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FALL 2021
Non Profit Org
U.S. Postage
PAID
Permit #129
19464
TREE TOPS
p36
FOOD MATTERS
p46
SEED STRATEGY
p48
500 College Ave.
Swarthmore, PA 19081–1306
www.swarthmore.edu
CLIMATE OF CHANGE
THE BULLETIN’S FALL ISSUE is dedicated to
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN
stories of Swarthmoreans making strides in
helping to sustain the planet. We are hopeful,
hard at work, and energized for change.
LAURENCE KESTERSON
Give back like Mwangangi by mentoring
current students. Learn more at
swarthmore.edu/alumni.
navigating new waters together
Whales and other species critical to ocean
health. Story, p.24.
WHALE ILLUSTRATION © ELENNADZEN–STOCK.ADOBE.COM
FALL 2020
1
“Last year was my first time as a teaching
assistant for the Math Department. This role,
however trivial it may look on the outside,
has actually been one of the most rewarding
experiences I have ever had. Guiding
students through math homework problems
and seeing some of them develop an interest
in math has been an extremely fascinating
process. Surprisingly, it has not just been a
one-sided relationship; I have learned much
more about the problem-solving process
through guiding others to solve their
problems.”
— Mwangangi Kalii ’23
in this issue
36
Pick a topic and dive in:
The Color of Trees
By looking at agricultural
problems in new ways,
John Leary ’00 is building
biodiversity — and
community, too.
LANDFILLS
The Post-Landfill Action Network is
a student-led zero-waste movement
that equips students with the
necessary skills and resources to
implement solutions to waste in their
campus communities.
by Tara Smith
+ WASTE NOT: postlandfill.org
CORAL REEFS
The Coral Reef Alliance partners
with local communities and takes a
multipronged approach to restoring
and protecting coral reefs.
+ RESTORE: coral.org
OCEANS
Oceana works to make our oceans
more biodiverse and abundant
by winning policy victories in the
countries that govern much of the
world’s marine life.
+ GO DEEP: oceana.org
AGRICULTURE
Trees for the Future works with
thousands of farmers across
sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on the
implementation of “Forest Garden”
programs in Cameroon, Kenya,
Senegal, Uganda, and Tanzania.
+ PLANT THE FUTURE: trees.org
CLIMATE POLICY
LAURENCE KESTERSON
Leary looks to a future when sustainable
agriculture practices are the norm. “We need
to be able to grow food on this planet for a
long time to come,” says Leary, at Kimberton
CSA, a Pennsylvania community-supported
agriculture farm, this summer. Today, Trees
for the Future has 68 employees in Senegal and
more than 200 across Africa.
Climate Analytics combines science
and policy analysis to support
countries — especially those most
vulnerable — in the fight against
human-induced climate change.
+ ANALYZE: climateanalytics.org
20
THIS SIDE UP
Just as funny upside down, a treasured Monty Python
poster makes the cut for Move-In Day on Aug. 23.
Creating a New
Climate
Moving past pessimism
and paralysis, a studentled workshop series
encourages participants
to critically engage with
the climate crisis.
by Roy Greim ’14
24
In Deep
At the ocean’s edge and
into its deepest waters,
Swarthmoreans are
invested in the mechanisms
of marine life, working
out how animals solve the
problems of their worlds
and exploring how they
function in their
environment — however
it changes.
by Kate Campbell
42
The Company
of Trees
In appreciation of
our ever-changing,
deeply rooted, and highly
communicative campus
friends.
LAURENCE KESTERSON
SWARTHMORE’S
STEWARDS
ARE AT WORK IN THE
WORLD AND
GAINING GROUND
GROWING TOGETHER
FEATURES
46
2
9
FEATURES
DIALOGUE
COMMON GOOD
The Shadow
of Hunger
Editor’s Column
Swarthmore Stories
personal reflection by
Qian Julie Wang ’09
48
Letters
Liberal Arts Lives
Ciara Williams ’16
Ken Meter ’71
Sarah Bedolfe ’11
Community Voices
Patrick Houston ’17
Studentwise
Maxwell Finkelstein ’22
Books
53
CLASS NOTES
Global Thinking
Helen Fox ’94
From the Ground Up
Buy local produce. Eat less
meat. Reduce your carbon
footprint. From seed power
to the inner life of cows,
Swarthmoreans discuss
some of the environmental
work to be done.
Alumni News
and Events
Their Light Lives On
Looking Back
by Elizabeth Slocum
84
SPOKEN WORD
ON THE COVER
A keystone species, the
air-breathing, song-singing
humpback whale eyes us up.
LAURENCE KESTERSON
Lynne Steuerle Schofield ’99
HONORING A LEGACY: James Hormel
’55, H’09. Tribute, p.79
FALL 2021
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
1
dialogue
ON OUR RADAR
EDITOR’S COLUMN
Define What
Is Possible
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN
Editor
Kate Campbell
Staff Writer
Roy Greim ’14
Class Notes Editor
Heidi Hormel
Designer
Phillip Stern ’84
Photographer
Laurence Kesterson
Administrative Coordinator
Lauren McAloon
Editor Emerita
Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49
swarthmore.edu/bulletin
Email: bulletin@swarthmore.edu
Telephone: 610-328-8533
We welcome letters on articles 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. Read the full letters policy at
swarthmore.edu/bulletin.
Send address changes to
records@swarthmore.edu
The Swarthmore College Bulletin (ISSN
0888-2126), of which this is volume
CXIX, number I, is published in October,
January, and May by Swarthmore
College, 500 College Ave., Swarthmore,
PA 19081-1390. Periodicals postage
paid at Philadelphia, PA, and additional
mailing offices. Permit No. 0530-620.
Postmaster: Send address changes
to Alumni Records, 500 College Ave.,
Swarthmore, PA 19081-1390.
Printed with agri-based inks.
Please recycle after reading.
pr inted w
i
th
FALL 2021
I was disappointed by Professor Mark Kuperberg’s
interview regarding the economics of the pandemic (“Ripple
Effect,” Spring 2021). He wrote that “this whole thing was
really a medical problem, not an economics problem.”
Like most natural disasters, the human suffering is caused
by the human economy. It is not random that the first two
COVID-19 hot spots were a nursing home in Washington
and a meat-packing plant in South Dakota. These are two
industries with the lowest-paid and least-benefited workers.
If the choice is working while symptomatic versus missing
a paycheck, going to work is required. Losing pay means
losing food, missing rent, and possibly becoming homeless.
The same dynamics made COVID hit communities of color
much harder than white communities.
This is the ugly face of capitalism.
In a rational economy, a global health emergency
means all hands on deck for health workers. Yet, due to
the exigencies of profit, hospitals, having too few beds,
were unprepared for the crisis and clinics actually laid off
workers.
When economists shirk their responsibility, they pave the
way for future suffering in the next natural disaster.
— ROBBIE LIBEN ’83, Missoula, Mont.
WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE
I am wondering if the implementation of
this plan (“Roadmap to Zero Carbon,” Spring
2021) means that Swarthmore will give up its
investments in fossil fuel companies. … On a
related subject, is any consideration being given
to reducing water use? I was at a conference
in Ireland, at a boarding school, where in the
shower one would press a button, and out would
come a measured amount of water, at exactly
the right temperature. The button could be
pressed again, I don’t know how many times,
but the arrangement was a valuable reminder
that water is not an unlimited resource.
— JUDITH LEEDS INSKEEP ’60, Gwynedd, Pa.
©2021 Swarthmore College.
Printed in USA.
e
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
I was delighted to find two items in the recent (Spring 2021)
Bulletin.
One was the feature on the Pterodactyl Hunt. Good to
hear this zany tradition is alive and well. The main reason I
decided to go to Swarthmore in 1987 was because I saw a
poster advertising the Pterodactyl Hunt on a campus visit. I
figured any college that hosted such a bizarre activity must
be an interesting place to be.
The Hunt’s tradition may have spread. I introduced it to a
summer camp up in Maine one year. Who knows how many
Pterodactyls are flying around the world now?
Besides having yearly fun with the Hunt, once I arrived
at Swarthmore, I was extremely thankful for the Student
Activities Fund. Not many schools had this fee wrapped
into tuition. By making the Student Activities Fund part of
tuition, it opened up all campus concerts, movies, and other
events to everyone for free. I’m extremely pleased to see
the Textbook Affordability Program fund following the same
tradition for textbooks and college supplies. Getting into
Swarthmore is one thing. Being able to live, interact, and
thrive on campus without social and financial barriers is
absolutely essential. Bravo for instating TAP!
— HEATHER RIGNEY SHUMAKER ’91, Traverse City, Mich.
Sarah (’07), my wife, and I really enjoyed the texture on
the front cover (Spring 2021). The digital editions are
convenient, but that was an especially nice touch!
— DILLON McGREW ’07, University Park, Md.
Send letters and story ideas to
bulletin@swarthmore.edu
nd
2
COVID AND CAPITAL
TEXTURED TREAT
ly
H-UV
in
DANIELA FERA
Editor
Senior Editor
Ryan Dougherty
ks
RICHARD COLLINS
KATE
CAMPBELL
Managing Editor
Elizabeth Slocum
e c o-fri
WE ARE IN DEEP WATER
and looking for answers. Yet
in these most extraordinary
days, Swarthmore alumni,
faculty, and students
continue in a fierce pursuit
of solving problems and, just
as importantly, a creative
approach about what
questions to ask.
In this Bulletin issue,
as the campus welcomes
all students back after a
prolonged absence due to
Doliolids, a type of sea squirt that’s rarely studied,
COVID-19, Swatties share
go through a very complex life history in which they
change body plans four times. A critical part of our own
ways they approach the
evolutionary story, we urgently need to know more
work and care of planet
about them as their environment is under pressure.
Earth.
A tremendous task.
Through the collective crises of climate change, the continuing pandemic,
humanitarian relief needs, global terrorism, and a blistering, hyperpoliticized
culture war in the United States, Swarthmoreans continue to work through
the ringing noise and define what is possible for an enlightened world.
Two takeaways: Start small and listen closely. John Leary ’00 literally
begins with seeds in his quest to expand the presence of trees, collaborating
with communities in sub-Saharan Africa to cultivate forest gardens. “We need
a great-big reset in our food systems,” Leary says.
Bradley Davidson ’90 works at the cellular level,
with his research on sea squirts and the possibility
by
of discovering how the evolutionary secrets these
marine organisms hold might someday help to
cure diseases, such as cancer. “Diversity is much
richer and more fragile than we realize, and we
have a mission to document this diversity before
it is lost,” says Davidson, associate professor and
chair of biology at Swarthmore. As a guide in the
fight against environmental threats, Sarah Jaquette Ray ’98 is providing an
existential toolkit for a generation of young people carrying the metaphorical
weight of the world on their shoulders. Leading the way is Patrick Houston ’17,
who makes an impassioned call for climate action in New York, urging others
to follow and “blaze new paths to transformative solutions.”
We share their stories and many more with the aim that they leave you as
inspired — and hopeful — as they have us.
Together we can reach the surface.
Pterodactyl Sighting
ALL TOGETHER NOW:
Summer research was in full
swing for students working in the
lab with Daniela Fera, assistant
professor of biochemistry.
FALL 2021
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
3
“We ought to put down our hyperanalytical thinking caps and hit the streets with a
cardboard sign, armed with the awareness that radical action is increasingly imperative
for our collective survival,” says Patrick Houston ’17.
COMMUNITY VOICES
ALL HANDS ON DECK
Radical climate action is imperative for our
collective survival
by Patrick Houston ’17
IN 2010, a Queens, N.Y., resident paid
a mortgage on her house. Nearing
retirement, her savings were meager.
Her modest home would be the
greatest asset she’d pass on to her
then-14-year-old son. But in 2012,
Hurricane Sandy destroyed it. The
NYC Build it Back program stepped
in and eventually constructed a new
house on the same plot of land.
Unfortunately, by the time her son is
her age, it’s possible the neighborhood
could be underwater.
Sandy was just one in a barrage
of recent record-breaking disasters
related to climate change. Each of the
past four decades has been hotter than
the one that preceded it, and the seven
hottest years in recorded history
4
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
occurred within 2014–2020.
The climate emergency is merciless
and rapidly advancing. It requires all
hands to fight against the systems and
institutions exacerbating it, and to
work for the measures to mitigate it.
As the climate and inequality
campaigns associate at New York
Communities for Change (NYCC), I
play a role in engaging communities
in this advocacy and direct action to
advance solutions.
When I graduated from Swarthmore,
I had a respect for the activism that
enabled the paradigmatic shifts
of the civil rights era, but I didn’t
fully appreciate its necessity today.
Sure, grassroots activism was cool, I
reasoned, but it was professionals in
government agencies, consulting firms,
and think tanks who made the big
decisions.
However, for all of the valuable
climate-action work carried out by
institutions, they’re fundamentally
incapable of ushering in the scale,
speed, and scope of change that the
climate-science clock requires. Until,
that is, the ground beneath them shifts.
Since Sandy, as that Queens
homeowner has fought to fend off preforeclosure and to secure additional
income, she’s somehow also made
time to fight alongside NYCC to
advance climate action. Through
rallies, lobby meetings, marches,
calls to representatives, and electoral
primaries, she’s had an outsized
impact on climate action in New York.
Singularly, her relatively simple
steps might appear futile. But as part
of strategic, collective actions, this
67-year-old, high school-educated,
Black child-care provider is helping
move mountains, both ideological and
tangible. In the past five years, she has
played an integral role in our victories,
including rejection of permits for a
proposed gas pipeline, city and state
pension-funds divestment from fossil
fuels, and passage of the landmark
NYC law to cut pollution from the
city’s biggest source of emissions,
buildings.
All grassroots climate campaigns
aren’t created equal. But the
analytical skills imbued in our
College educations should help guide
most Swarthmoreans into smart,
strategic, coherent campaigns. Join an
organization in your locale to support
action at scale. This often requires
striking fear in the hearts and minds
of culpable decision-makers: those
whose allegiance to quarterly earnings
or fossil fuel contributions inhibit
action on the most consequential
challenge humanity has ever faced.
The emergency grows more dire,
and we must not leave it to the most
marginalized and vulnerable to blaze
the path to transformative solutions.
STUDENTWISE:
WHEN I COULDN’T
GO HOME
i20 club helped alleviate
the isolation brought about
by the pandemic
by Maxwell Finkelstein ’22
T
HROUGHOUT my
three years as a Swattie,
and especially in light
of the global pandemic,
no community
has impacted my
journey more than i20, Swarthmore’s
international student club.
I grew up in Singapore, and my first
experience at Swarthmore was at
International Student Orientation,
way back in 2018. Entering that warm,
welcoming, understanding environment
created by other international Swatties
set the perfect first impression of
“I tried my best to emulate the warmth I felt when I was welcomed as a freshman,”
Swarthmore. It made me feel like I
says Maxwell Finkelstein ’22.
belonged, that this was somewhere I
wanted to be for the next four years.
I made fast friends and stayed involved with the i20
not so loud that it impeded my daily activities, but it was
community throughout freshman year.
always there, a weight at the back of my mind. If my little
The following summer, I volunteered to be an orientation
sister had a rough day at school, I missed home more — I
leader and was privileged to welcome the next incoming
wanted to be there to support her, along with my parents.
class of international Swatties. At the end of sophomore
There was no way for i20 to fix that sense of isolation, but
year, I was elected co-president of i20, just a few months
we tried to alleviate it as much as possible. I worked with a
after the COVID-19 lockdown began in the U.S.
dedicated team of orientation leaders to organize a remote
International students faced unique challenges
International Orientation program for the Class of 2024,
throughout the pandemic. Many of us were unable to travel
and tried my best to emulate the warmth I felt when I was
to campus and instead studied remotely from our home
welcomed as a freshman. We held online events to bring
countries, often at the expense of our sleep schedule. Others,
together the i20 community worldwide, and we welcomed
like me, have remained on campus, unable to return home
the i20 freshmen who were able to come to campus with ice
and see family.
pops, tours, and weekly dinners.
It’s rare that I actively miss my family during the semester
While our i20 community has certainly suffered greatly
— I call them at least once a week, and I have a great group
due to COVID-19, it has also grown closer. Even though
of friends who make Swarthmore a home. But during the
I remain eager to return to Singapore when I can, i20
pandemic, especially after the first year, it became different.
has provided a second home for me, and for many other
Missing my family was a silent feeling of incompleteness,
Swatties.
LAURENCE KESTERSON
ERIK McGREGOR
dialogue
FALL 2021
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
5
dialogue
Submit your publication for consideration: books@swarthmore.edu
HOT TYPE: New releases by Swarthmoreans
F. Harlan Flint ’52
From There to Eternity: Alzheimer’s
and Beyond
Sunstone Press
This is the story of
the end-of-life
journeys of two
dissimilar but
treasured people:
Flint’s wife, Chris,
and his friend
Baudelio, the last
of a long line of
pioneers who
found a home in the high country of
northern New Mexico. The story has
its final act for Chris and Baudelio at
close to the same time but in far
different ways: hers from the anguish
of Alzheimer’s, his from a slow decline
after a lifetime of hard work.
Jeremy Mack ’59
Phantoms of the Hotel Meurice:
A Guide to the Holocaust in Paris
Tandem Lane Editions
Though World War
II occurred more
than 70 years ago,
mourning for the
loss of national
self-esteem in
France is hardly
essayed. Silence on
the defeat, the
collaboration, and
the knowing participation of the
French government in the
extermination of 73,000 Jews living in
the country is deafening in Paris. Mack
examines this phenomenon and offers
some ideas as to its origin and
continuation.
Steven Riskind ’65
Art | Commerce: Four Artisan
Businesses Grow in an Old New Jersey
Industrial City
Steve Riskind Photography
Over a period of eight years, Riskind
photographed four small businesses
in or near Paterson, N.J.: a specialty
textile firm, a jewelry manufacturer, a
pipe organ builder, and a stained glass
studio. Accompanied by introductory
essays based on interviews with the
owners, Riskind’s images capture the
intensity of skilled artisans engaging
with the materials they use, caught in
the process of creation.
Margery Post Abbott ’67 and Carl Abbott ’66
Quakerism: The Basics
Routledge
In this primer, the Abbotts offer an
accessible and engaging introduction
to the history and diverse ideas
associated with the Religious Society
of Friends. With helpful features
including suggested readings,
timelines, a glossary, and a guide to
Quakers in fiction, the book is an
ideal starting point for students and
scholars new to Quakerism, as well as
those interested in deepening their
understanding.
Eleanor Morse ’68
Margreete’s Harbor
St. Martin’s Press
Margreete’s Harbor is the story of 10
years in the history of a family, a tale
of small moments, intimate betrayals,
arrivals, and disappearances that
coincide with America during the late
1950s through the turbulent 1960s.
Attuned to the seasons of nature, the
internal dynamics of a family, and a
nation torn by its contradictory ideals,
this literary novel reveals the largest
meanings in the smallest and most
secret moments of life.
Jeffrey Haydu ’75
Upsetting Food: Three Eras of Food
Protest in the United States
Temple University Press
Battle lines have
long been drawn
over how food is
produced, what
food is made
available and to
whom, and how
best to protect
consumers from
risky or unhealthy
food. In Upsetting Food, Haydu
resurrects the history of food reform
and protest, showing how activists
defined food problems, articulated
solutions, and mobilized for change,
while considering how each movement
reflected the politics, inequalities, and
gender relations of its time.
Peter Cohan ’79
Goliath Strikes Back
Apress
Capturing the
e-commerce edge
in customer
growth and
retention has been
a decades-long
battle between
online startups
and traditional
retailers. The two
face different sets of challenges that
are constantly evolving in our digital
world. By looking at how they are
facing off, Goliath Strikes Back aims to
help executives gauge the landscape to
create an effective strategy in the
modern e-commerce realm.
Diane Wilder ’83
Leap Thirty
June Road Press
Across 30 poems in
this visceral debut
collection, Wilder
recasts midlife as a
second coming of
age: a time of new
vulnerabilities and
strengths, of
breakdown and
renewal, of
constraint and release. In the process,
she lands on sources of affirmation —
in being a parent, in becoming
comfortable with one’s body, in letting
go, in claiming new kinds of agency.
Pamela Haag ’88
Revise: The Scholar-Writer’s Essential
Guide to Tweaking, Editing, and
Perfecting Your Manuscript
Yale University Press
Writing and
revision are two
different skills.
Many scholarwriters have
learned something
about how to write,
but not all of them
know how to revise
their own writing,
spot editorial issues, and transform a
draft from passable to great. Drawing
on before-and-after examples from
more than a decade as a developmental
editor of scholarly works, Haag tackles
the most common challenges of
scholarly writing, offering practical,
user-friendly advice written with
warmth, humor, sympathy, and flair.
Jenna Tiitsman Supp-Montgomerie ’99
When the Medium Was the Mission:
The Atlantic Telegraph and the
Religious Origins of Network Culture
NYU Press
While the advent of a telegraph cable
crossing the Atlantic Ocean was
viewed much the way the internet is
today, religious framing dominated
the interpretation of the technology’s
possibilities. With lively historical
sources and an accessible engagement
with critical theory, When the Medium
Was the Mission tells the story of
how connection was made into the
fundamental promise of networks,
illuminating the power of public
Protestantism in the first network
imaginaries.
Erica Turner ’99
Suddenly Diverse: How School Districts
Manage Race and Inequality
University of Chicago Press
This ethnographic account focuses on
two school districts in the Midwest
as they respond to rapidly changing
demographics at their schools. While
suggesting some ways forward,
Suddenly Diverse shows that, without
changes to managerial policies and
practices and larger transformations
to the whole system, even school
leaders’ best efforts will continue to
undermine the promise of educational
equity and the realization of more
robust public schools.
Rhiannon Graybill ’06, ed.
“Who Knows What We’d Make of It,
If We Ever Got Our Hands on It?”
The Bible and Margaret Atwood
Gorgias Press
In the nightstands
of hotel rooms,
kept under lock
and key, in the
poetry of a
pre-apocalyptic
environmental
cult, and quoted by
children, atheists,
and murderers
alike — the Bible is omnipresent in the
work of Margaret Atwood. This
volume, co-edited by Graybill and
Peter Sabo, assembles cutting-edge
literary and critical readings of
Atwood and the Bible, employing a
variety of theoretical approaches to
explore both the ancient and modern
corpus of texts in dialogue with each
other.
Krys Malcolm Belc ’09
The Natural Mother of the Child: A
Memoir of Nonbinary Parenthood
Counterpoint
For Belc, a
nonbinary,
transmasculine
parent, giving birth
to his son Samson
clarified his gender
identity. And yet,
when his partner,
Anna ’07, adopted
Samson, the legal
documents listed Belc as “the natural
mother of the child.” In this memoir,
Belc moves past societal expectations
to take control of his own narrative,
with prose that delights in the intimate
dailiness of family life and explores
how much we can ever really know
when we enter into parenting.
Molly Fennig ’20
Starvation
Immortal Works
Wes McCoy is not
the favorite child.
He does not have a
wrestling
scholarship to
Stanford, nor does
he live up to the
family legacy as an
athlete, unlike his
brother, Jason. But
when Jason dies in a car accident, Wes
turns to food for a control over his life
he didn’t have before. Wes must
confront his eating disorder as he
learns more about himself and the
mystery surrounding Jason’s accident,
before he loses his life and those
closest to him.
The Bulletin receives numerous submissions of new publications from the talented Swarthmore community and can feature only a fraction of those
submissions here. Please note that work represented in Hot Type does not necessarily reflect the views of the College.
6
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
FALL 2021
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
7
common good
dialogue
SHARING SUCCESS AND STORIES OF SWARTHMORE
COURTESY OF HELEN FOX ’94
BELOW THE
SURFACE
An in-depth understanding
of ocean life
by Sherry L. Howard
HELEN FOX ’94 was supposed to
be on a research boat on the surface
off the coast of Key Largo, Fla. But
instead, she found herself with five
other people in a capsule a tad larger
than a school bus anchored to the sea
floor.
In 2001, her adviser from the
University of California, Berkeley,
was to be the one near the bottom of
the sea studying the habitat of the
stomatopod, or mantis shrimp. But
he couldn’t get medical clearance for
the saturation dive. Although Fox’s
interest was in coral
reef conservation, she
couldn’t say no to the
amazing opportunity.
Fox felt conflicted
about taking his spot, but grateful.
“I would never have gotten to go
otherwise,” she says. Today, Fox is the
conservation science director at the
Coral Reef Alliance, headquartered in
Oakland, Calif. For nearly 20 years, she
has worked to ensure that coral reef
conservation programs are based on
scientific evidence and has designed
research projects to understand the
social and ecological impact of marineprotected areas. “Coral reefs are so
beautiful — that’s the biodiversity,”
says Fox. “The corals themselves form
Helen Fox ’94 majored in biology and learned about the natural and
human threats to coral reefs. “The corals themselves form the ecological,
structural, and biological foundation for the whole ecosystem,” she says.
the ecological and structural and
biological foundation for the whole
rest of this ecosystem. There’s fish
swimming in and among them. There’s
all kinds of invertebrates, little creepy
crawlies hiding in the holes.”
Global warming is a real threat to
coral reefs, she says, because it has led
to bleaching. Corals secrete calcium
carbonate, creating a limestone-like
skeleton whose surface is actually the
live animal. Algae live
inside the corals in a
symbiotic relationship
and give them their
color. When the water
heats up, the algae move out, leaving
the corals white and stressed but still
alive. If the algae don’t return, the
corals eventually die.
“A lot of the Great Barrier Reef has
died,” Fox says, “because of some of
that major bleaching.” The Coral Reef
Alliance developed a theoretical model
to show the impact of warming on the
reefs 300 years in the future and how
to save them today.
Fox first became enamored with
coral reefs in Australia the year after
her high school graduation. Her
HELEN FOX ’94
Marine Biologist
“Climate change is a very big
threat and very pervasive.”
8
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
family lived near the University of
Queensland, and her mother suggested
that she take a course on coral reefs.
Fox did and learned “what an amazing
ecosystem they are.” Her appreciation
was solidified when she returned
as a Fulbright Scholar soon after
graduating from Swarthmore.
Fox’s work as a coral reef
conservationist no longer calls for
saturation diving — so named because
the body gets saturated with nitrogen
at that depth and decompression is
needed. But she fondly remembers
that formative experience aboard the
research vessel Aquarius decades
ago. On that expedition, Fox spent
about nine days 45 feet below the
surface. She and a team member
donned double scuba tanks for
daily dives guided by a line attached
to the capsule. They mapped the
stomatopods’ hangouts with plastic
paper and pencil tied to a string.
Though the dive was a side project for
Fox, who was doing her Ph.D. work
on coral reefs damaged by dynamite
fishing off Indonesia, its importance
still resonates today.
“In many developing countries’
remote coastal communities and
villages, coral reefs provide the sources
of food and income and shoreline
protection,” she says. “They’re a very
important ecosystem for people.”
ON
THE
WEB
POINT OF PRIDE
Tiffany Thompson,
associate director of
gender and sexuality
initiatives, discusses
the history of LGBTQ+
activism at Swarthmore.
+ ADVOCATE
bit.ly/SwatLGBTQ
GOING GREEN
Ten students will tackle
sustainability challenges
through the President’s
Sustainability Research
Fellowship.
+ IMPLEMENT
bit.ly/SwatPSRF
IN FULL BLOOM
A rare “corpse flower”
bloomed on campus
this spring, giving off
its characteristically
rancid smell.
+ SEE IT
bit.ly/SwatFlower
GLOBALLY MINDED
Ryan Arazi ’21 and
Madison Snyder ’21 were
awarded Fulbright grants
to continue their studies
abroad.
+ TAKE OFF
bit.ly/FulbrightSwat
LAURENCE KESTERSON
GLOBAL THINKING
POWER LIFT: A rite of passage was renewed as students returned to campus for Move-In Day and Orientation in
August.
WELCOME BACK!
Students
Return to
Campus
by Ryan Dougherty
AT LAST: The College community celebrated a
return to (mostly) normal late this summer, beginning
with International Student Orientation. With the
classrooms and athletic fields and performing arts
spaces reopening, excitement was high. Those who
had been away for upward of 18 months had much
to take in, from the progress on the Dining and
Community Commons project to the restoration of
Kyle House to an increasingly electric Singer Hall.
While vigilance for COVID-19 remained high, the
College regained its rhythm.
FALL 2021
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
9
common good
COUNTING SLEEP:
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN
YOU MIX A FINANCIAL
ENTREPRENEUR AND
AN INSOMNIAC?
10
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
ENERGY MOVEMENT
Following the announcement of the College’s
ambitious energy plan this spring, Rosamund
Stone Zander ’64 made a $5 million gift to help
fund the geo-exchange plant that will be housed
in the basement of the forthcoming Dining and
Community Commons. In addition to the gift,
Zander will also support a challenge: If the College
community raises $1.5 million for the geo-exchange
plant by June 30, 2022, she will match the sum
to fully fund the $8 million project. “What we
have done to our environment since the Industrial
Revolution stands out as the most critical issue
of our time,” says Zander, a family therapist and
executive coach who also serves on the board of
Climate Reality, a nonprofit group headed by former
Vice President Al Gore. “I am thrilled to support
this amazing project, having experienced that
Swarthmore’s commitment to reducing carbon in
the air, and sustainability overall, runs very deep
indeed.” Learn more: bit.ly/GeoExchangeDCC
We Are Humans
HAYDIL HENRIQUEZ ’14, an arts educator
and cultural worker from the Bronx, has been
named the first-ever Bronx Poet Laureate.
During her two-year term, Henriquez will
promote the inclusion of and passion for poetry
across the NYC borough, looking to inspire a
new generation of writers and poets, and to
educate Bronx residents about the history of
poetry. “It’s something so basic, but we often
forget we’re humans,” Henriquez told the
Bulletin in 2017. “In order for us to fill voids
within us, we need to speak, we need to feel
community, we need to share our stories.”
Henriquez is the NYC Scholastic Art & Writing
Awards manager at the Alliance for Young
Artists & Writers.
“Regular, powerful citizens can be
involved in the process and have an impact,”
said Eric Holder, the 82nd U.S. attorney
general.
Democracy and
Civil Rights
We should never
underestimate
the power we have
by Kate Campbell
E
RIC HOLDER, the
82nd U.S. attorney
general, spoke to
more than 500
College community
members as part
of the inaugural event in a virtual
series sponsored by the President’s
Fund for Racial Justice and the Social
Responsibility Committee of the
Board of Managers.
Holder, the first African American
in that role (he served from February
2009 to April 2015), discussed a wide
range of topics, including the state of
American democracy, civil rights, and
voting rights.
“Eric Holder was a natural choice to
kick off this series on the challenges
of citizenship in a multiracial
democracy,” said James Snipes ’75,
chair of the Social Responsibility
Committee of the Board of Managers.
“Throughout his career, as a lawyer,
judge, and attorney general, he has
shown an extraordinary commitment
to civil rights, and voting rights in
particular. He set the bar high for the
programs that will follow.”
The remote event featured a
conversation with Holder and
Professor of History Allison Dorsey,
with questions moderated by Tristan
Alston ’22, Sonia Linares ’22, and
Daniel Torres Balauro ’23, and an
introduction from President Valerie
Smith.
Holder acknowledged the
psychological toll that the events
of 2020 and the historic realities of
race in America have taken on Black
citizens. Despite the past year’s events
relating to police abuses, Holder said
he remains optimistic that the energy
behind the growing social-justice
movements will continue to inspire
change for the better.
Holder urged audience members
to increase their engagement in their
communities and in government
organizations. “Regular, powerful
citizens can be involved in the process
and have an impact,” said Holder. “We
should never underestimate the power
we have and young people especially. …
The largest voting bloc in this country
is young people.”
Gathering together as citizens to
demand change and participating in
the process is crucial, he said.
“There’s no question that 2020
was a moment,” Holder said. “But the
question really is going to be, does the
moment lead to a movement.”
+ MORE: bit.ly/HolderSwat
COURTESY OF THE HAITI CLINIC
The College community has been challenged to raise
$1.5 million for the Dining and Community Commons.
COURTESY OF ERIC HOLDER
“Jason, stop. Go to sleep!”
It was 4 a.m. Once again, Jason Jin ’20 was clacking away on his
keyboard, disturbing his roommate’s sleep. “Jason had a lot of sleep
issues,” says Josh Collin ’20. “And I got a front-row seat.”
Like many Swarthmoreans, Jin was a self-described overachiever.
Stress turned into insomnia. Jin struggled with sleep each night, only
to fly awake at 6 a.m. to find Collin doing pushups.
“He was a lark with an elaborate morning routine,” Jin says ruefully.
Yet the Swarthmore roommates proved a good match. Jin grew
fascinated with wearable health-tracking devices that can analyze
sleep data, becoming principal investigator on a sleep study in
Assistant Professor Maggie Delano’s
engineering lab. Meanwhile, Collin
founded SWIFT — Savings, Wealth,
Investment, Finance, and Trade — a
campus organization promoting
financial literacy. After seeing Jin’s
insomnia first-hand, Collin thought,
“Someone has to solve this problem.”
Collin’s entrepreneurial instincts
and Jin’s fascination with sleep
devices combined. They launched
Bioloop, a sleep-coaching company,
Jason Jin ’20
from their dorm room, receiving
mentoring and early funding from
Swarthmore’s Center for Innovation
and Leadership. Bioloop interprets
data from devices like the Apple
Watch, Fitbit, and Oura Ring.
Those devices are cool, says
Collin, but too much data can be
overwhelming. The pair’s idea was to
add a human element to all the data
— a sort of personal sleep-trainer —
Josh Collin ’20
to help people stop bad habits (eating
before bed, too much blue light from
screens) and develop and maintain good ones (meditation, healthy
wind-down routines).
“Sleep is something we brush aside,” says Collin. “But we’re hurting
our own longevity. Sleep is this missing pillar of health.”
As for the former roommates? They’re currently housemates in San
Francisco, sharing a house with 12 other founders and seven newly
hatched companies. And they’re both sleeping a healthy 7–8 hours a
night.
— HEATHER RIGNEY SHUMAKER ’91
VOICES WE TURN TO
On the Ground
in Haiti
Neil Heskel ’74 and Kevin Browngoehl
’78 established the Haiti Clinic in
2007 and were on the ground to
help when the 2010 earthquake
devastated the island nation. The
two doctors again coordinated relief
efforts in 2021 when a magnitude
7.2 earthquake struck the Tiburon
Peninsula in Haiti on Aug. 14. “The
death toll is over 2,100, with more
than 13,000 injured and an unknown
number of people missing,” says
Heskel (pictured above with a young
patient and his mother). “Hurricane
Grace swept over Haiti, hampering
the complicated search-and-rescue
mission. The Haiti Clinic provided
medical care and supplies in several
of the hardest-hit areas.” Hiring
Haitian physicians, nurses, and other
health care workers to help with their
efforts also helps local families have
a source of income. “The permanent
clinic in Cité Soleil is open and
seeing patients daily while offering
telemedicine visits for those who
cannot safely travel,” says Heskel.
“The Haiti Clinic’s remote team is
collaborating with other organizations
in efforts to care for as many sick and
injured as possible.” Water and food
are desperately needed, Heskel adds:
“Our team had to drive over two hours
— each way — to fill water buckets.
Our volunteers in the U.S. are
assembling and shipping supplies.”
FALL 2021
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
11
common good
CAMPUSQUICKLY
The College celebrated the retirement of 11 esteemed faculty members, who
combined for more than 370 years of service to Swarthmore. Though they will be
missed on campus, each leaves behind a legacy, fostered through their notable
scholarship, devoted mentorship, and lasting commitment to the liberal arts.
The 2020–21 retirees are: Nathalie Anderson, English Literature; Caroline
Burkhard, Chemistry and Biochemistry; Joy Charlton, Sociology; Arthur McGarity,
Engineering; Braulio Muñoz, Sociology; Marjorie Murphy, History; Carol Nackenoff,
Political Science; Helen Plotkin, Classics; Micheline Rice-Maximin, French and
Francophone Studies; Allen Schneider, Psychology; and Faruq Siddiqui, Engineering.
Strengthening
Indigenous
Studies
MORE: bit.ly/SwatRetirees2021
BLOOMING
IMPRESSIVE: This
summer, the Chester
Children’s Chorus returned
to camp on campus.
Highlights included
a photography class
with Jeremy Polk of the
College’s Media Center.
This beautiful image of a
bee resting on a flower was
taken by Makayla Davis, 13,
an eighth grader who sings
in the chorus’s Festival
Choir.
MAKAYLA DAVIS
James Fenelon a scholar of
urban inequality, Native Nations,
race and racism, and social
movements, joined Swarthmore
this fall as the 2021–22 Lang
Visiting Professor for Social
Change. Fenelon, who is Lakota/
Dakota from Standing Rock
(Nation), is a professor of
sociology at California State
University, San Bernardino, and
founder and director of its Center
for Indigenous Peoples Studies.
He is hosted by Swarthmore’s
Department of Sociology &
Anthropology and will teach
one course per semester,
the first being Indigenous
Peoples and Globalization.
Fenelon will also work alongside
Assistant Professor Adrienne
Benally, an incoming colleague
in Environmental Studies
specializing in Indigenous
humanities, and with Davina Two
Bears, a postdoctoral fellow in
Sociology & Anthropology, to
strengthen Swarthmore’s learning
and research opportunities
in Indigenous studies, and to
forge meaningful connections
and partnerships with Native
Nations. Benally’s appointment
is Swarthmore’s first tenuretrack position fully dedicated to
Environmental Studies.
+
Leading the Way
Swarthmore recently welcomed four new members to the President’s Staff:
•
Elizabeth Boluch Wood, vice president for advancement, brings to Swarthmore
35 years’ experience in higher education and nonprofit fundraising, including
nearly two decades at Princeton University.
•
Brad Koch, the Marion Ware Director of Athletics, Physical Education, and
Recreation, joins the College from Cabrini University, where he had spent nine
years as athletic director.
•
Beth Glassman, vice president for human resources, brings more than 25 years
of experience as an attorney and chief human resources officer, including five
years at Widener University.
•
Erin Brownlee Dell, chief of staff and secretary of the College, comes to
Swarthmore from Guilford College, where she had served in multiple roles
during her 18-year tenure, including as an associate academic dean.
CAPPING OFF
AN UNUSUAL
ACADEMIC YEAR
by Ryan Dougherty
Swarthmore’s 194th Commencement
ceremony on June 6 was held virtually,
as a result of COVID-19. But the online
tribute followed a celebration at
Swarthmore’s Mertz Field on May 30,
during which the seniors shared their
achievements with family and friends.
The events represented the culmination
of four years of exploration and growth
for seniors, spirited instruction and
collaboration with the faculty, and
multifaceted support of staff members
from across campus.
Reflecting on one of the most unusual
academic years in College history, let’s
examine these celebrations of the Class
of 2021 by the numbers.
