Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin 2017-10-01

FALL 2017
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TURTLE POWER

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500 College Ave.
Swarthmore, PA 19081–1306
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SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

TREASURES OF THE COLLEGE ARRRRCHIVES

FALL 2017
LAURENCE KESTERSON

community

Plunder your closets for Swarthmore memorabilia—we’re seeking donations!
archives@swarthmore.edu
swarthmore.edu/archives

PRISON REFORM

p38

in this issue

34

SYNCH AND SWIM

All Together Now

Honoring a golden era of
Swarthmore synchronized
swimming.
by Jonathan Riggs

MOMENT IN TIME
At Orientation, students like
Vivian Torres ’21 experience the
magic of Swarthmore ... and
make their own.

18
24
38
FEATURES

Including You

Creating spaces for an
all-embracing campus
community.
by Kate Campbell

Hive Minded

Unlocking—and learning
from—the secret life of
bees.
by Elizabeth Slocum

Unbarring Progress

Confronting the controversial American tradition of
mass incarceration.
by Michael Agresta

2

DIALOGUE

Editor’s Column
Letters
Community Voices
Gabe Turzo ’01

Rewind

Phyllis Foster Satter ’62

Books
Global Thinking

Andrew Medina-Marino ’96

9

COMMON GOOD

Swarthmore Stories
Learning Curve
Jeff Kaufman ’08

Liberal Arts Lives
Ron Goor ’62
Suzanne Winter ’10

72
SPOKEN WORD

Varo Duffins

WEB
EXCLUSIVES
BULLETIN.SWARTHMORE.EDU
AQUATIC ARTISTRY

Swim through a gallery of the
glory days of water ballet.
BUILDING COMMUNITY

Read more about the countless
ways our campus comes together.
DOLPHIN FRIEND

Watch an animated 18th-century
Quaker adventure and read more
in Friends Historical Library.
THE BEES’ KNEES

Find out what all the buzz is
about with extra interviews and
background.
COMPASSION FOR CAMBODIA

Get inspired by Liz Seth ’98 and
Richard Sager ’74’s essay on their
life-changing trip.

45
CLASS NOTES

Alumni News and
Events
Profile

Shanalyna Palmer ’94

ON THE COVER
Rebecca Zhou ’19 and her bee research
photographed by Laurence Kesterson

FALL 2017

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LETTERS

EDITOR’S COLUMN

FOR THEE A BEE DO WE BECOME

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN
Editor
Jonathan Riggs

Strange that the cover of the summer 2017 Bulletin should link fish
and curiosity. My curiosity about fish was a major reason for leaving
Swarthmore after two years. In the 1950s, biology at Swarthmore was
largely cellular, and not a fit for my interest in fish and wildlife.
I went on to a Ph.D. from the University of New Hampshire in zoology
(salmon physiology) and started a salmon farm in Maine. My company,
Sea Run Holdings Inc., produces reagents and therapeutics from the
plasma of farmed salmon. Salmon fibrinogen has healed intestinal
fistulas in Crohn’s patients; in animals, salmon thrombin is as effective
as morphine for pain; and salmon fibrin promotes functional recovery
after spinal cord injury. The fish are our natural expression system free
from mammal pathogens.
Come on, S’more students: What else can they do?
—EVELYN SNODGRASS SAWYER ’58, Freeport, Maine

Managing Editor
Kate Campbell
Class Notes Editor
Elizabeth Slocum
Designer
Phillip Stern ’84
Photographer
Laurence Kesterson
Administrative/Editorial Assistant
Michelle Crumsho
Editorial Assistants
Eishna Ranganathan ’20
Sangeeta Subedi ’18

PEN PAL

Editor Emerita
Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49

Way back, last century, when we had to sign credit card transactions, I
dropped my Swarthmore pen at a checkout. The fellow behind me picked it
up. I said it was celebrating 50 years since I graduated. He turned it over and
inspected it closely. “It’s lasted well,” he said.
—LUCY RICKMAN BARUCH ’42, Marlow, England

bulletin.swarthmore.edu
facebook.com/SwarthmoreBulletin
instagram.com/SwarthmoreBulletin
Email: bulletin@swarthmore.edu
Telephone: 610-328-8533

LAURENCE KESTERSON

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

by

JONATHAN
RIGGS
Editor

Printed with agri-based inks.
Please recycle after reading.
©2017 Swarthmore College.
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FALL 2017

With Gratitude
In late March, Swarthmore publicly launched the Changing Lives,
Changing the World campaign, announcing $253 million already
committed toward a goal of $450 million by June 30, 2020. Our
campaign is an opportunity for alumni, families, and friends to
express joyfully their support for the mission of the College and propel
Swarthmore forward in its distinguished history.
As of June 30, commitments totaled $267 million, or roughly
60 percent of the goal, in support of the campaign’s four priorities:
enhancing our social impact, connecting the liberal arts, building an
inclusive community (this Bulletin’s theme), and creating vital spaces.
The majority of donors—including 52 percent of alumni—gave
through The Swarthmore Fund. The overwhelming success of The 1864
Challenge (1,864 donors in 1,864 minutes) contributed significantly to
the increase in participation.
In total, more than 9,000 alumni, faculty, students, and friends made
a gift to Swarthmore in 2016–17, and we are most grateful. Thank you,
and please join us in continuing to change lives and change the world.
—EMILY WEISGRAU, director of advancement communications

+ MORE: lifechanging.swarthmore.edu
i

th

ON CAMPUS and around the world, honeybees
are living their best liberal arts lives.
As mathematically precise (the hexagonal
glory of the honeycomb) as they are artistically
effusive (masters of interpretive dance), they
pour all their talents and time into working
together toward a common goal—and a common
good.
We each could learn a lot from their busy,
buzzing success, made possible only via the
harmony of inclusion, of community—the theme
of this issue, a hallmark of the Swarthmorean
experience, and a reminder to us all ... to “bee”
our best selves.

The Swarthmore College Bulletin (ISSN
0888-2126), of which this is volume
CXV, number I, is published in October,
January, April, and July by Swarthmore
College, 500 College Ave., Swarthmore,
PA 19081-1390. Periodicals postage
paid at Philadelphia, PA and additional
mailing offices. Permit No. 0530-620.
Postmaster: Send address changes
to Alumni Records, 500 College Ave.,
Swarthmore, PA 19081-1390.

ly

H-UV

ks

The Bulletin staff buzzing about bees in Swarthmore’s Pollinator Garden.

FISH PHARM

in

IN MEMORY OF A FRIEND
“We continue to mourn the loss of
Bunn Buraparat ’20. His family, friends,
and professors recall the joyous, lively
personality that belied his curious, kind,
and thoughtful nature. Bunn brought an
eagerness and intensity of dedication to
his studies. The kind of student you would
put in a group to get people talking to one
another, Bunn sought to help others by
sharing knowledge and advice. A creative
designer who loved science, he possessed
an infectious sense of humor that brought
light and joy to those around him.”
—PRESIDENT VALERIE SMITH

+ FULL TRIBUTE: bulletin.swarthmore.edu

Work in Progress
As an Arab-American, I find it encouraging that
Brendan Work ’10 (spring 2017, “Speaking the
Same Language”) is teaching Arabic in Missoula,
Mont. I strongly believe more Americans should
be exposed to this beautiful and globally important language. And yet, I’m concerned that Work
would call Arabic an “enemy language” even in
jest. Such phrasing, even if it seeks to diffuse
the stereotypes students have of Arabs, does not
seem to be in the Quaker spirit. Work’s heart is
in the right place. I hope he will consider this
letter merely a constructive note.
—EMAN QUOTAH ’95, Rockville, Md.

FALL 2017

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COMMUNITY VOICES

VERONICA FARJE

FINDING MY WAY
Starting over takes strength

I

AM, to my knowledge,
Street, so after graduation, that’s
the only member of
where I went.
the Class of 2001 to
Though I was good at my finance job,
have spent time in a
I hated it. I hated the tediousness, the
mental institution. No
sedentary lifestyle, the making-theone who knew me well
rich-even-richer while pretending to
in school would be terribly shocked by
serve some more noble purpose. It’s
this news. In fact, if you were to take a
not healthy to devote so much of your
time machine back to graduation and
energy to doing something you can’t
ask my classmates who among us was
stand; eventually, I could no longer
most likely to be committed at some
be alone for more than an hour or two
point, I almost certainly would have
without drinking.
finished near the top of that list.
My classmates will readily affirm
How did I get there? How did I
that my partying was problematic
go from Wall Street
from the start, but
professional to psychafter a few years in the
by
ward patient to struggling
workforce, I was drinking
writer working at a
to obliterate a debilitating
Trader Joe’s in New York?
subconscious pain that
More important, how did
I couldn’t articulate.
I go from being tormented
Ultimately, I drank myself
by my subconscious to being happy
into the hospital while incoherently
and reasonably well-adjusted?
rambling about suicide.
Like many children from workingState law allows hospitals to hold
class backgrounds who land in elite
suicidal patients, so as I sobered up, I
schools, I carried a lot of people’s
found myself in the intake facility of a
hopes and expectations with me when
psychiatric care unit.
I arrived at Swarthmore. Having come
Although I was annoyed, I was also
of age in the ’90s, I internalized the
relieved: The three weeks I spent in
notion that people with talent and
the hospital allowed me to do some
financial ambition belonged on Wall
deep reflection. I realized what I really

GABE TURZO ’01
Writer

“Don’t get too set in your beliefs
about the world—or about yourself.
Have the courage to grow.”
4

Swarthmore College Bulletin /

FALL 2017

wanted to do was write.
Having done so sporadically over
the years, I knew there were few
things more rewarding for my sense of
well-being than honoring the urge to
compose. Before my breakdown, I’d felt
that devoting myself to writing in the
absence of tangible financial success
was a form of self-betrayal. After my
breakdown, my only concern was
whether I liked my creations.
To write, I still needed to work, of
course, but I couldn’t risk returning
to the draining, dangerous trappings
of my previous life. So one day last
summer, I walked into a Trader Joe’s
looking for a job.
My work there is physically
demanding and can be repetitious,
but one year later I’ve grown deeply
fascinated by the ethical and logistical
questions raised by the food industry,
along with the sociology of retail
sales. My work on Wall Street was
ephemeral—I find it much more
rewarding to focus on growing as a
writer while trafficking in that most
visceral of commodities: food. And,
most important, I’m happy.
What began as a painful personal
and professional journey has led me to
find pleasure working in a field I never
would have considered while pursuing
an art form I love. Sometimes it’s scary
to change directions or admit we want
something new. But it’s worth facing
our fear to find out who we really are.
GABE TURZO ’01 is a writer in New
York. He encourages anyone struggling
with similar issues to email him:
gabeturzo@gmail.com

REWIND: AN UNCOMMON
LANGUAGE

Linked by love and linguistic differences
“GO WHERE?”
“To the backyard.” I nodded toward it as I balanced a tea
tray.
“You mean ‘garden’?” asked Keith, my new British
boyfriend.
“Here it’s a yard.”
He shuddered. “What an ugly word for a lovely place.”
“Keith, in America it’s the space behind the
house, where kids play, women hang washing,
and we’ll have our tea.” I tried to be patient.
I never imagined teaching English to an
Englishman.
“In England, yards are paved with tarmac,
with dustbins in a corner.” I liked the way he wrinkled his
nose. My mind strayed from the lesson.
We met in fall 1960 at Swarthmore, British exchange
student Keith Johnson ’62 and I. One Saturday evening,
my friend Isabelle Phillips Williams ’63 and I sat studying
political science in Parrish Commons, the high Georgian
windows black and the room sunk deep in gloom, except
for crooked-shaded floor lamps dotting the darkness with
narrow pools of dim light. Cigarette smoke drifted through
those pools.

Izzie looked up from her book, scowling. “What does
obstreperous mean?”
“What’s the context?”
She read the sentence, a description of hotly debating
British politicians in the House of Lords.
I tried acting the meaning, mouthing shouts, flinging my
arms about.
She stared blankly.
Then we heard a voice from a far-off pool of light.
“AWWWK-w’d.”
Izzie and I exchanged uncomprehending glances.
“AWWWK-w’d.”
When we made no answer, the tall, gaunt owner of the
voice sauntered from his corner to ours, doling out a letter
with each step. “A-W-K-W-A-R-D.”
“Oh: ‘awk-werd,’” we laughed, converting his beguiling
musical enunciation to our Northeastern twang. Although
we recognized it, we began debating the meaning of
“awkward” and whether it meant the same as “obstreperous.”
In his appealing, mellow British accent, moving his mouth
into ever more enticing shapes, Keith explained the use
of awkward to describe a difficult, noisy child, one who
misbehaved, the way the Brits in the history book were
misbehaving. This made sense, launching us into our first
of many animated discussions about English and American
differences.
“Obstreperous” and our debate brought Keith and me
together. If Izzie hadn’t asked her question, Keith and I might
never have spoken.
An hour later Keith smiled shyly, excused himself, and
packed his neglected books into the dark-green cloth
bookbag we all carried in 1960. He pulled on his coat and
wound his multicolored British college scarf round his neck.
With a tentative backward look full into my eyes (not Izzie’s,
I felt sure), he slipped into the night, the swinging doors
flapping shut behind him.
In less than two years, the words we exchanged were “I do.”
As I read in bed beside Keith over the years of our
marriage, words I didn’t know kept cropping up.
“What does this mean, honey?”
by
His own book resting on his chest, his eyes
would roll toward the ceiling. I swear the
definitions were printed there in ink visible
only to him.
After reading the meaning from above, he
’62
would turn back to his novel. At first, I looked
these words up myself as well, but then saw I didn’t need to.
He had become my teacher.
One day, years later, shortly after Keith’s death, I ran
across an unfamiliar word. I started to turn to him for help.
In that moment, I fresh-grieved my loss.
These days, a different husband asks me, “What does this
word mean?”
I look up, smile, and think of Keith.

PHYLLIS FOSTER
SATTER

+

FULL ESSAY: bulletin.swarthmore.edu

FALL 2017

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dialogue
AUTHOR Q&A

A BELOVED NATURAL PLACE

BITTERSWEET
UTOPIA

by Melissa Tier ’14

HEATHER RIGNEY SHUMAKER ’91’s newest book is a love letter
to the Arcadia Dunes off Lake Michigan’s eastern coast, and a homage to the lives that intertwined to save it.
Saving Arcadia: A Story of Conservation and Community in the
Great Lakes (Wayne State University Press) tells how residents
preserved this 3,600-acre tract at the turn of this century.
The Arcadia area had primarily been farmland until 1970, when a
large swath of contiguous land was bought out by a utility. Over the
years, the local residents quietly explored the dunes, forests, and
abandoned farms until rumors of development necessitated action.
Shumaker weaves together the many voices that led to the
conservancy acquiring the land to preserve it: farmers, inn
owners, local politicians, and other residents of Michigan’s Benzie
and Manistee counties, as well as the conservancy staffers and
fundraising campaign partners united in their conviction.
“Nearly all of us cradled memories of a beloved place within us,”
she writes. “When something strikes that chord, we respond.”
The history of the Arcadia Dunes community demonstrates just
how powerful that response can be.

by Michelle Crumsho

In his second monograph,
Amnesiopolis: Modernity,
Space, and Memory in East
Germany (Oxford University
Press), Western Michigan
University Professor Eli
Rubin ’97 crafts the only
history of everyday life
in Marzahn, the largest of
the German Democratic
Republic’s socialist housing
projects.

MELISSA TIER ’14 is Swarthmore’s sustainability program
manager.

How has Marzahn changed?
Marzahners once took pride in their
strong community, heavily populated
by families with children, but what was
once the most desirable place to live has
experienced an exodus of young people—
far from the city and entertainment,
the apartments had no character. It is a
place that only makes sense in a socialist
system, because it was made by a
socialist system. The older residents are
still very proud of Marzahn and what it
stood for, but they are suspended in time.
I describe Marzahn as “the future of a
past world.”
What is the ultimate takeaway?
These vast prefabricated housing blocs
in formerly socialist countries do not
represent the failure of socialism. These
spaces are themselves often the most
powerful repositories of time. Time,
space, and our sense of memory are
intertwined—trying to erase the past
by creating an all-new space actually
connects people to deeper, older strands
of time, too.

BENJAMIN JOHNSON

BOOK REVIEW

What was most memorable about your
Swarthmore experience?
The Honors Program—absolute magic
results from sustained, intense study
of a subject. I am still deeply influenced
by Hegel’s The Phenomenology of Spirit
and Marx’s Capital, which we read in
Rick Eldridge’s Continental Philosophy
seminar.

+ CONTINUED: bulletin.swarthmore.edu

HOT TYPE: NEW BOOKS BY SWARTHMOREANS

Kristie Betts Letter ’94

Under-Worldly
L’Aleph

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FALL 2017

Giving poetic voice to the
subterranean, Letter’s
collection of verse plumbs
depths cultural, emotional,
spiritual. Her wit matched
only by her fearlessness, she
mines meaning from topics
as varied as Flint’s poisoned
water, algebra, and the allure
and vulnerability of 1980s
hair-metal heartthrobs.
Letter unearths universal
truths wherever she looks,
whether it’s a “Purple
Rain”-soaked dance floor,
past-their-prime would-be
lovers in a singles bar, or a
bingo-parlor reunion with
her birth mother. Absolutely
breathtaking.

J.R. McNeill ’75
and Peter Engelke

The Great Acceleration
Belknap Press

Since the mid-20th century,
the Earth has ushered in an
age marked by fossil fuel
use—the Anthropocene—
in which humans are the
most powerful influence on
global ecology. Co-authors
McNeill and Engelke trace
the planet’s environmental
history since 1945, the
most anomalous period in
our relationship with the
biosphere, and one that
will, for better or worse,
shape the future of every
living thing on Earth.
“Since we cannot exit
the Anthropocene,” they
conclude, “we will adjust to
it, one way or another.”

Stephen Henighan ’84

The Path of the Jaguar
Thistledown Press

Determined to make a
better life for her children
in late-’90s Guatemala, a
young mother must chart a
path between her indigenous
Mayan culture and the
tantalizing opportunities of
a nearby tourist town in this
acclaimed work of fiction
by Henighan, the author of
three previous novels, two
short-story collections,
and a volume of literary
criticism. “How people ruin
themselves for the illusion
of earthly love!” a character
exclaims, its truth ringing
across all ages and cultures
and on every page.

Sarah Jaquette Ray ’98
and Jay Sibara ’99

Disability Studies and the
Environmental Humanities
University of Nebraska Press

This co-edited,
interdisciplinary reader
explores the privileges
inherent in the relationship
between environments and
bodies as well as the ways
that toxicity and illness
complicate their study.
Spanning the 17th century to
the present, Ray and Sibara
establish a foundation
for this far-ranging field
while presenting its most
recent breakthroughs. “It
seems that environmental
humanities and disability
studies,” they write, “indeed
have much to offer each
other.”

FALL 2017

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GLOBAL THINKING

SCIENCE FOR SOCIAL WELFARE
He’s saving lives by following his two passions
by Amanda Whitbred

WHILE working on a Ph.D. in
molecular neuroscience at Caltech,
Andrew Medina-Marino ’96 felt
something was missing.
“I realized I was never going to be
fully happy if I didn’t find a way to
integrate my love of science with my
passion for social welfare,” he says.
A suggestion from a member of his
thesis committee ended up pointing
him to the perfect solution: the
Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS)
at the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention.
Accepted into the elite training
program, Medina-Marino gained a
deep understanding of public health—
and how it mirrored his Swarthmore
educational experience.
“The humanities are just as
important to impacting public health
as the sciences or social sciences,” he
says. “Doctors and researchers may
understand epidemics through science
and medicine, but communities make
sense of epidemics through dance, art,
and performance. Studying the liberal
arts was the perfect way to learn to
approach public health holistically.”
Medina-Marino conducted diseaseoutbreak investigations around
the world, including the plague in
Chicago with the CDC and Ebola in
West Africa with Doctors Without
Borders.
“The EIS was everything I ever
wanted,” he says.
He was also part of an outbreak
investigation into childhood deaths
due to lead poisoning in Nigeria. An
initial inquiry by another team of
CDC investigators found that the
poisoning was coming from gold ore
with high concentrations of lead the
communities were mining.
Medina-Marino’s team determined

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Swarthmore College Bulletin /

common good
SHARING SUCCESS AND STORIES OF SWARTHMORE

FALL 2017

that the scope of the poisoning wasn’t
limited to just one village—and that
hundreds more children and adults in
other villages were also poisoned.
“You had the intersection of
global climate change that caused
these villages to lose productivity
of their agricultural land; you had a
lack of economic opportunities that
forced them to move from farming
to gold mining; and you have very
real public health outcomes from the
intersection of poverty, economics,
and environmental disturbance,” he
says.
Now based in South Africa,
Medina-Marino is head of research
for a nongovernmental agency,
the Foundation for Professional
Development, focusing on
epidemiological and intervention
research to decrease the burden of
HIV and tuberculosis, which are both
rampant in the country.
Despite the overwhelming scale
of these epidemics, Medina-Marino
relishes his work for its intellectual
challenge and the opportunity it gives
him to make a real impact.

ON
THE
WEB

ANDREW MEDINA-MARINO ’96
Epidemiologist

He will be one of the world’s first
researchers to pilot a new batterypowered device that will allow him to
test for TB in the field, and to provide
patients with their results in just
90 minutes. (Traditional lab tests
took up to 40 days to give definitive
results.) It’s a case of new technology
saving time, money, and lives.
Medina-Marino is proud he’s found
a way to change the world by joining
his two passions.
“My goal,” he says, “is to ensure that
all people have the health security to
be productive members of society.”

“Doctors and researchers may understand epidemics through science
and medicine, but communities
make sense of epidemics through
dance, art, and performance.”

PICTURE THIS!
Where science and art
intersect is beautiful.

+ DAZZLE

bit.ly/RobertSavage
WELCOME,
CLASS OF 2021
Enjoy highlights from
Move-In Day.

+ WATCH

bit.ly/2021Move
HISTORY WITH
A FUTURE
Hear Ben Goossen ’13
discuss his acclaimed
new book, Chosen
Nation: Mennonites and
Germany in a Global Era.

+ LISTEN

bit.ly/Goossen
DESIGNING AN
EXPERIENCE
See how nearly 300
students gained firsthand experiences across
disciplines—and the
world—this summer.

+ EXPLORE

bit.ly/SwatDesign
CROWN HEIGHTS
Matt Thurm ’10’s new
film won a Sundance
Film Festival award.

+ CELEBRATE
bit.ly/Thurm

FRIENDS FOR GOOD

Two Swatties
in Cambodia
by Liz Seth ’98 and Richard Sager ’74

WE WERE DRAWN to Cambodia via the
American Jewish World Service, founded by
believers in tikkun olam, the Hebrew phrase for
“repairing the world.” Our continuing education
in social justice in the Cambodian context
has allowed us to return to our own work with
renewed passion and determination, to make
a difference where and when we can, and to
recognize change is possible.

+ CONTINUED: bulletin.swarthmore.edu

FALL 2017

/ Swarthmore College Bulletin

9

common good

NEW BOARD OF MANAGERS
MEMBERS

ONE FOR ALL

John Chen ’76 is COO of
Hilco Global. Thom Collins
’88 is executive director/
president of the Barnes
Foundation. Lucy Jane
Lang ’03 is special counsel
for policy and projects and
executive director of the
DANY Academy at the New
York County District Attorney’s Office.
A love of science runs in their family: Selman A. Waksman and his
granddaughter Nan Waksman Schanbacher ’72.

CARA EHLENFELDT ’16

DOLPHIN DERRING-DO!
FRIENDS HISTORICAL Library recently
acquired the letter book of Thomas Chalkley,
one of the most influential Quaker ministers
of the 18th century. Set sail for an animated
video depicting one of his many adventures at
bulletin.swarthmore.edu.
—CARA EHLENFELDT ’16

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Swarthmore College Bulletin /

FALL 2017

The Waksman Foundation for Microbiology throughout its
history drew dedicated trustees who built its reputation for
initiating and supporting excellent scientific research, programs,
and education.
It began with Selman A. Waksman. He was a brilliant scientist,
but his granddaughter remembers his warmth and generosity.
“He was at the antibiotic age’s forefront,” says Nan Waksman
Schanbacher ’72. “He wanted his discoveries to help mankind.”
Awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1952 for his discovery
of the first antibiotic effective against tuberculosis, he used his
personal royalties to launch the foundation.
Selman’s son Byron Waksman ’40—Schanbacher’s late father
and a pioneer in his own right in neuroimmunology—was the
second president and led the foundation for three decades. His
granddaughter had served as vice president and chair of the
board since 2007.
“It gave me the opportunity to meet and work with wonderful
people I respect, admire, and love,” she says. “It is a family
legacy of which I am enormously proud.”
Although the foundation ultimately closed for financial
reasons, its mission lives on via bequests to a variety of
institutions, including the National Academy of Sciences, the
American Society for Microbiology, The Marine Biological
Laboratory, and Swarthmore College to support the Summer
Scholars Program.
“Nan’s so dedicated to science education while keeping the
focus on microbiology,” says Amy Cheng Vollmer, Swarthmore’s
Isaac H. Clothier Jr. Professor of Biology and the foundation’s
fourth and final president. “She’s worked hard to make sure the
world won’t forget her family’s contributions.”
“Science education in the U.S. has deteriorated, and the public
has become increasingly ignorant about how science works and
why it is important,” says Schanbacher. “We continuously sought
ways to play a part in reversing those trends.”
—KATE CAMPBELL

BEN MCCANNA

Visible Influence

“It is not only important to stay involved in what is going on in the world—miserable
as some of this world can be,” says Libby Murch Livingston ’41, “it is also good for us.”

A Rallying
Cry
by Elizabeth Slocum

E

LIZABETH Murch
Livingston ’41 prefers
to cheer others
on away from the
spotlight. But that
doesn’t mean she’s a

spectator.
At 97, she actively advocates
for issues near to her heart—and
encourages classmates to do the same.

“We were fortunate to have been
given the tools at Swarthmore to be
effective in fighting for the causes
we hold most dear,” 1941’s longtime
secretary writes in this issue’s Class
Notes (pg. 45).
For Livingston, that’s included
marching with her Piper Shores
retirement community in Maine’s
annual Pride Portland parade—roars
of applause greet the group each year
as they cover the mile-and-a-half
course. For others, she says, it may
mean writing letters or making calls on
behalf of their own pet interests.
“Libby” to her Swarthmore friends
but “Betty” to nearly everyone
else—she adopted a new moniker
as a student at the College to avoid
confusion among a bevy of Bettys—
Livingston became passionate about
volunteering while raising her five
children. Eager to do more, she
pursued a master of social work and
established a career helping families
and immigrant communities.
Education and Swarthmorean
values were instrumental in
Livingston’s upbringing: Her parents,
the late Edwin and Elinor Murch,
graduated from the College (Classes
of 1914 and 1915, respectively), as did
several aunts, uncles, and cousins. The
family tradition continued with her
Quaker matchbox marriage to the late
Bill Livingston ’39 and the attendance
by two of their own children, William
Livingston ’67 and Martha Livingston
Bruce ’74.
“The most important thing about my
being at Swarthmore was meeting my
husband—and after that, field hockey,”
she laughs.
All jokes aside, Livingston’s great
takeaway from nearly a century of
service? To always be a rallying cry,
since every voice matters.
“We have to support those who are
involved in issues we find important,”
she says. “And why not? Each little
thing helps.”

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11

common good

Well-Versed

“//”
by Mary Jean Chan ’12

My mother lays the table with chopsticks & ceramic
spoons, expects you to fail at dinner. To the Chinese,
you and I are chopsticks: lovers with the same anatomies.
My mother tells you that chopsticks in Cantonese sounds

FRANCESCA CANALI

SHORTLISTED for the U.K.’s
prestigious 2017 Forward Prize
for her poem “//,” Mary Jean Chan
’12 embraced the art form after
reading queer feminist poets like
Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde.
“This poem was born out of an
intensely personal experience,”
she says, “and also informed by
ruminations on the state of mental
health among LGBTQ youths in
Hong Kong, a city that I flee from,
yet constantly wish to return to.”

CHILDREN FIRST

IN THE CARDS
Martin Fleisher ’80’s bridge team—one of two
to represent the U.S. in the open division—took
top honors in August at the 2017 World Bridge
Championships in Lyon, France, defeating the
host country in a close match.
“It was the thrill of a lifetime,” says
Fleisher (right). “I won the Intercollegiate
Championships as a Swarthmore freshman
in 1977, which was my first major win, and 40
years later a world championship. I never would
have believed it.”
The match was also golden for another
Swarthmorean: Jeff Wolfson ’75 and his team
defeated Italy for the senior-division title.

like the swift arrival of sons. My mother tongue rejoices
in its dumbness before you as expletives detonate: [two

women] [two men] [disgrace]. Tonight, I forget I am
bilingual. I lose my voice in your mouth, kiss till blood
comes so sorry does not slip on an avalanche of syllables
into sorrow. I tell you that as long as we hold each other,
no apology will be enough. Tonight, I am dreaming again
of tomorrow: another chance to eat at the feast of the living
with chopsticks balanced across the bridges of our hands
as we imbibe each yes, spit out every no among scraps of
shell or bone. Father says: kids these days are not as tough
as we used to be. So many suicides in one week. How many
times have you and I wondered about leaving our bodies
behind, the way many of us have already left? My friend’s
sister loved a woman for ten years and each word she says
to her mother stings like a papercut. Each word she does
not say burns like the lines she etches carefully into skin.
I have stopped believing that secrets are a beautiful way
to die. You came home with me for three hundred days —
to show my family that dinner together won’t kill us all.
First published in Ambit magazine
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Just Desserts
The longtime owner of a marketing company,
Joan Rogers Leopold ’76 was inspired by her
grandchildren to pursue a dream: writing and
publishing fiction for families. So she launched
Slow Tag Press, Stories for Grandparents and
Their Grandchildren. Her first book, Herbert
Loves Sherbet, a brightly colored charmer about
being careful what you
wish for—no matter how
delicious—is available
now. Read more: bulletin.
swarthmore.edu
—SANGEETA SUBEDI ’18

Gil Kemp ’72 (left) and Eric Hemel (right) meet with SPELL students during a trip to Vietnam.

