V O L U M E 8 2 • N U M B E R 3 • W I N T E R / S P R I N G 2 0 0 1

M A G A Z I N E

Bass phenom Edgar Meyer

M A G A Z I N E

VOLUME 82 • NO. . 3 • WINTER/SPRING 2001

Mary Tom Bass, MEd’85, Editor

Victor Judge, BS’77, MS’79, Assistant Editor

GayNelle Doll, Assistant Editor

Nelson Bryan, BA’73, Class Notes Editor

Joanne Lamphere Beckham, BA’62 · Bonnie ArantErtelt, BS’81 · Shawn Jenkins · Beth Matter · Phillip B. Tucker, Staff Writers

Skip Anderson · Vivian Cooper-Capps · Beth Fox ·Julia Helgason · Nancy Humphrey · Susan L. Jenkins ·Elizabeth Latt · Mark Levine · Princine Lewis · LeighMacMillan · David F. Salisbury, Contributors

Donna DeVore Pritchett, DesignerKeith Wood, Assistant Designer

Anthony J. Spence, E’75, Executive Director of AlumniCommunications and Publications

VANDERBILT MAGAZINE is published quarterly by VanderbiltUniversity from editorial and business offices at 301University Plaza, 112 21st Avenue South, Nashville, TN37203. VU Station B 357703, 2301 Vanderbilt Place, Nashville,TN 37235-7703. Phone: 615/322-2601. Fax: 615/343-8547.E-mail: vanderbiltmagazine@vanderbilt.edu. Please sendaddress corrections to Gift Records Office, VanderbiltUniversity, 201 Alumni Hall, Nashville, TN 37240. VanderbiltUniversity is committed to principles of equal opportunityand affirmative action.

Circulation: VANDERBILT MAGAZINE is sent free of charge toalumni and parents of current undergraduate students whomake an annual gift to any part of the University. Sustainingmembers of the Alumni Association ($25 for recent graduatesof ten years or less, $35 for regular individual membership,$50 per couple) also receive the MAGAZINE.

Copyright © 2001 Vanderbilt University

Cover: Edgar Meyer, Blair School of Music adjunct associateprofessor of bass, by Jim McGuire

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F E A T U R E S

12First BassUnder Edgar Meyer’s tender ministrations,the “bullfrog of the orchestra” takes wings

16In the Company of TreesDespite drought, starlings, bulldozers, and humans,Vanderbilt’s trees endure

20Wise Heart2000 Distinguished Alumnus led the way for understanding of atherosclerosis

22Lost Kingdom RediscoveredIn the “Place of Serpents,” Vanderbilt archaeologists unearth a sprawling ancient city

26Photo NomadAlumna captures the faces of Western China

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D E P A R T M E N T S

2 On Campus

10 Sports

30 Books

32 Alumni News

34 Class Notes

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The late Norman Goldberg, MD’30, and his wife, Roselea, strengthened

fine arts education at Vanderbilt through their generous gifts. The Goldberg

Collection in the Heard Library is a large and unique collection devoted

to 19th-century artists of the Norwich School, who painted the scenery

of the East Anglian countryside and nearby coastal areas. The Goldberg

estate also provides funds for the purchase of additional materials for the

book collection, a professorship in fine arts, an annual lecture in art

history, and a University Press prize.

Mousehold Heath by John Crome from Etchings of Views in Norfolk (1838)

Norman and Roselea Goldberg Collection

Jean and Alexander Heard Library

2 V A N D E R B I L T M A G A Z I N E

O N C A M P U S

W I N T E R / S P R I N G 2 0 0 1 3

Psychologist Named A&S Dean

� Richard McCarty, executive director of sci-ence for the American Psychological Associ-ation, will become dean of the College of Artsand Science on July 1.

McCarty, who also is a professor of psy-chology and former department chair at theUniversity of Virginia, says he was interestedin coming to Vanderbilt “because it is such anoutstanding research institution with aspira-tions to be even better. It is unusual to find aninstitution with both high standards and atremendous base of support.”

He succeeds John Venable, who becamedean of the University’s largest college uponthe resignation last summer of Ettore “Jim”Infante.Venable agreed to serve as dean whileVanderbilt conducted a national search for asuccessor.

An authority on the physiological and be-havioral aspects of stress, McCarty was pro-fessor and chair of UVA’s psychology departmentfrom 1990 to 1998.He has been with the Amer-ican Psychological Association since 1998. In1994–95 he was visiting scientist for the Clin-ical Neuroscience Branch of the National In-stitute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

McCarty came to his field of study in asomewhat roundabout way.“I started out to

be a biologist beforebecoming interestedin psychology,” heexplains.He receivedhis bachelor’s degreein biology and amaster’s degree inzoology from OldDominion Univer-sity before earninga Ph.D. in compar-

ative animal behavior from Johns HopkinsUniversity.

He spent two years as a research associ-ate in pharmacology with the National Insti-tute of Mental Health before joining UVA in1978 as an assistant professor of psychology.He also was a senior fellow at the NationalHeart, Lung and Blood Institute and spent 10years as behavioral science coordinator for theFBI National Academy. He is a fellow of nu-merous professional organizations and servesas editor of American Psychologist.

McCarty plans to teach classes at Vander-bilt but will forego his research. He will makeregular trips to the campus during the springsemester to meet faculty and students be-fore assuming the deanship in July.

Richard McCarty

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Summoning Special Memories

I wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed

the Fall 2000 issue of Vanderbilt Maga-

zine. With graduate degrees in English, I

found the report on the Millennial Gather-

ing of Writers of the New South (“Remod-

eling the House of Southern Literature”) of

obvious interest,but it was Christine Kreyling’s

piece on the point/counterpoint of the Van-

derbilt and Peabody campuses (“Great Aspi-

rations”) that really caught my attention. My

tenure at Vanderbilt predated the Vander-

bilt-Peabody merger, and I used to “escape”

to the Peabody campus when I wanted a few

moments of peace and quiet. Ms. Kreyling

captured the spirit of both campuses and

summoned some special memories. Thank

you.

Lorrie Kyle Ramey, MA’72, PhD’79Winter Park, Fla.

The latest issue (Fall 2000) came recently. I

don’t know precisely why, but I found this

issue more interesting than any in recent past.

I believe that I read it cover to cover. I espe-

cially enjoyed the information on new build-

ings and was surprised to see mention of

Capers and 22nd Avenue. I rented for a year

just about at that spot; it must be time for me

to visit VU once again. The information con-

cerning Peabody brought back memories,

for in the early ’50s I rented a room on 18th

Avenue South, at the edge (at that time) of

that campus. Thanks for the good work.

Frank Trainor, MA’53, PhD’57

Storrs, Conn.

Letters are always welcome in response tocontents of the magazine. We reserve the right to edit for length, style, and clarity. Sendsigned letters to the Editor, VANDERBILT MAG-AZINE,VU Station B 357703, 2301 VanderbiltPlace, Nashville, TN 37235, or e-mailvanderbiltmagazine@vanderbilt.edu.

E X T R A D I A P E R , A N Y O N E ?

Since 1997, Vanderbilt University Medical Center has become a national leader in the field of inutero surgery for spina bifida. Surgeons have performed more than 100 operations in an attemptto minimize the damage to fetuses while still developing in the womb. Expectant parents havecome to Vanderbilt from across the country as well as British Columbia and Puerto Rico. Expertssay it is too early to predict the final outcome, but results so far are encouraging. Says one parent,“My boy is going to walk. We are helping him be as normal as he can be. What else can we askfor?” Each year patients return for a reunion, giving Vanderbilt physicians a chance to review thechildren’s progress. Above, during a gathering last fall, Dr. Joseph Bruner (left), director of fetaldiagnosis and therapy, Dr. Noel Tullipan, director of the division of pediatric neurosurgery, and reg-istered nurse Eileen Vrabcak are happily covered up by their patients.

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� In a move that offers enormous potentialpayoff for Vanderbilt, Procter & Gamble hasgiven the University a collection of patents andpending patents for technology that could leadto the next “super aspirin.”

Procter & Gamble has donated 196 patentsand all associated intellectual property for acollection of chemical compounds that blockthe action of the enzyme cyclooxygenase-2.Like the recently marketed COX-2 inhibitors,Celebrex and Vioxx, these compounds couldbecome “super aspirins”—drugs that relievepain and inflammation without the gastricside effects of aspirin. COX-2 inhibitors mayalso find use in the prevention and treatmentof colon cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

“Celebrex and Vioxx are already householdnames,”says Dr. Harry R. Jacobson, vice chan-cellor for health affairs.“We hope to add a thirdCOX-2 inhibitor to this list.”The global mar-ket for COX-2 inhibitor drugs is approximately$3 billion annually.As the sole new owners ofthe Procter & Gamble technology,Vanderbiltwill benefit from all future revenues after thetechnology is developed and commercialized.

The gift is the sixth in a series of Procter &Gamble technology donations to leading uni-versities and research institutions. Procter &Gamble’s external consultants identified Van-derbilt, a longtime leader in research areas thatinclude the cyclooxygenase enzymes, as theuniversity most uniquely qualified to developfurther the COX-2 inhibitor technology.

Of the nearly 200 compounds being do-nated to Vanderbilt, one has been tested moreextensively and holds promise for commer-cialization. In animal studies, this lead com-pound appears to be as effective ananti-inflammatory as Celebrex and Vioxx, withan added edge—an ulcer healing effect. Be-yond pain relief, COX-2 inhibitors may findapplications as cancer drugs. COX-2 inhibitorsappear to improve the tumor killing activityof chemotherapy.

Gift of Patent Could Lead to New “Super Aspirin”

H E A D Y S T U F F

Jon Kaas reached the pinnacle of his 29-year career on theVanderbilt faculty last fall when he was inducted into the Nation-al Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors bestowedon an American scientist. Centennial Professor of Psychol-ogy, professor of cell biology, and Kennedy Center investi-gator, Kaas has studied the brain for some 35 years. Hisresearch has provided new insights into how the brain process-es sensory input from the ears, skin, and particularly the eyes.As a Centennial Professor, Kaas’ primary focus at Vander-bilt is research. But he continues to teach one undergradu-ate and one graduate course each semester. “I love teaching,and I have had the best of students at Vanderbilt,” he says.Former Kaas student Leah Krubitzer, PhD’89, a neuroscien-tist at U.C. Davis and MacArthur fellowship winner, says, “Ican’t think of anyone who has worked on so many differentspecies in such detail. Once you work in Jon’s lab, your lifeis never the same—not just your science, but your whole life.”

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� The Vanderbilt Board of Trust has approveda comprehensive fund-raising campaign witha test goal of $1 billion.

“Vanderbilt is ascending to the highest lev-els of quality and excellence,”says trustee chair-man Martha R. Ingram. “Under ChancellorGordon Gee’s leadership, we are confident thatVanderbilt will be counted among the trulygreat universities of the world—if we providethe resources necessary to turn aspirations intoreality.”

Trustees approved the campaign, the mostambitious in the University’s history, duringtheir November meeting.Vanderbilt’s last com-prehensive campaign concluded in 1995 withmore than $560 million in gifts, pledges, andplanned bequests.

Monroe J. Carell Jr., BE’59, chairman ofCentral Parking System and a member ofthe board since 1991, will chair the fund drive.“This campaign is about people,” he says.“AtVanderbilt, we have something unique, andwe must build upon it to be even better by fo-cusing on scholarships, endowed chairs, and

student life. That is the kind of leadership thatwill make Vanderbilt a great university.”

Under Carell’s leadership, a steering com-mittee will work with University leaders, in-cluding alumni and faculty,to continue campaignplanning. The final goal announcement andpublic kickoff is planned for spring 2002.

The multiyear campaign will focus on fiveprincipal areas for the University: endowmentfor scholarships and faculty chairs, fundingfor new and improved facilities, improvementsin student life, continuing development ofworld class research and clinical programs,and general operating support.

A limited number of universities are en-gaged in campaigns with a goal of $1 billionor more, including Georgetown, Duke, North-western, and Washington universities.

“This campaign will affirm our most cher-ished principles and values,”Ingram adds.“Atthe same time, it will sound a clarion to theUniversity family, its friends, and the com-munity that sustains it to help Vanderbilt re-alize its true potential.”

$1 Billion Campaign to Be Launched in 2002

W I N T E R / S P R I N G 2 0 0 1 5

� The new dean at Vanderbilt’s School ofMedicine, one of the world’s leading expertson diabetes and pregnancy, wants to expandclinical research and collaboration betweenscientists and health-care professionals.

Dr.Steven Gabbe,one of the most respectedacademic perinatologists in the country anda member of the Institute of Medicine, as-sumed his new position in March. He suc-ceeds Dr. John Chapman, who retired after 25years as dean.

For the past four years Gabbe served onthe faculty at the University of WashingtonMedical Center where he was professor andchairman of the Department of Obstetricsand Gynecology. Previously he was professorand chair of obstetrics and gynecology at theOhio State University College of Medicine.Students at both institutions singled him outto receive teaching awards.

Gabbe’s background en-compasses both clinical and re-search experience. His researchinterests include prenatal di-agnosis using ultrasound, theassessment of fetal well-being,premature labor, and the com-plications of childbirth. He isauthor of 127 peer-reviewedpapers, 93 abstracts, 71 chap-ters, and nine books.

A graduate of PrincetonUniversity and CornellUniversity Medical College,Gabbe was a resident and fel-

low at the Boston Hospital for Women anda research and clinical fellow at HarvardUniversity. Obstetrics and gynecology is anideal background for a medical school dean,he says, because “it emphasizes primary care,medical care, surgery, and reproductive health.It’s at the cutting edge of so many researchfields, such as genetics, cancer, and geriatrics,that it provides a very broad appreciation ofwhat’s possible in medicine.”

Gabbe says he has several items on his agen-da as dean. His plans include encouragingbroader opportunities for resident and felloweducation and continuing medical education.He is interested in translational research—applying what is learned in basic sciencelaboratories to clinical practice. He also willencourage interdisciplinary clinical research.

Gabbe is only the 10th dean of VUSM sinceits 1875 founding.

Expert on Diabetes and Pregnancy Heads School of Medicine

� The Freedom Forum will build a new $6million journalism training institute on theVanderbilt campus and relocate most of itsadministrative staff to Nashville from Arlington,Virginia. The facility will house a training cen-ter for journalists of color, plus offices forFreedom Forum staff.

The institute is a one-of-a-kind facility thatwill involve daily newspapers from aroundthe country. It is expected to train about 80journalists annually from nontraditional back-grounds for newsroom jobs.

Aspiring journalists of varied ages andbackgrounds will undergo intensive 12-week

training sessions followed by guaranteed jobsand further training at newspapers. Honorsseminars also will be offered to selected stu-dents from nearby colleges. In addition, theinstitute will offer programs aimed at help-ing newspapers boost minority retention.

Currently, minorities account for morethan 28 percent of the U.S. population, butthey represent only 12 percent of newsroomstaffs.

“Diversity is one of Vanderbilt’s highestpriorities, and we welcome the institute to ourcampus,” says Chancellor Gordon Gee.“Theimportant work of the institute may well shapea new face in newsrooms across the countryand greatly affect issues facing our society.”

The Freedom Forum will build and fundthe new three-story, 32,000-square-foot fa-cility adjacent to the First Amendment Centerand Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy

Studies at 18th Avenue Southand Edgehill. In 1993, TheFreedom Forum spent $2million to help construct theFirst Amendment Center andVanderbilt Institute for PublicPolicy Studies building underthe leadership of JohnSeigenthaler, founder of theFirst Amendment Center.

“We are expanding thesuccessful partnership withVanderbilt that began in1993,” says Charles Overby,

chairman and CEO of The Freedom Forum.Overby announced that Wanda Lloyd, man-aging editor of the Greenville News (S.C.) anda national leader in journalism diversity,will become executive director of The FreedomForum Institute for Newsroom Diversity.

4 V A N D E R B I L T M A G A Z I N E

Steven Gabbe

Freedom Forum to Build Institute for Newsroom Diversity Engineers Working to Improve Mobility of Blind Pedestrians

� Vanderbilt engineers are working with ateam of universities to develop better auditorysystems to guide blind pedestrians throughtricky intersections.

The Blind Pedestrian Access to ComplexIntersections project, sponsored by the Na-tional Institutes of Health, will incorporateSchool of Engineering research to develop anacoustic virtual reality system that will deepenunderstanding of how people perceive soundand interactively teach the blind to use soundto fine-tune their location as they navigate in-tersections.

“There is a great deal of individual varia-tion in how people perceive sound,”says Van-derbilt acoustics specialist Kenneth Frampton,assistant professor of mechanical engineering.“Our technical challenge will be to develop acomputer program that can create a real-timeacoustic virtual reality environment that is in-stantaneously interactive.”

When completed, the system will allow in-dividuals to practice navigating an intersec-tion using an auditory guidance system. Theywill wear a headset connected to a computerthat will generate sounds in response to theposition and motions of their heads.

The first step in developing this interactivesystem is to analyze how sound is perceivedfrom different directions, depending on theposition of the head. For this research, Framp-ton and his team are enlisting the help ofKEMAR, a microphoned mannequin. Withsensitive microphones in each ear that simu-late the performance of the human ear,KEMARtransmits sound data to a computer systemthat analyzes characteristics of sounds receivedin each ear.

“People determine location of sound bycomparing the difference between what thetwo ears are hearing,”Frampton explains.“Theposition of the head and the structure of thecartilage around the ear affect both the vol-ume and the timing of the sounds perceivedby each ear.

“The signal processing system we’re de-veloping will enable us to present sounds thatappear to be originating from any direction,”he adds.“What used to be accomplished usingdozens of speakers will be achievable withonly two.”

The Freedom Forum Institute for Newsroom Diversity will train about80 journalists of color for jobs in journalism each year.

G R E AT P E R F O R M A N C E S

Jonathan Miller, the Harvie Branscomb Distin-guished University Visiting Scholar and acclaimeddirector and author, was in residence at Vander-bilt from October 16 through November 3. Here heworks with Kate Janssen, BMus’99, and Evan Dozier-Stefanuk, BMus’00 (right), of the Vander-bilt Opera Theatre, on a scene from Mozart’s Mar-riage of Figaro. While in residence, Miller, who alsois a physician, participated in the University’s GreatPerformances series, appeared as part of the Dean’sHour at the School of Medicine, and worked withclasses in directing as well as the ShakespeareWorkshop and Vanderbilt Opera Theatre.

Class of 2004Freshman class 1,643

Average SAT 1313

Average High School GPA 3.61

Women 53%

Men 47%

Minorities 17%

Asian American 6%

African American 5.6%

Hispanic/Latino 3.4%

States Represented 46

Tennesseans 13%

Foreign Countries Represented 47

High Schools Attended

Public 58%

Private 42%

National Merit Scholars 102

National Achievement Scholars 9

Ranked 1st or 2nd in class 186

Student body presidents 42

Publication editors-in-chief 105

Captains of athletic team 563

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Vanderbilt Launches Research Webzine

� A new online magazine devoted to university-based research is Vanderbilt’s lat-est effort to help the public understandand appreciate science and engineering. CalledExploration, the journal is on the Web athttp://exploration.vanderbilt.edu. “It’s ex-tremely important that universities and otherscience and engineering research institutionsdo a better job of explaining what they do tothe general public,” says Rick Chappell,former NASA science astronaut and direc-tor of Vanderbilt’s Office of Science andResearch. The webzine uses photography,illustrations, animations, and video and audio

clips to help explain aspects of research thatare difficult to convey through text alone.

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V A N D E R B I LT R A N K S 2 2 N D

Vanderbilt continues to be among thenation’s top 25 universities, according to U.S. News and World Report. Published lastAugust, the “Best National Universities”annual surveyranked Vanderbilt22nd. Princeton wasfirst, and Harvard andYale tied for second.

6 V A N D E R B I L T M A G A Z I N E

� Vanderbilt’s financial portfolio performedexceptionally well last year, yielding a stag-gering 31.92 percent return and endingthe fiscal year 2000 at $2.4 billion.

“Typically, if you outperform the mar-ket by 1.5 percent, then you’ve done verywell,” says Bill Spitz, vice chan-cellor for investments and trea-surer.“Last year we beat it by 3.6percent and thought that wasawesome. This year we outper-formed our customized bench-mark, which is a blend of marketindices for each of the categoriesthat we invest in, by more than 20 percent.”

Spitz attributes the boon to Vanderbilt’sinvestment strategy, which differs from themodel used by many investors and institu-

tions. “A traditional asset mix of 75 per-cent U.S. stocks, 10 percent non-U.S. stocks,and 15 percent bonds would have generat-ed a return of 8 percent,” he notes.“The dif-ference between the 8 percent return andour 31.9 percent outcome is largely a func-

tion of our private equity port-folio.” The engine drivingVanderbilt’s endowment fund inrecent years has been its ventureportfolio, which yielded a returnof 178 percent over the past year.

The endowment funds onlyabout 5 percent of Vanderbilt’s

annual operating budget of $1.2 billion, thebulk of which comes from Medical Centerrevenues, tuition, government grants, andgifts.

� A network of international researchers isset to begin the largest study ever conductedto search for genes that cause major depres-sion. The study, coordinated by Vanderbilt’sProgram in Human Genetics in collabora-tion with the pharmaceutical company GlaxoWellcome, could lead to development of newdrugs to prevent or treat the disease.

Major or unipolar depression affects about12 percent of the population in the Westernworld at some point, making it the leadingcause of disability worldwide.Although about70 percent of patients respond to treat-ment with antidepressants, up to 75 percentof them experience recurrent depressionwithin 10 years. A high proportion of suf-ferers remains undiagnosed and untreated.

Although some candidate genes for de-pression have been identified, none has beenconfirmed.“Understanding the genetic basisof unipolar depression will give us new tar-gets to help design new, improved medicines

to deal with the condition,” says Jonathan L.Haines, professor of molecular physiologyand biophysics and director of the Pro-gram in Human Genetics.

The new study will recruit a minimum of1,200 families in which at least two indi-viduals have been characterized as clinicallydepressed. Clinical histories and DNA datawill be collected from eligible families at mul-tiple centers, including Washington Univer-sity; the Institute of Psychiatry in London;the University of Birmingham, UK; the Uni-versity of Wales; and Trinity Centre for HealthSciences. Additional sites are expected to jointhe effort.

Vanderbilt investigators will analyze allof the data collected at study centers, look-ing for links between genetic markers andclinical depression. Spots in the genome thatare found to be linked to depression then actas signposts, pointing the way to the actualgenes that play a role in the disease.

Vanderbilt Searches for Depression Genes

P R E V E N T I N G V I O L E N C E T H E B E S T W A Y

Susan Han and Tom Catron use puppets and role playing as part of the Behavioral Enrichment andSocial Training (BEST) program, a violence prevention initiative aimed at preschoolers. Catron,associate professor of psychiatry and codirector of the Center for Psychotherapy Research andPolicy at the Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies, and Han, research associate at the Cen-ter, helped develop the program with other Vanderbilt researchers. BEST trains teachers andparents to help eliminate negative and inappropriate behaviors—while also improving a child’s self-esteem and problem-solving abilities—through reinforcement of positive behaviors. The programis being tested in several local preschools and may expand to other cities statewide. “The earlieryou can reach a child the better,” says Catron. “Teaching them problem-solving techniques andanger management in preschool is a powerful intervention.”

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Bold Investment Strategy Reaps Big Dividends

USDE Grant Helping Disadvantaged Students Aim High

�Disadvantaged middle-school children nowhave a greater chance of attending schoolslike Vanderbilt, thanks to a federal five-yeargrant to the University totaling $5.7 million.The U.S. Department of Education’s GEARUP program—Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs—recently awarded $45.6 million in GEAR UPgrants to help more than 710,000 disadvan-taged middle-schoolers throughout the country.

Vanderbilt will use its grant to enhanceits existing Project GRAD (Graduation Real-ly Achieves Dreams) program that helps pre-pare students for academic success startingin pre-kindergarten and following themthrough high school. The cornerstone of Pro-ject GRAD is the guarantee of scholarshipassistance to any student who graduates witha 2.5 grade point average from a high schoolparticipating in the program.

“Project GRAD also provides intensiveprofessional development for teachers andworks with families to ensure that studentsarrive at school ready to learn,” says MarcySinger-Gabella, Vanderbilt assistant provostfor Initiatives in Education and director ofProject GRAD. “This grant both helps fundthese activities and significantly enhancesour ability to provide academic advising, col-lege planning, and parent outreach services.”

Project GRAD currently serves Pearl-Cohn High School and its feeder schools,Cockrill, McCann, and Park Avenue ele-mentary schools, and W.A. Bass, McKissack,and West End middle schools. The grant willenable Project GRAD’s expansion into otherMetro schools.

Better Business Through Social Responsibility

� Businesses don’t have to choose betweenbeing socially responsible and making moneybut can easily intertwine the two, says BenCohen, cofounder of Ben & Jerry’s Home-made, who visited the Owen Graduate Schoolof Management last fall.

Cohen spent the day meeting with stu-dents and participating in a business round-table sponsored by the Cal Turner Programin Moral Leadership for the Professions.Throughout the day’s activities, which in-cluded his appearance as the inaugural speakerfor Owen’s Just Do It Right Club and, ofcourse, an ice cream social, Cohen reiteratedBen & Jerry’s mission to use business as apositive force for progressive social changeand to strengthen partnerships with com-munities in which the company operates.