LAURENCE KESTERSON
Farewell to 11 Retiring Faculty Members
FOREVER BE PROUD: “You are venturing into a world of extraordinary uncertainty,
but also of great promise and infinite possibility,” President Valerie Smith said in her
Commencement address. “You will leave here and form a union with purpose. And we will
forever be proud to call you graduates of Swarthmore College.”
1,150: Approximate number of chairs (color-coded for faculty,
students, and guests) and program cards at the in-person
celebration.
800: Approximate number of ponchos distributed during the
rainy event.
342:
Graduating seniors, each of whom received a package
containing a diploma, a T-shirt, an alumni decal, and a
congratulations packet from the Swarthmore Libraries.
320:
Approximate number of students who elbow-bumped
President Valerie Smith upon crossing the stage at the
in-person celebration.
292:
Seniors who submitted photos for the Commencement
video.
65: International and permanent resident students from 30
countries.
66:
Students who were first in their family to graduate from
college.
61:
Students receiving honors.
60:
Students with the most popular major, economics — one
more than computer science.
43:
States represented by students, in addition to Washington,
D.C.
27:
Students with at least one parent who is an alum.
1:
Playing of Semisonic’s “Closing Time,” to conclude the
campus celebration (which had its own Spotify playlist).
A Point of Honor
President Valerie Smith awarded 2021
honorary degrees to three distinguished
recipients:
Elizabeth Anderson ’81, a philosopher who
examines how evolving concepts of freedom
and equality are experienced in our daily lives.
(bit.ly/EAnderson81)
Dr. Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary
of health in the U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services, and the first openly
transgender federal official to receive Senate
confirmation. (bit.ly/RLevineSwat)
Dawn Porter ’88, an award-winning
filmmaker and the co-founder of Trilogy Films,
a production company that specializes in
social-justice documentaries and independent
feature films. (bit.ly/DawnPorter88)
+
12
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
FULL COMMENCEMENT COVERAGE: bit.ly/SwatGrad2021
FALL 2021
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
13
common good
A FEW NEW FACES JOIN
THE BOARD OF MANAGERS
CREATIVE BONDS
The Board of Managers welcomes five
new members:
auren Glant ’83,
L
a litigator who taught at
New York University Law
School, Pace University
School of Law, and
Brooklyn Law School,
and now consults with
nonprofits.
dgar Lee ’98,
E
a private investor with
more than 20 years of
finance and alternativeinvesting experience; he
served as a portfolio
manager at Oaktree
Capital Management
from 2007 to 2020.
Asahi Pompey ’94,
global head of
corporate engagement at
Goldman Sachs and
president of the Goldman
Sachs Foundation.
Brian Wong ’96,
founder and chairman of
RADII Media and former
vice president of Alibaba
Group.
Winston Zee P’07,
a transnational business
lawyer who is a member
of the faculty of Shanghai
Jiao Tong University
KoGuan Law School.
+
14
MORE: bit.ly/SwatBOM
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
Alumni, families, and friends were unable to gather in
person during the 2020–21 academic year, but nearly
4,000 community members attended 141 individual
virtual events hosted by the Advancement Office.
Swarthmore celebrated its first virtual reunion with trivia
nights, interactive workshops, class happy hours, and
musical performances, thanks to the efforts of dedicated
volunteers. One workshop focused on creating handmade
volvelles, like this piece (left) created by Jen Yeoh
Schneller ’91. “What great fun that class was!” Schneller
says. A special series of SwatTalks, sponsored by the
President’s Fund for Racial Justice, focused on racial
identity, representation, access to resources, and the
structural changes and solutions necessary to moving
forward. The Alumni & Parent Engagement Office is
planning creative ways to bring as many alumni together as
possible for Alumni Weekend 2022. The latest information
about upcoming events — whether in person, hybrid, or
virtual — is available at swarthmore.edu/alumni.
Check it out: Friends Historical Library, circa February 1968.
HAPPY 150TH, FHL! The Friends Historical Library is 150 years young this year!
The Anson Lapham Repository (as it was then known, named for its initial donor)
opened its doors in 1871.
Activist tendencies within the Religious Society of Friends make FHL
an extraordinary resource not just for the study of Quakerism but also for
abolitionism, women’s rights, Native American history, and more.
With more than 50,000 books and approximately 10,000 linear feet of manuscripts
and archives, FHL functions not solely as an important educational resource for the
Swarthmore College community but also as an international research facility.
FHL launched its 150th anniversary on World Quaker Day, Oct. 3.
— JORDAN LANDES, Curator of Friends Historical Library
The Life of a Teacher-Scholar
SWARTHMORE AND THE
JOHAN SKYTTE PRIZE
THREE CONSECUTIVE WINNERS of the Johan Skytte Prize — the
equivalent of the Nobel in political science — are friends who had been
classmates as undergraduates. David Laitin ’67, Peter Katzenstein ’67, and
Bryn Mawr’s Margaret Levi recently discussed their connection in a podcast
at the Immigration Policy Lab at Stanford (bit.ly/SwatSkytte) in which they
reflected on the value of their Swarthmore education and how it shaped the
course of their careers. Laitin, a Stanford professor and Immigration Policy
Lab co-director, was named this year’s winner. He followed Katzenstein
(2020), his Swarthmore roommate, and their friend Levi (2019), Laitin’s
colleague in Stanford’s Department of Political Science. The three became
friends when they studied political theory in parallel Swarthmore seminars
in 1966 and reflected on politics and political science in postseminar suppers.
Robert Keohane, who taught at Swarthmore while the trio were students,
received the Skytte Prize in 2005, and was followed in 2006 by Robert Putnam
’63, H’90, the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor Emeritus of Public Policy at
Harvard University.
ROBERT F. PASTERNACK, the Edmund Allen Professor Emeritus of
Chemistry and Biochemistry, died June 5 at age 84. With his passing,
Swarthmore has lost one of its most respected and influential scholars,
who inspired students and colleagues alike.
Known as one of the world’s leading bioinorganic chemists, Pasternack
joined Swarthmore in 1982 from Ithaca College. Pasternack also
frequently collaborated with Peter
Collings, the Morris L. Clothier Professor
Emeritus of Physics. A conversation
about a possible overlap in their research
ultimately led to the now widely used
technique of resonance light scattering,
and it changed the trajectory of their work
for years to come.
“Bob loved the life of the teacher-scholar,
and saw no separation between the two,”
Collings says. “In the research laboratory,
he mentored and instructed students to
accomplishments they never envisioned
for themselves. In the classroom, he utilized examples from research
to illustrate and explore course content. Bob was both proper and kind,
serious and friendly — a wonderful class act.”
+
DATA & DEMOCRACY
Sorelle Friedler ’04 has been named
the assistant director for data and
democracy at the White House
Office of Science and Technology
Policy. Friedler, who graduated
with a degree in computer science
and is an associate professor of
computer science at Haverford
College, focuses her work on the
fairness and interpretability of
machine-learning algorithms, with
applications from criminal justice to
materials discovery. She will be the
first person in White House history
with a job title focused specifically
on data and democracy.
MORE: bit.ly/BPasternack
FALL 2021
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
15
common good
She Led
by Example
during difficult discussions
among faculty colleagues, often
deploying her wry humor to break
the tension. In 2001, she became
the College’s sixth provost. In
her 10-year tenure, the longest
of any to hold the position, Film
and Media Studies expanded and
Islamic Studies was established.
In recognition of Hungerford’s
dedicated service as provost and
for her outstanding contributions
to Swarthmore’s educational
program, Eugene Lang ’38, H’81
established a fund for faculty
THIS SPRING, President
in her honor. The fund allows
Valerie Smith shared the
the provost to make grants to
sad news that Constance
individual faculty members to
Cain Hungerford, the Mari S.
support their professional and
Connie Hungerford served as interim president
Michener Professor Emerita
scholarly efforts.
for the 2014–15 academic year. Never one to seek the
of Art History and Provost
In a moment of College
spotlight, she was admired and respected by all.
Emerita, died May 12 after
transition, Hungerford took on
suffering a stroke. She was
her most significant College role:
73. With her passing, Swarthmore lost one of its most
interim president for the 2014–15 academic year.
distinguished, influential, and beloved figures and one
“Connie is best known for her thoughtful, highly
who served the College confidently as provost and interim
collaborative leadership style, which will serve us very well
president.
in this transitional year,” then-Board of Managers Chair
“Connie took her training and talents as an art historian
Gil Kemp ’72 said in announcing her appointment. “I know
and translated these gifts for detail, visuality, and context,
you will find her to be a steady, guiding, and imaginative
cultivating the ability to see uniquely issues that faced
influence.” Indeed, in reflecting on her long service, Kemp
the faculty and the College,” says Provost and Dean of the
says: “Connie’s intelligence, scholarship, caring, and vision
Faculty Sarah Willie-LeBreton.
touched in many positive ways the lives of all members of
Hungerford joined Swarthmore’s Art Department
the College community.”
faculty in 1975 as an instructor to teach classes in 19th- and
Hungerford met her husband, Hans Oberdiek, at
20th-century art, American art, Picasso, modernism, and the
Swarthmore; an emeritus philosophy professor, he retired in
history of photography, which was well-timed to coincide
2014.
with the College’s first studio arts photography course
Hungerford was self-effacing and never one to seek the
in 1977. Within two years, and in her first as an assistant
spotlight, so on the occasion of her retirement, the Art and
professor, she also served as acting department chair while
Art History Department planned the only event that ensured
still teaching a five-course load that included survey classes
her attendance: the re-dedication of the Hicks Murals
and honors seminars. She would chair the department again
in their new home in the Old Tarble Drawing Studio —
for six years in the 1980s and from 2017 to 2019.
something for which she had long advocated.
“She always taught and led by example: imparting wisdom,
“[Hungerford’s] tenure at Swarthmore was extraordinary
embodying generosity, and modeling discernment,” says List
not just for her longevity as a scholar, administrator, and
Gallery Director Andrea Packard ’85, a former student.
mentor to generations of students and colleagues alike, or
Hungerford was the author of Ernest Meissonier:
the myriad ways she served the institution,” President Smith
Master in His Genre (Cambridge University Press, 1999) in
says. “It was remarkable also because of the way she served
addition to numerous articles and chapters on the French
— with grace, humility, a deep reverence for the College’s
painter. She curated a 1993 retrospective of his work for the
mission, and genuine care for the individuals who comprise
Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, France, and was a longtime
our community. I know I am not alone in finding it difficult
consultant on Meissonier for Sotheby’s and Christie’s.
to imagine Swarthmore without her.”
Hungerford was known for her equanimity, especially
+ MORE: bit.ly/CHungerford
MOUNTAIN MOVER
CIARA WILLIAMS ’16
Environmental Activist
16
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
LAURENCE KESTERSON
LAURENCE KESTERSON
Swarthmore
mourns the loss
of art historian
and College leader
Connie Hungerford
“It’s building awareness of the whole complex system in which waste operates,” says Ciara
Williams ’16, co-executive director at PLAN, the Post-Landfill Action Network.
UNTANGLING THE WEB
Taking an intersectional approach to waste
and environmental justice
by Ryan Dougherty
CIARA WILLIAMS ’16 always
felt connected to nature and the
environment. But when she began
studying the theories of the Principles
of Environmental Justice in her late
teens, that holistic view deepened.
“It blew my mind,” Williams
says of the document born out
of the First National People of
Color Environmental Leadership
Summit in 1991. “It showed me that
environmental justice is really more
of a lens that forces us to challenge the
distinction between humans and the
environment and think about how the
health of the environment reflects the
health of the people, and vice versa.”
That informs Williams’s efforts as
co-executive director of PLAN, the
Post-Landfill Action Network, which
comprises a network of 700 colleges
across the U.S. as well as dozens of
partners active in local, national,
and policy-based movements.
Started by college students in 2013
as an extension of the zero-waste
movement, PLAN helps students
to look beyond the conventional
approach to zero waste and also offers
organizing and leadership training.
Key efforts include getting people
to pay attention to not only the
unpleasant sights, smells, and health
dangers of landfills or incinerators,
but also their tangled web of problems:
from trash trucks roaming residential
neighborhoods unnecessarily to
public-education funding cuts caused
by depressed property values.
“It’s building awareness of the
whole complex system in which waste
operates,” she says.
Williams’s environmental activism
started in high school, organizing
against the incinerator in her
hometown of Chester, Pa. At the time,
budget cuts to public education caused
her school to slash courses.
“The principles of environmental
justice offered an approach to
understand how those budget cuts
were not an isolated event, but rather
an ongoing pattern of disinvestment
and environmental racism,” she says.
“I started thinking in terms of selfdetermination — the people’s ability to
shape the environment around them.”
Williams previously worked for the
nonprofit Mural Arts Philadelphia,
supporting projects aimed to help
redefine public space, and in the
City of Philadelphia’s Office of
Sustainability. There, she learned to
effect change within the constraints of
institutions.
At Swarthmore, she helped
raise the environmental literacy of
Chester through a Lang Opportunity
Scholarship, and reframe racial
and juvenile justice as a volunteer
with Chester Youth Courts. For her
thesis project, Williams explored
how education can be leveraged to
spur environmental justice and civic
particaption for students.
“My Swarthmore education
developed the ways I’m able to talk
about environmental justice,” she
says, “to see it as not just a set of
principles, but something that’s living
with and influenced by all of my
experiences.”
FALL 2021
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
17
common good
COMMUNITY BUILDER
FEEDING
HOPE
SARAH BEDOLFE ’11
Marine Scientist
A sustainable-food
pioneer makes changes
built on trust
18
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
COURTESY OF OCEANA
As Ken Meter ’71 surveys the landscape
of sustainable-food movements, he is
thrilled to see an emerging generation of
young people forging bold initiatives.
“They’re launching farms among
marginalized communities so people
can feed themselves and build support
networks,” he says. “It’s gratifying to
see that energy crystallize after so many
years of laying the groundwork.”
Meter hopes his new book, Building
Community Food Webs (Island Press,
2021), will advance their efforts. In it,
he shows how industrial, commoditycentered food systems drained wealth
from communities, and he “highlights
some of the most innovative projects I’ve
worked with.”
Soon after graduating from
Swarthmore, Meter emerged as an early,
and often ignored, voice calling for
community food systems in both rural
and inner-city settings. Now he serves
as president of Crossroads Resource
Center, a nonprofit that partners with
communities to bolster their selfdetermination. In that role, he has
developed economic analyses for local
food networks in 41 states, two Canadian
provinces, and four tribal nations.
The path has been both prodigious
and arduous. “The most effective work
emerges through the heavy process of
building trust: coming together to heal
some of the wounds and inequities we
suffer from,” Meter says.
His focus has been documenting the
DODD DEMAS
by Ryan Dougherty
“It’s very easy when you work in community settings to feel marginalized,” says Ken
Meter ’71, author of Building Community Food Webs.
extraction of wealth from communities
and working with community groups to
reverse it.
Even during the tragedy of the global
pandemic, Meter sees hope.
“People experienced a tremendous
change in mindset when they couldn’t buy
flour and weren’t sure if farmworkers or
meat cutters were healthy,” he says. “I’m
hopeful that people realize the donations
they gave to alleviate this crisis can be
applied to fashioning food systems that
work for everyone over the long term.”
Meter credits his time at Swarthmore
and engagement in Chester, Pa., for
advancing his analytical skills and
catalyzing his commitment to low-income
communities.
After Swarthmore, he moved into
a marginalized neighborhood of
Minneapolis and helped launch locally
owned businesses. He then co-founded
a magazine to foster dialogue among
community groups.
That led to reporting, which introduced
Meter to farmers, bankers, and
business leaders struggling to establish
independent operations amid this
extractive economy. It also helped him to
reflect on his family’s background with
public service and farming: “My father
was born on a Nebraska farm to a family
that had farmed for generations.”
“Learning more about where my people
came from posed new challenges as I tried
to define how I could make a difference,”
he says. “I’ve found a more impassioned
voice and, hopefully, a more effective life
by looking internally and expressing my
own heritage.”
“When we protect habitat, that almost always has to do with making sure there are
areas where fish can regenerate their population without interference of harmful fishing
practices,” says Sarah Bedolfe ’11, advocating for legislation to reduce plastic pollution.
CURRENT SEEKER
SEA CHANGE
Helping to find and fix
problems in marine
habitats
by Sherry L. Howard
KEN METER ’71
Fair Food Pioneer
SARAH BEDOLFE ’11 grew up on
the beach near her hometown of
Dana Point, Calif. As a student, she
volunteered at a local ocean institute,
dived in the waters off Australia,
and even came across the small and
brilliantly colored nudibranch marine
slug on the ocean floor.
“The ocean is a beautiful, amazing
place, and I reconnect with it
whenever possible,” she says. “It’s
definitely a place where I feel happy
and at home.”
Now a marine scientist at the
nonprofit Oceana, Bedolfe wants
the ocean to retain its appeal as
a place for recreation and aweinspiring creatures — and as a source
of livelihood. Oceana has offices
around the world and coordinates
with conservation groups globally
to find ways to sustain the oceans
and implement national policies
to protect them. Bedolfe is part
of the organization’s science and
strategy team at its headquarters in
Washington, D.C. The team’s goal
is to provide scientific research for
conservation projects in 10 countries.
Their efforts include evaluating
potential new projects based on
threats to marine biology, government
systems, and the feasibility of solving
their problems. “What I love about
my job is that I get to collaborate with
my colleagues around the world and
connect them with one another and
provide resources,” she says.
Oceana’s campaigns include
fisheries management, habitat
protection, and anti-plastics pollution,
with a primary aim of ensuring that
oceans are managed sustainably,
Bedolfe says. “The focus of our
fisheries-management campaigns is to
make sure those fisheries can endure
and continue to feed the people who
need and rely on that food source,” she
says.
Bedolfe’s writing and scientific
skills were nurtured at Swarthmore,
where she graduated with a biology
degree. She earned a master’s in
marine biology from the University of
Groningen in the Netherlands, where
she was born.
Bedolfe says Swarthmore Professor
of Biology Rachel Merz, now retired,
helped strengthen her understanding
of the scientific method.
“Several of [her] courses involved
designing and carrying out our own
experiments and writing our results in
a paper,” she says. “That prepared me
for the field work and lab work I had to
do in grad school.
“The skills are still important to me
— even if I’m bound to a desk now.”
FALL 2021
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
19
CREATING A
NEW CLIMATE
Moving past pessimism and paralysis, a student-led workshop series encourages
participants to ‘critically engage with the climate crisis in its many dimensions’
G
ROWING UP
in rural Kansas,
Martin Tomlinson
’23 experienced the
effects of the climate
crisis firsthand.
“I saw my neighbors’ crops failing
and the water in the creek behind
my house beginning to dry out,” says
Tomlinson, a double major in peace
& conflict studies and religion with
a minor in environmental studies.
“As my town became more and more
abandoned, I began to realize that this
was the death of a way of life and of a
community.”
Such evidence of the existential
threat posed by the climate crisis
continues: This summer alone, the
20
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
United States experienced heat
waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods
that claimed hundreds of lives. A
recent report authored by the United
Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change warns that global
climate change is accelerating due
to insufficient reduction of humancaused greenhouse gas emissions.
Described by U.N. Secretary-General
António Guterres as a “code red for
humanity,” the report suggests that
limiting global warming to below 1.5
degrees Celsius, a tipping point for
increased risk of irreversible climate
disaster, is no longer possible and that
further warming can only be avoided
by rapid and large-scale reductions of
all greenhouse gases.
Faced with the enormity of the
crisis, many students, including
Tomlinson, feel overwhelmed and
paralyzed by the seeming inevitability
that things will only get worse.
Social isolation caused by the
ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has also
done little to alleviate the fear that the
time for decisive, collective action has
passed.
In this reality, it is critical to have a
space for discussing the climate crisis
and formulating action at both the
individual and community level. At
Swarthmore, a student-led workshop
series, Climate Essentials, aims to fill
this role by encouraging participants
to “critically engage with the climate
crisis in its many dimensions.”
FALL 2021
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
BETH WALROND
by Roy Greim ’14
21
AN EXISTENTIAL TOOLKIT FOR CLIMATE ANXIETY
by Elizabeth Slocum
22
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
the all-encompassing nature of the
climate crisis and intersectionality
within.
“It’s important to continually
emphasize the interconnectedness
of environmental, social, and racial
justice,” says Interim Director of
Sustainability Elizabeth Drake, one
of the project’s mentors. “If you care
ATZIRI MARQUEZ ‘22
covered topics such as “Indigenous
Environmental Justice,” “Climate
Science and Policy,” and “Planning
for the Future,” and featured such
speakers as Indigenous activist
Enei Begaye Peter of the Diné and
Tohono O’odham nations. The
broad range of topics was designed
to help participants understand
NINA TIPTON
The series of lectures and virtual
meetings works to draw participants
into community and build on an
awareness that actions can be taken to
combat climate anxiety.
Climate Essentials began in 2020 as
a five-session pilot program under the
direction of Atticus Maloney ’22 and
Declan Murphy ’21, students in the
President’s Sustainability Research
Fellowship (PSRF) who developed
a syllabus with guest speakers and
recommended readings related to the
climate crisis.
“Many of us at Swarthmore are
grappling with the same concerns
and questions about the climate
crisis,” says Murphy. “We wanted to
create opportunities for community
members to talk about these things,
hear other thoughts, and then work to
translate conversations into action.”
This year, Tomlinson and fellow
PSRF participant Maya Tipton ’23
took the reins of the now-virtual
Climate Essentials course with help
from Murphy and Terrence Xiao ’20, a
sustainability and engaged scholarship
fellow in the Office of Sustainability.
Although the move to Zoom initially
presented challenges, the virtual
format allowed for double the number
of participants of the pilot program;
this year’s series had more than 100
registrants, consisting of students,
staff, faculty, community members,
and alumni.
“The virtual environment actually
helped create a strong sense of
community because it made the
course accessible to people who
normally wouldn’t be able to join,”
says Tomlinson. “We had alumni from
all over the country calling in and
students in different parts of the world
participating as well.”
Over six sessions, the workshop
LAURENCE KESTERSON
of California Press, 2020). Pulling
from psychology, sociology, and
even Ray’s Swarthmore degree in
religious studies, the book addresses
the burnout and guilt felt by many
of her students, and equips them
to push forward in the fight against
environmental threats. Ray calls it
an “existential toolkit for the climate
generation.”
Much of the guidance Ray offers
in the book is also employed in her
classroom.
“I’ve shifted a lot of my orientation
toward things like building
community over individualism,” she
says. “And that goes everywhere,
including how you arrange the
seats in the class, who builds the
syllabus. I also try to prioritize
solution stories over negative stories
and have students participate
in radical imagination creation,
without necessarily giving them the
whole rationale behind why that’s
important.”
Perhaps the biggest change, Ray
says, is giving students the space
to acknowledge their feelings. By
encouraging them to journal their
thoughts or check in with fellow
classmates, they recognize they’re
not alone.
It’s not therapy, she says, though
it’s certainly therapeutic.
“American culture is so fetishizing
of happiness that students never
get permission to just have negative
feelings and not have to make
them go away,” she says. “If there’s
anything that we can do, it’s to
actually validate negative feelings.
We don’t have to fix them, make them
happy, therapize them, pathologize
them, take medication, distract
ourselves away from them, or even
use the intellect as a solution.
They’re a reasonable response to the
reality we live in.”
ANNABEL DUPONT
WHEN SARAH JAQUETTE RAY ’98
sensed the pervasive hopelessness
in her students, she knew it was time
for a change of course.
Her environmental studies classes
had once been full of upbeat nature
lovers hoping to make careers of
protecting the Earth. But something
had shifted, Ray says, leading to long
lines for her office hours and lots of
tears.
“The students were despairing
about how the Anthropocene has
hit, and we are in this moment where
humans have irreversibly affected
nature,” says Ray, a professor
at Humboldt State University in
California with a background in
the humanities and social justice.
“This is no longer about protecting
something. This is about human
survival in a radically altered future.”
Ray’s syllabus had never shied
away from these facts; for years, her
courses offered a critical perspective
of nature as situated in human
activity, leading some students to
reckon with their own complicity in
environmental justice.
Over time, however, the students
had grown more hip to these
realizations before even entering the
classroom, Ray says.
With each critical discussion, they
drove closer to “What’s the point?”
“The students themselves were so
overwhelmingly despairing that they
couldn’t even learn this material,”
says Ray.
“The more I told them how bad
things were, the more that just piled
on this overwhelming intractability
and interconnectedness to all
the problems of the climate crisis
and environmental degradation in
general.”
The experience inspired Ray
to write A Field Guide to Climate
Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool
on a Warming Planet (University
“It’s important to continually emphasize the interconnectedness of environmental, social, and
racial justice,” says Interim Director of Sustainability Elizabeth Drake (top left). Clockwise from top
right: Atticus Maloney ’22, Maya Tipton ’23, and Martin Tomlinson ’23, students in the President’s
Sustainability Research Fellowship who have led Climate Essentials. A spring course is planned.
about social justice issues, you also
need to care about the climate crisis
because they are one and the same in
many ways.
“Ultimately, the goal is to build a
critical mass of community members
who understand the crisis and its
urgency,” Drake adds. “Hopefully, that
awareness will influence the way they
approach their lives and there will be
many impacts, however small, that
result.”
Translating knowledge into action
was the focus of the final session,
which provided participants with an
opportunity to reflect on their own
impacts. For example, climate activist
Fran Putnam ’69 planned to educate
herself further on environmental
issues faced by Indigenous people,
while others planned to get involved
with local organizations such as
Chester Residents Concerned for
Quality Living.
Holding Climate Essentials during
this unique time led several of its
organizers to reflect on the similarities
between COVID-19 and the climate
emergency, and what can be achieved
through collective responsibility.
“I believe both crises result in part
from a widely held belief that we
exploit the planet, animals, and others
without significant consequences,”
says Tipton. “Climate change and
COVID show us that we are not
separate from our environment and
other people — in fact, we are all
deeply interconnected.”
“Gone are the days where we
imagine we cannot sacrifice some
aspect of our daily lives for the good of
the whole,” adds Maloney. “Hopefully,
we can channel this energy to make
similar sacrifices for the survival of the
human species in the face of climate
catastrophe.”
FALL 2021
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
23
Crabs dance in hysterics, fleeing the
waves. A beetle darts on business
unknown. Gulls and terns stoically
observe. In the fine, rhythmic balance
at the water’s edge, life unfolds in
both frenzy and meditative urgency.
Maybe such existence in and around
the ocean evokes mystery, myth, and
drama in what we dream is an
exquisite orchestration in the place of
our origins. But Swarthmoreans are
invested in its mechanisms, working
out how animals solve the problems
of their world and exploring how they
function in their environment
— however it changes.
by Kate Campbell
24
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
AYANG CEMPAKA
IN
DEEP
T
HE SEA ABOUNDS
with show-stealers.
Dolphins burst
like rockets through
the wave crests. An
octopus’s lyrical
suctioned army of arms transfixes. The
blue whale, Balaenoptera musculus,
weighing up to 330,000 pounds, sends
its whistles, moans, and calls through
water for thousands of miles. And
when the giant marine mammal gives
birth, mothers nimbly nose newborns
to the ocean’s surface for their first
breaths of precious air.
Consider, too, the ruthless stealth of
the lowly mantis shrimp. This 6-inch
ocean citizen releases a jaw punch to
its prey with a strike force so ferocious
it can delimb a crab. The blow,
measured at 15,000 newtons, equals
the acceleration of a .22-caliber bullet.
For Swarthmoreans at work in the
world’s (now five) named oceans, the
water’s inhabitants — both behemoth
and near invisible — captivate.
It wasn’t only the mantis shrimp’s
power that first fascinated Rachel
Crane ’13. It was also the crustacean’s
technique.
“I left Swarthmore with a deep love
of invertebrates, biomechanics, and
marine systems,” says Crane, who
studied “beautiful lugworms” with
Professor Rachel Merz at the College
before graduating to the mantis
shrimp as a lab manager at Duke
University.
“They’re really interesting, with the
most amazing mouth parts. Their jaw
is like a bullet in the muzzle of a gun,”
she says. “It has a super-fast, amazing
strike.”
When Crane noticed how masterful
mantis shrimp were at cracking open
shells, she began to wonder if they
approached each prey differently.
“I fed them small snails, and they
FALL 2021
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
25
would work on a shell for hours and
hours,” she says. “Here’s a species the
size of your thumb, not much brain
there, but it turns out if you give them
snails of different sizes, they would
strike in different ways.”
By watching the charismatic
predator’s feeding behavior, Crane
started to think about what it took
to withstand the assault. “I pivoted,”
she says. “I got interested in mollusk
shells, thinking of the accumulated
damage of the mussels that live on the
rocky coast where waves bombard
them. If a shell survives one encounter,
how does it repair damage?”
For Crane, who earned her Ph.D. at
Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine
26
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
BUMPING INTO STRANGERS IN THE DARK
Searching for octopuses at night in an
area renowned for tiger sharks, marine
scientist Heather Ylitalo-Ward ’06 had
her wits about her.
“When you dive at night, all you can
see is the small area illuminated by
your flashlight,” says Ylitalo-Ward,
who works in Hawaii for the Division
of Aquatic Resources, a branch of
the state Department of Land and
Natural Resources. As part of a team
monitoring fresh and saltwater in each
of the main Hawaiian Islands, most of
COURTESY OF RACHEL CRANE ’13
answer fundamental questions from a
biological perspective.
“There are a lot of questions that can
be answered by looking to the ocean,
but those answers often loop back to
us.”
Humans have the knowledge and
technology to make good choices, says
Merz, the Walter Kemp Professor
Emerita in the Natural Sciences. “But
political and societal pressures, the
lack of education, and pressures from
the burgeoning human population
can all lead to bad choices for ocean
health.”
One point of light, “is the capacity
of marine species and ecosystems to
recover if given relief from what is
limiting them,” says Merz.
If fishing pressure is relieved, she
says, species can rebound.
“Ecosystems have resilience if
disruptors — pollution, overfishing,
development — are halted,” she says.
“We live on this small, finite planet
hurtling through space, and against
great odds life has and is evolving
here. That process has produced
extraordinary beauty visible in the
intricacies and the whole of every
organism and ecosystem,” says Merz.
“The living world feels vast, but, like
us, it is mortal.”
COURTESY OF RACHEL CRANE ’13
— RACHEL CRANE ’13
Station, invertebrates and bivalves all
have an “unseen charisma.”
“They’re extremely important and
cover huge expanses of the California
coast,” she says. “The mussels’ beds
provide a home to diverse life, and
the bed provides protection for these
animals.” The animals experience
massive temperature fluctuations,
can face thermal stress from sunlight
at the peak heat of the day, and are
bombarded by waves and boulders that
can crush them.
For the past six years, Crane has
been studying the mechanics of what
makes an effective shell armor.
“The shell is constrained by its
evolutionary past,” says Crane. “And
evolution is acting across deep time.
The hurdle comes in understanding
what is still effective” for the shell, she
says.
As new threats emerge, Crane asks:
Do the shells change in ways that make
them stronger?
“Mussels have all different kinds
of predators: Otters and crabs will
hammer on shells, birds who will pick
them up and drop them.”
If that’s not enough, meet the
drilling predators. “Octopuses and
snails drill holes through the shell to
eat the mussel,” says Crane. Starfish
are another menace — Crane often
witnesses the “extended fight” that
occurs when a starfish eats a mussel.
“The starfish will need to retreat with
the tide, with its hunched posture
wrapped around the mussel,” she says.
The coastal environments where
Crane works are “really accessible as
opposed to the deep ocean, but there is
really amazing stuff to see.”
The ocean holds mysterious life and
“things that push your understanding
of what an animal is,” says Crane. “But
in the end, it is still biology — not a
totally different dimension. We can
TIMOTHY LEICHLITER
“[THE OCEAN
HOLDS] THINGS
THAT PUSH YOUR
UNDERSTANDING OF
WHAT AN ANIMAL
IS. BUT IN THE
END, IT IS STILL
BIOLOGY — NOT A
TOTALLY DIFFERENT
DIMENSION. WE
CAN ANSWER
FUNDAMENTAL
QUESTIONS FROM
A BIOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVE.”
Grateful to be able to spend so much time underwater for work, Heather
Ylitalo-Ward ’06 says it can be a meditative experience. “You can hear the
songs of the whales so loudly, it sounds like they must be right on top of you,”
she says. “Their songs are complex and oddly melodious — a perfect soundtrack
to data collection.”
her work is below the surface.
“Suddenly, I turned and there was a
huge animal right next to me. It turned
out to be a sleeping turtle that was
equally startled,” she says. “I think we
were both relieved to see one another
instead of a large tiger shark.
“Really, every day in the water is a
treat, and I see something incredible
every time I dive. I feel very lucky to be
able to do this job.”
Ylitalo-Ward, who studied
octopuses for her dissertation
“Pay a little more attention,” says Rachel Crane ’13. “There
is so much to see and there’s a lot of wonder in small things. The
slow-paced can be equally dramatic as the fast-paced.”
research at the University of Hawaii at
Manoa, agrees with Crane that science
requires patience. “It can be very hard
to find octopuses in the wild, even
with a trained eye, so it is important
to spend time looking for little hints
in the environment,” she says. “They
taught me a lot about taking time to
really look at things.”
The species she studied, Octopus
oliveri, lives only 12–16 months. “It
was a reminder to try to make the most
of each moment,” says Ylitalo-Ward.
“They capitalize on the time they have
on this planet: searching for food,
exploring the reef, finding mates,
having thousands of babies. Their
capacity to solve puzzles and escape
their enclosures was remarkable. They
never stopped exploring, which is
something I hope to emulate.”
Working primarily in Kauai, YlitaloWard scuba-dives on the reefs,
collecting data to characterize the
health of the fish populations and
benthic substrate. “We have a small
FALL 2021
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
27
“OCEANS ABSORB CARBON DIOXIDE, PROVIDE OVER HALF THE PLANET’S
OXYGEN, REGULATE TEMPERATURE AND WEATHER PATTERNS. NOT
ONLY THAT, THEY PROVIDE FOOD, MEDICINE, TRANSPORTATION, AND
RECREATION. OUR HEALTH, AND THE HEALTH OF THE ENTIRE PLANET, IS
DEPENDENT ON THE HEALTH OF OCEANS.”
— HEATHER YLITALO-WARD ’06
28
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
of runoff coming from the watershed,”
she says. “There are some coral species
that are more tolerant to temperature
change, and those may start to be the
dominant colonies we will see on reefs
moving forward. It doesn’t mean the
reefs will be gone; it just means they
will be different.”
Another key to reef resilience is
fish populations, says Ylitalo-Ward.
“We can have a positive impact by
minimizing the amount of herbivore
species removed from the ecosystem.
Those herbivores help remove algae
from corals, which in turn can help the
corals recover from bleaching events.
We have to focus on what we can do to
help, rather than feel defeated by the
things we have already lost.”
From November to April, humpback
whales come to Hawaii to have their
calves and mate. Researchers arrive to
tag the whale populations and study
their migratory behavior. Other whale
species can also be spotted around
Hawaii, Ylitalo-Ward says, including
false killer whales, melon-headed
whales, short-finned pilot whales, and
sperm whales.
“I’ve often been out on boats to get to
our dive locations and had humpbacks
breaching around us,” she says. “It’s a
pretty magical feeling to be driving out
to a site and suddenly having a gigantic
humpback whale surface right next
to the boat. We always try to keep our
distance and give them their space, but
sometimes they come right up next to
you without any warning.”
The constant song of the whales
accompanies the dives.
“You can hear the songs of the
whales so loudly, it sounds like
they must be right on top of you,”
says Ylitalo-Ward. “Their songs are
complex and oddly melodious — a
perfect soundtrack to data collection.”
ANCIENT LINKS IN OUR EVOLUTIONARY
STORY: SEA SQUIRTS HOLD IMPORTANT
SECRETS
If spooked by a sudden move or touch,
sea squirts, so perfectly named,
will contract their little muscles
and forcefully “squirt” out the sea
water they’ve consumed. These
hermaphroditic animals also produce
sex glands with both eggs and sperm.
And, says Bradley Davidson ’90,
associate professor and department
chair in developmental biology, “they
use their “squirt-gun” siphons to spray
out their eggs and sperm.”
But because sea squirts (also called
tunicates) tend to be self-sterile,
“they need to squirt next to another
individual in order to reproduce.”
Davidson says the famous geneticist
T. H. Morgan was intrigued by this
self-sterility mechanism, “realizing
that it must involve some sort of
molecular or genetic basis for eggs and
sperm to recognize self from non-self
— like our immune cells do.”
And as if one more extraordinary
trait were necessary — sea squirts also
“eat” their own brains.
Sort of.
RICHARD COLLINS
team dedicated to working with the
local community to conserve and
restore the unique ecosystems of
Kauai,” she says.
Hawaii has been a leader in
ocean conservation in many ways,
Ylitalo-Ward says, including
through the establishment of the
Papahanaumokuakea Marine National
Monument, one of the largest marine
conservation areas in the world.
“The area provides a refuge for many
marine species that might otherwise
be targeted by fisheries or affected by
other human impacts,” she says. The
state also established a CommunityBased Subsistence Fishing Area in
Kauai, the first of its kind.
“This designation allows for
strong community involvement
and natural practices to guide
management decisions,” she says.
“Since its designation, there have
been significant positive trends in fish
populations within the managed area.”
The chance to study coral reef
ecosystems draws researchers
who help to initiate responsible
management decisions. Ylitalo-Ward
collaborates with them to help identify
trends.
One trend emerging in Kauai is an
increase in algae growth during times
with high temperatures and slowmoving water.
“We’re also seeing increased algae
growth and changes in nearshore
community structure after strong rain
events, when there are high amounts
Doliolids, a poorly characterized group of sea squirts, “go through a very complex life
history in which they change body plans four times,” says Bradley Davidson ’90, associate
professor and department chair in developmental biology.
“This is partially accurate,” says
Davidson. “Some tunicates go through
a dramatic metamorphosis, similar to
caterpillars and butterflies. In squirts,
they start out as a tiny tadpole-like
larva that is able to swim, but not to
feed. These larvae attach the front of
their heads to a rock or other subtidal
structures — they like the bottom of
boats — and then they transform into
a vaselike young adult that can no
longer swim, but is able to filter feed,”
he says.
It is during this transition, says
Davidson, that sea squirts “reabsorb
portions of the larval brain, specialized
for swimming, and remodel the
remainder to generate a new, juvenilespecific organ, presumably specialized
for feeding and reproducing.”
The National Science Foundation
(NSF) recently awarded a grant
to Davidson and his collaborators,
Danelle Devenport, associate
professor of molecular biology at
Princeton University, and Christina
Cota, assistant professor of biology
at Colby College, focused on how
signal receptors are moved around in
dividing cells, including mammalian
cells.
“Although sea squirts are close
cousins to vertebrates, including
humans, sea squirt embryos have
extraordinarily low cell numbers,”
explains Davidson. “The embryonic
stage we study only has 200 cells while
a vertebrate embryo at this same stage
would have roughly 10,000 cells.”