A Brighter
Path

C

RISSCROSSING the
back roads of Vietnam
is all in a day’s work
for Gil Kemp ’72,
who went from a
Swarthmore sociology
degree to a Harvard MBA, and then on
to join—and chair—the College’s Board
of Managers.
Difficult travel is part of visiting
the country he’s come to know and
love. It’s often the only way to reach
students he’s helped here for more
than a decade through a nonprofit
started with friend Eric Hemel.
Kemp jetted across much of the
world as founder and CEO of Home
Decorators Collection. When Hemel
invited him to explore Vietnam and
Cambodia on a walking tour in 2003,
Kemp’s children were grown and
he was glad for a distraction from

empty-nest syndrome. Vietnam’s
culture and beauty stood out, but so
did its poverty.
“Some homes are just two rooms
divided by a canvas wall, covered by a
corrugated steel roof,” he says. “The
conditions were very bleak.”
Dismayed by the number of
Vietnamese children not in school,
Kemp and Hemel researched their
obstacles to education, including the
cost of tuition, books, and uniforms;
travel; and the need of some families to
keep them working at home.
Moved to help, Hemel jump-started
the nonprofit Scholarship Program
to Enhance Literacy and Learning
(SPELL) and asked Kemp to join him.
Initially a silent financial partner,
Kemp embraced a more hands-on role
after he retired in 2010.
“The Quaker values that still
influence Swarthmore influenced
me,” says Kemp. “Gene Lang ’38, H’81
was a powerful role model, and I’ve
been blessed with many teachers who
positively influenced me.”
They began by networking with
agencies in Vietnam and identifying

children at high risk of dropping out.
Targeting the poorest 10 percent
of third- and fourth-graders from
within 300 miles of Da Nang in central
Vietnam, SPELL provided for their
educational and, in some cases, healthcare needs.
“Philanthropy can entail more than
just writing a check,” says Hemel. “Gil
and I are involved in every key policy
decision regarding our scholarship
program.”
They apply many business practices
to the nonprofit model, including
selling the idea of the program to
parents and making expectations of
success clear to students.
“This program has benefited from
trial and error,” Kemp says, “and from
having the flexibility and humility to
say we don’t know all the answers and
ask how we can make it better.”
SPELL, which employs eight
Vietnamese staff members, has shifted
from the grade-school commitment;
it has 2,200 high schoolers and 500
college students enrolled and each year
adds 600 new ninth-graders.
“I’m exceedingly fortunate to
connect with young people who are
working so hard,” says Kemp, who
visits two weeks each year to meet
with potential students. “They are
so impressive and coming from very
desperate situations. Resilience
is far and away the trait I see as a
determinant of happiness and success.
What appeals to me most about
resilience is that it’s a learnable trait.”
Now 14 years later, SPELL has
supported more than 6,000 students.
“It’s remarkable to see them
achieving so much,” he says. “It’s been
the most joyful experience. I didn’t
anticipate that it would be as impactful
and such a source of joy.”
—KATE CAMPBELL

+ MORE: bulletin.swarthmore.edu
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13

common good

LEARNING CURVE

MORE THAN MOST

He puts his money where his heart is
Hannah Allison, former Bucknell
assistant coach, is the new head
coach of the Garnet.
SOFTBALL

Melissa Finley takes over
as head coach after leading
Colgate for the past five
seasons.
ROY GREIM ’14

LACROSSE

Wei Impressive
by Roy Greim ’14

Cross country and track & field standout
Tess Wei ’17 is one of two students
selected to represent the Centennial
Conference as a nominee for the NCAA
Woman of the Year Award, which
honors a collegiate student-athlete who
has distinguished herself in academic
achievement, athletic excellence, service,
and leadership.
Wei, an honors major in studio art,
honors minor in sociology & anthropology,
and course minor in art history, is a
member of Phi Beta Kappa and was
Swarthmore’s nominee for the Rhodes
and Marshall scholarships in 2016.
Her passion for art extended beyond
the classroom: As an intern at the
List Gallery, Wei designed, wrote, and
published the gallery’s 25th anniversary
catalog; at the student-run Kitao Gallery,
she served as the campus arts director.
She also interned at the Barnes
Foundation and held a residency at the
Ballinglen Arts Foundation in Ballycastle,
Ireland. The College will acquire pieces
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The late Avery Blake ’28, former
head coach, was inducted
into the Intercollegiate Men’s
Lacrosse Coaches Association
Hall of Fame Class for 2017.
from Wei’s senior exhibition through
the art department’s Frank Solomon
Jr. Student Art Purchase Fund, which
recognizes one student per year.
After playing varsity soccer as a
freshman, Wei joined the cross country
team as a sophomore. In her junior
season, she was named to the AllCentennial Conference Second Team with
a 13th-place finish at the championship
meet. Wei also earned NCAA Mideast AllRegion Honors that year as the Garnet’s
top regional finisher, placing 23rd
among 334 participants. She rounded
out her breakout season as a member
of the Philadelphia Inquirer Academic
All-Area Team and as the Centennial
Conference Scholar-Athlete of the Year
for women’s cross country, given to the
all-conference team member with the
highest GPA. Capping off 2016, Wei ran
the Philadelphia Marathon in 3:05.16,
finishing sixth in her age group and 39th
among women overall.
She is the sixth Swarthmore studentathlete to be placed on the national ballot
and joins Supriya Davis ’15, Aarti Rao ’14,
and Katie Lytle ’14 as recent Centennial
Conference representatives.
The 2017 NCAA Woman of the Year
winner will be announced Oct. 22.

Kathryn Restrepo ’19 was the
leading goal-scorer for the
Spanish national team at the FIL
Rathbones Women’s Lacrosse
World Cup in July.
“I learned so much—it was
very interesting seeing how
much the playing style can vary
country to country,” she says.
“I’m super excited to play with
my team at Swat again!”

by Ryan Dougherty

THE LONGER Jeff Kaufman ’08 thought about it, the less
comfortable he was with being more financially secure than
people who didn’t happen to be born into opportunity.
Discussing this with Julia Wise—now his wife—he became
convinced that they “should be doing something to help.” So
the couple put that ethic into action, donating more than half
of their income to charity for the past five years.
“We have more than we need, and there are a lot of people
who don’t,” says Kaufman, whose Quaker upbringing
stressed self-actualization over accumulation. “So we are
committed to sharing—to doing—all that we can.”
The couple evaluates charities through the nonprofit
GiveWell to maximize their donation’s impact. They focus
on world health issues like childhood malaria, seizing “an
amazing opportunity” to improve and save lives, he says.
Kaufman is a software engineer, Wise a community liaison
for the Centre for Effective Altruism. Living on a small
fraction of their income after taxes and savings, with two
young daughters—including their elder, Lily (pictured)—
in the Boston metro area, the couple does face financial
conflicts.
But that would be true regardless, he says, and frugality
forces them to zero in on the things and experiences that
bring them the most meaning.
After leaving Swarthmore, Kaufman worked in natural
language processing and computational advertising before
joining Google to write software for loading web pages faster.
His earning and donating power spiked, but after four years,
Kaufman felt shadowed by a question: “Is there more I could
be doing to make other people’s lives better?”
Seeking to make more of a direct impact, Kaufman
joined Wave earlier this year to help build a mobile-money
system for Ethiopia, based on the humanitarian success

RIETTE FARTHING

FIELD HOCKEY

of the M-Pesa microfinancing service in Kenya. When he
was laid off from the company in June, his and his wife’s
philanthropic mindset was tested ... and emboldened.
“Being in a position where we don’t need much money to
live on actually gives us many more exciting options than we
would have had otherwise,” he says.

“Is there more I could be doing to make
other people’s lives better?”

+ MORE: bulletin.swarthmore.edu

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15

common good

LIBERAL ARTS LIVES

RON GOOR ’62

NANCY GOOR

“I have taken photos in many places and many situations,” says Ron Goor ’62. “I try to
capture the humor, pathos, and beauty all around us.”

LIBERAL ARTS LIVES

BITTEN BY
THE BUG
Curiosity keeps him
going
by Carol Brévart-Demm

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Perhaps one of Ron Goor ’62’s most
memorable contributions to science came
when he offered his bare arms to feed
hungry mosquitos. But more on that later.
After high honors in zoology, botany,
and chemistry at Swarthmore garnered
him a 1963 National Science Foundation
Predoctoral Scholarship at Harvard, he
earned a doctorate in biochemistry and
then spent two years on a postdoc in the
National Institutes of Health Laboratory of
Molecular Biology.
Goor’s second stint at NIH was
coordinating a large clinical trial on
coronary heart disease. After spending
a year in the NIH medical library reading
papers, Goor found definitive proof that
reducing fat intake results in weight loss.
“It was like being back in the Honors
Program,” he says.

Since then, Goor and his wife, Nancy,
have co-authored best-selling books
on healthy eating for weight loss and
lowering cholesterol, but have also
written and illustrated (with Ron’s
photos) nine award-winning nonfiction
children’s books.
One of these, In the Driver’s Seat,
features photographs taken by Goor
of what it’s like to pilot vehicles like a
Concorde jet, a front-loader, and an
Amtrak engine. Ron even took a three-day
trip in an 18-wheeler and slept in the cab.
Other books cover topics like the lost
Roman city of Pompeii and insects, a
personal fascination of Goor’s.
In fact, in the early 1970s, Goor became
special assistant to the director of the
Smithsonian’s National Museum of
Natural History, where he developed,
among other things, the country’s
first live-insect zoo. (That’s where he
buddied up to those aforementioned
bloodsuckers.) He also created an
independent production company to
make educational nature films.
All of his varied interests have made
for a fascinating journey, and the Goors
agree on the launching pad that made it
all possible.
“Because of Swarthmore’s Honors
Program, I feel I can do anything,”
he says. “As a result, I’ve had a very
interesting life.”

+ photo-stories-by-rongoor.com

LAURENCE KESTERSON

Naturalist

“I’m not home enough to support a mammal,” laughs Suzanne Winter ’10, with her beloved rescue turtle, Tycho Brahe. “The name
seemed appropriate because Brahe lost his nose in a duel—turtles don’t really have ‘noses’—and I like science.”

TEACHER’S PET
She has helping others
down to a science
by Jonathan Riggs

“I LIKE getting my students to express
themselves across different media,”
says Suzanne Winter ’10, a biology
teacher at Stevenson, a therapeutic
prep school in Manhattan. “Things
like essays, theater, paintings,
cross-stitch.”
Cross-stitch?!
“It’s very relaxing,” she explains. “We
plot our big ideas onto a cross-stitch
grid—it’s more freeing for students to
think about things in three dimensions,
not just on lined paper.”
Winter’s favorite subject to teach

is sex education. Adolescents come
to Stevenson facing academic, social,
physical, and/or emotional challenges,
and she prides herself on fostering an
environment where they can ask her
the most personal of questions without
embarrassment, knowing they’ll get
clear, factual, nonjudgmental answers …
at the price of a pun, perhaps.
“I made a pretty bad ‘you’re ovaryacting’ joke today in class.” She smiles
proudly.
After Swarthmore, Winter
reconsidered medical school when an
interviewer asked her if she would be
comfortable eschewing creativity in her
daily work.
“I wrote a letter afterward, thanking
her for recognizing how difficult it
would be for me to toe that rigid line,”
she says. “Teaching opened itself as
a creative way for me to be of service
while still engaging with medicine,
health, and science.”
Adviser to—and chief enthusiast

of—Stevenson’s anime club as well as
a proud confidante to her students,
Winter hopes to inspire them to
always see the world through curious,
compassionate eyes.
“We had a delightful time recently
in class listening to a Percy Jackson
audiobook, coloring, and discussing
how the actors’ choices could spark
assumptions—good and bad—in
listeners,” she says. “Engaging with new
information and disrupting systems is
my idea of fun, both as an educator and
as a rabble-rouser.”

SUZANNE WINTER ’10
Educator

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including
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FALL 2017

you

Creating spaces for an
all-embracing campus
community
by Kate Campbell
illustrations by Jason Heglund

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FALL 2017

everyone when more than 225 students, faculty, and staff
attended.
“It was the highlight of the year,” says Razvi. “Everybody—
professor or student, Muslim or otherwise, Swattie or
TriCo—came out to support us. It genuinely meant so
much for the Muslim students to see the outpouring of
love displayed at our event. It was honestly one of the most
humbling moments of my time at Swarthmore. ”
The key, Duncan Smith says, is to make sure all
community members feel embraced, respected, and heard.
Jason Rivera, dean of the sophomore class and director of
the Intercultural Center, agrees, citing the importance of
resources like the new College website built specifically for
current and future LGBTQ students.
After all, a rich sense of community—noise, food, music,
contemplation, questions, debate—shapes the Swarthmore
experience.
“We seek ways for members of our community to
cross paths with and get to know individuals—students,
faculty, staff, neighbors—with different backgrounds, life
experiences, and perspectives,” says President Valerie
Smith.
The Monday before finals this spring, Clarissa Phillips ’19

“By creating a
true campus
‘community’
feeling, we make
it easier for people
to be themselves
and get the
most from their
experience at
Swarthmore.”
—Syon Bhanot,
assistant professor

LAURENCE KESTERSON

A

N OPENING, a
sliver of light.
That’s what T.
Shá Duncan Smith,
Swarthmore’s
associate dean of diversity, inclusion, and community
development, searches for in a conversation.
“We need to create opportunities across campus for
people to exhale and to have a space where different ideas
are allowed to exist together,” she says. “Swarthmore, at
its very core, strives to promote a culture rooted in mutual
understanding, empathy, and empowerment.”
Building an organic sense of togetherness anywhere—
the world at large, across campus—is a tall order, but when
empathy and compassion lead the way, it’s possible.
For example, Yousaf Razvi ’18, president of the Muslim
Students Association, found the days around last year’s
presidential election especially fraught.
“In America, we were seeing increased hate crimes and
violence against Muslims,” he says. He wanted a place on
campus to celebrate and share his Muslim identity, but
wasn’t quite sure what to expect when planning an Eid
al-Adha banquet. So he reached out to co-sponsors across
the religious spectrum, including Kehilah, Swarthmore
Progressive Christian Community, and Newman Club, as
well as the Intercultural Center, Interfaith Center, and
Islamic Studies Department.
They were eager for a good turnout, but unsure who, or
how many, would come. The number astonished almost

Making space for joy in community-building, students bounce inside plastic bubbles on
Parrish Beach to celebrate Swatoberfest.

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DREW ALTIZER

James Hormel ’55, H’09 and Michael Nguyen ’08 believe
in bringing Swarthmoreans together in dynamic ways.

JOYFUL NOISE

was calling Poi Dog restaurant to coordinate a special
“Multi” student–faculty dinner while setting up communal
dining tables in a Kohlberg classroom. Along with Dakota
Gibbs ’19, Casey Lu Simon-Plumb ’18, and Chris Malafronti
’18, she helped plan the night for students who self-identify
as belonging to multiple heritages or backgrounds. When
the gathering was over, 35 guests had shared conversations,
laughter, and a deeper sense of belonging.
“People develop and learn best when they aren’t trying to
be someone else,” says Assistant Professor of Economics
Syon Bhanot, who even brought his dog, Humphrey. “By
creating a true campus ‘community’ feeling, we make it
easier for people to be themselves and get the most from
their experience at Swarthmore.”
“Events like that are a time to talk about experiences and
identities, and to learn more about each other and ourselves,”
says Phillips, who worked alongside Rivera in the IC office.
“The world definitely seems more daunting when you have to
go it alone, but good company always makes things easier to
handle.”

“To build a beloved
community, we need to
celebrate our differences
but also recognize
the challenges of
communicating across
them.”

FINDING NEW OPPORTUNITIES to connect is a goal
for Zenobia Hargust, Swarthmore’s director of equal
opportunity and engagement. In addition to the upcoming
projects she’s working on, Hargust is thrilled to be

—President Valerie Smith

Inclusion in action was on display when James
Hormel ’55, H’09 and Michael Nguyen ’08 gave a
$4.3 million gift last year to fund The Hormel-Nguyen
Intercultural Center, which will be the new home of the
Intercultural Center, the Interfaith Office, and the Office
of International Programs as well as multiple dynamic
spaces and opportunities for bonding.
“This generous gift is a big win for the community,” says
Jason Rivera, director of the Intercultural Center. “It’s
a greater opportunity for us to work with our students,
staff, and faculty on coalition-building and community
engagement and development.”
More campus community-building:
DINNERS WITH STRANGERS, launched by President

Valerie Smith, where small groups of faculty, staff,
students, and alumni meet for the first time over a meal.
SWATDECK, a social experiment where students walk

to the train station and meet their randomly assigned
teammates. Together, they travel into Philadelphia to a
spot that sparks their curiosity.
LEARNING FOR LIFE, where student-staff-faculty

partnerships connect as they design their own learning
projects.
THE PRESIDENT’S SUSTAINABILITY RESEARCH
FELLOWS PROGRAM (PSRF), which matches students

with mentors to research solutions to sustainabilityrelated campus challenges.

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FALL 2017

partnering with the Accessibility Task Force, a campuswide
group focused on the accessibility of all information and
communication technology.
“This will advance the important work of making our
campus materials available and accessible to all current and
prospective community members,” she says.
Challenges, communication-related or otherwise, are
always part of growth, says Pamela P
­ rescod-Caesar, vice
president for human resources. Plus, students aren’t the only
ones who benefit from a sense of camaraderie. There are
countless opportunities for faculty and staff to mentor and
inspire one another to improve processes and outcomes.
“We have made progress,” she says, “but we still have work
to do.”
SUCH WORK CAN MEAN ownership of projects. This
is especially important for students, even when the
responsibility can be daunting, says Andrew Barclay,
assistant director of student activities and leadership in
the Office of Student Engagement. Barclay manages large
events including seasonal, madcap socials in Upper Tarble,
but smaller projects—such as getting haircuts for charity
or climbing a pop-up rock wall—often draw students into

common spaces and spark a connection to the College
culture.
“I ask myself all the time: How can we be intentional about
building community?” he says. “At a state school, the sense
of community is often built around athletics, but for a small
liberal arts school, we think about those things differently.
When a student comes to me with an idea for what they’d
like to see on campus, I tell them, ‘I can facilitate it, but you
need to help.’”
When Josie Hung ’19 approached Barclay with her idea
for hosting a series of events called Culture and Identity
Appreciation Week, he turned the tables and asked her how
she would make it happen.
“It was intimidating at first reaching out to all the groups,
and I wasn’t sure how people would react,” Hung says, but
the effort involved in spearheading the project to success
ultimately made her feel more connected to campus and her
classmates. She was proud of the positive difference she was
able to create.
That sense of pride is foundational for student success,
says Karen Henry ’87, dean of first-year students and
director of first-generation and low-income student
initiatives. Henry takes special pride in community
bonding and building. As a Swarthmore student, she formed
friendships she still treasures today thanks to spaces like the
Black Cultural Center.
“It was a home away from home,” she says. “Swarthmore
is a very caring community. That was true when I was a
student, and as an administrator, that’s still true.”
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hive
minded
by Elizabeth Slocum
Using a microphone and field sampler, Rebecca Zhou ’19
watches and listens for the bees’ waggle dance and stop signal.

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LAURENCE KESTERSON

Unlocking—and
learning from—
the secret life of bees

RANGE abdomen, pink thorax.
Carefully, as a honeybee darts
its tiny tongue to slurp concentrated
sugar water, Rebecca Zhou ’19 readies
her rainbow of paint pens. She shakes the orange and pink
ones to get the color flowing, then gently dabs the bee’s fuzzy
body—two dots on the abdomen, one on the thorax. The tiny
forager, drugged-up on a sweet solution three times as potent
as nectar in nature, hardly seems to notice. Later, Zhou will
try to spot the marked bee as it jets back to its hive, fresh
from its food run.
“I’m actually terrified of bees!” Zhou admits. You wouldn’t
know it. On this steamy July morning outside Martin
Biological Laboratory, clad in sunhat, T-shirt, and shorts,
she’s more protected from the heat than from a potential
sting.
A honeybee study may seem a strange choice for a student
with melissophobia, but Zhou’s anxiety actually factored into
her decision to participate: She wanted to face her fear.

ALL ABUZZ
Susanne Weil ’80’s husband, Peter Glover, first put the bug in
her ear.
“We’re going to keep bees!” he declared in 2008, fresh from
a Master Gardeners symposium led by the state apiarist. An
English professor at Centralia College in Washington state,
Weil knew zero about honeybees, but the timing proved
fortuitous: A week later, the couple watched PBS’s Silence
of the Bees documentary, depicting the acceleration of Apis
mellifera die-offs.
“It alarmed and upset me,” Weil says, “and what seemed
like a fun adventure suddenly looked like important
environmental work.”
The documentary described colony collapse disorder
(CCD), a mysterious condition that thrust the western
honeybee into the international spotlight. Winter honeybee
losses—which typically hover between 15 and 25 percent
nationally—jumped to 35.8 percent in 2007–08, with 60
percent of those losses likely tied to CCD, according to the
U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“With CCD, you have bees going out, but they’re not able
to make it back,” says Chris Mayack, a visiting assistant
professor of evolution who mentored Zhou’s summer
honeybee project. “You have no dead bees in or around the
hive, you still have viable brood, there are food stores—
everything else seems normal except the bees aren’t there.”
The root cause of CCD is still unknown, though most
scientists agree it’s likely a combination of pesticides,
parasites, and a lack of foraging resources. Although the
number of CCD cases has dropped significantly over the
past decade, bees are still suffering, with the Varroa mite—a
destructive parasite that infests hives—ultimately being the
No. 1 plague on U.S. honeybee health.
“Beekeepers on average are losing about 30 percent of

“IF YOU DEVOTE THE TIME AND CARE,
BEES WILL REWARD YOU IN SO MANY WAYS.”
—SUSANNE WEIL ’80
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LAURENCE KESTERSON

A Velay fellow, Zhou spent her summer recording sights,
sounds, and scents in one of several Swarthmore projects
exploring the secrets of this remarkable insect. In doing so,
she and her fellow student researchers joined a colony of
Swarthmoreans acting on behalf of—and in the vein of—the
beloved bee.

Students mark bees and train them with a highly concentrated sugar-water solution, then swap it with a concentration closer to nature. “Apparently, the pathway they get when they eat sugar water is similar to the human cocaine- or heroin-addiction pathway,” says Rebecca Zhou ’19.

their hives each year,” Mayack says, “so the focus has shifted
to looking at colony collapse in general.”
Colony losses have been a frustration for Weil, who went
from “newbee” to a certified instructor with seven hives
of her own: In 2016, apiarists in her area of southwest
Washington lost an average of 45 percent of their bees.
“We know some who lost all,” she says.
The couple’s growth as beekeepers has taken years of
practice and patience, but they began like expectant parents,
“rehearsing ahead of time every step in hiving our two new
bee colonies—we were afraid of harming them through some
rookie mistake,” she says.
They quickly discovered that, like children, “bees don’t
read the books, and we had to reconnoiter when they buzzed
outside the proverbial rules.” They learned to hive swarms,
harvest honey, treat for diseases, and make difficult life-anddeath decisions. Ultimately, they learned to listen.
“Observing bees at work fascinates me,” Weil says. “I
love the calming, meditative feeling I get watching their
dancelike flight as they hover at the hive entrance, the arc

of the foragers taking off in search of food. It’s fun to watch
what colors of pollen they bring back in their baskets and
speculate what plants produced those colors.
“But most important,” Weil adds, “I get a feeling for the
disposition, the temperament, of each colony—and the bees
get used to me.”
A 2010 study shows that even in their six- to seven-week
life span, worker bees can learn to recognize individuals, and
Weil finds that developing a relationship with her “girls”—
worker bees are all female—helps her be a better beekeeper ...
and living creature.
“If you devote the time and care,” she says, coffee in hand
as she enjoys the day’s apiary garden ballet, “bees will reward
you in so many ways.”
PLIGHT OF THE BUMBLEBEE
Despite their highly publicized struggles, honeybees are
not going extinct, notes Michael Roswell ’11, an ecology and
evolution Ph.D. student at Rutgers. As of April 1, 2.89 million
colonies—each with thousands of bees—were recorded by

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27

MARTHA INOUYE

That means there’s a greater chance of frost damage not
only to flowers but to fruit trees—and to the pollinators
themselves.
“Bumblebee queens overwinter underground, and when
the snow melts and the ground warms up, they come
out,” Inouye says. “But the timing of their response is not
matching the timing of the earliest flowers. There’s a risk
that pollinators may not have all the resources they need to
complete their reproductive cycle.”

“Somebody did a survey, asking people how many bee species they think there are in the United States, and typically, the answers would be 10 or
20,” says David Inouye ’71, in Colorado. “But there are 4,000. I don’t think people appreciate the diversity of the native bees.”

the USDA among operators of five or more hives.
But many of the country’s roughly 4,000 native bee species
aren’t faring as well—because of habitat loss, pesticide
use, climate change, and other factors—or receiving the
widespread attention afforded to their honey-making
cousins.
According to the Xerces Society for Invertebrate
Conservation, 28 percent of North American bumblebees
face some risk of extinction. Early this year, the rusty
patched bumblebee—native to much of the upper Midwest
and Northeast—became the first wild bee in the continental
U.S. to be declared endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service. Bombus pensylvanicus, a common bumblebee
around Swarthmore 20 or 30 years ago, Roswell says, is listed
as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation
of Nature.
“We know for some species that have collapsed really
rapidly that something changed,” Roswell says. “But for most
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native bee species, we don’t have good enough baseline data
to show how current distributions relate to that of the past.”
That’s beginning to change, as interest in native bees has
grown, according to David Inouye ’71, a professor emeritus of
biology at the University of Maryland.
“Historically, there haven’t been people consistently
monitoring populations,” he says. “I think people assumed
that bees were always going to be there.”
Inouye has researched native bees at Colorado’s Rocky
Mountain Biological Laboratory since 1973, when a group set
out to study pollinators’ relationship with wildflowers. One
summer of research turned into two—which turned into 44
years of data on temperature, precipitation, and snowmelt
changes and the effect they had on local wildflowers and
pollinators.
“The growing season is getting longer,” Inouye says, “but
although the date of the first flowers is shifting earlier, the
date of the last hard frost hasn’t changed significantly.”

PLANTING FOR POLLINATORS
That synchronization between bees and flowers is of
particular interest to Bethanne Bruninga-Socolar ’10, a Ph.D.
student at Rutgers whose dissertation centers on foraging
behavior and how bees respond to the availability of plant
species.
“Bees depend on plant products for food in every part of
their life cycle,” says Bruninga-Socolar, who works alongside
Roswell in a pollinator lab led by Rutgers professor Rachael
Winfree. “Eighty-seven percent of flowering plant species
depend on pollination provided by animals—mostly bees.”
Initially interested in researching general insect ecology,
Bruninga-Socolar changed her focus.
“I was hooked by bees’ diversity and the essential role they
play in both human and natural ecosystems,” she says. “Plus,
bees are super cute and surprisingly clumsy, which makes it
really fun to observe them.”
Unlike the famously hierarchical honeybee, many native
species—carpenter bees, leafcutter bees, mason bees, etc.—
are solitary, building nests, finding food sources, and raising
young without the help of a caste system or colony.

Roswell hopes that by studying bees’ behavior and
environment, we can reverse their decline. His research,
which centers on habitat enhancements and restorations
that support pollinators—specifically New Jersey’s 400
native bee species—focuses on finding better ways to
compare biodiversity and studying whether male and female
bees prefer different kinds of flowers. (Roswell’s short
answer: They do, though he’s eager to understand more.)
At Swarthmore’s Scott Arboretum, plants are chosen to
appeal to pollinators’ preferences, says horticulturist Josh
Coceano. “We also support bees by having early- and lateblooming plants, as it’s not uncommon to see bees foraging in
February and November.”
Specifically, the Arboretum’s Pollinator Garden, designed
by Mara Baird ’79 as a residential-scale example for
homeowners, caters to the food and shelter needs of a range
of insects, birds, and bats. The garden, between Martin
Biological Laboratory and the Cornell Science Library, was
named a Certified Wildlife Habitat by the National Wildlife
Foundation, and its ethos inspires the College in many ways.
Even gardening novices can do their part by planting
flowers that support pollination, says Inouye, who chairs
the steering committee for the North American Pollinator
Protection Campaign (NAPPC). Along with its parent
organization, the nonprofit Pollinator Partnership, NAPPC
created planting guides tailored to 31 ecoregions around the
country.
“This can even be done in urban areas,” Inouye says. “It’s
surprising, the diversity of native bees that can survive in
cities if there are flowers.”
He recommends limiting the use of pesticides, especially

“ABOUT ONE
OUT OF EVERY
THREE
BITES OF FOOD THAT
YOU EAT COMES TO
YOU COURTESY OF
POLLINATION.”
—DAVID INOUYE ’71

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29

Sunflower

Lupine

Butterfly weed

BEEUTIFY
YOUR GARDEN

Purple coneflower

Pollinator.org provides planting guides for
31 ecoregions across the U.S. Here are
seven plants native to Swarthmore’s Eastern
Broadleaf Forest–Oceanic Province region
that benefit bees and other pollinators.

Black-eyed Susan
“What we’re taught at Swarthmore is to do the right thing and be responsible with what you do, whether in your personal life or your business life,”
says Ashish Malik ’84, CEO of Bee Vectoring Technology, pictured with boxes housing his company’s biocontrol powder. “I practice that every day.”

Fairy candles

“87 PERCENT
OF FLOWERING PLANT SPECIES
DEPEND ON POLLINATION
PROVIDED BY ANIMALS—
MOSTLY BEES.”
—BETHANNE BRUNINGA-SOCOLAR ’10

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Blazing star

neonicotinoids, which have been linked to bee paralysis and
death, and recognizing Earth’s complex food web in which
pollinators play a crucial role.
“At the NAPPC annual conference, next to each dish at our
reception is a little sign: ‘These green beans were brought
to you by pollinators,’ ‘This chocolate was brought to you by
pollinators,’” Inouye says. “We’re trying to raise awareness
among consumers that about one out of every three bites of
food that you eat comes to you courtesy of pollination.”
THINKING INSIDE THE BOX
One creative company is tapping into that statistic. At the
startup Bee Vectoring Technology (BVT), researchers are
using the insects themselves to deliver a natural pest- and
disease-control solution to berries, tomatoes, and other
plants.
“Biological crop protection has come in favor the last 10
or so years,” says CEO Ashish Malik ’84. “As consumers, we
don’t like the use of chemicals on our food. So how do we get
farmers to use less chemicals on the crops that they grow?”

Through BVT’s setup, commercially reared bees passing
through their hive pick up an organic biocontrol powder,
which includes a naturally occurring fungus that prevents
numerous plant diseases. The bees then distribute
the powder to individual flowers, limiting the need for
conventional crop-protection measures.
“Other products are sprayed using tractors and other
machinery, which uses a lot of water and wastes a lot of
product,” Malik says. “Through vectoring, we’re able to
reduce the quantities of active ingredient by as much as
99 percent. It’s extremely efficient, effective, and highly
sustainable.”
It also poses no health risks to bees, people, or the
environment, Malik says. But the process isn’t a panacea.
“Plants see many pests in the environment: root diseases,
leaf diseases, insects, weeds,” he notes. “We can’t address
the pests that aren’t coming through the flower, but within
an overall program, we can greatly reduce the amount of
chemicals that are used.”
Founded in 2012, the company is still prerevenue and

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31

LAURENCE KESTERSON

about halfway through its approval process with the
Environmental Protection Agency. BVT’s research and
development has focused largely on bumblebees and
strawberry crops, but Malik is excited about his system’s
wider potential.
“Out here in California, a million honeybee hives are
brought in every Valentine’s Day to pollinate a million
acres of almond trees,” he says. “These trees are affected
by a disease our microbe could help manage. It’s a perfect
opportunity for this disruptive technology.”
WORKER BEES
Perhaps the next advances in bee science will be born from
Swarthmore’s Martin biology lab, where three separate
projects synergistically overlap. Bee casualties from one
study are sometimes used in another to test their chemical
exposomes. Data from a project focused on pheromones
is gathered simultaneously with one studying bees as a
superorganism.
“What is the difference, really, between individual bees
and individual cells?” says Brian Shields ’18, who assisted
with a project led by Talia Borofsky ’18 exploring whether
honeybees’ decision-making is similar to neurons firing in
the brain. “It blurs the lines between what we consider a
discrete living thing.”
Honeybees are in constant communication, “speaking”
through a series of dances that convey the distance of nectar
and pollen—a figure-eight waggle dance when food is far
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afield, a circular dance when the source is closer. When
the food supply changes—such as when students swap in a
feeder with a reduced-sugar solution—the bees project a stop
signal telling dancers to end their movements.
“It’s like a really high-pitched ‘beep!’” says Rebecca Zhou
’19, who after a morning of marking honeybees outside has
returned to the lab to begin her recordings. “Even without a
microphone you can hear it.”
Zhou is interested in whether the bees also communicate
through scent—if they’re in a dark or loud environment
where they can’t see or hear, how do they get their stop
message across? Using a delicate, odor-collecting solid
phase microextraction fiber, Zhou can detect and collect
pheromone molecules released from the bees.
Armed with a microphone, a field sampler, and—this
time—a protective veil and suit, Zhou settles in among the
flying bees.
“Following pink thorax, blue abdomen,” she records.
“Waggle dancing. Possible stop signal. Stop signal. Multiple
stop signals.”
Though her work with bees will probably end with this
project, Zhou says she gained a great appreciation for the
insects—and the wisdom they can impart.
“Bees are like people,” Zhou says. “They’re very altruistic.
They are really community-focused. And they rely on each
other to survive.”