Although the company donates moneyto worthy causes through its foundation,Cohen stressed that Ben & Jerry’s primar-ily fulfills its mission by integrating social re-sponsibility into its business operations.Examples include buying tax credits for hous-ing for the formerly homeless, utilizing com-munity banks and investing in the rebuildingof decaying areas, and switching from bleachedto unbleached containers.

“We decided to redefine the bottom lineand measure success in two ways: how muchwe have contributed to the welfare of the com-munity and how much we have increased prof-its,” Cohen says. “Earlier in our careers, wedecided that if we didn’t like the way businessis normally run, we should do it differently.”

Ben & Jerry’s cofounder Ben Cohen, sporting a Ten-nessee Titans jersey presented by Owen Schoolstudents, poses with second-year students Jen-nifer Lemming and Keith Deerkoski, cofoundersof the Just Do It Right Club.

New General Counsel Also Will Teach Law

�David Williams II, formerly a vice presidentand professor of law at The Ohio State Uni-versity, has been appointed vice chancellor,general counsel, and secretary of Vanderbilt.Williams, who began his new position lastsummer, also will teach at Vanderbilt LawSchool.

As vice president for student andurban/community affairs at Ohio State, heoversaw a wide range of activities at thesprawling campus, including housing, din-

ing and student organizations, intercolle-giate athletics, facilities, and community af-fairs. He also was a tenured professor in OhioState’s College of Law, where he special-ized in taxation and sports law.

Williams is Vanderbilt’s chief legal offi-cer. He directs the Office of General Coun-sel and the Office of Risk Management, andoversees corporate activities related to theUniversity’s Board of Trust.

At Ohio State,Williams was vice presidentunder Gordon Gee, then Ohio’s president andnow Vanderbilt’s chancellor.When asked whyhe left his home of 14 years to assume the four-fold duty at Vanderbilt, Williams credits theworking relationship he has had with Gee, theuniqueness of the University he now callshome, and the wide latitude of possibilities asthe top legal representative of the institution.

“If you have any desires to practice lawin such a way that you have one client and getto see a wide variety of things that are cuttingedge, then being general counsel of a uni-versity is a great way to experience that,” hesays.

Gee says of Williams,“He is a talented andversatile administrator who is equally at homeanalyzing tax policy and working with stu-dents; he is a fine legal scholar and teacher;and he intuitively understands the mission ofa great university.”David Williams II

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As part of the restructuring, John S. BeasleyII, BA’52, JD’54, vice chancellor for alumni anddevelopment, emeritus, will serve as counselorto the chancellor and will help foster rela-tionships between the University and key alumniconstituencies.

The vice chancellor for student affairs andcampus life will report directly to Chancel-lor Gee and will oversee a wide range of ex-isting services and programs, such as residentialand judicial affairs, student activities, studenthealth and counseling, the Honor Code, andothers.

These activities currently are administeredby the Office of the Associate Provost for Stu-dent Affairs and the Office of the Dean of Stu-dents, both of which report to Provost TomBurish. The new position is being establishedin part as a result of an evaluation of Van-derbilt’s current student life operation con-ducted by a review team of senior student affairsexecutives.

Moving student affairs and campus life toa more autonomous position within the ad-ministration will allow Burish to engage inwider leadership in his role of chief academicofficer, Gee says.

Leading the search committee for the firstvice chancellor for student affairs and campuslife will be David Williams II, vice chancellorand general counsel, who also was a memberof the review team. The search committee willcomprise faculty, students, members of theBoard of Trust, and alumni.

W I N T E R / S P R I N G 2 0 0 1 9

� The consolidation of several key institu-tional functions and the creation of new se-nior executive positions mark a significantreorganization of Vanderbilt’s strategic plan-ning, development, alumni relations, and stu-dent affairs efforts. Chancellor Gordon Geeannounced the changes in January.

The two new positions—vice chancellorfor institutional planning and advancementand vice chancellor for student affairs and cam-pus life—“involve issues, organizations, andopportunities that are at the heart of our aca-demic mission and will dramatically affectVanderbilt’s ability to reach a new level ofexcellence and leadership,” Gee says.

Gee, who became chancellor last July, calledthe changes “significant, unique, and trans-formational.”

Nicholas Zeppos, a law professor who forthe past two years has served as associate provostfor academic affairs, became vice chancellorfor institutional planning and advancementMarch 16. A national search is under way forthe new vice chancellor for student affairs andcampus life.

Gee says the division Zeppos heads is tak-ing a leadership role in strategic planning andwill incorporate the activities of the previousOffice of Alumni and Development.

“It has become clear to me that the Uni-versity’s advancement efforts, that is, fundrais-ing and alumni relations, must be far moreclosely linked with our academic mission andplanning,”Gee says.“We have arrived at a pointin Vanderbilt’s evolution where our highestacademic aspirations, unparalleled opportu-nities, and resource development must merge.”

Gee calls Zeppos “one of the brightest, mostenergetic and creative people at Vanderbilt. Hecares deeply for Vanderbilt’s mission, has greatrespect for its alumni, faculty, students, and

staff, and has a passionate commitment to ex-cellence for the future.”

A graduate of the University of Wiscon-sin and its law school, Zeppos joined the Van-derbilt faculty in 1987 after serving as anattorney in the U.S. Department of Justice.From 1998 to 1999, he served as associate deanof the Vanderbilt Law School. He has wonfive teaching awards at the University and isa nationally recognized scholar in legislationand government regulation.

Beverly Bond, MBA’93, who had served asvice chancellor for alumni and develop-ment since July 1999, became executive di-rector of the University’s capital campaign.Previously she was associate vice chancellorof the division, directing fundraising andalumni relations for non-medical areas of theUniversity. A 22-year veteran of the alumniand development staff, Bond also helped di-rect the Campaign for Vanderbilt, which raisedmore than $560 million from 1989 to 1995.

“Beverly has been a true friend to Vander-bilt and to many, many of our alumni for morethan 20 years,”says Wayne Hyatt, BA’65, JD’68,president of the Vanderbilt Alumni Associa-tion. “Most of us ‘ordinary folk’ do not ade-quately realize or appreciate the very importantrole she played in the Campaign for Vander-bilt and in other fund-raising efforts; that wasvital. However, we see her best as one whosefriendship, dedication, and encouragementinspired and supported our own efforts forVanderbilt; that was special.”

8 V A N D E R B I L T M A G A Z I N E

Chancellor Gee Announces New Structure for Student Affairs, Planning and Advancement

� The Heard Library’s government infor-mation Web site (http://www.library.van-derbilt.edu/romans/gvtmain.html) wasrecently named one of the 26 principal start-ing points for finding government infor-mation in the country.

Maintained by Larry Romans, govern-ment information librarian and political sci-ence bibliographer, engineering junior JaredSims, and other student assistants, the sitereflects a diversity of material, some fromthe Government Printing Office (GPO), somefrom other agencies and departments of thefederal government, and some from non-governmental sites. It’s indicative of the di-rection the GPO and its primary disseminators,the more than 1,300 federal depository li-braries, are now taking.

Because of government cutbacks to theGPO budget, more and more governmentinformation is available only through elec-tronic resources. “It costs too much moneyto produce both electronic and paper ver-sions,” says Romans.

Using electronic resources to access gov-ernment information has advantages. “Themost obvious is that you don’t have to be inthe library to find things. Another is that theyupdate information much more quickly on-line. It might take us six months to receive apaper update,” says Romans, “but it takes aday to post an electronic update.”

On the other hand, the availability of gov-ernment information only through elec-tronic resources does not always assure thatit will be available to everyone, which makes

it difficult to uphold the motto of the GPO—“Keeping America Informed.”

Government Information Services’ papersources are varied.“We focus on three mainareas,” says Romans, “Congress, the Officeof the President, and the Department of State.

But we have a fascinating array of old andcurrent material. People don’t realize thatthe United States government is the world’slargest collector and producer of statis-tics.”

Government Information Services at theHeard Library became a depository in 1884.(A smaller depository focusing on legal ma-terials was added at the Law Library in 1976.)

Government Information Web Site Lauded

B L A I R S T U D E N T P L AY S C A R N E G I E

Blair School of Music senior and violinist Sara Schultzgave the performance of her lifetime during the NashvilleSymphony’s Carnegie Hall debut last September. Sheand 18 Blair faculty, the majority of whom are principalsfor their sections, toured the east coast with the orches-tra, which also includes Blair precollegiate and collegiatealumni. “The hall itself looked surprisingly small to me,”says Schultz. “I had seen the place on television so manytimes that the night of the concert I felt as if I were play-ing inside a TV set instead of a stage. The room felt likea true place of business, and my job, as part of the orches-tra, was to play with accuracy and excitement.” The sym-phony did just that according to New York Times musiccritic Allan Kozinn, who called the performance “mostlya knockout” and hailed the orchestra as playing “with theenergy of an ensemble out to impress.” The program fea-tured works by Ives, Strauss, and Beethoven.

A C A L L F O R “ H E R O S , H O P E , A N D H I S T O R Y ”

NAACP chairman Julian Bond, grandson of a formerslave, was keynote speaker for the Martin Luther KingJr. Commemorative Series held in January. A distin-guished professor at American University and a historyprofessor at the University of Virginia, Bond told a capac-ity crowd in Benton Chapel that today’s students are“filled with the cynicism and despair of their age” andneed to learn more about the “unknown heroes and hero-ines” who took part in the civil rights movement. “By giv-ing voice to the hopefulness of earlier generations whofaced resistance and oppression my students have neverknown and will never know, I hope to make heroism moreavailable, more attainable to a generation inclined to seethrough a glass darkly.”

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Voice Holds Clues to Assessing Suicide Risk

� Mental health awareness has made greatstrides in recent years, but an ongoing chal-lenge is determining an individual’s degree ofsuicide risk. Current assessment methods in-volve taking personal histories, clinical ex-amination, and psychological testing—all ofwhich take precious time in situations thatmay require immediate action.

An interdisciplinary research team atVanderbilt has identified several acoustic fea-tures in the voices of people recorded shortlybefore they took or attempted to take theirown lives that differentiate them from record-ed voices of normal individuals.

The work is an outgrowth of observationsfirst made 30 years ago by Stephen Silverman,then a clinical psychologist at BrookdaleHospital Medical Center in New York. As heinterviewed patients in the psychiatric emer-gency room, Silverman, who is also a jazzpianist, found that the sound of some voicesliterally caused the hair on the back of his neckto rise. As he analyzed the voices that creat-ed this sense of alarm, he concluded that itwas caused by a distinctive quality in the pat-tern and tone of the voices of individuals like-ly to attempt suicide in the near future.

Silverman and his wife, Marilyn, also a psy-chologist, began to investigate the phenome-non on their own. After years of study andresearch, they visited Vanderbilt and describedtheir project to professors Thomas Harris,chair of biomedical engineering, and RichardShiavi, an expert in signal processing. TheVanderbilt researchers accepted the challengeand arranged adjunct appointments for theSilvermans, who are on the clinical facultyat Yale Medical School.

Thus far, the work at Vanderbilt has iden-tified several features that appear to differ inthe voices of normal, depressed, and suici-dal individuals. One involves the dominantfrequencies of the voice; another involves theamount of energy in different frequency ranges.In analysis of slightly more than 100 subjects,researchers were able to differentiate correct-ly between depressed and suicidal individu-als 80 percent of the time. Further researchunder way includes investigation of second-by-second variations in the rate of vibrationof the vocal chords.

Larry Romans

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� Vanderbilt signed three nationally rankedplayers for the Commodore program last fall,including an infielder, right-handed pitcher,and left-handed pitcher. They rank amongthe top 100 prospects in the nation accord-ing to the collegiate baseball recruiting Website TeamOneBaseball.com.

Tony Mansolino, a 6-0, 185-pound seniorshortstop at Buchanan High School in Clo-vis, Calif., is a two-time honorable mentionAll-Tri River Athletic Conference selectee.

Jeremy Sowers, a 6-1, 160-pound left-handed pitcher from Ballard High School in

Louisville, Ky., claimed All-State honors in2000 after registering a 13-0 record and 0.16earned run average in 85.2 innings. He selected Vanderbilt over Notre Dame, WakeForest, and Duke.

Jeff Sues, a 6-4, 220-pound, right-handedpitcher from Middletown, N.J., guided RedBank Catholic to the conference champi-onship last season while leading the team instrikeouts and posting a 5-3 mark and 2.50earned run average. He chose Vanderbilt overClemson, San Francisco, William and Mary,Princeton, and Columbia.

� Carla Williams was named assistant direc-tor of athletics for future revenue sports lastsummer, succeeding June Stewart,who retiredearlier in the year.

When she was named, Williams wasfinishing the Ph.D. degree at Florida StateUniversity where she served as an academicmentor. She is a former basketball player andassistant coach at the University of Georgiaand has extensive experience as a radio andtelevision commentator.

Williams is the administrative contact forVanderbilt varsity teams except footballand men’s and women’s basketball.

W I N T E R / S P R I N G 2 0 0 1 11

Williams Oversees Future Revenue Sports

S P O R T S� As a high school senior, Nick Mor-row, an all-state linebacker from ruralNew Concord, Ohio, knew very littleabout Vanderbilt football. But a visitto the campus sold him on the Uni-versity and its football program.

“I watched the Notre Dame gamethat fall,”Morrow says.“I met the coach-es and absolutely loved it. I knew itwas the place for me. I cancelled all myother visits and decided to come here.”

Morrow began his collegiate careerintending to be a large-animal veteri-narian, but ultimately decided that hiscareer should focus on people. He looked fordirection in Peabody’s human and organiza-tional development program and found hisniche and major in special education.

“I took an Intro to Exceptionalities coursemy freshman year with Professor Joe Wehby,who opened my eyes,” Morrow explains. Hetalked to his mother, an educator, about teach-ing.“She said,‘You know, anyone can becomea teacher and get through it. But not every-one can be a good teacher who really is pas-sionate about the kids and helping them.’That, and working with Dr. Wehby, changedmy mind. I began to do some volunteer workon campus with the Susan Gray School forChildren and absolutely loved it.”

Three and a half years after enrolling at

Vanderbilt, Morrow has completed his under-graduate requirements. However, as a red-shirt player (held out his freshman year foran extra year of eligibility), he returns to theteam this fall for his final year of football. Healso plans to earn a master’s degree in edu-cation administration.

As a student-teacher last fall, Morrowworked with at-risk students with mild tomoderate learning disabilities at the highschool and middle school levels. Before mov-ing into administration, he plans to spendseveral years in the classroom.

“That’s where my heart is,”he says.“I havean opportunity to give students somethingthey might not otherwise have, and I’ll do mybest to accomplish that.”

10 V A N D E R B I L T M A G A Z I N E

� Press McPhaul, former assistant men’s golfcoach at North Carolina State University, wasnamed Vanderbilt’s head men’s golf coach lastsummer. He replaces Jim Ragan, who recent-ly became head men’s coach at Oklahoma.

“Press McPhaul is the right man to con-tinue building our program,” says AthleticsDirector Todd Turner.“He has the energy andenthusiasm of youth, he relates well to student-athletes, and he knows the game inside-out.”Turner has known McPhaul sincethe early 1990s when McPhaul was captain ofthe North Carolina State University golf team.

McPhaul was with the Wolfpack men’scoaching staff for two years. He was knownas a strong recruiter and also served as theinterim women’s golf coach in 1999.

A native of Sanford, N.C., he was one ofthe state’s finest amateur golfers. He was amember of the Wolfpack’s eighth-place NCAA

tournament team in 1995 and played in threeNCAA tournaments. More recently, he was asemifinalist in the 1998 Carolinas Amateurand placed third and second in the last twoNorth Carolina Amateur tournaments.

“I’ve known Todd Turner since I playedcollegiately and understand firsthand his inter-est and commitment to golf,” McPhaul says.“All I needed to know was that he was at Van-derbilt to know I wanted to be here, too.”

Ward Leads Women’s Golf With Winning Play

� Meredith Ward began playing golf whenshe was three years old.At age seven, she start-ed playing competitively.Last year, she becamethe first Vanderbilt women’s golfer to win atournament: the Green Wave Tournamentin New Orleans.

“I was quite shocked,” Ward says of hervictory.“It was our third tournament of thespring season. … I would not look at the statsheet indicating what place I was in becauseI was happy with the way I was playing.”

Ward, a junior from Crystal Lake, Ill., wasnamed second-team All-SEC at the end ofthat spring season. A double major in engi-neering sciences and economics, she alsomade the SEC Academic Honor Roll.

The tournament schedule, particularlyin the fall, keeps Ward and her teammatesbusy. On tournament weeks, some of whichcome back-to-back, the team leaves onWednesday, travels to the tournament, andreturns on Sunday. “Typically, you missThursday and Friday classes,” she says.“Youmake up tests here and there, try to meetwith tutors, and practice to get ready for thenext tournament.”

The team goal for the 2001 spring seasonis to go to the NCAA final championship.“We still haven’t played our best golf togetheryet, and this is thebest chance we’veever had to go.”

Ward enjoysthe supportiveatmosphere thatsurrounds theteam. Many fam-ily members trav-el to the varioustournaments tooffer encourage-ment.“My parents flew to every tournament,”she says.“We usually have a pretty good rep-resentation of parents.”

Life after graduation may include a shotat tour golf play.“I think I would regret nottrying,”she says.“That’s what my dad has al-ways said to me: ‘What have you go to lose?Give it a shot, and if it doesn’t work out, itdoesn’t work out.’ If it doesn’t, I’ll go into in-vestment banking or consulting work.”

� Led by first-team junior linebacker JamieWinborn, four Commodores earned All-SEChonors from the conference’s head coachesat season’s end in December. Senior tight endElliott Carson, senior offensive tackle BrianGruber, and sophomore wide receiver DanStricker were named to the second team.

It marked the most Vanderbilt playersnamed to the all-conference team since fiveplayers were tabbed for honors following the1997 season.

For Winborn, it was the third year in arow he was selected to the All-SEC team. Heannounced after the season that he will forgohis senior year of collegiate eligibility to enterthe 2001 NFL draft. Winborn is a fourth-year junior (having redshirted in 1997) andexpects to graduate this spring with a degreein human and organizational development.

It was Carson’s second appearance on theteam while Gruber and Stricker were namedfor the first time in their careers.

Sidelines

Allen DeGraffenreid, BS’97, last Octo-ber was drafted to play in the new XFL

football league, a joint effort of the WorldWrestling Federation and NBC. He was cho-sen in the 39th round by the New York/NewJersey Hitmen as an offensive guard.

Christine M. Reitano, BS’00, lastJune was selected as Vanderbilt’s

recipient of the SEC Female Scholar Athleteof the Year award.A member of the track andfield team, she competed in the 400-meterhurdles, 400-meter sprint, and pole vaulting.Reitano was graduated magna cum laude andPhi Beta Kappa with an interdisciplinarymajor in neuroscience. She now attends med-ical school at the University of Mississippi.

Former men’s basketball coach C.M.Newton was inducted into the Nai-

smith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame lastOctober in the contributors category. He wasa member of Kentucky’s 1951 national cham-pionship team and was involved in basket-ball for more than 50 years. He coached atVanderbilt from 1982 to 1989, compiled arecord of 129-115, and saw postseason playtwice in the NIT and twice in the NCAA tour-nament.

Special education major Nick Morrow worked with at-risk learning-disabled students last fall.

Linebacker Sees Future in Special Education

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Vanderbilt Baseball Scores with Fall Signees

� Former Vanderbilt women’s soccer stand-out Asta Helgadottir was selected by the Car-olina Tempest in the inaugural draft of theWomen’s United Soccer Association. She waspicked in the 12th round as the 91st overallselection.

“It feels great to be drafted and to get tobe part of this great league,” says Helgadottir,who was drafted in December.“Carolina wasmy first choice, and I’m glad I will be closeto my sister who plays at Duke.”

At Vanderbilt, Helgadottir was named aFirst-Team All-American, a Freshman All-American, All-SEC, and All-Central Region

First-Team.Vanderbilt senior defender Laurie Black

was named First-Team All-SEC and Third-Team All-Central Region in a vote by theNational Soccer Coaches Association ofAmerica’s All-America Committee inDecember.

A native of Bethel, Conn., Black added tothe offensive attack with 29 shots, one goal,and one assist. A human and organization-al development major, she wrapped up theregular season by being named to the SECAcademic Honor Roll for the third straightseason.

Former Soccer Star Goes Pro, Second Player Named All-SEC

the foreground, he transformed his bass intoan instrument of astonishing delicacy andcolor. During a stretch of solo playing in apiece entitled “Emily’s Reel,” his bass had thedoleful, ethereal sound of a remote echo. Ina gorgeous oddity,“Druid Fluid,”which braid-ed together strains of Baroque music, folktunes, and blues, the instrument embracedmoody lyricism and dronelike percussive-ness. Meyer produces the kind of straight tonefavored by early-music specialists, and it gaveeverything he played a raw, unmanufacturedquality—demonstrating that even this burlyinstrument could be made to sound as plain-tive as any wailing guitar.

When the trio launched into several O’Con-nor compositions from Appalachian Journey,the music slid perilously close to the old-timeysoundtrack of a sepia-bathed Ken Burns doc-

umentary. But in Meyer’s pieces the musicwent beyond generalized nostalgia to createa world that had the strange yet familiar feel-ing of a Cornell box. Baroque figurationbumped up against country heartache; therhythmic and harmonic thorniness of mod-ern classical music merged with the twangybravado of bluegrass. Occasionally, as in apiece entitled “Schizoozy,” there was a rawblast of energy that summoned up the spir-it of ’70s hard rock.

“I’ve unconsciously been doing a surveyof all the music I’ve ever heard,” Meyer toldme before the concert. “Most of the musicI’ve become interested in is hybrid in its ori-gins. It’s real hard to find a pure strain of any-thing. Classical music, of course, is unbelievablyhybrid. Jazz is an obvious amalgam. Bluegrasscomes from 18th-century Scottish and Irishfolk music that made contact with the blues.By exploring music, you’re exploring every-thing.”

It’s never been easy to know what to expectfrom Edgar Meyer. In the late ’80s, he releaseda series of recordings on MCA that rangedfrom jazz and contemporary classical to ambi-ent music and the blues. These albums, whichpushed the vogue for eclecticism to the pointof incoherence, were an early instance of whatthe classical violinist Joshua Bell calls “Edgar-

music.” In 1998, with the Emerson StringQuartet, Meyer recorded his luminous “Quin-tet.” It’s a piece that sounds as if the mysticminimalists Henryk Górecki and Arvo Pärthad suddenly gone down home. In the mid-’80s, Meyer founded a band, Strength in Num-bers, which specialized in a highly sophisticatedform of bluegrass,dubbed “newgrass.”Althoughthe group made only one recording, The Tel-luride Sessions, in 1989, bootleg tapes of itsperformances are highly prized in college-town record stores. Through Strength in Num-bers, Meyer became involved with some ofthe most inventive nonclassical instrumen-talists in the country. His 1997 recordingUncommon Ritual, a collaboration with thegreat improvisatory banjo player Béla Fleckand guitarist Mike Marshall, ranges from atranscription of a Bach fugue to bluegrass

and swing. On Short Trip Home, which Sonyreleased last year and which is perhaps hismost exhilarating album to date, Meyer andMarshall joined Joshua Bell and the legendarymandolin player Sam Bush in a brilliantlyfresh argument for bluegrass as a smart, unpre-dictable—and completely unpretentious—form of American classical music.

Bass players are generally the most sta-tionary of musicians, setting loose their fin-gers and arms while keeping their torsos andlegs still. Meyer’s relationship with his instru-ment, however, is intensely physical. At Lin-coln Center, he sometimes draped himself

over the frame of the bass in a languorousembrace. At other times, he stood apart, flick-ing at the strings with his bow, as though thebass were playing him. Sometimes the two ofthem, swaying in tandem, seemed entirelylost in the music together. Watching this mat-ing dance, I was reminded of something SusanRanney, the principal bass player of the LosAngeles Chamber Orchestra, said to me: “Idon’t consider that Edgar and I play the sameinstrument. He is a soul that has decided tolocate itself in a bass.”

In the classical music world, bassists havelong struggled for respect. David Finckel, thecellist of the Emerson String Quartet, regardsMeyer as “unquestionably up there with thegreat players on any instrument.” Nonethe-less, he finds it odd that a musician of Meyer’scaliber would devote himself to so limited an

instrument.“It’s easy to understand why onewould take up the violin or cello or flute,”Finckel says.“But why one would freely chooseto take up the double bass is beyond me.”

Gary Karr, who is the best-known classical-bass soloist of the generation beforeMeyer’s, says that one reason for the instru-ment’s low esteem among classical musiciansis that the opportunities for self-display comedown mostly to several concertos by theless than household name of Giovanni Bottesi-ni, a 19th-century bass virtuoso and a com-poser of romantic showiness.Karr can cataloguethe indignities he has endured on behalf of

W I N T E R / S P R I N G 2 0 0 1 13

“The bass doesn’t appeal to me. I am the bass.” Edgar Meyer

M E Y E R R E C E I V E S T O P P R I Z E

Edgar Meyer became the first bassist to receive the top award for

American classical instrumentalists last October when he was named

winner of the Avery Fisher Prize. The award recognizes outstanding

achievement and excellence in music and includes a $50,000 prize.