This allows Davidson and his
colleagues to study how individual
cells “communicate with their
neighbors in an intact embryo at
very high resolution.”
His work with sea squirts is helping
to discern some fundamental rules
of how cells communicate as they
divide, and ultimately how errors in
this process may contribute to human
diseases, including cancer.
“Because these cells communicate
through chemical signals that are
extremely similar to the signals
exchanged between human and other
animal cells, we can leverage our
findings to help us address questions
relevant to human health along with
the development of embryos,” says
Davidson.
In order to receive these signals,
cells must produce an antenna-like
protein called a signal receptor.
“We’ve found that embryonic
cells ‘shut down’ these antenna-like
receptors when they are dividing” he
says, “and this appears like it might be
a general feature of dividing cells that
was never noticed before.”
Davidson explores how receptors
are moved around in dividing cells,
including mammalian cells.
“This is an urgent question,” he says,
“because cancer is primarily caused
by misregulation of cell signaling,
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29
THE WORLD BELOW THE BRINE
by Walt Whitman
and some for reproduction. The
reproductive zooids detach and grow
their own tails containing clusters of
another distinct reproductive body
type.”
This last body type makes both eggs
and sperm, he says, squirting them out
to make a new generation of nurses.
“What’s really fascinating to me is the
capacity for a single genome to encode
four different bodies,” Davidson says.
“That’s what I’m hoping to investigate
— how does a single set of genes
instruct the formation of not just one
body but four distinct bodies.”
“Along with being incredibly
beautiful, almost like an art piece in
their construction,” says Davidson,
doliolids are also important
ecologically and evolutionarily. “They
are especially good at filter feeding and
COURTESY OF BRADLEY DAVIDSON ’90
and so understanding the interplay
between division and signaling is
crucial for understanding the origins
of cancerous cell behaviors.”
The NSF also recently awarded
Davidson an Early-Concept Grant
for Exploratory Research (EAGER)
to work with collaborators Marc
Fischer and Joe Ryan at the Skidaway
and Whitney marine stations to
investigate a fascinating and poorly
characterized group of sea squirts
called doliolids.
“Individual doliolids go through a
very complex life history in which they
change body plans four times,” says
Davidson. “They start off as a large
nurse that grows a long tail on which
two different body types grow in grapelike clusters called zooids. Some of
these zooids are specialized for feeding
Sea squirts are part of our own evolutionary story, says Associate Professor Bradley
Davidson ’90 (bottom right), with (clockwise from top left) Guillermo Barreto Corona
’19, Hriju Adhikari ’20, former postdoctoral researcher Christina Cota, Cameron Tumey
’21, Twan Sia ’21, and William Colgan ’19, all wearing sea squirt paper hats while on a
lab outing. “What I tell my students is that diversity is much richer and more fragile
than we realize, and we have a mission to document this diversity before it is lost.”
30
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
they convert what is unavailable into
available nutrients,” he says.
When sea squirts die, or excrete,
they produce marine snow that drifts
down and provides essential nutrients
in deeper waters.
“Sea squirts are also part of our own
evolutionary story” he says. “They are
considered a ‘missing link’ between
vertebrates like ourselves and the
many animals without backbones,
the invertebrates. The sea squirts
are at a critical juncture, and they
represent a part of this story that we
don’t understand yet. We need them to
understand our own history.”
As he continues to witness the
changes to a range of marine life where
the sea squirt lives, Davidson is deeply
concerned.
“I’m not optimistic about the health
of the environment of the animals
that I study,” he says. “With warmer
temperatures, some animals are going
to thrive, but overall, it’s clear that
diversity is going way down.”
At the University of Washington’s
Friday Harbor Laboratories where
Davidson has spent time for his
research, there has been a “gigantic
decrease in diversity.”
“I would say it’s unprecedented,”
he says. “In the 10 years I have been
collecting, the marine organisms are
crashing. It’s just flat instead of rich
and diverse.”
Focusing on his role as a scientist
and on the role of his students has
helped him cope with understanding
the loss.
“What I tell students is that
diversity is much richer and more
fragile than we realize and that we
have a mission to document this
diversity before it is lost,” says
Davidson. “We can direct our efforts
positively to really understand what
we are losing in terms of species and
hopefully find ways to preserve what is
left, including the often overlooked sea
squirts.”
He hopes others will recognize the
critical importance of the sea squirt.
“Each species of sea squirt is the end
point of millions of years of evolution,”
says Davidson. “When you lose these
things, you’re losing something that
can never be regained. You’re losing a
story that took millions of years to tell
and that no one will ever hear.”
But there are also reasons to remain
hopeful.
“There is time for us to preserve
what is left,” says Davidson. “If we give
it a chance, life comes roaring back.
Marine organisms are unstoppable,
they will find a way to thrive. All we
need to do is open the door and they
will come pouring through.
“That’s the hope — that life finds
a way,” he says. “All these organisms
are incredibly resilient if they are just
given the chance.”
STARTING WITH LOVE
This desire to help the planet begins
with an emotional connection to
it, says Mark Wallace, professor of
religion.
“All of the religions consider nature
in balance with itself a divine gift that
we humans are to love and steward,” he
says. “We are fundamentally aquatic
creatures and we come up for air, but
we yearn to get back to water. In this
model, the world’s oceans, rivers, and
wetlands are the circulatory system of
Mother Earth; caring for this flow of
nutrients and waste is a way of caring
for God’s body.”
Indeed, in primordial cultures,
all beings have personhood, says
Wallace, whose book When God Was
a Bird: Christianity, Animism, and
The world below the brine,
Forests at the bottom of the sea, the branches and leaves,
Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds, the
thick tangle, openings, and pink turf,
Different colors, pale gray and green, purple, white, and
gold, the play of light through the water,
Dumb swimmers there among the rocks, coral, gluten, grass,
rushes, and the aliment of the swimmers,
Sluggish existences grazing there suspended, or slowly
crawling close to the bottom,
The sperm-whale at the surface blowing air and spray, or
disporting with his flukes,
The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy sealeopard, and the sting-ray,
Passions there, wars, pursuits, tribes, sight in those oceandepths, breathing that thick-breathing air, as so many do,
The change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air
breathed by beings like us who walk this sphere,
The change onward from ours to that of beings who walk
other spheres.
Published in 1860 in the “Sea-Drift” section of Leaves of Grass
the Re-Enchantment of the World
(Fordham University Press, 2018)
was awarded the 2019 Nautilus Gold
Award for best book in Western
religious thought.
“There are the tree people, the bear
people, the whale people … only some
of whom are human beings,” he says.
“Whales are especially fascinating.
In the Bible, they are symbols of the
mystery and beauty of wild nature.
Today, we know how similar we are
to whales. Like us, they have long
lifespans and enjoy deep emotional
lives defined by their keen intelligence
and rich communication skills.”
According to Indigenous religions,
“whales are people just like us,” says
Wallace, and it’s amazing what other
beings can do when we sense the
connection. “We start to think we are
part of the same family, and develop
an emotional connection and care
about their habitat,” he says. “We start
with love and then we start to feel a
connection to nature. For me, much
of this begins in the Crum Woods,
and then we want to care about these
places.”
Poets, too, often use the sea and
its inhabitants as a muse. In Walt
Whitman’s “The World Below the
Brine,” the worlds of water and
land merge, says Peter Schmidt, the
William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of
English Literature. In this climactic
line, “The change onward from ours
to that of beings” in other “spheres”
Schmidt says, “Whitman asks us to
imagine what things might change in
us when our minds are able to inhabit
(or as least imagine we experience) not
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MATTHEW LESLIE
MATTHEW LESLIE
A drone is reflected in the ocean water above the tail of a humpback whale in the Gulf of Corcovado, Chile.
“Drone technology will have — and is already having — a significant impact on marine-mammal research,” says
Colin Perkins-Taylor ’20, who studied humpbacks and the Chilean blue whale population. Today, he is in graduate
school studying the bottlenose dolphin.
A blue whale in the Gulf of Corcovado, Chile. “Our data showing that the Chilean blue whale subspecies is intermediate in size between the smaller
pygmy blue whale subspecies and the larger Antarctic blue whale subspecies is crucial because it supports the genetic and acoustic evidence that
this blue whale population is distinct from the others,” says Perkins-Taylor, who studied with Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Matthew Leslie.
“This means that the Chilean blue whale subspecies needs to have its own unique conservation plan developed to allow this population to recover
from whaling during the 1900s.”
just other species but environments,
like moving from land to sea.”
In the poem’s final two lines,
Schmidt says, Whitman wants the
reader “to take another leap, from
“our” world, the Earth, to different
planets or solar systems. Whitman was
convinced that there were many other
worlds in the universe beyond our own
solar system.”
steadily up into the air.
A precise collaboration, PerkinsTaylor observed the drone while
relaying instructions to Leslie on
where to direct its flight. Their goal
was to position it above the whales as
they swam and breached — capturing
their behavior without impacting
it directly. “My instructions were
instrumental in helping him locate
the whales with the drone’s camera
and taking the best-quality pictures
possible,” says Perkins-Taylor.
When the drone flight was complete,
Perkins-Taylor would perch in the
bow of the ship again and catch the
drone as Leslie slowly guided it into
his hands. “This is easier said than
done because conditions were not
always ideal for catching the drone
between the wind and the waves,” he
says. Kevlar gloves, climbing helmets,
LOST THEN FOUND
After two summer internships
studying sea turtles and shorebirds,
Colin Perkins-Taylor ’20 was certain
he wanted to pursue a career in marine
biology. Narrowing down the specialty
was the puzzle to solve.
“I was a bit lost because I didn’t
know what I wanted to do specifically,”
says Perkins-Taylor, a Swarthmore
native who graduated with a major in
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Swarthmore College Bulletin /
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biology and a minor in environmental
studies.
Then came an extraordinary
opportunity to research whales in
the wild using drone technology to
measure their body movements,
behavior, and migration patterns.
“My experience being in the field
was genuinely life-changing,” says
Perkins-Taylor, who collaborated with
Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology
Matthew Leslie. “Everything changed
for me when I got to observe the
humpback whales breach every day
and collect data on them using both a
drone and a regular DSLR camera.”
“Being exposed to all aspects of
the research process and getting to
practice them closely with a professor
is something that many undergraduate
students do not have the opportunity
to do,” he adds.
“But I, fortunately enough, did.”
Working with Leslie’s colleagues at
Panacetacea, a research, education,
and conservation group in Panama,
Perkins-Taylor would help to direct
Leslie to position the drone from
aboard a ship in the Gulf of Chiriquí.
That allowed Leslie to monitor the
instrument panels and watch the live
digital feed.
“Once we identified humpback
whales that were behaving in a way
conducive to being photographed
by the drone, Professor Leslie and I
would quickly equip the drone with its
propellers and camera,” he says.
To launch the delicate equipment,
Perkins-Taylor stood in the ship’s bow
in safety gear holding the drone above
his head. Then he and Leslie would
review a preflight checklist before
launching the custom-built drone
and eye protection were critical to the
process.
Once safely on shore, Leslie
downloaded the photos and data, and
Perkins-Taylor calculated the length
and width of measurement for each
whale.
“Drone technology will have — and is
already having — a significant impact
on marine-mammal research moving
forward for a variety of reasons,” says
Perkins-Taylor. “In particular, drones
offer a new vertical perspective to
study animals in a way that has been
shown not to disturb them, making
this technology appealing for the
novelty and ethics of it. Drones are
beginning to revolutionize this field,
and that is only going to continue in
the years to come.”
Before drone technology, Leslie
notes, two options existed to measure
“THE LIVING WORLD
FEELS VAST, BUT,
LIKE US, IT IS
MORTAL.”
— RACHEL MERZ, THE WALTER
KEMP PROFESSOR EMERITA
IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES
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33
HUMANS HAVE HUNTED WHALES
for centuries, but over time the
scale, methods, and reasons for
whaling have shifted. Initially,
coastal communities using small
boats harvested limited numbers of
cetaceans, mainly for food. In the
11th or 12th centuries, Basques in the
Bay of Biscay between France and
Spain began commercial whaling; by
the early 16th century, they and other
western Europeans had shifted the
hunt to the North Atlantic.
In the 1800s, Americans were
chasing whales in the Pacific and
Indian oceans, and from the 1920s,
Antarctic waters became whaling
ground zero for Japanese, Russians,
and Norwegians. The constant global
movement reflected new demand
and a new dynamic that fueled
unregulated mass hunting, which
resulted in population collapses
of targeted species and altered
whale migration patterns, driving
whalers to search for new areas
and new species to exploit. Whaling
technology changed, becoming far
more deadly. Near-shore rowed or
paddled boats gave way to sailing
ships with specially designed
“chasers,” in turn supplanted by
enormous steam- (later diesel-)
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Swarthmore College Bulletin /
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powered “factory” ships, floating
slaughterhouses that enabled long
voyages and, in tandem with chasers
equipped with motorized harpoons,
massive harvests.
All these developments
contributed to inexorably rising kill
levels, to half a million annually in
1945–1970. The dangers of such
extreme resource exploitation were
long known, but agreements to limit
harvests date only from the 1930s
and — despite some notorious
holdouts — effective enforcement
only from the 1980s and 1990s.
The damage wrought has been
immense. Indigenous peoples have
seen their livelihoods destroyed and
their cultural traditions disrupted.
Cetacean species have been
decimated. Though populations
are slowly rebuilding, warming sea
temperatures threaten the survivors.
But whales, which continue
to fascinate humans for their
size, grace, and intelligence, are
finding new roles: as symbols of
environmental protection and
subjects of ecotourism.
Robert S. DuPlessis, the Isaac
—
H. Clothier Professor Emeritus of
History and International Relations
means that the Chilean blue whale
subspecies needs to have its own
unique conservation plan developed to
allow this population to recover from
whaling during the 1900s.”
According to their paper,
co-authored by collaborators at Woods
Hole Oceanographic Institution, the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, and Chilean scientists
at Fundación Meri, body size, acoustic,
and genetic evidence align to support
the Chilean blue whale as a third
Southern Hemisphere subspecies
inhabiting the Pacific Ocean off
western South America.
Now that this new subspecies is
identified, says Leslie, the next steps
are to highlight its role in ocean
health to those nations that oversee
its habitat. By bringing it to the
attention of the International Whaling
Commission and leaders in Chile,
Ecuador, and Peru, the hope is that
those countries will value and protect
the animals and recognize them as a
resource.
“We want to get them excited about
this and work to protect the Chilean
blue whale,” Leslie says.
Perkins-Taylor says his research
experience was exceptional for the
opportunity to interact directly with
the animals he was studying.
“When I was on the boat, I observed
whales for hours every day and
became mesmerized by them,” he says.
“This surreal environment and these
incredible animals made me fall in
love with working out on the water, so
hopefully I will never look back and
can successfully make it in this field.”
After graduating in May 2020,
Perkins-Taylor completed an
internship with the Sarasota Dolphin
Research Program in Florida. “I
wanted to gain more marine-mammal
research experience following
KRISTIN RASMUSSEN / PANACETACEA
MICHELE AND DONALD D’AMOUR MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, SPRINGFIELD, MASS.
GIFT OF LENORE B. AND SIDNEY A. ALPERT, SUPPLEMENTED WITH MUSEUM
ACQUISITION FUNDS. PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVID STANSBURY.
The Whale Fishery “Laying On” by Nathaniel Currier. Before petroleum, whale oil
was highly valued for domestic lighting, industrial lubrication, and softening fibers
and leather, and as an ingredient of products as varied as soap, paint, perfume, and
nitroglycerine. Baleen was the steel and plastic of its day: Pliable, strong, and durable, it
was turned into hoop skirts and stays, upholstery and carriage springs, and much more.
whales: find dead ones or risk your life
in a small, low-flying plane over the sea.
Whales are an amazing subject to
study, says Leslie, who specializes
in conservation and evolutionary
mammalogy. “They are mammals,
they breathe air, they nurse their
babies, and yet they are almost alien
in that they exist underwater in
this completely different realm,” he
says. “You think of them as big and
lumbering, but when they look up,
and roll beside the ship, they’re very
curious. Sometimes you’re not sure
who is studying who.”
In 1970, the United States listed
all humpback whales as endangered
under the Endangered Species
Conservation Act. In 1985, a
moratorium on commercial whaling
was enacted. Today, their numbers,
though increasing, are still threatened
by entanglement in fishing gear, vessel
strikes, vessel-based harassment, and
underwater noise.
In addition to their studies of
humpback whales off Panama,
Perkins-Taylor and Leslie teamed up
to lead a research article on Chilean
blue whales published last year in the
journal Endangered Species Research.
The Chilean blue whale population
has only been proposed as a new
subspecies in recent years, says Leslie.
There were no current statistics that
measured the size and shape of this
blue whale population in comparison
with other blue whales around the
globe.
“Our data showing that the Chilean
blue whale subspecies is intermediate
in size between the smaller pygmy
blue whale subspecies and the larger
Antarctic blue whale subspecies is
crucial because it supports the genetic
and acoustic evidence that this blue
whale population is distinct from the
others,” says Perkins-Taylor. “This
“My summer research was extremely valuable for me as a student because I gained
hands-on experience in the field,” says Colin Perkins-Taylor ’20, who used drones to study
whales. “It gave me insight into what the life of a researcher is like in all aspects.”
my incredible time working with
Professor Leslie,” he says.
“My whale research experience
at Swarthmore established a strong
foundation for me to succeed in
the field of marine biology. Beyond
observing whales breaching every day
and learning vital skills for studying
them non-invasively, I got to analyze
data and write a manuscript with
Professor Leslie that has since been
published in a scientific journal.”
Now in graduate school for marine
biology at the College of Charleston,
Perkins-Taylor is applying his
knowledge and skills to study coastal
bottlenose dolphins using drones.
Swarthmore’s scientists continue
deeper into uncharted waters, learning
more about enigmatic Earth partners.
As humans crane skyward to plow new
frontiers, the tides around us wait.
And those whale calls and songs that
travel for so many miles under waves,
through currents, across atmospheres.
Will we have the chance, in coming
years, to decipher their languages with
drones and other devices?
Will we be listening if the sounds
stop?
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/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
35
LAURENCE KESTERSON
36
By looking at agricultural
problems in new ways,
John Leary ’00 is
working to build
biodiversity —
and community, too
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
by Tara Smith
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/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
37
“You can’t just throw
trees at this problem and
make it better.”
— John Leary ’00
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Swarthmore College Bulletin /
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COURTESY OF TREES FOR THE FUTURE
ROM THE START, John Leary ’00
was perhaps an unlikely candidate to
envision global reforestation. When
he brought home pictures of trees he’d
colored at school, his mother discovered he was colorblind.
The trunks were green, the branches and leaves brown.
As it turns out, seeing the forest for the trees was more
important anyway.
Today, Leary is executive director of Trees for the
Future, a nonprofit with a vision to change lives through
regenerative agriculture and help farmers “plant themselves
out of poverty.”
It’s an urgent mission, says Leary: “If you don’t know
where your food is coming from, it’s probably causing harm
to some family or community somewhere.”
When Leary was a Peace Corps volunteer in the early
2000s, the seeds of friendship took root with his homestay
brother, a Senegalese farmer. The two began planting trees
together. Little did they know that they were preparing the
ground for a sweeping movement that would bring tens of
thousands of farmers hope, health, and opportunities to
create a sustainable future for themselves and their families.
For two decades now, Leary has been committed to
collaborating with the communities he hopes to empower.
This investment in relationships goes a long way toward
explaining why the U.S.-based organization he leads —
which is dedicated to training farmers in the developing
world — is growing, both organically and exponentially.
Whether he’s talking about the extraordinary flavor of a
carrot grown by a farmer down the road from his Maryland
home, the transformation of a lifeless plot of land in subSaharan Africa, or the crushing injustice of the profits made
by agribusiness at the expense of the health of the planet
and everyone on it, Leary connects the choices to their
consequences.
Planting trees is one part of a broad response to complex
problems.
“You can’t just throw trees at this problem and make
it better,” Leary says. Neither, he adds, can solutions be
imposed on communities. A modern-day Johnny Appleseed,
Leary and his U.S. team make up only a small percentage of a
global organization that’s nearly 200 strong and has planted
more than 220 million trees. Meaningful change begins with
a conversation about farmers’ needs and the opportunities
they see. Trees for the Future provides resources, including
certification in agroforestry, and local staff members
oversee projects implemented by the farmers themselves,
strengthening agriculture and the food system within their
own communities and molding each unique project to their
cultural context.
Many of these projects involve creating “Forest Gardens,”
which require composting, mulching, cover crops, water
conservation, and integrated pest management. Trees for
the Future’s comprehensive four-year training program,
facilitated by local team members, empowers farmers to
optimize their land by managing space, time, sun, shade,
and water so they can grow enough produce to feed their
families, provide fuel and fodder for livestock, and ultimately
produce crops to sell. These programs have also made it
possible for farmers to provide education for their children
and have given new opportunities to young people whose
only prospects once lay in dangerous voyages overseas to
search for work.
As a rule, the organization makes sure that at least 30%
of farmers enrolled in any program are women. This is an
John Leary ’00 (left) and Omar Ndao first met in Senegal when Leary was a Peace Corps volunteer. Today, they work together for the nonprofit
Trees for the Future, planting “Forest Gardens,” which require composting, cover crops, water conservation, and integrated pest management.
intentional benchmark, Leary says, because “history tells
us we’ll have better outcomes if we prioritize women’s
involvement and equip them to be mentors, trainers, and
leaders.”
Leary says in high school he learned the importance of
serving the greater good. “But it wasn’t until Swarthmore
— when I began to see fellow students using their wits and
talents to make social impacts — that I began to see how I
could make positive change,” he says. “My education in this
progressive Quaker environment transformed my thinking.”
Leary chose Swarthmore for its academic reputation and
its highly ranked tennis program. He also loved the beauty
of the campus and the Scott Arboretum. But ultimately it
was the atmosphere of intellectual inquiry and activism that
turned out to be the richest soil for his own growth.
He majored in sociology & anthropology, with a
concentration in environmental studies. When he wasn’t
studying sustainability in the classroom, he was working
on campus in some related endeavor. Leary found various
ways to be involved, from deconstructing the old straw bale
house and collecting recycling to “cleaning up after trees”
as he assisted the grounds crew in the Scott Arboretum on
the occasional Sunday morning — never guessing that leaf
litter would be a critical component of breaking the cycle of
hunger and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa.
The cautionary tale of Easter Island inspired Leary’s
senior thesis on ecotourism. “They cut down all of their trees
to build boats to search for faraway lands they never found,”
he says. “The loss of tree cover led to soil erosion and the
extinction of diverse species of fish, mammals, and birds,
and the eventual collapse of the society.
“At Easter Island, we see in microcosm how quickly
humans can degrade and deforest a landscape. At a time
when billionaires are investing in interplanetary space
travel, history tells us we should be building our natural
resource base and protecting our food supply.”
Studying abroad in Zanzibar during his Swarthmore
years whetted his appetite to see more of the world. After
graduation, he arrived in Kaffrine, Senegal, as a Peace Corps
agroforestry extension agent. Staying with the family of
Omar Ndao, Leary began on-the-ground training in the
Wolof language and culture. He also witnessed the ravages
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39
40
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COURTESY OF TREES FOR THE FUTURE
COURTESY OF TREES FOR THE FUTURE
wrought by decades of growing monocultural cash crops
such as peanuts.
Leary knew that trees could help restore the soil so
farmers could grow diverse crops to feed their families,
which would in turn restore the physical and economic
health of these communities. He and Ndao worked together
to establish the first Forest Gardens. They’re a data-driven
solution to poverty, Leary says — severe food insecurity
of 83% drops to 14% after one year in the program. Forest
Garden farmers also harvest more diverse food all year
round: “It’s about having more baskets, not more eggs in one
basket.”
Ndao, who is now Trees for the Future’s plant-it-forward
supervisor in Senegal, speaks with a kind of wonder about
those years at the beginning of the project.
“We had no resources and we had to work very, very hard,
traveling village to village by horse cart, and doing all the
different steps to grow garab [trees] and plant them with
farmers throughout the community to get things started,”
Ndao says. When Leary returned to the United States and
found a job with Trees for the Future, an organization first
founded in 1989 by Dave Deppner, he continued this work
with Ndao and others and extended this network of local
community leaders.
In all, a dozen families across several communities
planted about 5,000 trees in the first year Ndao and Leary
labored together in Senegal. The hard work of that first
generation of families growing Forest Gardens soon began to
pay off. As their diverse crops grew, the idea began to spread.
“In Kaffrine, for example, there are many people in the
community who wanted to work but didn’t know what
path to take,” Ndao says. “The jardin-forêt [Forest Garden]
is perfect for farmers because their mind and heart are
together in the benefits and the system of the Forest Garden.
They’re able to work in both the dry season and the rainy
season.”
They’re also able to optimize the land they have instead
of seeking more land or having to work as laborers on other
people’s farms.
“Vegetable consumption has increased, people are
healthier,” Ndao says, “and the knowledge farmers now have
will enable them to farm the same land for the next 50 years.”
The Forest Garden model is “simple, replicable, and
scalable,” Leary says. “Trees are free fertilizer factories.
They help the land to be more resilient. Their roots channel
moisture into the ground, fix nitrogen in the soil, and prevent
erosion. They create thorny, green walls that keep goats and
other animals out of the garden they protect, they enrich
Collaboration with community members is key to the success
of Trees for the Future, says John Leary ’00, speaking at one of the
nonprofit’s team meetings in Kaffrine, Senegal. Senegal’s Forest
Gardens are a data-driven solution to poverty, he says.
the soil, and they dampen the power of storms and make the
growing environment calmer.”
As the gardens mature, Leary and Ndao have continued to
modify the model.
“In Senegal, we have a lot of different pests, like
nematodes, termites, and locusts, that attack the crops,”
Ndao says. And if farmers plant only one species of tree,
they become susceptible to worms and other bugs attacking
them. “Mixing different types of thorny, really hardy trees
together in the green walls makes them resistant to all kinds
of different pests,” Ndao says. “The system we have today is
helping thousands of families to create very strong barriers
around their fields that keep out not just goats but also
sheep and cows. They’ve even proven strong enough to keep
hippopotamuses out of the fields in Senegal.”
Diversity makes Forest Gardens, as well as the living
fences surrounding them, stronger.
Trees for the Future Marketing and Communications
Manager Lindsay Cobb sums it up well. “We’re committed
to helping people understand the connections between
reforestation and sustainable food systems,” Cobb says. “It’s
not just about planting trees.”
It’s also, Leary says, about what’s on our plates. Saving
the world from the cumulative effects of environmental
degradation by food systems requires disruption.
“The knowledge farmers now have will enable them to farm the same land for the next 50 years,”
says Omar Ndao, Trees for the Future’s plant-it-forward supervisor, with his son, Cheikh Tidiane, and
his wife, Fama, near a Forest Garden in Senegal.
“We need a great big reset in our food systems,” Leary
says. “We need to align our preferences with what our local
farmers can grow sustainably.”
Leary highlights the striking parallels between food
insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa as a result of decades of
growing monoculture crops with agrochemicals and what’s
happening in the U.S. as the effects of agribusiness using the
same practices become more and more evident. “When we
lose biodiversity, we lose the ability to adapt,” he says. And
preserving that precious biodiversity comes down to seeds.
“It’s also important to understand the destructive cycle
of GMO seeds and pesticides,” Cobb says. “The seeds can
survive the chemicals, but none of the flora and fauna can,
and so we kill precious plant and animal life.” The good news
is that Trees for the Future is providing guidance for many
different agribusiness companies that want to change their
practices.
Leary is also pleading with global influencers to lead by
providing “good rigor,” examining food systems and the
future of food. “We need to be able to grow food on this
planet for a long time to come,” he says, “and right now the
carbon footprint of most food is astronomical before the
farmer even puts the seed into the ground.” None of this
should come as a surprise, he adds: “Studying BSE [mad
cow disease] in a microbiology course at Swarthmore in the
late 1990s convinced me that harm comes from eating food
grown in weird ways.”
In losing our connections to local, seasonal food, we’ve
also lost connection to community, Leary says. “In Senegal,
for example, there’s a beautiful, delicious, and sustainable
food culture. If we were all eating locally, we’d be eating what
our neighbors eat.”
Leary and his wife, who is from Senegal, and their
two children, ages 9 and 12, regularly enjoy different
cuisines including “a rainbow of vegetables” from the
local community-supported agriculture program to which
they belong. A CSA, Leary says, is an example of the kind
of disruptive system that’s needed to bring about positive
change.
Today, the boy who colored tree trunks green is leading
a movement. As these trees, and knowledge, and the
commitment to change practices that degrade the planet
take root, there is hope. This year, the program will plant
more than 50 million trees across nine countries.
“Through the pandemic, we didn’t experience a single
interruption in our food supply,” Leary says. “Forest Garden
farmers also had a whole grocery store of food available
throughout the crisis. These closed local systems have so
much to teach us about our own fragility when we depend on
a global food system.”
FALL 2021
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
41
THE COMPANY OF TREES
Swarthmoreans share
their appreciation of
a few ever-changing,
deeply rooted, and
highly communicative
friends on campus
photos by
Laurence Kesterson
TREES IN FRONT OF PARRISH
“They give a very peaceful and
countrylike effect to the whole
campus. That’s always been part
of the charm of the College, this
physical aspect of having these
purposefully planted trees. I just
loved the effect.”
— Libby Murch Livingston ’41
TREE NEAR PARRISH AND CLOTHIER
“I was sitting at its base, my back
against the trunk, when I emerged
from the fog I’d fallen into after
hearing that John F. Kennedy had
been assassinated. I’d been on
the second floor of Wharton when
muffled tones on someone’s radio
conveyed that a monstrous and
momentous event had taken place.
It’s a stretch to suggest that the
tree was a sanctuary, but I used it
as one.
— Rob Lewine ’67
SEQUOIAS
“I am very fond of the sequoias
lining the path between LPAC and
Kohlberg. They are beautiful in
unique ways during each season,
and I find them very calming.”
— Bennett Drucker ’22
LILAC GROVE NEAR TROTTER
“I would study for finals under
the intoxicating fragrance of lilac
bushes. The weather would just
begin to warm, and thoughts would
drift towards plans for the summer.”
— William Liang ’87
RED OAK, NORTH SIDE OF ENTRANCE
DRIVE TO ROSE GARDEN CIRCLE.
DEDICATED ON FOUNDER’S DAY BY
ISAAC CLOTHIER.
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Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
FALL 2021
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
43
SWAMP WHITE OAK
“The majestic oaks lining Magill Walk are the trees
that speak to me, so to speak. In honor of ’63’s
50th Reunion, my class had a swamp white oak
planted in my honor on Magill Walk ... a particularly
meaningful gift because it is an underplanting that
will help sustain the walkway of oaks on Magill
Walk. I was not aware of ‘underplanting’ until I
learned about it at Swarthmore. And, as I have
learned more about trees, I am more partial to oaks
since they are native, which means they support
many more birds and insects than non-native trees.”
— Diana Judd Stevens ’63
AMERICAN ELM
“Asking the director of the Scott Arboretum for my
favorite tree on campus is a bit like asking your
grandmother who her favorite grandchild is ... but
today my answer is the magnificent American elm
along the railroad tracks. I marvel at its sheer size;
its fabulous buttressing moss-covered roots and
majestic umbrella-shaped broad canopy. Knowing
the history of this species in America makes me
appreciate the preciousness and rarity of having
an American elm of this stature on campus. This
tree predates the founding of the Arboretum in
1929 (being accessioned in 1932 as an existing
tree), so it is presumably well over a century
old. It stands 131 feet tall, and it has survived
the ravages of Dutch Elm disease (thus far) that
wiped out most American elms planted on college
campuses (including those that used to grace the
face of Parrish Hall) and throughout city streets
of America after the fungus was introduced into
the Unites States in the 1930s. This tree has
been designated a Heritage Tree in our ongoing
assessment of our tree collection to identify our
most precious trees among the over 3,000 trees
accessioned on campus.”
— Claire Sawyer, director of the Scott Arboretum
DWARF WHITE PINE
“On the walk from Parrish down to the BCC and
nearby Cunningham House is a very fine dwarf
white pine that I’m a very big fan of. I first came
across it freshman year as I walked around campus
as a part of my parking-enforcement job with
Public Safety. I made it a habit to try to remember
the names of all the trees I came across, and the
pine was always my favorite to walk by and call out
with its distinctive name and coloration over fall,
winter, and spring. I no longer have the same job on
campus, but as I walk by on occasion, I still call out
its name and appreciate its place in my heart.”
— Powell Sheagren ’22
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Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
DAWN REDWOOD,
METASEQUOIA ALLÉE
BETWEEN LPAC AND
KOLHBERG HALL
OAKS LINING
MAGILL WALK
AMERICAN ELM
BESIDE SEPTA TRACKS
DOUBLE DOGWOOD,
NORTH SIDE OF
KOHLBERG HALL
FALL 2021
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45
“During my undocumented
childhood ... I arrived at
elementary school every
day starving.”
© RYAN MUIR
COURTESY OF QIAN JULIE WANG ’09
PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
— Qian Julie Wang ’09
“Daily, I fought the urge to rescue perfectly edible meals from the garbage,” recalls Qian Julie Wang ’09. Her new memoir, Beautiful Country,
surveys the impact of hunger in undocumented children in the United States.
THE SHADOW
OF HUNGER
personal reflection by Qian Julie Wang ’09
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Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
MY FIRST YEAR at Swarthmore in 2005, I gained 20
pounds.
This is certainly not unusual for freshmen, but in my case,
it was for atypical reasons.
During my undocumented childhood, a period of extreme
poverty that I never dared speak of during my time on
campus, I arrived at elementary school every day starving,
stomach churning toward the free meal that would be
slopped onto my tray at lunchtime. For decades thereafter,
the shadow of hunger lived in my stomach.
It was the thing that commanded me to binge whenever I
came upon a buffet, that whispered that the only way to stave
off the hunger of my past was to eat all of the free food that
ever came before me.
The first time I entered Sharples, I wandered from food
station to food station with suspended breath. I could hardly
believe the range of options, and made my way from the
salad bar to the pasta assortment, the entrée section and the
ice cream spread.
My only concern was the size of the trays, so I left my first
visit to the serving section with a sampling on small plates
and plans to return for seconds. And during every Sharples
outing that first year, I always returned for seconds. And
thirds. And sometimes even fourths. I never left behind a
single crumb, stuffing everything into my stomach before
smuggling some more out the back door and across the field
to Mertz.
The only thing that astounded me more than Sharples’s
offerings was the sheer amount of food my fellow students
dumped into nearby trash cans.
Daily, I fought the urge to rescue perfectly edible meals
from the garbage. The waste I witnessed at Sharples threw
into relief the hunger painted on the faces of the homeless
lining the streets of Philadelphia, where I worked several
part-time jobs. That contrast weighed on me far more than
my newfound pounds.
It was clear early that my appreciation of Sharples was not
widely shared, but I would not realize just how rare it was
until one specific incident.
After loading a plate with a vegetable I’d never heard of,
with a name I could not pronounce (arugula), I approached
a table in the side room with my new friends — all of us still
in that precarious need-to-impress stage — and marveled in
awe: “Can you guys believe the spread today?!” I met silence,
followed by a chuckle and then another, before laughter
crested down the table.
I bit the insides of my cheeks, my appetite gone, while the
friend closest to me explained that they had all just been
complaining about how horrible the food was. I stayed quiet
for the rest of the meal, but cleared my plates nevertheless. It
marked the one time I did not dare return for seconds.
From then on, I experienced a different Sharples. I
observed the disdain with which my classmates surveyed
the offerings. The meals that were poked before being tossed.
The flippancy with which my peers regarded the many
culinary options before them. Something was wrong with
my relationship to the food, I figured. I was damaged in some
way; I was not normal. And slowly, over the course of my
years at Swarthmore, I learned to paint that nonchalance
onto myself, to hide my enthusiasm for the feast at every
meal, to prod at my tray with indifference, and later, to even
— much as it pained me — leave food still sitting on my tray
as I walked toward the trash bins.
As this mimicry went on, the pounds fell off, but the
weight of shame on my shoulders grew. I went on to graduate
still pretending that food did not matter as much as it did to
me — as my childhood prescribed it always would.
It was not until after years of therapy — of struggling to
make peace with my past while etching a balanced, ethical
relationship with food — that I realized my response to
Sharples had been far from abnormal. Nor, alas, were the
circumstances of my childhood.
It was, indeed, the atmosphere at the Sharples dining
room that had been abnormal, problematic. For despite all
the campus discourse about anti-racism and wealth equality,
there had been so much waste. I’m sure that things have
changed — and are changing still — since I left campus some
12 years ago. But it bears stating that one cannot in good
conscience stand for everything Swarthmore does while
generating the waste I watched its student body, myself
included, create in abundance.
One cannot be passionate about demolishing systemic
barriers of racism and wealth inequality while remaining
apathetic to food sustainability and climate change. The
brunt of our changing ecosystems falls first upon people of
color and the poor, long before it will ever threaten to touch
the perimeter of our lush campus.
As such, one could argue, perhaps, that it is none of our
business, our responsibility. But that has never been the
stance of the Swarthmore I know. Nor would it be true to the
beating heart of the Swarthmore we love.
Editor’s note: Swarthmore has committed to becoming a Zero
Waste campus in efforts to reduce environmental harm and
promote just and sustainable systems. Since 2016, the College
has undertaken a substantial effort to reduce the waste that
we generate and to divert waste away from incineration in
Chester, Pa., and into compost or recycling. The College has
also built a fully campuswide “postconsumer” compost system
that offers compost bins in every campus building, managed
by our Environmental Services team and the student Green
Advisors.
FALL 2021
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47
FROM
THE
GROUND
UP
Buy local produce. Eat less meat.
Reduce your carbon footprint. These
steps sound simple enough, but they
barely scratch the surface in the fight
to preserve the climate. Adapting to
the crisis and reducing its effects
requires context and creativity, with
major changes to agriculture,
advocacy, and policy. From seed
power to the inner life of cows,
Swarthmoreans discuss some of the
work to be done, recognizing that
when it comes to the environment,
there’s no one-size-fits-all approach.
by Elizabeth Slocum
illustrations by Ayang Cempaka
48
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
THE ROOT OF THE MATTER
Eric Bishop von Wettberg ’99 is unearthing solutions to
climate change by turning to the earth itself.
An associate professor of plant and soil science at the
University of Vermont, von Wettberg studies root systems
in chickpeas and other legumes to better understand the
relationship between crops and carbon. By comparing the
roots of domesticated plants with those of wild varieties, von
Wettberg and his research team aim to improve the carboncapture process, to the benefit of crops and the surrounding
soil.