+

MAKE A BEELINE FOR MORE: bulletin.swarthmore.edu

LAURENCE KESTERSON

The western honeybee—Apis mellifera—communicates distance and direction of food sources through a series of dances.

“It’s really easy to overlook insects, especially bees and ants, but they actually interact constantly every day, kind of like people,” says Rebecca
Zhou ’19. “They have very complex social structures that a lot of vertebrates don’t even have.”

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33

F

ORTY years into
its on-again, offagain history
here, Swarthmore
synchronized
swimming—née water
ballet—hit an early 1980s peak thanks
to a very special group of women.

all
together
now

Honoring a golden era
of Swarthmore
synchronized
swimming
by Jonathan Riggs

PHYLLIS HALL RAYMOND ’54,
M’71: I fell in love with synchronized
swimming watching Esther Williams—
she was so graceful and looked so
good in the water. When I did it at
Swarthmore, I didn’t look quite that
good. But I loved it, so I wanted to help
bring it back decades later.
DIANE DIETZEN ’83: Phyllis
Raymond recognized that Becky
Shahan ’83 and I had both done
synchro and asked us to help recruit.
What she found out was that Becky
was really good and I was ... piddling.
TAMARA PAYNE-ALEX ’86:My
joining was a fluke: Some girls asked
me and I said sure … except I couldn’t
swim. So they asked if I could float.
Practice was excruciatingly hard, but
everyone was so encouraging that I
kept at it. By my senior year, I could
swim—and swim well.
AMANDA KONRADI ’84: No other
sport requires you to hold your breath,
exert yourself at full capacity, and
constantly risk getting kicked in the
head … while smiling.
REGINA HANLON BARLETTA ’83:
Even with so much time in bathing
suits, there weren’t body-image issues.
We were all shapes and sizes. It was
freeing to never be self-conscious.

TAMAH KUSHNER ’83: It pleasantly
surprised me how easy it was to start a
sport here—people were very generous
with their time. We began at Hall
Gym’s pool, where you shook your
clothes out for fear of cockroaches.

Tamah Kushner ’83 performs her Bond-inspired “Goldfinger” routine.

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DIETZEN: I thought the old pool was
beautiful, but most people associated it
with swim-test trauma.
BARLETTA: In Hall Gym, you could
hear the music above the water but not
below. Somebody would tap the edge
with a wrench to make a beat for us.
We circulated a petition to get input
in the process when they built Ware
Pool in 1981. It was joyous to have
this new, clean, fresh, big pool with an
underwater sound system.
KONRADI: I choreographed a routine
to a Simon & Garfunkel song, but I was
having trouble explaining it. Everyone
was frustrated until Tamara, who had
been singing along, connected my
instructions to the lyrics, and things
fell into place. That day, I learned how
to meet learners where they are.

KUSHNER: We usually wore bathing
suits that overlapped in the front.
One time, we were doing this trick,
connected in a big water wheel, and ...
MARY WASHBURNE ’83: Long
before the famous “wardrobe
malfunction,” it happened to us!
BARLETTA: One routine started with
us wearing white gloves, performing
languidly to Beethoven’s Fifth; we
threw them off for the disco version, “A
Fifth of Beethoven.” Even now, I’ll hear
a song and my arms go up in the air.
WASHBURNE: The guys’ swim team
joined us for some routines. To their
surprise, they sank like stones at first!

RAYMOND: It’s unbelievable that we
coordinated and hosted the nationals
here in 1983—competitors included
Arizona’s Candy Costie and Tracie
Ruiz, who won the first synchronized

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35

swimming duet gold medal in 1984,
when it became an Olympic sport.
Those athletes were practicing eight
hours a day; we were doing eight hours
a week, so for our girls to do so well
was magnificent.
MARTHA SWAIN ’83: I’ll never
forget when these Amazons from
other schools came out in matching
bathrobes with matching gear bags and
matching towels. I had no idea how
incredible synchronized swimming
could be—because we weren’t!
PAYNE-ALEX: Imagine me, who had
been in synchronized swimming for
a year and a half, “competing” at the
nationals—it was wonderful.

“MY DAYS OF GLORY
WERE DIM—I DIDN’T
LIKE BEING UPSIDE
DOWN IN THE WATER
AND COULD NEVER GET
EXACTLY VERTICAL—
BUT SUPER FUN.”
—MARTHA SWAIN ’83

DIETZEN: My joke I tell people is that
I was part of the 13th trio in the nation
in 1983 … because there were 13 trios.
LAURENCE KESTERSON

JOHN BOWE ’83: T
he computer
center staff asked me to create a
program for scoring nationals; it took
me maybe two months. This was all
with “terminals,” no Windows or
mice, just a keyboard with an 80-by24 character screen and a dot matrix
printer. Still, wicked cool for that time.
I think I got paid the highest rate for
campus jobs, $2.35 an hour, enough for
half an Apollo pizza in Media.

every time I do laundry—my poster
from nationals hangs in there.
KONRADI: Although synchro is
stereotyped for the glitzy suits,
hair, and makeup, that part was my
least favorite. (“Femme” is not my
forte.) I reveled in the physicality

and discipline—I was never in as good
shape as when I could swim 75 yards
underwater on one gulp of air.
KUSHNER: I still do the beginning
of our nationals routine when I get in
a pool. Our (somewhat) synchronized
swimming is that ingrained. I mean,
for four years we basically showered
together and talked about everything.
We were—we are—family.

SWAIN: Synchro sums up Swarthmore
for me. In high school, we were all
valedictorians, but at Swarthmore,
you’re in the bottom quarter. At least
I was. And then, in the swimming
pool when the big guns came out at
nationals, we weren’t just in the bottom
quarter, but the bottom 1 percent—but
you can have a lot of fun there.
BARLETTA: Swarthmore can get
very serious. So it was great to be able
to enjoy each other’s company and the
challenge of being underwater, trying
to connect with seven other people to
do these maneuvers, then coming up,
sputtering and swearing. It was hard, it
was fun, it was pure joy.

KUSHNER: I was never an athlete
until college, but that experience led
me to a more physical life. I wouldn’t
have gotten the chance if I hadn’t been
at Swarthmore, where you could be not
so great and still be captain of a team.
DIETZEN: A common Swarthmore
experience is you feel that everyone
else is amazing and you’re just … not.
And so even though synchronized
swimming wasn’t quite life-changing,
having something we all built
together that was purely ours, that we
contributed, was the charm of it all.
WASHBURNE: It bonded us for life
and so did Phyllis Raymond: She was
the wonderful heart. I still treasure my
memories—and my nationals T-shirt!
RAYMOND: I love synchronized
swimming, but what meant the most
was being able to give back something
like this experience to Swarthmore—
and especially to the members of
the team. They were and are so very
special, each and every one.

+ RELIVE SYNCHRO MEMORIES AND SHARE
YOUR OWN: bulletin.swarthmore.edu

WASHBURNE: I bet if you got us all
together now, we could get at least
some of our old routines down. To this
day, I still love swimming and I always
do a couple of laps of synchro.
SWAIN: M
y days of glory were dim—I
didn’t like being upside down in the
water and could never get exactly
vertical—but super fun. I still love to
swim, even though I’m still not good.
PAYNE-ALEX: The best thing is
amazing my children. When I do my
tricks, it wows them.

Above, Phyllis Hall Raymond ’54, M’71 in her garden today. Below, Swarthmore’s synchro
seniors in 1983, clockwise from top left: Mary Washburne ’83, Diane Dietzen ’83, Regina
Hanlon Barletta ’83, Martha Swain ’83, Becky Shahan ’83, and Tamah Kushner ’83.

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FALL 2017

DIETZEN: We all keep in touch,
mostly through Facebook, although
we tried to go swimming at reunion
a couple of years ago. I think about it

Left: Tamara Payne-Alex ’86 sells admissions tickets. Right: Diane Dietzen ’83 does “Little Purple Flower,” part of the 1982 “Watercolors”
splash-tacular that also included “Goldfinger.” See more of these routines and others in our web gallery.

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37

unbarring
PROGRESS
Confronting the controversial American
tradition of mass incarceration
by Michael Agresta
photography by Laurence Kesterson

“In all of the facilities
I’ve studied or taught in,”
says Erin Corbett ’99, CEO of
Second Chance Educational
Alliance, “those who are
incarcerated are so wanting
to be in school, take classes,
and better themselves.”

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39

recently, the Bulletin has highlighted
the work of reformers such as Ellen
Barry ’75, Julie Biddle Zimmerman ’68,
and Keith Reeves ’88.
The problem of prisons remains
unsolved … for now. But no matter how
challenging the political climate may
prove, Swarthmorean lawyers, writers,
educators, and activists continue to
dedicate themselves to the complex
challenge of prison reform, one of the
key civil rights issues of our time.

B

EING a Swarthmorean
means being part of a long
line of forward-looking
social-justice workers,
stretching back to the early
years of the United States, Quakerism,
and the movement for the abolition
of slavery. But even as much of the
19th-century Philadelphia Quaker
community was agitating for an end
to one “peculiar institution” that put
human beings in chains, destroyed
families, and enforced unpaid
labor, those same Philadelphians
were experimenting with another:
the modern prison. Eastern State
Penitentiary, built in 1829, is seen as
an important early model for a U.S.
prison system that has exploded in size
since the civil rights movement.
Over the years, many members of
the greater Swarthmore community
have led efforts to fight this disturbing
trend—to shrink the prison system,
make it more humane, and offer those
currently or ever incarcerated greater
opportunities for advancement and
rehabilitation. Partly at the suggestion
of a Swarthmore professor, the late H.
Haines Turner ’30 refused his family
inheritance and spent decades devoted
to improving prison conditions. More

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THE EDUCATOR
For Erin Corbett ’99, prison education
is more than just one job—it’s many.
In 2017 alone, Corbett has taken
action to broaden educational
opportunities for incarcerated people
through at least four professional
roles: as a doctoral candidate with
the University of Pennsylvania,
studying the relationship between
prisoners’ educational attainment and
postrelease employment outcomes;
as an employee of the New Jerseybased Petey Greene Program, training
volunteers to tutor inside prisons; as a
business entrepreneurship instructor
in a women’s facility with College
Unbound, which offers academic, forcredit programming in the Rhode
Island Department of Corrections;
and as CEO of her own Connecticutbased Second Chance Educational
Alliance, helping incarcerated men
prepare for postsecondary educational
opportunities.
“I do a lot of driving,” chuckles
Corbett, whose commitments often
take her across state lines and in and
out of some of America’s most elite—
and most subjugated—institutional
environments.
Though she earned her doctorate
from Penn’s Graduate School of
Education in May, Corbett plans to
keep at least one foot outside academia
for the long term.
“I’ve always been a hands-on
person,” she says. “Practical
application of research has always
been where I’ve found the greatest
fulfillment. I definitely want to
continue research, but so that what I
actually do inside facilities has a datadriven basis.”

Her work focuses on one
overarching problem: too many young
people—disproportionately men of
color—locked up during the earlyadulthood years that would normally
be devoted to schooling. If and when
they’re released, it’s into a job market
already hostile to anyone with a
criminal record, let alone someone
with an incomplete education.
Federal guidelines require all
state corrections departments to
provide high school equivalencylevel educational opportunities. After
that, depending on the facility, the
opportunities often dry up, Corbett
says, even though research indicates
participation in and completion of
these educational programs reduces
recidivism.
Corbett focuses on acting locally.
Her Second Chance program,
co-founded with Erwin T. Hurst,
partners with a prerelease facility
in Connecticut, helping men with a
high school diploma or GED refresh
their knowledge and skills so they can
pursue higher education upon release.
“These are guys who have a
credential but may not feel like they’re
ready for traditional postsecondary,”
Corbett says. “Second Chance is that
buffer to help them build their study
skills and confidence. I would love to
see it at more facilities.”
Looking forward, Corbett expects
her next research project to focus
on determining the best methods
of preparing teachers to work with
incarcerated people, which means
reckoning with a discomfiting paradox
at the heart of prison education.
“The prison classroom is such a
unique space from an educator’s point
of view,” Corbett says. “You are trying
to stimulate critical thinking in the
context of a total institution that does
not encourage it.”
THE EXONERATORS
At a basketball tournament, a 12-yearold Seth Steed ’01 witnessed his first
know-your-rights workshop … and
discovered what he wanted to devote
his life to doing.
“Learning about every citizen’s
constitutional rights blew my mind,”

“It’s an incredible feeling—there’s really nothing else like it,” says David Crow ’80 (left), with Seth Steed ’01, on getting the conviction of a client
overturned. “It makes you just want to go back and fight harder.”

Steed says. “I’m passionate about
criminal justice reform today from
growing up in East Harlem. During the
’80s and ’90s, I saw the negative effects
of overpolicing on my community.”
That passion eventually brought
Steed from a law firm in Washington,
D.C., to the Neighborhood Defender
Service of Harlem, an organization
known for its innovative, communitybased public defense practice. Steed
later joined the Legal Aid Society of
New York City, where, as appellate
counsel, he reinvestigated 23
questionable homicide convictions.
His proudest moment so far has
been the February 2016 exoneration of

Vanessa Gathers, a Brooklyn woman
wrongly imprisoned for manslaughter
for 10 years after being induced into
confessing to a crime she did not
commit.
“I was there at the right time, and
I had trial skills,” says Steed, who
reinvestigated her case for three years
with Legal Aid colleagues and pro bono
counsel from a New York firm.
On the Gathers case and others,
Steed worked with another Legal Aid
appellate counsel, David Crow ’80, who
had helped develop the playbook for
modern public-defender exoneration
cases.
But for two years, Steed never

stepped all the way inside his mentor’s
office. When he did, he was greeted
with a familiar sight.
“In the far corner, he had a diploma
I recognized,” says Steed. “Without
knowing that he was also an alum,
David’s Swarthmore-ness had come
through, and we were drawn to each
other. It means to me that you have a
commitment to social justice, and you
want to make the world a better place.”
(Steed also worked alongside Ursula
Bentele ’65, who directed the Capital
Defender and Federal Habeas Clinic
at Brooklyn Law School for many
years until her 2015 retirement, when
she joined Legal Aid as a part-time
FALL 2017

/ Swarthmore College Bulletin

41

‘Friends’ in the fight
The Quaker and Swarthmore tradition of campaigning for prison reform is rich and deep, as evidenced by these activists
whose work continues to inspire. Explore the Friends Historical Library archives for more!
—CELIA CAUST-ELLENBOGEN ’09

Early Quakers were intimately acquainted with the horrors of prison. William Penn was imprisoned numerous times due to his religious convictions. When he established Pennsylvania, Penn—depicted in Violet Oakley’s mural in the state Capitol—introduced radical criminal justice reforms,
including abolishing the death penalty for all crimes except murder.

WILLIAM PENN (1644–1718) is known as the first great Quaker

ELIZABETH GURNEY FRY (1780–1845) was a British Quaker

ISAAC T. HOPPER (1771–1852) and his daughter ABIGAIL
HOPPER GIBBONS (1801–1893) were ardent abolitionists

EDWARD TOWNSEND (1806–1896) served as Eastern State

prison reformer. He wrote his spiritual classic No Cross, No Crown
while locked in the Tower of London. FHL has 70 copies, in three
languages, dating from 1669 to 2001, including the first edition.
bit.ly/FHLPenn

dedicated to prison reform. His portrait hangs in Parrish; they
founded the Women’s Prison Association, still active today.
bit.ly/FHLGibbons
ANNA WHARTON MORRIS (1868–1957) became deeply interested

in prison reform over newspaper reports of cruelty to young inmates.
Her papers at FHL include cartoons depicting prison life at Eastern
State Penitentiary in the 1920s, drawn by an insider.
bit.ly/FHLMorris
42

Swarthmore College Bulletin /

FALL 2017

famous for advocating for incarcerated women and children. Until
last year, she was featured on the Bank of England’s 5-pound
note. FHL has a number of images of her, many books and articles
about her, and a few of her original documents.
bit.ly/FHLFry
Penitentiary’s warden from 1870 to 1881. He ensured prisoners
received compensation for their work and was instrumental in
passing legislation to reduce sentences for good behavior.
bit.ly/FHLTownsend

+ MORE: bulletin.swarthmore.edu

volunteer attorney.)
It was Crow’s turn to be happily
surprised when, in 2016, Steed
was offered a job in the Bronx DA’s
Conviction Integrity Unit; wellintentioned conviction-review units
are rare enough in DA offices, but hires
with résumés like Steed’s are even
rarer.
“It’s really the prosecutor who has
the most power in these situations,”
Crow says. “We think one of the keys
is to bring people with a variety of
backgrounds into the convictionreview unit. Seth being a defense
lawyer, it was almost without
precedent.
“It is a significant step in getting
conviction-review units to play the
role they should play,” Crow adds.
“Ultimately, it’s up to the elected DA.
It’s something for every citizen to be
concerned about: Is the DA concerned
with justice, or with defending their
own office?”
For Steed, who had come to his
appellate work expecting to take an
oppositional role to prosecutors and
police, the new job was a significant
shift.
As a public defender, he had “been
fighting against what I perceived as the
systemic subjugation of people of color
for almost a decade. The fight against
mass incarceration is the civil rights
issue of my generation. Could I now be
part of the government and continue to
do this important work?”
In the end, he was convinced by the
character of his new boss, Bronx DA
Darcel Clark, who was elected on a
campaign of racial justice and reform,
and who became the first black female
DA in New York state history.
“I decided it was worth a shot,
if DA Clark was willing to take a
chance on a career public defender
like me, and she’s shown me nothing
but institutional support,” Steed
says. “She is a person of substance
and conviction, dedicated to justice,
fairness, and restoring the public’s
faith in the criminal justice system. I
am tremendously proud to be a part
of this groundbreaking and vitally
important work in the Bronx.”
In fact, in Clark’s first year in office,
based upon the work of her Conviction

Integrity Unit, she agreed to vacate
two homicide convictions.
Steed is optimistic about the future,
given the changes that he’s witnessed
so far.
“Since 1989, almost 2,000 people
have been exonerated, by DNA or other
evidence,” he says. “That’s about 70
people a year. That’s a lot of lives.”
Crow, for his part, stresses the
immensity of the task ahead, even if
things are slowly getting better.
“We’ve spent the past 30 years
throwing money at the criminal justice
system to get them to deal with every
problem we’ve had,” he says. “We’re
going to spend the next 30 trying
to ratchet down that approach and
rescue people who are survivors of that
system.”
THE MUCKRAKER
Before a high school classmate was
arrested and eventually deported,
Maya Schenwar ’05 had never seen the
inside of a correctional institution.
During winter break of her senior
year at Swarthmore, Schenwar visited
the friend at the jail where he was
being detained before deportation.
A Phoenix columnist at the time, she
thought she might write something
about immigration policy based on
the experience. The visit changed
everything.
“It was shocking,” Schenwar says.
“This is a system where this person
who is about to be sent away for at
least the next 10 years and split from
his family can’t even hug his mother—
he’s sitting behind glass and talking to
her on the telephone.”
When Schenwar returned to
Swarthmore, she authored her first
column on prisons. It would not
be her last. As editor-in-chief of
Truthout, an independent socialjustice publication backed by a board
of advisers that includes Bill Ayers,
Dean Baker ’80, and Mark Ruffalo,
Schenwar has zeroed in on the topic
of prisons, penning several New York
Times op-eds, including “Prison Visits
Are a Right,” “Too Many People in Jail?
Abolish Bail,” and “A Virtual Visit to a
Relative in Jail.”
“Unless there’s some presence in
the media, this issue is going to stay

invisible, because the people who are
locked inside the system are made
invisible,” Schenwar says. “That’s the
point of the system. I never would have
been to a jail if someone I knew hadn’t
been incarcerated.”
Unfortunately, mass incarceration
has hit even closer to home for
Schenwar: Her sister has struggled
with opioid addiction and repeated
imprisonment.
“If you have a criminal record, you’re
more likely to be sentenced to prison
again,” she explains. “My sister got
stuck in that cycle. She’s always been
arrested for very minor offenses, but
she is continually getting stuck in
jail or prison, because she’s seen as a
person who’s gone to prison.”
As Schenwar began considering
a book on her prison reporting and
essays, it became obvious that she
had a specific story to tell through her
family’s experiences.
“One of the main problems with
media coverage of prisons is that it
focuses on politics or statistics or
third-person stories, but it doesn’t
actually provide a way for readers to
understand the humanity of people
in prison,” she says. “Until we do that,
there isn’t going to be significant
progress.”

“With the exception of a few prison
nursery programs (which are controversial,
because they involve locking up newborn babies), incarcerated mothers must say goodbye
to their infants upon birth,” Maya Schenwar
’05 wrote on Truthout.

FALL 2017

/ Swarthmore College Bulletin

43

the volunteer
Making a difference for those affected by
our flawed system of mass incarceration
doesn’t always mean a lifetime devotion
to prison reform. A veteran of the U.S.
Foreign Service, Ellie Bly Sutter ’66
moved to Lexington, Ky., in retirement to
be near her grandchildren. Since 2009,
she has volunteered one day each week
at her local county jail, teaching a course
on debate and public speaking.
JENNIFER DOERGE

“A lot of men who come into these
situations in jail are very beaten down,
ashamed of themselves,” Sutter says.
“What they need to be able to do is look
you in the eye and advocate effectively
for themselves.”
Sutter’s course is part of a broader program that enrolls recovering addicts
and others who want to make a big change in their lives. She encourages
other Swarthmoreans to find similar programs in their area, or even to start
one themselves.
“A lot of these guys feel that the world has forgotten about them,” Sutter
says. “Just to have someone who comes in and shakes hands with them,
someone who talks to them and isn’t just interested in giving a lecture
about how bad they are—it’s a great gift you can give.”

+ MORE: bulletin.swarthmore.edu

Her 2014 book, Locked Down, Locked
Out: Why Prison Doesn’t Work and
How We Can Do Better, is an attempt
to address that empathy gap by
intertwining a policy-level indictment
of the modern prison industry with the
intimate story of her sister’s—and her
family’s—struggle.
Convicted of stealing a bottle
of perfume, Schenwar’s pregnant
sister was sent to prison. Family
members were not allowed into the
hospital room while she gave birth;
immediately after the baby arrived, the
mother was shackled to the bedpost
in a way that made it hard for her
to hold her child. She was forced to
return to prison 24 hours after giving
birth, while Schenwar and her family
took charge of the baby. And, for
several days after returning to prison,
Schenwar’s sister was unreachable.
“The warden wasn’t around to
44

Swarthmore College Bulletin /

FALL 2017

authorize a phone call,” Schenwar says.
“We had no idea what was going on.
Meanwhile, she was put through this
torture, separated from her baby. Some
mothers go through this and never see
their child again.”
Experiences like this have
clarified Schenwar’s belief that
mass incarceration is a key driver of
inequality, racial and social injustice,
and economic insecurity.
“We have to understand,” she
says, “that prisons affect families,
communities, and, ultimately, all of
us.”
THE CHALLENGES AHEAD
There is reason to be optimistic: For
much of the past decade, shrinking the
prison population has seemed like a
genuinely bipartisan priority.
“Conservatives and liberals agree
that the criminal justice system is

fiscally irresponsible,” Steed says. “We
spend a lot of time warehousing a lot
of people at a very high cost. With 45
years of the war on drugs to look back
on, we realize: This is a public health
issue. Opioid use and addiction should
not be treated criminally. My hope
is that the prison population should
decrease greatly.”
Unfortunately, that consensus may
be receding.
“With recent decisions by the
attorney general to reinstate
mandatory minimums and truth in
sentencing,” Corbett warns, “we are
starting to see the clock turn back to
1994, ’95, ’96, where incarceration
rates skyrocketed overnight.”
Whether or not the reformists
or reactionaries win out in the
current moment, mass incarceration
remains a reminder of a deep-rooted
contradiction in core American
values. To really address it requires an
idealism both enduring and constantly
refreshed with study and exposure
to new ideas. Schenwar, for one,
associates that type of idealism with
Swarthmore, where she developed
her own values in the context of the
campus antiwar community of the
early 2000s, and in the shadow of the
institution’s long-held commitment to
peace and social justice.
“Immersed in those circles, my
understanding of prisons emerged
differently than it would have
otherwise,” Schenwar says. “Not, ‘We
need fewer people in prison’ or ‘Our
policies have to be better.’ This is
true. But I also saw, and now see more
clearly, a larger vision: This oppressive
structure should not exist.”

+ READ previous coverage and a wealth
of external information on this topic:
bulletin.swarthmore.edu

class notes
A TREASURY OF ALUMNI-RELATED ITEMS

CHANGING LIVES,
CHANGING THE
WORLD
Oct. 25
Join President Valerie
Smith in Boston to
learn how our comprehensive campaign will
make a difference on
campus and beyond.
Mix, mingle, and joyfully celebrate Swarthmore!
bit.ly/SmithBoston
ALUMNI COLLEGE
ABROAD
Join your fellow
Swarthmoreans on an
educational journey:
Jan. 7–12
“Cuba: An Extraordinary People-to-People
Experience”
March 15–19
“Icelandic Interlude &
the Northern Lights”
bit.ly/SwatAbroad

LAURENCE KESTERSON

ALUMNI
EVENTS

Rainy weather couldn’t dampen the excitement of Move-In Day Aug. 29, when the Class of 2021 arrived for Orientation.

1939 1941
Trudie Blood Seybold
marked her 100th birthday
Aug. 21 with a three-day
celebration at her home in
Boothbay, Maine.
“Long an advocate of
women’s rights and civil
rights, Trudie is known
locally for her generosity,”
says the Boothbay Register, which featured her in
a Grandmothers for Reproductive Rights (GRR!)
T-shirt (bit.ly/TrudieS).

Libby Murch Livingston
lizliv33@gmail.com
To my classmates: I think
of you often and wish
we could somehow get
together. I hope you are
well-cared-for and able to
enjoy family and friends.
Here are some thoughts
that speak to me today:
(Violins play) In our small
world, those of us who are
so blessed still have the
opportunity to influence

policies that affect the
lives of many—possibly
ourselves! We were fortunate to have been given
the tools at Swarthmore to
be effective in fighting for
the causes we hold most
dear. We also have the
help of family or aides with
the tools to reach out (an
immediate example: my
daughter Elinor, who answered my “help” call and
set my ancient computer
to find the proper “view” to
continue this letter).
It is not only important
for us to stay involved in
what is going on in the
world—miserable as some
of this world can be—it is

also good for us. We all
have our pet interests—
politics, environment,
social issues, etc. Let’s get
our views across to those
authorities who can effect
change.
I feel that the Class of
1941 can still be effective
in expressing its members’
opinions and values.
We can still be a force,
hopefully for good, in this
crazy world!
Let me know your
thoughts. Anybody out
there?

Editor’s note: Learn more
about Libby on pg. 11.

FALL 2017

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45

class notes

1942

includes old grads like me
and some recent alums. All
welcome!

Mary Weintraub Delbanco
delbanco660@gmail.com
Lucy Rickman Baruch
writes: “What price is a
degree? One grandson
collected his diploma and
then pursued his true
vocation—sound and
lighting—while another
seems the only one in his
(airport) department with
a degree. Both, however,
are happy in their jobs. I
am reconciled with being
a great-grand because the
little ones are such fun.
We had a day out with the
twins (18 months) and
everything fascinated
them—dogs, geese, other
children—but they are a
handful!”
Lucy Selligman Schneider
reminds me that political
portraits in her hallway—
while mostly of men—­
include a framed piece
of ribbon proclaiming
“Votes for Women” from
her sister’s baby carriage
when her mother walked
in a suffrage parade. Her
wall continues to attract
knowledgeable visitors
interested in history.
My home in Baltimore,
Roland Park Place, is
close to my daughter and
son-in-law. My grandson,
a musician, works and
attends graduate school in
LA. My granddaughter aspires to become an actress
and is a junior at Baltimore
School for the Arts.
For a number of years,
Roland Park Place has
been the meeting place
for the Baltimore chapter
of Swarthmore’s reading
group. It began meeting
here to accommodate
the late Lois Hosbach
Love ’43, a greatly valued
member. Our group today

46

Swarthmore College Bulletin /

1943

Betty Glenn Webber
bettywebber22@yahoo.com
616-245-2687
I’ve just returned from a
week’s trip to North Carolina with two friends to
see a third. Although I still
drive, my much-younger
fellow travelers shared the
driving, my only responsibility being to supply
their favorite homemade
cookies. I’ve known my
pal in Charlotte for 60plus years, so the visit
was rewarding. The final
touch: Someone looked
at the four of us and said,
“Hmm—the Golden Girls.”
From Ginny Curry Hille
comes word of a happy
event—a flying trip to
Seattle to visit son Rob
and his wife, Carol. “Not so
good: a broken wrist from
a stumble on the sidewalk.
Happily, I’m healing rapidly
and now remembering to
pick up my feet!”
Jack Dugan received a
reminiscent note from Bob
Hecht, with recollections
going back to Coach
Ed Faulkner’s pairing
those two for future
tennis success. Jack, too,
recalls good friendship
get-­togethers in Buck
Hill Falls, Pa., NYC, and
California over the years.
Memories of rich College
experiences are with us
all, I’m sure.
On that note, and following up on a suggestion from Mary Stewart
Trageser, let’s share fond
recollections of our campus days. Mary mentions
the struggle up Magill with
suitcases without wheels,

FALL 2017

the clinking of glasses
when a significant couple
entered the dining room,
special profs. What pops
up in your mind?
I learned of Herb Fraser’s
May 2 death from his
devoted son and caregiver,
Peter ’68, who provided
an intimate picture of his
dad’s last evening. Herb
watched the news, had his
usual demitasse and dessert, and headed for bed
at 10; he died a few hours
later. Our condolences to
Peter and his family.
Terry Votaw Harman died
May 22. I always think of
her as that tall, dark beauty with a sweet friendliness to everyone. Her life
with Art Harman ’41 was
a 73-year matchbox marriage. Condolences, too, to
the Harman family.
Our editor suggests
we contribute remembrances to Class Notes. I
encourage you to send me
those personal words that
lend color and depth to
the portrayals of our late
friends.

1945

Verdenal Hoag Johnson
verdij76@comcast.net

Editor’s note: Verdi, 1945’s
class secretary for the
past decade, died Aug. 9.
We share her final column
in her honor:
I have had to stop driving. I
loved to drive. Edward ’46
didn’t learn to drive until
after we were married;
he had been a city boy
and didn’t need a car. He
never enjoyed driving as
I certainly did; he did it
only out of necessity. This
meant that for most of our
married life, I drove.
Edward had trouble

with directions. His last
drive was the result of his
getting lost here in Dover,
N.H. Two lovely ladies
were stopped by his confusion. One got into our
car and drove him home
while her friend followed.
That was his last trip and
he was so glad.
Now comes the big
change, and I found two
wonderful services: One
will pick me up and take
me home any time I need
to be at the hospital. A
second will take me to any
nonemergency medical
appointment. Yesterday,
a small bus pulled into my
driveway—about half the
size of a regular bus. There
I was: the sole passenger.
I was so tickled—some of
my neighbors were outside
so they could appreciate
my splendor. What an
adventure!

neighbor across Elm Avenue to take this new kid
in tow. Doug died June 7
in Broomall, Pa., but lived
most of his life in Swarthmore and Springfield,
Pa. Doug’s Swarthmore
pedigree started with his
mother, Hallie Hulbert
Douglas, Class of 1903,
and also included aunt
Clementine Hulbert Gibson, Class of 1907, brother
James Douglas Jr. ’32, and
son Al Douglas ’72.
Doug graduated from
Swarthmore High in 1941.
He received an engineering degree from the
College, served stateside
with the Air Force during
World War II, and was a
sales engineer with Robert
Arnold Associates for more
than 35 years. Wife Wilma
predeceased him in 2009.
He is survived by four sons
and five grandchildren.