Begun in 1974 and named for the late philanthropist, the Avery

Fisher Prize is not awarded every year. In 26 years it has gone to only

16 individuals. Previous winners include pianist André Watts, cellist

Yo-Yo Ma, and violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg. Clarinetist David

Shifrin also won the prize in 2000.

Mark Wait, dean of the Blair School of Music, says Meyer winning

the Fisher Prize “is a just recognition of his amazing talent and unique

place in the music world today.”

12 V A N D E R B I L T M A G A Z I N E

One evening a few months ago,three of the world’s top stringplayers gathered at Avery Fish-er Hall to offer a cheerful

demonstration of the hybrid state of Amer-ican classical music. Yo-Yo Ma, the most cel-ebrated cellist of his generation, was seatedstage left.Across from him stood Mark O’Con-nor, a lanky, long-haired violinist who wonfiddling contests in Texas as a child and whohas six times been named Musician of theYear by the Country Music Association. Stand-ing between them was the 40-year-old bassplayer Edgar Meyer, who may be the mostremarkable virtuoso in the relatively unchron-icled history of his instrument.

Meyer, adjunct associate professor of bassat Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music, is a musi-cal chameleon who is equally at home sup-plying the bass line for Schubert’s “Trout”Quintet, working as a studio musician forEmmylou Harris and Garth Brooks, and play-ing the demanding solo part in his own con-certo for double bass and orchestra. (Alongwith Ma and the Boston Symphony Orches-tra, he helped open last summer’s Tangle-wood Music Festival with a performance ofhis Double Concerto for Cello and Bass.)

On this occasion, he was rejoining a triowhose 1996 album of rough-hewn riffs andkeening folk tunes, Appalachia Waltz, was a

best-seller on the classical/crossover charts,and whose follow-up album, AppalachianJourney, had just been released. The programbegan with a piece entitled “lB,” which Meyercomposed as a violin exercise for his eight-year-old son, George. Like much of his music,it had an immediacy that was at once child-like and sophisticated—a whirling tuneful-ness wrapped in trancelike rhythms thatevoked the chaotic choreography of kids ina playground. For the most part, Meyer stayedin the background, content to supply a thump-ing beat while Ma and O’Connor matchedeach other with virtuosic, muscular bowing.But when the music called for Meyer to seize

FIRSTBass

Reprinted with permission from New Yorker magazine,July 24, 2000 issue. Copyright © 2000 by Mark Levine.

JIM MCGUIRE

b y M a r k L e v i n e

UNDER EDGAR MEYER’S TENDERMINISTRATIONS, THE “BULLFROG OFTHE ORCHESTRA” TAKES WINGS

his bass, and placed respectably.“I think peo-ple’s response was along the lines of ‘Wow, thedog can talk,’” he says.

Meyer seems entirely comfortable mov-ing between his home in country music’s cap-ital and his forays into the classical world,between his itinerant life as a collaborativeplayer and the solitude it takes to compose.“It would feel unnatural for me to separateperforming from writing music,” he told me.“For me, it’s all continuous. I can’t think ofany living composers who are at the level ofaccomplishment as performers that we imag-ine Beethoven and Mozart and Bach were. Buta lot of the leading jazz players write their ownmusic and play it. It’s the same with a lot ofbluegrass musicians. Whatever one thinksof Rachmaninoff ’s achievement as a com-poser, I find the degree of continuity betweenhis playing and writing to be quite natural.”

We were in his upstairs studio in Nashville,a small room with sloping ceilings, bare walls,and a floor strewn with sheet music, faxes, andCDs.“I was always writing music,”Meyer says.“I wrote whatever I felt like. As a kid, I wrotea lot of little pop songs, then I started writingpieces to play with my friends. If they wereclassical players, it would be written-out stuff,and if they were improvising players it wouldbe a melody, and then we’d improvise over it.”Before long, he began composing for his owninstrument.“If I wanted to have a cool pieceto play with my friends, I knew I’d have towrite it. It’s always been that way for me—justwriting stuff for people I know.”

The boundaries between performance andcomposition have started to relax in recentyears—both Philip Glass and Steve Reich, forexample, perform their own music with theirown ensembles—but the feeling that virtu-oso performers are not to be taken seriouslyas composers persists. Meyer may be partic-ularly vulnerable in this regard, given his lackof academic credentials as a composer; in anycase, he is typically understated about his com-posing ambitions.“I took a couple of lessonsin composition once, and I wasn’t liking it toomuch,” he says. “A lot of my instruction wasaccidental—reading my dad’s college text-books when I was a kid, picking up thingsfrom my friends. But that’s about it. When Ihear something I like, I try to figure it out andadd it to what I do. My classical influences are

real middle-of-the-road: Bach, Mozart,Beethoven. My music is probably a little con-servative in that it’s so rooted in the old guys.I think 20th-century guys have probably fig-ured out a lot of neat stuff that I don’t reallyknow about. And I certainly plan on catchingmore of that as I get older. But that wasn’twhat brought me into music. As a composer,I probably try to combine the things that excit-ed me about music when I was a kid.”

A Musical EgalitarianMeyer’s popular successes have placed him indanger of being tagged with the most poiso-nous epithet among serious music lovers:“crossover.”As far as Meyer is concerned, how-ever, he’s not crossing over into anything; he’sjust doing what he wants to do. And he hasmade believers of those in the top rank of clas-sical performers who have played his music.Carter Brey, the principal cellist of the NewYork Philharmonic who joined Meyer for aperformance of the Double Concerto for Celloand Bass in Los Angeles last year, says thatMeyer’s music, with its rhythmic complica-tions and its demands for spare, unmanneredsound,“jolted me out of a complacent way ofthinking about how to play a string instru-ment. You have to put your classical trainingin a drawer for a while to play Edgar’s music.He doesn’t want the fatty, supercharged soundthat those of us trained in the tradition of theRussian School produce.”

Joshua Bell says,“Edgar’s music only seemssimple from the outside. It’s actually amaz-ingly intricate. That’s a pretty tough trick.”David Finckel, of the Emerson Quartet, putsMeyer in the company of other Americancomposers who were once disparaged for beingtoo accessible.“We need to remember that inthe ’60s and ’70s there was a violent reac-tion against Copland, Bernstein, Barber,” hesays.“Edgar is writing what he loves and believesin, and anybody who does that runs the riskof condescension.”Yo-Yo Ma says,“If peoplethink his music is simplistic, they should tryto play it. And if they read Edgar himself asunsophisticated they need to read again.”

Carter Brey recalls going on an outing withMeyer when they were both performing inthe Seattle area.“A group of us were walkingin the woods on Mt. Rainier, and at one pointEdgar separated himself from us,” Brey says.

“I came on him while he was standing by him-self next to a tree, watching a stream. Hewas swaying and gyrating, as if he were lostin some inner music.”

Meyer is a musical dreamer whose workbelongs to that essentially optimistic strain inAmerican music which connects Ives to Fourthof July bands, Copland to cowboy songs, Bern-stein to Broadway, Philip Glass to MTV. “I’dsay that a big piece of what I’m doing is try-ing to get in touch with the underlying uni-versal principles of music,” he told me oneday, without a hint of grandiosity.“I do thinkthat there are some root principles that showup wherever there’s exciting music—broad,basic things, like melody and rhythm. Thesethings have the force of nature behind them.Trying to get around melody and rhythm islike fighting gravity.”

When I asked David Shifrin, the artisticdirector of the Chamber Music Society of Lin-coln Center, about Meyer’s all-embracingapproach, he said, “Edgar isn’t blending twoor more worlds—he’s living in a single verylarge world.”As Meyer himself put it,“Musicis just the best place to be.”

Mark Levine teaches poetry at the University ofIowa Writer’s Workshop. His most recent book ofpoems, Enola Gay, was published in April 2000.

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Edgar Meyer, his wife, Connie Heard, and theirson, George, enjoy a trip to Canada last Augustin what was “probably our first family vacationwhere neither of us was working,” Heard says.Meyer, who has been called “quite simply, the bestbassist alive,” is adjunct associate professor ofbass at the Blair School of Music. Heard, an asso-ciate professor of violin at Blair and member of thehighly acclaimed Blair String Quartet, is also thedaughter of Alexander Heard, Vanderbilt Chan-cellor, Emeritus. Continuing in the gifted family tra-dition, George, eight, is a budding violinist.

14 V A N D E R B I L T M A G A Z I N E

the instrument: the conductors who haveordered him to lower his volume to the pointof inaudibility (“The bass,” he says gloomily,“is the bullfrog of the orchestra.”); the timeshe has stood in baggage-claim areas andwatched his 17th-century Amati get jammedcoming down the chute.Then why devoteyour life to it? Karrsays,“From Day One,I felt that the bass waspart of my body. Itssound was my sound.If chocolate could sing,it would sound like thedouble bass.”

Meyer says simply,“The bass doesn’t appealto me. I am the bass.”

The Young Master“My parents tell me that I’ve wanted to playthe bass ever since I was two,” Meyer said tome one recent afternoon. We were sitting onunpainted rocking chairs on the screened-in porch of his house in Nashville, where helives with his wife, violinist Connie Heard,associate professor of violin at the Blair Schooland member of the Blair String Quartet, andtheir son, George. Meyer, who was wearingwhite sneakers,rumpled khakis,and an untuckedshirt, looked boyishly unkempt. A bulky manwith the physique of an ex-linebacker, he spokeshyly, as if it might seem immodest to talk toomuch about himself.

“My parents took pictures of me holdinga broom and a vine, pretending I’m playing,”he said.“It’s not real mysterious. The bass wasmy father’s instrument, and I loved him andlooked up to him. From before I can remem-ber, my identity was as a bass player.”

Meyer’s father, who was also named Edgarand who died in 1988, grew up on a farm out-side Chattanooga. Self-taught on the instru-ment, he toured the South with jazz bandsbefore settling in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, wherehe directed the string program in the local pub-

lic schools. He started his son on the bass atthe age of five. When Meyer turned 10, hisfather presented him with the gift of a $25 bassof nebulous Czech origins, a scarred specimenthat, with its top removed, had been used as a

planter.The elder Meyer hada large collection of jazzrecordings, featuring such

bass stars as Ray Brown, Paul Chambers, andRon Carter, but every Sunday, all day long, heplayed classical music.“That,”Meyer says,“wasmy childhood religious experience.”

Meyer made extraordinary progress onthe instrument with seemingly little effort. Asa child, he rarely practiced more than 45 min-utes a day. (This continues to be the case.) Atthe same time, since the category of childprodigy does not extend to bassists, he did notenvision a musical career.

“I grew up really laid back on the instru-ment, thinking it was just a blast,” he says.

“I spent a lot of time jamming with a coupleof buddies—a trombonist and a bassoon-ist—just doing free-improv stuff. I playedpiano in high school jazz bands, and I playedbass for the church choir, and my dad and Idid a lot of weddings and bar mitzvahs.” Foryears, Meyer thought of becoming a math-ematician, and today his favorite airplanereading is books about math. But after a yearat Georgia Tech he changed his mind andenrolled in Indiana University’s School ofMusic. From the outset, he knew that the stan-dard career path for a classically trainedbassist—vying for orchestral positions andtaking one’s dutiful place on the periphery ofthe musical action—didn’t suit him. “Therewas no chance of that,” he says. “I was inter-ested in music—which includes much morethan the orchestral repertoire.”

If Meyer had any model at all, it was theboundary-leaping trumpeter Wynton Marsalis.But Meyer’s teacher at Indiana, Stuart Sankey,discouraged eclecticism. Sankey, who was alsoGary Karr’s teacher, told me, “I really didn’tthink it was a good idea for Edgar to straddleclassical and jazz. The demands are just toodifferent, and I tried to convince Edgar thathe’d have to make a choice. He kept refusing.”Meyer supplemented his classical training withgigs as an accompanist for a black gospel choir,a Latin band, and a country singer; he alsoplayed improvisational jazz piano at bars.Once, as a lark, he entered a fiddle contest on

“I don’t consider that Edgar and I play the same instrument. He is a soul that has decided to locate itself in a bass.”

Susan Ranney, principal bass player, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra

2000 Barber & Meyer Violin Concertos performed by Hilary Hahn

Bach: Unaccompanied Cello Suites performed by Edgar Meyer

Appalachian Journey performed by Edgar Meyer, Yo-Yo Ma,and Mark O’Connor

1999 Short Trip Home performed by Edgar Meyer, Joshua Bell, Sam Bush, and Mike Marshall

1998 Meyer, Quintet; Rorem, String Quartet No. 4 performed by the Emerson String Quartet with Edgar Meyer

1997 Uncommon Ritual performed by Edgar Meyer, Béla Fleck,and Mike Marshall

1996 Appalachia Waltz performed by Edgar Meyer, Yo-Yo Ma, and Mark O’Connor

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Appalachian Journey, anEdgar Meyer collaboration,received a Grammy award inFebruary. Performing withMeyer on the CD are cellistYo-Yo Ma and fiddler MarkO’Connor. Last year ShortTrip Home received a Gram-my nomination. It featuresMeyer, violinist Joshua Bell,mandolin player Sam Bush,and guitarist Mike Marshall.

W I N T E R / S P R I N G 2 0 0 1 17

ANDERBILT HAS ALWAYS LOVED ITS TREES.Bishop Holland McTyeire planted them, nurtured them, and

loved them so well that whenever one had to be felled in thename of progress, he felt compelled to turn his back. James Kirk-land, Vanderbilt’s second chancellor, found their loss so painful

that he was said by his biographer to leave town on occasion to avoidwitnessing their destruction. Chancellor Harvie Branscomb felt suf-ficient remorse about sac-rificing two choice baldcypresses to make way forKissam Quadrangle that,upon his retirement, he paidfor replacements out of hisown pocket.

Trees, some of themolder than the United States,have provided shelter againstsoggy May Commence-ments. They have yieldedbranches and berries andcones for a hundred hang-ings of the greens. They haveprovided samples for gen-erations of Nashville school-children’s leaf identificationprojects. They have enduredthe insults of countless poster nails, Hitchcock-esque invasions ofstarlings—and a few errant student drivers.

If you have visited campus recently, witnessed the ubiquitous sil-houette of construction cranes against the winter sky, and wonderedhow long the trees could hold their own against the relentless marchof progress, rest assured. Vanderbilt’s trees, numbering perhaps 6,000by one educated guess, are as cherished as ever, though no one hasleft town lately at the prospect of a sycamore’s demise. In an averageyear Vanderbilt plants several hundred trees to replace those thathave fallen victim to age, disease, or the stress of living amidst thou-sands of humans.

“Vanderbilt has one of the most beautiful and well-maintained cam-puses in the country,”observes William Shain, director of admissions.“The trees are a major part of that. Our surveys of admitted studentsshow that the campus setting is a powerful draw in attracting students.”

An 1879 catalog published six years after Vanderbilt’s foundingshows that the campus already featured at least 300 species of trees andshrubs. Bishop McTyeire, the University’s visionary first president andtireless promoter, transformed what was largely treeless land, plantingdozens of species himself, including magnolias, elms, tulip poplars, andthe zelkovas that still grow near the Divinity School. Many were saplingstaken from the hills of Hillsboro Pike and raised in an arboretum oncampus.

Chancellor Kirkland’s wife, Elizabeth, organized faculty wives andother women to form the Vanderbilt Garden Club, which over the

years has been responsible for the planting of many Vanderbilt trees,including the magnolia screens that line West End and 21st avenues.

In 1988, the Vanderbilt campus was granted official arboretumstatus by the American Association of Botanical Gardens and Arbore-ta. Vanderbilt’s collection of trees focuses on native species main-tained to look much as they would in nature, with a minimum ofpruning or shearing. Many of them are identified with tags, thanks

to a 1968 gift made by Mrs.James Mapheus Smith, aformer Vanderbilt librari-an, in honor of her husband,who earned a Vanderbiltdoctorate in 1931.

“Quite a number of othercolleges and universitieshave arboreta,” notes PamSevy, University landscapearchitect.“But they are morecommonly found amonguniversities with a horti-culture or landscapedepartment. What alsomakes Vanderbilt’s arbore-tum stand out is that it’s nota separate entity. The entirecampus is an arboretum.”

That’s good for the people who study and work at Vanderbilt, butnot always ideal for the trees. “We can’t just set spindly baby treesout there in the middle of a big lawn where people might be tempt-ed to take shortcuts,” Sevy says. “We have to buy good-sized, sturdyspecimens to give trees a fighting chance.”

Sevy, who is primarily responsible for choosing the new trees thatVanderbilt plants each fall and winter, concentrates on species thatdo well in the Nashville region and are naturally disease-resistant. Mostare bought from nurseries around McMinnville, Tennessee. Vander-bilt’s trees generally are tough enough to withstand the drought con-ditions of the past two years. But it’s possible to kill them with kindness.

“We want trees, but people also enjoy green lawns,” says Sevy.“Our mature trees grew up not having sup-plemental water until about 10 years agowhen we began irrigating our large openlawn spaces. Some of the trees, particu-larly sugar maples, haven’t handled it realwell. In a forest setting, instead of lawn

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DESPITE DROUGHT, STARLINGS, BULLDOZERS, AND HUMANS,VANDERBILT’S TREES ENDURE

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Vanderbilt’s original 75-acre campus was largely treeless, so saplings were planted along-side new building construction, evident in this early photo of Benson Science Hall, erectedin 1880. Many of the young trees were taken from the hills surrounding Hillsboro Pike.

Trees, lawns, and bedding plants make for a beautiful campus, but they sometimes require different conditions to thrive. Irrigation kills more trees oncampus than does drought.

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The University’s Office of Publications and Designpublished The Trees of Vanderbilt in 1994. Sevendifferent walks on campus are described in thissmall volume, along with information about manynative American species found in Vanderbilt’sarboretum. Copies are available at the Vander-bilt Bookstore for $10.95 each; call 615/343-4369.

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the grounds each day looking for weak or dead wood and removingit before it creates a hazard for humans.

It’s not a job for sissies. Besides being willing to climb tall treeswith only a rope and saddle, you have to expect the unexpected.“Wecouldn’t cut a holly recently because there was a nest of yellow jack-ets that was way too active,” Pent says.

Squirrels whose nests are threatened can turn aggressive. Juniperbranches scratch the skin. And there’s the weather. “The cold does-n’t bother me. You can put on enough clothes,” Langley says.“But inthe heat of summer it’s pretty tough up there.”

Still, there are compensations for working on Vanderbilt’s trees.“Climbing demands a bit of engineering,” says Pent. “It takes phys-ical and mental skills. For me, it’s quite a rush.”

“Students stop and ask us what we’re doing,” Langley adds.“Theirmost frequent question is,‘You’re not cutting down that tree, are you?’”

Planting for Posterity

As Vanderbilt has undergone a building growth spurt,the need for space and the pressure on trees and otherplantings grows. But University officials are keenlyaware that Vanderbilt’s trees are part of its identity.

“In a number of cases, construction decisions have been drivenby the desire to maintain existing trees and green space,” notes Sevy.And even if most of those involved agree that a particular tree shouldgo, it still has a chance of survival.

“Everybody here that deals with trees has what we call our favorite‘ugly’ tree—the one tree on campus that everybody else wants to cutdown but that we’ve adopted,” Petty says. Petty’s own ugly tree is ahorse chestnut growing close to his office on the Peabody campus.

“My favorite ugly tree is the mulberry in Fleming Yard,” Pent says.“It has only four or five branches left, but the trunk is white and flakyand beautiful to me. There’s not much left to it, but what there is I’veclimbed up into and tried to make pretty.”

Seven trees on the Vanderbilt campus have achieved official recog-

nition by the Tennessee state forester as Tennessee State ChampionTrees—the largest known of their specimen. They include a sweet-bay magnolia, southern hackberry, Japanese zelkova, swamp whiteoak, Chinese scholartree, Ohio buckeye, and hedge maple, or Eng-lish field maple.

As society has become increasingly mobile, and homeowners areless likely to have the time or space to plant the slow-growing mag-nificent kings of the tree hierarchy like white oaks and beeches, Van-derbilt’s venerable trees become more valuable than ever.

Now, in the quiet cool months of a Tennessee winter, with lawnsdormant and leaves raked, Vanderbilt’s gardeners are still pruning,planning, and planting more trees for posterity. With any luck, oneday some of them will be champions, too.

GayNelle Doll is an assistant editor of VANDERBILT MAGAZINE.

Most impressive comeback by a species:Dawn redwoods, now growing near theDivinity School, were known only by fossilrecords until the 1940s, when livingspecimens were found in China.

Biggest by-product:Leaves. Millions of ’em.Vanderbilt’s compostheap, located at 31st andBlakemore avenues, isbigger than a football fieldand grows to 10 feet highduring leaf-raking season.

Most ardent non-human fans:A toss-up between the squirrels and thestarlings that developed an unhealthyobsession for Vanderbilt’s magnolias inthe mid-’90s. Fortunately, says MarkPetty, who oversees grounds maintenance,“Starlings don’t have long life spans. Weran them off with loud noises that madetheir lives uncomfortable and after doingthat for a generation or so, their habitschanged and they went elsewhere.”

W I N T E R / S P R I N G 2 0 0 1 19

The fan-shaped leaves of the ginkgo tree have been found in fossils that dateback 280 million years. Kernels of their plumlike fruits are considered adelicacy by the Chinese, but the fruit’s outside flesh is famous for its obnox-ious odor. Recent cloning technology has made it easier to obtain odor-freemale ginkgoes. The ginkgoes pictured here grow outside the Hobbs Labo-ratory on the Peabody campus.

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you’d find fallen leaves and rotted wood, which sets up a wonder-ful kind of biological soup for fungi that draw on the nutrients atthe tree roots. That’s what really makes trees happy.”

Revenge of the Trees

Trees also suffer from soil compacted by lawn mowers,other heavy equipment—and rarefied scholarly hot air.An elm that flourished outside the Peabody Admin-istration Building was known as the tree of knowledge.

Educational administrators gathered under its summertime canopyfor discussions. When it died, Peabody president Bruce Payne wrotein 1936 that it had been talked to death.

Most of the time trees suffer in silence to the human insults inflict-ed on them. Occasionally they strike back.

“Two years ago a coed was walking under a tree when a hedgeapple fell and struck her on the head,” remembers Mark Petty, whoas director of general services oversees day-to-day maintenance ofVanderbilt’s grounds. “We don’t plant persimmon trees anymore,but we’ve got one in front of Branscomb that drops fruit on the side-walk. It’s slippery and we spend a lot of time washing it off.

“Anything with nuts is a prob-lem,” adds Sevy. “And the fruitfrom female ginkgo trees createsa real odor problem. Until recent-ly you couldn’t tell the males fromthe females before they were 10or 12 years old and started bear-ing fruit. Nowadays you can buymale clones, but we still have plen-ty of stinky females around.”

Last year during Reunion amaple crashed to the groundbetween Calhoun and GarlandHall after a rainstorm. Following

the ice storm that paralyzed Nashville in 1994, Vanderbilt’s groundscrews and contracted tree surgeons spent three months cleaning upbroken branches and damaged trees.

On a day-to-day basis, two of Vanderbilt’s landscape gardeners,Peter Pent and Lee Langley, are primarily responsible for the Uni-versity’s tree and shrub maintenance. Part of their job is patrolling

NOTABLE NOTORIOUS

Nominee for theMethuselah award:

The massive bur oaknear Garland Hall,

growing at the timeof the American

Revolution and alsoknown as the

bicentennial oak.

Most reviled species on campus:The inaptly named treeof heaven (ailanthusaltissima). Importedfrom the Orient becauseit grows fast and survivesstreet conditions, itbecomes huge. It’s alsoweak-wooded, unstable,and messy. “It should berenamed the weed ofhell,” commentsVanderbilt landscapegardener Peter Pent.

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Tallest tree on campus:A willow oak estimated to be80 to 90 feet tall. Vanderbiltinherited it by acquiring theBill Wilkerson Hearing andSpeech Center at the corner of 19th and Edgehill avenues.

Above: Among the rarest trees on campus are these Japanese zelkovasgrowing between the Divinity School and the Owen Graduate School of Man-agement. Bishop Holland McTyeire planted Vanderbilt’s zelkovas as wellas many other trees on campus. Left: Campus planners generally avoid planting trees with messy fruits, butthese crabapples growing near the Law School compensate for a bit of untidi-ness with spectacular spring flowers and, later in the season, fruits that pro-vide brilliant color and feasts for resident birds.

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Dr. Clifford Garrard Jr., BA’58, MD’62, aformer classmate and now a retired cardiol-ogist, says Gotto’s work has greatly enhancedunderstanding of heart disease. “His workhas defined basic problems of arteriosclero-sis, coronary disease, and heart attacks,” Gar-rard says. “His trial studies have shown ushow to treat cholesterol metabolism withmedication that blocks the pathways whichdeposit arterial plaque.”

Garrard, who nominated Gotto for theVanderbilt award, remembers being seatednext to Gotto many years ago in organicchemistry class. “Tony went about his workquickly and methodically, and always fin-ished when I was still getting started,” Gar-rard says. “Our exams were graded on thecurve, and Tony was always up there at thetop by himself. He was an extremely smartfellow—but also a very nice fellow. Through-out our careers I would see him from timeto time at professional meetings, and he wasalways the same pleasant gentleman as hewas back in school.”