“At some point, we need to take the carbon out of the
atmosphere,” says von Wettberg, a biology major at
Swarthmore with a Ph.D. in ecology and evolution from
Brown University. “Because soils can hold 10 times more
carbon than the atmosphere, and because in agricultural
soil, putting more carbon into it generally makes it better,
the most ethical place to put carbon at scale is into the soil.
“If we want to achieve that, we need to understand how
our crops came to put less carbon into the soil.”
Since the dawn of agriculture, crops have been selected for
their output of seeds, with attention focused on their growth
above the ground, von Wettberg says. As a result, farmers
inadvertently selected for crops that put less back into the
soil, with weaker root systems that thrived only in tilled
land.
Wild chickpeas, meanwhile, grow on mountains and in
deep rock in their native Turkey, their roots better suited
for unideal growing conditions. By cross-pollinating these
varieties with cultivars in the lab, von Wettberg’s team aims
to improve genetic diversity while building climate-change
resistance into agricultural systems.
“Da Vinci famously said that we know more about the
celestial bodies than we do the ground beneath our feet,”
von Wettberg says. “We have struggled to understand what
goes on below, because to assess a root system, you basically
have to take a shovel and dig it up, and that’s inherently
destructive.”
Plant root systems can be compared to the human
digestive tract, von Wettberg says, with the microbiome
playing a large role in their health. “Plants are taking up
water, nutrients, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium from the
soil,” he says, “and their efficiency at doing that is in large
part determined by how well they interact with the millions
of microbes in that soil.”
Understanding this is important as plant researchers
address the needs created by climate change. Beyond his
study of chickpeas, von Wettberg is working with seed gene
FALL 2021
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49
HOW TO LIBERATE THAT FROZEN
FEELING AND BUILD SOME
CLIMATE MOMENTUM AS
TEMPERATURES RISE:
ALUMNI NOTEBOOK
“One of the ways we can protect the crop diversity
we value most is to save seeds of our own crops, and
that can happen in one’s garden — it doesn’t need
to be at a university lab or a seed company. If you
have your grandmother’s seeds, her Ukrainian black
tomato or just a New Jersey heirloom
beefsteak tomato, you can save
your own seeds. That is a
small step, but it preserves
that bit of crop genetic
diversity.”
— Eric Bishop
von Wettberg ’99
“Be an advocate.
Give to causes that
are getting engaged
in lobbying. It’s a really
important time right now; with
the change in the administration,
climate change is way back on the agenda.
And be an educated consumer. Read good books, like
Michael Mann’s The New Climate War.”
— Polly Ericksen ’87
“Some people like being more
hands-on, by joining a
community garden or
meeting like-minded
people. That’s always
a good start: finding
a community that’s
interested in the
same things and being
physically involved in it,
to be more connected and
rooted.”
— Eriko Shrestha ’19
banks to preserve crop genetic diversity, and he’s helping
resettled refugees produce crops of cultural significance
in Vermont, where the growing conditions are typically far
different from their home countries in South Asia and subSaharan Africa.
Von Wettberg says expanding the typical Western
agricultural rotation to a four-crop system would further
benefit plant and soil health and help diversify farmers’
incomes. One plan he’s exploring would round out the corn
and soybean rotation with winter wheat and mung bean, a
quick-growing legume often used in East Asian and Indian
dishes. Though mung beans aren’t widely popular yet in the
United States, von Wettberg wouldn’t be surprised if they
took off.
One food company, he notes, Eat Just Inc., recently
created a plant-based egg, catering to those Americans
cutting animal products from their diets — often in the name
of helping the planet.
The product’s main ingredient? Mung beans.
RUMINATING ON RUMINANTS
The data on bovine flatulence can be hard to stomach.
Livestock accounts for 14.5% of global greenhouse-gas
emissions, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture
Organization, largely the result of the methane they produce
through ruminant digestion. These findings have led to
global calls for reforms on how cattle are raised, as well as to
how meat and dairy products are consumed.
“IT’S IMPORTANT THAT WE NOT
TAKE SOLUTIONS FROM AMERICA
AND IMPOSE THEM ON AFRICAN
SMALLHOLDERS, WHERE THE
RATIONALE AND THE PROFIT
MARGINS FOR LIVESTOCKKEEPING ARE REALLY QUITE
DIFFERENT.”
— Polly Ericksen ’87
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Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
The models driving these demands, however, are typically
based on a Western industrial farming point of view. This
leaves ranchers from Africa, Latin America, and Asia out
of the conversation, says Polly Ericksen ’87, the program
leader for sustainable livestock systems at the International
Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). Not all cattle are raised
in the same way, she says — and not all people have the
luxury of replacing their protein sources.
“There’s a lot of data in Europe and in North America
on how cows digest, on where carbon can be stored in
agricultural situations, on how people will change their
behavior and respond to different incentives,” she says.
“None of that applies to smallholder farming situations in
Africa, where people keep livestock for different reasons.
They’ve adapted to a host of not just climatic but other kinds
of stressors as well.”
A history major at Swarthmore with a master’s in
economics and a Ph.D. in soil science, both from the
University of Wisconsin–Madison, Ericksen has spent more
than 20 years working on agricultural development, naturalresource management, and global environmental change in
developing countries. At ILRI, a global nonprofit research
organization based in Nairobi, Kenya, Ericksen spends much
of her time correcting assumptions about global livestock
production while driving home the
realities of African systems in climate
change discussions.
Unlike cows in the U.S., animals in
Kenya are often hungry, as the region’s
two dry seasons limit the supply of
food for livestock, Ericksen notes. And
hungry cows digest very differently
from well-fed cows.
“We’ll never be able to feed every cow
in Africa with the resource intensities
that you can in the U.S.,” she says.
“There isn’t enough land, there isn’t
enough money, there isn’t enough
fertilizer. One thing we have learned
is that you need different solutions for
different systems. It’s important that
we not take solutions from America and
impose them on African smallholders,
where the rationale and the profit
margins for livestock-keeping are really
quite different.”
In addition to elevating
the agricultural data from
underrepresented regions, Ericksen works with public- and
private-sector partners in those areas on addressing and
adapting to climate change. Improving the quality of cows’
feed baskets can significantly reduce their carbon output,
Ericksen says, as can managing manure in confined feeding
operations. “We’ve also found that the health of animals has
a big impact on their productivity and is another promising
opportunity to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions,” she says.
“But the challenge for the livestock sector is how will you
ever get to total emissions reduction, because ruminant
digestion will always produce methane,” she adds. “That’s
why we need to look at land-based mitigation options for
livestock systems.”
MODEL BEHAVIOR
The Paris Agreement of 2015 brought the world together
in a unified front to confront the challenges of climate
change. Through a series of pledges, countries set targets for
reducing their greenhouse-gas emissions with an eye toward
stemming global warming.
But aspirations are different from actions.
As an implementation specialist at Climate Analytics, an
international organization that advises partner countries
on solutions to climate change, Eriko Shrestha ’19 works
FALL 2021
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51
closely with nations to identify measures they can take to
reach their emissions goals.
“We talk to government stakeholders, sometimes
private-sector utilities, and we make recommendations
— identifying the lowest hanging fruit for them to tackle,
and then moving up from there,” says Shrestha, whose
regions include the Caribbean and her home country,
Nepal. For a target that focuses on renewable energy, for
example, Shrestha’s team might create a scenario combining
diesel generators with wind, solar, and geothermal power.
Following a series of simulations, the team will devise an
action plan, taking into account “what’s feasible financially
as well as in the time horizon, and what’s existing on the
ground in terms of infrastructure.”
Context plays a key role, Shrestha says, especially in
developing countries where resources may not always
be available. To gain buy-in for their recommendations
from national governments and others from their target
sectors, Climate Analytics employs workers who live in the
individual countries, or who are otherwise deeply familiar
with their cultures and complexities. What works in, say,
52
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
“WE WORK WITH DEVELOPING
COUNTRIES THAT AREN’T
HISTORICALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR
THE EMISSIONS, YET THEY’RE
THE MOST VULNERABLE TO
CLIMATE CHANGE.”
— Eriko Shrestha ’19
Germany might not be right for Nepal, Shrestha notes,
“because Nepal doesn’t have the same technology, finances,
and responsibility.”
Though based in New York, as a native Nepali, Shrestha
understands the country’s unique circumstances. In her
role she works directly with a small on-the-ground team in
Nepal as well as with the nation’s Ministry of Forests and
Environment.
“Sometimes, coming in as an organization, it can be very
top-down to be like, ‘Nepal needs to reduce emissions by
this much,’ when why should Nepal do that?” she says. “It’s a
developing country, and its national grid is mostly powered
by hydropower — how can we reduce a lot of emissions from
that?”
“There’s also an ethical component in that we work with
developing countries that aren’t historically responsible for
the emissions, yet they’re the most vulnerable to climate
change,” she adds. “So they’re more inclined to be more
ambitious to pressure more industrialized countries to do
the same, and improve their own resiliency against disasters
because rebuilding is costly.”
A political science and environmental studies major at
Swarthmore, Shrestha took an interest in climate policy
as a Lang Opportunity Scholar, working on an electronicwaste management project in Kathmandu. Frustrated by the
difficulties she encountered surrounding hazardous waste
and recycling, she realized the importance of government
policy in laying the groundwork for environmental reform.
“Now, my take on policy is that we need to work in the
private sector, because there’s a lot of nudging that needs
to be done,” she says. “It’s an evolution of me learning how
things work, and figuring things out from there.
“This is clearly a complex issue that one person can’t
solve. How can we all be part of the solution?”
class notes
A TREASURY OF ALUMNI-RELATED ITEMS
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bit.ly/SwatTalks
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students.
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alum for Alumni Council by
Nov. 1.
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LAURENCE KESTERSON
SWARTHMORE DISCUSSION
GROUP
Join us in this series, held
remotely this fall, to hear
knowledgeable speakers and
engage in lively conversation
with local community members
as well as Swarthmore staff,
faculty, and alumni.
swarthmore.edu/
discussion-group
Sky Park ’24 (left) and Paris Shan ’23 assist with check-in at International Student Orientation in August.
1943
Betty Glenn Webber
bettywebber22@yahoo.com
Those of us physically unscathed
by the pandemic and its losses
are blessed, and those touched
more closely have our concern and
sympathy.
Many of us are sharing a common
experience: the arrival of the
century mark. I was glad to hear
from Diana Judd Stevens ’63, a
Crosslands friend of Connie Spink
Fleming, about the celebration for
Connie’s 100th birthday April 15.
The Zoom gathering included a
recap of Connie’s life with photos,
personal greetings, appreciation
of her community leadership at
Crosslands, and family highlights.
Diana said Connie reported that
each of her three children attended
Quaker schools, including daughter
Connie Fleming Strickland ’71.
Before the pandemic, Diana and
Paul Stevens ’65 had several
dinners with Connie.
My take on my looming birthday
was that I am fortunate to be well
and active but am functioning with
assorted faculties beyond their
use-by dates.
Mary Stewart Trageser reflected
on Swarthmore memories, and I
echoed, word for word, her remark
on being an English major but
one who hasn’t written a novel.
During my news-gathering, Mary
contributed content and greetings.
You all realize, of course, that there
is no column without your input.
1949
Marjorie Merwin Daggett
mmdaggett@verizon.net
Bill Hirsch reminisced about the
late economics professor Patrick
Murphy Malin, who was a diplomat
favored by President Franklin
Roosevelt and an early proponent
of renting rather than owning a car.
Elizabeth Urey Baranger died in
May 2019, leaving three children
to whom we extend belated
sympathy. Elizabeth was an
FALL 2021
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
53
class notes
honors math graduate, a nuclear
physicist, and a professor at the
University of Pittsburgh, where
she was later associate dean for
graduate studies and vice provost;
while there, she worked to improve
the status of women, especially
in the sciences. I remember her
confident smile as she told the late
Dr. Forster that the mystery liquid
she’d been given to test was just
distilled water.
Our sympathy to the family of
Eleanor Lacy Brightman, a member
of the Folk Dance club and honors
grad with a master’s in social work.
She worked at Connecticut Valley
Hospital and was married to the
late Rev. Robert Brightman ’50.
Condolences to the family of
Peggy MacLaren Ulrich, who died
in May. She was dean of students
and admissions at Swarthmore,
at Westminster Choir College in
Princeton, N.J., and at Wheaton
College. In 1997, she married the
late Alden Ulrich and lived in
Philadelphia, volunteering and
endowing a scholarship at the
Vocal Arts Academy.
I will miss Ted Wright, who
faithfully contributed to class
notes and with whom I enjoyed
conversations about the Dutch
settlers of New York. Our sympathy
to his wife, family, and friends. He
served in the Navy, graduated Phi
Beta Kappa, earned his doctorate
at Yale, married Susan Standfast in
1967, and taught government and
political science at Bates College,
the University of Chicago, and
SUNY–Albany. He was an active
member and past president of the
Dutch Settlers Society of Albany.
Also in May, Bill Eldredge died in
Hudson, Ohio, and our sympathies
go to his wife and two children.
He served in the Korean War
and began his long career with
Sherwin-Williams in 1953. Bill
married Patricia Sawyer in 1960,
and they had two children. He
served on the Hudson Planning
Board and that of his Unitarian
Universalist church and was
president of the Hudson Library
and Historical Society. He also
kept in close touch with College
friends and their wives, including
the late Dean Peabody, the late
Joel Siner, the late Bill and Susan
Lurie Lichten, and Dan Beshers.
54
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
1951
Elisabeth “Liesje”
Boessenkool Ketchel
lizketchel30@gmail.com
Gerry Pollack reports: “Don Blough
and I traveled to Brookline, Mass.,
to have dinner (a semi-annual
event) with Arthur Mattuck. We
were roommates in our final year
at Swarthmore. We were joined
by Lotte Lazarsfeld Bailyn, Lisa
Steiner ’54, and my wife, Pat.”
John McIntyre “can still walk a
mile, and sing and play the piano at
the same time. My wife is a joy and
looks up new recipes for dinners
chez nous.”
Robin Cooley Krivanek reports:
“I have finished my second tour of
duty on the board of the Sanibel
Captiva Conservation Foundation; I
still volunteer with our local social
services agency FISH and with my
United Church of Christ church. I
was surprised and honored to be
named a Grande Dame for a Fort
Myers, Fla., girls school fundraiser.”
In D.C., Dot Wynne Marschak
“taught a course in July (on Zoom)
at the Osher Lifelong Learning
Institute on E.L. Doctorow’s
Ragtime. I also continue to organize
programs for the Woman’s National
Democratic Club on Zoom. I take
classes, participate in book clubs,
and engage in a weekly trivia
contest with my two kids, who live
in California. I belong to a Village,
which is part of a movement that
brings us old folks together in selfhelp groups in order to ‘stay put.’
Through my nonprofit, Community
Help in Music Education, I continue
to be a strong promoter and
supporter of the Chester Children’s
Chorus.”
Bob McCarthy says: “At 92,
I’m still doing the same fitness
routine that I was doing 20 years
ago. However, memory is another
story. I have to say to myself, ‘Be
happy. You’re alive.’ And my wife,
Marge, is still with me. But I’ve
given up woodworking classes.
I’ve resigned from the docent
program at the Santa Fe Museum
of Indian Arts and Culture. I
dropped out of the Mesa Prieta
Rock Art Survey program to locate
and catalog Pueblo-culture rock
art. Still, a longtime buddy and I
regularly drive 25 miles on tracks
across the desert to our assigned
site: an old Native village, long
unoccupied, though we are told,
never ‘abandoned’ — it belongs to
the ancestors. Our assignment is
to assure that there are no signs
of anyone digging in search of
old Indian pots. My wife and I are
still promoting labyrinth walking
as a meditation tool, building
labyrinths in backyards and church
yards as well as in a public park.
Anyone curious can check the
World-Wide Labyrinth Locator at
labyrinthlocator.com.”
We have lost several classmates:
Richard Dole Jr., Joy Sundgaard
Kaiser, Sumi Mitsudo Koide, and
Woodlief Thomas.
1952
Barbara Wolff Searle
bsearle70@msn.com
A bit late, here are a few highlights
from Roger Feldman’s Christmas
letter from London, where he
and his wife live. “As a former
epidemiologist,” he writes, “it has
been interesting to be an observer
rather than an active participant” in
the pandemic. The couple have not
seen their U.S. and New Zealand
family members for more than a
year. “On a more cheerful note, our
allotment plot with a close neighbor
yielded a modest second-year
harvest from two Victoria plum
trees, rhubarb, and a cluster of
Tayberry vines. The rewards are
entirely emotional; these must be
the most expensive plums and
rhubarb in the world.”
The rest of my news, sadly,
concerns three people who have
died. David Lemke died just
after Christmas. He graduated
with an engineering degree and
worked as a civil engineer in
steel fabrication. He is survived
by his wife and several children,
grandchildren, and nieces and
nephews. Robert Ammerman died
in May. He graduated with highest
honors in philosophy and later
was a professor at the University
of Wisconsin. He was passionate
about teaching and introduced
new and popular courses in diverse
topics in and related to philosophy.
He is survived by his son and
grandchildren.
Sybil Hillman Pike died in March
at the Crosslands Retirement
Community in Kennett Square, Pa.
The first part of her career was
as a Library of Congress research
librarian. Later, she and partner
Doris Grumbach, an author, opened
and operated Wayward Books, a
D.C. bookstore.
Sybil and I were roommates
our first year at Swarthmore and
remained friends. Our start was
rocky; it took quite a while before
we let down our guards and
became friends. We didn’t know
at the time that all the women on
our hall were Jewish. The dean
thought she was doing us a favor
by housing us with people we’d feel
“comfortable” with.
Please let me know how you are
doing, especially if you have stories
you’d like to share about David,
Robert, or Sybil.
1953
Carol Lange Davis
cldavis1105@gmail.com
Paul Kuznets wrote about the
cicadas inhabiting his Elm Heights
neighborhood, next to the Indiana
University campus in Bloomington:
“One begins to hear the roar of
the cicadas and then sees netted
shrubs and small trees. Outside the
netting, leaves are covered with
the carapaces of cicadas that have
emerged from the ground before
flying off to find a mate. Go half
a mile in either direction and it is
quiet. Fortunately, they are here
for only two months, after which
we can return to worrying about
the usual things like COVID-19 and
climate change.”
I chatted with Nina Felber
Streitfeld, who has had several
cornea transplants with her sight
seriously affected, making reading
difficult. Now, the dentist has
covered her front teeth with some
sort of preservative to keep them
from crumbling, so her teeth look
better than she does. Nina is on the
board of directors of Save Westport
(Conn.) Now.
Not to be outdone by Nina,
Stanley Mills had a cornea
transplant last year. When we last
spoke, he was not sure whether it
had improved his sight.
Deane Bellow Schneider died in
Bethesda, Md., June 16, 2019. Gail
Eaton Renner died Feb. 1. She is
survived by daughter Jane and
son John, as well as a grandson
and granddaughter. Robert Griest
died Jan. 29. His wife of 64 years
and three daughters, as well as
seven grandchildren and greatgrandchildren, survive him.
Eleanor Cohn Kane died April 28
in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., where she
had a private medical practice for
many years. I remember Elie as
freshmen in Parrish E3. All that
studying she did really paid off. See
Their Light Lives On for her many
accomplishments. Elie is survived
by son Michael and grandson
Maximillian.
Please send me your news; there
must be something to share with
the rest of the class.
1954
Elizabeth Dun Colten
lizcolten@aol.com
I need input to make your column
more interesting — or I will have to
write about me.
Bill Armstrong tested positive for
COVID-19 in November and spent
the next six months recovering. He
commented with humor that for the
first time in 50 years, he had plenty
of time to grow a beard.
Peter Van Pelt serves on the
boards of the Lathrop (retirement)
Community and Valley Classical
Concerts, both in Northampton,
Mass. He planned a summer visit
to Maine to see his son and also
a trip to visit longtime friends in
Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. He
is in occasional contact with Dick
Carle and has had email exchanges
with Eric Gillett.
Jay Ochroch and his wife and Fred
and Elena Sogan Kyle had their
first face-to-face get together in 15
months at a Japanese restaurant
in Center City Philadelphia. Jay
confessed that to survive the
pandemic, he and his wife became
gym rats at their condo. Although
Philadelphia shut down during the
pandemic, Fred and Elena survived
reasonably well.
Franz Allina’s March 30, 2020,
death was listed in the winter
Their Light Lives On. Son Eric
wrote that his Swarthmore friends
continued to be an important part
of Franz’s life, including Victor
Navasky, who was best man at
Franz’s wedding and made remarks
in his memory at a Committee to
Protect Journalists board meeting.
Later in life, Franz attended
Cardozo School of Law in NYC
with a particular interest in First
Amendment issues. He had the
support of his politically active
wife, Marcia, and children Eric
and Amy.
Alison Griffith Tennyson, an
intrepid traveler and longtime
D.C. resident, died April 9. She
spent her adult life contributing
to her community, loved the
arts, especially opera, and was a
staunch supporter of gay rights,
but her first love was Europe. She
is survived by daughter Leslie and
grandson Luke.
Grace Bunker Lowney died April
28. She raised two children while
getting a child psychology Ph.D.
from the University of Michigan.
She worked in education,
volunteered at the Unitarian
Universalist church and the League
of Women Voters, and traveled
extensively. Daughter Catherine
’82 would welcome memories of
Grace’s time at Swarthmore.
Janet Barkdoll ’22 is the 2020–21
recipient of the Class of 1954
Scholarship. She is and honors
mathematics major with a minor
in studio art. Janet grew up in
Vermont, and her rural background
makes her unusual on campus.
1955
Bernard Webb
bethel4684@gmail.com
Many of you may have stories
to tell about your experience in
dealing with the pandemic; please
consider sharing those. Also, be
sure to read about those who have
passed in the thoughtfully worded
Their Light Lives On.
We are saddened by the death
of Carl “Punky” Fristrom. He was
remarkable, having survived polio
in his youth and then participating
in Swarthmore athletics. He had
a noteworthy career in athletic
coaching and set a fine example in
reporting regularly in these notes.
Meanwhile, here in our small
town, we appreciated the ability
of the local stores to weather the
pandemic. Our coffee shop has
been thriving; a coffee and a muffin
is a regular Friday ritual for Ethel
Smith Webb ’58 and me.
Hugh Strachan says his senior
community in Boca Raton, Fla.,
handled the pandemic well. Hugh
likes to sing and is active in the
Master Chorale of South Florida,
whose works had been on hold.
Ron Decker has not minded being
cooped up in an apartment building
in Chicago with a gorgeous view
of the sunrise over Lake Michigan.
Normally, he and his wife travel
regularly, but they have “not gone
anywhere” during the pandemic.
Sara Hall Todd’s “senior
community of 1,600 and several
hundred staff” steered their way
through the pandemic successfully
and were edging back to normalcy.
She had just returned from a trip
to Tucson, Ariz., where she visited
old friends. “I am making up for lost
time while I can still get around.”
Tom Preston is “no longer on
Lopez Island, Wash., but we have
just had the longest-ever dry and
warm weather in April in the Seattle
area.” Previously, Ted Phillips and
Tom laid out their connections to
Lopez Island.
Sally Schneckenburger Rumbaugh
weathered a health crisis and
recovered nicely. At such times, she
reaps the benefit of a daughter and
granddaughter living nearby.
Ron Decker received a note from
the wife of Paul Marcus that he
“passed away May 8 after a very
brief stay in the hospital and due
to his heart and lung issues dating
back to surgery in 2018.” Paul was
a former roommate of Ron and a
fellow member of Phi Delta Theta.
Also lost to us are Judith AschGoodkin and Alice Lund Norris. Our
thoughts are with their loved ones.
This update is from Bill Dominick:
“Last July, Phyllis Klock Dominick
’57 and I moved to the Cedarfield
continuing care retirement
community in Richmond, Va. The
combination of our ages and our
general health brought us to the
realization that we no longer could
nor should be living on our own.” It
took awhile for them to get used to
the small apartment and feel like
“one of the gang.” All five children
and their spouses, as well as 11
grandchildren, used to get together
every five years for a family reunion
at some warm, exotic location over
the winter holidays. Now, the older
grandchildren are on their own and
employed, and “we’re not as mobile
as we once were. So, for the first
time in some 40 years, we were
at home this past December. Life
moves on, as they say.”
1956
Caro Luhrs
celuhrs@verizon.net
Deven Ayambem ’24 is our 2020–21
class scholarship recipient.
Swarthmore has allowed him to
understand perspectives unlike his
own, giving great meaning to his
life. An English major, Deven has
three passions: STEM, dance, and
powerlifting. He was the first-place
winner of the Pennsylvania State
Powerlifting Championships.
In 1954, Phil Hawes reluctantly left
Swarthmore to pursue architecture,
and he’s still going strong. In 2020,
he taught immersion courses in
sustainable design at the Maharishi
FALL 2021
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
55
class notes
International University in Fairfield,
Iowa. This involved developing a
new model for 20 acres on which
MIU had placed 200 trailers for
the last 40 years as “temporary”
student-faculty housing.
Barbara Troxell and husband
Gene Boutilier live at Pilgrim Place
in Claremont, Calif., where he is
the resident moderator and on the
board. Barbara chairs the Napier
Initiative Council, a partnership
between Pilgrim Place and the five
Claremont Colleges to encourage
leadership for social change. As
ministers, both are deeply involved
in two Claremont churches.
I hope you were able to participate
in our spring class Zoom hosted
by Eric Osterweil in Brussels and
starring Carl Levin, the longestserving U.S. senator in Michigan
history, who sadly died in July. It
was a great discussion about the
responsibility of elected officials for
truthfulness and decency. Carl said
his experience on Swarthmore’s
student council and Detroit’s city
council taught him that “you can’t
legislate without compromise.”
I am also sad to report the death
of Carolyn “Cabbie” Shuler Minionis
on Oct. 8, 2020. She always had
a bright smile and a happy laugh.
A chemistry major, she was on the
varsity lacrosse and basketball
teams and in the College orchestra.
Cabbie was a high school teacher
of science, math, and photography
on Long Island, N.Y. She also was
principal violist in the North Shore
(Long Island) Symphony. Cabbie’s
husband, Roger, predeceased her.
She is survived by four children,
Ron, David ’87, Sandra, and Laura
’91, and eight grandchildren.
Additionally, I am sad to report
the death of Gerard “Gerry” Swope
on May 3, 2020, in Woods Hole,
Mass. He was only in our class
from 1952 to 1954. At 18, Gerry
was drafted into the Army and
served with the Medical Corps in
Korea. He completed his bachelor’s
in accounting at Babson College
and later earned an MBA from
Harvard. He was a manager at
PricewaterhouseCoopers and CFO
of two D.C. companies. A husband,
father, and grandfather with a
subtle wit and dry sense of humor,
he is survived by wife Mary, sons
Timothy and Ian, brother John, and
56
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
three grandchildren. Our thoughts
are with all.
Christopher “Kit” Lukas is an
Emmy winner for his work as a
writer and director in commercial
and public television. He has also
written four novels and seven
nonfiction books. His latest is
Carrying a Torch and Other Tales
of Love, Lust, and Loss, a series
of engaging stories available
at tamupress.com. By the way,
how many of you knew that Kit
studied conducting under Leonard
Bernstein?
1957
Minna Newman Nathanson
jm@nathansons.net
Deb Smith Dempsey wrote that on
a visit to Maine, her daughter drove
her to visit Eleanor “Polly” Witte
Wright. They each sat with their
children “in decorously masked
distance … and felt our way back to
a friendship from many years ago.
Now, we are free to email back and
forth and say some of the things
you can’t tell the children.”
Maxine Marcus Boshes moved
to Sacramento, Calif., 16 years
ago to be near the families of her
daughter and son. The family has a
history of early childhood teachers,
including Maxine, her mom, and
her daughter. When the children’s
center in Santa Monica, Calif.,
where Maxine taught closed, she
enjoyed backyard family picnics,
virtual writing critiques, and walks
with a masked neighbor.
Katherine Applegate, who
retired from teaching community
college economics, said that
since COVID-19, she’s done what
she’s always done in trying times:
gone back to school. She’s taking
classes with the Oregon State
University Extension Master
Gardeners to support landscaping
a yard on the edge of a high
(3,800-foot) desert.
Katherine wrote that Debby Gross
Farrington, who died in October
2020, was a fine arts major whose
interest in the arts continued
throughout her life. Almost all of
Debby’s letters included some
discussion of an exhibit, collection,
museum, or local arts and crafts
show.
I was saddened to learn of the
death of Mary Boyce Gelfman,
who used her graduate education
and legal degrees in advocacy for
special education students. We
met occasionally on Cape Cod,
where we each had a house. I’ll
mostly miss her wit — always
cleverly on point, but never mean.
Mayer Davidson kept in touch
with the late Gordon Power
when both ended up in academic
medicine in Southern California.
Besides securing 30-plus years
of NIH research funding, Gordon
had a talent for creating complex
projects, including building his
own airplane (that late wife Peggy
Condon Power ’59 persuaded
him not to fly), making intricate
furniture, and building a fourbedroom, two-story house whose
roof he was repairing before he
succumbed to COVID-19. Gordon
attended medical school with
Ferris Hall, who recalled Gordon
telling him about playing a game of
mental chess with another student
at a Swarthmore football game
until they left the stadium to settle
a disagreement on a chess board
in the dorm.
Cora Diamond thrives on Zoom.
She and sister Julie Diamond
’65 had a Zoom “conversation”
with Megan Laverty of Teachers’
College at Columbia about Julie’s
book Kindergarten: A Teacher, Her
Students, and a Year of Learning.
Cora participated in a class via
Zoom at the University of Chicago,
presenting a paper there and again
at Oxford; she also held Zoom
workshop presentations on Ludwig
Wittgenstein and Iris Murdoch. All
this and her dog keep her active.
Peter Rosi died in March. In
his 50-year medical practice in
Alaska, he assisted thousands of
mothers to deliver their babies at
home. He and first wife Charlotte
had five children and then adopted
four brothers. He is survived by
eight children, 18 grandchildren,
and 15 great grandchildren. Pete
and second wife Leone traveled
widely, particularly focusing on
monasteries.
1958
Marianne Wertheim Makman
maynardmakman@gmail.com
Linda Howard Zonana
lhzonana@yahoo.com
We are sad to learn of the death
of Edwina “Edie” Parker Furman,
whose obituary appears in Their
Light Lives On.
Janet Smith Warfield wrote that
in 2020 she formed the educational
nonprofit Planetary Peace, Power,
and Prosperity Legacy Foundation.
Its twice-monthly virtual gatherings
include “‘stewards’ from all over
the planet who share their gifts
and skills with one another in
respectful conversations.” Janet’s
second book, Surrendering into
Soul, is being published. Also, she
has completed a series of podcasts
on Bold Brave Media and has
been interviewed on podcasts and
live-streams, including The Beyond
Growth Show, Better Your Business
in 30 Minutes, and The Wellness
Universe Inspired Sessions.
Charles “Tex” Wyndham, after
congratulating us on succeeding
Vera Lundy Jones as class
secretary, said his marriage to
Nancy is a second one for them
both, and “we passed our 50th
anniversary on Feb. 4, so we think
this one is going to last.” Nancy
has a son, two grandchildren, and
three great-grandchildren, while
Tex has a son and a daughter. His
son Buck’s book, Hogs in the Sand:
A Gulf War A-10 Pilot’s Combat
Journal, was published in 2020.
Tex’s own book, Texas Shout:
How Dixieland Jazz Works, is a
collection of columns he wrote
for The West Coast Rag and The
American Rag magazines. “Since I
took DuPont’s last big downsizing
offer and retired at age 54, all of
my employment has been in the
fields of ragtime and Dixieland jazz.
I am very lucky to be able to say
that everything I wanted to do in
those musical areas I did.” Those
interested in seeing some of Tex’s
performances should search his
name on YouTube. “The audience
for Dixieland jazz and ragtime is
quite elderly and has been dying
out. My own Red Lion Jazz Band,
which first took the stage in July
1964, still rehearses weekly, but
hasn’t played a gig since October
2019.” He and Nancy were planning
to travel to vintage film weekends
in Rome, N.Y., and Columbus, Ohio.
Writing in to class notes has
been proven to prolong lives, so
please contact us about your
lives, struggles, amusements, and
reflections.
1959
Miriam Repp Staloff
mrstaloff@gmail.com
Josephine Weissman Hall died in
September 2020. A psychology
major at Swarthmore, she was
the only woman admitted to her
class at Chicago Medical School.
Josie trained as an OB-GYN
at Albert Einstein College of
Medicine in New York. In addition
to her private practice, she was
an assistant professor at USC and
former California Gov. Jerry Brown
appointed her to the state Board of
Medical Quality. Larger than life,
Josie was funny, intelligent, and
a strong, unforgettable character
who raised five children and left
an indelible mark on everything
she touched. Her family and her
patients will miss her. And so will I.
In February, our class lost Moffett
Beall Hall. Her husband described
her as “a lifelong scholar, artist,
and seeker.” An English major at
Swarthmore, Moffett earned an
additional bachelor’s in studio
arts, mastered oil painting and
watercolors, and worked in
pottery and printmaking. Moffett
spent her junior year in France
and completed two book-length
translations from French to English.
She raised a son, wrote poetry, and
was a student of Zen Buddhism.
Her passing was noted in the spring
Their Light Lives On. A memorial
page is at moffetthallmemorial.com.
I encourage you to send any items
about yourself that we can share.
Meanwhile, I’m still vertical.
1960
INTERGENERATIONAL FRIENDSHIP
Jeanette Strasser Pfaff
jfalk2@mac.com
The topic (inspired by Michael
Westgate) was: “What do you
remember about Somerville?”
Michael remembered that the
jukebox in the Somerville snack
bar had a silent record. For the
same price as a song, you could
buy three minutes of silence. The
company servicing the jukebox
was incredulous that students
would be willing to pay for
silence. Michael also recalled that
Wednesday nights, Charlie Chaplin
movies were shown, with the late
Peter van de Kamp, his favorite
astronomy professor, providing
piano accompaniment.
Janet Lockard remembered
spending too many hours in
Somerville, listening to the
jukebox, sometimes dancing, and
writing terribly profound streamof-consciousness “poetry” on
paper napkins.
Pat Roulston Williams learned
“to change chords on guitar by
watching a friend doing it in the air,
listening to the jukebox.”
Sara Bolyard Chase described
the building as gray fieldstone
in visual harmony with nearby
Parrish. “Upstairs was a cavernous
space for dances; downstairs,
under a low ceiling, a space much
more sophisticated. I remember
feeling both adventurous and
not quite ‘right’ being there.” (Is
this Somerville or Hernando’s
Hideaway?)
Dave Horr remembered three
things: The delightful, unique
mural by Russ Ryan ’57, the dance
parties, and lining up to choose
classes for the next semester.
Dave is thrilled that the Holtkamp
organ in Lang Music Building has
been restored. “I enjoyed playing
it at our 25th Reunion and was
sorry it had become unplayable. In
retirement, I substitute for organist
Michael Westgate ’60 met up with Ben Stern ’20 in June in
Chatham, Mass. Working with Associate Professor Ben Berger,
Ben was among the students who assisted Michael in putting
together a virtual Intergenerational Forum on the Growing
Disparity in Wealth, marking the Class of 1960’s 60th Reunion.
colleagues, and I am secretary and
treasurer of the Southern Arizona
American Guild of Organists.”
Sandra Ha Fink “loved the mural
and the chance to talk to friends
after spending time in the library.”
Bob Heaton remembered
the mocha milkshakes and
grilled sticky buns, but, more
interestingly, recalls “joining a
fellow classmate and Robert Frost.
Awesome! He did not seem poetic,
just a congenial old man.” (Frost
came to campus our freshman
year.)
Peter Faber: “Discovering sticky
buns, Russ drawings, and crashing
a formal dance in blue jeans.”
(Peter, always the rebel.)
Judith Nordblom Alger says,
“Who even remembers that
‘Somerville’ was a place?” Joan
Bond Sax has “absolutely no
recollection of Somerville.”
John Vincent: 1) Working many
hours in the basement snack bar
and 2) Groups of students taking
proctored exams in the main room
on portable typewriters. “Noisy —
clatter, clatter — but you didn’t pay
attention because you needed to
complete your exam.”
Susan Washburn remembered the
white-painted concrete block walls
and delightfully sardonic black
line drawings by Russ. She adds:
“Since my new fake hip doesn’t
like lengthy mountain hikes, I got
my old road bike refurbished. Of
course, I had to acquire a brightorange helmet and a glaring yellow
windbreaker to match my bike’s
flashy paint job.”
John Harbeson had a few
wonderful conversations in
Somerville but “probably didn’t
frequent it as much as I should
have.” Also, John was asked to do
a seventh edition of Africa in World
Politics, first published in 1991.
Meanwhile, Gordon Adams
writes: “I am concerned about
my world: drought in the West,
hostility across cultures, collapsing
ecosystems. … But our garden and
birds continue to be delightful, and
the grandchildren are alive and
well.”
1961
Pat Myers Westine
pat@westinefamily.com
The Class of ’61 had finished three
virtual 60th Reunion events when
I wrote this. Although disappointed
FALL 2021
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
57
class notes
we couldn’t meet on campus, we
Zoomed: 1) the Spring Fling in
April with chat rooms; 2) in early
June for an arts panel, organized
and facilitated by Class President
Maurice Eldridge, which updated
us on how music, art, theater,
dance, and film studies became
established departments and work
together; and 3) also in June,
shared a toast with President Val
Smith during which she updated
us about the College and answered
our questions, followed by another
chat room. Maurice and I thank
Jon Van Til, Randy Moore, Bonny
Cochran, and Greta Reed Seashore
for their time and effort in planning
a very different reunion.
The Class of 1961 Reunion Fund
for the Arts and Social Change
has reached over $300,000 with
a yearly distribution of more than
$14,000 given to one to three
students who spend the summer
working for nonprofits, grassroots
advocacy groups, or public service
agencies on projects combining the
arts and social change.
Carolyn Goldberg Burke’s
biography group portrait,
Foursome: Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia
O’Keefe, Paul Strand, Rebecca
Salisbury, has been published.
Responding to the reunion arts
panel, she says, “No doubt it all
began at Swarthmore, at a time
when we didn’t have arts in the
curriculum.”
Sidney Oltman Ferrell is back in
Berkeley, Calif., where she lived for
40 years before a 17-year interlude
in Sweden, Romania, Kazakhstan,
Oregon, and Washington state.
She is happy to be in the in-law
apartment at one son’s that is not
too far from her other son.
Sidney wrote of the death
of Panthea Kreps Redwood,
her roommate for three years
at Swarthmore and a year
after College. Panthea lived in
Anchorage, Alaska, where she was
a city planner. I also received a
note from Emily Rowley telling me
of husband Bob Rowley’s death in
December. He and Hugh Nesbitt,
both Kappa Sigs, died this winter,
and their deaths were announced
in the spring Bulletin. I welcome
your personal memories. Hugh
sat next to me for four years in
Collection, and my late husband,
58
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
Peter ’62, and I visited his “house
in the woods” several times when
we all lived in Pittsburgh. Bob lost a
son-in-law on 9/11 and a daughter
to physical difficulties; he returned
for several of our reunions.