1947 1949
Marshall Schmidt
kinmarshal@aol.com

Marjorie Merwin Daggett
mmdaggett@verizon.net

I wrote to Volkert Veeder
congratulating him on being the only classmate to
attend our 70th Reunion—
and explaining why I could
not make it.
Kinnie Clarke Schmidt
’46 and I celebrated our
70th wedding anniversary June 21. We had four
generations present at
our family party, including
Peter Schmidt (first cousin
once removed), chair of
Swarthmore’s English
department.
I regret to report the
death of Gordon “Doug”
Douglas, whom I first
met in late August 1937
when my family moved to
Swarthmore. He and two
other boys responded to
pressure from a thoughtful

I wrote part of our class
suggesting a response
about recent books read or
re-read. And some replied!
On her 90th birthday,
Sara-Page Merritt White
was enjoying Hillbilly Elegy
in addition to the many
activities at Crosslands
in Kennett Square, Pa.
Her three daughters, from
Philly, Doylestown, Pa.,
and Newton, Mass., helped
her celebrate and later
joined with George and
Maralyn Orbison Gillespie
for a birthday brunch.
Belated birthday wishes,
Sara-Page.
Theodore Wright and
his wife still travel, most
recently to Morocco as
well as to Las Vegas,
Death Valley, and Zion

1945, 1946, and 1948 are in need of class secretaries.
Interested? Email eslocum1@swarthmore.edu.

GARNET SCRAPBOOK
Hawaii state Sen. Josh Green ’92 (right) hung
out with actor–producer (and Kauai resident)
Pierce Brosnan this summer during filming of a
documentary on pesticide use in the islands.

Ellen Liu ’19 (left) and Gloria Kim ’19 checked out the solar eclipse Aug. 21 outside
the Science Center on campus.

From left: Cat Laine ’98, Jen Weiss Handler ’98,
and Rachel Breitman ’98 met up in New Orleans in
June for their now-annual “ladies’ trip.”

Victor Navasky ’54,
publisher emeritus
of The Nation, was
honored at Harvard
with the 2017 I.F. Stone
Medal for Journalistic
Independence in April.

“Only you can prevent wildfires”: Marc
Sonnenfeld ’68 greeted Smokey Bear while
vacationing this summer in Maine.
Missing their seminar days, Sonali Shahi ’06, Krista Spiller ’06, Simone Boyle
’07, Jesse Young ’05, and Anna Morgan ’04 convened a vibrant book club in Philly.

+ SEND YOUR PHOTOS/BLURBS TO BULLETIN@SWARTHMORE.EDU

Michael Fleischmann ’13 (left) met economist
Dean Baker ’80 during an internship with the
Congressional Research Service in Washington, D.C.
Dean spoke at a House briefing on how NAFTA affects
American jobs.

FALL 2017

/ Swarthmore College Bulletin

47

class notes
National Park. In April, his
family gathered for his 91st
birthday. Last October,
Ted presented a paper at
a conference on South
Asia in Madison, Wis.,
about Asaduddin Owaisi,
a Muslim politician in
Hyderabad, India, whose
grandfather Ted had
interviewed in 1964. Ted
and his wife hike slowly
with a naturalist group
and do twice-weekly osteo
exercises. After reading
The New York Times, he
finds little time to re-read
books from long ago.
Charles Taylor retired
from medical practice in
2001 and, with his wife,
moved back to North Conway, N.H. They became
active in a Congregational
church, he as chair of the
trustees and she as chair
of the music committee
and in the children’s
education committee.
He joined the Rotary
Club, and they both sang
and played handbells in
choruses. His reading has
been mainly about healthcare reform, and he was
impressed by the similarity
of debates over the last
hundred years.
Jack Chapman, a Bronze
Star veteran for his role
in the Saint-Lô battle of
July 1944, died in March.
Our condolences to son
Russell and daughter
Leslie. Wife Ida and first
wife Jane Morfoot Bentley
predeceased him.
Joseph D’Annunzio also
died in March. Through
the Navy V-12 at Columbia,
he earned an engineering
degree; at Swarthmore,
he earned a psychology
degree, played varsity soccer, and was an Olympic
alternate. Our sympathy to
his wife, Barbara.
Joann Broadhurst Sparks
died in Wenonah, N.J.,
in April. She had been
an active member of
Wenonah’s Environmental
Commission, Garden Club,

48

Swarthmore College Bulletin /

and Historical Society. Our
condolences to sons David
and Donald.
Charles Bush died in
Mendocino, Calif., in
March. He spent four joyous years flying aircraft off
carriers for the Navy and
traveling in an around-theworld carrier cruise. He
then spent 35 years as an
HR director before moving
to Mendocino. Condolences to his wife and children.
His range of activities and
length of friendships is
no surprise to those who
remember his smile and
joy from College classes
and biology labs.
Katherine Burt Anderson
died of emphysema in
June. She’s remembered
as a wonderful cook, a
fan of chamber music,
and a devoted gardener
at her weekend cottage in
Woodville, Va. “She was a
dynamic woman, and very
much a product of Swarthmore,” says son John
McKitterick ’75. Katy is
also survived by daughter
Molly and three grandchildren, including Christopher McKitterick ’09; our
condolences to them. I will
fondly remember Katy as
my fellow Russian Bank
player, crossword puzzleand double-crostic-maker,
a demon at Liar’s Dice, and
always fun to be with.
I am appreciative of all of
you who responded.

1951

Elisabeth “Liesje”
Boessenkool Ketchel
eketchel@netscape.com
Walter Blass writes: “Sorry
to miss the reunion but
had to attend Guilford College Board of Trustees. I’m
well enough to spend all
of September in E
­ urope­—

FALL 2017

same six countries as last
year. The older I get, the
closer I feel to my European ancestry and the good
friends I have there now.”
From Ralph Lee Smith:
“Last year, the University
of Tennessee Press issued
a second edition of my
1986 book, The Story of
the Dulcimer. It has been
nominated for the 33rd
annual Mary Ellen LoPresti
Publication Award from
the Southeast Chapter of
the Art Libraries Society of
North America.” Congratulations, Ralph!
Lew Rivlin observes
that almost half of his
high school class—which
included Lotte Lazarsfeld Bailyn, Dan Singer,
and the late Sue Rose
Levinson—was “alive and
kicking at the time of our
70th reunion. Some of
the geriatric-experienced
physicians at D.C.’s VA
Medical Center expressed
interest in a questionnaire
that might informally
indicate our shared
threads toward longevity.
I suspect that a similar
percentage attaches to
the mostly 87-year-olds
in our Swarthmore class. I
prepared, with the doctors’
guidance, a questionnaire on such matters as
whether we inflicted kale
upon ourselves or refused
diet sodas and Russian
roulette. The number of
responses from Lincoln
School classmates was
embarrassingly small. I
wonder if our Swarthmore
classmates might be a tad
more willing—in the interests of not-quite-science.
The doctors promised
they would at least feign
interest in seeing these
filled out—and we could
even combine the two
similar cohort groups.” So
how would we indicate our
interest, Lew?
Mary Ann Ash Chidsey attended Alumni
Weekend. “I enjoyed the

­ luegrass-music opener.
b
My son Alan, who came
with me, discreetly pulled
up on his phone the
words I didn’t know or
couldn’t hear. I chatted
with Jay Finkel ’52, who
led the parade. Alan and I
had good fun with our tablemates, and one couple
invited us for a return visit.
Those golf-cart rides were
fun; I would have starved
without them! I can’t promise to be around in four
years for our 70th, but I
might try another reunion
next year.”
Paul Shoup writes: “Marija and I are in Belgrade,
Serbia. Later, we shall
(with the help of our two
boys) hunker down in our
chalet in Switzerland. This
may sound idyllic, but it is
an effort and will, I think,
be the last of our many
sojourns to Europe. All the
best to those who answer
your call.” Thanks, Paul.
I, too, wish the best to my
faithful correspondents—
and to those who choose
not to share their news.
Pat and Gerald Pollack
traveled to D.C. in midJune to see Barbara
Wolff Searle ’52 before
she moved to Carlsbad,
Calif. “Dan and Maxine
Frank Singer ’52 gave her
a farewell party. Although
we had many friends in
Washington when I retired
from my job in the federal
government in 1999, we
have not often gone back.
So many of our friends
have moved away or are
no longer alive. Seeing
Barbara and meeting her
son, Josh, a psychology
professor at Allegheny
College, was bittersweet. It
was wonderful to renew
our acquaintance with
Barbara, but realistically,
after her move across
the country, we are never
likely to see her again. Politics aside, Washington
was very much as we left
it nearly 20 years ago,

except that the street
conditions had deteriorated and traffic was
worse. We enjoyed a visit
to the National Gallery and
were heartened to observe
that, while we had aged
considerably, the people in
our favorite pictures were
as youthful as ever.”

1952

Barbara Wolff Searle
bsearle70@msn.com
Sadly, Richard Heath died
in January following complications from a stroke.
A lawyer, lifetime learner,
and lover of culture and
history, Dick traveled the
world with his wife of 61
years, Beth, and wherever
he went, he found a way
to connect with others.
Dick is survived by four
children, including David
Heath ’79, a sister, and 10
grandchildren.
Sandra Detwiler, a
Marine colonel, former
guidance counselor, and
certified financial planner,
died in September 2016.
One former student
described Sandy as a
“vivacious counselor” with
a “glowing personality”
who spent many happy
hours rock-hounding,
camping, fishing, hiking,
and traveling.
Robert Bailey died in May
in Chicago. His longtime
friend Ron Decker ’55
writes: “After Swarthmore,
Bob graduated from Northwestern University Law
School, was a lawyer in
the U.S. Army, then spent
his career as a corporate
lawyer in Chicago. His
later career was spent as
general counsel of Midas
International. Bob had
many hobbies, including
carpentry and photogra-

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phy. He is survived by wife
Marlene, three children,
and five grandchildren.”
Harold Swartout died in
June in Canandaigua, N.Y.
A longtime mechanical
engineer at Eastman Kodak, Hal was predeceased
in 2015 by his wife of 63
years, Barbara Calkins
Swartout ’53. “While none
of my brothers nor I ever
attended Swarthmore,”
writes daughter Linda
Bartsch, “we were all
raised hearing tales of
campus life and classmates and professors. It
amazed us that though
they were born 15 miles
apart in New York state,
they always said that they
met in a mud puddle at
Swarthmore!”
Justo Sanchez, a business owner and real estate
investor in Coral Gables,
Fla., died peacefully in
July surrounded by his
children. A quiet man
with an easy smile, Justo
enjoyed reading, jazz, and
traveling with wife Elena.
My own news is quite
dramatic: I’ve started a
new life in a CCRC, which
I only recently learned
stands for “continuing
care retirement community.” I’m pleased to be here
but don’t have much to say
yet. I’ll keep you posted.

1953

Carol Lange Davis
cldavis5@optonline.net
Bill Fitts writes, “In the
spring Bulletin, Steve
Clark ’52 claimed to be
at the top of Swarthmore
marriages in years at 61.
Well, Fran Lemke ’54 and
I were married in 1953 and
will celebrate 64 years in
November—and still going
strong!” How many others

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can make that claim?
Bob Fetter took a day trip
by train to Swarthmore
on May 27 for Alumni
Weekend, where he was
joined by Roger Youman
and Francis Ashton. Bob
said that the gardens
were beautiful across
campus and that he looks
forward to next year’s
65th Reunion. “Golf carts
are so handy for getting to
events, driven by cheerful
students.” With an
advance phone call, a golf
cart can even pick you up
near the train station.
Stanley Mills became a
full-time retiree in July. He
has suffered from severe
eye problems for many
years and is legally blind
but had been commuting
to work from Long Island
to Manhattan several
times each week.
Tedd Osgood writes that
wife Dorothy died April 5.
“All three of our children
plus two grandchildren,
along with cousins and
friends, were here for a
rousing memorial service
in the gathering room of
Kendal at Hanover, N.H.,
April 29.”
Dorothy Dodson Haag

died April 7 at the Kings­
way Arms Nursing Center
in Schenectady, N.Y. She
was one of three female
Swarthmore math graduates recruited by General
Electric, where she worked
until her marriage to Fred
Haag in 1957. Dorothy
enjoyed road trips in the
family’s VW camper van.
She and Fred often visited
family in New Hampshire,
Florida, and Texas and
drove to folk concerts in
Camden, Maine.
Dorothy delivered for
Meals on Wheels and
was an active member
of the Friends of the
Saratoga Battlefield. A
Girl Scout leader for both
her daughters, she even
persuaded her husband
to be a co-leader. Her
hobbies included history,
genealogy, reading, and
knitting sweaters. She was
predeceased by her husband and is survived by
daughters Catherine and
Ellen and two grandsons.
John Gray died May 17.
He received his doctorate
from Stanford in 1957, and
his doctoral thesis on contact structures, published
in the Annals of Mathe-

matics, has been cited
nearly 100 times in recent
years alone. As a math
professor at the University
of Illinois, John became
director of graduate studies. His research interests
centered on category
theory, a study of patterns
common to many parts
of mathematics including
algebra, topology, logic,
and computer science.
John was predeceased by
wife Eva, who introduced
him to Switzerland, where
he spent happy sabbatical
years and where daughter
Elizabeth died at age 15.
John is survived by sons
Stephen and Theodore and
three grandchildren.
Garrett Forsythe died
May 21 at Lima Estates
retirement community in
Media, Pa. Garrett spent
most of his career with
DuPont as a research
and product development
engineer and held several
patents. During the Korean
War, he flew dozens of
missions from several
aircraft carriers. He was
treasurer of the Media
Monthly Meeting for many
years and is survived by
wife Susan, children Garrett and Patricia, and three
grandchildren.
Carol Holbrook Baldi,
who had suffered from
Alzheimer’s for several
years, died June 18 in a
memory-care facility in
Litchfield, Conn. Carol
started working on Wall
Street in the 1950s, when
it was almost unheard of
for a woman. She rose
to portfolio manager and
investment analyst, and
was vice president of the
U.S. Trust. After 20 years,
Carol established her
own investment company,
which she managed until
her 2012 retirement. She
was predeceased by husband Paul.

1954

Elizabeth Dun Colten
lizcolten@aol.com
The May AARP Bulletin
says, “A record 70 million
Americans have grandchildren … with an average of
five to six per grandparent.” Do we qualify? How
about greats?
Eleven grandchildren
were expected for Peter
and Ann Stoddard Sielman
’57’s 60th anniversary
celebration. Two grandchildren weddings for
Raymond and Mary Wren
Swain: Nicholas Landry’s
in the spring and his sister
Margaret’s in the fall. Beth
Wood Bowers went to
California for her second
grandson’s high school
graduation. Beth, in Virginia, likes all that D.C. offers
(except the traffic) and
can easily attend grandson
Carson’s high school
drama productions and lacrosse games. This spring,
Dick and I, Liz, visited our
Italian grandchildren and
traveled by train from Milan to Basel, Switzerland,
where we boarded a boat
and cruised up the Rhine
to Amsterdam. Perhaps
the most spectacular part
of the trip was the Keukenhof tulip garden display.
Ed Wallach’s son, Paul,
an accomplished sculptor,
has lived in Paris for about
25 years; one of his sons
is entering his third year
of college in Boulder, Colo.
Ed’s daughter, Julie, and
her family moved back
near Philly; her children
graduated from Maryland
Institute College of Art and
the University of Miami.
Congrats to Victor
Navasky, winner of the
I.F. Stone Medal for
Journalistic Independence

FALL 2017

/ Swarthmore College Bulletin

49

class notes
“in recognition of a career
dedicated to integrity and
for his work speaking
truth to power beyond the
confines of mainstream
media.” Roger Freeman received his 45-year service
pin as the longest-serving
physician (actually 47
years!) at B.C. Children’s
Hospital in Vancouver,
where he researches tic
and stereotypic movement
disorders.
While reading The Undoing Project, about how
people make illogical and
inconsistent decisions,
Peter Sielman came
across the late Leonard
“Doc” Rorer’s name as a
contributor. Pete highly
recommends the book
Thinking Fast, Thinking
Slow by psychologist
Daniel Kahneman. He also
suggests From Bacteria to
Bach and Back by philosopher Daniel Dennett.
Lynn Barrera Matzen has
a new address: The Trails
at Orono, 875 Wayzata
Blvd. W., Unit 235, Orono,
MN 55391.

astronomy, planetary geology, and environmental
studies, guest preaching
on weekends. In 1979–80,
they took a year off
teaching, sold their house,
and lived in a 26-foot
catamaran in the British
Virgin Islands. “Our three
sons—Dan, Jim, and Josh
(then ages 14, 11, and 5)—
were with us,” Dick writes.
“I worked as a mate on a
ferry boat to put beans
and rice on our table. We
survived hurricanes David
and Frederic and had many
other adventures.”
Dick retired in 2002. In
2012, he and Nancy celebrated their 50th anniversary on a four-week cruise,
taking in a total solar
eclipse in the Coral Sea. On
the anniversary day, they
were crossing the Tasman
Sea from Tasmania to
New Zealand, which they
circumnavigated on their
way to visit Bill Shepard in
Christchurch. Six months

1955

after returning, they moved
to Brookfield, Wis., to be
near three grandchildren.
Dick has continued his research, writing the e-book
Discover Our Solar System
Beyond Neptune’s Orbit,
aimed at general readers.
He has almost finished a
second book, An Introduction to Trans-Neptunian
Space, meant for advanced
planetary astronomers and
researchers.
After graduation, Felix
Carrady was forced to
leave the U.S. because his
family had lived in Shanghai, a part of Communist
China. Ironically, they had
lived there from 1940 to
1948, before Mao, and
had spent three years in
a Japanese prison camp
because of their British
passports. When he was
visiting his parents in
Hong Kong, a family friend
suggested Felix join him
in his artificial-flower
business and run the

manufacturing and
export operation. Artificial
flowers developed into the
second-largest export industry in Hong Kong, with
Felix’s company exporting
more than $3 million worth
in one year. They extended
to manufacturing in
Macau, Taiwan, and China.
Returning to Shanghai
during the Cultural Revolution to start a business
there, he was intimidated
by “young kids thrusting
Mao’s red book in my
face.” In Taiwan, most
contacts spoke Mandarin, while Felix spoke
Cantonese. Remembering
that—as Formosa—Taiwan
had been a Japanese-controlled territory, he spoke
to contacts in Japanese
and translated into English
for his American partner.
“Mainly because my
experience in prison
camp in Shanghai had
taught me how important freedom was, and

CAPTION THIS

50

Swarthmore College Bulletin /

FALL 2017

1956
Caro Luhrs
celuhrs@verizon.net

Sally Schneckenburger
Rumbaugh
srumbaugh@san.rr.com
Our classmates have led
interesting lives. After
Swarthmore, Richard
“Dick” Hodgson headed to
Union Theological Seminary. He was a pastor first
in Massachusetts, then in
New Jersey, then Vermont.
Always fascinated by
astronomy, he taught it
part time at the University
of Vermont. That led to
a move to Dordt College
in Sioux Center, Iowa,
where wife Nancy began
the computer science
department and he taught

because I believed life
surely was about more
than making a living,” Felix
retired at 40 and moved
to Melbourne, Australia,
where his parents were
living; until then, Felix and
his father had always been
in different countries. He
had 10 good years with his
father before his death.
Felix stayed in Melbourne,
got divorced, and brought
up his son and daughter.
He has been involved in
running adult-education
courses and a Jungian
dream group, writing,
playing piano, cruising
the world with wife Zieta,
and doing “as best I can to
enjoy this precious life.”
I am sorry to report Lee
“Babe” Hallberg died two
days short of his 84th
birthday. Condolences to
his family.

YOUR CAPTION HERE!

Be creative! Submit a caption by Dec. 16 to cartoon@swarthmore.edu.
To see last issue’s cartoon with suggested captions, go to Page 70.

I regret my only note
is sad: Patricia Hardy
Jacques died April 24.
After graduation, Pat
worked for ad agencies
in NYC and became an
account executive for
McNeil Laboratories and
Roche Labs.
Pat met husband Raoul
“Bud” Jacques while skiing at Windham Mountain,
N.Y. When they married,
she became stepmother to
Ann, Peter, and Timothy.
Pat and Bud traveled
extensively, visiting 12
countries. She loved our
national parks, especially Yosemite, which she
thought of as paradise.
Pat was a loving person
and a caring community
volunteer. Our thoughts
and sympathy are with her

family and friends.

1957

Minna Newman Nathanson
jm@nathansons.net
Missed seeing ’57 Class
Notes in the last issue?
Prevent another gap by
sharing your happenings.
I’m still reliving the rich
discussions/connections
from our 60th Reunion.
Among the classmates
enjoying the beautiful days
on campus were Barbara
Fassett Beane, Carol
Dubivsky Becker, Ron
Bodkin, Sheila Brody, Dori
Winter Dailey, Deborah
Smith Dempsey, Phyllis
Klock Dominick, Ruth Ellenbogen Flaxman, James
Gibson, Neil Grabois, Sam
Hayes, Frank James, Jane
Lattes-Swislocki, Steve
Lloyd, Anoush Miridjanian, Jon ­Peterson,
Michael Schoeman,
Terry Armstrong Thompson, Carol Edelstein
Weichert, Eleanor “Polly”
Witte Wright, Lily Ann
Frank Youman, and Marty
Porter Shane.
At the Alumni Collection
following the Parade of
Classes, class agent Steve
Lloyd again received the
Joseph B. Shane Alumni
Service Award. (He was
first honored at our
50th Reunion.) Thanks
to his gentle persuasion,
87 percent of classmates
contributed to the College
fund.
Besides the ­usual
College­-arranged
events, our class met
for a free-wheeling,
amazingly wide-ranging
discussion that included
reminiscences of our
time on campus and its
contemporary relevance
(or not); the future of

face-to-face instruction,
online lectures, or even
“time-off” ­semesters for
middle-agers, given the
thrust for postsecondary
education/vocational
training for a larger population; the future value
to society of a liberal arts
education and the role its
graduates play as leaders;
the crucial impact on the
College’s endowment of
rising costs and financial
aid for an increasingly
economically diverse student body; and the proper
range of a “therapeutic”
campus culture between
the amount of support
provided during our time
on campus and now.
Alumni Weekend ended
at a class brunch given by
Vice President of Advancement Karl Clauss.

1958
Vera Lundy Jones
549 East Ave.
Bay Head, NJ 08742
verajonesbayhead@
comcast.net

Janet Smith Warfield was
named the Top Female Motivational Speaker for 2017
by the International Association of Top Professionals. On April 22, Janet was
one of five facilitators in
an Expanding Consciousness Collective Earth
Day Webinar, followed by
a seven-week webinar
service in New Zealand
and Australia. She spoke
in Dunedin, New Zealand,
and her group spent three
days living among the oldest indigenous tribe there,
the Waitaha Nation. The
group also toured Australia and swam at the Great
Barrier Reef.
I keep in touch with Tex
Wyndham. He’s a great let-

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ter writer, and it’s always
nice to hear from him.
Next June is our 60th
Reunion! I hope many of
you plan to visit Swarthmore to celebrate this
milestone.

1960

Jeanette Strasser Pfaff
jfalk2@mac.com
Some time ago, a classmate suggested that we
share some favorite memories of our freshman year,
adding, “I’m at the stage
where looking backward
can be more fun than looking ahead.” Here we go!
Linda Habas Mantel:
“One of my most persistent
memories is having Pecan
Sandies and Constant
Comment tea with Kay
Senegas Gottesman down
the hall in the evenings.
These were our standby
snacks. I also remember
listening to records on my
portable phonograph—
and, after observing all the
other girls in my French
theater class knitting
argyle socks for their
boyfriends, finally being
taught to knit (left-handed) by one of the older
girls on the floor. I started
a sleeveless sweater, did
the back, half the front,
and that was it—no more
knitting for me, ever.”
Kay recalls: “First semester freshman year, I was
devastated when I didn’t
get the grades I had in high
school. No smart person, I
thought, gets only B’s and
C’s! I remember going to
see Dean Cobbs because
I was sure I should drop
out. She reminded me
that since everyone had
been near the top of his or
her high school class, not
everyone could get A’s all

the time. Happily, I stayed,
got some A’s, and met
wonderful people.”
Meg Dickie Linden recalls
trudging through Crum
Woods on cold evenings to
get to a lecture at Pendle
Hill Quaker Center and
trudging back later when it
was even colder.
Susan Washburn
remembers sowing some
wild oats. “One somewhat
unsavory memory featured
a bottle of gin and an
impromptu pajama party
on the porch roof of Pittinger. Somehow, I ended
up chugging an extremely
large quantity of said gin,
and after a miserable night
of violent vomiting, I was
taken to the infirmary. The
only reason I didn’t get expelled was that the powers
that be concluded that I’d
been sufficiently punished
by demon gin itself. They
were right: I didn’t touch
gin in any form for nearly
20 years. And I never, ever
got drunk again.”
Will Fairley: “I remember
meeting Sara Bolyard
Chase on the front porch
of Parrish when I first
arrived. We quickly
discovered we were
both from Virginia—the
original Virginia stretching a thousand miles to
the west, including West
Virginia. And we were
the only ones (she from
Morgantown, W.Va., and I
from Charlottesville, Va.).
It was comforting to have
that in common. A lifelong
friendship began.”
Sue Willis Ruff: “I
remember working in the
dining room, bringing pots
of coffee to tables where
someone held up a cup—
and listening, in awe,
to the profound things
upperclassmen were
talking about. I remember
hearing, ‘There are only
three things I won’t let my
children read.’ I held my
breath. ‘Time, Life, and the
Reader’s Digest.’”

I, Jeanette, turned 18 in
September, not long after
we arrived as freshmen.
I woke up on my birthday
morning, opened one eye,
and saw a small table right
next to my bed with a card
and some little presents.
I was thrilled! And obviously, still remember this
kindness.
Despite my prodding,
Gilbert Harman couldn’t
put this into anecdotal
form, but he gratefully
remembers the teaching
of Monroe Beardsley. “He
always encouraged me in
whatever I was thinking
about.” This paved the way
for Gil to move from engineering, his intended major, to physics, then math,
and, finally, to philosophy,
his lifelong pursuit.
John Goodman: “Shortly
after I arrived, one senior
living in Mary Lyon told me
very solemnly that some
days I would find it so hot
and humid that ‘it just isn’t
worth getting up out of the
bathtub all day.’ I found
that both amusing and
unbelievable. However,
much later on, I did order
up a block of ice to have
delivered to my bathtub to
help cool off my room. It
worked, somewhat, for a
couple of days.”
Some news: Carolyn
Panzer Sobel “just moved
from my isolated, big,
beautiful house to Kendal
at Hanover, N.H., and I
am exhausted, as you can
imagine. But it’s a wonderful place and I’m happy
to be here.” The Kendal
retirement communities
are founded on Quaker
principles, so Carolyn’s
Swarthmore background
strikes a chord with fellow
residents.
Paul Frishkoff’s new
book, Dr. Chuckle’s Twoa-Day Perpetual Calendar,
comprises 732 original
puns—two per actual
“named” day (e.g. National
Haiku Day, International

FALL 2017

/ Swarthmore College Bulletin

51

class notes
Family Day, etc.).
Will Fairley was elected
a fellow of the American
Statistical Association. He
co-founded the company
Analysis & Inference
Inc. in 1979 to provide
consulting for business
and government. Will has
published more than 40
peer-reviewed papers
and has made significant
contributions to the use of
statistics and probability in
legal evidence.
Ted Hayes received a
political science Ph.D.
from Berkeley in 1968
and has been an adjunct
professor for many years.
At one time he owned a
consultant company, and
then he was a journalist
in Elkton, Va., where he
lives. Ted has written and
recorded CDs of pop and
British patriotic songs and
would happily send copies
to classmates. Call him at
540-705-4747.

1961

Patricia Myers Westine
pat@westinefamily.com
I thank Jane Alexander
Stewart, who answered
my request for news
with an update from the
Provincetown Film Festival
in Massachusetts, where
son P. David Ebersole and
his husband, Todd Hughes,
had a screening of their
documentary Mansfield
66/67. One of the Ph.D.s
interviewed about Jayne
Mansfield, Jane talked
about the actress as an
Aphrodite figure. Jane is
retired from her clinical
psychology practice but
continues her interest in
myth in film with video
essays on Vimeo. She is
particularly interested
in the “mystic return of

52

Swarthmore College Bulletin /

the heroic feminine and
emerging elder hero in film
and society.” For the past
decade, she’s been traveling, writing, and supporting causes she believes in;
she also got married and
now lives in Rancho Palos
Verdes, Calif. Jane and
her husband are “winding
down” their two big trips
a year to far-flung spots
like Antarctica, Bhutan,
India, and Africa; London
to Marrakesh and Spain;
Geneva to St. Petersburg
by car, train, and plane;
Costa Rica, Panama, and—
most recently—­Japan, and
spending more time driving
the U.S. She was planning
a trip up the coast of New
England to Nova Scotia
after her time in Province­
town.
The Bulletin will be expanding its “In Memoriam”
section, so class secretaries have been asked to
include classmates’ memories, reunion yearbook
information, etc., in their
columns. Please share any
memories you have when
you read of a classmate’s
passing.
Helen Howard Harmon
was at Swarthmore a short
time and graduated from
Syracuse with a business
degree. She worked in NYC
for Citibank before moving
to California, where she
was a computer programmer for a subsidiary of IBM
until she became an active
volunteer, homemaker, and
mother. She and husband
Gary traveled to Egypt,
Persepolis, Kenya, the
Galapagos, and Easter
Island. Gary predeceased
her, and she is survived by
a daughter and granddaughter. I remember Helen as an extremely pretty
girl who played hockey and
stayed in touch, contributing to our 50th Reunion
yearbook.
Peter Aizupitis died in
May; I saw him briefly at
our 55th Reunion last

FALL 2017

year. He was very proud
that daughter Klara ’14
had graduated from the
College. Peter was forced
to leave his native Latvia
at age 4 and spent some
time in a displaced-persons camp in Germany
after his father appropriated a steam-powered
truck to transport his
family to the American
Zone in Nuremberg. In
1952, his family came to
the U.S., and Peter called
Swarthmore “the best
years of his life.” He spent
his career reporting on
current events in Latvian
for Voice of America, and
I can remember watching
him covering the Olympics
on TV. He was a lifelong
soccer player and coached
his daughter’s teams. He
was my husband Peter
Westine ’62’s “big brother”
in Tau Alpha Omicron,
and when Peter A. moved
south of Pittsburgh, the
two of them stayed in
touch for several years.
He is survived by wife
Rebecca and daughter
Klara. I extend the class’s
sympathy to the Aizupitis
and Harmon families.