Gotto grew up in tiny Una, Tennessee, theonly son of a Methodist Publishing Houseemployee and a schoolteacher. As a young-ster he loved hearing tales of his great-

grandfather and namesake, a feisty Italianyouth who set sail from Genoa to America,joined the notorious 19th-century adven-turer General William Walker on an ill-fatedexpedition to Latin America, and, accordingto family lore, witnessed Walker’s executionbefore a firing squad.

Besides his great-grandfather, Gotto’s boy-hood heroes included Franklin Rooseveltand Adlai Stevenson. Gotto still remembershearing Stevenson speak in Nashville.“I wascertainly impressed,” he says. “I’d had a lotof success on my high school debate team,and I thought I’d like to try the law and maybepublic office.”

The roadblock was Gotto’s father. No loverof lawyers, he refused to pay for his son’s legaleducation.

Medicine may have been Gotto’s secondchoice, but he found a focus early. His expe-rience as a Rhodes Scholar fired his passionfor scientific investigation and caught theattention of biochemist and Nobel prizewinner Sir Hans Krebs and his associate,Sir Hans Kornberg. When results of Gotto’sfirst summer’s research were published, theyoung American was invited to the Con-gress of Biochemistry in Vienna. ThereKrebs and Kornberg persuaded him topostpone medicine, continue his research,and work toward a doctorate.

Dale Johnson, now a professor ofchurch history at Vanderbilt, was a RhodesScholar during the same time as Gotto.

“There was a kind of focus and clarity aboutTony,” Johnson remembers. “He was cen-tered—personally, academically, and reli-giously. He used to take a bus some distance

to attend church on Sunday, yet he nevercalled attention to his religion.”

At the end of his second year abroad, Gottointerrupted his studies long enough to marryAnita Stafford. The pair had met as teenagersat 4-H camp. Gotto was immediately smit-ten. Anita was unimpressed. In his senioryear, when Gotto was elected student bodypresident, Anita took a closer look.“I figuredhe must have something I’d missed,” sheremembers.

When Gotto sailed for Oxford, he leftAnita Stafford working toward a Peabodyteaching degree. When she was graduated in1959, he came to fetch her for an extendedhoneymoon in Europe. After they returnedto Nashville, Anita taught school until thebirth of their first daughter. Tony earned hismedical degree in 1965. He served a resi-dency at Massachusetts General Hospital inBoston. From there, they went to Bethes-da, Maryland, where he fulfilled a militaryobligation at the National Institutes of Health.

With three little girls—Jennifer, born in1964, Gillian in 1968, and Teresa in 1970—the Gottos lived an idyllic life. But it wouldnot last. At ages five and eight, the two oldergirls were diagnosed with juvenile diabetes.

The Gottos were devastated. The diseasehad claimed Anita Gotto’s uncle prematurelyin his mid-30s. Though medical connectionsgave them access to the best doctors and lat-est treatments, the family lived under a cloud.

The uninspired meals prescribed for hisdaughters were a significant factor in Gotto’smission to promote healthy foods that tastegood. His colleagues seemed indifferent, yetGotto persisted.

Meanwhile, his reputation for meticulousresearch pulled in dozens of job offers. Hechose the fledgling Baylor College of Medi-cine in Houston for one reason: MichaelDeBakey. In the late ’60s, DeBakey had becomefamous for designing and successfully implant-ing a booster pump to supplement failinghearts and keep cardiac patients alive longenough for treatment.

Gotto and DeBakey became fast friendsand collaborators. They coauthored The Liv-ing Heart in 1977, supplemented by a laterupdate, The New Living Heart. Their simpleprose translated complex medical infor-mation into laymen’s language, and both

continued on page 43

1957 was a banner year for VanderbiltRhodes Scholars. From left, Olaf Grobel,BA’56, Tony Gotto, BA’57, MD’65, andDonald Smith, BA’57, all headed to Oxford.

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In a field with no shortage of great mindsand great egos, Antonio Gotto is a para-dox. Colleagues, former classmates, andmentors universally praise not only thebrilliance of his research and the profound

effect his work has had on the field of heartdisease, but the measure of the man himself.Modest, unassuming, steady, and centeredare all words frequently used when you askanyone who knows Tony Gotto what he isreally like.

Gotto, BA’57, MD’65, is considered oneof the world’s foremost authorities in unrav-eling the complexities of atherosclerosis, theprimary cause of cardiovascular disease. Hiswork has greatly enhanced understandingof the disorder. He is author of more than

350 scholarly articles and several best-selling books, and past president of the Amer-ican Heart Association and the InternationalAtherosclerosis Society. Since 1997 he hasserved as the Stephen and Suzanne WeissDean of the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Med-ical College of Cornell University where healso is a professor of medicine and provostfor medical affairs.

Last October, Gotto returned to Vander-bilt to accept the Vanderbilt Alumni Associ-ation Distinguished Alumnus Award, thelatest in a long list of honors he has received.“This one I will cherish,” he said with char-acteristic modesty, “because I cherish myyears at Vanderbilt and the splendid facultywho gave me my start and pulled me along.”

Gotto used the occasion less to talk abouthis work than about those faculty: Dr. OscarTouster, former chairman of molecular biol-ogy, who encouraged him to seek a career inacademic medicine; Dean Madison Sarratt,who prompted him to try for a Rhodes Schol-arship; and Dr. Arthur Ingersoll, professorof organic chemistry, who urged him to pur-sue research.

“Tony was an absolutely superior studentin all ways,” Touster says unequivocally.“Hecould do anything that was expected of him.As a senior undergraduate he audited mygraduate course in bio-organic chemistryand made the highest grade in the class.He was always soft-spoken, yet he exudedcapability.”

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a three-story building and we were walkingon top of the roof,” the Ingram Professor ofAnthropology remembers.

The structure that Vanderbilt archaeolo-gists and teams from the United States andGuatemala have since been working to unearthis not only one of the largest and most elab-orate residences of ancient Maya kings dis-covered but also one of the best preserved.Initial survey and mapping have revealed thatthe site is 20 times larger than previously esti-mated, covering at least five square kilometers.

“With more than 170 rooms built around11 courtyards in three stories, this eighth-century royal palace is about the same sizeas the central acropolis in Tikal (Guatemala),”says Demarest, who heads the expeditionwith Tomás Barrientos from the Universi-

dad del Valle in Guatemala.“But what is mostincredible about this site is that most of thepalace is buried virtually intact. No one hasfound anything like this since the turn of thecentury.”

The vegetation-covered royal palace sitsin the center of the ruins of an ancient citynamed Cancuén, which means “place of ser-pents.” It is located in a remote area of thePetén rainforest of Guatemala that has beenlargely overlooked by archaeologists. Theexpedition that has begun to map and exca-vate the site is sponsored by Guatemala’sInstitute of Anthropology and History, theNational Geographic Society, and Vander-bilt University.

The fact that the significance of the sitewent unrecognized for so long is under-

standable, says Demarest.“To the untrainedeye, the palace looks just like a great, jungle-covered hill. Even to archaeologists much ofthe palace appeared to be high, solid plat-forms.”

An area of about two square kilometersaround the palace is paved with stone. Overtime, jungle trees pushed through the stones

Above: Ingram Professor of Anthropology ArthurDemarest (left) and Vanderbilt graduate studentGeorge Higginbotham (right) peer into a windowon a lost world, an excavation of a room in a royalpalace built by the Maya people. Vanderbilt andGuatemalan archaeologists are excavating aneighth century, three-story 170-room royal palaceat Cancuén, Guatemala, a palace unusual in itsdesign and solid limestone masonry. AlejandroSeijas (center) is an undergraduate student at theUniversidad del Valle in Guatemala.

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IN THE “PLACE OF SERPENTS,” VANDERBILT ARCHAEOLOGISTS UNEARTH A SPRAWLING ANCIENT CITY

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For more than a thousand years, thegreat jungle-covered hill slept. Farm-ers found the dense vegetation and

stony site unsuitable for growing crops.Archae-ologists visited the remote corner of Guatemalain 1905 and determined that the site proba-bly had been only a minor center of ancientMaya civilization.

Sixty years went by. Harvard graduate stu-dents visited again briefly—long enoughto identify an ancient palace that did notseem to be particularly remarkable. The site

lacked the tall temples that signal major ruinsin other nearby areas.

Nearly four more decades passed, markedby civil strife that left little time for inhabi-tants of the region to wonder about the hillbordering the Guatemalan highlands.

Then one day in 1999, Arthur Demarestwent walking on the hill’s highest level andquite literally fell into another world. Hefound himself up to his armpits in vegeta-tion—with a solid stone base.

“That’s when I realized the entire hill was

Lost Kingdom

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Above: The architectural drawing in the background is an artist’s conception of a section of the sprawl-ing palace built 1,300 years ago. Archaeologists are finding that the foliage-covered palace had morethan 170 rooms built around 11 courtyards on three stories and was made of fine limestone masonry.

Right: The Maya people of Cancuén left behind this burial vase, one of numerous artifacts found atCancuén, Guatemala, once a large and powerful kingdom that controlled trade in precious goods inmuch of the Maya world.

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ed in the past, so he tracked down some of itin private and public collections. The story hehas found is likely to cause major revisions inthe scholarly views of Maya civilization.

Cancuén was ruled by one of the oldestMaya dynasties, one that was already wellestablished by 300 A.D. So far, researchershave found no evidence that Cancuén con-ducted any major wars with its neighbors.Instead, Cancuén’s rulers appear to have beensingle-mindedly dedicated to commerce.Their location, at the beginning of the nav-igable stretch of the Pasion River, the majorwaterway used by the Maya, allowed themto control trade in precious commoditiesbetween the Guatemalan highlands and thejungle lowlands. Records show that they usedtheir wealth to form alliances throughout theMaya world. Researchers think that the palacehad such a large number of rooms to housevisiting royalty from their many allies.

The fact that Cancuén appears to haveprospered for hundreds of years without war-

fare and that commerce appeared to play afar more important role in everyday life thanreligion contradicts the widespread viewamong scholars that religion and warfarewere the sources of power for Maya kings,particularly toward the end of their domi-nance, after about 600 A.D.

“I have a book in press that I’ll have torevise,” Demarest says matter-of-factly. “Itjust goes to show that you can’t believe every-thing you read on one dynasty’s monuments.”

David F. Salisbury is assistant director of scienceand research communications at Vanderbilt.

W I N T E R / S P R I N G 2 0 0 1 25

While Vanderbilt archaeologists work touncover royal treasures at Cancuén, mod-ern Maya villagers in the area eke out asubsistence living. Life for the descendantsof the ancient Mayas could improve, how-ever, if Arthur Demarest’s plan works.

“Archaeologists can’t just keep exca-vating ancient Maya ruins while the mod-ern Maya settlements nearby are starving,”says Demarest, Ingram Professor of Anthro-pology. He views the site now being exca-vated in Guatemala as an opportunityto try a new approach to archaeologicalpreservation that not only will protect theancient site but provide economic sup-port for the modern Maya people.

Demarest is attempting to raise suf-ficient private funding to recreate the for-mer splendor of the huge, labyrinthinepalace and to make it the centerpiece of anew ecotourism center.

“We hope this project will create amodel for future archaeological researchin developing countries—and especially

for the Maya area—using the ancient trea-sure of the Maya civilization to benefittheir descendants,” Demarest says.

Cancuén is not only a lost city, but alsoa lost natural world. In addition to theruins, the site contains one of the last standsof tropical rainforest in the southern Peténregion of Guatemala, complete with endan-gered tropical species including howlermonkeys, woolly anteaters, and rare birds.So the plans include strict environmen-tal preservation measures.

An integral part of the planning is toestablish an educational program that willtrain members of the local village in thevarious skills needed to operate an eco-tourism center and to preserve and pro-tect the site.

Plans for continued archaeologicalstudy, rainforest conservation, and indige-nous community development are beingcarried out under the auspices of Van-derbilt’s Institute of Mesoamerican Archae-ology.

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and established an island of dense rainfor-est. The walls of the 270,000-square-footpalace are built of solid limestone masonryand did not collapse when enveloped by thejungle, unlike the more typical Maya struc-tures made from concrete and mud.

The palace was so well camouflaged thatDemarest and his colleagues did not recog-nize its true size for their first two weeks atthe site. Like previous visitors, they alsothought large parts of the palace were solidplatforms until Demarest fell into one of thecourtyards.

The archaeologists visited Cancuén in1999 to follow up a lead from a 10-year digin northern Guatemala. Excavations at DosPilas and several other sites had given thema wealth of information about a highly mil-itaristic city-state called Petexbatun.

Among the Petexbatun records, they founda description of a marriage alliance betweena Dos Pilas prince and a Cancuén princess.The small palace where the princess lived was

one of Dos Pilas site’s most exquis-ite structures. “It looks as if the princessbrought her own artisans, because thestonework on her palace is just like that at

Cancuén and far superior to anything in thePetexbatun region,” Demarest says.

At Cancuén, where archaeologists expect-ed to find a minor center, they were surprisedto find evidence of a much larger, richer, andmore powerful kingdom, one based on con-trol of the trade in precious commodities:jade, pyrite for making mirrors, and obsid-ian for razor and knife blades. Thousands ofpeople apparently lived at the center duringits peak.

The palace was surrounded by the homesand workshops of artisans, which archaeol-

ogists have explored. “Even theworkmen at Cancuén were

well-to-do. They hadteeth filled with jade

inlays and wereburied with fineceramic figurineswith beautifulheaddresses,”Demarest says.

While archae-ologists were map-

ping the site, Guate-malan epigrapher Fede-

rico Fahsen was reconstruct-ing the history of the site by deciphering itsmonuments. The city’s statuary had been loot-

24 V A N D E R B I L T M A G A Z I N E

Arthur Demarest instructs archaeology graduate students on a river expedition to Can-cuén.“Our discoveries are exactly the sort of stuff that captures the public imagina-tion: lost cities in the jungle, tombs filled with treasures, and hieroglyphic inscriptions,”he says.“To me, however, the most interesting aspect of our work is that we foundCancuén in the rain forest where high civilizations aren’t even supposed to exist.From an ecological standpoint, we’re trying to keep people out of the rain forestbecause we know that large human populations will destroy it. Well, the ancient Maya,who never read any of the USAID (United States Agency for International Develop-ment) literature about fragile ecosystems, built a high civilization in the rain forest withhundreds of cities.”

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At right are a piece of an altar and a stela, or mark-er, left by the Maya people. Arthur Demarest isstanding at the base.

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Archaeology, Arthur Demarest maintains, is not only about uncovering the past, but alsoabout enhancing our present and future. “Archaeologists can’t just keep excavating ancientruins while the modern Maya settlements nearby are starving,” says the Vanderbilt anthropol-ogist, shown here near the Cancuén site at a piñata party with the children of El Zapote.

Novel Restoration Effort Could Help Modern Mayas

DaliToday I arrived in Dali from Kun-ming and set out for a fishing vil-lage on an island in Lake Urhai. Iended up on the wrong boat at atourist-trap temple but managedto escape down a road that leddownhill where I saw a boat andfamily on shore, so I went to get acloser look.

Because I try to live on bothsides of the camera, I jumped inthe boat to talk to the two youngdaughters and take a few photos,but I also jumped in to see if I could take part in the fishing experience.When the mother started bringing in the net, I decided to give it a tryand see if I could help. The catch seemed rather disappointing to me:only one big fish (the other one got away) and a bucket of smaller ones.I learned from the family that the thousands of tiny white translu-cent fish in the seaweed were the most prized part of the catch. These“silver fish” are a popular delicacy in other parts of China and Japan.

GanguWhen I went to Daxiang Si to photograph the cliff-side Buddhist andDaoist shrines, I met two elderly men who were reluctant to have theirpictures taken. Their fear dated to the Cultural Revolution when theycould have been punished for having their photograph taken with aforeigner. One of the men lives on the actual cliff side inside a smallcave with a Daoist shrine. His bed is located right next to an altar forthe Daoist god of medicine, and his job is to tend to the giant Bud-

W I N T E R / S P R I N G 2 0 0 1 27

dha carved into the cliff. The other man was accompanied by hisfive-year-old grandson, a typical wide-eyed, runny-nosed little guy whocarried three empty water bottles on a string. Both men wore the tra-ditional Mao blue jackets and caps, and the grandfather wore lightlyshaded large eyeglasses.

My guide and I were invited for tea by the man who lives at theshrine, and as we sat and talked, I learned that the man with the glassesis a farmer and raises honeybees. He invited me to come and see hisbees and his blooming tree. Before we left the shrine, four men, three

of whom were policemen in GansuProvince, came and sat with us,too. They liked my camera and myphotographs and were very inter-ested in all of the places I was goingto see, but they were more curious

about the color of my hair (light brown). As we were leaving the cliff-side temple, the caretaker gave us all handfuls of crackers and candiesfrom dishes on the altar. He said it was “Buddha food.”

Then we went to visit the farmer’s “bee factory.” He gave us strawhats with netting around them for protection, and then he wanted meto take a picture of him with his bees next to the flowering tree. I wasslightly nervous as he pulled out a section of bees, but I just kept snap-ping.When I asked him if he had any jars of honey for sale, he was moreinterested in offering me sips of his homemade “prince Honey RiceWine,” supposedly made from the prince bee’s honey.

XiaheAfter traveling by train on the SilkRoute,we are now driving to Xiahe,and like most drives in China, youjust have to hang on and pray. Onmy first day in Xiahe, I was givena guided tour of the TibetanLabrang Monastery where thereare over 1,800 monks (the yellowhat sect) in residence. Pilgrimscome from all over to completeclockwise circuits around everyholy site in the huge monastery.Men, women, and children are

dressed in thick coats with long sleeves almost touching the groundand straw or felt hats. Everyone has a string of prayer beads that areconstantly in motion between their fingers. The Lamas wear deep pinkrobes and quietly make their way around town.

Within the monastery halls, yak butter lamps glow brightly and

Top: Li River valley near Yangshuo.Middle: A toddler in Baisha, a smalltown near Lijiang in the Yunnan Province.Below: Taken near Xiahe, a pilgrimwoman holds Tibetan prayer beads.

Hong KongUpon leaving the United States for Hong Kong, I had an extreme de-sire to curl into a fetal position. I was embarking on a lifelong dream,but an acute fear bewildered me. The world was suddenly a scary place,and I wanted so badly to leave the airport and go home; however, Ihave yet to curl up into a ball. I know I’ll be fine. Everything I am goingto see and do for the next four months will be new and different—and far, far away from home.

Walking down Hong Kong’s alleys—where the people are happierto see you than those in the streets—I passed a couple of elderly ladiesat the back door of a restaurant. Earlier I had received a tip from anexpatriate: when greeting people on the street, make eye contact, smile,and give them a subtle nod. After making eye contact with one of theladies, I smiled and nodded. Her eyes lit up, and she beamed as wepassed. I touched her hand and held it for a moment. She seemed sur-prised, but then she squeezed my hand. When I motioned for her tolet me take her photograph, she smiled and stood tall with her handsto her sides. She reminded me of my grandmother, hard at work,yet warm and friendly.

s the 1999 recipient of theMargaret Stonewall WooldridgeHamblet Award for outstandingachievement in studio art, photog-rapher Stacey Irvin, BA’98, em-barked on a four-month odyssey toexplore the cultures of China, Tibet,Nepal, and Pakistan through thelens of her camera. Presented an-nually at Vanderbilt, the Hamblet

Award includes $16,000 used bythe recipient to travel and pursueartistic interests. A native of Dallas,Irvin earned her baccalaureate inphilosophy while studying photog-raphy with Don Evans, associateprofessor of fine arts. She hopes tocombine her passion for travel withphotography and pursue graduatestudies in photojournalism. Antarc-tica tops her list of future destina-tions. To see more of Irvin’s images,go to www.staceyirvin.com.

26 V A N D E R B I L T M A G A Z I N E26 V A N D E R B I L T M A G A Z I N E

Top: A Uighur man in Hotan wears a traditional wool hat. Above: In the Pamir Mountains, photographer Stacey Irvin(second from right), BA’98, poses with a group of Tajik traders on the road to the Pakistan border.

A NomadPhoto ALUMNA CAPTURES THE FACES OF WESTERN CHINA

b y S t a c e y I r v i n

W I N T E R / S P R I N G 2 0 0 1 29

I pulled out my camera, andeveryone had to look through theviewfinder. Of course there waspushing, grabbing, and posingfor the camera. They also lovedgiving me high fives and saying“all right.” Sometimes I feel likethe pied piper, but with a cam-era, as children follow me until Itake their photo.

KathmanduHere I am in Kathmandu listen-ing to a Patty Griffin tape.My friendMarcella arrived from the Statesto join me, and I think I have be-come slightly more homesick. Atthe same time I feel a panic settingin with the reality that this trip iscoming to an end. I am already an-

ticipating the self-criticism I will inflict upon myself when I’m finallyhome sitting in front of a massive stack of contact sheets.

Travel is definitely a displacement. But what will I do with this partof my education? How can I take these travel experiences and trans-form them? I have witnessed people’s daily activities; I have tasted theirfood, tried to speak their languages, and listened to their music. Ihave read their faces, seen the sweat on their brows and the dirt on theirhands, and the love within their families. It’s so much easier to observewhen you are displaced.

We live in a world of constant misconceptions, assumptions, andinflated fears; however, people should realize how much we all have incommon. The love and strength I’ve witnessed across cultures, reli-gions, nationalities, and ages have proven invaluable to my under-standing of humanity. I’ve had over a hundred cups of tea with peoplewho spoke little or no English, yet we were “each other’s company,”de-spite the presence of vast differences.

HotanAnd I thought I’d been to markets. Today I spent a few hours wan-dering around the Hotan Sunday Bazaar. It reminded me of an an-cient dusty Home Depot/Super Wal-Mart outdoors and denselypacked with people and donkey carts—huge trees cut for lumber,fresh handmade wood furniture, doors carved and colorfully painted,endless rows of fabrics, mountains of freshly cooked noodles, tonsof hanging lamb carcasses, smoking shish kebabs, knife sharpeners

at work with sparks flying. Tables were stacked with baskets of freshbread, walnuts, and pomegranates, and there were cases full of watches,earrings, and other shiny objects.

But my favorite vendors were the paint salesmen. They sat withcontainers of fluorescent powdered pigments and would measureout scoops of powders and mix them together while carefully weigh-ing the amount. Many of the salesmen were covered in dusty redsand purples, their hands and faces almost permanently stained. Itook some photos of one vendor with a deep pink-colored faceand sparkling gray-blue eyes with a great ivory smile.

TashkurganOn the drive to Tashkurgan we stopped while I photographed an oldTajik man who was riding a mule with his granddaughter and lead-ing two camels with huge loads of hay packed on their backs. Itwas an incredible sight that really summoned the ideas I’ve had ofancient Silk Road traders.

I wandered across a field to a Tajik village where some little boyswere starting up a soccer game among the flocks of grazing sheep.When I made it down to the field, I sat down to watch the boys play.Slowly a couple of them came and sat near me until they musteredup enough nerve to get closer. Soon the whole group was surroundingme, babbling, smiling, and showing great interest in my camera bag.I showed them my photos and gave them all football and baseballstickers. They all must have been around seven to 10 years old withthe exception of one younger girl in khaki dungarees, a red sweatervest, tiny earrings, red painted nails, a penciled on uni-brow, andof course, extremely short hair. Her eyes were as big as her smile, andthey lit up her dirty round face.

Left: A Uighur woman sells vegeta-bles in Kashgar. Above: Tajik childrenplay soccer in a village called Tashkur-gan. The boy on the left has stickerson his hand, a gift from Irvin.

A Tajik man traveling high up in the Pamir Mountains leads two camels loadedwith hay.

28 V A N D E R B I L T M A G A Z I N E

embroidered cloth hangs from theceiling over the large square cush-ions used by the monks whilestudying or chanting. Light seepsthrough small windows near thecenter of the ceiling and sets thetapestries aglow. From floor toceiling, rows of small niches housebrightly wrapped scriptures, andyou can hear Lamas chanting intheir deep guttural voices through-out the halls.

I set up my tripod to photo-graph pilgrims as they passedthrough a door to the prayer wheels.Several young Tibetan girls andmen came over to look throughmy viewfinder—this is the sim-plest gift I can give to these peo-ple. I was greeted with bursts of“Hello, what is your name? Howare you?”from young monks. Justa few years ago, everyone wouldyell in Chinese the word “lao wei”when they saw a foreigner. Now“hello” has become the universalway to identify a foreigner, oftenfollowed by lots of laughter, espe-cially if you respond.

HamiThis was the first place I’ve comein contact with the Uighur people,one of China’s many minoritygroups. Uighurs are of Turkish de-scent, and their striking physicalcharacteristics are an interestingmix of European, Middle Eastern,and Asian features.

The morning light was won-derful as I photographed men bak-ing bread in big round ovens thatopen from above like a giant vasemade of earth.They place the round,flat pieces of dough on the insidewalls of these kiln-like ovens andthen peel them off when they’rebaked. I stopped by a farmhouseto buy bread from a Uighur woman.Inside the main room of her housewas a window in the ceiling thatilluminated the wooden crate offreshly baked round bread.