There was a letter this spring
in the New York Times obituary
section remembering Peter
Aizupitis, who died in 2017.
Dorothy Smith Pam is on the
Amherst, Mass., town council
and is an instructor at Holyoke
Community College. Her holiday
letter included a poem expressing
hope and light in the dark time of
COVID-19. Roger ’60 and Diane
Marshall Shott live in Louisville,
Ky., and felt well-taken-care-of in
their Masonic Home retirement
communityg. They missed their
usual annual activities and inperson visits with their two sons.
What would we all have done
during the pandemic without Zoom
and FaceTime?
1962
Evelyn Edson
eedson@pvcc.edu
David Wegman sent the notes he’d
prepared for a virtual 55th Reunion
with fellow med students Steve
Schoenbaum, Suzanne Wright
Fletcher, and Arthur Siegel. Having
retired in 2010, Dave still works
nearly full time but gets to do only
those things he really wants to
do. He specialized in occupational
health and was principal
investigator on an international
research team studying a “chronic
kidney disease of undetermined
origin” that causes disability
and death among working-age
Nicaraguan men. Dave believes
the cause is physically demanding
labor in extreme heat, which over
time can lead to irreversible kidney
damage. Their research has shown
evidence that water, shade, and
regular rest could be beneficial.
Dave is on the board of the Alpha
Foundation for the Improvement
of Mine Safety and Health and in
a Swedish project on risk factors
in occupational health. He has
helped the International Alliance
of Theatrical Stage Employees
to develop a post-COVID-19 plan
for backstage workers. Wife
Peggy died in 2010, but he found
a partner in Carolyn, who started
a forest-restoration project in
Armenia after its 1988 earthquake.
Allen Greenleaf died Jan. 17
in Pownall, Maine. He studied
mechanical engineering at
Swarthmore, specializing in optics.
He homesteaded in Maine after
he became concerned his work in
high-altitude large optics might
contribute to projects of war. Allen
began building a barn by first
building a sawmill, then cutting and
milling lumber from his farm. He
also designed, built, and installed
a hand-crank elevator “because
he could.” Those of us who knew
Allen remember him as a shy,
quiet person. His obituary noted,
“A conversation with him required
keen hearing and a comfort with
silences.”
Peg Kaetzel Wheeler wrote about
keeping up with her children and
grandchildren during the past year.
“I’ve found time passes remarkably
quickly when you’re doing nothing
in particular.” To stay busy, she was
in three book groups and knitted
and sewed, including full-sized face
masks and mini-mask bookmark
Christmas presents.
I was sorry when COVID stopped
my work as a volunteer reading
tutor for third-graders in Fluvanna
County, Va. Instead, I read aloud
to children Voyage of the Dawn
Treader and Charlotte’s Web.
I close this month’s column with
a remembrance of Ruth Brown
Cross, who died in January.
She was married to economics
professor William Brown while
we were at Swarthmore. After
his death, she married Bob Cross
and returned to the College when
he became president (1969–71).
When I arrived in Charlottesville,
Va., in 1972, Bob was a dean at the
University of Virginia. Ruth and
I were volunteers at Reading for
the Blind and were often assigned
the numerous Bibles requested by
patrons, marveling at the wonderful
variety of translations. Ruth was
active in the arts community, and
we saw each other at screenings of
the Metropolitan Opera. She was
94, lively, and interesting to the
end. May we all do as well.
1963
Diana Judd Stevens
djsteven1@verizon.net
Kathie Kertesz’s 80th birthday
celebration in Spain ended
abruptly when she had a stroke.
She is rehabbing in Vallejo, Calif.
Prognosis is favorable.
Kyoko and David Gelber
celebrated their 20th wedding
anniversary in Provincetown,
Mass., soon after David was
elected to a third term on the
Garrison, N.Y., school board. Dave
’62 and Suzi Merrill Maybee gifted
granddaughter Alyssa Nathan
’21 a Barbara Seymour print in
recognition of Alyssa’s Swarthmore
graduation. Linda Steelman, Suzi,
Barbara, and I enjoyed lunch
together when Suzi took delivery
of the print. Clyde Prestowitz
reported he, Bill Krist ’62, Dave
Maybee ’62, and their wives
celebrated Dave’s 80th birthday a
year late. They and the late Dick
Poole roomed together in A101.
In comparing our 2020 class
address list with 2021’s, I noted
Russ Fernald now lives in Berkeley,
Calif., and Peggy Schoenberg
Menzin is in Lexington, Mass. Mike
and Eugenia Margosian Becker
moved to a retirement community
in Bend, Ore. Their two daughters
live in Oregon, while their son,
recipient of the Becker baby
grand, is in Massachusetts. Atala
Perry Toy is now my neighbor at
Crosslands in Kennett Square,
Pa. Last spring, Cay Hall Roberts
experienced another kind of
move when husband Dick went to
their continuing care retirement
community’s memory-care unit.
With Cay holding his hand, he died
there July 7.
Kelly Ann Lister thinks Clyde’s
The World Turned Upside Down:
China, America, and the Struggle
for Global Leadership should be
a must-read for all in Congress
and the White House. Speaking
of books, Bob Putnam has done
more than 100 virtual events for
The Upswing: How America Came
Together and How We Can Do It
Again. He planned a few in-person
events in the fall, combined with
tourism and birding. Tom OwenTowle, author of two dozen books,
has published Making Peace
with Our Own Death, in which
he advocates for facing our own
end boldly and creatively. Pete
Steelman ’95 released The Island
Preacher, a collection of sermons
by his late father, the Rev. Bill
Steelman, that capture Bill’s spirit
and passion.
Alison Archibald Anderson enjoys
life in Philadelphia, where she
is active in her Quaker meeting,
involved with committees in
her co-op, and walks with two
groups. Bruce Leimsidor keeps
busy following the art market
and adding to his collection of
16th- to 18th-century Italian and
French drawings and ancient
Buddhist sculpture. Before retiring
as a psychiatrist in 2020, Janet
Oestreich Bernstein closed her
private practice and spent 21 years
working as a traveling doc.
Elizabeth Chin ’22 was the
2020–21 Class of 1963 Scholar.
Her plans to intern and study
abroad were canceled due to
COVID-19. Instead, she studied at
home, created digital art, and set
up an online stationery shop.
After a long illness, Ralph
Bailey died April 23, 2020. He
was a CPA, musician, singer, and
songwriter. Many may remember
the outstanding music he provided
at our 45th Reunion with Fred and
Polly Glennan Watts.
Hedy Harris Lipez Burbank died
Jan. 10 after several illnesses and
complications from COVID-19. A
lifelong volunteer, Hedy received
the Arabella Carter Community
Service Award at our 50th Reunion
for her work with the Peace Corps,
the Red Cross, an HIV/AIDS
support group, a volunteer fire
department, an eating-disorder
support group, etc. Professionally,
after receiving a master’s in
psychiatric nursing, Hedy had
a private counseling practice
and worked for organizations in
Berkshire County, Mass.
After fighting pancreatic cancer
tenaciously, Mike Cook died May
27. A Rhodes Scholar, he joined
the Foreign Service in the 1960s
and the Environmental Protection
Agency in 1973, receiving
numerous awards for his work.
Many of us remember Mike as
a football player and wrestler.
Athletics continued to be important
for him, including participating
in marathons and triathlons. In
retirement, Mike worked with
Kim, his wife of 53 years, in
her Vietnamese Resettlement
Association. He also helped found
the Green Infrastructure Center
and, most importantly, took delight
in his four grandchildren.
Please stay in touch — send
me your news, happy, sad, or
otherwise.
1964
Diana Bailey Harris
harris.diana@gmail.com
Allan Berlind’s first contribution is
that he is 17 years into retirement
from Wesleyan’s neuroscience
program and biology department.
Also, he discovered that since
1993, all four Swarthmore alumni
on the faculty received Wesleyan’s
excellence in teaching awards.
No fan of virtual reunions,
Archer Dodson Heinzen organized
an in-person one for D.C.-area
classmates. In attendance with
spouses were Jack Riggs, Jeffrey
Heynen, Elizabeth Morrow
Edwards, Lydia Razran Stone, and
Matt Worthington. Special guests
were honorary ’64er Heather
Booth, wife of the late Paul Booth,
and D.C. visitor Peter Weinberger.
Inner Traditions will publish
Bernie Beitman’s next book in
the new field of coincidence
studies. He has started two online
Zoom meetings: Coincidence
Ambassadors and Coincidence
Café. He also restarted his podcast,
Connecting with Coincidence.
Unfortunately, Peter Freedman’s
gum cancer has returned. “I’m
undergoing immunotherapy
(piece of cake) and chemotherapy
(absolutely awful). There is no
prospect for a cure, just a question
of how these therapies can slow
the cancer down.” He recommends
“mindfulness training to anyone in
a situation such as mine.”
In contemplating “the privileges
people like me have enjoyed
our entire lives,” Mike Meeropol
“decided that all my efforts — my
commentaries, writing postcards
to voters, giving money — produce
a non-zero positive impact.” He
hoped to do more as the pandemic
receded, especially in terms of
voters’ rights. “Otherwise, it may
be ‘curtains’ for the so-called
democratic experiment.”
During the pandemic, Roz Stone
Zander continued her work on
slowing climate change through
a position on Al Gore’s Board of
Climate Reality. She added that
there are many developments
that can “lead us out of despair
into doing something,” such as
“seaweed for fertilizer, food and
materials, paper made out of stone,
regenerative techniques for soil,
etc.” She will have a retrospective
exhibition of paintings about nature
at the Boston Center for Arts’
Cyclorama in April.
Meg Hodgkin Lippert and
husband Al were enjoying “full-time
care of our granddaughter, now 2,
in Honolulu. We look forward to a
couple of weeks in our Maine cabin
on China Lake with family — our
first time traveling in two years.”
Spike Lipschutz is “working,
battling COVID, and supporting the
wellness of health care workers.”
He’s still celebrating past Phillies
World Series, because once a
Phillies fan …
Peter Setlow reports, “With
almost everyone vaccinated, we are
now up and running at full speed”
in the lab, and he hoped UConn
Health would be back in person
this fall.
Anne Cochran Sloan said, postvaccination, she was enjoying
political breakfasts, in-person
book clubs, and church attendance
without making a reservation.
Anne also looked forward to “a long
summer stay with my extended
family at our cottage in Michigan.”
Amy Stone completed training
in mental health first aid with the
National Council of Behavioral
Health through the Sisterhood of
Salaam Shalom. Half of the allwoman class were Muslim and the
other half Jewish.
With Bernie Banet’s help, I
reached Joanna DuBarry Morris,
who’d weathered the pandemic in
reasonably good shape.
The Junior Fellows Program
at the College of Physicians of
Philadelphia was renamed in honor
of George Wohlreich to the George
and Judy Wohlreich Junior Fellows
Program. From 2006 to 2021,
George was the medical society’s
president, CEO, and Thomas W.
Langfitt Chair. During his tenure,
he spearheaded the creation of
the fellows program, a summer
and after-school program for high
school students from historically
excluded communities that fosters
interest in careers in health
care and medicine and provides
academic counseling and support.
1965
Kiki Skagen Munshi
kiki@skagenranch.com
George Thoma’s NIH retirees’ lunch
club met at an outdoor lanai at a
retirement complex, which “was
more satisfying than the monthly
Zoom calls we had been doing.”
Susan Gross Nikolay sends: “In
Germany, we are slowly coming out
of lockdown and getting used to the
‘new normal,’ like wearing masks
in stores.”
Leonard Barkan was looking
at some major life changes after
sequestration. “The pandemic
year (plus) was also a sabbatical
year. On the plus column was 24/7
time with my beloved spouse; the
pleasant obligation of producing
three home-cooked meals per
day, and the writing of a book.”
Reading Shakespeare Reading
Me is scheduled to be published
next spring. Leonard’s retirement
is projected for the end of 2021
along with a move from a house in
Princeton, N.J., to an apartment on
Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
FALL 2021
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
59
class notes
Blaine Garvin “completed my 50th
year of teaching political science
at Gonzaga University — only a
handful of students in class, all
wearing masks, and the rest on
Zoom. A few valiant students kept
discussions going, but it wasn’t
easy. We survived and look forward
to a normal fall.”
Dick and Gay Sise Grossman
write: “Gay had surgery last
December to remove the hardware
that held her left leg together, and
she can finally ride a bike. We
had a great visit from Niki Giloane
Sebastian. We are doing a lot of fire
mitigation to make our community
safer in this severe drought.”
I got in touch with Niki and
found out she retired last year as
a case coordinator for Medicaid.
Since January, however, she
had worked part time at the New
Mexico Caregiver’s Coalition,
which involved teaching, care
coordination, and counseling.
Peter Meyer is, as usual, busy,
though there are “no new trips to
report on despite coming out of
COVID. The main effects of the
drift toward normalcy are a flood of
visitors to our tourist-destination
hometown [New Hope, Pa.] and
acrimony over moving back to inperson municipal meetings.”
Nancy Myers O’Connor writes:
“The pandemic was more just an
inconvenience for me; I continued
to do a lot of bicycling until a short
while ago when I rode into the side
of a police car. I had my helmet
on but broke my pelvis. I am fully
recovered. The bike is still in the
shop, and I will get a new helmet.”
Because of extreme wildfire risk,
Ann Erickson moved to the coast
after having lived on California’s
Russian River for 49 years. “I was
evacuated twice in recent years,
and the Armstrong Redwoods
Natural State Reserve in my town
has burned. During one of the
evacuations, I drove up the coast
to Fort Bragg and decided to buy a
small mobile home in an RV park on
the bluffs by Noyo Harbor.
“With the Earth on fire, climate
change, and awareness of my own
mortality, I am not expecting ‘back
to normal.’ But I am treasuring
each day, the wild birds, the ocean,
the endless skies, and the larger
universe.”
60
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
1966
Jill Robinson Grubb
jillgrubb44@gmail.com
At the end of 2020, Phil ’65 and
Pam Corbett Hoffer made piñatas
shaped like the coronavirus or
Trump’s head for the neighbors to
break open.
Joan and Tom Webb thrived in
a bubble with their children and
grandchildren on 45 acres. Joan
finished the Breitowich Family Club
newsletters and started another
about the Cousins Club. Tom works
daily opening up areas of woods
and wetlands blocked by invasive
species. With the election and
arrival of vaccines, Tom hoped
2021 would progress toward racial
justice, attention to climate and the
planet, and an end to the pandemic.
Frank and Pat Lykens Hankins
went to Mexico with dear friends
for two weeks. They also enjoyed
their lake house, gardening,
working in the studio, bobbing on
their pontoon boat, and relaxing at
their beach house.
John M. Robinson returned to the
serious study of history and the
building of a large train set. Wife
Pat is raising exotic plants in a new
solarium, and both love FaceTiming
with their two daughters and three
grandchildren.
Allen Shoenberger welcomed his
first granddaughter, Alice, last fall.
Bob Gwin said that back in the
days when we roamed the campus,
Christine Jordan had a radio show
that could acquire records of the
British comedy Goon Show. Bob
found recordings of the Goons and
infected his daughter, who passed
them on to her daughters, 9 and 13.
They are often caught quoting “The
Highly Esteemed Goon Show.”
Eleanor Bly Sutter said her
Russian-language book A
Russian Soul in Foreign Lands
was published in Moscow. It’s a
collection of poems entrusted to
her by an elderly Russian refugee.
Another writer, Judy Petsonk,
is giving book talks on Justice:
Maccabees & Pharisees, which
chronicles a civil war in the first
century BCE and the emerging
Pharisee movement that would
transform Judaism into a religion of
teachers and disciples. Meanwhile,
Judy’s husband, Steve Eisdorfer,
put together online community play
readings. Judy’s grandson, Jude, 3,
is also a storyteller. Judy is taking a
course on screenplay writing.
The late Professor Tom Bradley
told Russian major Tony Loeb
to choose one career path and
change whenever he wanted to.
Taking that advice, Tony has been
a draft counselor, radio announcer,
engineer, retail salesman, high-tech
account manager, sales manager,
renewable-energy salesperson/
consultant, professional fiduciary,
and tutor in Russian and German.
Bill Belanger learned to solve
problems at Swarthmore. He put
that skill to use as an electrical
engineer with DuPont; a public
health engineer and tech-support
manager with Philadelphia
Air Management Services; an
environmental engineer; a human
physicist; a radiation safety officer;
a Superfund hazardous-materials
site responder with the EPA; and
a radiation safety consultant. Now
Bill is a gourmet cook, studio artist,
and design artist in woodworking
and furniture.
Linda Lynes Groetzinger is
working on a memoir of her two
years in the Peace Corps in India,
as well as exercising with her
husband, attending seminars,
and adoring her granddaughter
and daughter. She loved the novel
Cutting for Stone. Steve Bennett
recommended A Gentleman in
Moscow.
I, Jill, have grown to love so many
of you through this job; thank you
for your patience and participation.
1967
Donald Marritz
dmarritz@gmail.com
Barbara Ingersoll Rothenberg
retired from the NYC Department
of Sanitation and lives in Brooklyn,
near Prospect Park. “Fifty-five
years [since graduation] blows
my mind, but there are a lot of
long-time things in my life these
days. Not only have I been married
for 55 years, my children have
been married a long time, and
the grandchildren are grown or
growing.”
Richard Vallee continues research
at Columbia’s medical school, back
in “The Heights” where he lived
before Swarthmore.
Ken Turan is retired but can’t
stay away from the movies. “I am
working on a dual biography of
movie titans Irving Thalberg and
Louis B. Mayer for a series called
Jewish Lives, to be published by
Yale University Press.”
On July 19, 2020, Charles Bailey
marked the 55th anniversary of his
summit of Mount Denali with a hike
up Lummi Mountain in Washington.
The original climb included the late
Stan Adamson ’65, the late Tuck
Forsythe ’65, and Malcolm Moore,
brother of Ted Moore ’66. They
made energy bars at Sharples and
drove to McKinley Park, Alaska, in
Tuck’s ’55 Ford Fairlane.
Teaching a ceramics course online
drove Judy Bartella into retirement
after 46 years at the George
School. For 30-plus summers, she
also “variously worked at, ran, and
owned the Victorian Chalfonte
Hotel in Cape May, N.J.”
Shigeo Takenaka has lived near
Tokyo since his retirement about
15 years ago from the Japanese
Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Along
with his daughter and son-in-law,
also government employees, he
was “able to live a relatively stable
and quiet life” during the pandemic.
David and Mary Kramer Schaps
’69 “organized one of the many
improvised outdoor synagogues
that popped up in Israel during the
pandemic.”
Tom Harriman worked with his
editor on his contributions to
the upcoming second volume
of writings from the Veterans
Writers Group, following the
2006 collection Veterans of War,
Veterans of Peace. Tom’s short
stories have appeared in Deadly
Writers Patrol and the 10thanniversary edition of Tea Party.
Jane Alpert’s ancient Greek
reading group kept going strong
ALUMNI COUNCIL NEWS
As the fall semester began, we asked
the Alumni Council Executive Committee
what they were most excited about for
the Council:
Ayanna Johnson ’09
“I am excited to
create meaningful
connections and share
the diversity in our
alumni experience
with current students.
Our virtual Alumni
Council ‘Career and
Life’ office hours go beyond conventional
networking to discuss mentorship,
defining oneself professionally, and how
to thrive. Our alumni are an amazing and
available resource.”
BoHee Yoon ’01
“One of the ways
I try to give back
is by volunteering
with our wonderful
Alumni Council, but
Swarthmore has
managed to turn even
this work into one of
the most rewarding experiences, and I
have made more lifelong friends, across
decades of class years.”
Dina Zingaro ’13
“Bringing new voices
to SwatTalks, which
relaunched last
September with
Nobel Prize-winning
physicist John
Mather ’68, H’94.
It’s incredible to see
alumni from around the world and from
such different class years in the same
conversation.”
Emily Anne Nolte
Jacobstein ’07
“I’m most excited
about increasing the
pool of nominees for
Alumni Council to
develop a diverse and
representative slate
of nominees. Diversity
comes in many ways, and I’m excited for
that to shine through on the Council.”
Mike Dennis ’93
“Sustainability …
launching Alumni
Council office hours …
refreshing our website
… and growing the
Student Emergency
Fund.”
Patricia Scholz-Cohen
’85
“Despite all Alumni
Council events taking
place remotely this
past year, the many
connections made
with both alumni and
current students
continued to be strong and productive.
A highlight for me in the coming year will
be connecting with senior students and
sharing what a wonderful resource the
alumni network is for them.”
Sean Wright ’96
“I’m excited to see our
alumni community
come back stronger
with more tools for
engagement after
this most challenging
year and a half. I am
especially excited
and hopeful for the students to be on
campus, the campus to remain open, and
for Alumni Council to virtually support
current students.”
alumni@swarthmore.edu
through COVID-19 and includes
Michael Ferber ’66, Barbara Probst
Morrow ’66, and Demetri Bonaros
’97. Jane also consults pro bono for
New Yorkers Against Gun Violence.
Husband Foster de Jesus retired
from his architecture practice
and still swims faster than Jane,
despite being 10 years older. Their
grandchildren “are the spark in our
lives.”
Tom Laqueur writes: “At last a
grandchild, Abigail Mets Laqueur,
who lives nearby with her parents
— a pure joy.” Tom finished up with
his last Ph.D. students, marking the
end of 40 years of teaching. But he
is still writing — a book about dogs
in art and an essay in the London
Review of Books about reparations.
He distilled 35 liters of Calvados
from 10 times that amount of his
own hard cider.
Doug Huron died in June at his
D.C. home. He had a distinguished
career as an employment-rights
attorney and had a landmark
U.S. Supreme Court decision that
declared gender stereotyping a
form of workplace discrimination.
Doug practiced law even after
developing primary lateral
sclerosis, a rare variant of Lou
Gehrig’s disease. He is survived by
wife Amy Wind, three children, and
two grandchildren.
Marc Hofstadter died in May.
He is survived by his partner of
30 years, David Zurlin. Marc’s
career included several teaching
stints, as well as more than 20
years as the librarian of the San
Francisco Municipal Railway. He
wrote and published 10 volumes
of poetry, including The Miracle
Garden, which will be published
posthumously.
1968
Katie Bode Darlington
katedarlington@gmail.com
David Singleton writes from
Delaware: “The news is that our
longtime friend and neighbor got
elected president. As for me, I’ve
concluded 20 years’ service on the
College’s Board of Managers. It’s
been an important part of my life,
so I will really miss it.”
David Thoenen is chair of the
board of Ascend, an international
nonprofit working in Afghanistan
to empower young women through
mountaineering-based leadership
training. He wrote that as the
challenges facing these girls and
young women mount, it is more
important than ever for Ascend to
stay in Afghanistan.
Fred Montgomery serves on the
Senior Resources Commission in
Lake Forest, Ill., which is “involved
with the operations of the city’s
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61
class notes
senior center, with affordable
senior housing, and with a Vaccine
Buddies program.”
Carol Shloss has a new book
about Ezra Pound and his daughter,
Let the Wind Speak, which follows
Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake,
a study of James Joyce and his
daughter. Next, Carol will look at
the relationship between Flannery
O’Connor and daughter Regina.
Bob Pollock announced the
release of Entertwined, a collection
of his musical compositions on the
Furious Artisans label. Reviewers
said the CD is “an extremely wellthought-out project containing
seven works created by Pollock
from the mid-1970s through 2007
… that illuminate [his] inimitable
vision.”
A reviewer of Eleanor Morse’s
novel, Margreete’s Harbor (pg. 6),
said the characters are “as deep as
the Maine harbor on which they live
… depicted in gorgeous prose.”
Lynn Etheredge is circulating an
overview of a new paper, “Toward
a Future of Human Flourishing,”
that lists the application of digital
technologies and rapid learning
strategies to many fields. Lynn’s
photographic collection of colorful
flowers, trees, and gardens is at
lyneth1.myportfolio.com.
After last year’s vegetable garden
“competition” in our class notes,
Bronwyn Hurd Echols created a
raised bed dedicated to a range of
vegetables and fruits, from collards
to lingonberries.
Joe Hafkenschiel says: “Each of
my patio eggplants produces 20plus eggplants at one time. Now,
I’ve just got to figure out what to do
with them.”
Another garden fan, Sam
Brackeen missed the blooming of
the rhododendron concentrated
in Swarthmore’s Scott Outdoor
Amphitheater area for the second
consecutive year because of the
campus’s closure.
Sue Knotter Walton is
“transplanting” herself from the
East Coast to the West, specifically
a rental in Park Hill, Denver. “I am
madly winnowing down for movers
coming at the end of July.”
Love bloomed in 2020 for Larry
and Diana Royce Smith’s daughter.
But at her wedding in Colorado,
only the bride, groom, Diana, Larry,
62
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
and a photographer were physically
present, with the groom’s family
attending via Zoom. This year, they
hope to celebrate the festivities
that didn’t happen last year. But
first, Diana and Larry will travel to
Idaho by way of Maine to see their
daughter and her Norwegian Forest
cat named Blueberry Muffin.
Speaking of pets, Hal Kwalwasser
wrote that his goldendoodle pup
was named Zola for author Emile
Zola since he is part French poodle.
“We got the pup on Juneteenth,
which argued for picking a humanrights crusader’s name.” While he
doesn’t answer to his name yet,
Hal was reading to him from Zola’s
works.
Marc Sonnenfeld looks forward to
seeing everyone at the next reunion
and would like to correspond with
classmates about that.
Plan to join us for our 55th
Reunion in June 2023. Please stay
in touch on swarthmore68.com, or
by writing to me.
1969
Jeffrey Hart
hartj@indiana.edu
During the challenges of COVID-19,
Ron Thomas completed several
extended solitary meditation
retreats as part of a five-year
Dzogchen training program.
Christine Erb writes: “After four
self-administered COVID tests and
a visit from the U.K. authorities, I
was released from quarantine and
am happily visiting my 8-month-old
grandson, Finn, and his parents
Nicole Belanger Satullo ’08 and
Nathaniel Erb-Satullo ’07 in
Oxford.”
Peter Max Zimmerman spent
time in Slovakia in January. Fred
Feinstein’s daughter Emma was
married in April. He and wife Karen
Collins regularly stream the Live
from the Lost Highway music
broadcast on Fred’s Facebook
site. Howard Vickery ’70 became
a grandfather for the first time in
February.
Marilyn Holifield was the
commencement speaker for and
received an honorary doctor
of humane letters from Barry
University in Miami in May.
John McDowell retired from
Indiana University–Bloomington
after 46 years as a professor there.
He edited a book, Performing
Environmentalisms: Expressive
Culture and Ecological Change, due
out in September. His retirement
plans include organizing his papers
and materials, keeping his eyes
open “for whatever might appear
on the horizon,” and seeing to
projects still in the works.
Ronald Krall had kneereplacement surgery March 30.
Jeff Hart had his April 22. Tom
O’Donnell had his awhile back.
Barry Wohl recovered sufficiently
from his endocarditis to hike with
his son in Wyoming.
Jeff Ruda was elected to the
board of directors of the American
Ceramic Circle, a nonprofit with
500-plus members founded
“to promote scholarship and
research in the history, use, and
preservation of ceramics.”
Rika Alper and spouse John
abandoned Montclair, N.J., for
their Berkshires house. Leonard
Nakamura was featured in an
article in the spring Bulletin (bit.ly/
LNakamura).
Avery Rome “got drafted by the
local Democratic Party and I am
running as 6th Ward commissioner
of Radnor Township [Pa.]. This is a
new path for me, after a career of
newspapering at the Philadelphia
Inquirer and teaching journalism
at Penn. It’s a joy to meet the next
generation of activists.”
Carl Kendall had new research
published on leprosy. Elizabeth
Coleman continues to write new
poems.
Donald and Cheryl Warfield
Mitchell 71’s daughter, Anais, won
a Grammy for the cast album of
Hadestown. Anais’s band, Bonny
Light Horsemen, appeared on CBS
This Morning: Saturday last year.
Don and Cheryl live in Vermont,
where they raise sheep at Treleven
Farm.
With deep sadness, Peter
Warrington, Don Lyon, and Felix
Rogers reported the passing of
their Swarthmore roommate, John
Fahnestock, who died May 31 from
complications of a progressive
neurological disorder.
John began as a math major but
earned his degree in art history
and participated in modern
dance, theater, filmmaking, and
pranks like anamorphic dorm
painting. His life as a potter was
enriched by experiences in theater,
including a tour of England with
the Swarthmore-graduate troupe
Freddy and the Muskrats. In the
1970s, John purchased a bungalow
in Telluride, Colo., when it was still
affordable. Besides pottery, he
was adept at carpentry and home
and commercial remodeling, and
as a projectionist for the Telluride
Film Festival. As a member of
Telluride’s planning commission,
John is credited with guiding the
city to civic development that
was esthetically and historically
consistent.
He married Goedele Vanhille,
a fellow ceramist, and moved to
nearby Norwood, Colo., where they
established their gallery, Yank and
Flanders, in 2001. He is survived by
Goedele and children Cisco, Jonas,
and Esme. John is remembered
for his warm, gracious manner,
remarkable intellect, invincible
skill at Scrabble, and stunning
quickness with puns, befitting a
“groan” man.
1970
Margaret Nordstrom
hon.margi@comcast.net
I received great news from Anne
Thompson of NASA’s Goddard
Space Flight Center in Greenbelt,
Md. She has been elected to the
American Academy of Arts and
Sciences. She was the only NASA
employee among the 252 newly
announced members. The senior
scientist for atmospheric chemistry
in the Earth Sciences Division,
where she has worked for 26 years,
Anne was elected in the category of
astronomy, astrophysics, and earth
sciences.
She was a Penn State professor
of meteorology from 2005 to 2013.
Among other achievements and
contributions, Anne was recognized
for her early work that used models
to characterize the Earth’s oxidizing
capacity and its relationship to
the greenhouse gas methane.
She and colleagues described a
preindustrial atmosphere using
methane measured in ice cores and
proposed mitigation strategies. The
latter is part of the new national
climate strategy.
Anne initiated NASA’s
Southern Hemisphere Additional
Ozonesondes in 1998, which has
amassed nearly 10,000 ozone
profiles while building capacity that
enables nations like Kenya and
Indonesia to meet obligations to the
Montreal Protocol on Substances
that Deplete the Ozone Layer.
She was president of the
International Commission on
Atmospheric Chemistry and
Global Pollution and the American
Geophysical Union’s (AGU)
Atmospheric Sciences Section.
Anne’s honors have included
a Fulbright Scholar Award, the
American Meteorological Society’s
Verner Suomi Award, the AGU
Roger Revelle Medal, and a
corresponding membership in the
Academy of Athens.
Ruth Jones McNeill’s death was
included in the spring Their Light
Lives On. She died on Valentine’s
Day in Corvallis, Ore. Ruth majored
in anthropology and taught in
West Hartford, Conn., and then in
and around Boston. She married
Bart Jones in 1992 and moved to
Oregon in 2004 where she taught
preschool before retiring. Ruth
battled cancer off and on beginning
in 1989. At one point, she was
informed that people with her
diagnosis had a life expectancy of
two to three years. Her response
included a trip to Peru and outliving
that forecast by 20 years.
Beverly Lyon Clark died March
18. She is survived by husband
Roger, son Adam, daughter Wendy,
grandson Matthew, and many
others. She married Roger in 1969
and received an English literature
Ph.D. in 1979. She was an English
literature professor at Wheaton
College for 44 years. For additional
details, see Their Light Lives On.
Our condolences go out to Roger
and their family.
1971
Bob Abrahams
bobabrahams@yahoo.com
Reunion Committee member
Deborah Bond-Upson says: “It
has been wonderful to have more
contact with Swarthmore folks
for our V-union. I live and work on
Oahu, Hawaii, have four adult kids,
and just gained a granddaughter
in San Francisco’s East Bay. Erie
Pearson Vitiello, Kate Cook, and
I have been staying in touch and
gathering periodically. Kate is
about to become a grandmother
to a baby in the East Bay, too, so
she is moving there. Erie is not far
away in Davis, Calif., so we will get
to gather more. If you visit Oahu,
come kick back with me.”
Shelley Fisher Fishkin enjoyed
the Sharples Social on Zoom and
has several classmates in her
weekly Zoomba dance party, which
anyone can join by emailing her at
sfishkin@stanford.edu.
The Chinese Railroad Workers in
North America Project at Stanford,
which Shelley co-founded in 2012
and co-directed with Gordon H.
Chang, ended in August 2020.
The project had met its goal
of changing the conversation
around the 150th anniversary of
the Transcontinental Railroad,
adding that at a time of rising
anti-Asian violence, it is important
to recognize the central role
Asian people have played in the
development of the United States.
Deborah Zubow Prindle is
wrapping up four years at the
State Department overseeing
assistance to 18 countries in
Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and
Central Asia, and was considering
retirement.
Deborah has enjoyed watching
her adopted-in-February Sheltie
puppy grow up. Also, she reached
out to retired professor Steve
Piker to mentor the D.C.-area Swat
Alumni Book Groups (about 200
people) with a reading list on love
that includes, for the first time,
ethnographic nonfiction.
Don ’69 and Cheryl Warfield
Mitchell were thrilled to watch
daughter Anais receive an
honorary doctorate and deliver the
2021 commencement address at
Middlebury College.
Cheryl helped create the new
online Policy and Practice of
Nurturing Care master’s program,
in conjunction with Castleton
University in Vermont, with a
two-generation approach to
supporting children, families, and
communities. The sheep continue
to thrive, but the chickens fell
victim to the resident raccoon.
Marya Ursin enjoyed the Reunion.
As her studio, the Dragon’s Egg,
opens to public performances,
and college and theater school
begin to be in person, “I find myself
with a rush of commitments. I’m
not sure how to restore some of
the emptiness the pause brought,
which I found nourishing.”
She planned to play a lot with
granddaughter Aarya and hug
her daughter and extended family
members.
Kenneth Oye is a member of
the American Friends Service
Committee Board and Corporation
and of the Novel and Exceptional
Technologies Advisory Committee
of the National Institutes of Health,
and is a professor of political
science and data systems at MIT.
William Pete Welch has two
kids in their early 40s and two
grandsons in elementary school.
“After a checkered career, for
a decade I have worked for the
federal government analyzing
Medicare policy (while living in
Arlington, Va.).”
Dave Gott leads “an active life
in western Massachusetts that
has included parallel vocations
in farming and social work. My
coming out as gay has been central
to my life, and I still sing ‘Yea,
Morals Matter.’”
Terry Miller Mumford writes: “As
restrictions have lifted, we have
been able to visit with three of our
four children and their families. We
are making an extra effort to reach
out to those we couldn’t see for
many, many months.”
Please stay connected with our
class with our new website and
Facebook page. See swarthmore71.
org for links.
1972
Nan Waksman Schanbacher
nanschanbacher@comcast.net
Jan Ellen Paradise died April 12
after a long illness. Her full obituary
is at bit.ly/3qSNNPM.
Arlene Dannenberg Bowes retired
from practicing dentistry in private
offices and for the U.S. Public
Health Service. She also left Penn’s
School of Dental Medicine after 27
years on the clinical faculty.
Ken DeFontes was elected board
chair for the North American
Electric Reliability Corp., which
implements mandatory reliability
standards for the electric-power
industry. “We have been quite busy
dealing with cyber and physical
security and the transition of the
electric grid to renewable energy.”
After 12 years as a large-animal
veterinarian, then 24 years in
biotech/oncology research, Mark
DeWitte is “‘mostly retired,’ except
for a clinical research review board
for UPenn hospital.” Mark and his
wife worked in Australia at one
point and travel there whenever
possible.
Paul Lauenstein lost his mother
in April (our condolences), but his
father, 95, fishes with Paul and his
brother. Paul continues to build
a database of wildlife sightings
in Sharon, Mass., for future
generations to “see what we had
before climate change.”
Christopher Leinberger sent
greetings from D.C., where he is
an emeritus professor at George
Washington University and was
focusing on his startup. Wife Lisa
teaches art history at American
University. Their blended family
includes five children (two are
Swarthmore grads), their spouses,
and five grandchildren.
John Lubar spends every week on
a different fishing boat as an at-sea
fishery observer. Apparently, his
claims of retirement were “hollow.”
Bertha Fuchsman Small is minding
grandchildren and tending belted
Galloway cows and some horses.
She occasionally helps with
FALL 2021
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
63
class notes
vaccination clinics.
Carola Sullam Shepard stayed
busy during the pandemic by
meeting friends outdoors and
having “one real old-fashioned
telephone conversation each
week.” While sorting and labeling
old photographs, Carola “wrote up
brief descriptions of the lives of
grandparents and other relatives,
including … how they influenced
me. Hopefully, my kids will want to
read this one day and have those
unfamiliar characters in period
costume come to life.”
Mark Vander Schaaf retired as
regional planning director for
the Minneapolis–St. Paul area
five years ago. He has finished a
project for the American Planning
Association called Creative
Placemaking in Rail Transit
Corridors, a tool for communities
integrating arts and culture
into their transportation and
community-development activities.
Robert and Katherine Burns
Vaughan are celebrating 50 years
of marriage and still live bicoastally, enjoying grandchildren
in both places. They are pursuing
dreams long deferred, such as
writing, travel, and long-distance
ocean sailing, while gearing up for
the 2022 midterm elections.
Nan Waksman Schanbacher
is director of development for
the Wade Institute for Science
Education. This small nonprofit
in Quincy, Mass., provides
professional development for
educators to improve STEM
education, to get kids excited and
engaged with the subjects, to steer
some of them into STEM careers,
and to turn them into proactive
citizen-scientists. Anyone in the
Boston area who is interested in
participating (or donating) should
get in touch with Nan.
1973
Martha Shirk
swarthmorecollege73@gmail.com
During the pandemic, Neil Raphel
and wife Janis Raye hibernated
64
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
in Vermont. Then, their publishing
business, Brigantine Media, took
off as their Brick Math program
was used throughout the U.S. and
in other countries. Read more
about this new use for Legos at
brickmathseries.com.
Retirement was “just around the
corner” for James White Jr. after 21
years with the Delaware River Port
Authority, at which he spent his last
seven years as CFO/treasurer. He’s
had a 45-year career in treasuryrelated jobs in the corporate,
banking, and government sectors.
A high point of 2020 was seeing
daughter Chiquita Brooks-LaSure
sworn in as administrator of the
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services, the first Black woman to
hold the post.
Isaac Stanley ended his tenure as
board chair of Ignite, a Chicagobased agency that supports
14–26-year-olds on the brink of
homelessness; this was four years
after retiring as senior business
analyst from MetLife, where he had
a 32-year career. He leads weekly
virtual meditation sessions for
about a dozen regular attendees
(including several classmates).
He and wife Ava Harris Stanley ’72
were looking forward to sailing on
Lake Michigan.