1962
Evelyn Edson
268 Springtree Lane
Scottsville, VA 24590
eedson@pvcc.edu

Well, it wasn’t the 50th Reunion. It was the Class of
’67’s turn to be wined and
dined, and we felt like hasbeens. Not many showed
up, but that meant we
could talk at greater length
with those who did. A sobering list of deaths in our
class made us realize that
our time to gather is limited. Cynthia Norris Graae
said she had thought about

not coming—she was
mourning the death of a
friend—but in the end was
glad she did. Val VanIsler
brought a book of photos
from our 50th, which we
all enjoyed p
­ erusing. Some
will be posted on our class
website.
We were disappointed
not to have our traditional
music program, but Susan
Goodman Jolles, a stalwart
of previous events, was
called away by a “harp
emergency”!
The weather was beautiful after a week of rain,
and the campus looked
lovely, though to our eyes
somewhat overbuilt. Bonnie Holden Carter lamented the disappearance
of the magnolias (now
replaced by a dorm) where
Walter proposed to her
and she joyfully accepted.
We noted new, smaller
magnolias coming on.
A high point for us was
the awarding of the Eugene
M. Lang Impact Award to
Kathleen Malley-Morrison.
Kathie is affiliated with
Boston University’s psychology department. Her
work began by studying
abuse in families and has
since extended to the
study of violence, its causes, and how peace can be
achieved. She organized
the Group on International
Perspectives on Governmental Aggression and
Peace and runs a blog,
engagingpeace.com. She
recently published State
Violence and the Right to
Peace, a compilation of
essays by peace scholars
writing about conflicts in
43 countries.
Most of us are retired
but still keeping a hand
in. Jon Rosner maintains
lab space in the University
of Chicago physics department and has several
research projects going.
Dave Edwards retired from
UT–Austin but has 2,700
library books checked out

to aid in his current book
on de-reifying the social
structure. My new book, on
a 15th-century travel book
of the Aegean islands,
came out in August. Marsha Swiss has not retired:
“Why should I spend time
volunteering to do things
that I would do badly when
I can continue to do what I
do well?” Words to live by.
Sandy and Izzie Phillips
Williams ’63 (pg. 5) were
organizing a gathering in
Martha’s Vineyard for July;
they planned to sail there
in their boat. They filled me
in on Barbara Yoder Porter.
She lives in Durham, N.C.,
and advises scientists on
successful grantwriting.
Peggy Kaetzel W
­ heeler,
who regales me with
her exciting adventures,
is traveling with her
grandchildren. Her book
group makes excursions
to places related to what
they are reading in their
New England Seminar. This
year’s trips have been to
the Rachel Carson National
Wildlife Refuge; the home
of Sarah Orne Jewett in
South Berwick, Maine;
and the Ogunquit (Maine)
Museum of American Art.
Several deceased classmates had not previously
been covered. Christian
Otto, who taught history of
architecture and urbanism
at Cornell, died of pancreatic cancer March 27, 2013.
His main research area
was 18th-century Central
European architecture,
but he also loved New
York, as a scholar and as a
walker. He worked with his
graduate students as long
as he could. He leaves wife
Roberta Moudry and four
children. Robert Kaplan
died in January 2015 from
complications of Parkinson’s disease. He spent his
career as a government
community development
representative. After retirement, he cultivated his love
for music, especially the

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Philadelphia Orchestra, for
which he was a volunteer
archivist. Peter Walch
died May 3, 2014. After
teaching art history at
Pomona, Vassar, Yale and
the University of New
Mexico, he retired in 2001
to his native Maine, where
he took over the family
business, Walch Publishing
(now Walch Education).
He lived in Portland and
on Little Diamond Island,
where he was regarded as
the unofficial mayor. He is
survived by his wife, two
children, two stepchildren,
and four grandchildren.
Thomas Evans died June
23 in Grinnell, Iowa. After
graduation, Tom entered
a management-trainee
program at Strawbridge
& Clothier, but he soon
found his true vocation:
the ministry. He studied
at Chicago Theological
Seminary, then served in
Congregational churches.
He is survived by wife Rey,
three daughters, and three
grandsons.
We missed you at
reunion! To see our jolly
group of classmates, go to
bit.ly/Alumni­Photo. That’s
me behind Dave Edwards’s
arm.

1963
Diana Judd Stevens
djsteven1@verizon.net

As many of you know,
Robert “Bob” Tinker died
June 21. On behalf of the
class, I sent a note to wife
Barbara Perkins Tinker
and the couple’s two
sons and their families.
Robert worked tirelessly to
improve science education
in K–12 schools. In 1986,
Monica Pannwitt Bradsher
and Robert began National
Geographic Kids Network,

which reached more than a
million children worldwide.
Monica noted that Robert
had the best track record
of anyone writing National
Science Foundation
education grant proposals
and that his impact on
science education was
great, though hardly
known except by science
teachers.
Cay Hall Roberts’s femur
has broken three times.
She is into serious physical therapy but hopes to
attend our 55th Reunion.
Also looking forward to
our 55th is Polly Glennan
Watts, who fractured her
femur in May. This prevented attendance at her
granddaughter’s Amherst
graduation and visiting
Paul ’65 and me. Polly is
healing on schedule.
Speaking of ’63 reunions,
because of a connection
made at one, Dorothy Earley Weitzman and Steve
Livernash continue to
attend the biennial Boston
Early Music Festival. Bob
and Rosemary Werner
Putnam ’62 look forward
to grandson Gabriel Perez-­
Putnam ’18 graduating
next June as well as to our
55th. The Putnams have
spent most of 2017 in their
Jaffrey, N.H., home, where
Bob is writing his “last,
last” book. In April, when
Bob spoke in Alabama,
they discovered Drew
Reynolds ’74 and wife
Lynne sharing their breakfast table. Writing from
a three-week home exchange in Basque Country,
northern Spain, where she
and Carl explored the Bay
of Biscay, La Rioja wine
country, and Galicia, Holly
Humphrey Taylor said she
won’t be able to attend
our 55th. Her daughter’s
colon cancer surgery and
chemo (doing well now) is
a reminder we rarely know
what is coming.
Atala Perry Toy had a
retrospective exhibit of

30 of her Nature Spirits
photographs in St. Charles,
Ill. Author, artist, and
artisan, Atala focuses on
advancing the cooperative interrelationship of
humans and nature. In “Be
Well Philly 2016,” Bill Lipshutz was listed as a top
doctor in gastroenterology.
At Alumni Day in May, Barbara Seymour connected
with Mary Williams Clark
and husband Jerry King,
and Sandy ’62 and Izzie
Phillips Williams. Dave ’62
and Suzi Merrill Maybee
expect to make more
trips to campus now that
granddaughter Alyssa ’21,
daughter of Lenny ’92 and
Lynne Maybee Nathan ’91,
is a Swarthmore student.
Earlier this year, Bruce
Leimsidor returned from a
six-week guest professorship and lecture tour in
Ukraine and Russia. Before
his lecture at a university
in Chechnya, Bruce had
reason to doubt the viral
Western media reports
about a local gay pogrom.
His doubts were confirmed
when he visited the alleged
site, which turned out to be
an abandoned office building. While Chechen society
is strongly homophobic
and serious harassment
or beatings of gay men are
frequent, Bruce found no
evidence of a concerted,
large-scale persecution.
He has done quite a bit
of work on gay rights in
Russia. In Ukraine, Bruce’s
colleagues at the Odessa
law university were much
more reticent to criticize
the Poroshenko government than they were last
year.
In May/June, Jane Jonas
Srivastava traveled to
Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan,
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan,
and Tajikistan with Elder
Treks. Jane left for a
dance camp in Idaho
soon after her trip to “the
-stans,” so more on her
trip in the next issue, in-

cluding the story of the 96
needles she took as gifts
for the women she met.
I talked with Jim Patton
in Southwest Harbor,
Maine, to get advice about
planning a family visit to
Acadia National Park. I
got not only advice but
also the news that Jim
still works hard, enjoys
life, restores boats, gives
expert testimony, and saw
Ed Ganz ’64, who also lives
on Mount Desert Island.
Ed was recently back from
consulting at a medical
school in Portugal. Shortly
before Paul ’65 and I left
for summer in Maine, I had
a most enjoyable luncheon
at Barbara Seymour’s
with Martha Baird Ralphe,
Carol Finneburgh Lorber,
Ricky Strong Batt, and
Claire Thurman.
Nancy Hall Colburn
Farrell emailed me that
she and Jack moved to
Boulder, Colo., in May—a
good reminder to let me
know your news, including
your moves.

1964

Diana Bailey Harris
harris.diana@gmail.com
swarthmore64.com
Michael Gross reports:
“Our classmate and my
close friend Arnold Griffith
died in April of bladder
cancer. He’d planned one
last trip east, but the end
was too fast and my quick
trip to LA to say goodbye
turned into a sentimental visit with his wife,
Pat. Arnold and I met at
orientation; fascinated by
our opposite backgrounds,
we spent the next 57 years
enjoying the contrasts.
He once even braved a
camping safari in Kenya
with me.

“On a less-sad note,
Rickie [Snyder Gross] and
I are making the best of
her passage through the
early stage of Alzheimer’s
dementia. Life is still very
good for us both, but complicated and a lot of work.
I’m quite sure she’ll exude
her usual cheerful charm
at our next reunion.”
Peter Setlow was “back
at Swat May 6 to celebrate
100 years of Swarthmore
soccer. Knew it would be
a great evening when the
first person I recognized
was teammate Dave Rowley ’65, who yelled, ‘Sets!’
Dined with Dave, John
Wehmiller ’66, Mickey
Herbert ’67, and Bill
Morehouse ’62. We all look
so old now, but so young
in pictures all around the
room. A great evening—
only good memories.”
Amy Stone, one of the
founding mothers of
Lilith, the Jewish feminist
magazine, was on hand for
the inauguration of Lilith’s
archives at Brandeis
University, alma mater
of editor-in-chief Susan
Weidman Schneider. Amy’s
40 years of Lilith writing
will be stored for scholars
and those who’ve misplaced their back issues.
North of the border, Phil
Morehead “has branched
out from his previous life
of opera and contemporary
music to playing piano in a
swing band and in musical
comedy shows.” In August,
he was to conduct for the
Highlands Opera Studio
in Haliburton, Ontario, a
training program for young
professional opera singers.
His activities “have been
somewhat hampered by
the dislocation of his left
shoulder in March and
hip problems in June. He
hobbles from gig to gig.”
Peter Freedman has
“come to define aging as
waking up in the morning
and something you did
not know existed hurts.

FALL 2017

/ Swarthmore College Bulletin

53

class notes
But our hurts are small,
and Lynda and I are doing
well: getting ready for our
annual summer East Coast
trip to visit family and
friends and sample East
Coast culture.
“After umpteen years, I
am retiring from running
my Go and Chess in the
Schools program. Looking
forward to more time for
cultural activities—or
maybe some kind of return
to political activism.”
Annie and Mike Meeropol
“continue involvement in
‘the resistance’” through
his biweekly radio commentaries, “and it seems
each period brings new
reasons to attempt to
refute with actual facts
and figures the atrocities
to truth committed daily
by our ‘fascist in chief,’
Donald Trump.” Mike has
attempted to argue that
wishing for Trump’s impeachment “is the wrong
struggle—a President
Pence would be more successful, therefore worse!”
Bob and Catherine Young
Kapp ’66 “are cranking
along” with some travel—
to Quebec and Montreal
last September, Portugal
and Spain this May. “Senior adviser to the China
Program at The Carter
Center (where he doesn’t
fulminate), he’s translated
three books from Chinese
to English for a U.K. publisher. He’ll spend a few
weeks at a university way
up the Yangtze, teaching
U.S.–China relations, toward the end of the year.”
Gerald Blum “hosted our
third annual ‘An English
Trifle’ dance weekend over
Memorial Day in eastern
West Virginia, while
also hosting at home in
Maryland an eight-week
series of Tuesday-evening
classes teaching how to
call contra, square, English
country, and family/wedding dances, and going
to a ‘Dare to be Square’

54

Swarthmore College Bulletin /

weekend in Virginia in
June. We’ll be singing with
the University of Maryland
summer chorus in July.”
In May, John Oliver Simon joined fellow translators in celebrating the centenary of the great Chilean
poet Gonzalo Rojas with
an encuentro (gathering)
in Madrid. “We formed a
truly amazing collegiality,
each of us immersed in
the same poet across our
palette of languages and
communicating in our
common, fluent (if accented) second language,
Spanish. Probably our
best workshops happened
offline, conversing as we
walked the ancient streets
or argued the significance
of a line over a beer in
some taberna.”
And it’s always fun to
hear from someone new:
Jim Schembs writes: “I’ve
been thinking of doing
this for 5–10 years. You
probably don’t remember
me. I played football and
lacrosse, was in engineering and a Delta Upsiloner.
I transferred to Stanford
for my junior year.”

1965

Kiki Skagen Munshi
kiki@skagenranch.com
smore65.com
The last Class Notes
began with Kay and
Warren “Tuck” Forsythe’s
visit here in California.
Tuck died not long after
he and Kay returned home
to Washington state.
Those who receive the
Unexpurgated Class Notes
have seen responses from
many of you. Tuck leaves
a void—in our hearts and
our class, of course—but
he was also the administrator of the class website

FALL 2017

and had paid to extend
the site’s life until 2022. A
fitting tribute would be to
keep up the website—and
we need someone to do
it. Bernie Banet ’64 and
a friend of Tuck’s are
looking after it and will
help whomever takes it
over. It is not a lot of work.
If you can do this, please
contact me.
Speaking of technology,
I am struggling with the
move to a new computer.
Somehow, many of my
addresses were lost. If
you normally receive my
emails and haven’t lately,
please write so I can put
you back on the list. If you
would like to start knowing
what is happening beyond
the 800-or-fewer-word
Class Notes in the Bulletin,
please also write.
Dana Carroll had an
eventful spring. “In a period of three weeks, I was
operated on for prostate
cancer, moved to a new
house, and was elected to
membership in the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences and the National
Academy of Sciences.
There was so much happening, I hardly had time to
enjoy the good stuff.
“I was very sad to learn
of Tuck Forsythe’s death.
He and I played soccer together at Swarthmore, and
our parents—both matchbox couples—were friends.
For a number of years, he
and Kay were stationed in
the southern Utah desert,
not far from where we now
have a place.”
Grant Miller has officially
retired. “After 20 years
working for the president’s science adviser,
overseeing federal agency
research and development
programs on internet
technology, protocols,
and infrastructure, I am
passing the baton. I was
privileged to oversee the
deployment of several new
generations of internet

technology that we use today, and we are deploying
software-­defined networking that we will be using
a few years from now. It
is amazing how relaxed
I instantly have become
and how much my blood
pressure declined.
“My husband has agreement from his work (federal administrative judge)
for him to telecommute full
time, so we will be staying
primarily in Rehoboth
Beach, Del. Interestingly,
several good friends are
now buying homes in our
community, as well. Come
visit us if you can.”
Steve Saslow wrote from
Portland, Ore., after a long
silence. “Will Bloch and I
maintained good contact
over these years. He forwarded me the news and
[Tuck’s] obituary.” Around
sophomore year, Tuck flew
to Oregon to join Steve
and a group in attacking
Mount Hood. It was a hard
winter climb, but “we got
lucky! Beautiful and calm
conditions, well-settled
snow during a lull between
storms, under a full moon
that made it an unforgettable purple-silver-white
night scene—our own
lights hardly needed—­
with the mountain
towering during the
midnight-to-sunrise part
of our ascent. We nearly
danced up that thing.”
“We have deep concerns
about the leadership at
EPA and its continued
obfuscation of scientific
evidence and the research
enterprise.” That was
Peter Meyer on CNN after
he and another adviser
resigned over the non­
renewal of contracts for
nine EPA scientists. Go,
Peter.
In a similar vein, Jerry
and Robin Hannay Nelson
’67 went to the April 29
Climate March in D.C.
Earl Tarble says: “Had
my right knee replaced

in November and the
left shoulder replaced
at the end of April. I’m
hoping that is the end of
replacement parts. With
the surgery recovery and
physical therapy, we’ve put
traveling on hold until the
end of August.” They were
to take a steamship from
Memphis to St. Louis, with
plans in September for an
Atlantic trip from Lisbon to
the Azores and back.
Once again, we need
someone to take over the
class website. Whether you
can or not, send me news!

1966
Jill Robinson Grubb
jillgrubb44@gmail.com
swarthmore66.com

Our classmates continue
to care for the world,
involved in politics and
personal connections.
Carl Abbott and Tom
Webb hosted a session at
Alumni Weekend about
Swarthmore’s Civil Rights
Activism History Project.
Frank Cochran reread
family letters as background for two extensive
oral history interviews,
for the Dorchester County
Historical Society in
Cambridge, Mass., and for
Swarthmore.
Daniel Pope, like Frank,
enjoyed being a garrulous
oldster when he was
interviewed about his experiences in the civil rights
movement in Cambridge,
Mass., Chester, Pa., Maryland, and on campus
(bit.ly/SwatCivilRights).
Tom Webb still meets
with Alvin Stallman, 88, a
longtime friend with whom
he formed a support group
of seven men in 1991 when
his first wife was dying of
cancer.

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Taking his passion
to have Swarthmore
divest of fossil fuels to
the ’67 reunion, Tony
Loeb joined Menno van
Wyk ’67, Charles Bailey
’67, and Spencer Putnam
’67 at a discussion session.
Although President Valerie
Smith did not respond
to Tony’s petition, he hopes
for a further report from
this year’s discussion.
Ross Ogden works on
four projects for the American Red Cross Biomedical Services unit. Each
involves a way to engage
thousands of volunteers
monthly in saving lives by
collecting and distributing
blood and its components.
Much improved from the
ill health that kept him from
our 50th Reunion, Gareth
Jenkins has enlisted in a
New Mexico organization
that assists young people
from disadvantaged backgrounds. He’ll work as a
financial coach, providing
advice and encouragement. Gareth’s reading list includes Jim
Al-Khalili’s Aliens, about
extraterrestrial life (not
national politics); Richard
Bookstaber’s The End of
Theory, a fine critique of
mainstream economic theory; Omar El Akkad’s American War, a dystopian
novel about a collapsing
ecological future; and G.W.
Bowersock’s The Crucible
of Islam, on the religion’s
origins.
Many are traveling.
Dave and Jody Pullen
­Williams­ are taking the
alumni trip to China and
Tibet.
Frank and Pat Lykens
Hankins traveled to
Nepal and Bhutan, then
took their catamaran to
the Abaco Islands in the
Bahamas for two months
of exploring. During “Zen”
time sailing, Pat read
the Three-Body Problem
trilogy, a set of sci-fi novels
by Cixin Liu. She wished

she had Sandy Moore
Faber along to explain
some of the concepts Sandy had touched on during
her amazing lecture at our
50th.
With a friend from
Ireland, Helen Heusner
Lojek explored Idaho:
beautiful Payette Lake,
spectacular ­Shoshone
Falls, unbelievable
Bruneau Sand Dunes, and
soothing hot springs.
Some are moving closer
to family. Jim ’65 and
Jean Lyon Preer moved
to Brookline, Mass., from
Indianapolis, where she
was on Indiana University’s library and information
science faculty for 33
years. Now they’re near
daughter Genevieve, a
Boston Medical Center
pediatrician; son Stephen,
a software engineer in
Northampton; and four
grandchildren. While in
Indianapolis, Jean and
Jim campaigned for public
transportation, LGBTQ
rights, and Democratic
candidates, but they are
happy to be back on the
East Coast, reconnecting
with Swarthmore friends.
Janet Nordgren
Stavnezer and partner
John Walsh moved to
Alameda, Calif., to be
near her daughter and
grandkids. Janet and
John are traveling for fun.
After an Amtrak ride to
and from Denver through
the Rockies and a stay at
a Montana dude ranch
with her daughter’s family,
they’ll spend a month in a
cabin on Lake Superior’s
north shore and head to
Baja in November, Maui for
Christmas, and Tanzania in
February.
Although Steve
Penrose downsized
dramatically, he was asked
to be the Dallas Opera’s
treasurer. He is also the
Dallas Zoo’s treasurer and
volunteers with Dallas
Court Appointed Special

IN MEMORIAM
1941

Isabel Durkee Warner
July 4, 2017

1942

Elizabeth Letts Metcalf
June 23, 2017

1943

Theresa Votaw Harman
May 22, 2017

1944

Eugene Lindstrom
July 14, 2017
Katherine Flint Shadek
Dec. 22, 2016

1945

Alumni death notices received by the College from
May 21 to Aug. 19, 2017.
View expanded memorials at bulletin.swarthmore.edu.

1952

1963

Sandra Detwiler
Sept. 2, 2016

Robert Tinker
June 21, 2017

Robert Bailey
May 16, 2017

Bennett Hill Jr.
June 21, 2017
Justo Sanchez
July 1, 2017
Harold Swartout
June 26, 2017

1953

Carol Holbrook Baldi
June 18, 2017

Elizabeth Bressler
Bunting
Aug. 3, 2017

Garrett Forsythe Jr.
May 21, 2017

Verdenal Hoag Johnson
Aug. 9, 2017

John Gray
May 17, 2017

1946

Carolyn Martin Miller
June 26, 2017

Jane Wells Harder
Dec. 29, 2016

1947

Gordon Douglas
June 7, 2017
Mary Ellen Yardley
July 13, 2017

1949

Barbara Aeschliman
Aug. 7, 2015
Katherine Burt Anderson
June 17, 2017

1950

Edmund Jones
May 24, 2017
Robert Paton Jr.
July 2, 2017
Joseph Rutledge
Oct. 3, 2016
Margaret Hench
Underwood
June 26, 2017

1955

Susannah Stone Eldridge
July 28, 2017

1964

Arnold Griffith
April 25, 2017

1965

Warren Forsythe
June 1, 2017

1979

Howard Stern
July 31, 2016

1981

Michael Miller
April 9, 2017

1997

Eric Mealy
July 25, 2017

2020

Bunn Baraparat
Aug. 2, 2017

Roger Abrahams
June 20, 2017
Robert Fenichel
Oct. 11, 2013

1957

Clifford Earle Jr.
June 12, 2017
Thomas Maher
June 13, 2017
Stephen Pitkin
Aug. 7, 2017

1961

Peter Aizupitis
May 28, 2017

1962

Thomas Evans
June 23, 2017
John Tannehill
June 25, 2017

FALL 2017

/ Swarthmore College Bulletin

55

class notes
Advocates.
What were you doing
on one day in June? Bob
Nussbaum was reading Sarah Ruden’s
translation of Augustine’s C
­ onfessions and
then heading to a memorial
service for a good friend.
Wendy Prindle ­Berlind
was working on a blueand-white quilt for her
granddaughter’s birthday
and walking carefully while
cortisone worked its magic
in a deteriorating hip joint.
While Janet Griffin
Abbott got a home energy
audit, Jack Hooke and his
wife played in a nine-hole,
two-person golf scramble.
Joe Becker was celebrating his 40th anniversary and playing with the
preemie granddaughter for
whom he left our reunion.
Following his weekly
kayaking trip with wife
Laurie, Bob Gwin was
cleaning gypsy moth caterpillar poop off the car.
Your daily lives form the
magnificent tapestry of
our class. Send more.

1967
Donald Marritz
dmarritz@gmail.com
swarthmore67.com

Class Notes this time by
Belle Vreeland Hoverman.
And why not? She did
almost everything else for
our reunion, with grace, efficiency, and good humor.
“It has been a month
since we gathered for our
50th Reunion. We had 118
in attendance: 80 classmates; 31 Swarthmorean
spouses from other classes; and seven spouses who
graduated elsewhere. The
College looks remarkably
the same but has changed
in many ways: The campus

56

Swarthmore College Bulletin /

SPOTLIGHT ON …

FRANK COCHRAN ’66
Frank Cochran ’66, inspired by the notion that his current
events are now history, dredged up family letters saved by
his late mother, Elizabeth Blair Cochran ’35, and reread
them as background for oral history projects on his 1960s
involvement in Cambridge, Md.’s civil rights struggles.
“Our trial in Cambridge led me to change my Swarthmore
major to political science,” he says, “and to choose a profession—the law—that would be one of service in the cause of
social justice.”

+
is lusher—Sharples is now
hidden by a forest of trees,
and there is a large vegetable garden out back that
is part of the sustainability
effort. Catherine is gone,
but there are new greeters.
“We started off Fri­
day with two panels
that focused on how we
connect and what we
look forward to. The 50th
marked an opportunity to
look forward as well as
back, so we talked about
change and what it meant
as many of us retire and
contemplate how we will
spend the next years—
whether five or 25. That
panel was led by Heidi
Hartmann and Jane Lang.
Alexander Nehamas and
Tom Laqueur got us thinking about what friendship
means. It may be hard
to define, but friendships made many years
ago carry huge weight.
Rob Lewine entertained
us Friday evening with
three of his LA bandmates.
Barbara Stubbs Cochran
was the Collection speaker
and put in perspective the
current political assault
on the press. Kaete Honig
Shaw and Robin Hannay
Nelson exhibited work at
the List Gallery. And not
to leave off controversy,
we had a panel discussion
and breakout sessions to
make recommendations

FALL 2017

CONTINUED: bulletin.swarthmore.edu

to the Board of Managers
about divestment, only
to find that the Board is
agnostic when it comes
to their investments. A
summary of that panel is
available at swarthmore67.
com, and recordings of our
other talks are posted at
alumni­weekend.
swarthmore.edu. And
check out bit.ly/1967Video,
a video from Franklin Apfel’s wife, Sabrina Cecconi.
“We heard from President
Valerie Smith that about
20 percent of current
students are the first in
their families to attend
college; 53 percent of all
students receive financial
assistance, and the
average amount received
is $48,720 per year. The
Class of ’67 Scholarship is
funded at just under $1.5
million thanks to generous
donations from many of
you. It was obvious to
many of us that without
financial support, we
would not have been able
to attend college. (It’s
not too late to add to the
scholarship.) One of the
highlights of the weekend
was the memorial service
in the Swarthmore Meeting House organized by
Marge Post Abbott where
we remembered our 39
classmates who have died.
“Photos are posted
at swarthmore67.com,

which will remain active
for at least another year.
Please continue to
communicate with one another. Messages sent from
the website include your
personal email address
so that the recipient can
answer you back directly.
Update your profile. Write
about what you enjoyed
most about the weekend.
Upload your photos.
“Lastly, we have become
Garnet Sages, which
means Don Marritz now
must write updates on
us for every issue of the
Bulletin, instead of just
alternate issues.”

1968

Katie Bode Darlington
katedarlington@gmail.com
Lynn Etheredge is engaging with our class, the
Swarthmore community,
and beyond in conversations about the development of a curriculum for
“action intellectuals.” His
goal is for Swarthmore to
educate students “to use
their professional expertise, skills, and liberal arts
education for contributing
to change in their professions, organizations, and

communities.”
Bob Bartkus co-authored
the 2017 New Jersey
Arbitration Handbook,
providing practical information about initiating,
conducting, and enforcing
arbitration. Bob also edits
New Jersey Federal Civil
Procedure and writes the
chapter on injunctions.
Marc Sonnenfeld received two lifetime awards.
The Legal Intelligencer
in Philadelphia honored
him as “an attorney who
has had a distinct impact
on the legal profession
in the state and who has
helped to shape the law in
Pennsylvania.” The Eagle
Scouts recognized him for
his lifetime of service.
Nancy Bennett received
a master’s in pastoral care
and counseling from a joint
program with New York
Theological Seminary and
the New York Zen Center
for Contemplative Care.
Peter Fraser became his
father’s full-time caregiver
two years ago. “The ‘role
reversal’ of an adult child
caring for a parent has a
significant physical and
emotional impact. My
father [Herbert Fraser
’43] died recently, and
adjusting to the change in
role and routine is radical
and surprisingly raw.”
Nanine Meiklejohn, a
Council on Aging commissioner in Montgomery
County, Md., is working to
provide affordable rental
housing for seniors. She is
also president of a union
retiree club.
Chris and Chitra Yang
King are transplanting from
eastern Massachusetts
to Ojai, Calif., to be closer
to their son and grandkids. “We will be in both
places for a while, though
probably not at the same
time, for those who want to
connect. Or we could stop
by on our cross-country
trip in October.”
Wayne Patterson sends

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greetings from Seoul,
where he spent the
summer. He specializes
in modern Korean history
and is a visiting professor/
scholar at Penn.
Jane Prichard Gaskell
came to San Antonio for
the American Educational
Research Association
conference, the Alamo,
and a visit with me while in
town. We strolled the River
Walk, visited LBJ’s Texas
White House, and ate the
(alleged) best barbecue
in Texas.
On her way home from
Alumni Weekend, Emily
Albrink Hartigan reported:
“I found out when scrapple
is like C-4: when it goes
through the airport
scanner. I said to the guy
opening my suitcase, ‘I
think it’s the scrapple,’
and he started to laugh.
Then he said, ‘Yes, it’s the
scrapple,’ after a cursory
feel of the three frozen
pounds of RAPA scrapple.”
Sue Knotter Walton’s
travels included “going on
retreat at a monastery by
the Hudson River, attending the Frost Place Conference in Poetry in New
Hampshire, being with a
friend while she died, and
staying connected to my
clinical community. It’s a
full life.”
Also on the road were
Frank and Vera Grant
Brown ’70. They joined
Sam Brackeen to watch
four exciting men’s basketball games as Swarthmore won the Centennial
Conference and entered
the NCAA Division III Tournament. “Tarble Pavilion
was rocking,” says Frank.
The Browns bike for fitness and logged more than
2,400 miles last year.
David Thoenen says
world events are putting
a crimp on his climbing
plans. “A planned outing
to Iran was postponed due
to ‘not helpful’ policies
emanating from the White

House, and a fall trip to
Afghanistan has been put
on hold due to recent gains
by the Taliban. Bummer.”
So David and wife Maria
headed to Peru “and captured the magic of Machu
Picchu in approximately
1,000 iPhone snaps.”
Trailing the ghosts of
1968, Hal Kwalwasser
visited today’s Vietnam. Its
rhetoric is communist, but
the economy is unabashedly capitalist, Hal says.
“It’s fascinating to see how
they cope with the contradiction. There are pervasive hammer-and-sickle
flags on light poles. Near
the Rolls-Royce dealership in downtown Hanoi,
billboards urge citizens
to fight the imperialists.
In Saigon there’s the Ho
Chi Minh Stock Exchange.
Also, “museums to the
war abound. Interestingly, they are remarkably
­measured—to remind
people who won, but
without inciting animus
against French or American tourists, who bring in
so much cash.”
Here’s a unique trip you’ll
enjoy: our 50th Reunion,
May 31–June 3. Contact
classmates and invite them
to join you. Want to help
make the 50th special?
Join the Reunion Committee. Email me for details.