Left: Two young boysin a rural village nearPeshawar in north-ern Pakistan. Below:Uighur musical instru-ments on display ina storefront.

Above: A Uighur man nearKashgar in Xinjiang Province.Below: Two young Uighurmen sell bagels in the “oldtown” of Kashgar.

A WOMAN’S L IFE

In Her Own Time, edited by Jeanne Stevenson-Moessner,BA’70, Fortress Press, 387 pp. including notes, $21 paper-back

From adolescence to maturity, premenstrual to menopausal,and life to death, women mark time through developmentalpassages uniquely their own. In Her Own Time, edited by JeanneStevenson-Moessner, is a guidebook for the pastoral care of womenthat provides a theological framework for their emotional, phys-ical, and spiritual growth.

Eighteen female theologians bring their own backgrounds,observations, research, and clinical training together in address-ing women and the issues that are common to their lives.

Contending that spiritual care is dependent on understandingthe internal and external focuses that mold a woman through-out her life, the book is divided into three major parts—devel-opmental themes, developmental passage, and developmentalissues—and it confronts a range of topics related to self-care, sin-gleness, healthy eating, disability, trust, and empowerment, amongothers.

Stevenson-Moessner is the Henry Luce III Fellow and associ-ate professor of pastoral theology and spiritual formation at theUniversity of Dubuque Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa.An ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), she hascollaborated with women in the Society for Pastoral Theology toproduce two other books in this field: Through the Eyes of Women:Insights for Pastoral Care (1996) and Women in Travail and Tran-sition: A New Pastoral Care (1991) . —Susan L. Jenkins

BOYS OF SUMMER

The 521 All-Stars: A Championship Story of Baseball andCommunity, text by Frye Gaillard, BA’68, photographs byByron Baldwin, 123 pp., Black Belt Press, $29.95 hardcover

In most respects, baseball is a game like no other. The defense con-trols the ball; there’s no clock ticking down to the end of thecontest; and the dimensions of the playing field are not only asym-metrical but vary from ballpark to ballpark. Basketball, as FryeGaillard points out, can be played on a slice of asphalt by as few astwo people. Baseball, on the other hand, takes vast space and nofewer than 18 players.

In rural South Carolina, there is no shortage of grown men toplay, nor is there a shortage of real estate for them to chalk out 90-foot base paths. By happenstance, Gaillard exited Highway 521at the sight of a baseball field, the aged, rickety bleachers and barely-there dugouts that corral half the infield. What drewGaillard off the highway impressed him: two teams of AfricanAmericans varying in age and ability and droves of fans who paid$2 apiece to watch the weekend warriors battle on their make-dodiamond.

Baseball is a tradition in the small town of Rembert, S.C., andin the neighboring communities that host the leagues’other teams.Generations of men have played semi-pro ball in Rembert, datingback more than a half-century. A few of the players have been tothe Major League; several more have been to the minors and backagain. All play for love of the game.

Gaillard and photographer Byron Baldwin document the 521All-Stars’ journey to the league championship series. En route, theteam faces multiple challenges, including the unexpected death ofa team leader.

Gaillard’s career as pitcher and shortstop peaked on the cityleague softball fields of Charlotte, N.C. He has written 16 booksand coedited four, and he lives in Indian Trail, N.C.

—Skip Anderson

W I N T E R / S P R I N G 2 0 0 1 31

LESSONS FROM WARFARE

A Question of Character: Life Lessons to Learn From Mil-itary History coauthored by Thad A. Gaebelein, MA’90, andRon P. Simmons, 169 pp. including bibliography, Red BrickPress, $14.95 hardcover

For years, the pinstriped power-brokers of the Fortune 500 haveconsumed the wisdom of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War because of theancient battle manual’s applicability to the business world. Fol-lowing on that phenomenon, authors Thad A. Gaebelein and RonSimmons offer a historical retrospective of effective leadership byprofiling the successes of warlords from Hadrian to Patton. A Ques-tion of Character: Life Lessons to Learn From Military History exam-ines the qualities that “separate the lasting from the flash in thepan.”

“We present examples from military history because in no otherprofession are the consequences for failure so extreme,”the authorsexplain. What they found was a common denominator amongconquerors and captains of industry alike which marked them forgreatness—character. “A business, like a military campaign, canonly be successful if the troops are led by, and contain, people ofcharacter.”

The first portion of the book is formulaic in its presentation ofbasic character values related in the context of warfare. Lessons onqualities like interdependence are neatly wrapped in military max-ims: “Never cross the supply sergeant.” European monarchs con-tent to maintain an inefficient status quo of wasteful warfare arecompared to executives of the Big Three automotive manufac-turers who continued to turn out gas-guzzling “land-yachts”well into the mid-’70s energy crisis.

A large portion of the book is dedicated to Napoleon’s mete-oric rise to world dominance from under the stigma of xenopho-bia and social exclusion and to the character flaws that led to hisultimate fall at Waterloo.

Lieutenant Commander Thad A. Gaebelein is an instructorat the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, N.Y., anda former Army major who taught military history at the UnitedStates Military Academy at West Point. —Shawn Jenkins

LIFE AMID THE KUDZU

Somewhere in All This Green by William S. Cobb, MA’63,171 pp., Black Belt Press, $20 hardcover

Tied by common threads of the Old South, William Cobb’scompilation of 13 short stories reflects facets of complex, and some-times disturbing, human interaction, brought out in various every-day circumstances. Religion, family, relationships, society, unspokenrules, and heritage are closely intertwined in Somewhere in All ThisGreen. The selections survey Cobb’s career, displaying both therealism and fantasy that have characterized it.

Internal struggle plays itself out in the lives of characters likeRalph Fosque, the irrepressible boy trapped in an old man’s body,who is almost convinced that he has come to terms with grow-ing up. But when he faces his fears by reacquainting himself withthe daughter he abandoned 22 years before, he abruptly walks outin the middle of a conversation with her and never looks back.

Although Cobb’s prevalent use of realism in his characters oftengives an air of hopelessness, it is his sprinkling of almost absurdescapism or denial that provides a contrast to the despair. South-ern writer Pat Conroy says of Cobb,“[He] writes with uncommonclarity, beauty, and mastery of his subject matter. His stories seemto rise up out of the earth and begin speaking on their ownwithout even looking around to notice who wrote them.”

Cobb is writer-in-residence at the University of Montevalloin Alabama. —Susan L. Jenkins

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EPISTLES FROM “RED”

Selected Letters of Robert Penn Warren,Volume One: TheApprentice Years, 1924–1934, edited, with an introduction,by William Bedford Clark, 274 pp. including notes and index,Louisiana State University Press, $39.95 hardcover

Where have all the letters gone? In this era of electronic commu-nication, the handwritten letter seems to have gone the way of thepassenger pigeon. William Bedford Clark, however, shows read-ers how it used to be done, at least by one fledgling writer who wasjust coming into his own.

Clark’s first volume of collected letters by one of Vanderbilt’smost famous alumni—poet, novelist, and critic Robert Penn War-ren, BA’25—chronicles the early life of the literary giant in his lastyears at Vanderbilt and during his graduate study at Berkeley,Yale,and Oxford, where he wrote his first book. The letters not onlyserved as a means of communication between Warren and others(most notably fellow Fugitive and Vanderbilt alumnus Allen Tate,BA’22), but Clark makes a case for Warren’s personal communi-cations as a corollary canon or literary subgenre in which he exploresalternate identities, all of which subsequently “make” the writerwe know today as Robert Penn Warren.

One of these identities is “Red”Warren, a nickname he assumedafter entering Vanderbilt at age 16, though to those at home inGuthrie, Ky., he was always “Robert Penn.” Clark describes the“Red” Warren portrayed in letters as “a hell-raiser with a reputa-tion for fast and dangerous living, a cynic who knows the worldand views it with sardonic detachment, an aesthete devoted tire-lessly to the pursuit of perfection in his verse, an amused specta-tor of the human comedy.”

In reality, however, Warren was self-conscious, gangly, andincreasingly under emotional stress that resulted in an attempt-ed suicide during his spring term at Vanderbilt in 1924. It is thispersona who writes to his good friend Allen Tate that “when a per-son writes a letter it is nearly as much one to himself as to the per-son who takes it from the postbox.”

Clark, professor of English at Texas A&M University, is a notedauthority on Warren and author of The American Vision of RobertPenn Warren. —Bonnie Arant Ertelt

URANIA DESCENDING

John Milton’s Epic Invocations: Converting the Museby Philip Edward Phillips, MA’92, PhD’96, Volume 26 inRenaissance and Baroque Studies and Texts, 122 pp. plusnotes, bibliography, and index, Peter Lang Publishing, $44.95hardcover

In “Book VII” of John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost, the narratorinvokes the heavenly muse Urania, the patron goddess of astron-omy, to inspire him as he constructs a “great argument to justifythe ways of God to men.”Conceived during the 17th century, thisunparalleled interpretation of Satan’s rebellion against God andthe expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden was com-posed in England after a clear line of demarcation had been drawnbetween the identity and function of pagan and Christian allu-sions in religious literature.

A Puritan and a humanist, Milton was not granted a dispen-sation from the controversy surrounding the employment of aclassical convention within an explicitly Christian poem. His strug-

30 V A N D E R B I L T M A G A Z I N E

B O O K Sgle and reconciliation with this question of poetic and theologi-cal appropriateness is examined most authoritatively by Milton-ian scholar Phillip Edward Phillips, assistant professor of Englishat Middle Tennessee State University, in John Milton’s Epic Invo-cations: Converting the Muse.

Through his methodical analysis of invocations in the Hebra-ic, Homeric, and Vergilian tradition of epic poetry, Phillips dis-cusses how summoning Urania for divine assistance provesproblematic for Milton, a Christian writer with a classical educa-tion, who lived in an epoch when Royalists established a “Christ-ian nation” with undeniable connections to a classical past andwhen Puritans rejected the idea of a pagan heritage as they attempt-ed to work God’s purpose in the world. Phillips explores the com-plex relationship between poetic form and political-religious crisisby combining rhetorical and philological analysis with new his-toricist theory. From a sensitive, careful reading of the texts andhis extensive research, Phillips illustrates that through a syncreticblending of pagan and Christian attributes, Milton’s muse, Ura-nia, may be identified simultaneously as the pagan daughter ofZeus and Mnemsoyne and as Christ or the Holy Spirit.

—Victor Judge

FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON

To Quarks and Quasars: A History of Physics and Astron-omy at Vanderbilt University by the late Robert T. Lage-mann, MS’35, professor of physics, emeritus; edited byWendell G. Holladay, BA’49, MA’50, dean of the College ofArts and Science, provost, and professor of physics, emeri-tus; 585 pp. including appendices, notes, and index; pub-lished by the Department of Physics and Astronomy; $25hardcover

This very readable book covers events in the Department of Physicsand Astronomy from the establishment of the University in1873 through 1995.Along the way, it documents the careers of fac-ulty members Landon C. Garland, the University’s first chancel-lor and professor of physics and astronomy; John “Dynamo”Daniel,who “electrified” the campus in 1890; and astronomer Carl K.Seyfert, who built Dyer Observatory in the 1950s.

To Quarks and Quasars contains compelling accounts of thedepartment’s distinguished faculty members.They included Nashvil-lian Edward E. Barnard, who became one of the world’s leadingastronomers during the late 19th century. Nobel laureate Max Del-brück conducted his seminal research in molecular biology whilea member of the Vanderbilt physics faculty during the 1940s. Fran-cis Slack, Ernest Jones, Newton Underwood, Robert Lagemann,and other Vanderbilt physicists worked on the Manhattan Project,which resulted in the creation of the atomic bomb and the OakRidge National Laboratories in Tennessee.

Lagemann had almost completed writing the book when hedied in 1994. It was left to his colleague Wendell Holladay to editthe manuscript and provide many of its illustrations. Though writ-ten chiefly for faculty and former students, non-scientists will alsoenjoy its depictions of important researchers, discussion of cam-pus politics, and historical perspective.

Copies may be ordered from the Department of Physics andAstronomy, Box 1807 Station B, Nashville, TN 37235.

—Joanne Lamphere Beckham

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ToQUARKS

andQUASARS

A History of Physics and Astronomyat Vanderbilt University

ROBERT T. LAGEMANN

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Postimpressionist painter while they

toured the exhibition. In October,

Bostonians met at Charley’s Eating

and Brewing Saloon for happy hour.

The Van Gogh exhibit was at the

Philadelphia Museum of Art in early

December, and Philadelphia alumni

also took advantage of the event

by hosting a breakfast and lecture

at the museum. Professor Folgar-

ait again was the featured lecturer.

Meanwhile, New York alumni

celebrated the holidays at the Mu-

seum of Modern Art.

HEADING WEST

Alums deep in the heart of Texas

were active during the last months

of 2000.

In November, members of the

Dallas club viewed masterpieces

by Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Car-

los Merida, and other artists at

the Modern Masters of Mexico ex-

hibition. Following a reception at

the Dallas Museum of Art, alums

heard a lecture by Stephen Harri-

son, the museum’s associate cu-

rator of decorative arts. In October,

they met at Frankie’s Sports Bar for

happy hour, and convened again in

December for a holiday party. In

January, Houston alums welcomed

Vanderbilt’s new chancellor to the

Lone Star State when they hosted

a Conversation with Chancellor Gor-

don Gee at the Houstonian Hotel.

The young alumni of Houston also

enjoyed a November happy hour at

the Mercantile Brewery and Pub,

and the San Antonio club spon-

sored a “rapping and relaxing” party

in December for the Elf Louise Com-

munity Service Project in McCre-

less Mall.

It was an afternoon of visual and

culinary delights for the Tulsa alumni

who met at the Philbrook Museum

of Art in November for a catered

lunch and tour of the Triumph of

French Painting exhibition.

St. Louis club members raised

their glasses during an October wine

tasting party held at Remy’s Kitchen

and Wine Bar. They also launched

2001 with a viewing party at Ozzie’s

Restaurant and Sports Bar when

the Commodores took the court

against Arkansas.

In downtown Denver, Colorado

alums discovered an antidote to the

cold December weather when they

sampled the wares at a beer tast-

ing get-together held at the Rock

Bottom Brewery.

CLUBS IN ACTION

IN VANDY’S BACKYARD

Nashville Vanderbilt Club members

combined aesthetics with sports

by taking a September road trip

to Birmingham for an “Arts and

Athletics Weekend.” The delegation

of Nashville alumni met Alabama

Vandy alums at the Birmingham

Museum of Art for a reception with

Chancellor Gordon Gee and a lec-

ture on French artist Henri Matisse

by Associate Professor of Fine Arts

Vivien Fryd. After viewing the largest

tour of Matisse’s work to be exhib-

ited in America in two decades, the

alumni donned their black and gold

and traveled to Legion Field where

they cheered the Commodore foot-

ball team in their match against the

Crimson Tide.

DOWN SOUTH

Atlantans performed a day of com-

munity service in October for Hands

on Atlanta and hosted a Conversa-

tion with Chancellor Gordon Gee in

November at the Piedmont Driving

Club. Peach State alumni also cel-

ebrated the winter holidays in De-

cember by sponsoring their eighth

annual intercollegiate party at the

Marriott Hotel at Lenox.

Other cases of December holi-

day fever reported throughout the

South’s alumni circuit included par-

ties in Birmingham and Jackson,

Tennessee.

Not all Floridians spent weeks

recounting votes or speculating

about chads. Palm Beach/Broward

County alums gathered at Pete

Rose’s Ballpark Café to watch the

Commodores battle the Gators.

Tampa alumni met in December for

libations at Newks Café.

UP NORTH

Art aficionados in the Boston Van-

derbilt Club recently came “face to

face” with Vincent Van Gogh. Fol-

lowing breakfast and a lecture at the

Back Bay Hilton, alumni toured Van

Gogh: Face to Face at the Museum

of Fine Arts. Leonard Folgarait, chair

of fine arts, introduced alumni and

friends to the 19th-century Dutch

A L U M N I N E W S

32 V A N D E R B I L T M A G A Z I N E

�Wayne Hyatt, BA’65, JD’68,wants alumni to enter “a part-nership with Vanderbilt.”

As the 99th president ofthe University’s Alumni Association, he believes the 100,000-plus alumnithroughout the world canbe influential resources forbuilding relationships withVanderbilt’s administration,faculty, and students.

“There’s a huge wealth of information, experience,and commitment in the alumni, and bringing theminto the process of advancing Vanderbilt is in manyways far more important than asking them to con-tribute money,” says Hyatt, who assumed presidencyof the Alumni Association last May during Reunion2000.

To encourage this partnership with Vanderbilt,Hyatt has met with current students and leaders ofstudent organizations and asked how alumni can servethem. “Historically, we have missed the opportunityto involve students at a high level in alumni programs,”

he says, “and from my conversations with students, Ihave found them to be enthusiastic to learn about theresources alumni can offer.”

Whenever Hyatt’s professional role as a partner inthe Atlanta law firm of Hyatt & Stubblefield requireshim to travel, he also uses those business trips as op-portunities for calling on Vanderbilt Alumni Clubpresidents or attending club events. He is particularlyimpressed by the gatherings that alumni clubs arehosting this year to introduce Chancellor Gordon Gee.“The more our clubs around the country involve ad-ministrators, faculty, and prospective students in theirprograms and projects, the stronger the partnershipwith Vanderbilt.”

But Hyatt argues that the crucial factor for alumnito sustain a relationship with Vanderbilt is the Uni-versity’s unwavering focus on quality teaching.“Teach-ing is what brought us to Vanderbilt; teaching is whatwill keep Vanderbilt among the great universities, andas alumni, we want the University to keep a focus onteaching. One of the great features of Vanderbilt isthat freshmen can have a full professor who notonly researches but teaches.”

Alumni Association President Aspires to Strengthen Partnership

Wayne Hyatt

� Sheryll D. Cashin, BE’84, a former White House di-rector who has devoted her career to helping the urbanpoor, received the 2000 Walter R. Murray Jr. Distin-guished Alumnus Award last October. The Associa-tion of Vanderbilt Black Alumni presented the awardduring the group’s Reunion 2000 activities.

Cashin, an associate professor of law at George-town University Law Center, served as director of com-munity development with the National EconomicCouncil from 1993 to 1995. In 1996, she worked forVice President Al Gore as staff director for commu-nity empowerment. In both roles, she developed andoversaw policies to support revitalization in low-income communities.

A native of Huntsville, Ala., Cashin was graduat-ed summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in elec-trical engineering. At Vanderbilt she served as presidentof the Black Student Alliance and was a Harold Stir-

ling Vanderbilt Scholar.Cashin earned a mas-ter’s degree in jurispru-dence (English law) withsecond highest honorsfrom Oxford Universi-ty and a J.D. cum laudefrom Harvard LawSchool, where she edit-ed the Harvard LawReview.

Previous AVBA dis-tinguished alumni in-clude Dr. Levi Watkins,

MD’70, the first African American to graduate fromVanderbilt’s medical school and a prominent Baltimorecardiologist; Bill Campbell, BA’74, mayor of Atlanta;and Brig. Gen. Kenneth U. Jordan, JD’74.

N A S H V I L L E A L U M N I W E L C O M E G E E

More than 600 Nashville alumni filled the Stadium Club onSept. 28 to meet Chancellor Gordon Gee, who told the groupthat being chancellor of Vanderbilt is the “best job in America.”Atright Gee chats with Stanley Bernard, BA’44, MD’47, and hiswife, Adell. The Nashville Vanderbilt Club gathering was thefirst in a series of events called “Vanderbilt Values: A Conversationwith Chancellor Gee.” In November, the new chancellor trav-eled to Atlanta where the Atlanta Vanderbilt Club hosted areception at the Piedmont Driving Club. Gee met Houstonalumni at the Houstonian Hotel in January, and Birminghamalumni at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens in February.The Metro New York Vanderbilt Club will host a reception onApril 4 at the Warwick Hotel. More events are being planned.

Black Alumni Honor Distinguished Alumna

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Sheryll Cashin

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HOMECOMING 2000Commodores Celebrate the CenturyA new event and a host of old favorites greeted Vander-bilt alumni who converged on campus for Homecoming,October 20 and 21. Below, Alumni Association PresidentWayne Hyatt, BA’65, JD’68, A&S senior Ann Carmichael(left), and Sarah Creekmore, BA’00, who works with theAlumni Association, joined student organizations, footballplayers, and Chancellor Gordon Gee and Constance Geein the Homecoming parade held Friday. On Saturday morn-ing, more than 675 alumni, friends, and family membersgathered to enjoy the annual Homecoming Pre-Game Tail-gate, including, bottom right, David Chatman (left), BA’85,and Kelwin Heard, BS’85. Chatman is president-elect ofthe Association of Vanderbilt Black Alumni. Right, con-gratulations to Homecoming Queen and King—senior PamelaFerguson, SGA president, and senior Erik Baptist, formeralumni class officer—who were crowned during halftime ofthe football game, which pitted the Commodores againstSouth Carolina. Vanderbilt scored a touchdown on the firstdrive down the field following kickoff, but the Gamecocksprevailed, 30-14. The Mid Autumn Party, a new event forseniors and young alumni, was launched Saturday night ata downtown nightspot and attended by more than 100.

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HOMECOMING PHOTOS BY PEYTON HOGE

To see moreHomecoming photos, visit

www.vanderbilt.edu/alumni

News for this section should besent to Nelson Bryan, classnotes editor, VANDERBILT MAG-

AZINE, VU Station B 357703, 2301 Van-derbilt Place, Nashville, TN, 37235-7703, fax: 615/343-8547, or e-mail:vanderbiltmagazine@vanderbilt.edu.Please include your degree, year, and,when applicable, maiden name. Youalso can send us news or update youraddress and other biographical infor-mation electronically through forms onthe alumni home page at www.vander-bilt.edu/alumni.

’52Marion Collins Clouser, BA,writes that she spent some timeaway from her Tallahassee, Fla.,home to research her family

history and her husband’s family histo-ry in Tenn. “This exciting history, goingback to 1735, was fascinating. … I havewritten up these family histories for ourchildren and grandchildren.”

R E U N I O N J U N E 1 – 2 , 2 0 0 1

’56Madeline Reynolds Adams, A,and Debby Luton Cate, BA,write that they are co-chairingwhat they “intend to make the

best reunion ever. Come one, come allto the 45th reunion.” They want theClass of ’56 to “kick up their heels”before they become Quinqs. Help outby calling with ideas of what you wouldor would not like to happen. ContactMadeline at 404/355-8965 (phone) or404/355-3156 (fax), or Debby at281/497-6829 or dlcate@tenet.edu.“Please mark your calendar now andplan to come! Make this a top priority.”Nancy Holt Garver, BA, of Richmond,Va., retired last May from SouthernStates Cooperative after 20 years ininformation systems.

’58Richard K. Hammel, A, ofHammel Financial AdvisoryGroup in Brentwood, Tenn., wasnamed one of the Best 150

Financial Advisors for Doctors in theUnited States by Medical Economicsmagazine. He also serves on the nationalboard of directors for the NationalAssociation of Personal FinancialAdvisors. Joseph B. Trahern Jr., BA,MA’59, was named National AlumniAssociation Distinguished ServiceProfessor at the University of Tennesseein Knoxville. The English professor alsowas named Macebearer for the academic

year 1999–2000, the highest honor givento a UT faculty member.R01

R E U N I O N J U N E 1 – 2 , 2 0 0 1

’61James Lott Armour, BA, LLB’64,of Dallas, was selected for inclu-sion in Who’s Who in America,having been continuously includ-

ed since 1988. He is a partner in the lawfirm of Locke Liddell & Sapp, practicingoil and gas international law. Burnett W.Donoho, BA, of Englewood, Colo., wasnamed to the board of directors ofSocket Communications, a California-based firm that develops and sells con-nection products for Windows-poweredcomputers. He is president and chief ex-ecutive officer of Club Sports Interna-tional. Robert D. Hatcher Jr., BA,MS’62, was named to the board of direc-tors of Tengasco, an oil and natural gasexploration company in Knoxville. Arecognized authority in Appalachian geology, he holds a chair as a Universityof Tennessee/Oak Ridge National Labo-ratory Distinguished Scientist throughthe Science Alliance Centers of Excel-lence at the University of Tennessee.Alan Rosenthal, BA, MD’64, vice presi-dent of scientific affairs and technologyat Abbott Laboratories in Illinois, wasnamed to the board of directors ofMitoKor, a biotechnology company inSan Diego.

’63McKenzie C. Roberts, BE, ofMcMinnville, Tenn., was electedpresident-elect of the NationalExchange Club at the organiza-

tion’s annual convention last July. Aprofessional engineer, he is owner ofEngineering Consulting and Design,Roberts Electric Company, and Securi-ty Equipment Company. James D.Skaggs, MA, PhD’71, retired as distin-guished professor of English from theUniversity of Puerto Rico after twodecades. He has written 10 volumes ofpoetry, the latest of which is DoneBefore Dark. He now lives in BowlingGreen, Ky., in a 1890s foursquare stonehouse across from Western KentuckyUniversity’s campus.