Martha King was named the 2021
Rising Volunteer of the Year by
the Food Bank of the Rockies. For
her, volunteering was a source of
mental and physical health during
the pandemic, which arrived just
after her return from Zambia with
Peace Corps Response. Martha
got together with Dave Lyon and
Joe and Lana Everett Turner ’74 at
the Turners’ home in Steamboat
Springs, Colo., in late spring. Ask
her or Dave about their near-death
experience driving back to Denver.
Sandy Alexander, who practices
law in Tulsa, Okla., shared a
fascinating part of her family
history on the class website. “I
am the daughter of survivors of
the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre,”
she wrote. “I am relieved that
I no longer have to explain the
meaning of that statement. I am
still processing the whirlwind
that enveloped me during the
commemoration of the centennial
of the massacre.”
Sandy’s late father, John Melvin
Alexander, was the named
plaintiff in the unsuccessful 2003
reparations lawsuit brought by
survivors and their descendants.
“I have come to the realization
that just as the Brown family has
been forever associated with the
debates about school integration,
my Alexander family name will be
associated with the debate about
reparations.” To read more, visit
swarthmorecollege73.com.
Andrew DeGraffenreidt III died in
February, two weeks after suffering
serious burns in an accident in his
West Palm Beach, Fla., backyard.
Andrew, the first Black city
attorney in Hollywood, Fla., had a
private law practice and served as
counsel to numerous public boards
as well as city attorney in Riviera
Beach, Fla. He and his wife of 27
years, Mary, had a blended family
of seven children. Condolences can
be posted at bit.ly/3dhISCn.
Visit swarthmorecollege73.
com or facebook.com/
SwarthmoreClassOf1973.
1975
Sam Agger
sam.agger@gmail.com
Dave Gold opened a third law
office in New York, with the others
in Miami and Boca Raton, Fla. “I
was able to spend precious time
in Asheville, N.C., with my children
and grandchildren during COVID.”
Terry Fromson reports: “My son
and his wife had a baby boy May 15
— my first grandchild. My husband
and I enjoyed meeting him and
helping his parents soon after his
birth in Boston.”
Larry Schall writes: “We are
aging, and with age comes both
wisdom and loss. We lost a good
one this past June: Ken Andres,
a dear friend to so many of us
and a teammate in every sense of
that word. He passed peacefully
with wife Karen at his side after
a very short illness. To his soccer
teammates, Ken was No. 18, an
absolute force on the 1974 National
Soccer Championship finalist team,
now in the Swarthmore Athletics
Hall of Fame due entirely to his
persistence. Ken was as committed
to the sport of soccer as anyone
I’ve ever known. He had a biting
sense of humor and tried hard
not to smile all that much, lest
anyone mistake him as anything
but completely serious. To those
of us who got to see beneath that
façade, Ken was a sweet and loyal
man, devoted to his friends and
family. He will be missed.”
1977
Terri-Jean Pyer
terripyer@gmail.com
I am writing at the end of June,
trying to adjust to the new freedom
provided by being fully vaccinated.
I ventured to New Hampshire for a
family wedding in mid-June. Every
moment was vibrant with how
exquisitely special it was and to
see, hear, and hug loved ones after
such a long drought.
I felt especially fortunate that
Mary Lou Dymski drove up from
Cambridge, Mass., to spend a
few days with me and my family.
She shared photos of her three
beautiful grandchildren, and we
promised to visit more frequently.
I suspect that many of you have
been having similar experiences,
appreciating your chance to see
friends and relatives and to finally
hold those family celebrations that
were postponed. I hope you will
share those experiences with us
and that you will make plans to
participate in our reunion in 2022.
I’m sorry to share that the College
recently learned of the 2018 death
of Louis Staton, a classmate who
left Swarthmore a year early. He
was an energetic, gifted writer,
actor, and musician. A play he
wrote in his 20s, A Mid-Semester
Night’s Dream, based loosely on
his Swarthmore experiences, was
mentioned in a New York Times
article about the cultural arts
center and theater that his mother
ran in Mount Vernon, N.Y., and that
produced the show in 1981. Our
sincere condolences to his family,
including daughter Dominique.
figuring out my next move.”
As we approach age 65, it
would be great to hear from more
classmates who are also “figuring
out their next move.”
pass the baton. I trust one of you
will take it up
1978 1980 1981
Donna Caliendo Devlin
dmcdevlin@aol.com
David Kranz writes: “After a
42-plus-year career in 1199 SEIU,
United Healthcare Workers East,
I retired at the end of last year.
My time in 1199 was composed
of close to 18 years working at
Mount Sinai Medical Center in
NYC, first in a clerical position,
then as a bio-medical technician
and active as a shop steward.
For the next 24 years, I worked
for the union in charge of issues
concerning our professional and
technical members. It has been
very satisfying to be part of one
of the few success stories in the
American labor movement, as 1199
SEIU has grown to over 400,000
members. When I first got my job
at Mount Sinai after Swarthmore,
my idea was to work for a couple of
years to gain some insight on the
potential of a progressive union
to bring about societal change,
which was inspired by my study
of labor history. It has been a very
satisfying ride. I would love to hear
from old classmates. I’m looking
forward to doing more reading and
Karen Oliver
karen.oliver01@gmail.com
Martin Fleisher
marty@dearborncapitalpartners.com
I’m afraid there is little news,
perhaps because we are all just
emerging from the COVID-19 era.
On a sad note, David M. Snyder
of Port Allegany, Pa., died March
18 after a lengthy illness. He is
survived by wife Karen and son
Bryan.
Melanie Wentz and Tom Long
came East for a family wedding,
and we had a nice reunion with
them and Eric and Jodie Landes
Corngold. Mel and Tom were our
first out-of-town guests in quite
some time. We’re looking forward
to more.
As many of you know, Anne
Schuchat retired after 33 years
at the CDC. This is a loss for the
CDC and the country but also to
our class since about 50% of our
notes have been about her — more
pressure on the rest of you.
This is my last column as class
secretary. I’ve enjoyed my 16 years
working on this, but it is time to
It was fun to see folks at our
four virtual 40th Reunion events
between Nov. 19 and June 3.
The Reunion Committee of Jeff
Gordon, Tom Scholz, and the
amazing Katie Kuzoian Straple
from the alumni office did a
fantastic job organizing the various
Zoom gatherings. It was great
to catch up with everyone, and
a shout-out to all who helped as
breakout-room hosts.
Cheryl Kisatsky Avanzato has
been a radiologist at an upstate
New York hospital for 30 years.
She and husband John, a
gastroenterologist, work part time,
allowing them to travel to see
parents and their three sons. Their
youngest wed a Brazilian woman
in 2019, and they look forward
to traveling to Brazil with them.
Cheryl confesses that she has
finally joined Facebook and enjoys
seeing what classmates have been
doing. Speaking of Facebook,
don’t forget to join and post in our
Swarthmore College Class of 1981
group between Bulletin issues.
STRONG SURGEON
POLLY McKINSTRY ’76
Polly McKinstry ’76 took third place in
the women’s 65+ category at the 2021
International CrossFit Games — one of
just 20 athletes worldwide invited to
compete in her age group. Polly, who was
awarded “most valuable woman athlete”
her senior year at Swarthmore, is an
oculofacial plastic and reconstructive
surgeon in Laguna Hills, Calif.
“When I chose Swarthmore, it
offered one of the best women’s athletic
programs among the Ivy and Little Ivy
colleges,” Polly says. “The athletics were
a great outlet and support for the intense
academics. I was thrilled to discover CrossFit, which
brought back the focused training and camaraderie I
enjoyed doing team sports. Being physically fit makes me
better able to focus and perform my work as a surgeon,
just as it helped my studies at Swarthmore.”
Jonathan Berck is an attorney
with a small firm in Newburgh, N.Y.,
where he and his wife relocated
after three years in Beacon, N.Y.
They have a house on the Hudson
River. Jon adds that they have been
proceeding up the Hudson Valley
for the past five years and probably
won’t stop until they hit Montreal.
Alan Gordon’s newest pseudonym
is Allison Montclair, whose third
mystery novel was published
in June. This series is about
the proprietors of a licensed
marriage bureau in 1946 London
who find themselves drawn into
one investigation after another.
“Allison’s a better writer than I am”
Alan says. “Book four will be out
next year.”
Ken Leith was busy packing up his
house as part of a plan to downsize
this summer. He had no new house
picked out, “but with this crazy
market that could change in 48
hours.” While trying to stay healthy,
Ken says, “my knees are feeling like
they need [the late] Doug Weiss to
keep them moving.”
A late submission for the 40 for
our 40th column from Matt Lorenz:
“As grandson Shiloh Lee Lorenz
turns 3 in Tallahassee, Fla., I work
away in Tampa Bay, Fla. Celia and
I are eager to share beaches with
Swat tourists.”
Finally, Dan Schulman — from
Brooklyn or Bucks County, Pa.,
depending on the progress of his
renovation contractors — writes: “I
have been at my own eponymous
law firm practicing commercial
litigation and bankruptcy with
two other attorneys for the past
decade. Before that, I worked at
major New York law firms. I have
been married for 30-plus years
to Leslie Hall, and Juliet is our
only child.” In May, Juliet had
a book review published in Ms.
magazine. Dan regularly sees Ellyn
Plato, Hilary Mellis Barr, Gary
Simon ’79, and Stephen Labrum
’79. Dan added that Carl Levine,
who started with our class before
transferring to the University of
Michigan–Ann Arbor, looked the
same as he did in college, “other
than the length of his hair,” which
may have been why he recognized
him immediately when their
daughters were in elementary
school together.
FALL 2021
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
65
class notes
1982
David Chapman
dchapman29@gmail.com
I received a treasure trove of news
from the Class of ’82 Facebook
page. Also, any news can be
emailed to me (or just stop by
Charlottesville, Va., and update me
in person).
Tim Hoyt and Lisa Wright ’83
weathered the COVID-19 crisis
with Tim becoming an expert
at Zoom and other distanceteaching methods at the U.S.
Naval War College. He has been
working on a book about the Irish
Republican Army and the Irish war
of independence. More important,
Tim’s delighted to be able to sing
with groups to a live, in-person
audience again.
Geoffrey Brown is an emptynester, with elder daughter Naomi
working as a second-grade teacher
in Springfield, Mass., and the
younger, Susan, heading to the
Netherlands for college. He will
be back at the National Science
Foundation in January as a
program officer.
Bob Brownstone had major
transitions during COVID: a
complicated divorce, the sale
of his marital home in San
Francisco, a new apartment,
leaving his employer, starting
three companies, purchasing a
New Orleans rental property, and
facilitating relocations for his son
and daughter. With best friend
Michelle, he traveled and learned
to be a calm person.
Bridget Bower retired July 1 after
33 years as archivist at Ithaca
College. She noted that there
was a backlog at her job, “but I
estimated it would take about
10 years of doing nothing else to
finish it up.”
Raymond Sun completed 29 years
in Washington State University’s
history department, where he
received a teaching excellence
award in 2018. He leads a digital
exhibit project of the more than
250 World War II dead from
66
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
what was then Washington State
College. Raymond is researching
Jewish rescue of Jews during the
Holocaust.
William “Beau” Weston wrote
the social-theory essay “Heroic
Centrism in a Time of Polarization,”
which was published by the
Niskanen Center.
Sherry Jordon started her 28th
year of teaching in the theology
department and the Women,
Gender, and Sexuality Studies
program at the University of St.
Thomas in St. Paul, Minn. She and
husband Bill live in White Bear
Lake.
Jamie Stiehm is a member of
the Alumni Council and gave a
SwatTalk on the Arc of Suffrage
with Lucy Lang ’03 as moderator.
Jamie continues to write a column
from D.C.
Ken Short is provost at the U.S.
government’s newest engineering
graduate school, after seven years
as its acting provost. He helped
the school obtain its charter in
December 2019. Ken added that
he was leaving neuroscience
research and teaching less, “but
only after serving as Professor
Allen Schneider’s honors examiner
in neuroscience one last time this
spring.”
Henry Yaffe sold his business
in 2020, is vice president of
technology for Luna Innovations,
and purchased a house in
Christiansburg, Va. “Amit and I are
bouncing back and forth to our
Maryland home. We are expecting
our first grandchild in July.”
Kate Rittenhouse Dugan worked
for 30 years as a children’s
librarian in Andover, Mass. Her son
sells water-management systems
and is moving out soon. She and
her husband adopted two rescue
cats during the pandemic.
Jon and Susan Danzig Bernhardt
’83 live in St. Paul, Minn.,
and had been caring for their
granddaughter. “Susan is also
offering a cornucopia of alternative
health care services, including
Tibetan cranial. Anybody traveling
anywhere near should stop by
for hospitality and a session. In
other news, we get to see Betsey
Buckheit, who lives about an hour
away (plus others who live only a
Zoom call away).”
Jennifer Madison McNiff wrote
that Gwen Erwin Marrion received
the Katchen Coley Award for
Excellence in Land Conservation
from the Connecticut Land
Conservation Council. Gwen is
founding member and president
of the all-volunteer Bolton Land
Trust, which works to balance
growth with preservation.
1983
John Bowe
john@bowe.us
Suellen Heath Riffkin hoped for
post-pandemic restoration of the
usual summer gathering at the
Jersey Shore with Ellen Singer,
Sue Kost, Lisa Yahna Shortell, and
Patty Pesavento to celebrate their
60th birthdays.
From Seattle, the silver lining of
the pandemic for Martha Swain
was that daughter Maddy, 25,
moved back to the city. Martha
teaches early childhood classes
at the Seattle Waldorf School and
was looking forward to seeing Jen
Baily in July in Boston on Martha’s
way to visit her folks in Maine.
Andrea Davis-Griffin oversaw
the Greenhouse Therapy Center’s
move to a larger commercial suite
in Pasadena, Calif., growing her
team, and building a sensoryintegration therapy gym. She
enjoyed time with a stepdaughter
who moved back home for the
pandemic and others in their
nearby blended family.
Toni Caruso Siebert (paralegal in
appellate practice) and husband
Steve (State Department) have
started to think about retirement,
even though it’s five years away
and their two boys are still at
home. Steve would like to “retire”
to another interest or project, while
Toni would be content reading and
baking bread.
Deb Felix said her College
Equity Index has been released
and can be accessed free
at collegeequityfirst.org.
“Swarthmore did OK, but some
competitors did better.” Deb goes
sailing or kayaking several times a
week in Wellfleet, Mass.
Greg Davidson and Tamah
Kushner worked from home in
Redondo Beach, Calif., where they
“were impressed with each other’s
work lives — having not really ever
seen them so close up.” They enjoy
visits with their first grandson on
the other coast. Greg walks about
seven miles a day, with a goal of at
least 2,000 miles walked in 2021.
After pastoring and working with
Mennonite Church USA, Andre
Gingerich Stoner is a community
organizer with Faith in Indiana,
South Bend. The county chapter
has roughly 25 congregations
and community groups. Andre
was pleased that county officials
committed to investing American
Rescue Plan monies in crisis
intervention.
Wendy Davis is “officially retiring
from my adult literacy teaching
position as of this June.” She
planned to stay retired for at least
a year to join her partner on some
deferred trips, including to the
Grand Canyon.
Dan Werther and his wife left
COVID-ravaged NYC last winter for
six months in Florida. With his taste
of warm weather in winter, Dan
says, “I really need to recalibrate
and figure out what my mind and
body can take.”
Kevin Kuehlwein and his husband
celebrated 25 years together and
largely lived in their Salem, N.J.,
home during COVID-19. Check out
Kevin’s piano improvisations on
SoundCloud.com under Gideon
Scull Studios. “It’s been fun to
put them out there and get some
interest from complete strangers.”
Karen Ohland is associate director
for finance and operations at a
to-be-constructed art museum
for Princeton University. Also, she
will be the next president of the
American Society of Mechanical
Engineers.
As for me, John Bowe, my wife
and I got licensed to be foster
parents last winter and had our
first placement in February — a
then-14-month-old. Our two
20-something kids live nearby,
visiting often, and the foster child
happily goes to them both. We had
overlooked the fact that a toddler
can easily tire out 60-year-olds.
1984
Karen Linnea Searle
linnea.searle@gmail.com
I’m writing this column in early
summer with a recent Swarthmore
grad and a rising senior camping in
my backyard. One of them asked if
I still feel attached to the College.
Considering that I’m reading a
book by my former roommate,
looking at the art on my walls from
yet another classmate, and going
through all your emails … yes, I
certainly do feel connected.
In July 2019, Ann Starrs joined the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
as the director for family planning,
moving from NYC to Seattle. “I
manage a grant-making program
to improve access to contraception
(or family planning) for women
in low/middle-income countries,
focusing on sub-Saharan Africa
and South Asia. I love the work.”
Jorge Munoz and his family are
well, all at home. “Daughter Sofia,
20, is a junior at Scripps College,
and Renata, 18, starts at Haverford
College in the fall. Wife Natalia is
busy with home renovations, lots of
cooking, and looking after her mom
(virtually in Bolivia). I work from
home for the World Bank, focusing
on Africa, mostly. I have discovered
drumming as my new hobby, so I’m
devoting more time to music.”
Chris DeMoulin writes from L.A.:
“I’m grateful that after 18 months,
we got to reschedule L.A. Comic
Con for Dec. 3–5 at the L.A.
Convention Center. Any ’84s who
want to check out the madness
with 100,000-plus people, ping me
at chris@comicconla.com; I’ve set
aside 40 tickets.”
After 26 years of teaching at
Hackley School in Tarrytown,
N.Y., Adrianne Pierce retired.
Partner Laura works from home
for Girls Inc. Daughter Hannah is
at Wesleyan majoring in film and
English, and younger daughter Cate
joined her there this fall.
Colette Mull and Mike Dreyer
were contemplating a move from
Pennsylvania and will be sad not
to see Steve Demos and Roger
Latham ’83 and Jane Stavis as
regularly. Colette adds: “Jane
has a little quad like ours in Cape
May, N.J., so we will see her more
frequently than Steve and Roger
but hope they will come to visit.”
Jessie Winer, a New York artist
whose show in a Naples, Fla.,
gallery was interrupted by the
pandemic, had her volunteer
collaboration with Central Park
Conservancy expanded, when they
took her popular quarterly drawing
classes in the park virtual. Now,
hundreds of people from all over
the world tune in.
Gwyneth Jones Cote sent a
photo of a D.C. gathering with her,
Donna Marchesani Cronin, and
Jim Weber. They had a great time
catching up. In the photo was a
copy of the Halcyon, open to the
staff page with a photo of the three
of them. Of course, none of them
has aged a day since 1984.
Thanks to all for sending news.
Please keep emailing. For those
of you who are curious, the book
I’m reading is The Age of Kali
by Jocelyn Roberts Davis. It is
a retelling of The Mahabharata,
often called India’s Iliad, but from
a nontraditional perspective. It’s
Jocelyn’s first foray into fiction,
and it’s already swept me up into
an entirely new world.
1990
Jim Sailer
jim.sailer@gmail.com
Tracey Patillo
tepatillo1@gmail.com
Sharon Marroquin is a multilingual
specialist in Austin, Texas,
training school administrators and
teachers. “I believe these programs
are necessary reparations for
decades of linguistic and cultural
oppression within the public
schools.” She also claimed she
will be a 90-year-old chair-dancer
someday. We hope to join her.
In a first-time update, Ruth
Brown Walkup writes: “I have
been married for 25 years, gotten
a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology,
focused on international health
development, worked for the
U.S. government for more than
10 years (including as a diplomat
in Zimbabwe and India), shifted
careers to being an organizational
and leadership-development
expert, done more than 30
triathlons, played around with
oral storytelling, explored the
[Financial Independence, Retire
Early] movement, traveled slowly
in many parts of the world, been
happily child-free by choice, and
weathered COVID renting a hobby
farm in rural Virginia where the
Appalachian Trail is a 45-minute
walk from the back door.”
Jen Austrian Post retired from
the federal government in 2020. It
didn’t last long, and she returned
to the workforce after four months.
Husband Rick is in IT and hasn’t
been traveling heavily due to
COVID. Their daughters are back
home. The elder graduated from
Rochester Institute of Technology,
and the younger finished her
sophomore year at Washington
College in Maryland.
Peter Mastroianni is a founding
partner of Reichman Jorgensen
Lehman & Feldberg, a national
trial firm with four offices. “We
launched in October 2018 with a
results-driven, no-billable-hour
model. In 2021, we were named
Silicon Valley Firm of the Year, and
our managing partner, Courtland
Reichman, was named Silicon
Valley Litigator of the Year by
Benchmark Litigation.” Sarah
Newland Jorgensen and Christine
Lehman are named partners. Peter
is a board member of Escheatment,
a software company that locates
and recovers unclaimed assets.
1991
Ben Rothfeld
plannerben@gmail.com
It’s well past our 30th Reunion, but
give yourselves a pat on the back.
Just not too hard because we’ve
got enough aches and pains.
Several alumni spoke at a
memorial tribute for Nick Jesdanun
on April 23, including Cameron
“Cammy” Voss, Sameer Ashar,
and Steve Burd ’90, as well as
members of Nick’s family, fellow
runners, and former co-workers
at the Associated Press. They
each highlighted a facet of Nick’s
generous, humble, and not-soserious soul.
After learning about Nick’s
passing in April 2020, I worked
with Sameer, Steve, Pat Egan
’92, Heather Hill ’92, Stephanie
Hirsch ’92, Mara Senn ’92, Beth
McLaughlin ’92, Dena Ringold ’92,
and Dave Zaring ’92 to establish
the Nick Jesdanun Memorial
Summer Opportunity endowed
fund to support traditionally
underrepresented or firstgeneration Swarthmore students
who are part of the Richard Rubin
Scholar Mentoring Program with
summer internships in journalism,
technology, or public policy. Thanks
to the generosity of alums, friends,
and relatives, we have achieved
our initial goal of raising at least
$125,000. Donations are still being
accepted. See miles4nick.com,
which was organized by Nick’s
brother Gary and several cousins.
To round out the Nick news, Abby
Brown Sullivan and Keyvan AmirArjomand ran a Virtual Reunion 5K
called Miles4Nick that encouraged
alumni of all classes to run, hike,
swim, bike, or (in my case) referee
youth soccer to raise money for the
fund. We raised $7,555.
Gautam Gowrisankaran, wife
Kathie Barnes ’93, and two-thirds
of their daughters (the ones still
in high school) are moving back to
NYC for three years while Gautam
teaches at Columbia University.
They had lived in Tucson, Ariz.,
where the couple taught at the
University of Arizona.
John Altom lives in Whitehouse,
N.J., and is shepherding his
daughter, a high school junior, and
his sons, sophomores, through the
college-admissions process. Maybe
he can get some advice from
Cammy, who, along with husband
Denis Murphy ’89, attended
Swarthmore’s Commencement
to see son Declan Murphy ’21
graduate. Daughter Eliza Murphy
FALL 2021
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
67
class notes
’23 is a Swarthmorean, too. Cammy
works in the Philadelphia school
district office that oversees charter
schools. In other off-to-college
news, Phil McLean is sending
son Aiden to UC–Davis to study
environmental science. Alex and
Dawn Rheingans McDonnell saw
son Keiran graduate from Friends
Central School in Wynnewood, Pa.,
and are sending him to Haverford.
1996
Melissa Clark
melissa.a.clark@gmail.com
Gerardo Aquino
tony.aquino@united.com
At the many virtual reunion events
this past year, we heard classmates
discuss their areas of expertise
through Parlor Talks, along with
Marcella Nunez Smith speaking
at the Alumni Collection about her
work to address inequities in health
care and the disparate effects of
the pandemic on marginalized
communities.
Andrew Medina-Marino co-leads
the Men’s Health Division at the
Desmond Tutu Health Foundation
at the University of Cape Town,
South Africa. He was also
appointed an adjunct psychiatry
professor at Penn’s Perelman
School of Medicine. Andrew and
partner Daniel are busy with
their toddler son, whom they are
teaching English, Afrikaans, and
Spanish, even though he hasn’t
started talking yet.
Megan Smith worked at an
emergency intake site for
unaccompanied children crossing
the border this past spring with
about 200 other federal employees
from across the country, including
Nicole Jassie ’95 and Sandy Lin
’98. All three are lawyers who have
worked in child-related fields.
After five years with the
Department of Homeland Security’s
Office of the General Counsel
supporting the Office of Civil
Rights and Civil Liberties, Marc
Pachon became attorney for the
68
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
Office of the Immigration Detention
Ombudsman, investigating
mistreatment or harm. He is also
at the University of Illinois College
of Law. This year, he had four print
publications of his photography
and is president of the Arches
Gallery at the Workhouse Arts
Center in Lorton, Va.
Kate Ellsworth, in Boston, is
“busy with her acupuncture
practice, shepherding her 16-yearold through this last crazy year
and into the next (junior year in
Spain).”
Kristin Pizzo FitzGerald started
a middle school global-history
teaching job at Beaver Country
Day School in Chestnut Hill, Mass.,
after 11 years at the Fenn School.
Kristin, her husband, and their
kids, 6 and 8, live in Arlington,
Mass., and spend a lot of time with
family in Maine and on Cape Cod.
After 10 years running a
laboratory at the NIH and doing
clinical work at Johns Hopkins,
it took working from home during
the pandemic for Chris Hourigan
to realize that he doesn’t like
commuting. He, wife Suchi, a
pediatric gastroenterologist, and
their two boys moved from Virginia
to Bethesda, Md., this summer.
During the pandemic, Jim Hunt
founded Hunt & Associates, a law
firm focusing on personal-injury
cases. He lives in New Jersey with
his wife and six children.
Rebecca Winthrop wrote that
the upside of the pandemic
was getting “comfortable with
mucho interruptions from kids,
dogs, parents, you name it, amid
presentations and policy dialogues.
I also realized how little I need to
travel to do my global work. I don’t
think I will ever spend as much time
on planes as I used to.”
Curtis Trimble writes: “Alejandra
Gonzalez, our daughters, and
I managed to visit Alejandra’s
sister, Fernanda Gonzalez Hausske
’98, and her family in Idaho over
the holidays shortly after they
relocated there from the Bay Area.”
The couple’s daughter Sofia made
it through her first year at Bryn
Mawr College, with the second
semester as enjoyable as the first
semester was wearying. “All of us
look forward to her experiencing a
‘normal’ sophomore year.”
1997
Lauren Jacobi
laurenjacobi@hotmail.com
I am working on a new, timeconsuming project and am looking
for a classmate to help with
gathering alumni-related material
and writing our class notes. If you
are interested, please email me.
This past spring, Cameron
Geddes became the Accelerator
Technology and Applied Physics
Division director at the Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory,
where he researches laser-driven
particle acceleration and intense
laser-matter interaction. Tony
Cheesebrough is chief economist
for the Cybersecurity and
Infrastructure Security Agency at
the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security, and teaches at Carnegie
Mellon University’s Heinz College.
This summer, Liza Ewen started
as head of school at Monteverde
Friends School in Costa Rica —
wife Sandra Rodriguez’s native
country. Their kids, Santiago, 10,
and Pablo, 4, were excited about
the new school and a promise to
adopt a dog. Lia Ernst became legal
director with the ACLU of Vermont,
where she’s worked since 2015.
Previously, she was a judicial law
clerk for the U.S. District Court for
the Eastern District of Michigan and
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
First Circuit.
Andrea Barnett Gemignani
teaches legal writing and family law
at Belmont University in Nashville,
Tenn., as visiting professor of
legal practice. Previously, she
represented Virginia public
school boards. Rebecca Giguere,
her Argentinian-born husband,
and their daughter returned to
NYC after about eight months in
Mexico. Last summer, she and
her family went on a “vancation.”
They traveled cross-country in
a minivan for two weeks, visiting
several national parks, having a
socially distanced play date in
Nashville with Dhruvi Kakkad and
her boys, and posting on Instagram
(@touringwiththetorres). Rebecca
writes for the Families Love Travel
website and is a public health
researcher. She would enjoy
exchanging travel stories and tips
with other Swat families.
As always, please send me news;
I’d love to hear from you.
1998
Rachel Breitman
rachellbreitman@yahoo.com
Shirley Salmeron Dugan
shirley.salmeron@gmail.com
In Seattle, Delila Leber and her
wife had daughter Rosalie “Sally”
in April. Sister Layla, 2, is adjusting
and has become a diaper fairy
(plus other big-kid jobs). Delila
has moved into a new role as a
dual-language coordinator after 12
years of teaching kindergarten in
Spanish.
Ari Plost left Hagerstown,
Md., where he was a rabbi at
Congregation B’nai Abraham, to
be senior rabbi of Temple Solel of
Hollywood, Fla. While in Maryland,
Ari founded the Thomas Kennedy
Center and came up with the idea
for a park to honor this legislator
who fought in the 1800s to make it
legal for people of the Jewish faith
to hold public office in the state.
Mandy Hourihan Eppley started
studies this fall at UC–Davis School
of Law, which is known for its focus
on social justice. Most recently, she
worked at UC–Berkeley’s Center
for Cities and Schools, directing
a research initiative that partners
young people with city planners and
leaders.
Rebecca Green “appeared
on Master Minds on the Game
Show Network, improved my
hummingbird-photography skills,
became a law firm partner, and was
featured on the front cover of Los
Angeles Lawyer magazine for an
article I wrote on the U.S. Supreme
Court decision Bostock v. Clayton
County, Georgia. I’ve enjoyed Zoom
dates with Kevin Kish, Kate Baird,
and Julia Kernochan Tama, and
hope to continue that in the postpandemic world.”
In January 2020, Sarah Wamester
Bares moved to Walla Walla, Wash.,
for her husband’s job. Through a
tough year, she faced her mother’s
cancer treatment, car accidents,
and home-schooling, and she
bought a new home, which she is
renovating. “Since March, I’ve been
waking up at 5 every morning to go
to the house to remove cardboard,
muslin cloth, 25 layers of wallpaper,
and thousands of tack nails. The
kids are well. I’m looking forward
to them getting vaccinated and
resuming school.”
I, Rachel, was excited to use my
first post-vaccine Metro ride to
visit Cathlin Tully at her new home
in Maryland, and then take Amtrak
to NYC to see my former student
Emma Otheguy ’09 and husband
Tim Roeper ’07 and meet their
1-year-old Aleya in Queens. I also
saw some new Swatties this spring:
Pinar Karaca-Mandic’s daughter
Mina Mandic ’25, a former student
of mine here in D.C., and Kristin
Waugh Hempel ’97’s son Atticus
’25. It’s exciting to see the next
generation of Swatties.
Pinar (bit.ly/PinarKM) is the
academic director at the Medical
Industry Leadership Institute at the
University of Minnesota Carlson
School of Management. “Daily, we
are tracking COVID hospitalizations,
hand-collecting data, and sharing
data weekly with NPR and other
insights with media.”
1999
Melissa Morrell
melrel99@hotmail.com
Mary Meiklejohn-Pitney left her
position as director of patient
access at a community health
center to take her turn as the athome parent with the fully remote
kids. “Fingers crossed that the kids
can attend school in person this
fall, and I can start exploring the
next phase of my professional life,
whatever that may be.”
Jenny Briggs is the new chair
of the neuromuscular therapy
department at the Pittsburgh
School of Massage Therapy. Carl
Wellington is director of autonomy
at Aurora, where he leads a team
working on self-driving trucks.
Jenny and Carl had a wonderful
evening out with Elizabeth Nickrenz
Fein and husband Pete at an
outdoor dance party. Elizabeth is
chair of the Duquesne University
psychology department.
Carrie Bader in Salem, Ore.,
writes: “After a divorce, I decided to
embark on parenthood on my own.
I welcomed my little girl, Madelyn,
early this year. Solo-parenting a
newborn during a pandemic has
been ridiculously challenging.”
Roger Bock realized that after 15
years at the same job, it was either
now or never to try something new.
He is at Wayfair, where he applies
machine learning to improve the
“post-order customer experience.”
Aarti Iyer, who moved back to the
U.S. for a year, was awarded the
2021–22 James Marshall Public
Policy Fellowship by the Society for
the Psychological Study of Social
Issues. “I will work on Capitol Hill
to use social science theory and
research to inform federal policy.”
Anna Tocci died March 21
surrounded by friends and
family after a short bout with an
aggressive form of brain cancer.
She is survived by husband Justin
Andre and daughters Juna, 10,
and Anya, 8. Deborah Stein writes:
“I met Anna during a gathering in
the Willetts room she shared with
MC Hyland. That room, and the
one she shared the following year
with Sarah Cross, are some of
my favorite Swat memories. I still
marvel when I think about how my
teenage peers could create spaces
so warm, so welcoming, so full of
bright colors, creativity, kindness,
and the feeling of home. It was an
early sign that Anna had a special
capacity for community-building.
She will always be with me when I
make the black beans recipe she
wrote down for me.”
“The summer before my first
year at Swarthmore,” MC shares,
“I received a letter from my future
roommate, Anna, to tell me a bit
about herself. Her love of music and
her uncanny knack for hospitality
led Anna to foster communities. I’ll
miss Anna more than I can say, but
I will also forever be inspired by all
that she taught me about how to
care for people and let them care
for you.”
On March 28, we lost Aaron
Hirschhorn in a boating accident
in Biscayne Bay, Fla. He was
featured in the winter Bulletin (bit.
ly/AHirschhorn) for his appearance
on Shark Tank, where he received
funding for his startup, Gallant. He
is survived by wife Karine Nissim
and children August, Joe, and Elle.
From his brother, Dan: “It gives me
great comfort and happiness to
know he was doing exactly what
he wanted to do with his life, and
that he had never been happier.”
We will miss both of these amazing
classmates, and I am heartbroken
for their families and friends.
2000
Michaela DeSoucey
mdesoucey@gmail.com
Emily Shu
emily.n.shu@gmail.com
After 15 years in the classroom,
Kat Vidal Loveless is working as
a master practitioner in Carnegie
Learning’s World Language
Professional Learning department.
“The pandemic shifted our family
priorities dramatically, and I’m
grateful for the chance to work from
home again.”
Nikki Lee graduated cum laude
with a master of library science
from North Carolina Central
University. She is a middleschool librarian and is pursuing
yoga-teacher certification. Paul
Willenberg lives in Portland,
Ore., with his wife and 9-year-old
daughter and runs Namazake, an
online sake shop.
Thalia Mills and husband Gil
Toombes are muddling through life
with two jobs and two boys, Callum,
1, and Rohan, 5. She says the FDA
has been an interesting place to
work over the past year and even
more challenging with COVID-19.
Victor Pineiro and wife Ev had
second child Luke James in June.
Victor’s debut middle-grade
novel, Time Villains (the first in a
series), was released in July. Kim
Foote was awarded the George
Bennett Fellowship at Phillips
Exeter Academy, where she will be
writer-in-residence for the 2021–22
academic year. She had short
stories in The Rumpus, Ecotone,
and Iron Horse Literary Review.
Maya Shanbhag Lang’s memoir,
What We Carry, was in bookstores
this spring. “I’m still walking on air
from having The New York Times
say that I write ‘exquisitely.’ I live
near NYC and would love to see any
Swatties in the area.”
Eva Allan’s family will spend
her husband’s sabbatical year
in Lyon, France, and she would
love to connect with any alumni
there. Samantha Twigg Johnson
was marooned in her favorite
city, Oxford, England, during the
pandemic but missed family and
friends in the U.S. “I still love
counseling teenagers at a local
school, and I have restarted my
private psychotherapy practice.
I also write and play music. I
particularly enjoyed playing
a socially distanced set on a
canal boat in May.” Listen at
samtwigg.net or connect with
her on Instagram or Facebook (@
twiggtwang).
Rochelle Arms Almengor, along
with her husband, daughter, and
mom, relocated from Brooklyn to
Kentucky mid-pandemic. Rochelle
started a full-time faculty position
in the peace and social justice
department of Berea College, which
has author bell hooks on its faculty.
“It’s truly a dream to get to work [at
the college]. Otherwise, Daniel and
I are happily parenting Soli, who is
keeping us on our 40-something
toes. Come see us if you are down
South.”
I, Michaela DeSoucey, moved
across town, in Raleigh, N.C., for
more space for home offices and
future guests, and a bigger yard for
my boys, Jasper, 9, and Zachary,
5, and our pandemic cat. I was
fortunate to have Gabe Cumming
visit, via Zoom, my Sociology of
Food Systems graduate seminar
this spring to talk about his North
Carolina-based organization,
Working Landscapes. I, Emily Shu,
FALL 2021
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69
class notes
moved to an 18th-century house
near NYC, where I continue to
work as a high school principal.
I was delighted to host Jen Slaw
Napolitano via Zoom for a juggling
workshop for our seniors this
spring. Jen and her family moved
from New York to Conestoga, Pa.
2002
Tanyaporn Wansom
swarthmore2002@gmail.com
Jae Won Chung’s son, Ezra Chung,
arrived on Memorial Day. Jeanne
Gardner Gutierrez curated the
exhibition Cover Story: Katharine
Graham, CEO, which was on view
at the New-York Historical Society.
She also joined the board of the
Wassaic Project, a nonprofit
arts organization in Dutchess
County, N.Y. In April, Elizabeth
Lindsey became CEO of Urban
Alliance, a national nonprofit
that helps young people achieve
economic mobility through paid
internships and training. On
Juneteenth, she eloped with Erika
Johnson in Provincetown, Mass.
Elizabeth, Erika, and Elizabeth’s
two daughters live in D.C. Keetje
Kuipers writes: “My wife, Sarah
Fritsch Kuipers ’04, daughter
Nela, 8, and son Lyle, 18 months,
moved to Missoula, Mont., where
I teach poetry in the MFA program
at the University of Montana. We
are enjoying the rivers and music
and would love to see any Swatties
passing through.”
I, Tanyaporn, live in Bangkok,
enjoying consultant life and serving
as lead writer on Thailand’s country
grant for COVID-19 response and
mitigation to the Global Fund for
HIV, TB, and Malaria.
On June 16, Maya Peterson died in
childbirth alongside daughter Priya
Luna. Her loss is deeply mourned
by her partner, A. Marm Kilpatrick,
her parents, Mark and Indira
Peterson, and their families, as well
as by a community of friends. Her
mother writes: “Maya packed more
into her 41 years than many of us
would in 80.”
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FALL 2021
Maya earned a bachelor’s in
history with high honors from
Swarthmore and a master’s in
Russia, Eastern Europe, and
Central Asia Studies and a Ph.D.
in history from Harvard. A beloved
teacher and colleague, she was an
associate professor of history at
UC–Santa Cruz.
Marcy McCullaugh shares this
tribute to Maya: “Her determination,
fearlessness, and confidence
inspired so many of us to want
to be more like her. She was an
integral part of many communities
at Swarthmore, from the women’s
rugby team to Russian Club. Her
passion for history and the study
of Russia and Central Asia started
in college, especially during her
study abroad in St. Petersburg in
spring 2000 and adventures across
Russia, Mongolia, and China on
the Trans-Siberian train in summer
2001. Maya’s kindness, warmth,
and joy for living had a profound
and lasting impact on those of us
who knew and loved her best. Maya
will be in our hearts forever.”