1970

Margaret Nordstrom
hon.margi@comcast.net
Bonnie Shepard is a parttime program evaluation
consultant, working from
home and dividing her time
between Brookline and
Wellfleet, Mass. She led
the evaluation of the U.N.
Population Fund’s India
program last year, started

work with U.N. Women on
the evaluation frameworks
for their new strategic
plan, and is the internal
evaluation consultant for
the EMpower Foundation.
Barry Yourgrau talked
decluttering, hoarding, and
emotional attachments
with the Los Angeles
Times (bit.ly/BarryLAT).
Vicky Lundquist Harris
writes: “Two years ago, I
retired from my third and
longest career: 24 years of
teaching mostly earth science (plus other sciences
and a little math) to mostly
junior high students. When
I turned 66, I thought my
feet and voice could use
a break, even though I
always enjoyed the subject
and the kids. I continue to
coach Knowledge Bowl for
my former school—a little
bit like Jeopardy, College
Bowl, or Quiz Bowl, but
different because there is
significant teamwork. We
have won the state high
school competition four
times in the last 11 years,
which amazes me. I enjoy
hanging out with the kids
and doing whatever it is
that a coach does for an
academic competition.
“My husband continues
to farm (although he is cutting back). Our daughters
are doing well—one teaches junior high English, and
one teaches elementary
music. We have four
charming grandchildren—
the oldest is 4, and they
are a crazy and entertaining group. I have no idea if
I could have imagined this
future in 1970, but I like it
now that I am here.”
Ben Kuipers and wife
Laura Lein ’69 are finishing a sabbatical year, about
to return to faculty duties
in computer science and
social work, respectively,
at the University of Michigan. They joined UM from
UT–Austin in 2009, when
Laura became dean of the
School of Social Work,

from which she recently
stepped down. The year
2016 was pretty rugged;
they lost three parents
between the two of them:
Ben’s father (95), Ben’s
mother (91), and Laura’s
mother (99). Their lives
were lived well, and ended
well, but they are missed
enormously. Ben works in
artificial intelligence and
robotics, and has focused
on morality, ethics, and
trust for robots. They enjoyed a vacation in London,
where Ben gave talks on
robot ethics at Oxford and
Google DeepMind.
Art Block spoke at
Mort Winston’s March
memorial service held by
The College of New Jersey.
Mort’s wife, Sally, and twin
daughters, Maggie and
Molly, were there, along
with his siblings, Lucy and
Steve. (Daughter Carla, a
professor in British Columbia, could not make it.) Art
attended with wife Elaine
and daughter Jackie, a
TCNJ senior who applied
there at Mort’s suggestion.
“It was an impressive,
moving, and well-attended
tribute,” Art writes. “The
speakers who worked
with Mort for decades
at Amnesty International
and other human-rights
organizations related
the major role he played
internally while being a
formidable representative of the human-rights
community in confronting
multinational corporations
and repressive governments. A former student
told us how Mort changed
her life: When she was
struggling to complete
assignments despite
apparent understanding
of the material, he invited
her to meet with him. He
learned how this young
woman of color was poor,
had no family, and faced
innumerable obstacles. He
encouraged and mentored
her. Now, she is a faculty

member in the philosophy department! As the
tributes came to a close,
it was my turn to remind
the assemblage that ‘once
upon a time, Mort was a
college freshman.’ I shared
memories of Mort as my
Swarthmore roommate.”
(More: bit.ly/MortWinston)

1972
Nan Waksman
Schanbacher
nanschanbacher@
comcast.net

If you missed our 45th
Reunion, we missed you.
Tom Aldrich died of
cancer in fall 2016. Brother
Michael ’70 predeceased
him, also from cancer.
Tom is survived by wife
Susan Yelsey Aldrich
’71. Julie Bowen died of
cancer Sept. 4, 2014, at
Crozer-Keystone Hospice
in Ridley Park, Pa. For
more information, contact
her friend Sally Smith, wife
of Steve Smith ’71.
Patricia Gillespie died
June 8, 2014. Howard
Richards of Waukegan, Ill.,
died Oct. 10, 2014. He is
survived by three brothers.
Susan Corcoran left her
role as intake attorney at
the ACLU of Massachusetts to be volunteer and
training coordinator for
Community Legal Services
and Counseling Center.
“Small front-line agencies
like mine are terribly
worried about our clients,
who are targets of the new
administration’s vitriol, and
about our ability to provide
legal and mental-health
services as laws are
abandoned and programs
defunded.” Susan spent
time with Nancy Noble
Holland in LA last fall,
had a great trip to Venice

FALL 2017

/ Swarthmore College Bulletin

57

class notes
(thanks to Linda Valleroy’s
advice), and is “enjoying
visiting Swarthmore and
being better informed
through serving on the
Alumni Council; a bonus is
biannual visits with Ruth
Ganister.”
In September 2016,
Denise Dennis and John
Benditt ’70 attended the
Donors’ Reception and
Preview of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of
African American History
and Culture; a week later, Denise and brother
Darryl Gore ’79 attended
the museum’s opening.
Also last September,
Debora Bone, husband
Robert Lee, and mother
Dorothea Darrow Bone ’47
visited Denise and drove
to the Dennis Farm (bit.ly/
DennisFarm). In January,
Pennsylvania’s secretary
of agriculture presented
Denise with a plaque in
“thanks and recognition of
the Dennis Farm, a unique
and vital component of
the commonwealth’s rich
agricultural history” and
“for her commitment
to safeguarding the
land and the stories the
farmstead holds today.”
(Visit thedennisfarm.org.
Tours run May to October.
Denise will “show up
for friends and alums.”)
Laura Denton is an
educational diagnostic
specialist for the California
Department of Education assessing special-­
education students. Laura
is also on the board of
Partners in Sustainable
Learning. “In four years, we
have started 38 preschools
and trained 78 teachers in
rural Nepal. We have developed a comprehensive
curriculum and helped provide sustainable materials.
We’ve also created several
children’s books that have
been translated into Nepali. After the earthquake,
we supported rebuilding
of school sites with earth-

58

Swarthmore College Bulletin /

quake-proof architectural
plans.” Laura dabbles in
fiber arts, mostly knitting
and weaving, and has “a
large garden that produces
almost year-round. I’ve
been doing more writing
in the last several years—
stories, verse and memoir.
And then there’s the grandchildren …”
In February, The Philadelphia Inquirer featured
David Dye: “Audiences
have been connecting with
Dye over the airwaves in
Philadelphia since 1970,
when the then-19-yearold Swarthmore College
upstart landed his first
show at the pioneering album-rock station
WMMR-FM (93.3). … For
a quarter-century now,
public-radio listeners have
tuned into Dye on World
Cafe, the two-hour daily
music-and-interview show
that started out on five
stations and is now carried
by 214 stations around the
United States.”
Dave stepped down in
March as full-time host,
but he’ll still do his popular
Funky Friday dance party;
record one interview segment a week plus a weekly
music banter session; and
launch Dave’s World, an
hourlong show.
Dave Keely is enjoying
his seven grandchildren
and being semiretired from
family medicine. He does
community-level projects

FALL 2017

to reduce chronic disease
risk factors. “I have become an ardent advocate
for universal health care
in our country, leading the
South Carolina chapter of
Physicians for a National
Health Program and having fun speaking to groups
across the state.”

Editor’s note: Read more
about Nan on pg. 10.

1974

Randall Grometstein
rgrometstein@verizon.net
Marjorie Thompson,
widowed in August 2014,
packed up her house
with the assistance of
Swarthmore roommate
Debbie Edelman Segil and
her husband, Larry, and
moved to Nashville. She
traveled to Tuscany and
Barcelona with friends
and continues ministry
work through teaching and
writing. Last fall, I reported
Jean-Marie Clarke was
writing novels, but here’s
an update: “I have written
two volumes of a trilogy I
call the Fausten Diaries:
Sticks&Stones and
feedback—intellectual,
existential, experimental.
Although still in a raw
state, it has been read and

liked by some. Interested
and curious? Contact me:
denkmaler@t-online.de.”
In 2016, John Schubert
relived his 1977 trans­
continental bicycle tour by
driving the same route in
an old Mazda Miata from
Oregon going east. He
mentioned “a very memorable bar in Finley, N.D.”
Shalom Saar is still a fulltime professor of leadership practices at Shanghai
Jiao Tong University and
coaches senior executives
around the world. He
enjoys Shanghai and now
has five grandchildren.
Pat Heidtmann Disharoon
practices primary care
medicine in Baltimore and
works with Girl Scouts.
She has six grandchildren,
ages 8 and under—quite
a passel of toddlers. Her
father, Donald, died last
year at age 89, leaving her
the family matriarch.
Pete Jaquette and his
fellow Narwhals (Dan
Gibbon, Tom Sahagian, and
Ed Frost ’73) performed at
Alumni Weekend in May.
In the same month, Pete
joined Joyce Arakawa
Chan ’75 and their spouses
and Punahou School classmates for three days at a
villa in Monteriggioni, Tuscany. Katherine Buttolph
moved from New Jersey to
western Massachusetts to
do land-conservation work
for Mass Audubon. She
is “having a blast living in

SPOTLIGHT ON …

MARGA JANN ’72
Marga Jann ’72, an architect and visiting research fellow
at the University of Cambridge who focuses on urban and
cultural sociology and sustainable design, was awarded a
Senior Fulbright Fellowship to Haiti, starting this fall.
“My best advice,” she says, “comes from an old Quaker
adage, ‘Let your life speak,’ and a quote from Winston
Churchill, ‘Never, never, never give up.’”

+

CONTINUED: bulletin.swarthmore.edu

the Pioneer Valley, seeing
my son and grandsons
as often as possible, and
finding new craft brews.”
Adele Diamond and her
husband live in Vancouver, B.C., where they are
grandparents-in-residence to baby Hazel, born
in November. Warren
Grundfest is professor of
bioengineering, electrical
engineering, and surgery
at UCLA, where he was the
founding bioengineering
chair. “I am still very active
in developing new medical
technologies for minimally
invasive therapies. In 1995,
I married Andrea Scott,
who transferred to Princeton after a year.”
Neil Heskel writes from
sleepy Sebastian, Fla.,
“where Mayberry meets
the Keys.” He is involved
with a Haitian clinic along
with Kevin Browngoehl
’78; has five daughters
and four granddaughters; and does triathlons.
Patty Gilles Winpenny is
heading for Singapore to
“be K–12 head of learning
support and wellness at
ISS International School.”
She and her sons (Hawaii,
Long Beach, Calif.) reunite
annually in Vermont.
Lou Heavenrich had successful aortic aneurysm
surgery in March. Due to
excellent medical care, he
participated in an annual
hair-shaving fundraiser in
his small upstate New York
town. Glad to hear you
are doing well, Lou! Adele
Diamond is home from the
hospital, where she was
treated for pneumonia and
food poisoning.
Dave Shechtman “scored
four points in the 2017
Swats alumni basketball
game, where I was the only
representative of my class
and one of only three of
my millennium. The secret
to my success was bribing
the refs to get me to the
foul line a few times. The
court has gotten much

longer since we graduated.
In May, I caught up with
teammate Roger Holstein
while in New York visiting
our younger daughter.
Roger promised to participate in the 2018 game and
set some vicious picks on
the young folks to free me
up for an actual shot from
the field.” Way to go, guys!

1976

Fran Brokaw
fran.brokaw@gmail.com
Liz Loeb McCane still
puts most of us to shame
with her athletic prowess.
In May, she achieved a
personal milestone by
finishing her first Olympic-­
distance race at the St.
Louis Triathlon. “The
weather was darn close
to perfect, I smiled almost
the whole way, and I took
third in my age group.” Go,
Liz! Karen Schifano sent
her art to several curated
exhibitions this spring,
including “New York Art
Live,” an art fair in Osaka,
Japan, where she showed
13 paintings and 20 works
on paper. She was unable
to accompany her artwork,
but anyone who visits
Japan should check in with
Ken Moskowitz, who lives
with his wife in Yokohama,
where he is an adjunct professor of foreign policy at
Temple University Japan.
Monica Heller met up
with Robin Schott in
Copenhagen in March.
Though they had not seen
each other since graduation, they recognized each
other immediately and had
a great time catching up.
Joan Rogers Leopold still
operates her own marketing business and has
launched a new venture,
Slow Tag Press, Stories

for Grandparents and
Their Grandchildren. Slow
Tag’s first book, Herbert
Loves Sherbet (authored
by Joanie), is hot off the
press and available on
Amazon. (More: pg. 12)
Bruce Robertson co-­
curated (with Ninotchka
Bennahum ’86 and Wendy
Perron) an exhibition,
“Radical Bodies: Anna
Halprin, Simone Forti and
Yvonne Rainer in California
and New York, 1955–1972,”
at the New York Public
Library of the Performing
Arts and published a book
of the same title.
Maurice Kerins, in San
Antonio, is a real estate
broker with an emphasis
on older homes as his
“gentlemanly” avocation,
but is active in so many
activities, he feels like “the
proverbial chicken.”
David Newman writes:
“After 34 years of treating
families broad and deep,
the last 20 in a one- or
two-doc private practice, I closed my office in
May. My new venture will
be teaching family-practice
residents in a small town
25 miles away—no more
bicycle commuting!”
Greg Gebhart published
Deere Is Right Here!, a children’s book personalizing
John Deere vehicles for his
young audience, as he did
previously with “Bob” the
Bobcat and “CAT” the Caterpillar. He also published
Volume II of Chemistry
Games, offering board
games to make studying
chemistry fun; and a
memoir, 2 Lives in 3 Acts,
describing his journey with
bipolar affective disorder.
Madelyn Wessel is university counsel for Cornell
(bit.ly/MWessel). A frequent lecturer at national
conferences, Maddie has
been active in the National
Association of College
and University Attorneys,
including a three-year term
on the board of directors.

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While living in Oregon, she
received several awards
for promoting women and
minorities in the legal profession and for her work in
civil rights and affirmative
action.
Andrea Young, who
attended law school at
Georgetown Law, was
chosen as executive
director of the ACLU of
Georgia. Previously, she
was adjunct professor at
the Andrew Young School
of Policy Studies (named
for her father) at Georgia
State University. She was
also executive director at
the Andrew J. Young Foundation and co-authored
Andrew Young and the
Making of Modern Atlanta.
“My whole career has been
based on trying to bring
about Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr.’s dream—the beloved community. To bring
about an America that
fulfills the true meaning of
its promise, that all people
are created equal. All of
my career has been about
defending and extending
civil and human rights.”
I, Fran, attended the
Donor/Scholar Dinner on
campus in March where
I represented our class
and met Scott Ma ’19,
recipient of the Class
of 1976 Scholarship. It
was fun talking to him
and seeing that, though
things have changed,
much of the Swarthmore
experience is universal.
I had the pleasure of a
quick trip over Mother’s
Day weekend to witness
my son Billy’s “hooding”
as he received his Ph.D. in
history/Southeast Asian
studies. My old roommate,
Paula Rock Kaplan, and
I had two chances to see
each other this year—
when I vacationed in the
D.C. area, and when she
and husband Jeff stopped
for a visit at my family
home in Vermont. We saw
each other twice last year,

too—now hoping for three
years in a row!

1978

Donna Caliendo Devlin
dmcdevlin@aol.com
Betsy McCord and
husband Mark Roelofs
retired from DuPont,
where she was a Central
Research fellow. Betsy
loves children and has
run a Science Olympiad
and a robotics FIRST Tech
Challenge team out of her
rural Maryland home for
years. Her own children
share her love of science:
Kevin, a microbiology
Ph.D. and Harvard Med
post-doc, works at
Finch startup in Boston;
Katherine, a Prince­ton
chemical engineering grad
with a Stanford material science engineering
Ph.D., works in photonics
at Intel; Rebecca ’13 is a
Berkeley computer science
Ph.D. student; and Sean,
2016 world championship
winner of FTC robotics
(out of 17 countries, 5,000
teams), will major in computer science at Stanford.
It was good to hear from
Jennifer Myers Warner,
who left after sophomore year to “to elope
with the boyfriend from
Penn,” David Warner. “I
transferred on the fly to
the University of Chicago,
where I finished undergrad
and medical school. I did
a residency in diagnostic
radiology and have had
an interesting and varied
career, including five years
as department chair of a
Chicago hospital. I served
16 years on my elementary
public school board of education, as president for two
terms, concurrent with 15
years on our multidistrict

special education cooperative board of ed, also with
a term as president. State
and national school-board
associations have given
me distinguished-service
awards.”
Jennifer adds: “One of
my most important touchstones has been staying
in touch with dear friend
(and Lodge 5-mate) Betsy
Jensen. And thanks to
our 30th Reunion, my life
has been further enriched
by rekindling a friendship with another Lodge
5-mate, Ellen Bainer. Having these friends, no matter how far away, makes
life better. To top it off, the
35th Reunion listserv got
me in touch with Carolyn
Cliff, my long-lost Lodge 5
roommate (and birthday-sharer!). Carolyn and
her husband planned a
Chicago holiday in autumn
2013, so we were able to
meet up after all those
years. (Now, Julie Kauer
’79, where are you?)”

1980
Martin Fleisher
marty@meflaw.com

I had a nice email from Barry Schkolnick, who, with
wife Caroline, dined in LA
with Henry Yaffe ’82 and
wife Amit. The two men
had not seen each other
since Barry’s graduation
but reconnected on Facebook and picked up pretty
much where they left off.
The Swarthmore bond
is indeed hard to break!
Barry stills writes, creates,
and produces dramatic TV
series in the U.S. and internationally. Henry designs,
manufactures, and sells
fiber-optic subsystems and
test equipment.
Gene Burns says son

FALL 2017

/ Swarthmore College Bulletin

59

class notes
Nicky will enter with the
Class of 2021, so all three
boys (Danny ’14; Tim ’17)
will have gone to Swarthmore, which I’m pretty
sure sets a class record.
I’ve seen Anne Schuchat
a couple of times in NYC.
She was enthusiastic
about her position as
acting director of the CDC,
which she filled after the
previous director resigned
with the change in administration. A new permanent
director has been named,
so she returned to her old
job as principal deputy
director.
We had a nice dinner with
Tom Long and Melanie
Wentz near their Albany,
Calif., home. Daughter
Hannah graduated from
California Lutheran
University and is moving
home to look for a job.
Daughter Maisie is a high
school junior.
Tom, Mel, and Maisie
also dined with us in
August in Lyon, France,
where I was competing
in the 2017 World Bridge
Championships. My team
had qualified to be one
of two to represent the
U.S. in the open division.
(This was my third time
competing, with a notable
lack of success the first
two.) However, our team
managed to win the gold
medal after a frighteningly
close final match against
France. And yes, they
played “The Star-Spangled
Banner” while giving us
our medals—it was quite
a thrill!
Interestingly, one of the
participants in the senior
division (60 and over,
which doesn’t seem too
senior anymore) was Jeff
Wolfson ’75, whom I met
when I was a visiting student in fall 1973. His team
also won the gold! Quite
a day for Swarthmore
bridge. (More: pg. 12)
That’s all the news.
Please write!

60

Swarthmore College Bulletin /

1982

David Chapman
dchapman29@gmail.com
I am very happy to
report that the Bulletin’s
inclusion of David Shaiken
in “In Memoriam” was
erroneous. The editors are
genuinely sorry for any
distress this mistake might
have caused. I have been
in touch with David, and he
asked me to pass along the
following: “I’ve been enjoying life these many years
with wife Martha Sielman
and our five children. I
practice commercial and
bankruptcy litigation as a
partner in a small law firm
in West Hartford, Conn.
I hope friends were not
upset by the error.”
Our 35th Reunion was a
lot of fun. It was the first
time I had been back to
campus in a number of
years, and it was more
beautiful than ever. I
spent a lot of time with
Phil Joson, Mary Cronan,
Leisha Shaffer ’83, Scott
Jordan, Dana Lyons, Bart
Robins, and Rich Fields.
Bart, Dana, and Rich
performed in the space
behind Clothier (and then
into the tower for more
music-making).
I enjoyed reconnecting
with Jim DiFalco, Pat
Holmes, Larry Ehmer, Tim
Hoyt, David Edelman ’83,
John Skrocki, and Jon and
Susan Danzig Bernhardt
’83. For all those just
mentioned, I can think of
twice as many people who
weren’t able to come or
whom I would have loved
to see again. We have a
fascinating class!
My point is not to focus
on me (although I admit
that it appears that way!).
Everyone who was lucky

FALL 2017

enough to make it back
reconnected with people
who were important to us
in college and others who
have become important to
us through social media. I
recommend that you join
the Class of ’82 group on
Facebook. It is an easy
(and far timelier) way to
stay connected.
Please pass along any
information you would like
to share in Class Notes.

1984

Karen Linnea Searle
linnea.searle@gmail.com
Condolences to Jenny
Broome on the loss of her
father, Kenneth, in March.
Jenny has been in touch
with lots of Swarthmore
friends: “This winter and
into spring, family and I enjoyed a beautiful cabin in
Lake Tahoe thanks to Jon
Pitkin ’83. I saw Jennifer
Feldman Riebe ’83 when
her son came to Oakland
to compete in the regional
robotics championships.
We used it as an excuse to
get together with Joy Sue
Hutchinson ’83 and Jon
Pitkin ’83. Last fall, former
Swarthmore ecology
professor Jacob Weiner
gave a talk at Driscoll’s
here in Santa Cruz, Calif.
Jake left Swarthmore to
teach in Denmark about
20 years ago. He is still the
same smart, thoughtful,
dedicated ecologist he’s always been. Cynthia Richie
Terrell ’86 passed through
Santa Cruz with husband
Rob several times during
last year’s election activity,
and we often get together
with Santa Cruz residents
Rachel O’Malley ’86 and
Eva Bertram ’86 and their
families.”
Charlie Davis moved in

January from the Philadelphia suburbs to Boston
(actually, Davis Square in
Somerville). He still works
for Novartis Institutes for
BioMedical Research and
looks forward to meeting
old friends in the neighborhood. (LinkedIn would be a
great way to reconnect.)
Ali (Hope) Crolius is
continuing her weeding
business in western
Massachusetts. “I’m happily joining in the Swats
commitment to diversity by
saying I voted Republican
for the first time, pulling
the lever for ‘45’ and
glad I did so. This from a
long-ago sophomore who
alternately assailed and
guffawed the Reagan presidency along with most of
her classmates, who sat
in rapt horror as Professor
James Kurth defended
(with his heartbreaking
style of eloquence) much
of the Gipper’s policy
(before leaving us for the
Naval War College, I think),
and who now is rethinking
the Reagan legacy through
a rear-looking lens and
finding it is aging better
than she is. By voting to
‘MAGA,’ I lost all my Facebook friends, and half my
town (Amherst) crosses
the street when they see
me coming. Would love
to connect with Garnet
conservatives of any class,
wherever that one other
lonely individual may be.”
Our condolences to Colette Mull and Mike Dreyer
on the loss of Colette’s
parents within 10 months
of each other. Colette has
been recovering from a
concussion, so it has been
a difficult year, but they’re
cheered by their recently
adopted fun-loving, doting,
and cuddly Chihuahua and
fox terrier mix, Ollie.
“Mike and I are at the
same jobs, contemplating
retirement. We still run,
Mike plays soccer, and I
maintain my sanity with

yoga. My work niche has
evolved to be wellness
in physicians, and I have
led workshops locally,
regionally, and nationally
on building resilience in
physicians and trainees.
Mike is loved by his patients, then their kids, and
then their kids.
“Our son Alex starts his
senior year at Davidson
this fall, double-majoring
in political science and
gender and sexuality
studies. He interned this
summer in D.C. at the
Institute for Women’s
Policy Research, thanks
to a connection made with
founder and CEO Heidi
Hartmann ’67. He loves
it! Last fall, we spent time
with Alex in Copenhagen,
where he spent his junior
fall semester.”
Tom Guttmacher writes:
“I’m a family physician and
assistant professor of family medicine at the Alpert
Medical School of Brown
University, where I received
a 2016 Dean’s Excellence
in Teaching award. This
year our federally funded
community health center
merged with a community
mental-health center and
now provides integrated
behavioral health care in
a primary-care setting.
In the coming year, I
will pilot a primary-care
practice embedded within
a mental-health center for
patients with severe and
persistent mental illness.
“Our daughter, Anna,
will attend film school
in Buenos Aires. Her
great-grandmother, Carola
Eisenberg, originally from
Buenos Aires, will celebrate her 100th birthday
in September. Later that
month, we will attend
the premiere of an opera
by Harley Erdman, The
Scarlet Professor.”
Mary-Margaret Andrews
writes from Vermont (and
New Hampshire) that after
20 years as a member of

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SPOTLIGHT ON …

DONALD LLOYD-JONES ’86
Donald Lloyd-Jones ’86, a cardiologist and the chair of
preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg
School of Medicine, was named the American Heart Association’s national Physician of the Year.
“Swarthmore, more than any other place, really taught
me the values of curiosity and of listening to everyone, and
appreciating their unique perspectives,” he says. “Being
curious and meeting people where they are is so helpful
in making sure that people feel better in every sense after
they see the doctor.”

+
Dartmouth’s infectious
disease physician faculty,
she retired in June. She
plans to still teach at the
medical school but will
focus on establishing a
more balanced lifestyle of
family and friends, music,
books (yes, not ebooks),
exercise, and less typing.
Best to all of you in your
endeavors. Keep sending
the news!

1986
Karen Leidy Gerstel
kgerstel@msn.com

Jessica Russo Perez-Mesa
jessicaperezmesa@
yahoo.com
Thanks to all who contributed. We love hearing
from you.
Lucy Collier, who has
lived in Albany, Calif., for 14
years, began an intensive
study of shamanic healing
practices after President
Trump was elected. She
has also been singing, beekeeping, and walking 1,000
miles of the Camino de
Santiago over four years
(three weeks of walking
per year), starting at Le
Puy-en-Velay, France,

CONTINUED: bulletin.swarthmore.edu

two years ago. She will
travel with wife Mil Apostol
and friends to Ecuador in
January to learn from shamans about healing with
plant-spirit medicine and
other practices. She has
also been a psychotherapist in private practice
for 20 years in Oakland,
Berkeley, and Albany.
Lynelle Morgenthaler
started in March as
VP product leader at a
division of the nonprofit
Hispanic Intercommunication and Television
Network. “We are making
adorable bilingual pre-K
kits to sell to parents
based on TV characters.
It’s a ton of fun, and I get
to use my Spanish and
English-language-learning background (Swat
linguistics major!). It’s my
first foray in Austin and
in Brooklyn one week a
month. It’s been hectic
getting this startup team
off the ground, but it’s a
good kind of busy. Son
Aidan heads to Landmark
College this fall—it’s a sort
of ‘press restart’ on the
college experience for him.
Daughter Aislinn is a high
school junior and doing
Johns Hopkins’s Engineering Innovation program
this summer.”
Janette Lawrence
Neufville was promoted
to chief of operations and

compliance at Washington
Adventist University in Takoma Park, Md. “We also
enjoy watching our two
kids tackle grad school.”
Monica and Norman
Wright moved to Minneapolis, corporate HQ for
United­Health Group and
Optum. Norman leads
global operations for
Optum and loves the mission. His kids are through
college, so they are ready
to “let the next chapter
begin!”
After eight years of fulltime opera singing, David
Kravitz has returned to
law. He is the assistant
state solicitor in Massachusetts’s Office of the
Attorney General. He is
excited to work for the progressive champion Maura
Healey and to don his
appellate-litigator hat. He
will still sing professionally
as his schedule permits.
Deirdre Bell, a Navy
anesthesiologist, finished
a one-year tour at Naval
Hospital Guantanamo
Bay. She now heads to
Bremerton Naval Hospital
in Washington state. She
looks forward to exploring
the Pacific Northwest and
“will appreciate the cooler
weather. GTMO was hot
and humid!”
Pedro Gregorio loves his
job as a quality engineer
for Fiat Chrysler Automo-

biles. He “gets paid to play
with cars, so it’s every
toddler’s dream. I’m in love
with an amazing woman
whom I met while driving
to the 30th Reunion. Don’t
you love karma? Life is
good.” Congrats, Pedro.
Karen Schultz Paige made
a huge career change two
years ago. She is still at
Los Alamos National Laboratory, but after 20 years
managing data in the environmental cleanup program, she is now program
manager for the W88,
a submarine-­launched
ballistic missile. “I still live
in a rural area just outside
Santa Fe, N.M., and have
been married for 25 years
with one son in college and
a daughter considering
Swarthmore.”
Jeff and Karen Leidy
Gerstel celebrated son
Dylan ’17’s graduation
and their daughter’s first
year at the University of
Kentucky. They “finally”
sold their suburban New
Jersey home, moved back
to Manhattan, and got new
jobs. Karen says they are
“all unpacked and welcoming guests to the Upper
West Side.”
Cim Carpenter Kearns
writes that while finishing
a film studies Ph.D., she
discovered a haven of
creativity in corporate
America and has developed learning solutions
ever since. She works
for Oracle as a technical
training program manager.
Each move has taken her
progressively farther west,
and she now lives in Bozeman, Mont., with husband
Chris and son Luc, 17.
I, Jessica Russo Perez-­
Mesa, am the Hawaii
representative for Purdue
Pharma LP. Husband
Carlos and I celebrated our
25th wedding anniversary
in Spain this summer. The
best part was that our
kids—Carlos, 11, and Ava,
10—were at summer camp,

so we were kid-free for the
first time in 11 years. We
saw Cim and her family in
Hawaii before we went.

1990
Jim Sailer
jim.sailer@gmail.com

Dave Feinstein has done
design and brand work
with Beveridge Seay for
nearly 25 years and joined
the board of trustees for
International Arts &
Artists, which promotes
cross-cultural understanding and exposure to
the arts. He was a mentor
to the 2017 SwatTank
entrepreneurial competition winners, Michael
Piazza ’17 and Eric Wang
’18, and keeps busy in D.C.
by attending every protest
rally/march imaginable.
Phil Weiser writes: “After
I completed my term as
dean of the University of
Colorado Law School in
July 2016, my family took
a sabbatical in Sydney,
where we watched our
country take an unexpected turn. I reflected on what
I could do to serve and
decided to run for Colorado attorney general.” Good
luck, Phil!
Brent ’92 and Carolyn
Black Becker lost their
two senior dogs in 2016;
they are slowly rebuilding
their canine family with
a high-energy Doberman
rescue and an eye out for
a basenji rescue. Carolyn,
a nationally known
researcher in body-image
interventions, eating
disorders, and PTSD at
Trinity University, was
named one of this year’s
10 Piper Professors, an
honor given to outstanding
teachers and researchers
in Texas. Congrats!

FALL 2017

/ Swarthmore College Bulletin

61

class notes

ALUMNI PROFILE

Rick and Jen Austrian
Post have returned to the
D.C. area from another
overseas stint. Daughter
Eleanor graduated from
high school and is off to
Rochester Institute of
Technology. Younger sister
Margaret is thinking about
colleges, including one in
PA that sits just above a
creek. Jen, Rick, and Margaret have been politically
active this year, writing
letters and marching.
Bryan Callahan lives in
Seattle and works for the
Gates Foundation, where
he manages communications for the presidents of
Global Development and
Global Health. He and wife
Janelle have twin sons,
Henry and Roger, 4.
Karen Pulis was promoted to finance training
manager at State Street
Bank, traveling for work to
Japan, Hong Kong, China,
and India so often that they
feel like homes away from
home. A highlight this year:
visiting the Taj Mahal.
Debby VanLenten
Jagielow works in alumni
affairs at Yale while juggling active 9-year-olds’
activities. Debby spends
a lot of time on the road,
courtesy of her son’s baseball and daughter’s soccer
travel teams.
Two updates from my
freshman roommates!
Sanjit Korde runs a
Massachusetts law firm;
he and wife Cara are
raising 3-year-old twins in
Cambridge. Sanjit enjoyed
a mini-reunion at Peter
Mastroianni’s New York
compound with Adam Cooper, Mike Gittelman, Jesse
Springer, Cameron Gurney
’92, Kirk Paluska, Neil
Cockerill, and Ben Orlanski. David Ruby’s daughter
Jocelyn graduated from
high school and will attend
Knox College in Galesburg,
Ill., this fall. Dave and wife
Devora live in Seattle.
I had a lovely catch-up

62

Swarthmore College Bulletin /

lunch in New York with
Leslie Abbey, who is now
chief operating officer
for Covenant House New
York, one of NYC’s most
important social-service
agencies. Congrats, Leslie!
Peter Mastroianni and
wife Kathi are celebrating
their 25th anniversary.
Son Michael attends
Berklee College of Music,
and daughter Samantha
studies at SUNY Purchase.
Peter has joined McKool
Smith, a boutique litigation
law firm where Courtland
Reichman has been a partner for several years.
Catherine Cunniff Brooks
writes: “I’ve worked in the
research and evaluation
department of an educational collaborative for six
years—I am now managing
an employee, pursuing
and directing outside contracts, and supporting internal program evaluation.
I love my job—the work is
interesting, the hours are
part-time and flexible, and
my co-workers are great.”
Husband Rob is a software
engineer for a startup, and
son Bobby is in middle
school. Catherine stepped
up her political activity in
the wake of the election.
Eric Altman moved from
NYC to San Francisco two
years ago to join partner
Steve and his son, Quinn,
10—Eric’s now-stepson—
whom they co-parent with
Quinn’s mother. Eric works
for Blue Shield of California to address population
health disparities and
access inequities. Eric is
pursuing an MBA at Yale.
Danielle Moss had an
“awesome” reunion with
Anita Churchville ’91
in New York. Anita is
developing gifted and
special-needs educational
solutions at a Mumbai
private school and is “still
as brilliant and vivacious
as ever.” One of the leading advocates for women
and girls of color in NYC

FALL 2017

and nationally, Danielle
has left her role as CEO of
YWCA NYC and is taking
time for herself before
tackling her next role.