’64Lillian B. Clark, MAT, ofCampbellsville, Ky., was namedone of five Phenomenal Womenof the Year in January 2000 by

the Louisville Courier-Journal newspa-per. She is an adjunct professor atCampbellsville University. Theodore

E. Eisenstat, BA, was listed in the “BestDoctors” issue of New York magazine inJune 2000. He is vice president of theAmerican Society of Colon and RectalSurgeons and president of the Pennsyl-vania society. He and his wife, SharonLeonard, BA’66, celebrated their 34thwedding anniversary last June. They livein Watchung, N.Y. Leslie B. Enoch II,BA, chief executive officer of the MiddleTennessee Natural Gas Utility District inSmithville, received the PersonalAchievement Award and the Past Presi-dent’s Award from the American PublicGas Association at the association’sannual conference last summer. BillThompson, BA, editor of LandscapeArchitecture magazine, was the keynotespeaker at the Northern Californiachapter of the American Society ofLandscape Architects last June. TheAmerican Society of Landscape Archi-tects awarded him Fellow status in 1999.

’65Jane Evans, BA, president andCEO of Arizona-based GamutInteractive, the first electronicwallet for the mass market, was

named to the board of directors of Hy-percom Corporation, a provider of elec-tronic payment solutions. Ed Hill, MA,PhD’68, retired after a 31-year career as aprofessor of mathematics at Cornell Col-lege in Mount Vernon, Iowa.REUNION

R E U N I O N J U N E 1 – 2 , 2 0 0 1

’66George Hickman, BA, retiredfrom the DeKalb County, Ga.,school system after 27 years. Hetaught learning disabled stu-

dents at Decatur High School and waschairman of the special educationdepartment. His retirement plansinclude increased volunteer work andoccasional substitute teaching.

’67John Haile, BA, retired as editorof the Orlando Sentinel on Jan. 1.He led the staff to three PulitzerPrizes during his 15-year tenure,

and the paper launched a 24-hour cablenews station and ushered in the Internet.Marshall Wilt, PhD, was named one ofthe first recipients of the Centre Scholarsaward, a new honor given by Centre Col-lege in Danville, Ky., that recognizesexcellence in teaching, scholarly work,and contributions to the college. Aphysics professor, he has taught at Centresince 1967 and has directed a summerscience program for gifted high school

students and a physics institute for highschool teachers.

’68George S. Dragnich, BA, is thecounselor for labor and socialaffairs and deputy of the eco-nomic section at the American

Embassy in London, England.

’69Tom Sterling, BE, was namedpresident of Transtar, a Mon-roeville, Pa.-based transporta-tion company.

’70Vicki H. Escude, BA, a profes-sional certified success coachwith Success Unlimited Net-work in Gulf Breeze, Fla., was

named a senior associate with SUNPartnership Executive Coaching. Shecoaches entrepreneurs and corporateexecutives for success.

R E U N I O N J U N E 1 – 2 , 2 0 0 1

’71Connie Clark, BA, JD’79,assumed the chairmanship ofthe Tennessee Bar Foundationlast summer. She is director of

the Tennessee Supreme Court’s admin-istrative office of the courts, whichoversees the state’s judicial system.Ronald M. Pettus, BE, joined theNashville construction firm of R.G.Anderson as a project manager. Previ-ously, he was senior project managerwith the Tennessee Stadium Group.

’72Pearl Adams, BA, of Visalia,Calif., writes that her husbandof 16 years, Kenneth L. Adams,passed away suddenly of a heart

attack on May 28, 1999. George Gard-ner, BE, MS’93, a retired Navy com-mander, was appointed vice president ofthe Nashville engineering firm of Barge,Waggoner, Sumner & Cannon. James C.Kelly, MA, PhD’74, assistant directorfor museums at the Virginia HistoricalSociety in Richmond, had two bookspublished in 2000: Bound Away: Vir-ginia and the Westward Movement andThe Virginia Landscape. Doug Walker,BA, co-founder and CEO of WRQ, aSeattle-based e-business solutions andsoftware firm, won Master Entrepre-neur in the business leadership categoryof the Ernst & Young Pacific NorthwestEntrepreneur of the Year Awards. BudWalther, BE, pastor of Immanuel Unit-ed Church of Christ in Crothersville,Ind., was named president and CEO of

the Community Foundation of JacksonCounty, Ind.

’75Craig Hume, A, was namednews director for CBS 2 Chica-go. He previously was generalmanager of Central Florida

News 13 in Orlando. Anthony A.Joseph, BS, last summer began a three-year term as an Alabama State BarCommissioner for the 10th JudicialCircuit. He is a partner in the Birming-ham firm of Johnston, Barton, Proctor& Powell, where he concentrates hispractice in white-collar criminaldefense and general civil litigation. BillNorton, BA, JD’82, an attorney at theNashville firm of Boult, Cummings,Conners & Berry, last fall was anadjunct professor at the Vanderbilt LawSchool teaching bankruptcy law. Nial

Raaen, BA, of Ann Arbor, Mich., is acourt consultant and volunteered hisservices to assist the Balkan republic ofMacedonia in establishing an indepen-dent judicial budget and conductedbudgeting seminars for Macedoniajudges and court staff. Marty Singer,MA, PhD’77, president and CEO ofSAFCO Technologies, was appointed anadvisor to Intacta Technologies, a soft-ware company headquartered inAtlanta.

R E U N I O N J U N E 1 – 2 , 2 0 0 1

’76Jim Clark, BA, was the featuredwriter in the “Sunday Reader”section of the Sept. 3 issue ofthe News & Observer newspaper

in Raleigh, N.C. He teaches creativewriting and modern literature at Bar-

elected president of the staff at theMayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., for2001. Michael L. Solomon, BA, of Har-risburg, Pa., was named the first generalcounsel of the Boyds Collection, adomestic designer, importer, and dis-tributor of branded, handcrafted col-lectibles and giftware products.

’77James Althouse, BA, a colonelin the Army, took over com-mand of Yuma Proving Groundin Arizona last August. He pre-

viously was assistant program executiveofficer for the air and missile defenseprogram executive office in Washing-ton, D.C., responsible for the integra-tion of the Army’s Patriot and TheaterHigh Altitude Area Defense Systemmissile defense programs.R E U N I O N

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’78Charles C. Euchner, BA, wasnamed the first executive direc-tor of the Rappaport Institutefor Greater Boston at Harvard

University’s John F. Kennedy School ofGovernment. The institute is dedicatedto research and projects to improve thegovernance of Boston and surroundingcommunities. Previously, he was associ-ate director of the Center for Urbanand Regional Policy at Boston’s North-eastern University. Nicholas C. Glover,BA, is a real estate market attorney withNextel Communications in Tampa, Fla.He is author of Florida CommercialLandlord and Tenant Law. He writesthat he is “married and has three cats.”Steve Lane, BE, ME’91, last summerwas installed as secretary of ConsultingEngineers of Tennessee for 2000–2001.He is executive vice president anddirector of civil, environmental, sports,and entertainment engineering servicesfor Smith Seckman Reid in Nashville.Jonathan E. Rattner, BA, of Palo Alto,Calif., writes that after a brief stint as asole practitioner specializing in realestate transactions, he joined AtriumCapital, a Menlo Park-based venturecapital firm as CEO. “Life is good.”

’79Mike Condrey, BA, was namedto the board of directors ofCapital Bank in Raleigh, N.C.He is managing director of

Northwestern Mutual Financial Net-work for eastern North Carolina. DavidShardelow, BE, of Cincinnati, wasnamed director of e-business for theMetalworking Technologies Group ofMilacron.

’80Jeff Davis, BE, of Arcadia,Calif., was named director ofthe Water Resources Institute atCal State, San Bernadino. Roy

Herron, MDiv, JD, is author of ThingsHeld Dear: Soul Stories for My Sons, acollection of family stories and memo-

W I N T E R / S P R I N G 2 0 0 1 35

C L A S S N O T E S

34 V A N D E R B I L T M A G A Z I N E

ton College in Wilson, N.C., where he iswriter-in-residence. He has publishedtwo books of poems, Dancing onCanaan’s Ruins and Handiwork. JohnC. Dupree, BA, was named vice presi-dent of marketing and general businesssales for Sprint Business in Dallas.Melinda Baskin Hudson, BA, ofAlexandria, Va., last August was profiledby the Washington Post newspaper afterbecoming senior vice president ofAmerica’s Promise–The Alliance forYouth, a nonprofit organization dedi-cated to building the character ofyoung people. Nancy J. Hutson, PhD,of Stonington, Conn., was elected to theboard of trustees at Illinois WesleyanUniversity. She is a senior vice presidentof U.S. Exploratory Development andU.S. Development Science at Pfizer.Teri Rummans, BA, writes that she was

� Six years ago, Nashville music publisher and com-poser Jay Dawson, BME’69, attended a rehearsal ofthe Nashville Pipes and Drums. The joyful and melan-choly bagpipe sounds intrigued him, and he told theband that he would like to learn to play. Pleased to wel-come an eager newcomer, band members loaned Daw-son a set of pipes. “I thought I would learn to playover a weekend,” he says.

“I was wrong.”Today, many lessons later,

Dawson admits that learn-ing the bagpipes is a lifelongpursuit. Perhaps, but it is apreoccupation in which heclearly shines: he is now pipemajor of the Nashville Pipesand Drums (they are Year2000 U.S. Open Pipe BandChampions in their class).He also performs solo.“Pipesare a nice alternative to harpsand trumpets at weddingsand funerals, but bagpipemusic is not backgroundmusic. I often have to con-vince folks that 15 minutesis as long as most people want to listen to bagpipes,”he says.

The bagpipe chanter,which carries the melody,canproduce only nine notes. Three drone pipes sustain theone-toned, underlying sound. The difficulty in per-forming on the pipes comes from maintaining properbreathing technique, staying in tune, and playing themelody, all at the same time, and sometimes in unisonwith 10 to 15 other pipers.

What makes a good student? “A love of the sound ofthe instrument and a genuine determination to learnto play.” A sense of rhythm helps. “Learning bagpipe

music is more like learning a dialect of a language thanlearning a piece of music,”Dawson explains.Youth helps,too, because “there’s a kind of athleticism in playingpipes.”

A native Nashvillian, Dawson, who also plays theFrench horn,piano, string bass, and trumpet,has enjoyeda long, successful career in music, primarily in com-

posing, arranging, and pub-lishing band music,an activityhe began as a teenager. He isformer assistant conductor ofthe Nashville Symphony, inwhich he was a member of theFrench horn section for manyyears prior to that appoint-ment. He also is former direc-tor of the Nashville YouthSymphony.

Dawson points out thatbluegrass music and south-ern folk music reflect the influ-ence of Scottish and Irish tunes,perhaps explaining in part thepersistent popularity of bag-pipe music in the South. Butthe sound complements manytypes of occasions and musi-cal genres.Nashville Pipes andDrums has performed withthe Nashville Symphony andon the closing night of evan-

gelist Billy Graham’s appearance in Nashville last year.They also have performed with vocalists Amy Grant andMichael W. Smith. “We’ve even played at halftime fora University of Tennessee football game in Neyland Sta-dium. First,‘Scotland the Brave.’ Then ‘Amazing Grace.’And finally, ‘Rocky Top.’ The response from the crowdwas deafening,” Dawson recalls.“They loved it.”

“‘Dynamite,’”he adds with a grin,“can also be playedon the bagpipes.” —Peggy Culp

Jay Dawson L O U D A N D P R O U D

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Birmingham with her husband andthree children, working out of herhome. Martin E. Valk, BA, was electedto the Merrick (New York) Union FreeSchool District in May 2000, overseeingdistrict elementary schools. Tyler West,BE, has been appearing in national tele-vision ads for WorldCom’s “generationd” campaign. He is director of onlinemarketing for the business marketsdivision of WorldCom’s Atlanta office.

’84Richard Danielson, BA, wasnamed editor of the NorthPinellas Times newspaper. He isa resident of Clearwater, Fla.,

and formerly was a reporter for the St.Petersburg Times and Tampa Tribune.Hal Eason, BA, received the M.B.A.degree with high distinction from Har-vard Business School in June 2000. Hewas named a George F. Baker Scholar,the school’s highest academic honorpresented to the top 5 percent of theclass, and received the John L. LoebAward, a fellowship given to the top 10students in finance. He works with theBoston firm of Bain & Company asstrategy consultant. Trish Elston, BA,MA’90, was named director of develop-ment at the Country Music Hall ofFame and Museum in Nashville. JaneLewis, EdD, of Fayetteville, N.C., writesthat she was awarded a certificate ofappreciation by the Heritage Place Resi-dents Association in appreciation of herdedication in compiling History of Her-itage Place 1982–2000. Erin Maloney,BS, MPP’91, is in her third year as aninstructor at Bilkent University inAnkara, Turkey. She teaches computercourses and American culture coursesto Turkish students at an English-speaking university.

’85Brett A. Barfield, BA, joinedthe Miami office of Holland &Knight as an associate in the litigation department. Kyle

Cavanaugh, MEd, was named associatevice president for human resources atthe University of Texas in Austin. Hepreviously worked in human resourcesat Rice University and Vanderbilt.Barbara Yvonne Foster, A, marriedFranklin Dunham Hartline on June 24,2000. They live in Colorado Springs.A. Brian Phillips, BS, earned a J.D. andM.B.A. at the University of Tennesseeand an L.L.M. in taxation from theUniversity of Florida. After a ten-yearcareer with the U.S. Department ofJustice and U.S. Attorney’s office, heopened his own practice in Orlandofocusing on criminal tax and white-collar criminal defense. He and his wife,Pam Quinn Phillips, BSN, MSN’88,have a four-year-old son, James. Ivan J.Reich, BA, JD’88, of Davie, Fla., wasnamed a shareholder with the Ft. Laud-erdale law firm of Becker & Poliakoff.Scott A. Sonnemaker, BE, was namedexecutive vice president at Sysco FoodServices of Portland. He lives in WestLinn, Ore., with his wife and two chil-dren. Laurie Stroud, BA, a former tele-vision reporter, created BirminghamChristian Family magazine, a monthlyfamily-oriented publication with aChristian focus. The inaugural issue hitthe newsstands last July. She lives in

36 V A N D E R B I L T M A G A Z I N E36 V A N D E R B I L T M A G A Z I N E

ries of growing up in the South. A resi-dent of Dresden, Tenn., he is a statesenator, lawyer, and ordained ministerin the United Methodist Church. Hepractices law with his wife, NancyMiller-Herron, JD/MDiv’83. Theyhave three sons. Elizabeth W. Rapisar-da, BA, MBA’87, was named director ofcorporate relations at Vanderbilt. Previ-ously, she was director of strategic cor-porate and foundation initiatives at theUniversity of Pennsylvania.

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’81Cody Fowler Davis, BA, anattorney with the Tampa, Fla.,law firm of Davis & Scarritt, wascertified as a member of the Mil-

lion Dollar Advocates Forum. Member-ship in the forum is limited to attorneyswho have won million and multimil-lion dollar verdicts, awards, and settle-ments. Cindy Durham, BA, was namedexecutive director of the TennesseeAssociation for the Education of YoungChildren in Gallatin. The associationprovides experiences to members invarious approaches to the develop-ment, care, and education of children.Beatriz Lucki, BA, was named vicepresident of e-commerce USA at YupiInternet, a Spanish-language portfolioof e-commerce sites. Richard Murphy,BE, of San Jose, Calif., was nameddirector of sales in Europe for MEMCElectronic Materials, a manufacturer ofhigh-purity silicon wafers for the semi-conductor industry. He relocated toMilan, Italy, with his wife and threechildren for a two- to four-year assign-ment. Ross Perot Jr., BA, was namedpresident and CEO of the Perot Sys-tems Corporation in Dallas last August.Previously, he worked in London withthe company’s European operations.He remains chairman of HillwoodDevelopment Corporation, a privatelyheld real estate company.

’82Ronald E. Babos, BA, joinedthe Boca Raton, Fla., office ofTrammell Crow, responsible forretail tenant representation and

retail development. Cathy Lynn Ben-der, BS, of Hermitage, Tenn., marriedOmarr Shariff Jackson on May 21,2000. Bradley Frohman, BS, joined IPAxess company as vice president ofdevelopment groups in Plano and SanAntonio, Texas. Greg Langdon, BE, waspromoted to executive vice president ofproduct strategy at Efficient Networks,a Dallas-based provider of digital sub-scriber line and customer premisesequipment for the broadband accessmarket.

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’86Michael W. Blackburn, BA,MBA’94, of Nashville, announcesthe birth of a daughter, AnneElizabeth, born on Nov. 19, 1999.

Brian E. Bomstein, BA, was appointedsenior vice president and general counselat Bayview Financial Trading Group, amortgage banking service in Miami.James C. Camp, BS, of St. Petersburg,Fla., writes that he ran his first BostonMarathon in 2000: “Highly recommend-

ed.” Karl Jordan, BS, former All SECdefensive tackle at Vanderbilt, has beenstrength coach at Alabama A&M Univer-sity for three years. During that time, theteam has gotten bigger, stronger, andfaster, he says. His program combinesweight lifting, agility drills, and running.Joan Wildasin, BA, and her husband,Mark, JD’91, announce the birth of adaughter, Kathryn Arden, born on Dec.31, 1999, joining sister Grace Kathryn.They live in the San Francisco area.

� In his first nine months after taking office as Nashville’smayor, Bill Purcell, JD’79, made visits to all 127 ofNashville’s schools and read Yertle the Turtle to so manyschoolchildren that he had to replace the dog-earedcopy he’s treasured since he was a boy.

The Dr. Seuss fable about a pompous ruler broughtdown by the guy at the bottom is a favorite among Pur-cell’s young audiences, but it also carries a messageNashville’s mayor has taken to heart throughout hiscareer: Leaders ignore the concerns of the people attheir own peril.

Purcell stunned pollsters and much of the newsmedia with his 1999 upset mayoral win, racking up a25-point lead ahead of his two nearest rivals. Theresounding victory was less surprising to those whoknew Purcell from his five terms in the Tennessee Houseof Representatives. There he served as House Majori-ty Leader and earned a reputation as the legislature’sbest orator and a shrewd political observer. An out-spoken advocate for children’s health, education, andwelfare issues, he was largely responsible for reform-ing state spending to ensure that children’s programsget dollars roughly equal to adult prison expenditures.

Now, as mayor, he’s turned his energies toward mak-ing good on his campaign platform: good schools inevery neighborhood, safe neighborhoods in every partof the city, and a quality of life shared by all Nashvil-lians.

Purcell grew up in Philadelphia, the son of a retailsalesman and a college teacher. By the time he enrolledin undergraduate school at Hamilton College, Purcellhad developed an interest in government as it affectspeople.

He came south to law school at Vanderbilt, he says,to get warm. His timing was fortuitous.“There was anincreasing interest in and support for the clinic and theLegal Aid Society,” he remembers. As a third-year stu-dent, Purcell was executive director of the Legal AidSociety.“That experience,” he says,“greatly shaped allof my subsequent choices.”

His decade in the Tennessee House of Represen-tatives was marked by widespread progress. He chairedthe Select Committee of Children and Youth for theTennessee General Assembly, sponsored legislation cre-ating the statewide public defender system, introduceda bill to increase compensation for crime victims, and

sponsored the landmark Education Improvement Actof 1992. He also chaired the Democratic LegislativeCampaign Committee and managed the 1996 Clin-ton/Gore campaign in Tennessee. Purcell left state gov-ernment to concentrate on directing the Child andFamily Policy Center (which he founded in 1995) atthe Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies.

Now, as chief government executive over the 24thlargest U.S. city, Purcell has his work cut out. WhileNashville has benefited from the country’s long eco-nomic boom, public schools have not. Purcell has anambitious list of goals for education, including small-er classes and more teachers, improved technology,introduction of best management practices, and fam-ily resource centers.

He isn’t shy about pointing out places where Van-derbilt University can help. “Vanderbilt is Nashville’slargest private employer, and the city and the Univer-sity are very much interdependent,” he says.

“I will always think the city and the University shoulddo more for each other, and we ought to keep trying.”

—GayNelle Doll

� When Lee Hendrix,BA’75,was a young girl in Memphis,she and her best friend used to hang out in her friend’sgrandmother’s painting studio and draw on big padsof paper.When she wasn’t in the studio with her friend,she was looking closely at insects and other natural ob-jects near her home. Now, the two pursuits have con-verged in her work as an art historian and curator ofdrawings at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles,where she specializes in Northern European drawingsand prints.

“What you do in life is so instinctive,” says Hendrix,who served as associate curator of drawings and printsat the Getty from 1989 to 1998, when she was namedcurator of the division.“In entering the field of art his-tory, I’ve come back to the things that were fascinatingto me when I was younger. I’ve always been more in-terested in process than the finished product, howthe thing is made, the sort of decisions that go intomaking marks on paper or canvas, and drawing is ex-actly that. It’s all about process.”

Hendrix herself recently went through the creativeprocess as co-curator of Painting on Light: Drawings andStained Glass in the Age of Dürer, a challenging exhibitof Renaissance stained glass windows paired with theirpreparatory drawings. Shown at the Getty Museum lastfall, the show was more than 10 years in the making.

“One of the big challenges of this exhibit,” she ex-plains, “was pulling together the drawings and three-dimensional objects. Stained glass presents a particular

problem because it has to be taken out of its context aspart of the architectural fabric. The leading and glasscan crack, and the painting on both sides of the glasscan be scraped or damaged. I didn’t have a really goodnight’s sleep until all of it was reinstalled in its originalcontext.”

A chance discovery came about in developing theexhibit with one of the Getty’s exhibition designers,Ann Marshall, who attended the College of Arts andScience in the early ’80s. Hendrix explains, “We bothhave southern accents, and one day we were talkingand I asked where she went to college.She said Vanderbilt.It is incredible that two Vanderbilt alumni workedtogether on this glorious project.

“I did the art history portion, and Ann gave it vi-sual expression. She devised a very serene, incrediblybeautiful design in which the stained glass windowswere set in deep arches that were rather abstract, butevoked the context of a church. The exhibit itself wasa work of art.”

Hendrix’s passion for art history is rooted in herA&S undergraduate experience. “My first exposureto major painters was through Professor [Hamilton]Hazlehurst and Professor [Robert] Mode. Most of whatI know of early Christian and Byzantine art is rootedin what Professor [Ljubica] Popovich taught me. I re-member them all vividly and with great fondness, andit was because of them that I decided to get my Ph.D.in art history.” —Bonnie Arant Ertelt

Lee Hendrix S E C O N D C H I L D H O O D

Bill Purcell I M P R O V I N G N A S H V I L L E N E I G H B O R H O O D S

W I N T E R / S P R I N G 2 0 0 1 39

Centre College in Danville, Ky. Randi Y.Greene, BA, was named an associatewith the Nashville law firm of Ortale,Kelley, Herbert & Crawford practicingreal estate, insurance defense, and cor-porate law. Meredith Anne SimmonsHiggs, BS, is a tenure-track facultymember in developmental studiesmathematics at Middle Tennessee StateUniversity in Murfreesboro. She alsoserves as director of the developmentalstudies math lab and tutor trainer inthe college reading and learning associ-ation. She and her husband, Ray Higgs,BE’93, live in McMinnville where theyare active in their church. Eric R. Rode,

Va., married Paul Kopp on June 3, 2000.She received an M.B.A. degree from theCollege of William and Mary GraduateSchool of Business and works as a con-sultant for PricewaterhouseCooper’sWashington consulting practice. Jen-nifer Snyder, BA, began practice as afamily physician in Kenton, Ohio, lastAugust.

’94Laurie Estelle Burns, BS, mar-ried Lindsey Wade Cooper Jr.on May 13, 2000. They live inWashington, D.C. David Eber-

hardt, BA, was named assistant directorof student life for student activities at

BA, writes that “life is pretty rough inColorado, what with all the skiing, hik-ing, camping, and rock climbing thatI’m forced to participate in.” He is thelead brewer for Tommyknocker Brew-ery, a microbrewery in Idaho Springs,35 miles west of Denver. Lady Smith,MA, PhD’98, joined Southern Livingmagazine in Birmingham as a seniorcopy editor. Leah Stewart, BA, lastAugust had a book signing and readingof her debut novel, Body of a Girl, atDavis-Kidd bookstore in Nashville.Thomas T. Toland, BA, is a corporatefinance attorney with the Dallas firm ofHaynes and Boone.

’95Nicole Cheslock, BA, moved toPalo Alto, Calif., for an interdis-ciplinary master’s degree pro-gram in the school of education

at Stanford University. Joanne P.Doyle, BA, lives in the Brentwood sec-tion of Los Angeles and is director ofrecruiting at eCompanies, an Internetincubator in Santa Monica. KathrynKillick Johnson, BA, married GaryDouglas Smith, MBA’93, on July 15,2000. They live in Nashville. DeniseLasprogata, BA, is founder ofDEEDEE, a New York City-based cloth-ing company that makes fashionableapparel for blind and partially sighted

38 V A N D E R B I L T M A G A Z I N E38 V A N D E R B I L T M A G A Z I N E

WZZK-FM. Colin Luke, BA, also wasfeatured in the July 21, 2000, issue ofthe Birmingham Business Journal for hisrole as vice president of developmentand corporate legal counsel for ActiveServices Corp.