2003
Robin Smith Petruzielo
robinleslie@alum.swarthmore.edu
Hwa-chow Oliver Hsu left NYC
in 2016 for Silicon Valley to join
Ascend.io, a big-data startup.
This was after spending three
years getting a master’s in cello
performance and music theory and
nine years working as a full-time
software engineer and part-time
freelance musician and teacher.
Oliver married wife Stephanie in
2018, and they have a son, 2. After
being in Taiwan during COVID-19,
they decided to stay for good.
After three years at Howard
University as the Law Library
director and assistant professor
of law, Kristina Alayan moved to
Baltimore to be associate dean
of information and technology
and associate professor at the
University of Maryland Francis
King Carey School of Law. Kristina
adopted puppy Lucille this year,
joining dogs Sage and Herbie and
cats Miles and Quincy.
Morghan Holt Milagrosa Chinn
remarried, and alongside her
OB-GYN wife and daughter Lexx,
Morghan opened a women’s clinic
north of Seattle.
Charles Small and wife Jade
Floyd, who live in Silver Spring,
Md., welcomed daughter Jasper
Elliott Teagan Small on April 12,
2020. After four years as director
of federal affairs for Los Angeles,
Charles was sworn in virtually by
President Joe Biden on Jan. 20
as deputy assistant secretary for
intergovernmental affairs at the
U.S. Department of Transportation.
Ursula Whitcher was a virtual
honors examiner in algebra and
algebraic geometry for Swarthmore
this spring. She is the editor of
and a regular contributor to the
American Math Society’s Feature
Column. She had a short story in
Cossmass Infinities and a poem in
the Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction
magazine. Ursula’s poem “Physics
6,” written at Swarthmore, was in
the Ursula K. Le Guin memorial
poetry anthology Climbing Lightly
Through Forests.
After three years in Casablanca,
Morocco, Blair Cochran and
Chris Guttridge are now with
the International Baccalaureate
program at the American School
of Kinshasa, Congo. Son Nicolas
was excited to start preschool, and
second-born Lucas was excited to
discover new hazards.
Paul Wulfsberg is back in Algeria,
working in person as U.S. Embassy
spokesperson, having spent much
of the past year teleworking and
living in Boston with his wife and
two children.
Susan Christensen Henz coauthored her ninth educational
puzzle book, Amazing Brain Book
for Kids, with her mom through
Callisto Media. Susan and her
family put in a garden with plenty of
veggies and melons to share.
Stella Cousins and Jeff Regier
welcomed Alice June Regier on
May 11. They are on faculty at the
University of Michigan–Ann Arbor.
Eden Wales Freedman, who joined
Alumni Council, is vice president
for academic affairs and dean of
the faculty at Clarke University in
Dubuque, Iowa.
Davita Burkhead-Weiner is a
child psychiatrist in Ann Arbor,
Mich. She married Bob Headley
last fall in a tiny COVID-conscious
outdoor ceremony. They participate
in triathlons, including the IM
Michigan 70.3 this summer.
Todd Gillette and wife Laura
bought a house in Columbia,
Md., and enjoy game nights with
fellow ’03ers. Laura Fox has lived
in Alaska since 2008 where she
enjoys backpacking and cycling.
My husband, Frank, and I
welcomed daughter Greer Imogen in
January. Brother Emory, 2.5, tests
all of her toys.
2004
Rebecca Rogers
rebecca.ep.rogers@gmail.com
Danny Loss
danny.loss@gmail.com
Autumn Quinn and husband John
Gale welcomed James Patrick on
June 6. Anna, 4, is learning to be
a helpful big sister. Autumn is a
project manager for the Android
team at Google.
Jenny Blumberg Graber and
husband Evan welcomed Nora
Lynn Graber on March 2. She was
impatient to enter the world —
Jenny barely had time to get to the
hospital. Parents and brother Seth
are very much in love. Jenny’s work
as an OB-GYN in Philadelphia’s
suburbs was in person throughout
the pandemic. She is grateful for job
security and doing something she
finds fulfilling.
Cadelba Lomelí-Loibl’s first child,
Secoya, was born in May. Before
Secoya’s birth, Cadelba completed
a two-year program and is a fellow
in the Academy of Integrative
Health and Medicine. She is a nurse
practitioner in a community clinic
setting.
Sarah Donovan Finnegan became
a full-time stay-at-home mom
with two home-schooled kids,
ages 4 and 7. She’s also a full-time
risk manager for an investment
management firm. Sarah started in
a new role with AllianceBernstein in
November and also became a board
trustee for a secondary school,
helping them manage COVID-19 risk
and contingency planning.
Adrienne Mackey has a new art
project called Aqua Marooned!, a
card game that is played at nature
centers across the Delaware
River watershed. It encourages
players to connect with flora
and fauna and is part of the
Lenapehoking~Watershed project,
which shares environmental
awareness through art and culture.
Edwin Way earned a Ph.D.
in spring 2020 from Indiana
University–Bloomington.
His dissertation focused on
financialization and the political
economy of deindustrialization.
We, Rebecca Rogers and
Danny Loss, were excited for our
elder son to experience his first
summer camp. Rebecca joined a
collaboration with Harvard School
of Public Health’s Center for
Climate, Health, and the Global
Environment to explore ways
that health centers can prepare
themselves and their patients for
the effects of climate change and
extreme weather events.
2005
Jessica Zagory
jazagory@alum.swarthmore.edu
It is with immense gratitude that I
resume compiling class notes after
a two-year hiatus while I completed
my medical training. Thank you,
Emiliano Rodriguez, for keeping us
connected.
Preety Sidhu accepted a job at
the GrubStreet literary arts center
in Boston. She manages the
annual Muse & the Marketplace
conference on how to write well and
get published, which was founded
by Christopher Castellani ’94. Nick
Guerette started at the Berkeley
(Calif.) Free Clinic in March 2020.
He immediately pivoted from his
intended facilities-maintenance role
to providing handwashing stations
for homeless encampments.
This developed into the Curbside
Community Water Project, which
offers potable water to hundreds
of people living on the street in
Berkeley and Oakland. With the
project transferred to a newly
formed nonprofit, he is figuring
out what a general engineer is
employable for.
Katherine McAlister graduated
with a master’s in library and
information science from the
University of Washington. Kate
Duffy finished an American studies
Ph.D. at Brown University. She lives
in Burlington, Vt., with husband
Erik Osheim ’03 and their toddler
son. Lindsay Brin moved to Ottawa,
Ontario.
Caitlin Hildebrand-Turcik
completed an integrative medicine
fellowship in September 2020 and
leads integrative health at the San
Francisco VA. She and John Turcik
love life in the redwoods on the
Russian River in Guerneville, Calif.
In Bangalore, India, Raghu Karnad
married Abhishikta Mallick in March
2020 in a pandemic wedding that
was wonderfully minimal with just
parents, siblings, and one Swattie,
Anmol Tikoo ’06.
Randy Goldstein and Emily
Remus ’06 had Fiona RemusGoldstein on June 4, 2020. They
live South Bend, Ind., where Emily
received tenure as an associate
professor of history at Notre Dame.
Randy is CEO of Kitchen Cabinet
Distributors. Swatties should feel
free to reach out for “friends and
family pricing.”
On June 10, Timothy Colman
and Liam Miller welcomed Noa
Miriam Colman Miller to the farm
in Chester County, Pa. Jody Fisher
spent the past two years as duallanguage coordinator at a Chicago
elementary school. He and spouse
Jessica Petertil had Josephine
Eliza on June 16. Brother Judah,
2, was thrilled. Joy Mills moved
to Wellington, New Zealand, in
January and in April gave birth to
Willow Marjorie Mills Worth.
Eugene Palatulan, Jorge Aguilar,
Tafadzwa Muguwe, and Brian
Hwang forgot that they already
submitted their baby news for the
previous issue. Needless to say, I
am excited for these little ones to
continue the legacy in the Class of
2041(ish).
2006
Wee-Jhong Chua
wchua1@gmail.com
During a visit with my thengirlfriend, Sherin Rouhani, to
Philadelphia, my mom surprised
me with, “So, do you think she’s
the one?” Before I could answer,
she unveiled the most beautiful
engagement ring. With Sherin in
the next room, I quickly thanked her
and slipped the ring in my pocket.
So many questions flooded my
mind, including, “What’s the story of
the ring?” That and other questions
won’t be answered because this
was my mom’s final gift to me — she
died unexpectedly a week later.
My mom, Kim Elizabeth Chua,
retired as a jeweler and gemologist.
As a refugee from the Khmer
Rouge genocide in Cambodia, she
spent her first decade in the U.S.
as a social worker who sponsored
hundreds of displaced families
seeking refuge. She is remembered
as a deeply caring person, whose
greatest joy was in her family.
Sherin and I married in April at
the Lincoln Park Conservatory in
Chicago. While my mom couldn’t be
there, her spirit, love, and energy
were truly felt. We live in Chicago,
where I am an assistant professor
of pediatrics at the Northwestern
University Feinberg School of
Medicine. I work in the emergency
department, integrating my
passions for health care, advocacy,
and education. If you’re ever in the
Windy City, I’d love to catch up.
Yavor Georgiev and Norah had
son Yusef in January. The baby’s
already traveled to three continents
so the couple could spend
pandemic time off closer to family.
Ariana Nadia Nash has poetry and
academic articles forthcoming in
P-Queue, CounterText, and J19.
She and husband Jacob Sloan had
son Striker John Sloan on April 9.
He is already an avid reader and
will no doubt produce his own
masterworks soon.
Anastasia Herasimovich and
husband Vasili had second child
Alexander in May. Anastasia
also accepted an invitation from
Northwestern University Pritzker
School of Law to teach Structuring
Real Estate Transactions.
Megan Richie and Brodie Winner
’05 acquired son Emil Laurence
Winner to accompany big brother
Galen. The chaos tolerance of both
parents has increased accordingly.
After more than 12 years in
Brooklyn, Jenna Adelberg Silver
moved to Providence, R.I., with
husband Andrew and daughters
Caroline, 6, and Sophie, 3.
Jenna works for Univision
Communications in NYC.
Hannah de Keijzer moved to
Hoboken, N.J., with her family and
is excited to reconnect with NYC
Swatties. She’s wearing several
hats: nonfiction editor, catalyst for
writing and other creative projects,
dancer, and parent.
Katia Lom is in London with dog
Kaiser and partner Martin. She is
part of archive teams making TV
documentaries.
William ’05 and Anisha Chandra
Schwarz had Ameya Chandra
Schwarz on Oct. 14, 2020. Brother
Narayan had the strangest
kindergarten year ever; they
look forward to the reopening of
Washington state.
Martyna Pospieszalska and her
husband welcomed second child
Eliasz on June 29 and will move
from D.C. to South Padre Island,
Texas, for the next two years.
Emily Wistar and Dan Hammer
’07 had Caleb Barnett Hammer
in January, and sister Lily, 4, was
thrilled. Emily is a primary care
doctor at the Potrero Hill Health
Center, run by the San Francisco
Department of Public Health, and
returned to work in August after a
six-month maternity leave.
2007
Kristin Leitzel Hoy
kleitzel@gmail.com
Michelle Tomasik and Andrew
Cheng ’08 welcomed Felix Haolin
Cheng in June. Sister Annika is
FALL 2021
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
71
class notes
graciously helping the exhausted
parents. Mustafa Paksoy and wife
Anabel welcomed Zeki Marshall
Paksoy on April 18, three weeks
early. He was 4.5 pounds, but
he’s thriving. Mustafa started
as director of engineering at
Amplitude. The family splits time
between San Francisco and the
home they share in West Marin,
Calif., with Anabel’s sister.
Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham lives
in New Haven, Conn., with wife
Sonia Gilbukh and their pandemic
baby, Daniel Anthony Gilbukh. Paul
teaches finance as an assistant
professor at the Yale and is learning
to play tennis. The family moved
next door to Julia Smith ’06 and
Jacob Wallace ’05 and their two
kids last summer and were doing
their best to recreate dorm living in
their late 30s.
James Brady spent lockdown in
Philadelphia with his parents. This
was a big change from his days in
the crowded poker rooms where
he makes his living. During the
pandemic, he transformed his game
to play online. While his profits
plummeted, he was playing better
than ever. As everything reopened,
James looked forward to getting
back to his community and seeing
friends in person.
In April, Caleb Ward started as
a postdoc in feminist philosophy
at the University of Hamburg,
Germany, where he’s teaching a
couple of seminars and on the hunt
for more research funding. He and
his family live in Berlin.
Samantha Graffeo Gardner
completed her certification
in pediatric dentistry with the
University of Florida, Gainesville.
She, her husband, and their two
daughters were thrilled to return to
Boulder, Colo., and Sam was excited
to improve children’s oral health in
the Denver/Boulder area.
Katie Van Winkle spent much of
early 2021 helping people schedule
vaccination appointments. In April,
she helped launch the nonprofit
TogetherAustin and its vaccineequity project, VaxTogetherAustin,
which organized clinics and
administered more than 10,000
Pfizer vaccine doses. At 7 months,
baby Susannah loved seeing other
babies, splashing in fountains, and
practicing her plank position.
72
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
2008
Mark Dlugash
mark.dlugash@gmail.com
Renata Peralta moved back to
Philadelphia after seven years in
NYC. She was labor organizing
with the Communications Workers
of America while on “professional
development leave” from the Open
Society Foundations.
Justin Shaffer moved to Miami.
He works in real estate, picked up
tennis, and reconnected with Todd
Friedman ’09 and Raul Ordonez
’09. Mairin Odle spent 2020
oscillating among sewing, reading,
watching her pollinator garden,
and sleepless nights going over the
plot of the Austrian film The Wall.
She’s been thinking about visible
mending as an ethos, was finishing
a book, and is readying herself for
“something else.”
Wren Elhai finished a master’s
in international policy at Stanford
in June 2020. In August 2020, he
moved back to D.C. and the State
Department to be an adviser on
public and press engagement in
the Office of Cyber Issues. If you’re
in the area, connect with him to
catch up and/or play music.
Michael Karcher got rid of most of
the excess weight and depression
that resulted from a long, slow
Ph.D. and a chill postdoc, which
is coming to an end soon, with the
long-term job search ongoing.
Adam Dalva and Alana Salguero’s
wedding was canceled due to the
pandemic. In the plus column,
Adam was elected to the board of
the National Book Critics Circle.
Katy Feniello finished a midwifery
master’s in November and passed
her certification exam in December
after almost 10 years. Taking care
of people as full-time birth-center
nurse and student midwife for the
pandemic crushed Katy. She was
looking forward to starting as a
midwife fellow this winter.
After completing fellowships from
the American Council of Learned
Societies and the American
Association of University Women,
Sunny Yang shifted to online
teaching during her first semester
at the University of Houston. She
split the rest of 2020 training
herself in online pedagogy and
strategizing to keep her British
partner from being deported due
to a hiring freeze. In December, the
partner’s hire finally went through.
The pandemic unleashed, for her,
an interest in home décor, DIY, and
Etsy/eBay rabbit holes.
Jake Brunkard married Sergio
Sanchez in a civil ceremony
witnessed by three strangers
and a friendly dog shortly after
moving to Madison, Wis., to join
the genetics faculty at University
of Wisconsin. The couple spent
10 years in Berkeley, Calif., and
are (re-)learning what snow is.
This was the first time since 2008
that Jake moved without Ranga
Atapattu’s assistance, although
she did prepare road-trip playlists
in long-distance support.
Alyssa Work is a staff attorney at
the Bronx Defenders. She and Alex
Friedman ’09 now share their NYC
apartment with September 2020
arrival June Friedman-Work, who,
thankfully, also enjoys prestige TV
and wearing pajamas all day.
Patricia Kelly Marsh created
the ShhParty app, which allows
entertainers to grow an audience
and make an income selling tickets
and collecting tips. App users can
attend the ShhParty from a mobile
device at home or in person at the
ShhParty venue. Patricia married
Vincent Marsh on July 23, 2020.
Tatiana Cozzarelli was about
to run out of funding for her
Ph.D. that she had failed to write.
She was, however, writing and
building a revolutionary socialist
publication, Left Voice.
2009
Melanie Spaulding
maspauld1@gmail.com
Qian Julie Wang’s Beautiful
Country (pg. 46) debuted Sept. 7. It
is a literary memoir that traces her
time living as an undocumented
child in NYC in the 1990s; she
wrote the book while making
partner at a law firm. She was
thrilled to have Linda Huang ’08,
associate art director at publisher
Penguin, design the cover. Qian
Julie co-founded Gottlieb & Wang
this year and has dedicated her law
practice to advancing education,
immigration, and civil rights.
After four years of fieldwork
interviewing ranchers across
Montana about the challenges of
coexisting with wildlife, Hannah
Jaicks spent 2020 writing it
all up into a book that will be
published in February. The Atlas
of Conflict Reduction: A Montana
Field Guide to Sharing Ranching
Landscapes with Wildlife explores
personal stories of everyday
conservation heroes who coexist
with native wildlife, while also
practicing regenerative methods
that sequester carbon and provide
locally sourced, ethically raised
meat and produce. Krys Malcolm
Belc’s memoir, The Natural
Mother of the Child: A Memoir
of Nonbinary Parenthood, was
published in June.
Julia Barber earned a Ph.D. in
the history of art and architecture
from Brown University in 2018.
Fletcher Coleman and Laura Post
had a busy pandemic with Fletcher
earning an art history Ph.D. from
Harvard in spring 2020. After a
cross-country move with two cats,
he began as assistant professor
of art history at UT–Arlington.
Laura also joined the faculty
to teach printmaking. Sarah
Ifft Decker moved to Memphis,
Tenn., and started a tenure-track
job in Rhodes College’s history
department. Christopher Compton
earned a master’s in social work
from Hunter College and moved
from NYC to Massachusetts this
summer. Harrison Russin received
a musicology Ph.D. at Duke
University this spring and is an
assistant professor of liturgical
music at St. Vladimir’s Seminary in
Yonkers, N.Y. Since leaving Swat,
Dianne Seo has traveled (parts of)
the world and finds herself back
at Swarthmore’s doorstep; she
started a breast surgery fellowship
on the Main Line.
Because of COVID-19, Sven-David
Udekwu was stuck at his duty
station in Wau, South Sudan, for
eight months, doing networking
and access work with armed
groups and authorities for the
International Committee of the Red
Cross. Now, he’s in the Western
Oromia portion of Ethiopia. A
bright spot in social distancing was
his standing on Gina Grubb Fisher
’10’s lawn in 30-degree weather in
February.
After four years of practicing
corporate law at Cravath,
Swaine & Moore, Jose Aleman
moved to Europe with the goal
of transitioning to international
affairs by pursuing a master’s at
the Graduate Institute in Geneva.
Garth Griffin decided that he was
ready to start a venture and cofounded Gigasheet. The company
keeps people’s data safe with a
tool that makes it quick and easy
to carve up very large datasets.
Jennie Park is the new managing
director of fundraising at Briarcliffe
Credit Partners. Julian Chender
joined Accenture, where he
works in organization design. The
intensity and intelligence reminds
him of Swarthmore.
Jason Thrope was promoted to
senior vice president at Starwood
Capital, where he’s worked since
2012. He and wife Erin welcomed
Charlotte Elaine Thrope during the
pandemic. Matt and Lisa Cabral
Sosna had Nina Irene in July 2020.
They call her the Hulk because
she’s big for her age and wants to
move around all the time.
On Halloween 2020, Kara
Peterman married Scott
Rutherford in Northampton, Mass.
The wedding was attended by
immediate family and officiated by
yours truly. It was one of the few
highlights of 2020 for me.
2010
Brendan Work
theworkzone@gmail.com
We are delighted to inform the
Class of 2010 that they have been
accepted to Swarthmore College.
Simultaneous lifetime
experiences score highly with our
admissions committee, including
Kate Aizpuru for being a powerlifter in the civil division at the
Department of Justice at the
same time that Seth Green was
an Appalachian Trail hiker. These
identities paired well with Justin
DiFeliciantonio, Shiva mantrachanting tennis novelist, who is
training for a 50K ultramarathon
in October.
We were pleased to find that
Jake Ban received a master’s in
school leadership from the Harvard
Graduate School of Education.
After moving with husband Grady
to Minneapolis, Jake will be the
assistant principal of the Lower
School of St. Paul Academy and
Summit School. Another assistant
principal is Elizabeth CalvertKilbane, who moved into the
position after 11 years at Kappa
International High School in the
Bronx, and who had with husband
Thomas Kelleher ’09 their second
child, Louise, in March.
For fundraising purposes, we
want matriculates with as many
children as possible. Anne MillerUueda had second child Wesley
Wheeler Miller-Uueda in the same
year that Molly Weston Williamson
brought us son Callum, brother
of Fletcher. Sara Daley and her
husband had first child Gideon
in May, moved from Detroit to
Hamilton, Ontario, and reported
that raising a child and moving to
a new country allowed them about
as much sleep as a year of study
at our institution. Shaun Kelly and
his wife are with Augustine, 3, and
Leo, 1, in Wilmington, Del., where
Shaun runs Connolly Gallagher’s
corporate and commercial
litigation group after being director
of consumer protection for the
Delaware Department of Justice.
We were taken with how many
places you traveled and lived.
Jennifer Spindel is raising two
Siamese cats and working for
(“not evil”) big ag in St. Louis;
Gina Salcedo is doing compliance
analytics at a pharmaceutical
company and making zucchini
bread in Boston; and Caitlin
O’Neil is tending tomato plants in
Sacramento, Calif. Melinda Yang,
having spent three years in Beijing,
returned to the U.S. for a biology
faculty position at the University
of Richmond. She adopted Kaz
Uyehara’s foster cat, plus a dog
from a shelter, and wants to
thank the following people for
keeping her sane: Monica Joshi,
Roseanna Sommers and Robert
Manduca, Roy Allen, David Burgy,
Ramya Gopal, Ben Good, Nadja
Mencin, Clare Kobasa, and Marina
Tempelsman. Also among the
thanked were Helen Hougen, who
completed a urology residency
at Oregon Health & Science
University in Portland and then
moved to Miami for a urologic
oncology fellowship. Carey
Pietsch, a Brooklyn-based comic
artist, gave a virtual talk to current
Swatties at McCabe.
Unfortunately, while we were
writing this acceptance letter, our
admissions department informed
us of a rare mistake. Unless you
can send more evidence of 2010’s
feats and talents to theworkzone@
gmail.com, your spot will be given
to a more deserving class.
2011
Ming Cai
mcai223@gmail.com
Debbie Nguyen
dnguyen616@gmail.com
Kathryn Stockbower enjoyed the
summer weather in Portland, Ore.,
and checked off a bucket-list item
by summiting Mount St. Helens
alongside Ben Dair Rothfuss.
Brendan McVeigh married Manya
Sleeper in February. Among their
three physically present wedding
guests was Ryan Carlson. Andrew
Loh is a dual-degree candidate at
the Stanford Graduate School of
Business and Harvard Kennedy
School. Karen Shen started a
pulmonary and critical care
fellowship at UT Southwestern
Medical Center in Dallas. Sara
Lipshutz is on the biology faculty
at Loyola University Chicago.
Though Ruby Bhattacharya
spent the pandemic around
Philadelphia with family, she
is based in NYC ,where she
is director of recruitment and
selection at Barnard College’s
Office of Admissions. Niki Machac
graduated from a residency
program and in August became
an attending OB-GYN in Queens.
Samantha Griggs celebrated three
years with Peloton in September.
She is in the NYC area and enjoyed
the summer at her parents’ shore
house. Joanie Jean completed a
pediatric dental residency with
UConn’s Connecticut Children’s
Medical Center. She plans to move
to Philadelphia to work at a private
practice. Debbie Nguyen was
promoted to chief of staff at Foster
America, a national nonprofit
working to improve the foster-care
system. She lives in Norwood,
Mass., with Josh Abel and rabbits
Cookie and Freckles.
2012
Maia Gerlinger
maiagerlinger@gmail.com
Boston: Emily Coleman is halfway
through a dermatology residency.
Nick Vogt graduated from an M.D./
Ph.D. program at the University of
Wisconsin–Madison and started
an internal medicine residency at
Mass General. Toby Heavenrich
is an engagement manager for
Seurat Group.
New York City and state: Arsean
Maqami is pursuing an executive
MBA at Columbia. While managing
Design Build Partners, he and his
business partner were hired by
client Seritage Growth Properties,
where Arsean is vice president of
development and construction. He
works with Noah Sterngold ’14 on
Lean Flow construction-scheduling
software. Amelia Possanza, who
will probably live in Brooklyn
forever, was working on a book
about lesbians and has become
an avid biker. Will Campbell had a
baby boy and lives on Manhattan’s
Upper West Side. Shane Ogunnaike
lives in Harlem with wife Jade,
daughter Sloane, and “fur-son”
Albus, and is an account executive
FALL 2021
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
73
class notes
at AI startup Arthur.
Hannah “Alex” Younger was an
artist in residence at the Studios
at MASS MoCA last year. She had
a solo show at the Indianapolis Art
Center over the summer, and she
and Tasha Lewis were in Art Now
America at Eastern Tennessee
State University. Margret Lenfest
is in residency in canine sports
medicine and rehabilitation at
Cornell University College of
Veterinary Medicine.
Philadelphia, Baltimore, D.C.
area: Zack Gershenson and his
wife live in Harleysville, Pa., with
a cat and dog. He has the “same
job (pharma/biotech consultant)
with the same moral quandaries.”
Francesca Bolfo is completing
an art history Ph.D. at Penn in
contemporary post-colonial art,
with a focus on Cuba and Puerto
Rico and their diasporas. Tim
Brevart is leading a team of tech
consultants, and daughter Brie
was born April 6. Zach Weiner
and Lisa Shang live in Baltimore
with dog Pretzel. Lisa is an Under
Armour data scientist. Natalia Cote
Muñoz works in the Office of Policy
Planning at the U.S. Department
of State. She and David Weeks
’10 married in a virtual ceremony
with many Swatties attending.
Sara Blanco lives in Arlington, Va.,
where she trains women to run for
political office with Running Start.
Midwest: Eleanor Glewwe is a
visiting assistant professor of
linguistics at Grinnell College. Maki
Somosot and Josh Cockroft live in
Cincinnati, where Josh is a resident
in family medicine and psychiatry
at the University of Cincinnati,
and Maki is the communications
and narrative director for the Ohio
Organizing Collaborative. Adam
Hardy and Laura Rodgers-Hardy
moved to Cincinnati, where Laura
started a pediatric residency at
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. She
earned an M.D./Ph.D. from the
University of Illinois, and Adam has
an integrative biology Ph.D. from
UChicago. They had their second
baby in January.
West: Franklin “Charlie”
Huntington finished the fourth
year of a clinical psychology
Ph.D. at the University of Denver.
He lives in Boulder, Colo., in a
13-person co-op. Melissa Frick
74
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
ARTIST-ACTIVIST
ALEX ANDERSON ’13
Alex Anderson ’13, a Los Angeles-based artist who works in clay, is
the 2021 recipient of the John S. Knudsen Prize, presented by the
Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, Calif. A studio art and Chinese
double major at Swarthmore, Anderson brings social activism to
his works, which have been described as simultaneously lush and
beautiful with a tinge of critique.
For those hoping to follow in his path, Alex offers the same advice
he received from his grad school adviser: “Follow your inclinations
and make something we’ve never seen before,” he says. “It really is
that simple.”
lives in San Francisco and started
the fourth year of a radiationoncology residency at Stanford.
She was training for a 100K trail
race in Argentina’s Patagonia
region. Adam Bortner graduated
from a residency at a community
health center for the poor and
underserved and became certified
as an HIV specialist. Halleh Balch
and Andreas Bastian moved
to San Francisco, and Halleh
started a Stanford postdoc in
nanophotonics, energy, and
climate research. Nick Rhinehart
is in Berkeley, Calif., doing a
postdoc in robotics and machine
learning. In Half Moon Bay, Calif.,
for six years, Kat Clark has worked
at Apple for two years. Shiran
Victoria Shen began a national
fellowship at Stanford’s Hoover
Institution in September. Her
first book will be published next
year. Molly Siegel, who lives in
Portland, Ore., graduated from
an OB-GYN residency at Oregon
Health & Science University,
began a fellowship in reproductive
endocrinology and infertility, and
had baby Liam on May 24.
South: Dante Fuoco and his
boyfriend moved to Virginia, where
Dante is starting a poetry MFA
at Virginia Tech. Jennifer Yi is a
Durham (N.C.) VA Health Care
System clinical psychologist.
Abroad: Mary Jean Chan is a
senior lecturer in creative writing
(poetry) at Oxford Brookes
University in England and a
supervisor for graduate programs.
She will move to Oxford and is
writing her second poetry book.
2013
Paige Grand Pré
jpgrandpre@gmail.com
Congratulations to Kai Tucker Law,
who married Jason Law.
Marcus Mello, in Boston, started
in May as an associate urban
designer at Sasaki and got his
driver’s license after months of
practice. Nearby, Ahmad Ammous
started as a hospitalist outside
Boston. Also in New England are
Swarthmore roommates Chris
Geissler and Ben Goossen, who
both completed Ph.D.s — Chris
in linguistics at Yale and Ben in
history at Harvard. Chris thanked
the Swatties who provided support
along the way, and is “still singing
shape note music.” Josh Satre
bought a house in Frederick,
Md., and is a research analyst for
ACLED. He enjoys hiking with wife
Morgan and daughter Nora, 1.
Max Nesterak is deputy editor
of the Minnesota Reformer, a
nonprofit politics and policy news
site, and hosts its weekly podcast,
Reformer Radio. Sam Hirshman
and Olivia Natan graduated from
the University of Chicago Booth
School of Business with Ph.D.s in
behavioral science and quantitative
marketing, respectively. During
that time, they had coffee at least
once a week. Both are on faculty:
Sam at the Norwegian School of
Economics in Bergen, Norway,
and Olivia at UC–Berkeley’s Haas
School of Business.
Zach and Erin Curtis Nacev moved
to Portland, Ore., this summer.
Erin started an OB-GYN residency
at Oregon Health & Sciences
University, and Zach is studying at
Lewis & Clark Law School.
Charles Tse checked in from Hong
Kong following a dinner with Abir
Varma ’14. After being in investment
banking, Charles is in his fifth year
at a startup that has done well in
video live-streaming, and he closed
a fundraising round with a satellite
company. Pre-COVID-19, Charles
traveled annually to Tel Aviv, Israel,
to meet with tech startups for
venture-capital investments and
to connect with existing portfolio
companies. Since August 2020,
Charles has worked out daily and
“is likely in the best condition
since college.” He would love to
reconnect with Swatties.
2014
Brone Lobichusky
blobichusky@gmail.com
Robin Carpenter and Hannah
Grunwald adopted dog Pepper
during the pandemic. Hannah
organized a three-day virtual
conference on diversity, equity,
and inclusion in STEM and finished
a Ph.D. in December. They are
moving back to the East Coast,
where Hannah will start a postdoc
at Harvard Medical School,
studying cryptic genetic variations
in cave fish. Robin has been
crushing it in his races with Rally
Cycling in Europe, competing in
nationals in June.
Anthony Collard works for
Negative Zero Cryotherapy in
Florida. Max Firke completed
a master’s in education at the
University of Maryland while
teaching science in Montgomery
County, Md., public schools. He
volunteered during the pandemic
with Open Source Medical
Supplies, supporting collaborations
among makers who were working
to solve the PPE shortage.
Haydil Henriquez (pg. 10) was
named the inaugural Bronx Poet
Laureate.
After two cancellations due to
COVID-19, Danny Hirschel-Burns
married fellow Yale political
science Ph.D. student Deepika
Padmanabhan over the summer
in a family ceremony in Michigan.
He hoped to celebrate with
Swarthmore friends soon.
Emily Lau started a theoretical
and applied linguistics Ph.D. at
the University of Cambridge and
continued her computational
phonetics research. She has
also discovered a passion for
coxswaining with the Jesus College
Boat Club.
Frank Mondelli and Riana Shah
had baby Lev Aryuna ShahMondelli on Feb. 24. Lev has
already had a tour of campus.
Despite everything, Cody Ruben
had an excellent 2020. He finished
an electrical and computer
engineering Ph.D. at the University
of Florida, bought a house, started
a job as a consultant, adopted a
dog, and bought a car.
Lastly, Brone Lobichusky was a
third-year general surgery resident
at York Hospital in Pennsylvania
and was voted most likely to
“place a chest tube without local
anesthetic.” After receiving her
vaccine, she enjoyed postponed
vacations to Key West, Fla., and
Aspen, Colo. Brone’s also working
toward a fellowship in trauma and
critical care, and is always looking
for updates from classmates at any
point during the year.
2015
Abigail Frank
abigailcrfrank@gmail.com
Nathan Cheek
nncheek@princeton.edu
Chelsea Matzko moved to New
Orleans this summer with her
husband and two cats to begin
medical school at Tulane University.
Let her know if you want to grab a
beignet in the Big Easy. Speaking
of Tulane, Anirban Ganguly started
his second year of medical school
there. Across the pond in Ireland,
Tim Vaughan-Ogunlusi graduated
from medical school in May. Tim
went on weekend trips throughout
Europe to make up for a year’s
worth of canceled holidays. After
living in Dublin for three years, he’s
ready to be Stateside. Julia Murphy
celebrated completing year three
of medical school by wandering
Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Kimaya Diggs is chillaxing in
western Massachusetts, loving
life with her dog and spouse.
She’s writing full time, playing
lots of shows, and finishing solo
and holiday albums. She glazed
over 100 unfinished pieces left
behind by her late mother, which
was a special artistic and tactile
experience.
Antony Kaguara spent the past
couple of months working on
gethomespace.com, out of Nairobi,
Kenya. He is excited that Sharples
is getting a face-lift and can’t wait
to catch up at the next reunion.
Emmy Talian lives in East Falls,
Philadelphia, and teaches English
in the suburbs at Conestoga High.
This May, she received a master’s
from Penn’s Reading/Writing/
Literacy program. She road-tripped
to North Carolina this summer with
her cavapoo, Melon, and fiancé,
Justin, staying with Joy Martinez
Pinter ’16 and Erica Janko ’17 along
the route.
Lucía Luna-Victoria Indacochea
entered the last year of a history
Ph.D. at UC–Davis. She received
the ACLS/Mellon Dissertation
Completion Fellowship, which will
allow her to finish her dissertation
on Peru’s internal armed conflict.
Lucía hoped to return to Peru and
its magnificent food in 2022.
Alison Koziol is in Colorado
making beer during the week and
training sled dogs. If you’re in Fort
Collins, swing by for a pint. Lauren
Barlow left behind the winters of
Chicago for the “year-round sunny
shores” of Cambridge, Mass., to
pursue a master’s at the Harvard
Graduate School of Education.
Kate Wiseman is in Chicago
pivoting in the world of education
and the arts. She congratulated
Nate Cheek on his psychology and
social policy Ph.D., even though he
refused to brag about it. Nate and
Abigail Frank, who also has a Ph.D.
and is a phenomenal dancer, were
reunited at last.
2016
Stephanie Kestelman
stephaniekestelman@gmail.com
Z.L. Zhou
zzlzhou@gmail.com
Veda Khadka passed her qualifying
exams to be a Ph.D. candidate in
microbiology. She celebrated with
Sarah Babinski, who came to visit
from New Haven, Conn., where she
is working toward a Ph.D. Mercer
Borris moved to Cambridge,
Mass., where she’s pursuing a dual
master’s in business and electrical
engineering at MIT.
Stephanie Kestelman went to Cold
Spring, N.Y., for Brooke Kelsey’s
bachelorette party. Brooke married
Joe Boninger this fall.
Fatema Jivanjee lives in NYC,
has a master’s in social work,
works at the Renfrew Center for
the treatment of eating disorders,
and serves as a board member
of the New York chapter of the
International Association for Eating
Disorder Professionals. She’s
@YourSouthAsianTherapist on
Instagram. Antonia Violante started
a master’s in integrated product
design at Penn.
Sean Thaxter married Chastity
Hopkins ’15 in October 2020. Katie
Jo McMenamin and Spencer Friske
got married in June in Colorado. In
November, Suness Jones married
David Hall in St. Paul, Minn., with
Sun Park as maid of honor. Suness
has completed her first year of a
master’s in public health at the
University of Minnesota’s Maternal
and Child Health program.
Ariel Pearson lives in Philadelphia
and takes adult gymnastics
classes. Bill Fedullo remains in the
Philadelphia area, having started a
job as a whistleblower attorney at
Berger Montague.
Christen Boas Hayes moved in
with Isabel Knight in D.C. during
the pandemic. Isabel then moved
to Philadelphia to live with Asher
Glom Wolf ’18. Christen has visited
them and their five kittens and also
started a job as a regulatory policy
adviser at the U.S. Treasury.
Bennett Thompson works for the
U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency in D.C. and plays Dungeons
and Dragons in free time.
Shinae Yoon started law school
at the University of Virginia and
placed second in the All Reunion
Year Virtual Alumni Trivia. Over the
pandemic, she hosted an online
colloquium series sporadically
attended by Rachel Berger, Oscar
Chen, Cara Ehlenfeldt, Rachel
Flaherman, Allison Hrabar, Dakota
Pekerti, Daniel Redelmeier, Annie
Tvetenstrand, Elaine Zhou, and
Z.L. Zhou.
Tania Uruchima graduated with
a master’s in public affairs from
UT–Austin and returned to D.C. to
work for the federal government.
Kara Bledsoe moved to Fort Worth,
Texas, to work at Ithaka S+R, an
academic and cultural nonprofit.
She also was learning how to knit,
sew, grow her own food. Molly
Petchenik graduated from Yale
Law School and moved to Austin,
Texas, to clerk for U.S. District
Judge Robert Pitman. Laura Rigell
left Philadelphia and took a break
to travel before diving into work to
strengthen democracy.
In April, Martin Froger Silva left
his job of four years at FWD.us
to bike solo from the Mexican to
the Canadian border along the
Pacific Coast — a 2,500-mile trek
on a bike he built. This summer,
FALL 2021
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
75
class notes
he started a master’s in climate
science and policy at UC–San
Diego’s Scripps Institution of
Oceanography.
Z.L. is a linguistics Ph.D.
candidate at UCLA. Elizabeth Tolley
’18 visited him, and he occasionally
sees Laura Chen ’19 when he’s in
the Bay Area. Z.L. has taken up
the hobbies of mustache-growing
(handlebar) and puppy-rearing
(cocker spaniel-poodle mix).
Rainie Oet (she/they) moved to
L.A., sold a picture book about a
nonbinary child’s magical birthday
party, and had their third poetry
book, Glorious Veils of Diane,
published in February. She is
represented by literary agent
Abigail Frank ’15 of Sanford J.