1992

Libby Starling
libbystarling@comcast.net
It was wonderful to see
many at our 25th Reunion!
Special thanks to Patrick
Egan, Stephanie Hirsch,
and Dena Ringold for
surveying our class and
leading a conversation
about what we’ve learned
(and have yet to learn) in
our quarter-century since
graduation.
Congrats to the newest
champion for 1992 parent
of the youngest child,
Jonathan Siner. Jonathan
and wife Lisa Hersch had
Joshua in February. He
joins sister Leora, born in
2015. J
­ onathan works at
Yale Medical School.
Speaking of ­academics,
Jennifer Arnold is a
professor in the University
of North Carolina’s psychology and neuroscience
departments, studying the
psychology of language.
Mark Duckenfield is chairman of the Department
of National Security and
Strategy at the U.S. Army
War College in Carlisle, Pa.
Pat Egan is an associate
professor of politics and
public policy at NYU. Jeff
Hildebrand is an associate
professor of mathematics
at Georgia Gwinnett College. Noah Novogrodsky
is an advocacy professor
of law at the University of
Wyoming. Justin Powell is
professor of sociology of
education at the Université
du Luxembourg. Kevin
Wilson is co-chair of the
neuroscience program at

Gettysburg College. Chuck
Wooldridge is an assistant
professor of history at
Lehman College, City University of New York. David
Zaring is an associate professor of legal studies and
business ethics at Penn’s
Wharton School.
Meeting David Leeser’s
son, Harry ’18, made me
curious about other 1992
Swarthmore legacies.
Besides Harry, our
Swarthmore children are
Maya Darst-Campbell ’19
(daughter of Elizabeth
Campbell), Kiera ’15
and Madeline James ’18
(daughters of Frank ’89
and Lena Mansori James),
and Zachary Rothenberg
’20 (son of Alexander and
Emily Mather Rothenberg).
Joining them this fall are
swimmer Barbara Fitzsimmons ’21, daughter of Brendan, and … who else? As
of deadline, Swarthmore’s
database hadn’t caught up
to the Class of 2021!
Another reunion theme
was Swarthmoreans trying
to change the world from
government positions.
Josh Green is still a Hawaii
state senator (maybe considering higher office?),
while Marion Greene is a
Hennepin County commissioner in Minnesota.
(Somerville, Mass., voters
will determine this fall
whether Stephanie Hirsch
will join our list.) Fighting
the good fight as federal
employees are Mara Senn,
a prosecutor in the Justice
Department’s Kleptocracy
Asset Recovery Initiative,
and Laurie Sternberg,
senior regulatory counsel
at the FDA. Lena Mansori
James is a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge in the
Middle District of North
Carolina. Jessica Lang
works for the Health Policy
Commission in Massachusetts. And though not in
government, Francis Grab
is a lobbyist with Ernst &
Young in D.C.

Mary Anderson is a
“recovering attorney”
doing strategy consulting
near Chicago. Living in
Corvallis, Ore., Tiffany
Larscheid Bailey has been
executive director of Girls
on the Run Willamette
Valley since 2014. Leslie
Bell is a psychotherapist
in private practice in
Berkeley, Calif.; in 2013,
she published Hard to Get:
20-Something Women
and the Paradox of Sexual
Freedom. Kaethe Morris
Hoffer became executive
director of the Chicago
Alliance Against Sexual
Exploitation in 2013.
Triana Silton is a Service
Employees International
Union labor organizer in
California. Karen Jeffrey
Welser is a teacher at East
Side Nursery School in
Providence, R.I.
In 2016, Eric Behrens
left Swarthmore’s staff to
become chief information
officer for Widener University. Per Hong and his family relocated in 2016 from
Moscow to Minneapolis,
from which he still travels
for his work with A.T. Kearney. Andy Perry joined the
Corporation for Supportive
Housing in Los Angeles as
a senior program manager
for health care. Jay Rhoderick is a communications
consultant and trainer in
NYC, working with executives and managers (and
the U.S. Olympic team).
Kehl Sink is involved with
Bay Area startups and
considering law school.
James Worden relocated to
Naples, Fla., and evidently
had a secret identity as a
radio DJ in North Carolina
… your class secretary is
curious!
Keep learning and
thriving, ’92ers! These may
be the years of fewer marriage and birth announcements, but keep the news
coming. I hope to see many
of you at our 30th Reunion
(if not sooner).

Share your pics—on campus and off—on
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“The first theater course I took was an acting class with a title about self-discovery,” says
Shanalyna Palmer ’94. “That’s why I was at Swarthmore: to discover who I was.”

FINDING DIRECTION

Success for her means seeing
the big picture
by Kate Campbell
SHANALYNA PALMER ’94 never
planned on a life of movie-making.
“In high school, I went to science
and engineering camps,” she laughs.
“I chose a degree in theater studies so
that I would be more well-rounded for
corporate America.”
Despite that—or maybe because of
it—the Georgia resident has found success as an assistant director in television and movies. Miss Winn’s Garden,
a short film she directed and produced
in 2016, won multiple honors, including the California Film Award in 2016;
it’s been selected for Network Notes at
the Independent Television Festival in
Vermont this October. The film’s story
about foster families is an important

one that she hopes will lead to support
for similarly themed projects.
“Time away from Swarthmore led
me to the conclusion that if I want to
step up and become a better leader,
I have to create projects of my own,”
says Palmer, “projects that promote
the values instilled at Swarthmore
and lean toward social awareness and
social justice.”
Palmer is an assistant director on
The Hate U Give, directed by George
Tillman Jr. She has also worked on
The Walking Dead, The Sopranos, and
Queen Latifah’s newest show, Star,
which begins its second season this
fall.
“The most fun I’ve had on set was on

Star,” she says. “Lee Daniels has a bigger-than-life personality. He is very
exacting in what he wants, but his joie
de vivre is contagious. If the director
and cast have a sense of humor, we all
get to experience the fun.”
As a producer, director, and assistant director, Palmer may spend her
day deciding what to film, whom to
cast, and what crew to hire, or simply
when to have the vans arrive on set to
take the cast and crew to lunch. It’s a
little like conducting, she’s found.
“On an average day, more than 100
people are working to fulfill the vision
of one director,” she says. “It can take
a bit of diplomacy to convince people not to stray from what the director
wants—especially when we’re all creative types.”
Listening to her instincts, even in
challenging situations, has shaped her
life ever since Swarthmore.
“Professor Bill Marshall has been
my greatest influence,” she says. “I
was definitely not the best student in
his class. But deciding to chuck an Air
Force ROTC scholarship in economics to study theater instead was a crisis moment for me. Bill didn’t give me
any answers, but he did help me to put
things into perspective. He was the
first to teach me how to listen to my
inner voice and not be afraid to allow
intuition to be my guide. This continues to be a mainstay in my leadership
tool kit.”
For this lesson, she remains forever
grateful ... and inspired.
“Swarthmore broadened my worldview and expanded my critical thinking,” Palmer says. “It taught me to
consider the impact of my decisions on
individuals as well as on the community as a whole.”

FALL 2017

/ Swarthmore College Bulletin

63

class notes

1994

Joanna Vondrasek
joanna.vondrasek@gmail.com
Our class news is full of
new projects—professional, geographical, artistic,
and familial.
Chief operating officer of
MIT Technology R
­ eview,
a digitally oriented
media company founded by MIT, Elizabeth
Bramson-Boudreau was
appointed president of
MIT Enterprise Forum. “It
is a global community of
entrepreneurs with a vision
to build a better world by
accelerating the creation
and growth of world-class
technology companies. I
am inspired by opportunities to collaborate on this
goal.”
Way-Ting Chen Hill and
Jennifer Li Shen are celebrating a milestone in their
social-entrepreneurial
venture. Way-Ting writes,
“Our little baby Blue Garnet (yes, nod to Swarthmore) has turned 15!” Adds
Jenni: “Who knew that the
gal I met freshman year in
English class and I would
be business partners
for as long as I’ve been
married?!”
Suzannah Cole Callaghan
lives in Brooklyn with her
partner and their 5-yearold twins. She started a
job as a social worker at a
state psychiatric center.
Artist Alexandra Grant
(alexandragrant.com)
presented the show LA
Exuberance: New Gifts
by Artists at Los Angeles
County Museum of Art.
Artist and now filmmaker Nathan Florence
(nflorencefineart.com) is
working on a show of new
paintings for Modern West
Fine Art in Salt Lake City

64

Swarthmore College Bulletin /

that opens in January.
Nathan is also in postproduction on his documentary Art+Belief (artandbelieffilm.com), which
follows his own questions
of finding balance through
the story of Trevor
Southey, a gay Mormon
artist, and Southey’s
colleagues. Nathan and
his family resigned their
church membership as
the Mormon church has
made its positions against
LGBT rights more strident.
Nathan is on the board of
Alliance for a Better Utah,
a progressive group agitating for integrity in local
government. He and his
family love the mountains,
backcountry skiing, and
bicycling, and welcome
wandering Swatties to
crash with them.
Jon Varese says life in
the Hudson Valley is very
different from Santa Cruz,
Calif., but he is enjoying reconnecting with
nearby Swatties, including
visits with Sanda Balaban
(Brooklyn), Serena
Benedetti Pantazopoulos
(Philadelphia), and Noël
Theodosiou (Boston).
His first novel, The Spirit
Photographer, will be
published in the spring,
based on William Mumler
and the spirit-photography craze of the 1860s in
Boston and New York. Jon
also has a major essay
coming out on Nicholas
Nickleby, slated to appear
in the new Oxford Handbook to Charles Dickens
in 2018.
Jennie Romich and
wife Adele Botha had
daughter Anneka Helen
Botha ­Romich last fall.
Big sister Ingrid, one
uncle, two housemates,
two dogs, and one cat
love her dearly. Jennie is
finishing her 15th year on
faculty of the University
of Washington School of
Social Work, where she
is studying the effects

FALL 2017

of Seattle’s $15 minimum
wage. The study team has
garnered criticism from
organized business and
organized labor, which
Jennie takes as a sign
they’re doing OK.
Jenni Owen-Blackmon
and husband Steve
happily announce the
arrival of son Elliott Owen
­Blackmon, born in the
spring. All are well and adjusting to life as a family of
five (with cats Button and
Toby, who aren’t entirely
sure what to make of the
new addition). Jenni is
director of development
communications at the
University of San Francisco, a Jesuit Catholic
university, which—she’s
been surprised to discover—shares many values
with Swarthmore. She
still sings professionally,
though in the immediate
future her singing may
be limited to nursery
rhymes and lullabies for an
audience of one (or three,
depending on the cats’
musical preferences).
Kathy Sturm-Ramirez
and her family have traded
Dhaka (Bangladesh) for
Dakar (Senegal), and she
encourages Swatties to
visit. Kathy still works for
the CDC and now provides
technical advice to the
National Malaria Control
Program. She enjoys the
new professional challenges and the constant
sunshine and daily ocean
views, but the greatest joy
is to have daughters Aicha,
10, and Mariama, 8, grow
up in their dad’s native
country, spending quality
time with close friends and
family—and still living in a
mango-growing country.
Please join our Class
of ’94 Facebook page
and keep those updates
coming. Also, if anyone is
interested in taking over
as class secretary, let me
know. I would like to have
someone lined up in time

for our 25th Reunion, now
less than two years away.
It’s fun and easy!

1996

Melissa Clark
melissa.a.clark@gmail.com
Gerardo Aquino
aquinonyc@yahoo.com
George Khalaf is executive
director of an edtech startup, Empatico, connecting
third- and fourth-grade
classrooms worldwide.
“Students engage in
virtual learning exchanges
with a diverse network of
classrooms turning almost
any lesson plan into a field
trip across the globe.” He
lives in Brooklyn with his
wife and sons Gavin, 6,
and Oliver, 4.
Will Craig was a trainer
in Swarthmore’s inaugural
Inclusive Leadership Conference in April. He writes
that it was mind-blowing
to be back on campus in
a teaching capacity and
recommends creating
ways to bring your skills,
knowledge, and experience to the College. “It’s
fun and rewarding, not to
mention trippy.” Whatever
your interests, he guarantees a younger version
of yourself is there who
would benefit tremendously from meeting you.
Rowan Phillips’s poem
“Halo” will be published in
Best American Poetry 2017
(bit.ly/PhillipsPoem).
Marcella Nunez-Smith received the Society of General Internal Medicine’s
2017 Herbert W. Nickens
Award for her work on
minority health and diversity. She is an associate
professor at Yale’s School
of Medicine and School of
Public Health.

Sara Fox Schecter is an
events manager in Intel’s
Open Source Technology Center. “It is truly a
dream opportunity for me.
I am heading to Beijing
next week for an event.”
Husband Jack Schecter
completed Hood to Coast
Washington, a 77-mile
relay from Lake Isabella
to Seabrook, Wash., with
a team from Nike. Their
family enjoys exploring
Oregon.
Joel Johnson, in D.C.,
says life is good for him,
wife Kyong, and daughter
Yunah. He started an advertising agency, Admirable Devil, and counts Stage
Stores and Orvis among
his clients. He caught up
with brother Chris Johnson
’99 and Matt Howard ’99
for a crawfish boil.
Aviva Kushner Yoselis
saw several Swatties at
nephew Arik Davidson
’11’s wedding in Memphis,
Tenn. The oldest of her five
children graduates from
high school this year.
I, Melissa, enjoy life in
Princeton, N.J., with my
husband and kids, ages 7
and 9. Thanks for sending
your updates!

1998

Amita Sudhir
amitasudhir@gmail.com
Rani Shankar
rani_shankar@yahoo.com
In less than a year, it will
be our 20th Reunion! It’s
hard to believe it’s been
two decades, but we look
forward to seeing many of
you there.
Ari Plost is the rabbi at
Congregation B’nai Abraham in Hagerstown, Md. In
January, his opinion piece
about turning down an

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invitation to join President
Trump’s inaugural service
as a rabbi was published
in The Washington Post
(bit.ly/APlost). Matthew
­Hellman was named cochair of Jenner & Block’s
Appellate and Supreme
Court Practice. He is a
partner at the firm and has
presented arguments in
the U.S. Supreme Court
and in federal and state
appellate courts nationwide.
Robert Monk hung with
Travis Beck ’96 at the
100th anniversary of Deep
Springs College, where
both attended before
matriculating to Swarthmore. Manuel Carballo
was appointed Oberlin’s
vice president and dean of
admissions and financial
aid. Manuel is moving
to Ohio after 12 years at
Middlebury, where he was
director of admissions. Lea
Ekeberg moved to Pittsburgh with her husband
and daughter, 3, and will
teach French.
Rachel Breitman, Cat
Laine, and Jennifer Weiss
Handler went to New
Orleans in June and ran
into Rachel’s D.C. neighbor
Herrin Hopper at the same
hotel. Rachel met Tamala
Montgomery’s son, Aaron
Ulysses Liu. Rachel’s
school now has two Swattie teachers—Rachel and

Elaina Barroso ’04. Rachel
was excited to buy her
sons Martí’s Song for Freedom by Emma Otheguy
’09—who was once her
seventh-grade student!
On a trip to the Detroit
suburbs to visit my inlaws, I, Amita, discovered
that Haejin Kim ’99 lives
just one town over and her
husband and mine were at
the University of Michigan
together (but didn’t know
each other since it’s just a
bit bigger than Swarthmore). We hope to meet on
a future trip.

2000
Michaela DeSoucey
mdesoucey@gmail.com

Emily Shu
emily.n.shu@gmail.com
George Miranda is busy
in private practice for
hematology oncology in
Southern California. He
and wife Barbie have a
full house: Josiah, 10,
Gabriela, 8, Antonio, 4,
and Lorenzo, 2. “My family
is such a source of joy, and
they stretch me to grow as
a person every day.” Last
year, George hosted Luis

Quinones ’01 and attended
the U.S. Open with Anthony Cho ’01.
Jessica Watson is global
programs and partnerships
director at Wings of Hope
and visited India to evaluate a field site. She and her
husband have two boys,
5 and 2, and purchased
a half-acre in St. Louis.
“We are embarking on a
full-on urban farm and
­intentional-community
project. We are enjoying
getting our hands dirty and
finally having chickens
(and maybe quail?) again
soon.”
In Chicago, Christina
Lutz had twins Amara
and Bianca, her third and
fourth children. She is
planning visits with their
godmother, Tracy McNeil
’01, and Mark Lotto, best
man at her wedding.
Christina became partner
at commercial litigation
firm Levenfeld Pearlstein.
Chris Fanjul and wife
Corey had second child
Vanessa, who is “fat and
happy.” Chris is building a
business as a potter and
artist ­(chrisfanjul.com).
Gil Rosenberg earned a
religious and theological
studies Ph.D. from the
University of Denver and
Iliff School of Theology.
Greg Hansell is beginning a
theology Ph.D. at Villanova.
Samira Mehta finished

SPOTLIGHT ON …

JOEL PRICE ’00
Joel Price ’00, a mandolinist/violinist and Swarthmore’s
technology education coordinator, recorded an album and
toured the East Coast with Eli Conley and joined a new
Philly-based band called Open Hand in 2017—while celebrating a year of being cancer-free.
“Pay attention to the things that interest you,” he says.
“Figure out a way to incorporate those things into as many
aspects of your life as you can. As Diane Anderson said to
me, ‘Don’t do something you don’t like for too long—it’ll
make you old really quickly.’”

+

CONTINUED: bulletin.swarthmore.edu

a health and spirituality
fellowship at the Library of
Congress’s Kluge Center,
returning to Albright College. This fall, she heads
to Dublin for a conference
hosted by Kate Fama ’01.
Sarah Archer caught us
up on the politically relevant history of the color
pink ­(bit.ly/­PinkHistory).­
Brendan Nyhan has been
in the news with his
semi-regular national politics column for The New
York Times’s Upshot.
Nadia Murray relocated
to Atlanta this spring to be
with her fiance. Samantha
Johnson loves living in
Oxford, U.K., working on
an album and mentoring
youths in a public secondary school. Husband Teru
is at the University of Oxford; son Ryu finished first
grade and enjoys reading,
drawing, and silliness.
Check out Sam’s music at
samtwigg.bandcamp.com.
Lance Langdon and wife
Merilee are raising cool
kids Kennedy, 4, and
Emerson, 2. Lance completed an English Ph.D. in
2014 and is a lecturer at
UC–Irvine. This summer,
they visited the family of
old roomie Nick Attanasio.
Cathy Muller and husband
Henry had Ruth Eleanor
Pratt in April. “She is already smiling and cooing,
and big brother Arthur is
enjoying his new role.”
Rebecca Brodie Leung
received an MLIS from
San Jose State University,
where she was chair of
the student chapter of the
Society of American Archivists. “I am working on
projects at the Sierra Club
library and the archives at
the Federal Reserve Bank
of San Francisco. As a
reward for all of my work
(at least in my mind!), my
husband, Carter, and I are
traveling to Hong Kong to
see family and to India for
a wedding. I welcome contact from any Swatties!”

In his new book, One
Shot, John Leary draws on
15 years of humanitarian
work and conveys how
integrating trees into degraded agricultural lands
is the answer to reversing
desertification, water
scarcity, hunger, poverty,
climate change, and forced
migration. Arun Mohan
became CEO of Radix
Health, an IT company he
co-founded. He lives in
Atlanta with his wife, two
amazing girls (7 and 4), six
chickens, and one poorly
tended fish.
Joel Price joined the
band Open Hand (OpenHandBand on Facebook)—
half-Brazilian percussion
ensemble, half-string
quartet—and still works
at Swarthmore in ITS,
connecting people with
technology that makes
their work lives easier.
Joel happily reports that
he is still cancer free! “I’m
incredibly lucky to have
such a wonderful medical
team at UPenn and such
lovely friends and family
throughout that whole
ordeal.”
We look forward to updates as life churns along
and many of us hit 40
(gulp!). Most of Swarthmore’s new freshmen
were born the year we
graduated. Yes, it has been
that long!

2002

Tanyaporn Wansom
swarthmore2002@gmail.com
Gabriel Fairman and his
family left Brazil in July
for the Bay Area to set up
operations for his company, Bureau Translations.
Hilary Rice moved out of
D.C. to be closer to work—
and across the street from

FALL 2017

/ Swarthmore College Bulletin

65

class notes
her parents—so she and
the grandparents can
spend more time with her
daughter, Lydia. Imo Akpan
finished the clinical part
of a hematology fellowship
and is in the research
phase of the physician–
scientist training program
at Northwestern. She and
her husband vacationed in
London in June and met
up with Zoe Whitley ’01
and Naa Aku Addo ’04.
Lashanna Lawler
converted part of her art
studio into a gallery space,
and in mid-June she sold
several paintings at her
second art show. Between
teaching medical students,
painting on location, and
traveling, she was planning a show for sometime
this fall/winter. View her
work on Facebook,
@Lashanna­LawlerArtwork.
Natalie Graham was
granted tenure in Cal
State–­Fullerton’s African-American studies
department. Her book
Begin With a Failed Body
was released Sept. 15.
Philly residents Sarah
Zlotnik and Noah Winer
welcomed son Isaiah
Rafael Zlotnik on Jan.
5. I, Tanya Wansom, and
husband Chris Huang
had second child Ronan
Wiriya Huang on June 15
in Bangkok. Uncle Derrick
Wansom ’05 visited him
and brother Milo in July.
Many reported enjoying
our 15th Reunion, and I
loved all the pictures on
Facebook. Lizzie Rothwell
thanks everyone who
attended the Alice Hershey
Alumni Weekend event or
contributed to the scholarship fund, and reports that
they are close to meeting
their $35,000 goal!
Email ­swarthmore­2002@
gmail.com to receive calls
for Class Notes. I enjoy
hearing from everyone!

66

Swarthmore College Bulletin /

2004

Daniel Loss
Rebecca Rogers
swat04classnotes@gmail.com
The doctors of the Class
of 2004 have steadily
transitioned from training
to attending. Eric Shang
finished a vascular surgery
fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic. He and wife
Krista Gigone and their
two children moved to
Morgantown, W.V., where
Eric accepted an attending
position as an assistant
professor (clinical) at
West Virginia University.
Sarah Hilding is a family
medicine doctor in Hebron,
Conn. She married Dan
Pilver in April; brother David Salorio ’12, Catherine
Clark, Jenny Blumberg
Graber, and Sarah Donovan Finnegan attended.
Renuka Nayak is a rheumatologist at UCSF and a
postdoctoral fellow studying the microbiome in the
Turnbaugh Lab. Renuka
married Tony Singh in May.
Rebecca Rogers started as
assistant program director
for ambulatory education
in the internal medicine
residency program at
Cambridge Health Alliance,
where she is a primary
care physician.
Careers in other realms
continue to blossom,
as well. Mark Hanis is
a research fellow with
Stanford’s Handa Center
for Human Rights and
International Justice. He’s
cooking up a resistance
app, ­ActionMap.us. Liz
Leininger is an assistant
professor of neurobiology
at the New College of
Florida, a public honors liberal arts college. She and
husband Brian look forward to Sarasota life and

FALL 2017

encourage Florida Swatties
(or anyone wanting to visit
the beach) to get in touch.
After four years of enjoying
Geneva’s alpine air and copious fondue while working
at the World Health
Organization, Kirsten
Vannice is moving to the
Pacific Northwest to work
in the Seattle/King County
health department. Esther
Zeledon (with her husband
and two kids) moved from
Jamaica to the Dominican Republic for another
assignment with ­USAID.
Kathy Liu’s promotion to
director of major gifts at
the Metropolitan Opera
(where she has worked
for two years) will keep
her in NYC. Her brother
also moved there and her
parents think they’d like to
be closer to their children,
so Kathy is slowly dragging
her family east. She and
her family visited Machu
Picchu and Peru. Lillie
Dremeaux has lived in the
U.K. for a year and a half;
she is the digital editor for
the London newsroom of
The New York Times.
Nick Lum gave a guest
lecture at Swarthmore in
April on social-impact entrepreneurship. His startup
BeeLine Reader received
a grant from NewSchools
Venture Fund. Nick’s other
startup, Read Across the
Aisle, launched via Kickstarter in February. This
app helps people assess
and escape their filter bubbles. (It also includes free
access to The Wall Street
Journal.) Real Impact,
sharing Morgan Simon’s
journey in the world of
money and social justice,
is out Oct. 3. It starts with
her work at Swarthmore to
make the endowment more
socially responsible, then
goes on to help people
learn to align their money
with their values.
Our class has welcomed
many new arrivals. Carla
Greenberg’s first child,

ALUMNI COUNCIL NEWS
Swarthmore’s Alumni Council spent the past
year considering updates to its constitution
and bylaws. At its May meeting, two changes
were passed: allowing electronic voting and
removing gender binary distinctions from its
documentation.
The Council holds its fall meeting in October.
Members will continue to work on engaging
alumni in their review process, as well as
on offering career-related networking and
mentoring opportunities for students.
alumni@swarthmore.edu
swarthmore.edu/alumni/alumni-council
Miles Greenberg Heath,
was born in December.
Evan Moses and wife
Susanne had daughter
Finnley Abigail Moses
on March 5. Clifford
Sosin’s son, Thomas
Edwards Sosin, joined his
older sister May 14. Katie
Robinson and husband Sri
Ganda had third child Neil
on March 1. Neil’s siblings
like helping out as much
as they can. They live in
Andover, Mass.; Katie will
return to teaching math
at Westford Academy this
fall. Rebecca Rogers and
Danny Loss added to their
clan with the birth of son
Maxwell Vivian Rogers
Loss on April 22—all of
us (including big brother
Gabriel) are smitten. We
(Rebecca and Danny) also
just bought Rebecca’s
grandparents’ circa-1890
house in Arlington,
Mass.—visitors welcome!

2006
Wee Chua
wchua1@gmail.com

Jon Greenberg and wife
Kat had baby Penelope
in March. Jon is enjoying

paternity leave, which
includes thrice-daily walks
by the bay, endless children’s songs on YouTube,
and lots of goofy faces and
fun times.
Cara Tigue married Adam
Spadaro on June 3 in
Toronto; Jen Stevenson
O’Donnell ’06 and Jess
Fuhr Rohde ’07 were
bridesmaids. Everyone
had fun dancing the night
away, especially Mark
Rohde ’07.
Regina Simeone and
husband Lee still live in Atlanta, where Regina works
at the CDC, focused on the
Zika virus outbreak. She
completed the first year of
an epidemiology Ph.D. at
Emory University.
Sonali Shahi was promoted to assistant federal
defender in the Capital
Habeas Unit of the Federal
Community Defender Office for the Eastern District
of Pennsylvania.
Zach Zaitlin was excited
to attend a monthlong
composition program in
July at the Atlantic Music
Festival, where he lived in
a college dorm with fellow
students who were mostly
10–15 years younger than
him. He moved from Portland, Maine, to Philadelphia in August. Zach plans
to build up his private
piano-teaching studio, so

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Philly residents needing
quality music instruction
should look him up!
After two great years in
NYC, Elizabeth Buckner
moved in June to become
an assistant professor of
international and higher
education at the University
of Toronto. In New York,
Elizabeth had reconnected
with Bernadette BairdZars, Rebecca Brubaker,
and Elli Suzuki—she looks
forward to meeting up with
Swatties in Canada.
Danielle Miller Bond
writes from Pittsburgh,
where she celebrated her
Penguins winning their
second-straight Stanley
Cup. She is happily teaching engineering, doing
measurement and verification work, and rebuilding
her tennis game.
Nim and Katie Crawford
Cohen ’07 moved to LA in
July, after 10-plus years
in Boston and NYC. They
brought with them Ilian
James Cohen, born in
May. While Ili is mostly just
eating and sleeping, they
think he’s pretty great. Nim
left finance for product
management at Scopely, a
mobile video­game startup,
while Katie finished a Ph.D.
at Columbia and will be a
health policy researcher at
RAND. They would love to
see Swatties in LA.
Scott Long abandoned
the East Coast for chiller
but more humid surroundings, and is an IBM design
researcher in Austin,
Texas. He still pursues too
many extracurriculars at
once, particularly ultimate
Frisbee and improv.
Zach Michielli is architecture-Ph.D.-ing it up in
New Haven, Conn.—representin’ Swat by reading
all the books. If anyone
needs an architect to, uh,
architect them up a storm,
let him know.
Martyna Pospieszalska
married Richard Levitsky
in Krakow, Poland, in

July 2016, with Heidi
Fieselmann in the wedding
party. Martyna and Rich
enjoy D.C., working for
the Department of Justice
and the Coast Guard,
respectively.
Kristin Davis moved
to D.C.-based litigation
boutique Weisbrod Matteis
& Copley, where she works
with Matt Krauss and
Charles Fischette ’01. One
would be hard-pressed to
find another firm where
more than 10 percent of
the attorneys are Swatties.
Kristin was thrilled when
she showed up at Dulles
Airport to volunteer during
the January travel ban and
ran into Becky Strauss.
“We realized we could have
carpooled and saved time!
Nothing like a good protest
to draw out the Swatties.”
Catharine Parnell and
husband Eduardo work
for the Army in D.C. This
surprises Catharine practically every day. She works
in capital and interlocutory
appeals but hopes to move
back to the private sector
next year. Catharine has
also returned to competitive Irish dancing.
Rhiannon Graybill married
Kurt Beals in Great Falls,
Mont., June 10. Krista
Spiller, Emily Wistar, Emily
Regier, Vicky Woo, and
Cassie Barnum attended.
Harris Kornstein is working on a media, culture,
and communication Ph.D.
at NYU​, while his alter-ego
made headlines reading to
kids at Drag Queen Story
Hour and backup dancing
for Katy Perry on SNL.
I, Wee, am in my last year
of a pediatric emergen-

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SwarthmoreBulletin

cy medicine fellowship
at ­Seattle Children’s
Hospital/University of
Washington. I’m also starting my first real job search
since graduating from
Swarthmore. Making the
most of potentially my last
summer in Seattle, I hit the
Pacific Northwest adventure jackpot by securing a
permit to backpack at the
Enchantments.
That’s a wrap for 2017.
Hope to catch up with you
soon. Drop me a line if you
swing through Seattle.

2008
Mark Dlugash
mark.dlugash@gmail.com

Around the world: Tatiana
Cozzarelli spent the past
four years in Brazil, where
she participated in World
Cup and Olympics protests, the wave of student
occupations, and the labor
movement. Now, she is an
editor for Left Voice and
studying education at the
CUNY Graduate Center.
Anna Mello is finishing
her last year at Escola Internacional de Florianopolis in southern Brazil,
where she has taught
science for four years. She
is moving to NYC in early
2018 and looks forward to
new adventures.
Mikio Akagi finished his
first year at Texas Christian University, teaching
young conservatives about
science and social justice.
He’ll spend the latter half
of 2017 on research leave
in Dublin, Ireland.
Working life: Claire Melin
completed an emergency
medicine residency at the
University of Virginia and
will be an attending physician at New York–Presbyterian/Columbia University

Medical Center. She was
excited to celebrate sister
Julia Melin ’13’s marriage
to Israel Kositsky this
summer. After preventing
waste, fraud, and abuse
at the USPS Office of Inspector General, Shaterra
Green moved on to more
pressing social issues,
providing audit services
at Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy to protect
clients with immigrant
employees.
Natalie Bowlus lives
in Brooklyn and works
in CIBC’s infrastructure
group. She ran the Boston
Marathon in April and
is excited to do New
York’s again in November.
She also looks forward
to catching up with
classmates at our rapidly
approaching 10th Reunion.
Alyssa Work is a criminal
defense staff attorney at
the Bronx Defenders in
New York.
Patricia Kelly graduated
from family medicine residency at White Memorial
Medical Center in LA and
will move home to Atlanta
to work in urgent care.
After two years at
Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, Alice Grimm is
moving to the Bay Area to
teach math at Lick–Wilmerding High School.
After clerking for judges
on the 2nd Circuit and
Southern District of New
York, Jennesa Calvo-Friedman will start as the Karpatkin Fellow at the ACLU
Racial Justice Project.
Celebrations: Katie Bates
Weir and Allison Barlow
Chaney, inseparable roommates, have both extended
their respective families
with baby boys. Katie and
husband Alec had Henry
Galen Weir on Feb. 22. Allison and husband Nathaniel had Andrew Isaac
Chaney on April 15. Class
of 2039 roommates?
Melina Healey and Ross
Weller are having grand

fun with baby Junedale,
who loves to grab dog
tails and play Melina’s
banjo. Ross is a general
surgery resident at SUNY
Stony Brook. Melina is
an assistant professor at
NYU School of Law and
an Equal Justice Works
fellow.
Alex and Annie Burke
Benn had Tess Faye Benn
on Jan. 21. They love
watching her little baby
brain figure stuff out. Tess
looks forward to meeting
new Swat-lets at reunion.
Adrian and Megan Schuster Vasile had Alexander
William on Oct. 21, 2016.
Sister Nadia is thrilled, and
all have enjoyed visits from
Alicia de los Reyes, Meg
Perry, and Sarah ’07 and
Andrew Gillis-Smith ’07.
Lea Deutsch and Lauren
Rile Smith are thrilled to
announce son Elliot Franchi Rile-Deutsch.
Jessica Langston and
husband Raleigh had
daughter Calliope Henne
Langston.
Christina Baik and Seth
Donoughe had a girl! Mina
Baik-Donoughe was born
Feb. 18 and has been
strong, curious, and a
good eater from day one.
Finally, Stephanie Duncan
Karp begins an MFA at the
Iowa Writers’ Workshop
this fall. The work will be
fiction. Any resemblance
to actual persons, living or
dead, or actual events will
be purely coincidental.