’89Scott D. Carey, BA, a share-holder in the Nashville office ofBaker, Donelson, Bearman &Caldwell, was elected president

of the Tennessee Bar Association’sYoung Lawyers Division. MeredithRoberts Henry, BE, ME’95, MBA’95,works with GNB Technologies as amanager of plastics operations. She andher husband have been to NewZealand, Australia, and Paris since 1995and worked in Chicago, Columbus,Ga., and Jackson, Miss. James N. John-son, BA, MD’93, served four years as aflight surgeon and general medical offi-cer in the Air Force. After completinghis residency at the Mayo Clinic inJacksonville, Fla., last August, he beganserving a one-year sports medicine fel-lowship at San Jose Medical Center/Stanford University. Hal Piper, BA,MEd’93, joined Duke-Weeks RealtyCorporation in Tampa, Fla., as a leasingrepresentative. Ben Hardin Rowan III,BE, married Julie Lynn Jeter on Aug. 5,2000. They live in Memphis.

’90Melanie Denius, BS, marriedKevin Bartczak on June 16,2000. They live in Indialantic,Fla. Theresa Skowron Dunn,

BA, completed an M.B.A. degree at the

University of North Carolina at ChapelHill in May 2000 and married MichaelDavid Dunn in July. They live in Indi-anapolis where she works in marketingand opportunity analysis with Eli Lilly.Ken Epps, BS, is on hiatus from theNavy and is a first-year MBA student atthe University of North Carolina atChapel Hill. David Yuder Lien, BS,married Marina Yu-Qinq Lu on July 2,2000. They live in Nashville. Jeff S.Martindale, BA, accepted a position assenior financial analyst at FedEx inMemphis. He lives in Collierville,Tenn., with his wife, Lana, and sons,Will and Jack.

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’91Whitney K. DeJardin, BA, ofAlhambra, Calif., writes that sheand her husband, Brad, are busywith their daughter, Ellis, and are

renovating a 1912 Craftsman house.They are looking forward to seeingfriends and children at Reunion 2001 inJune. David Furtwengler, BE, is directorof test and evaluation for the TheaterHigh Altitude Area Defense (THAAD)project office. THAAD is a missiledefense system under development bythe U.S. Army and Ballistic MissileDefense Organization. He and his wife,Susan Honeycutt Furtwengler, BS,MSN’93, announce the birth of daugh-ter, Bethany, born in August 2000. CarlaJ. Haight, BS, of Blue Springs, Mo., waspromoted to performance consultant atOne Sprint Sales Center in the NationalConsumer Organization at Sprint Com-munications. John Hamilton, BA, andhis wife, Cheri, announce the birth oftheir first child, Jack, born in March2000. John received an M.B.A. fromDuke University’s Fuqua School of Busi-ness last May, then relocated to Atlantawhere he works for iXL as an Internetstrategy consultant. Jack Oliver, BA, anattorney in Cape Girardeau, Mo., servedas national finance director of theGeorge W. Bush presidential campaign.Jon Parrish Peede, BS, and his wife,Nancy Holloman-Peede, announce thebirth of a daughter, Somerset Kea Peede,born on May 2, 2000. He is director ofpublications and college editor at Mill-saps College in Jackson, Miss. MattSailors, BE, received a Ph.D. from theUniversity of Utah last May. He is a non-clinical assistant professor at the Univer-sity of Texas Health Science Center atHouston in general surgery and anadjunct assistant professor in the depart-ment of health informatics at the Schoolof Allied Health Sciences. John M. Turn-bull, BA, MD’95, returned to his regionalroots in Cookeville, Tenn., when hejoined the Upper Cumberland Orthope-dic Surgery practice.

’92Chris Baltz, BA, was nameddirector of media productionfor the Division of InstitutionalPlanning and Advancement at

Vanderbilt. His wife, Jill Taggert Baltz,BS, also works at Vanderbilt as assistantdirector of database management forinstitutional planning and advance-ment. Gregory M. Bernstein, BS, fin-ished a one-year assignment in Korea asthe physician for an Army artillery unitand now works in Washington, D.C., asa general medical officer in the healthclinic at the Pentagon. Amy Brown,BA, a third-year student at Rutgers LawSchool in Newark, N.J., was awarded ascholarship by the New Jersey State BarFoundation, the educational and phil-anthropic arm of the New Jersey StateBar Association. Olivia QuartelDaane-Black, BA, and her husband,David Andrew Black Jr., announce thebirth of a daughter, Ki-lin Daane Black,born on Oct. 25, 1999, in Aspen, Colo.Olivia is a self-employed artist, andDavid works with the Aspen Ski Com-pany. Sarah Hughes, BA, married SeanPatrick Kemple, BA’93, on April 29,2000, in Alexandria, Va., where theylive. Susan Swager Ingman, BA, andher husband, Martin, live in Helsinki,Finland, where they are IT consultantswith PricewaterhouseCoopers. Theyhave a one-year-old son, Erik JohannesIngman, and plan to attend Susan’s 10-year Vanderbilt Reunion in 2002.Heather Lea O’Cain, BA, marriedRobert Alfred Donato on May 6, 2000.They live in Memphis. Ben Ryan, BE,of Apex, N.C., began a new job lastAugust at the Internet start-up compa-ny Alerts.com. Deana Pace Wegenast,MEd, and her husband, Dennis,announce the birth of Evan JosephWegenast, born on May 7, 2000, joiningtwo-year-old brother, Zachary.

’93Alison Lee Ehlert, BS, marriedJason Alan Muncy on Aug. 7,1999, in Dallas. Bridesmaidsincluded Elisabeth Kyle Cater,

BA; Rania Deeb Smith, BA; PaulaFielder Wills, BA; Kelly Barton, BS; andLeslie Johnson McClanahan, BS. Alisonis a technical recruiter for AndersenConsulting. Melissa Fraser, BA, joinedthe Washington, D.C., law firm of Ful-bright Jaworski, practicing administra-tive law and oil and gas law. AllisonGardner, BS, married Brett Alan Auf-denkamp on July 15, 2000. They live inSmyrna, Tenn. Susan Stone Kessler, BS,MEd’94, assistant principal of FairviewHigh School in Tennessee, earned anEd.D. degree in school administration atVanderbilt last August. She and her hus-band, Eugene B. Kessler, BA’80, wel-comed their second child, ZacharyMatthew Stone Kessler, born on April 14,1999. Laura Shaffer, BA, of Arlington,

� Last year, a five-year-old charter school housed in temporary buildingson an inner-city parking lot in Houston took top honors among Texashigh schools based on academic achievement and attendance records.The school’s founder, director—and miracle worker—is 30-year-oldPeabody alumnus Christopher Barbic, BS’92.

The YES College Preparatory School is an open-enrollment schoolwhose students are primarily underprivileged Hispanic youth. Last year99 percent of the student body passed the state’s academic skills test, ascompared to neighborhood averages of 35 to 50 percent. SAT scores av-eraged 960 while neighborhood schools averaged 750.

Relying on creative solutions and a missionary zeal, Barbic launchedthe YES School under the auspices of the Houston Independent SchoolDistrict in 1995. Three years later he wrote a new charter that placedthe school under state jurisdiction and afforded Barbic the autonomy heneeded to make it work. Although YES is state funded, Barbic solicits pri-vate donations for the extras—about $750,000 in the last two years. Hehopes to buy land and begin construction on a permanent school build-ing soon.

“I don’t think I could do this anywhere else in the country,” says Barbic.“Houston still has that cowboy, wild-catter mentality. These people don’tmind taking risks.”

Positive publicity helps, too. Barbic recently picked up a prestigiousaward and a check for $10,000 from Rolling Stone magazine and DoSomething, a national nonprofit organization. He was selected for lead-ership, entrepreneurial skills, long-term vision, and a measurable effecton lasting positive change.

The YES motto is “Whatever It Takes”—and what it takes is plentyof energy. For 11 months of the year, classes begin at 7:30 A.M. weekdaysand end at 5 P.M. (an hour earlier on Fridays). Students also are re-quired to attend six-hour Saturday classes twice each month. Even so, 400enrolled students and their parents have signed contracts of compliance,and another 250 are on a waiting list.

“They see a college education as a way out of poverty,” says Barbic.“That’s the motivation.”

The faculty, in turn, is committed to preparing students for success incollege—socially as well as academically. Most minority students wholeave college leave for social reasons, says Barbic. “We try to make surethat won’t happen.” YES students get social conditioning through visitsto museums, theatre districts, historical sites, and longer trips to collegecampuses across the country. Last year YES ninth graders toured Vanderbilt.

At Vanderbilt, Barbic majored in human and organizational develop-ment and English—not in education—so his first teaching experience

came as a volunteer for the campus service organization Vanderbuddies;he tutored youngsters at Nashville’s Bethlehem Center. “I loved goingdown there and working with those kids. I guess I was born with teach-ing in my blood,” says Barbic, whose mother and aunt are teachers.

His newfound love for teaching prompted Barbic to choose Teach forAmerica as his senior research project. Teach for America is a programoffering teacher certification in exchange for a two-year commitmentto teach in impoverished neighborhoods. After graduation Barbic signedup and was hustled off to teach sixth graders in one of Houston’s inner-city schools.

“I could get the kids excited about learning, but when they went off tojunior high, it all unraveled,” he explains. “We needed a better answer.”That answer was YES.

YES stands for Youth Engaged in Service, and when Barbic talks aboutbuilding better communities through service, he means it. YES studentsvolunteer for everything from collecting food and toys to pounding ham-mers and wielding wrenches.

Barbic believes a critical mass of college-educated people can make aneighborhood thrive. He encourages his students—whom he calls “trail-blazers”—to get their college educations and then come back home wherethey can make a difference. On his desk, a symbolic crystal paperweightshaped like a mountain reminds him of this mission.

“I tell the kids it’s not enough to climb the mountain. When they getup there, they’ve got to reach down and help someone else to the top.”

—Julia Helgason

Christopher BarbicE N T E R P R I S I N G E D U C AT O R

F A N C I F U L F A C E S

“People provide the most interesting material for humor,” says Nashvilleartist Jim Gardner, BA’90. A banker by day, Gardner says his art is a “fun,weekend avocation. It beats playing golf or swilling beer.” He sold hisfirst painting in 1995, when “a friend talked me into doing a few worksfor a show. To my astonishment, someone bought one; it was a pleas-ant surprise.” A history and Spanish major at Vanderbilt, Gardner adds,“Unfortunately, the only time I did artwork at Vanderbilt was when I illus-trated books for girlfriends in early childhood education classes.” Hiswhimsical portraits can be seen at Local Color Gallery, Outside the Lines,Le Peep restaurant, and Sherlock Holmes Pub, all in Nashville.

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’87John M. Bayer, BE, is attendingthe U.S. Army Command andGeneral Staff College at Ft.Leavenworth, Kan., until June

2001. He previously served a 14-monthassignment with the 2nd Infantry Divi-sion in Korea. He and his wife, Perri,have a daughter, Bailee, four, and a son,Noah, one. “Drop us a line or call if youare in the Kansas City area,” he writes.Carol Ann Hilton, MEd, marriedJoseph Mark Finnigan on Oct. 21, 2000.She is a business proposal writer withDeloitte & Touche in Arlington, Va.Paula Hardin Hines, BS, and SteveHines, BS’85, announce the birth oftwin daughters, Megan Elizabeth andEmma Katherine, born on Jan. 11,2000. They live in Richardson, Texas.James R. Holmes, BA, and his wife,Elizabeth, announce the birth of theirfirst child, Emma McDonald Holmes,born in October 1999. He writes that hequit work to rear Emma and write hisPh.D. dissertation on the diplomacy ofTheodore Roosevelt. They live in Bel-mont, Mass. Thomas L. West, MA, waselected president of the AmericanTranslators Association, the largestassociation of professional translatorsin the United States. He is president ofIntermark Language Services inAtlanta.

’88Hans Heilmann, BA, was fea-tured in the July 21, 2000, issueof the Birmingham BusinessJournal as general sales manag-

er at country music radio station

W I N T E R / S P R I N G 2 0 0 1 41

Pete, have their own Vanderbilt alumniassociation on the hill. WhitneyMcCoy, BS, was promoted to senioraccount executive at Kleber & Associ-ates, an Atlanta advertising firm forclients in home improvement andbuilding product industries. AngelaDawn Middleton, BA, married RyanJoseph Mitchell, BA, on June 3, 2000.Attendants included MaureenMorgan, BS; Zach Hughes, BA; andNeal Massand, BS. Angela is pursuing amedical degree at the Medical Collegeof Virginia, and Ryan is a financial ana-lyst with Harris Williams & Companyin Richmond. John Nutter, BA, lives inMoscow, Russia, where he works for thelaw firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen &Hamilton. He will return to the UnitedStates this fall to attend the Universityof Virginia School of Law. Claire Eliza-beth Wakefield, BS, married AndrewDavis Berg on June 9, 2000. They live inFranklin, Tenn.

’99Jennifer Bewley, BS, lives inNashville and is in her secondyear of teaching first grade atEakin Elementary School.

Tiffany Cherrington Gaston, BS,MEd’00, married Albert Jackson DaleIV, BS, on July 8, 2000. They live inNashville. Juan A. McGruder, PhD, wasappointed special assistant to the presi-dent at Clark Atlanta University afterserving two years as assistant directorof CAPHE at the Council for Indepen-dent Colleges in Washington, D.C.Karen Choi Parvin, BS, and her hus-band, Chad Parvin, BE’98, celebratedtheir first wedding anniversary on Oct.30, 2000. They live in the Charleston,S.C., area. William B. Shropshire,MEd, is a high school counselor at Nor-cross High School in the Atlanta area.Kathryn Mead Smith, BS, marriedBrent William Webster on June 11,2000, in Greeneville, S.C.

’00Eothen “Egon”Alapatt, BA, wasfeatured in an article in the Aug.6, 2000, edition of the Connecti-cut Post newspaper in Bridge-

port. The story noted that he is anaccomplished deejay who introducedaudiences to funk. Alapatt is now in LosAngeles where he is manager and pro-ducer for the independent label Stone’sThrow Records. Kelly Bennett, BA,joined the Richmond, Va., firm of BB&TCapital Markets as an associate in thecorporate finance group. Jenn Reavis,BE, of Newburgh, Ind., writes that sheenjoys working at Merck as a pharma-ceutical engineer. Last summer she spenteight weeks in the Shinyanga region ofTanzania, working on nutrition andhealth counseling with women and chil-dren in rural villages.“While I was there,I climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, all the way to

Before her election to the VanderbiltBoard of Trust, she served as an officerof the Vanderbilt Aid Society, AlumniAssociation, Vanderbilt DevelopmentFoundation, and was a trustee of theJean and Alexander Heard Library. Lastyear she endowed the Mary JaneWerthan Professorship in Judaic andBiblical Studies at Vanderbilt’s DivinitySchool, and an annual achievementaward is given in her name by the Uni-versity’s Women’s Center. She was amember of the Temple Ohabai Shalomcongregation, served as Nashville presi-dent of the National Council of JewishWomen, chaired the women’s divisionof the Jewish Welfare Fund, and servedon the board of the Jewish CommunityCouncil. Survivors include her hus-band, a daughter, five grandchildren,five great-grandchildren, and a sister.

Edward H. Bringhurst, BA’31, ofDanville, Calif., October 1999.

Samuel L. Meyer, MS’32, of Lexington,Ky., June 26, 2000. He was president,emeritus, and the seventh president ofOhio Northern University. During histenure from 1965 to 1977, buildingcommenced on the west campusincluding Meyer Hall of Science,named in his honor. Prior to joiningOhio Northern, he worked at the Uni-versity of Tennessee, Emory University,Florida State University, CentralMethodist College in Missouri, and theUniversity of the Pacific. He was activein Rotary International, served on theUniversity Senate of the UnitedMethodist Church, and as chair of theOhio Foundation of Independent Col-leges. He is survived by his wife and twosons.

Ann Dillon, BA’33, of Nashville, July20, 2000. A magna cum laude graduateat Vanderbilt, she earned a master ofscience degree from Columbia Univer-sity. She served as director of statisticalservices for the Tennessee Departmentof Public Health from 1953 to 1968before moving on to a statistician posi-tion with Pan American Health Organi-zation in Washington, D.C. During hercareer, she also taught preventativemedicine and public health statistics atPeabody College and Meharry MedicalCollege School of Nursing and in 1965was listed in Who’s Who of AmericanWomen. Her professional affiliationsincluded the American Public HealthAssociation, American Statistical Asso-ciation, American Association for VitalRecords and Public Health Statistics,and the Tennessee Public Health Asso-ciation. She also was an active memberof West End United Methodist Churchand a supporter of Cheekwood,Nashville Opera Association, NashvilleSymphony, and a number of Vanderbiltdivisions, including the Blair School of

Music, College of Arts and Science,Heard Library, Children’s Hospital, andthe National Commodore Club.

Chester Colwell Brummett, BA’35,MD’38, of Mountain Brook, Ala., June7, 2000. He was a family practitioner inMiddlesboro, Ky., and Aberdeen, Miss.,before completing a residency in anes-thesiology and relocating to Birming-ham. He was a life deacon at theMountain Brook Baptist Church and amember of the American Academy ofAnesthesiology, the American MedicalAssociation, Alabama Medical Society,and Alabama Anesthesiology. His otheraffiliations included the AmericanRadio Relay League, Birmingham Sail-ing Club, and Birmingham AstronomyClub. A licensed pilot, he was active involunteer medical missions to Banga-lor, India; Ogbomosho, Nigeria; andGaza City, Israel. He was a flight sur-geon during World War II. Survivorsinclude his wife, Catherine Boyd BellBrummett, MD’38, three daughters,two sons, six grandchildren, and fivegreat-grandchildren.

Charles M. McGill, MD’35, of GigHarbor, Wash., Jan. 24, 2000.

J. Aust Matthews, BA’36, of PleasantHill, Calif., Sept. 1, 1998.

William H. Armistead, BE’37, MS’38,PhD’41, of Corning, N.Y., June 25,2000. He was retired from Corning Inc.where he had been director of research.Survivors include two daughters andthree sons.

Louise P. Childers, A’37, of Raymore,Mo., June 21, 2000. She and her husbandfarmed for 50 years and were placed onthe honor roll of the Missouri Agricul-tural Extension Service for their roles asleaders of 4-H. Her community involve-ment included serving as a Democraticcommitteewoman and membership inthe First Presbyterian Church of UnionStar, the General Federation of Women’sClubs, Philo Club, and Twentieth Centu-ry Club. She also had been a deputy forthe fourth district of the Order of theEastern Star. Survivors include threedaughters, a son, seven grandchildren,two step-grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and a step-great-grandchild.

William Southard Scott, MD’37, ofSpartanburg, S.C., May 6, 2000, follow-ing a lengthy illness. During World WarII, he served as a neuropsychiatrist atLawson General Hospital, the 216thGeneral Hospital in England and Ger-many, and the 82nd General Hospitalin France. He was a member of the FirstBaptist Church of Spartanburg, theSpartanburg County Medical Society,American Medical Association, South-ern Medical Association, and SouthCarolina Medical Association. Sur-

Uhuru Peak … and I can speak basicSwahili now.” Claire Rigsby, BA, mar-ried Rob Clark on July 15, 2000. Theylive in Bay City, Ill. Jeffrey S. Robinson,BA, lives in downtown Chicago wherehe works as an associate actuarial con-sultant for Towers Perrin.

D E AT H S

Andrew Emerson Chester, A’18, ofDallas, June 27, 2000. After serving as apilot during World War I, he workedfor Magnolia Petroleum Company,retiring in 1960 as vice president ofproduction. He was an active memberand elder at Highland Park Presbyter-ian Church and served as president ofthe Greater Dallas Council of Church-es. He was a mason and a member ofthe Dallas Country Club, Dallas Petro-leum Club, Daedalians, and MayflowerSociety. He is survived by his wife, fourchildren, 11 grandchildren, 11 great-grandchildren, and one great-great-grandchild.

F. Fagan Thompson, BA’25, MA’26,BD’28, of Wimberley, Texas, June 16,2000, after a brief bout with cancer. Hespent 18 years at Vanderbilt as a studentand teacher of religion and the arts, psy-chology of religion, and hymnody. Dur-ing the Depression, he traveled for theMethodist Publishing House, teachingthe Methodist hymnal and hymnody togroups in 17 states. He went on to minis-ter to churches and became a directorand consultant in psychology to Veter-an’s Administration hospitals through-out the South. Survivors include his wife,daughter, son F. Fagan Thompson Jr.,A’60, four grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

Mary Jane Werthan, BA’29, MA’35, ofNashville, Aug. 15, 2000, at her home.She was the first woman elected to theVanderbilt University Board of Trustand a leader in Nashville civic, cultural,and religious life. She was a chartermember of the board of directors ofPlanned Parenthood and was a found-ing member of Family & Children’sService, serving as president in the1950s. She also was a founding boardmember of the Public Television Coun-cil when it was formed to supportWDCN–Channel 8; a board memberwhen the Nashville Symphony Guildwas formed; first president of theFriends of Cheekwood; and a lifetimeboard member of the Tennessee Botan-ical Gardens and Fine Arts Center. As aVanderbilt student, she was president ofthe Women’s Student Government andWomen’s Athletic Association; presi-dent of her sorority, Alpha Epsilon Phi;Lady of the Bracelet, the highest recog-nition given to a female undergraduate;and was graduated Phi Beta Kappa.

40 V A N D E R B I L T M A G A Z I N E40 V A N D E R B I L T M A G A Z I N E

women. Her designs come with Brailletags describing garment color and careinstructions. Many of the garmentshave Braille words sewn with sequins onthe chest and around the midriff. Moni-ca Lewis, BA, married Jason Johnson,BE’96, on Sept. 2, 2000. They live inShawnee Mission, Kan. Jason DuaneRichardson, BS, MEd’97, marriedBrandi Elizabeth Burnett on May 21,2000. They live in Franklin, Tenn. Kris-ten R. Sullivan, BA, works as an edi-tor/writer for Omega PerformanceCorporation, a training and consultingfirm in Charlotte, N.C. Brian Thomas,BE, was appointed medical officer for atwo-year tour aboard the U.S. naval ves-sel USS Duluth last August. The Duluthis an amphibious ship that transportsmarines and their equipment.

R E U N I O N J U N E 1 – 2 , 2 0 0 1

’96Kimberly Secrist Ashby, BA,MEd’97, of Birmingham,received a master of divinitydegree in May 2000 from Union

Theological Seminary and PresbyterianSchool of Christian Education in Rich-mond, Va. Katherine Susanne Cizmar,BS, married Jason-Philip Camilleri onJuly 22, 2000. They are studying in Lon-don for master’s degrees, she in organiza-tional social psychology at the LondonSchool of Economics, and he in informa-tion management and finance at theUniversity of Westminster. AustinGarza, BS, finished medical school atVanderbilt and earned the M.D. degreelast spring. Joy Coleman Godshall,MEd, married William S. Ivester III onMarch 25, 2000, in Greenville, S.C.,where they live. She is coordinator of theUniversity of South Carolina’s transitionsystems change grant. Kimberly AnnMeyer Itkoff, BS, married ChristopherKent DeSalvo on April 2, 2000. They livein Atlanta where she is a benefits analyst

for Nextel Communications. Jennifer L.Letner, BS, is pursuing an M.B.A. at theUniversity of Georgia. Chanden S. Lang-hofer, BA, married Karen Harper on July8, 2000. After attending graduate schoolat George Washington University, heworks in the Pentagon. Matt Moynihan,BA, joined Weberize as content directorand linguistic administrator. SarahRouth Shelburne North, BA, was grad-uated from Vermont Law School magnacum laude and was designated a classmarshal for the May 2000 ceremonies.She and her husband, Barrie, foundedthe law school’s women’s rugby club. Sheis an associate with the law offices ofCharles Platto in Norwich, Vt., andLebanon, N.H. Sandra Gale Portnoy,BS, married Ethan Sumner Bornstein onMay 13, 2000. They live in Charlestown,Mass. John Shorb, BA, earned a masterof architecture degree from Virginia Techlast August and was awarded the HenryAdams Medal and Certificate as the sec-ond-ranking graduate. Gretchen Sti-chon, BA, of Nashville, was namedassistant to the director of education atthe Frist Center for the Visual Arts. MaryE. Traylor, BA, of Gainesville, Fla., writesthat she is excited to be done almost withmedical school and is ready to begin aresidency in pediatrics.“I look forwardto seeing lots of old friends at Reunionthis year and hope that lots of peoplereturn.” Duncan G. Winter, MEd,received the Tennessee Teacher of theHumanities 2000 Award from the Ten-nessee Humanities Council. He is chairof the social studies department at Fred J.Page High School in Franklin. YiwenYen, BE, received an M.S. degree fromCase Western Reserve University with aconcentration in medical imaging andcurrently is pursuing an M.D. at the Uni-versity of North Carolina School of Med-icine. Jessica Ruen Young, BS, marriedRobert Page Naftel, BA, on Aug. 5, 2000.They live in Atlanta where she is a senior

with overwhelming ambition.’ You haveto love Silicon Alley.” He is a senior sys-tems architect with Instinet in NewYork City, but hopes to build a mini-empire. “However, I still make time tothink outrageous thoughts and writeinflammatory essays. What’s life with-out a little controversy?” Andrew Oye-fesobi, BS, is a freelance entertainmentwriter and founder of Urban PrincePublishing, which released his firstnovel, Sin in Soul’s Kitchen, in February2000. His Web address is www.urban-prince.calicopark.com. Glenn E. Plosa,BA, works with the Nashville law firmof Zinser & Patterson after finishing lawschool at the University of Pittsburgh.Irene Porter, BS, was named assistantdirector of student life for Greek life atCentre College in Danville, Ky. OmarRosales, BA, a captain in the MarineCorps, reported for duty to the MarineCorps Tactical Systems Support Activi-ty at Camp Pendelton, Calif. OlegSavchenko, BS, was featured in theAug. 4, 2000, edition of the Jewish Stan-dard newspaper in Teaneck, N.J. He is aresident of Passaic and a medical stu-dent at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine inNew York City. Cynthia K. Suerken,BS, earned a master of science degree instatistics from the University of Georgiain May 2000, earning a 3.0 GPA, andreceived the Outstanding TeachingAward as the top teaching assistant inthe statistics department. She is aresearch statistician at the Research Tri-angle Institute in Chapel Hill, N.C.