Greenburger Associates.
Olivia Ortiz is working on a
master’s in city planning at UC–
Berkeley. When they’re very lucky,
Dakota Pekerti and/or Kelley
Langhans takes them on hikes or
brings them baked goods. Dakota is
the single dad of two kittens; Kelley
is working on a Ph.D. at Stanford.
Elaine Zhou has been teaching
high school English and traveling
in Shanghai. Before that, she was
in Chicago, passing time by visiting
Kelly Smemo, Richard Monar
and David Lin ’15, and Tamsin
True-Alcalá ’15 and giving talks at
Shinae’s colloquium series.
Joelle Hageboutros graduated
from Penn law school and is
clerking at the International Court
of Justice.
2018
Emma Suen-Lewis finished a
computer engineering master’s
and moved to Philadelphia with her
cat, Toast. Kai Kandrysawtz moved
to Charlottesville, Va., to pursue
a speech language pathology
master’s at the University of
Virginia.
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
Laura Chen
laura.g.chen@gmail.com
Letty Ho and Kevin Murphy drove a
van to Seattle from Oakland, Calif.,
to see Eriko Shrestha (pg. 48), who
fed them curry, showed them the
night lights, and took them on a
Katherine Kwok
katherinekwokhk@gmail.com
FALL 2021
hike through the snow.
Gloria Kim received a master’s
in religion and spent the summer
hiking through the Appalachians.
She would appreciate podcast and
e-book recommendations. Zain
Talukdar started his third year of
medical school at the University
of Rochester. Xena Wang hoped
to finish a master’s in museum
studies in 2022, while making art
and working at the Philadelphia
Museum of Art.
Until she moved to the
Philadelphia area in August, Laura
Chen used memes and Zoom calls
to stay in touch with freshman
hallmates Mark Oet, Maya Deutsch,
Janice Luo, and Kenny Bransdorf.
Jonathan Hamel Sellman finished
his second year as a secondgrade teacher in Lawrence, Mass.
His beloved grandmother died
this spring. She was a deeply
compassionate, selfless, tough-asnails woman who was like a third
parent to him. He was very excited
to visit Pavan Kalidindi and Ivan
Lomeli in L.A. over the summer.
2020
2019
Dorcas Tang
dorcastjy@gmail.com
Min Cheng
mindcheng@gmail.com
76
Kyle McKenney started at NYU
law school in the fall, studying
environmental law to fight climate
change using the legal system.
Kwame Asiedu is at Columbia for
a master’s in human nutrition.
Dominic Sonkowsky started a
master’s in urban planning at
NYU, focusing on walkability.
He volunteers with Welcome to
Chinatown. Isabel Cristo and Liz
Whipple live together in Brooklyn
and made a cameo appearance in
In the Heights.
Emily Audet graduated with a law
degree from UCLA. This fall, she
started as a Hueston Hennigan
Fellow with the Social Justice Legal
Foundation. She and husband
Matthew Olivencia-Audet live in
L.A., where he began work as a
software engineer at Google.
Arka Rao is close to joining a
lab at UC–San Francisco and met
Judith Kaminsky ’68, who owns
Cookin’, a recycled cookware store
in San Francisco.
Sayed Malawi foiled an attempt
at identity theft by David Xu, who
welcomed a third turtle, Bacon
Cheezburger.
Isabel “Izzy” McClean
izzy.mcclean@gmail.com
Mehra den Braven
mmehra.denbraven@gmail.com
Observing iguanas inspired Shayla
Smith’s short story, “Them Iguanas
Are My Friends,” which was
published in The Hopper (tinyurl.
com/4ce2t34c).
Peter Chong lives in Philadelphia
with two Swatties, one an alum
Nominations Open
for Alumni Council!
Interested in serving your fellow Swarthmoreans?
Nominate yourself or another alum for Alumni Council
by emailing Lisa Shafer at lshafer1@swarthmore.edu.
Nominations are due by Nov. 1.
and the other a rising senior. He’s
a paralegal at an immigration law
firm and cycles for transportation,
exercise, and relaxation.
Molly Fennig is working on a
Ph.D. at Washington University
in St. Louis in clinical psychology,
specializing in treating eating
disorders.
In March, Taylor Tucker did a
virtual book talk hosted by Sankofa
Video, Books, & Cafe with fellow
co-authors and the editors of
their book, Strong Black Girls:
Reclaiming Schools in Their Own
Image. It is available at Blackowned bookstores such as Sankofa
and Harriet’s Bookshop. In May,
Taylor graduated from Penn’s
Graduate School of Education with
a master’s and her certification to
teach secondary English.
Roman Shemakov co-authored
Digital Transformation of Property
in Greater China, available from
World Scientific.
Izzy McClean and her senior-year
roommates, Oliver Steinglass, Zach
Viscusi, Ian Cairns, Felix Laniyan,
and Quentin Millette, completed
their first road trip around the
Southwest. They are planning their
route for next year’s trip. Oliver
claims to have beaten Sagnik
Gayen in Catan, but we have no
sources to confirm this.
2021
Hannah Watkins
hannah.swatkins1@google.com
My name is Hannah Watkins, and
I’m our class secretary. During
my time at Swarthmore, I was
president of Terpsichore Dance
Collective, a biology major and
environmental studies minor,
and secretary of the senior class.
Shortly after graduation, I moved
home to Anchorage, Alaska, with
my partner and our cat, where I’m a
medical scribe in a OB-GYN clinic.
When I wrote this, I was enjoying
the summer social scene under the
midnight sun and looking forward
to spending quality time outdoors
fishing, hiking, and picking berries.
their light lives on
our friends will never be forgotten
William Nute Jr. ’38
A medical missionary and pacifist with
a dedication to knowledge, service, and
family, Bill died March 31, 2021.
Bill served with the American Board
for Foreign Missions in Turkey and
helped establish the Child Health
Institute. He later worked for the New
York City Department of Health and
taught at Columbia School of Public
Health.
Mary Ann Myerscough Huber ’43
Mary Ann, a retired administrator with
R.H. Macy & Co., died April 13, 2021.
With a bachelor’s in social science,
Mary Ann pursued studies in education
at Columbia University. At Swarthmore,
she was part of the Hamburg Show and
participated in mountaineering.
Francis Fairman III ’45
Francis, an engineer, a musician, and a
late-in-life runner, died Jan. 29, 2021.
Francis enlisted in the Navy V-12
program and studied at Haverford
College, Swarthmore, and Duke
University. After returning from
World War II, he earned a master’s in
electrical engineering and worked for
Westinghouse’s nuclear business for
30 years before running a successful
consulting business until age 70.
Peter Miller ’46
Peter, former president and chairman
of a family manufacturing company,
died June 15, 2021.
The son of two Swarthmoreans, Peter
majored in engineering before joining
his father’s company, Chester-Jensen
Co., a manufacturer of heat-exchange
and food-processing equipment in
Chester, Pa. He enjoyed golfing and
visiting Vermont, and he served on the
board of Crozer-Chester Medical Center.
Howard Bowman ’47
Howard, an undercover case officer who
received a Career Intelligence Medal
Elizabeth Martinez ’46, H’00
“Betita,” a leader in the Chicana
movement, died June 29, 2021.
A former Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee
coordinator, Betita helped create
the Chicano Communications
Center in New Mexico. She later
ran for California governor and
helped found the Institute for
MultiRacial Justice.
FALL 2021
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
77
in memoriam
from the CIA, died May 3, 2021.
Howard left the College to enlist in
the Army in 1944 and earned a Bronze
Star in the Battle of Munich. After his
honorable discharge, he joined the
CIA, retiring at age 65 and working as a
contract employee until 2005.
Margaret MacLaren Ulrich ’49
Peggy, a former dean of students and
admissions, died May 12, 2021.
In addition to her position at
Swarthmore, Peggy served at
Westminster Choir College in New
Jersey and at Wheaton College in
Massachusetts. She also volunteered
at the Academy of Vocal Arts
in Philadelphia and endowed a
scholarship/fellowship that provides
a monthly stipend and tuition support
for one resident artist annually.
Frank Hendrickson ’47
Frank, a physician and professor of
radiation oncology who successfully
treated a snow leopard with jaw cancer,
died Aug. 10, 2019.
Frank received his medical degree
from Jefferson Medical College, was a
general medical officer in the Navy, and
spent his career at what is now Rush
University Medical Center in Chicago.
Upon retirement in 1996, he was
presented with the Chicago Radiological
Society Distinguished Service Award,
and an endowed chair was named for
him at the medical center.
William Eldredge ’49
Bill, who was board president of the
Hudson (Ohio) Library and Historical
Society, died May 3, 2021.
Bill served in the Army during the
Korean War and worked for SherwinWilliams Co., including as president of
the International Division, retiring in
1993. He traveled extensively with his
wife overseas and on study tours with
the Victorian Society in America, and
he was active on the Hudson (Ohio)
Planning Commission and in his
Unitarian Universalist church.
William Matchett ’49
A poet and World War II conscientious
objector, William died June 21, 2021.
faculty & staff
James Bell, who worked as an
instrumentation engineer in the
Chemistry Department before retiring,
died March 22, 2021. He was 78.
Corine Dunlap, who worked for the
College for more than 25 years, died
Feb. 24, 2021. She was 94.
78
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
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William received his master’s
and Ph.D. in English from Harvard
University, where he was one of the
founders of the Poets’ Theatre. A
professor emeritus at the University of
Washington, he wrote multiple books
of poetry books, and his work was also
featured in The New Yorker, Saturday
Review of Literature, and The New
Republic. He was active with Seattle’s
University Meeting and the American
Friends Service Committee.
James Carson ’50
Jim, an engineer and a champion sailor,
died March 21, 2021.
Jim attended Swarthmore and the
Merchant Marine Academy, and he
served in the Merchant Marine. He
was a chemical engineer for DuPont
from 1950 to 1983, but his passion
was sailing, winning the Barnegat
Bay Lightning Class championship
numerous times and competing in U.S.
and international regattas.
Constance Cain Hungerford, the
Mari S. Michener Professor Emerita of
Art History and Provost Emerita, who
also served as interim president of the
College, died May 12, 2021. She was 73.
Pauline Marshall, who worked for 30
years in the College’s libraries, died
July 12, 2021. She was 96.
Abigail Moore, a former secretary for
Nancy Okazaki Morton ’50
A child-welfare advocate born and
raised in Hawaii, Nancy died March 16,
2021.
Nancy earned a master’s in social
work at the University of Wisconsin–
Madison in 1973. She worked for
Wisconsin’s Department of Health
and Social Services for 20 years,
specializing in adoption and foster care,
and then returned to Honolulu where
she worked for the Queen Lilioukalani
Children’s Center.
Rada Demerec Dyson-Hudson ’51
Rada, an anthropologist who
conducted fieldwork with her husband
in Uganda, died April 14, 2016.
Rada graduated from the College Phi
Beta Kappa with a degree in biology.
A Fulbright Scholar, she earned
a Ph.D. from Oxford and received
Guggenheim, Fulbright, and National
Science Foundation funding for a field
study of Karimojong pastoralists in
Women’s Studies, died April 4, 2021.
She was 87.
Robert Pasternack, the Edmund
Allen Professor Emeritus of Chemistry
and Biochemistry, died June 5, 2021.
He was 84.
Helen Warren, who worked in
Swarthmore’s cafeteria, died April 3,
2021. She was 83.
northeast Uganda, before eventually
working at Cornell and Binghamton
universities.
helped create the Taconic Independent
Practice Association to address the
expansion of managed care.
services, including as head of the Trust
Department at the First National Bank
of Atlanta.
Robert Ammerman ’52
William Jones Jr. ’54
Grace Bunker Lowney ’54
A veteran and philosophy professor,
Robert died May 28, 2021.
Before graduating from Swarthmore
with highest honors, Robert served
in the 88th Infantry Division in Italy
and participated in the first U.N.
Peacekeeping mission in Trieste. He
pursued graduate studies in philosophy
at Princeton and Brown universities,
joining the University of Wisconsin–
Madison’s philosophy department 1957,
where he focused his scholarship on
Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Bill, an economist who once earned
two silver medals in javelin at the Penn
Relays, died July 3, 2021.
Bill was a three-sport athlete at
Swarthmore, participating in football,
basketball, and track and field, and
earned the Kwink Trophy for best
overall athlete. He earned a master’s in
economics from the Wharton School of
the University of Pennsylvania and had
a long career in banking and financial
Alison Griffith Tennyson ’54
George Hoffmann ’52
An international traveler and ardent
supporter of gay rights, Alison died
April 9, 2021.
Alison attended Swarthmore and the
University of Geneva before graduating
from Barnard College; she then earned
a master’s from Columbia University,
where the book based on her thesis
included a foreword by then-Vice
President Lyndon B. Johnson. Alison
skied the Alps, carried letters into the
Soviet Union during the Cold War, and
loved all arts and opera.
George, a political science professor,
died May 10, 2021.
George taught at Wittenberg
University in Ohio, Midwestern
University in Texas, and Butler
University in Indiana from 1964 to
1991. He served as the director of Legal
Studies at Butler and for two terms
on the board of the Indiana Academy
of the Social Sciences, receiving its
George C. Roberts award for best
paper.
Sybil Hillman Pike ’52
Sybil, a bookstore owner and retired
Library of Congress research librarian,
died March 9, 2021.
A French major at the College with
a master’s in library science from the
State University of New York–Albany,
Sybil co-owned and operated Wayward
Books in Washington, D.C. She was
also an avid reader and gardener and
enjoyed time with family and friends.
Eleanor Cohn Kane ’53
A physician specializing in diabetes
mellitus, Eleanor died April 28, 2021.
After graduating from Woman’s
Medical College of Pennsylvania,
Eleanor was in private practice in
Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and was affiliated
with Vassar Brothers and St. Francis
hospitals, serving on their attending
medical staffs and as medical director
of St. Francis’ Internal Medicine
Department. In the late 1980s, she
Grace, a varsity archer and educator,
died April 28, 2021.
After Swarthmore, Grace earned
a master’s in education from Bryn
Mawr College, married, and raised
two children while earning a child
psychology Ph.D. from the University
of Michigan–Ann Arbor. She worked in
education, volunteered at the Unitarian
Universalist church and the League of
Women Voters, and traveled extensively
for pleasure.
James Hormel ’55, H’09
James, the first openly LGBTQ
person to represent the United
States as an ambassador, serving
in Luxembourg in 1999–2000, died
Aug. 13, 2021.
A longtime member of the
College’s Board of Managers,
James was a pioneering public
servant, fierce advocate for human
rights, and generous and dedicated
philanthropist. His support of the
College included the establishment
of a faculty chair in social justice
and a $4.3 million gift, donated
along with his husband, Michael P.
N. Araque Hormel ’08, to establish
the James Hormel and Michael
Nguyen Intercultural Center,
which opened in 2018, deepening
the College’s commitment to
inclusivity and diversity and to
educating the whole person.
Carolyn Wittman Gordon ’55
A special education teacher and
devoted mother of three, Carolyn died
May 13, 2021.
A member of the Garnet Singers,
Carolyn graduated with a degree in
psychology. She later worked as a
special education teacher and at a
child-development center and split
her time between Sarasota, Fla., and
Wilmington, Del.
Paul Marcus ’55
Paul, who registered voters in
Mississippi in the summer of 1964, died
May 8, 2021.
After Swarthmore, Paul earned an
MBA from Baruch College in New
York City. He cared deeply about civil
rights and focused his life’s work
on developing affordable housing,
including projects such as Manhattan
Plaza, Riverbend, and Waterside in
New York.
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in memoriam
Ann Price Steele ’55
Edwina Parker Furman ’58
Ann, who among many titles was an
ice-hockey grandmother, died May 12,
2021.
A member of the varsity swim team
and a biology major at the College, Ann
nurtured in others an appreciation
for animals and advocated for
animal conservation. As director of
public policy at the Mental Health
Association of Connecticut, she
lobbied for parity in mental health
insurance coverage, which became law
in her state in 2000.
A staunch advocate of free speech, Judy
died in spring 2017.
A scholar of the German philosopher
Immanuel Kant and a philosopher of
politics, Judy earned a master’s and
Ph.D. from Yale University before
joining the philosophy department at
the University of Waterloo in Ontario,
retiring in 2002. She was a founding
member of the Society for Academic
Freedom and Scholarship.
Gerard Swope ’56
An accountant and lifelong supporter
of the Marine Biological Laboratories,
Gerry died May 3, 2020.
Gerry attended Swarthmore for
two years before being drafted by the
Army and later received his bachelor’s
in accounting from Babson College.
After earning an MBA from Harvard
University in 1970, he was hired as CFO
of an employee-training video company,
then served as financial vice president
of Federal Publications Inc. until his
retirement.
Martha Fisher Laties ’57
“Marty,” a history major who testified
before Congress, died May 18, 2021.
After marrying, having three children,
and moving to Baltimore, Marty joined
the League of Women Voters and the
American Civil Liberties Union. In
1965, the family moved to Brighton, N.Y.,
where she was secretary of the local
ACLU and a leader of a group that fought
state aid going to religious schools,
among other issues; she continued
her political work at her retirement
community in Mitchellville, Md.
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
Marilyn Hughes Johnson ’58
Carl Levin ’56, H’80
Judith Wubnig ’55
80
“Edie,” an elementary school and adultliteracy teacher, died March 26, 2021.
Edie earned a master’s in elementary
education at the College of St. Rose
in Albany, N.Y., and taught in Albany
and East Greenbush, N.Y., as well as
in New Orleans. Later, she studied
adult literacy at Middle Tennessee
State University and worked with the
Nashville Adult Literacy program,
teaching and training volunteer tutors.
FALL 2021
The longest-serving U.S. senator in
Michigan’s history, Carl died July
29, 2021.
Before winning election to
the Senate in 1978, Carl was an
assistant attorney general and
general counsel for the Michigan
Civil Rights Commission and
helped form the Detroit public
defender’s office, serving as its
chief appellate defender. As a
senator, Carl spent nine years
as chair of the Armed Services
Committee, exposing corrupt
practices by military contractors
and playing an instrumental role
in lifting the ban on gays in the
military. He was also chair of
the Permanent Subcommittee
on Investigations, confronting
companies like JPMorgan Chase,
Apple, and American Express
about, among other issues, overseas
banking havens and tax-avoidance
maneuvers. He retired in 2015.
Peter Rosi ’57
Peter, a physician and home-birth
advocate, died March 25, 2021.
A history student at Swarthmore,
Peter received his medical degree
from the University of Chicago before
opening a practice that specialized
in home births, which he operated
for more than 50 years. Peter was a
longtime member of the Orthodox
Church of America and was active later
in life at St. Alexis Orthodox Church in
Battle Ground, Ind.
Marilyn, a whiz with her editorial red
pen and a community activist who
served on many local boards, from
cable TV to mental health, died May
28, 2021.
Marilyn moved to Connecticut in
the early 1970s and earned a master’s
in community psychology, becoming
administrative planner/coordinator for
five regional human-service agencies. A
proofreading job in the ’80s led to a 40year career as a freelance copy editor
and researcher.
Michael Hudson ’59
Michael, a professor who had
Guggenheim, Ford, and Fulbright
fellowships and was past president of
the Middle East Studies Association,
died May 25, 2021.
Michael’s lifelong engagement with
the Arab world began as an exchange
student in Beirut during the 1958
Lebanese crisis. In 1975, he joined
Georgetown University’s School of
Foreign Service as director of the
Center for Contemporary Arab Studies;
he was also founding director of the
Middle East Institute of the National
University of Singapore.
Panthea Kreps Redwood ’61
Panthea, a dedicated birder and
gardener who loved singing and oil
painting, died Jan. 3, 2021.
Panthea moved from Palo Alto,
Calif., to the East Coast at 16 to attend
Swarthmore, earning a biology degree.
At age 40, she migrated to Alaska
with her three children to homestead,
working for many years as a landuse planner for Anchorage. Panthea
traveled extensively, with her most
recent adventure being an exploration
of South Africa’s botany.
Allen Greenleaf ’62
A mechanical engineer by both natural
inclination and training, Allen died Jan.
17, 2021.
A graduate of Swarthmore and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Allen focused his professional life on
high-altitude large-optics technology,
until his concerns that this work might
contribute to war led him to leave the
field. He then became a homesteader
in Maine, supporting the work and his
interest in mechanical engineering by
refurbishing and putting to use old and
derelict farm equipment.
Linda Fulton McKay ’62
A great problem-solver who was in
her element at the beginning of the
computer age, Linda died June 11, 2021.
Linda earned a bachelor’s in
economics and had a Rotary
Foundation Fellowship in Bombay,
India. After earning her master’s in
biochemistry from the University of
Kansas in 1992, she worked for the
biotechnology company Genentech
and stayed involved in civic and
educational causes in Lawrence, Kan.
Linda had three paintings in the Kansas
Watercolor Society’s juried show in
2003 and was the featured artist in the
Lawrence Art Walk in 2009.
Bennett Weaver ’62
Ben, a “computer geek” and cellist, died
July 15, 2021.
Ben attended Swarthmore on a
music scholarship before returning to
Gainesville, Fla., to study physics at the
University of Florida. In the late ’60s,
he began writing computer programs at
CNA Insurance before joining Harris
Bank in the late ’70s as an analyst,
retiring in 2001. In 1983, Ben was a
founding member of the Association
of Personal Computer Users, one of
the oldest general computer groups in
America.
Ralph Bailey ’63
Ralph, a singer, songwriter, and
certified public accountant, died April
23, 2020.
A history major at Swarthmore,
Ralph also received a master’s
in history from the University of
Pennsylvania, becoming a CPA in 1991.
At the College, Ralph was a member
of Phi Sigma Kappa and the varsity
tennis and cross-country teams, and he
worked for WSRN.
Troopers. Later, in private practice,
he litigated hundreds of employment
cases, including Price Waterhouse v.
Hopkins, in which the U.S. Supreme
Court, for the first time, determined
gender stereotyping was a form of
discrimination.
Michael Cook ’63
Libby, whom loved ones called a “fighter
of injustice, an uninhibited dancer,
a curious traveler, and an outspoken
seeker of the truth,” died May 9, 2021.
After graduating from Swarthmore
with an art history degree, Libby earned
a law degree from Villanova University
in 1977 and practiced family law in and
around Philadelphia for 40 years. She
broke new ground with her practice in
collaborative law and was a passionate
advocate for court reform at the state
level.
Mike, a Rhodes Scholar, marathon
runner, and Ironman triathlete, died
May 27, 2021.
At Swarthmore, Mike played
football and was a wrestler while
also serving in student government.
After graduating from Oxford’s New
College, he joined the Foreign Service,
serving in Vietnam and Thailand,
before joining the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency in 1973 as the first
director of the Superfund program. He
received numerous awards for his work,
including the Distinguished Federal
Executive Award in 1987 and the
Distinguished Career Service Award
at his retirement in 2006, while also
working with wife Kim’s Vietnamese
Resettlement Association and helping
to found the Green Infrastructure
Center.
Marc Hofstadter ’67
A librarian and writer who published 10
volumes of poetry and a book of essays,
Marc died May 10, 2021.
After earning a bachelor’s in French
literature, Marc received a literature
Ph.D. from the University of California,
Santa Cruz, and taught American
literature there and at the Université
d’Orléans and Tel Aviv University. In
1980, he earned a master’s in library and
information science from UC–Berkeley,
and served, until 2005, as librarian for
the San Francisco Municipal Railway.
Douglas Huron ’67
Doug, a civil rights attorney who won
landmark workplace-bias cases, died
June 7, 2021.
After earning his law degree at the
University of Chicago in 1970, Doug
worked at the Civil Rights Division
of the U.S. Department of Justice,
where he was the lead lawyer on a case
that desegregated the Alabama State
Elizabeth Leavelle Bennett ’68
Arthur Fink ’68
A consultant, photographer, and
member of Portland (Maine) Friends
Meeting, Arthur died April 21, 2021.
A physics major at the College,
Arthur earned a graduate degree
in computer science from Harvard
University. Though he described
himself as a consultant, coach, speaker,
and facilitator, Arthur might have
been best known as the resident
photographer of the Bates Dance
Festival in Lewiston, Maine, from 2005
to 2017.
John Fahnestock ’69
John, a ceramist and a projectionist for
the Telluride (Colo.) Film Festival, died
May 31, 2021.
At Swarthmore, John threw pots and
was involved with dance and theater,
earning a degree in art history. He
eventually moved to Telluride, where he
built a ceramics studio, joined the fire
department, chaired the then-Historic
Preservation Commission, and worked
in finished carpentry. He later settled in
Norwood, Colo., and opened the gallery
Yank and Flanders with his wife in
2001.
Beverly Lyon Clark ’70
A professor loved and respected by
generations of faculty, students, and
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81
staff members at Wheaton College, Bev
died March 18, 2021.
Bev graduated from Swarthmore Phi
Beta Kappa, served in the Fiji Islands
with the Peace Corps, and received
an English literature Ph.D. from
Brown University. For 44 years, she
was an English literature professor at
Wheaton, in Norton, Mass., where she
wrote 13 scholarly books and hundreds
of articles.
Jan Paradise ’72
Jan, a pediatrician who studied child
abuse, died April 12, 2021.
Jan attended Swarthmore but
received her bachelor’s and medical
degrees from the University of
Pennsylvania; she was later on Penn’s
faculty and on staff at Children’s
Hospital of Philadelphia, studying child
abuse. Jan continued these studies after
relocating to Harvard Medical School
and Boston Children’s Hospital, before
leaving academia to enter private
practice, retiring in 2019.
Jennifer Dion ’73
Jennifer, a resident of Cortez, Colo.,
died March 9, 2021.
An art history graduate, Jennifer
lived in Pennsylvania and Virginia
before moving to Colorado.
Robert Early ’73
Bob, a Sheltie-lover who taught at
Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s
Kittanning campus, died Feb. 1, 2021.
With a bachelor’s in physics, Bob
received master’s degrees in physics
and math from Indiana University–
Bloomington, and earned a third
master’s in counseling and guidance
from the University of Central
Florida. Among Bob’s many activities
were a nightly jog, attending the
Pittsburgh Symphony, and playing
with the Armstrong Concert Band and
Kittanning Community Band.
Kenneth Andres Jr. ’75
Ken, an attorney and a member of the
Garnet men’s soccer team that placed
second at the NCAA Division III
National Championship, died June 24,
2021.
Ken was a founding and managing
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Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
partner of Andres Berger, president of
the New Jersey Association for Justice,
and an adjunct professor at Drexel
University law school. He refereed
soccer at the college level, served in
many National Intercollegiate Soccer
Official Association leadership roles, and
was the NCAA secretary rules editor.
Louis Staton ’77
A gifted writer, singer, dancer, and
actor, Louis died Feb. 6, 2018.
Louis worked briefly on and off
Broadway, at An Evening Dinner
Theatre in Westchester, N.Y., and at
Mount Vernon (N.Y.) Fine Arts Cultural
Center Open Cage Theatre. His other
jobs included working in solar panel
sales, and he wrote at least seven
musicals and 76 songs.
Eedy Nicholson ’78
Eedy, a lawyer and active member of the
Swarthmore Alumni Gospel Choir, died
July 16, 2021.
A history major at the College
who attended Boston College Law
School, Eedy was an attorney for the
Department of Social Services and the
Massachusetts Department of Children
and Families, retiring in 2015. She was
a member of Twelfth Baptist Church
in Roxbury, Mass., and its choir, with
which she traveled internationally.
David M. Snyder ’80
David, a supporter of national parks
and the battlefield trust, died March 18,
2021.
David studied history and philosophy
at Swarthmore and later worked for
UPS in West Chester, Pa., and Costa’s
in Coudersport, Pa. An avid sports fan
who loved to farm, David was a member
of the National Rifle Association,
the American Battlefield Trust, and
the National Parks Conservation
Association.
Submit an obituary
Jeanette Chapman ’84
Jeanette, an engineer and lifelong
musician who played piano and violin,
died April 16, 2021.
Jeanette transferred from the
College her sophomore year to Howard
University, graduating with honors
in mechanical engineering. She later
joined the U.S. Patent Office, where
she worked for 33 years and garnered
numerous awards including the Bronze
Medal Award for Superior Performance,
the Exceptional Career Award, and the
Distinguished Career Award.
Anna Tocci ’99
A musician, healer, and former cafe
owner, Anna died March 21, 2021.
Anna graduated with a peace &
conflict studies degree; worked as a
paralegal for migrant farm workers;
created the North Star Music Café in
Portland, Maine, in 2007; and sang
and played guitar in the band Ramblin
Red. For the past five years, Anna and
her husband had operated Greenlight
Studio, a play space for kids and their
parents in Portland.
Maya Peterson ’02
Maya, a beloved associate professor of
history at the University of California,
Santa Cruz, died June 16, 2021.
An internationally known scholar,
Maya engaged questions of health, the
environment, and the transnational
histories of science and technology; her
first monograph, Pipe Dreams: Water
and Empire in Central Asia, was a
finalist for the Central Eurasian Studies
Society’s Award for Best Book in
History and the Humanities. A devoted
mentor known for combining kindness
with intellectual rigor, Maya held a
history degree from Swarthmore, and
a master’s in Russia, Eastern Europe,
and Central Asia Studies and a Ph.D. in
history from Harvard University.
To report the death of an alum, email obituaries@swarthmore.edu. Please
provide the class year (if known), the date of death, and a short biography or link
to a published obituary.
Newspaper obituaries may also be mailed to Swarthmore College Bulletin,
500 College Ave., Swarthmore, PA 19081.
looking back
ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, the
Russian famine of 1921–1922 severely
afflicted the Soviet Union, its effects
lasting for years and claiming millions of
lives.
International relief organizations
such as the American Friends Service
Committee sent extensive aid to the
suffering areas. Jessica GranvilleSmith Abt (known as Jessica Smith),
Swarthmore Class of 1915, spent years
in Russia as a Famine Relief Program
worker with the AFSC.
Smith’s famine-relief work marked the
beginning of her lifelong dedication to
promoting Russian-American relations.
She authored many books and articles,
was an editor of and contributor to the
New World Review for more than 40
years, served on the Board of the National
Council of American-Soviet Friendship,
and was awarded the Order of Friendship
of the Peoples by the Soviet Union in 1977.
Smith’s professional work and personal
associations placed her under longterm scrutiny from the U.S. government.
She was summoned as a witness in a
1956 Senate inquiry in which she faced
accusations of being a Communist
propagandist. Both her first and second
husbands, active participants in the
Communist Party and Ware Group,
were formally investigated as suspected
spies. (Her second husband eventually
confirmed the Ware Group’s covert status
in his memoirs.)
In reference to Smith and another
witness, Sen. James Eastland, chairman
of the Senate Internal Security
Subcommittee, asked whether there was
“a weakness in our education system
which would produce such distorted
minds.”
Smith cited her Quaker education in
both secondary school and college for
nurturing her interest in peace activism.
“I loved Swarthmore,” she said. “It was a
terribly important influence on my life.
It was there I became aware of the great
need to work for peace, which has become
my life work.”
—CHLOE LUCCHESI-MALONE,
Archives Technician,
Friends Historical Library
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
in memoriam
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83
spoken word
CLEAR AND
TRANSPARENT
Associate Professor of
Statistics Lynne Steuerle
Schofield ’99 reflects on
her term in the Provost’s
Office as associate
dean of the faculty for
diversity, recruitment,
and retention.
by Alisa Giardinelli
What interested you about this role?
I worked on a committee with
Professor of German and Film &
Media Studies Sunka Simon, who
held this position prior to me. I
realized that there was a lot of work
still left to do and that she had laid
some great groundwork for things
that I was interested in. When I
first graduated from Swarthmore,
my original goal was to be a middle
school principal. So this feels a
little like I managed to get back to
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Swarthmore College Bulletin /
FALL 2021
that role without actually having to
do the really difficult job of being a
middle school principal. My original
thinking in wanting to be a principal
concerned the concept of what makes
good teaching: what is involved and
what support systems an institution
can provide so people can develop
their teaching and professional skills.
I’ve been able to do a lot of that in this
role, both in the recruitment of and
the development for junior faculty.
What initiatives stand out for you?
We’ve tried to clarify and make more
transparent our review procedures
and policies for our tenure-track
candidates as well as the reviews for
our non-tenure-track instructional
staff. We had them in place, but there
were often a lot of questions. We held
listening sessions with people who
had recently been up for tenure to see
what their experience was, chairs of
all of the departments and programs,
and the staff members who manage
the process. I’m really proud of that
because I think that transparency
has really improved the process for
our candidates as well as for the
College generally. I’m hoping the
transparency and clarity will mean
less implicit bias in the decisions
that we make because we’ve laid out
a set of criteria much more clearly.
That’s a very small way to be a part of
a broader movement around antiracism and anti-chauvinism.
Where does this interest in looking
for ways to improve systems come
from?
It comes from my very first job
when I taught middle school math
in Westfield, N.J. Two-fifths of that
first year, I taught algebra, and the
other three-fifths, I pulled seventh
graders out of gym to teach them how
to take the test that they were going
to have to take in eighth grade. I really
didn’t like that part of my job. I loved
teaching algebra. But it became really
clear to me that some policymakers
had decided that the way to determine
how much kids were learning was
by having them take a test. For some
kids, that extra math was maybe
a really good thing. And for some
kids, maybe, being pulled out of gym
was actually a really bad thing. It
wasn’t clear to me how much the
policymakers understood all of those
downstream implications.
Do you have a favorite moment?
The moment that our Academic
Continuity Committee turned in our
report [to President Valerie Smith in
May 2020] — that was the moment
when I was most proud to work at
Swarthmore. I felt like this is a place
that’s going to try to be as thoughtful
as possible about its response to the
pandemic.
Having started those conversations
allowed us to move more quickly,
once the decision was made, because
people were already aware of a number
of the issues. That was the best
committee I’d ever served on, not just
at Swarthmore, but of almost any
committee or work that I’ve done.
LAURENCE KESTERSON
LAURENCE KESTERSON
“I’ve most
appreciated
how much more
interaction I have
with the College
staff,” says
Schofield. “They’re
a tremendous group
of people, and faculty
in large part don’t
interact with many
of them on a regular
basis.”
in this issue
36
Pick a topic and dive in:
The Color of Trees
By looking at agricultural
problems in new ways,
John Leary ’00 is building
biodiversity — and
community, too.
LANDFILLS
The Post-Landfill Action Network is
a student-led zero-waste movement
that equips students with the
necessary skills and resources to
implement solutions to waste in their
campus communities.
by Tara Smith
+ WASTE NOT: postlandfill.org
CORAL REEFS
The Coral Reef Alliance partners
with local communities and takes a
multipronged approach to restoring
and protecting coral reefs.
+ RESTORE: coral.org
OCEANS
Oceana works to make our oceans
more biodiverse and abundant
by winning policy victories in the
countries that govern much of the
world’s marine life.
+ GO DEEP: oceana.org
AGRICULTURE
Trees for the Future works with
thousands of farmers across
sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on the
implementation of “Forest Garden”
programs in Cameroon, Kenya,
Senegal, Uganda, and Tanzania.
+ PLANT THE FUTURE: trees.org
CLIMATE POLICY
LAURENCE KESTERSON
Leary looks to a future when sustainable
agriculture practices are the norm. “We need
to be able to grow food on this planet for a
long time to come,” says Leary, at Kimberton
CSA, a Pennsylvania community-supported
agriculture farm, this summer. Today, Trees
for the Future has 68 employees in Senegal and
more than 200 across Africa.
Climate Analytics combines science
and policy analysis to support
countries — especially those most
vulnerable — in the fight against
human-induced climate change.
+ ANALYZE: climateanalytics.org
20
THIS SIDE UP
Just as funny upside down, a treasured Monty Python
poster makes the cut for Move-In Day on Aug. 23.
Creating a New
Climate
Moving past pessimism
and paralysis, a studentled workshop series
encourages participants
to critically engage with
the climate crisis.
by Roy Greim ’14
24
In Deep
At the ocean’s edge and
into its deepest waters,
Swarthmoreans are
invested in the mechanisms
of marine life, working
out how animals solve the
problems of their worlds
and exploring how they
function in their
environment — however
it changes.
by Kate Campbell
42
The Company
of Trees
In appreciation of
our ever-changing,
deeply rooted, and highly
communicative campus
friends.
LAURENCE KESTERSON
SWARTHMORE’S
STEWARDS
ARE AT WORK IN THE
WORLD AND
GAINING GROUND
GROWING TOGETHER
FEATURES
FALL 2021
Non Profit Org
U.S. Postage
PAID
Permit #129
19464
TREE TOPS
p36
FOOD MATTERS
p46
SEED STRATEGY
p48
500 College Ave.
Swarthmore, PA 19081–1306
www.swarthmore.edu
CLIMATE OF CHANGE
THE BULLETIN’S FALL ISSUE is dedicated to
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN
stories of Swarthmoreans making strides in
helping to sustain the planet. We are hopeful,
hard at work, and energized for change.
LAURENCE KESTERSON
Give back like Mwangangi by mentoring
current students. Learn more at
swarthmore.edu/alumni.
navigating new waters together
Whales and other species critical to ocean
health. Story, p.24.
WHALE ILLUSTRATION © ELENNADZEN–STOCK.ADOBE.COM
FALL 2020
1
“Last year was my first time as a teaching
assistant for the Math Department. This role,
however trivial it may look on the outside,
has actually been one of the most rewarding
experiences I have ever had. Guiding
students through math homework problems
and seeing some of them develop an interest
in math has been an extremely fascinating
process. Surprisingly, it has not just been a
one-sided relationship; I have learned much
more about the problem-solving process
through guiding others to solve their
problems.”
— Mwangangi Kalii ’23
Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin 2021-10-01
The Swarthmore College Bulletin is the official alumni magazine of the college. It evolved from the Garnet Letter, a newsletter published by the Alumni Association beginning in 1935. After World War II, college staff assumed responsibility for the periodical, and in 1952 it was renamed the Swarthmore College Bulletin. (The renaming apparently had more to do with postal regulations than an editorial decision. Since 1902, the College had been calling all of its mailed periodicals the Swarthmore College Bulletin, with each volume spanning an academic year and typically including a course catalog issue and an annual report issue, with a varying number of other special issues.)
The first editor of the Swarthmore College Bulletin alumni issue was Kathryn “Kay” Bassett ’35. After a few years, Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49 was appointed editor and held the position for 36 years, during which she reshaped the mission of the magazine from focusing narrowly on Swarthmore College to reporting broadly on the college's impact on the world at large. Gillespie currently appears on the masthead as Editor Emerita.
Today, the quarterly Swarthmore College Bulletin is an award-winning alumni magazine sent to all alumni, parents, faculty, staff, friends of the College, and members of the senior class. This searchable collection spans every issue from 1935 to the present.
Swarthmore College
2021-10-01
reformatted digital
The class notes section of The Bulletin has been extracted in this collection to protect the privacy of alumni. To view the complete version of The Bulletin, contact Friends Historical Library.