2010

Brendan Work
theworkzone@gmail.com
So you’re in the market for
a new or used Swarthmore
alum! I know a discerning
customer, and you’ve got
an eye for quality. Why

FALL 2017

/ Swarthmore College Bulletin

67

class notes
don’t I give you a tour of
the lot?
Let’s start with the classics. These are the ones
that keep the Swarthmore
brand on the road, the
really dependable pieces
of craftsmanship: Allison
Grein, who raised $9,000
for survivors of sexual violence by running the 2016
TCS New York City Marathon, is of that caliber. She
lives in Brooklyn, practices
entertainment and employment law at Reavis Parent
LLP, and hangs out with
Toby, her brother’s dog.
There’s Colin Schimmelfing out in San Francisco:
Another tried-and-true
seller, he began managing
at the edtech company
Clever and visited Melinda
Yang in Beijing, where he
engaged in successful
Mandarin taxi diplomacy. And of course, you
wouldn’t think of leaving
the 20X showroom without
seeing our new, souped-up
Joel Tolliver, promoted to
unit director of the Boys
& Girls Clubs of Central
Georgia, saving kids one
afternoon at a time, or the
freshly painted lowrider
Sam Goodman, teaching
reading, ’riting, and revising in New Jersey.
Perhaps you’re after a
sportier look? 20X has
you covered with these
quick-cornering Quakers.
Lauren Mendoza is the
new curator of Red Light
Lit: Austin, “a collective
of writers, musicians, and
artists who explore love,
relationships, and sexuality through spoken word,
art, and song.” Her story
collection, Life’s Too Short,
won the Michael Rubin
Book Award, and at the
book-release party were
husband Travis Contreras
and Anthony Stigliani ’11.
Over here is a real beauty,
an exquisite muscle car
we call Louis Jargow,
Ph.D. student in politics
at the New School. Louis

68

Swarthmore College Bulletin /

SPOTLIGHT ON …

JOSHUA SOKOL ’11
Joshua Sokol ’11, a science writer based in Cambridge,
Mass., received the Jonathan Eberhart Planetary Sciences
Journalism Award for distinguished popular writing.
Josh was honored for his article “Hidden Depths,”
in which he explains how icy worlds far from the sun’s
warmth, such as Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon
Enceladus, can maintain subsurface oceans. The article
appeared in the Aug. 13, 2016, issue of New Scientist.

+
was in D.C. for the Festival
of Resistance during the
inauguration, and now
he’s writing his dissertation as a genealogy of
political rage. And there’s
no beating the power and
agility of Kathryn Riley, a
visiting assistant professor
and postdoctoral fellow at
our own alma mater, researching nanomaterials,
who spent the summer in
Philly’s beer gardens with
Michele Perch.
We have the finest luxury alumni available over
here—really upscale pieces. Here we have Monica
Cody, the deluxe edition,
who’s leaving Google after
seven years (she had
worked on the Google Assistant Personality, meaning she wrote the jokes,
poems, and games for the
AI on your Android device)
to start Harvard Business
School, alongside Yingjia
Wang. The luxuriant stylings of Travis Rothbloom
also grace the exhibition
floor; he returned from
Venice, where he spoke
at a conference about
reforming the architecture,
engineering, and construction industry using
augmented reality, which
he plans to combine with
3-D laser scanning to digitally preserve Swarthmore
buildings before they’re
demolished. Then there’s
the undeniable splendor
of Julia Luongo, who does

FALL 2017

MORE: joshuasokol.com

air-quality work at an
environmental consulting
company in San Francisco
and plays softball with
Maggie Vizcarra ’11, and
the understated extravagance of Seth Green, who
works in New York at the
startup Code Ocean, which
works with scientists to
make code and data public
and reproducible. Sure,
there’s some sticker shock
for these babies, but you
pay for quality!
These over here are the
family alumni, really safe
and reliable models for
any age. We’ve got Clare
Kobasa, who married Scott
Weiss ’11 in June under
the officiation of classics
professor Jeremy Lefkowitz and the happy gaze of
Anson Stewart, who finally
graduated from MIT’s
transportation doctoral
program; Caitlin O’Neil,
who works on budget and
policy issues related to
California’s prison system;
and Gina Salcedo, celebrating two years of marriage
herself, a new condo owner
and an aunt since last
September. Then there’s
Stephanie Appiah, married
in March to husband Jay,
with well-wishers Chelsea
Davis, Jack Keefe, G
Patrick, and Aaron Brecher
attending; Sunny Cowell
singing “Stand by Me” as
Stephanie went down the
aisle; and enough Irish Car
Bomb cupcakes to make

the kids drive. Finally, we
happily announce the May
nuptials of Lena Wong to
husband Vincent, and the
delighted cooing of Monica
Cody, Anne Tucci, Kathryn
Riley, Claire Shelden,
Rachel Bell, Taylor Rhodes,
Liz Lopez, Anagha Krishnan, Aejin Yoon, Austin
Dike, Eileen Earl, Kate
Aizpuru, and Jake Ban,
who was invaluable—as if
he could be otherwise.
If you’re interested in a
ride that’s smarter than
you, these models over
here are sure to have the
intellectual horsepower for
you. Check out this brandnew David Weeks, back
from five years in Beijing
and ready to run Sunrise
International Education, an
experiential education and
media company; or this
factory-upgraded Melinda
Yang, who got a Ph.D. from
UC–Berkeley in 2015 and
has moved—get this—to
Beijing! She’s a postdoctoral researcher using
DNA from ancient humans
of China to study human
prehistory in East Asia.
Then there’s the custom-­
restored Benjamin Mazer,
entering his second year
of a pathology residency at
Yale; Ashley Miniet, in her
second year of an Emory
pediatric residency; and
Robert Manduca, who’s
studying income inequality
for a Harvard sociology
Ph.D. and will move to

New Haven with Roseanna
Sommers, working on legal
issues related to debt collection for low-income and
elderly consumers with the
National Consumer Law
Center.
Folks, we’ve got everything here at the 20X
dealership. We’ve got creative-writing rigs like Toby
Altman, who’ll start a poetry MFA at the Iowa Writers’
Workshop and whose first
book, Arcadia, Indiana,
was just published; we’ve
got filmmaking rigs like
Matt Thurm, whose latest
feature, Crown Heights,
won the Audience Award
at the 2017 Sundance Film
Festival and was released
in theaters Aug. 25; we’ve
got this one rig that only
works in Spain, Clara
Badimon, working with
grantees at the U.S.–Spain
Fulbright Commission
and patiently expecting
visitors; we’ve got barely
street-­legal policy-adviser
rigs like Elizabeth Hipple,
starting at the Washington
(D.C.) Center for Equitable
Growth after traveling
Europe; and we’ve got this
vintage Lorenzo Ramirez,
fresh out of Philly and
transplanted to the SoCal
sun, now the director of
ALLIES (Access, Learning
& Leadership Initiatives to
Elevate Students) in STEM
program at California
Lutheran University. And
just because you’ve stuck
with me for the whole
tour, I’ll give you a sneak
peek at these antique
“class officer” models: the
exotic roadster Erin Resch,
living around Boston and
beginning her second year
of residency at Tufts pediatrics, and the inimitable
hot rod Suzanne Winter
(pg. 17), who plans to halve
her hours at the Robert
Louis Stevenson School in
New York, apply for some
grad schools, and dance
the summer away.
All of these fine 20X

alumni are available to
buy or lease, and we have
financing plans as low as a
couple thousand a month,
payable to American Education Services. If you’ve
got an alum to advertise,
send his or her specs to
theworkzone@gmail.com.

2012

Maia Gerlinger
maiagerlinger@gmail.com
We had our 5th Reunion!
Some of us are getting
married and buying houses, which terrifies me.
Midwest: Hannah “Alex”
Younger is halfway through
an MFA at the School of
the Art Institute of Chicago, where she is also a
youth-program administrator. She is, apparently, the
only ’12er in the Midwest.
New England & Boston:
Tania Doles moved from
Southern California to
Portland, Maine, and
considers herself “obsessed.” She’s an editorial
director at a publishing/
custom-­media firm and
goes on long hikes in the
woods. Julia Cooper and
Ben Lipton moved near
Boston after receiving
their medical and computing security master’s,
respectively. Julia joined
the Lawrence Family Medicine Residency, and Ben
works for GRIMM, a small
cybersecurity firm. Avery
Davis and Julian Leland
married in Atlanta on June
17 and, together, took the
surname “Bell.”
Philadelphia: Manuk Garg
moved to Philly. Mary Alice
Upshur married Patrick
Hartnett ’11, successfully
defended a chemistry
Ph.D. at Northwestern,
and joined Dow Chemical.
She and Patrick bought

a house in Malvern, Pa.
Margret Lenfest ran the
ovarian cancer project at
the Penn Vet Working Dog
Center this summer and
began her third year of vet
school. John “Wes” Willison lives in North Philly
with wife Hana Lehmann
’13, with whom he acquired
a house and a dog. He is
pursuing a master of divinity at Princeton Theological
Seminary.
NYC: Jessie Cannizzaro
played lead in a production of Romeo and Juliet
at Lincoln Center and is
now in the off-Broadway
comedy Puffs. Tickets
on sale through January!
Shane Ogunnaike and
his wife moved to town
from the Bay Area. He still
works sales at a midsize
startup, but his true passions are TRAP Karaoke
and an anti-Trump PAC. I,
Maia Gerlinger, am back
in Jersey City, although
I write this from my
three-week homestay in
Guatemala with Rebekah
Judson. Carolyn Maughan
is back home in Brooklyn
and started her fourth year
as an auditor at Deloitte
in September. Joseph
O’Hara finished his first
year at Columbia Business
School and worked at
BlackRock this summer.
Wystan “Neil” Palmer
finished a chemistry Ph.D.
at Princeton and will start
a postdoc at Columbia.
Anastasia “Tasha” Lewis
lives in Jersey City and
is preparing for a solo
show at the Philadelphia
Magic Gardens next fall. In
June, she presented her
Illustrating Ulysses project
at the annual James Joyce
conference at the University of Toronto. Anthony
Montalbano works for UPS
while finishing his first
year in physical therapy
school. Maxwell Bressman
graduated from NYU
medical school and begins
an internal medicine resi-

Share your pics—on campus and off—on
Instagram: @swarthmorebulletin, #swatbulletin

dency at Einstein Medical
Center. He also won his
golf club championship!
Ryane Disken-Cahill lives
in Brooklyn and is the
costume designer for a
new show on Adult Swim.
Callie Feingold works for
CNN’s Department of
Business Operations and
Administration. Lindsay
Dolan married Kolby
Hanson on May 27. Among
the bridesmaids were
Allison Stuewe and Mary
Alice Upshur-Hartnett.
Hanna Kozlowska writes
cool pieces on things like
female lawyers fighting
the immigration ban and
a female prison worker’s
harassment suit.
California & the Pacific
Northwest: Kat Clark is
head of marketing and
community at Khan Lab
School while pursuing an
MBA at Berkeley Haas.
Eleanor Glewwe is working
on a linguistics Ph.D. at
UCLA. Her book Sparkers
(bit.ly/Sparkers) was
translated into Turkish!
Arsean Maqami moved to
San Francisco and works
for a real estate development firm. Andrew Cheng
is at UC–Berkeley pursuing
a linguistics Ph.D. Shiran
Shen graduated from
Stanford’s M.S. program
in civil and environmental
engineering and will stay
for an additional year
to complete a political
science Ph.D. Michael
Giannangeli finished an
MBA at MIT Sloan and will
work for Amazon Lab126
in San Fransisco. Molly
Siegel started an ­OBGYN­
residency at Oregon Health
Sciences University in
Portland. Frances Hunter
is in the Navy, stationed
in Hawaii at Pearl Harbor.
She now has a cat! Halleh
Balch’s research was
featured in a SpaceDaily
article (bit.ly/HallehB).
Baltimore & D.C.: David
D’Annunzio is a software
engineering manager at

ZeroFOX, a social-media
cybersecurity company;
plays with Catonsville FC
in the Maryland Major
Soccer League; and
lives with Emilia Thurber
’11. Zach Weiner, not to
be confused with Zack
Wiener (see “Abroad,”
below), lives in Baltimore.
He sent a plethora of fun
facts, including that he’s
“gotten five-ish haircuts,”
“attended a baseball game
and watched about four
movies on an airplane,”
and “learned how to roast
peanuts in my oven at
home,” so I assume he’s
doing really well. Monica
Ajinkya married a medschool classmate in May,
after which they graduated
and moved to Maryland
to start residencies in
Baltimore and D.C.
South: Maki Somosot
finished her first year
managing communications
for Bryan Stevenson at the
Equal Justice Initiative in
Montgomery, Ala.; she had
previously covered criminal justice in rural south
Louisiana. Jackie Scala
graduated from med school
and is starting an internal
medicine residency at
the University of Virginia.
Dante Fuoco is starting
his sixth year of teaching!
(Which deserves the exclamation point he added.)
This is his third year at the
New Orleans Therapeutic
Day Program, which serves
public-school students
with severe behavioral
disorders. He’s also doing a
new run of Transplant, his
(excellent) one-man show
about gentrification, white
guilt, and related issues.
Genevieve Pezzola received
a SMART (Science, Mathematics and Research for
Transformation) fellowship
through the Department of
Defense. She is interning
at the Army’s Engineer Research and Development
Center, where she’s testing
a concrete wall retro-

fitted with carbon-­fiber
reinforced polymer and
a mechanical anchorage
system exposed to live
explosives, which will be
part of her Ph.D. thesis.
Jenna Zhu will be an acting
apprentice at the Actors
Theatre of Louisville, Ky.,
in the ’17–’18 Professional
Training Company.
Abroad: Zack Wiener (bit.
ly/ZackWiener) is moving
to Jerusalem for his third
year of rabbinical school,
where he will study the
Talmud and learn Arabic.
He welcomes Swatties
for hummus! Marie
Rousseau joined ­­350.
org­as a translations and
localization coordinator.
She celebrated the first
anniversary of Self-ish
­(­bit.ly/­MRousseau)­, an
open mic she founded
for people who identify
as female, trans, and/or
nonbinary.

2014

Brone Lobichusky
blobichusky@gmail.com
Fall brings not only the
changing of the leaves on
the gorgeous East Coast,
but also updates on the
life changes of the Class of
2014’s brilliant, adventurous individuals.
Congrats to Cally Deppen
and Jake Neely ’13, who
married in January. Cally
is studying for a doctor of
physical therapy in Boston.
Alison Ryland works at
Upward Mobility in Boston
with Ted Chan ’02. She folk
dances with Pipe Dream
and Red Herring teams
and is applying to master’s
programs. Best of luck!
Madeline Charne started
at Yale to pursue an MFA
in dramaturgy and dramatic criticism, with a likely

FALL 2017

/ Swarthmore College Bulletin

69

class notes
concentration in theater
management. Also at Yale,
Danny Hirschel-Burns
finished his first year of a
political science Ph.D. He
spent six weeks in Senegal
this summer learning
French and subsequently
visiting his girlfriend in
India.
Caitlin Sequira works at
Effie Worldwide in NYC
after receiving an MA in
arts and cultural management from King’s College
London. Mihika Srivastava
is pursuing a master’s in
international affairs at
Columbia, concentrating in
human rights and gender
policy. She hopes to graduate next year—and hopes
even more to be employed
by then. Mihika interned
this summer with an NGO
in Udaipur and southern Rajasthan in India,
working on advocacy and
rights issues with tribal
women. She plans to work
in India after completing
her master’s but is also
getting tired of moving
around, so we’ll see what
happens. Harrison Tasoff
finishes NYU’s Science,
Health, and Environmental
Reporting Program in December. He has published
articles on their website,
Scienceline, and had a
piece in Hakai Magazine.
This summer he interned
at Scholastic’s math
magazines, and he is pursuing another internship.
Classmates will be pleased
to know that Harrison still
wears his cowboy hat. Cici
Zhang also interned at
Scholastic, working on the
science magazines. However, she does not wear a
cowboy hat.
Allegra Pocinki finished
her third year at the
Brookings Institution and
is transitioning from D.C.
to New Jersey to start a
sociology Ph.D. at Rutgers.
She is excited about
school but—like any good
Swattie—is even more

70

Swarthmore College Bulletin /

excited about living close
to a Wawa again!
Pat Walsh lives in D.C.
He ran a marathon last
fall and is helping Eleanor
Pratt train for a 10K. Eleanor is a research associate
at the Urban Institute,
where she’s been since
graduation. She studies
social policies affecting
low-income families,
specifically around access
to the social safety net.
Eleanor lives with Kimisha
Cassidy, who is in her
final year of a geography master’s at George
Washington. Aarthi Reddy
began her second year of
medical school at GW and
spent her summer working
on a project at Children’s
National—and relaxing!
Olivia Edwards is a clinical research coordinator at
LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, working with the medicine and
microbiology departments
on trials involving anal
and cervical dysplasia in
HIV-positive populations.
Olivia enjoys exploring the
city and organizing with
the New Orleans People’s
Assembly.
From the Sunshine State,
Luis Ramirez says he now
lives in Cape Coral, Fla.
Paul Cato finished his
second year of Ph.D.
coursework at ­UChicago’s
Committee on Social
Thought and moves this
fall into qualifying exams.
He and Janelle Viera
presented at a conference
this summer in Albuquerque, N.M. Paul has
been working with his
epilepsy-awareness group
in hopes of taking up
policy and political initiatives, given the struggles
disabled people are likely
to face under the Trump
administration.
Rebecca Ruby Ahmad-­
Robinson Anuru graduated
from the University of
Michigan–Ann Arbor in
April with a master of

FALL 2017

social work and master of
public health. She tried to
rest and enjoy Michigan
this summer while looking
to move to Atlanta by
year’s end.
Akunna Uka teaches
speech and debate and
history in Santa Monica, Calif. She joined an
outrigger canoe team and
competes in Southern
California. Akunna plans
to apply for a master’s in
educational leadership at
UCLA this fall.
Pauline Goodson has
been training to be a
bridesmaid, but she’s also
been conquering moun-

tains worldwide. She says
she is a totally unqualified
and unseasoned amateur
who enjoyed Mount Baldy,
Yosemite, and China’s
Wudang Mountains. She is
eager to climb more!
In September, Emily
Lau relocated to the U.K.,
where she began a linguistics MA program at University College London.
Pendle Marshall-­
Hallmark is doing
international human-rights
accompaniment work in
Colombia, and should be
there for another year. She
met up with Swatties in
Bogotá awhile back—any-

CAPTIONED!

one passing through has a
place to crash!
Your secretary, Brone
Lobichusky, finds herself
thrust into the hospital in
her third year of Temple
medical school. She has
rotated with internal medicine and neurology, and
is throwing sutures on her
surgery rotation. She is still
uncertain about what field
she would like to practice
but is eager to explore
specialties throughout
the year—and, hopefully,
never round on internal
medicine again. Outside of
school, Brone still dabbles
in volleyball.

2016

Stephanie Kestelman
stephaniekestelman@
gmail.com
Z.L. Zhou
zzlzhou@gmail.com

“I sent a $5 donation two years ago
and the flood started.”
—Sue Willis Ruff ’60
“After 54 years of recurring nightmares, I have
finally remembered the combination!”
—Helen Rees Lessner ’63
“How did you manage to have that many overdue
library books?”
—Walt Pinkus ’65
“So THIS is what they call snail mail.”
—Adam Fagen ’93

+ MORE CAPTIONS: bulletin.swarthmore.edu

Abroad: Yenny Cheung is a
Yelp software engineer in
Hamburg, Germany.
Olivia Mendelson spent
her summer in Tainan,
Taiwan, studying classical
Chinese. Kelsey Rico
visited her after traveling
through northern India.
Olivia returned to the
University of Michigan for
the second year of an art
history Ph.D. program and
is excited to learn Manchu
and teach as a graduate
student instructor.
East Coast: Rose Wunrow
is the executive assistant
at Vermont Legal Aid in
Burlington, Vt., doing
grant reporting, editing,
and masterful furniture
assembly. This year, she’s
hung out with her brother
and sister-in-law, Zac
Wunrow ’14 and Mallory
Pitser ’14; worked at the
Peace and Justice Center;

Share your pics—on campus and off—on
Instagram: @swarthmorebulletin, #swatbulletin

and scribbled stories. She
is applying to creative
writing MFA programs for
next fall.
Catricia Morris left
Minnesota to pursue a
master’s in prevention
science and practice at
Harvard.
Annie Tvetenstrand is in
her second year as an associate at PwC in Boston.
She lives with Claudia Lo,
who is working through
MIT’s comparative media
studies master’s program,
looking at online community moderation, and
honing her anger-farming
hit-piece skills.
A. S. Kroeber is pursuing
a classical philology Ph.D.
at Yale after teaching
­English and Latin at Trivium Preparatory Academy
in Phoenix. At the time of
writing, A. S. was moving
east, driving in a meandering fashion across the
country and falling into
sundry shenanigans with
Emma Remsberg ’17.
Also at Yale, Sarah
Babinski is a second-year
linguistics Ph.D. student.
Jacob Oet is in his
second year of a poetry
MFA at Syracuse. In May,
he was a resident intern at
Dai Bosatsu Zendo in the
Catskills, and this summer
he taught reading to ages
4 and up through the
Institute of Reading Development. His book With
Porcupine was published
last August.
Hannah Joo is the equity
and inclusion coordinator
at Dance/NYC, an arts advocacy organization. She
frequently travels to D.C.
and Philly to rehearse and
perform with Agora Dance,
and to visit Gary, world’s
best cat (... and Reba
Magier, Gary’s human).
Also in New York, Mike
Selverian scored a hat
trick in a Mofo hockey
league game in May.
Yumi Shiroma started an
English Ph.D. at Rutgers,

focusing on Marxist metanarratives of the novel and
computational methods.
She also adopted Signora
Madeline Vesey Neroni the
cat, who weighs 14 pounds
and likes Cheez-Its.
RJ Tischler is the debate
coordinator for After
School Activities Partnerships/ASAP. He finished
his year as an ASAP Philly
Fellow and plans to move
to West Philly.
Michelle Johnson
researches cognitive
neuroscience at the
Thompson-Schill Lab
at Penn. She performed
in a two-woman show,
Airswimming, in the
Philly Fringe Festival with
­Michaela Shuchman,
directed by Professor
Elizabeth Stevens.
Christen Boas Hayes
lives in D.C. with Hanyu
Chwe and Andrew Taylor.
She is a legal assistant
at Sullivan & Cromwell,
where she is gearing up for
hearings on LGBT asylum
and Special Immigrant
Juveniles Status.
Tania Uruchima is a
research assistant for a
nonpartisan organization
on children. She’s happy to
share D.C. tips with Swatties, as she loves it there!
Rachel Vogel spent the
year in D.C. working for
the Recovering Voices initiative at the Smithsonian,
where she helped coordinate the National Breath
of Life Archival Institute
for Indigenous Languages.
She is in her first year
of linguistics graduate
studies at Cornell.
Elaine Zhou has a year
left in Kentucky, during
which she will receive
an MAT while teaching
energetic seventh-graders
the art of language. Elaine
road-tripped the South
with Kelly Smemo and the
Arizona deserts with Shinae Yoon. She was excited
to travel the East Coast
this summer and RA at the

Center for Talented Youth;
she is considering moving
to Spain.
Midwest: Alden Dirks
started an agroecology
master’s at the University
of Wisconsin–Madison.
He is studying the use of
private grazing to manage
public grasslands and
symbiotic fungi that are
important for grassland
health.
Also at UW–Madison,
Ariel Rock is in his second
year of a physics Ph.D.
He’s not doing stuff that’s
super interesting—grad
school is just a lot, y’know?
Uriel Mandujano is at
Northern Trust in Chicago
designing and implementing automated infrastructure services. He enjoys
the long commute time
from the suburbs.
Last year, Aurora Martinez del Rio was a research
assistant in UChicago’s
Sign Language Linguistics
Lab and sang in three
choirs. She is continuing
at UChicago as a linguistics Ph.D. student.
Also at UChicago, Maria
Vieytez started a humanities master’s this fall. She
is “reading militantly” as
Susan Sontag would say,
often Chaucer and gender
things.
Fatema Jivanjee is a
project coordinator for a
depression-prevention lab
at the University of Illinois
Urbana–Champaign. She
practices kickboxing and
yoga and experiments with
new recipes.
West Coast and Pacific:
Sadie Rittman lives in
an off-the-grid cabin on
Kauai, surfing, hiking,
and having outdoor and
creative adventures.
Alex “Alonzo” Simms is
a software development
engineer for Amazon in
Seattle, where he also
sings with the corporate
a cappella group, Vocally
Self-Critical.
Molly Petchenik moved

from D.C. to Berkeley,
Calif., to work at the Prison
Law Office. She spent a
week over the summer
in Chicago, where she
caught up with Stephanie
Kestelman.
After graduation, Veda
Khadka moved west to
Menlo Park, Calif., where
she is a research assistant
in David Relman’s microbiology lab at Stanford and
is learning to code, avoiding kale and freeways, and
biking everywhere.
Also at Stanford, Lewis
Esposito began a linguistics Ph.D.
Shinae Yoon avoids
the Californian sun by
spending her time indoors
working in a Caltech lab.
Aneesa Andrabi is a

research analyst at
HR&A Advisors, an urban
development consulting
company in LA. She enjoys
the beach and California’s
mountains, and hates
traffic. She would love to
meet nearby Swatties!
Jeremy Varon is pursuing
a J.D. at UCLA.
After a year as a research
assistant at Princeton, Z.L.
Zhou moved to sunny LA to
pursue a linguistics Ph.D.
at UCLA. Canaan Breiss,
who moved to LA last year,
and Maddy Booth ’15, fresh
off a Gates Cambridge
Scholarship, are also joining the linguistics department in pursuit of a Ph.D.
They join Eleanor Glewwe
’12, who was already there
… same pursuit.

STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT
AND CIRCULATION
Title: Swarthmore College
Bulletin
Publication Number:
0530-620
Date of Filing: 9/6/17
No. of Issues Annually: 4
Mailing Address of Known
Office of Publications and
Headquarters Office:
500 College Ave.,
Swarthmore, Delaware
County, PA 19081-1397
Publisher:
Swarthmore College
Editor: Jonathan Riggs
Average No. of Copies of
Each Issue Published
During Preceding 12
Months:
A. Total No. Copies 25,893
B. Paid and/or Requested
Circulation
1. Sales through Dealers
and Carriers, Street Vendors and Counter Sales

None
2. Mail Subscription

22,826
C. Total Paid and/or
Requested Circulation

22,826
D. Free Distribution
Outside the Mail, Carrier
or Other Means, Samples,

Complimentary and other
Free Copies
1,589
E. Total Distribution

24,415
F. Copies Not Distributed

1,539
G. Total
25,954
H. Percent Paid
93%
Average No. of Copies of
Single Issue Published
Nearest to Filing Date:
A. Total No. Copies 25,860
B. Paid and/or Requested
Circulation
1. Sales through Dealers
and Carriers, Street Vendors and Counter Sales

None
2. Mail Subscription

22,807
C. Total Paid and/or
Requested Circulation

22,807
D. Free Distribution
Outside the Mail, Carrier
or Other Means, Samples,
Complimentary and other
Free Copies
1,665
E. Total Distribution

24,472
F. Copies Not Distributed

1,615
G. Total
26,087
H. Percent Paid
93%

FALL 2017

/ Swarthmore College Bulletin

71

spoken word

A PARTNER IN
THE PROCESS
by Kate Campbell

IN ADDITION to a fierce commitment
to student access and affordability,
Varo Duffins has two trademarks: a
warm smile and a striking collection
of bow ties. Swarthmore’s director of
financial aid since 2015, he believes in
collaboration across the board.
“Students and parents presume that
we are their partners,” he says. “We
need to meet that expectation and
mirror that perspective.”

72

Swarthmore College Bulletin /

FALL 2017

What challenges will we face?
Adapting the financial aid process to
the increasingly changing pool of prospective students and making sure that
access and affordability are sustained
and remain equitable for students at all
levels of financial need. Swarthmore’s
ability to sustain loan-free financial
aid awarding will be key. It not only
supports affordability among current
students, it enables our new graduates
to gain a financial advantage (e.g. not
having high student loan repayments)
when an added debt burden might alter
the timing of critical life choices.
What helps you succeed at work?
My prior roles in financial aid and
admissions have allowed me to understand how students and parents view
getting in, fitting in, and paying for
college. These are key enrollment challenges of elite liberal arts colleges. At
Swarthmore, our office works very hard
to assist students with issues that cannot always be anticipated, to enhance
our communication with students and
parents, and to promote greater ease in
completing the application process.

What do you do outside work?
I spend time with my family: my wife,
Sharon; our cat, Luke; our dog, Chewie.
I enjoy movies, ’80s music, fixing
(sometimes breaking) things around
the house and garage, reading, and
learning to play the guitar. Since 2005,
I have also been a board member of
Kids’ Chance of Pennsylvania, working
alongside workers’ compensation
professionals to raise and award funds
to college-bound children of those who
have been seriously injured or killed in
a work-related accident. I am humbled
by the difficult circumstances these students and their families have faced, and
by their courage in overcoming them.
Why did you major in biology?
I liked the way science courses made
me think. Building, developing, and perfecting detail-specific processes were
skills I would’ve needed as a biologist
but that I also need in financial aid.
What inspires you?
Thoughtful on- and off-campus discussions surrounding increasing economic diversity and affordability, and
working with a terrific experienced
team to help students turn their dream
to attend Swarthmore into a reality.

LAURENCE KESTERSON

LAURENCE KESTERSON

Who inspired your leadership?
My Little League baseball coach and
teacher, Terry Eberly. He volunteered
to coach 12-year-old boys, but his real
intent was to develop us into young
men. He attributed our every success
and error to mental rather than physical
effort and insisted on a code of conduct
based on respect for our teammates and
for ourselves. We went undefeated two
summers in a row. He was brilliant, and
his example has remained with me.

in this issue

34

SYNCH AND SWIM

All Together Now

Honoring a golden era of
Swarthmore synchronized
swimming.
by Jonathan Riggs

MOMENT IN TIME
At Orientation, students like
Vivian Torres ’21 experience the
magic of Swarthmore ... and
make their own.

FALL 2017
Periodical Postage
PAID
Philadelphia, PA
and Additional
Mailing Offices

BEGIN AGAIN

p4

TURTLE POWER

p17

500 College Ave.
Swarthmore, PA 19081–1306
www.swarthmore.edu

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

TREASURES OF THE COLLEGE ARRRRCHIVES

FALL 2017
LAURENCE KESTERSON

community

Plunder your closets for Swarthmore memorabilia—we’re seeking donations!
archives@swarthmore.edu
swarthmore.edu/archives

PRISON REFORM

p38