’98Alician Fatemah Babalmoradi,BS, and Joseph AndrewDriscoll, BE’96, MA’98, weremarried May 21, 2000. She is in

a doctoral program in pharmacy, andhe is working on a doctoral degree inelectrical engineering. Anne-MarieBetts, BS, and John Peter Tartikoff,BA’95, were married on July 8, 2000, inPhiladelphia. They live in Atlanta whereshe is employed with Eclipsys Corpora-tion, and he works with the FultonCounty Police Department. Jeremy T.Chaussee, BS, is completing his thirdyear as an AmeriCorps VISTA workerfor the Massachusetts Campus Com-pact in Boston. Ryan Durst, BA, movedfrom New York City to Washington,D.C., where he is a staffer in the officeof U.S. Senator Fred Thompson, JD’67.Ashley Fogg, BS, joined the Atlantaadvertising firm of KilgannonMcReynolds as an account executive.Robyn Gerth, BS, is a geologist investi-gating earthquake hazards in Oakland,Calif. Daniel Martin, BA, writes that hefell in love with Chapel Hill, N.C., afterworking in the research triangle area.He started full-time classes at the Uni-versity of North Carolina’s businessschool. He notes that he and his dog,

M A K I N G B R I G H T E R D A Y S F O R C H I L D R E N

Stanford University plastic surgeon Nick Sieveking, BA’90, paus-es just long enough to pose with a patient during an intense two-week trip to the Philippines. Sieveking was part of a team of medicalvolunteers who traveled to the province of Leyte under the aus-pices of Interplast, a nonprofit organization that provides freereconstructive surgery for children in developing nations. Sievek-ing and two other plastic surgeons provided life-changing surg-eries on 44 children and six adults. “Those suffering from cleft lipsand cleft palates many times cannot eat properly, which may leadto malnutrition,” says Sieveking. “Children with cleft palatesalso have recurrent ear infections, which many times cause hear-ing loss.” Also part of the volunteer team was Nick’s father, NicholasSieveking, clinical psychologist and director of Vanderbilt’s Psy-chological and Counseling Center. The elder Sieveking studiedFilipino culture to help medical team members better understandtheir patients, and also provided therapeutic services.

consultant in computer systems withDeloitte Consulting, and he is a salesmanager at Ram Tool and Supply, a retailstore.

’97Kara Albert, BA, married AllenHicks on Aug. 12, 2000. Theymet in federal District Court inNashville the summer following

her graduation. She received a lawdegree and a master’s in bioethics atCase Western Reserve University Schoolof Law. They both practice law inAtlanta. Vandy alums at the weddingincluded Melissa Bowie Atkinson, BA;Jennifer Nordloh, BS; Charlotte Turn-er, BA; Britt Farwick, BA; Lisa Quall,BMus’99; and Megan von Gremp Mor-gan, BS, MSN’98. Lindsay Alexander,BMus, earned a master’s degree inchurch music/choral conducting fromBelmont University last August. She is amusic assistant at First PresbyterianChurch in Nashville. Michael Bobo,MD, completed medical school residen-cy at Vanderbilt last June and practicesoral and maxillofacial surgery in Mur-ray, Ky., and Union City, Tenn. He andhis wife, Sharon, have a young son,Christian. Heather Elizabeth Dewar,BS, and Brandon Nelson McCarthy,BA’96, were married on May 13, 2000.They live in Dallas where she is a pro-gram manager for Sprint, and he is anattorney. Kyla Marie Mostello, BA,proudly announces her New York Cityacting debut in the one-woman show“lamb of gods.” The show appeared atthe New York International Fringe Fes-tival last August. Thomas H. Mueller,BA, was graduated from the Universityof Mississippi School of Law and relo-cated to Jackson, Miss., where heaccepted a position as law clerk for aMississippi Supreme Court justice.Kevin O’Donnell, BA, writes that hecurrently lives by the motto, “‘Deca-dence is a valid lifestyle when balanced

W I N T E R / S P R I N G 2 0 0 1 4342 V A N D E R B I L T M A G A Z I N E42 V A N D E R B I L T M A G A Z I N E

vivors include his wife, two daughters,four grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

Sally B. Crosthwaite, BA’38, of Sher-man, Texas, April 13, 2000.

Robin A. Byron, MD’39, of Owingsville,Ky., Aug. 14, 2000, of complications fromcongestive heart failure. A veteran ofWorld War II, he retired as a major withthe U.S. Army Medical Corps serving inthe Pacific Theater, primarily in NewGuinea. He had an active private practicefor more than 50 years and was a mem-ber of the Owingsville Christian Church.Survivors include his wife, a daughter, ason, four grandchildren, a twin brother,and a sister.

William Parks Dixon, A’39, L’41, ofMemphis, July 11, 2000.

Wilfred S. Dowden, BA’39, MA’40, ofHouston, Texas, Oct. 31, 1999.

Leonard E. Garrard, BA’39, of Colum-bus, Ohio, July 24, 2000.

Bill Herbert, MD’39, of Spartanburg,S.C., Aug. 9, 2000, after a nine-yearstruggle with prostate cancer. An obste-trician/gynecologist, he delivered morethan 17,000 babies in Spartanburg hos-pitals. He was 76 when he delivered hislast baby, bringing the total to 17,001.He was author of Combat Surgeon, abook about landing behind the troopsat the Normandy Invasion and hisexperiences of running a 2,000-bedhospital to treat soldiers injured in theD-Day landing. Survivors include hiswife, Kitty Gale Herbert, BS’40,MA’41, a daughter, and two sons.

Morton B. Howell Jr., BA’39, ofNashville, Aug. 31, 2000, of complica-tions from Alzheimer’s disease. He wasa retired senior partner of Howell andFisher attorneys and a graduate ofMontgomery Bell Academy, serving onits board of trustees from 1947 until hisdeath. He earned his law degree at YaleUniversity and joined the U.S. Army AirCorps where he commanded theFourth Aviation Squadron at MaxwellField, Ala. He served on the board ofRhodes College and the EAR Founda-tion and was mayor of Belle Meadefrom 1947 to 1982. An avid duckhunter, his other interests includedLatin languages, travel, and classicalarchaeology. Survivors include a son,five grandchildren, and a brother.

James Arnold, MA’40, of Columbia,S.C., June 13, 2000. He studied at theUniversity of Grenoble, the Sorbonnein Paris, and the University of SouthCarolina. He taught in public and pri-vate schools and colleges and retiredfrom education in 1963 after his tenureas superintendent of schools in LowerRichland. A member of Shandon Pres-

byterian Church, he had a lifelonginterest in genealogy and history. Sur-vivors include his wife, a daughter, andthree grandchildren.

Lucy Matthews Mastin Kirkman,BA’41, of Charleston, S.C., June 21,2000. She was a member of the Daugh-ters of the American Revolution, LadiesBenevolent Society, National Society ofColonial Dames of America, Daughtersof the Crown, The Confederate Home,Daughters of the Cincinnati, Gibbes ArtGallery, Charleston Museum, LibrarySociety of Charleston, Delta DeltaDelta, and French Huguenot Church.Survivors include her husband, FrankL. Kirkman, BA’42, two daughters, ason, six grandchildren, and a sister.

Cloyd Andrew Robinson, BA’41, ofBirmingham, May 29, 2000. He servedas a lieutenant in the Army duringWorld War II and saw action in Bel-gium and Germany. After the war, heworked for Interstate Life InsuranceCompany and Sears Roebuck inNashville, Selma, and Birmingham.Survivors include two sons and sixgrandchildren.

Archie L. Boswell, JD’42, of Norfolk,Va., March 31, 2000.

Thomas O. Morris Jr., A’42, of Tampa,Fla., Dec. 29, 1999.

Eugene S. Ogrod, BD’42, of GraniteBay, Calif., July 8, 1999.

William H. Bailey, BD’45, of NorthChili, N.Y., April 13, 2000.

Marie Frances Kenneday Davis,BA’45, of Annisquam, Mass., April 19,2000. A native of Birmingham, shespent most of her childhood in herfamily’s hometown of Franklin, Tenn.She moved to Annisquam with her hus-band in 1946 where they reared theirthree children. She was an active volun-teer at the Addison Gilbert Hospitaland the Northshore Babies Hospitaland was a member of the Cape AnnGarden Club, the Annisquam SewingCircle, the Vanderbilt Alumni Associa-tion, the Annisquam Village Church,and the Annisquam Yacht Club. Sur-vivors include her husband, two daugh-ters, and six grandchildren.

Thomas Franklin Parrish, BA’45,MD’48, of Nashville, Aug. 10, 2000, fol-lowing a lengthy illness. He was Van-derbilt’s first orthopedic resident andserved for two years in the U.S. Army asa captain in the medical corps in Japanduring the Korean War. He was in prac-tice for 32 years with Tennessee Ortho-pedics. He raised cattle on a farm inCastalian Springs, Tenn., and was presi-dent of the Tennessee Hereford Associ-ation. Survivors include his wife, twosons, a daughter, and a brother.

Kenneth Todes, BA’45, of St. Louis,Mo., Aug. 12, 2000, of complicationsfrom various illnesses. An architect andbusinessman, he had owned the MarkTwain, Mayfair, and Gateway hotelsdowntown. At his death, he was workingon a memorial in Calvary Cemetery andon projects in Michigan. Survivorsinclude his wife, stepdaughter, stepson,and two step-grandchildren.

Ted R. Witt, BD’45, of Knoxville, Tenn.,June 8, 2000. He is survived by his wifeand son, Ted R. Witt Jr., BD’62.

Barry Bowers, BE’47, of Satellite Beach,Fla., Aug. 2, 2000, at his home. He was aNavy veteran of World War II, havingserved as a lieutenant in the IntelligenceService Unit called “Beach Jumpers.” Heearned a master’s degree in public healthpolicy from Johns Hopkins Universityand was CEO of Maryland General Hos-pital in Baltimore. He is survived by hiswife, daughter, son, stepdaughters, andgrandchildren.

Jeanne Marie Bryant Salmon, BA’48, ofNashville, Feb. 19, 2000.

Eugene Stuart Wolcott, BA’48, ofFranklin, Tenn., Sept. 1, 2000. He was aphysician in the Tennessee counties ofWilliamson and Marshall where heserved as chief of staff for both countyhospitals. He earned a D.D.S. degree atthe University of Tennessee College ofDentistry and an M.D. degree at the Uni-versity of Tennessee College of Medicinein Memphis. He was a retired lieutenantcolonel in the Air Force and a member ofHiram Lodge and York Rite in Franklinand Scottish Rite and Al Menah Templein Nashville, where he served as chiefmedical staff for 37 years. Survivorsinclude two sons, two daughters, and fivegrandchildren.

John McDuffie McGehee, A’49, ofMobile, Ala., July 15, 2000, following alengthy illness. He had served for a yearas Mobile County’s health officer andwas acting chairman of the Departmentof Internal Medicine at the University ofSouth Alabama. He served as a medicalofficer with the Navy during the KoreanWar and later set up a private practice.Survivors include his wife, a daughter,five stepdaughters, and 11 grandchil-dren.

Owen Martin Couch, BA’50, of Gun-tersville, Ala., Feb. 10, 2000.

H.G. Gatlin Jr., BA’50, JD’51, of Bethes-da, Md., Aug. 9, 2000.

Robin Spencer Courtney, BA’50, JD’55,of Columbia, Tenn., July 10, 2000. As ayoung man, he worked as a page in theU.S. Congress. He was a veteran of theArmy and served in Germany and theKorean War. A supporter of Vanderbiltathletics, he was senior warden and a

member of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.For more than 30 years, he worked in thegeneral practice of law and was cityattorney for Spring Hill. Survivorsinclude two sons, two daughters, and agrandson.

William G. Webber, BA’50, of PanamaCity, Fla., June 8, 2000.

Lewis R. Beam Jr., MD’51, of MillSpring, N.C., March 23, 2000.

Sally Davis Ford, BA’51, of Jackson,Tenn., Jan. 11, 2000.

James Robert Harland Jr., BA’51, L’54,of Atlanta, June 30, 2000, after a longbattle with cancer. He practiced realestate law in Atlanta. Survivors includehis wife, three children, and four grand-children.

E.J. Magnusson, BA’51, of Huntsville,Ala., June 7, 2000. He was a graduate ofColumbia Military Academy in Ten-nessee, Vanderbilt, and the Universityof Alabama. He served as a radar officerwith the Navy during World War IIaboard the destroyer USS Shelton. Amember of Mt. Zion Baptist Church, heretired from Thiokol after 36 years.Survivors include his wife, a sister, andseveral nieces and nephews.

William Sugg Voorhees, BA’52, ofNashville, Sept. 2, 2000. He was a mem-ber of Sigma Chi fraternity, a veteran ofthe Korean War, an elder of First Pres-byterian Church, and a member of theDowntown Rotary Club, CumberlandClub, Mission Inn Golf and CountryClub, and Howey-in-the-Hills, Fla. Sur-vivors include his wife, a son, a daugh-ter, a stepson, four stepdaughters, andnumerous grandchildren.

Elizabeth Calvin Booth, BA’53, ofAtlanta, Ga., Aug. 5, 2000. She attendedthe Berkshire Choral Institute andorganized a music ministry for seniorcitizens. She was a church soloist at St.George’s Episcopal Church in Nashvilleand the Cathedral of St. Philip andTrinity Presbyterian Church in Atlanta.Survivors include her husband, HenryBooth, BA’50, four children, and sevengrandchildren.

Percy F. Garnett, BA’53, of Florence,Ala., May 11, 2000.

Frances J. Cummins Moon, BA’54,MA’56, of Marietta, Ga., May 6, 2000.

Robert E. Kennington II, BA’55, ofGrenada, Miss., March 7, 2000.

Jack Kuzara, MA’55, MAT’55, of Buffa-lo, Wyo., July 2, 2000, at his home.While growing up, he helped his fatherbuild and maintain a cabin in the BigHorns, where he spent his summersand developed a love of stream fishing.During World War II, he served in theArmy Air Corps and participated in 32

missions in the European theater ofoperations. He later worked for theBureau of Reclamation’s informationdepartment in Boulder City, Nev. Hegraduated from the University of Utahin Salt Lake City and worked for thepostal service for 30 years until hisretirement in 1988 when he returned toBuffalo. In addition to stream fishing,he enjoyed hiking pioneer trails andvisiting places of historic importance.He was an active member of the Ore-gon Trail and Bozemen Trail societies.Survivors include his wife, a brother,and a sister.

Nancy Lou Rogers, BA’57, MS’68, ofNashville, Aug. 1, 2000, at her home.She had been a research associate atVanderbilt for many years and, at herdeath, was a research associate of thedivision of nephrology/clinical trialscenter. She is survived by a sister andcousins.

Willie Edward Phillips, PhD’59, ofUniversity Park, Md., Sept. 3, 2000, ofcancer. He was a physicist with theNational Bureau of Standards andhelped develop methods, computerprograms, and instrumentation forprecision deep-level measurements insemiconductors. He also focused onimproving precision low-temperaturethermometry techniques. In the 1980s,he taught electrical engineering andphysics at Mississippi State University.During World War II, he served in theArmy Signal Corps in China and India.He was a member of the UniversityUnited Methodist Church, the Masons,and the Rotary Club, where he wasnamed Rotarian of the Year in 1996 anda Paul Harris Fellow. He also was a pastboard member of the Institute of Elec-trical and Electronics Engineers. Sur-vivors include his wife, three daughters,and a sister.

Yvonne Spragins Tatum, A’59, ofMemphis, June 9, 2000.

John Harley Walsh, BA’59, MD’63, ofLos Angeles, June 14, 2000, of compli-cations from a heart attack. He wasresearch chief of the digestive diseasedivision and the Dorothy and LeonardStrauss Professor of Medicine at theUniversity of California Los AngelesSchool of Medicine. He also was direc-tor of CURE: the Digestive DiseaseResearch Center, and was internation-ally known for his pioneering studies ofhow gastric acid functions and of treat-ments for ulcers and other related dis-eases. Survivors include a daughter, ason, three grandchildren, and a sister.

Henry P. Staley Jr., BA’61, of Old Hick-ory, Tenn., April 2, 2000.

Cordell Thomas Taylor, BE’61, ofFranklin, Ky., July 25, 2000.

Lynn Dow Pearson, G’63, of Okla-homa City, Dec. 1, 1999.

Floyd Dale Crenshaw, PhD’64, ofEdwardsville, Ill., March 30, 2000.

Bobbie E. Oliver, MST’65, MLS’68, ofMemphis, May 20, 2000. He was retiredhead librarian at Memphis TheologicalSeminary and an ordained minister inthe Cumberland Presbyterian Church.He is survived by his wife.

Florence Spencer Statler, G’66, ofHendersonville, N.C., Feb. 11, 2000. Sheis survived by her husband, Anthony T.Statler, BA’50, MS’51.

J. Paul Franke, PhD’68, of Birming-ham, June 28, 1999.

Melissa Shane, MSN’99, of Nashville,August 2000. She was employed withVanderbilt at the VIPPS Center for Psy-chotherapy Research and Policy as amental health clinician.

Wise Heart continued from page 21

books became bestsellers. Patients were beginning to understandhow their arteries had become clogged and to learn to participate intheir own treatment.

Gotto believed that medical outcomes would improve whenpatients and their families became educated about the disease. Theidea was somewhat radical for a time when doctors gave orders andpatients obeyed—or disobeyed them. He also remained dedicatedto identifying tempting, tasty foods that met medical standards forheart health. His obsession culminated in his best-selling The NewLiving Heart Cookbook, coauthored with DeBakey, Lynne Scott, andJohn Foreyt.

When Gotto decided that similar fare should be available at restau-rants, he and Ted Bowen, CEO of The Methodist Hospital of Hous-ton, hired a chef and opened Chez Eddie in the hospital. The eateryproved a great success and was voted one of the city’s 10 best restau-rants.

Gotto and his Baylor colleagues pioneered research on the rela-tionship between cholesterol metabolism and hardening of the arter-ies, proving among other things a connection between loweredcholesterol and a lowered incidence of heart attack. During morethan two decades in Houston, Gotto was the Bob and VivianSmith Professor at Baylor, and chairman of the Albert B. and Mar-garet M. Alkek Department of Medicine and chief of the InternalMedicine Service at The Methodist Hospital in Houston. At Bay-lor he also held the J.S. Abercrombie Professor Chair for Athero-sclerosis and Lipoprotein Research and was scientific director of TheDeBakey Heart Center.

Then came the offer from Cornell and the prospect of new chal-lenges. Part of his assignment at Cornell would be building a researchinfrastructure, and there was $100 million to make it happen, a dona-tion from Cornell Chairman Sanford Weil and his wife, Joan.

The move to New York in 1997 took some adjustment.“I was herethree years before I could root for the Yankees,” Gotto quips, “butI’ve never regretted the move to Cornell.”

He draws inspiration from two black and white portraits liningthe walls of the dean’s conference room—those of Vanderbilt Schoolof Medicine legends Canby Robinson and Hugh Luckey, who bothwent on to lead Cornell’s medical school. “Cornell and Vanderbiltenjoy a long tradition of close relationships,” he observes.

Though he turned 65 this year, Gotto says retirement is a longway off. But in typical fashion, he’s laying the groundwork. The Got-tos spend winters in their old neighborhood in Houston where theystill own a home. They are about to start construction on a largercottage in Maine (they now have a lakeside cottage there) where theyplan to spend their summers—with plenty of room for family vis-its.

Though Jennifer and Gillian required lifesaving organ transplantsas adults, everyone is doing well. Jennifer, who finished her last twoyears in medical school on dialysis, is a psychiatrist and professor inLos Angeles. Gillian is a medical social worker in Houston. Teresa isa Harvard Business School graduate and stockbroker who lives andworks in London.

“Of course, I’d much rather they hadn’t been ill,” their father says.“But their illness strengthened their characters and their resolve andgave the girls a tremendous compassion for others that they wouldn’totherwise have.”

The Gotto daughters also learned that they could count on theirfather. “Tony has always been there for all of us,” his wife says. “Henever asks what he should do next. He always knows. And he alwaysdoes it.”

Julia Helgason, formerly a staff writer for the Dayton Daily News, is a free-lance writer in Nashville.

44 V A N D E R B I L T M A G A Z I N E

Symbiosis on a Grand ScaleVanderbilt has enriched the lives of a hundred thousand living alumni.

In turn, your input keeps the University grounded and growing. Please stay in touch.

A L U M N I A S S O C I A T I O N B O A R D O F D I R E C T O R S

PRESIDENT: Wayne S. Hyatt, BA’65,JD’68, 404/659-6600

PRESIDENT-ELECT: Stephen S. Riven,BA’60, 615/269-9377

VICE PRESIDENT: James H. Morgan,BA’69, 704/896-1788

REGION I: NASHVILLEMary Frist Barfield, BS’68, 615/665-1563Elizabeth Crow Dayani, BSN’71,

MSN’72, 615/371-5173Fran Keltner Hardcastle,

BA’59, 615/292-4338

REGION II: TENNESSEE (exclusive of Nashville)

David M. Chatman, BA’85, 615/904-1635Sarah Williams Hunt, BS’67,

931/684-2140

REGION III: SOUTHEAST (Ala., Fla., Ga., Miss., N.C., S.C.)

William R. DeLoache, BA’41, MD’43,864/288-6417

Scott C. Hatfield, BE’87, JD’93,919/846-5148

John B. Neeld Jr., BA’62, MD’66,770/396-4375

A. Alexander Taylor II, JD’78,423/821-2037

REGION IV: NORTHEAST (Ky. and Va.northward)

Sheryll Cashin, BE’84, 202/723-9596Richard A. Engle, BA’77, JD’81,

401/273-1303Donald E. Townswick, MBA’92,

860/563-5268Darell Eugene Zink Jr., BA’68,

317/255-1915

REGION V: WEST (all states west of Mississippi River)

Sharon Maginnis Munger, BA’68,214/350-5084

Jeff B. Love, BA’71, 713/226-1200Nancy Perot Mulford, BA’82

Atlanta: Joe Ellis, BA’87Birmingham: J. Ralph Jolly, BE’85,

205/870-4234Chicago: Michael S. Hurley, MBA’94,

773/472-5978Dallas: Paul B. Stevenson, BA’84,

214/696-0467Houston: Amy Ragan Weitzel, BA’85,

713/524-2239Los Angeles/Orange County: Beth

Cormier Pearson, BA’84, 949/673-0369

Memphis: Karen Thomas Fesmire,BS’80, 901/757-1828

Nashville: Janet Carney Schneider,BA’73, MAT’76, 615/352-2023

New York: Jeanette Warner-Goldstein,BA’82, JD’89

Washington, D.C.: Casey M. Carter,BA’85, 202/543-1360

Blair School of Music Liaison: LaurenMiller Utterback, BMus’90, 901/323-6516

Divinity School Liaison: William E.McConville, PhD’83, 518/783-4147

Owen Graduate School of ManagementLiaison: Bradford J. Williams III,MBA’94, JD’94, 212/619-8237

Peabody College Liaison: BerniceWeingart Gordon, BS’56, 615/352-6030

School of Engineering Liaison: AndrewW. Dozier, BE’69, MS’71, PhD’74,256/885-1579

Law School Liaison: Van Oliver, BA’71,JD’74, 214/987-3777

School of Medicine Liaison: George W.Holcomb, BA’43, MD’46, 615/298-1373

School of Nursing Liaison: MelissaCoate Hauck, BSN’72, 615/259-4438

EX OFFICIOPast presidents: Ruth Montgomery

Cecil, BA’65; John R. Loomis, BA’51Association of Vanderbilt Black Alumni

President: Cathy L. Bender, BS’82Divinity School Alumni/Alumnae

President: Trudy H. Stringer,MDiv’88

School of Engineering AlumniPresident: Robert L. Brown Sr., BE’50

Law School Alumni President: RichardS. Aldrich, JD’75

School of Medicine Alumni President:Herman J. Kaplan, MD’54

School of Nursing Alumni President:Leanne Crabtree Busby, MSN’87

Owen Graduate School of ManagementAlumni President: Robert W. Davis,MBA’91

Peabody College Alumni President: B.F.Stephens, BS’65

2001 General Reunion Cochairs: FredLummis, BA’76, and Claudia OwenLummis, BA’76

Vice Chancellor for InstitutionalPlanning and Advancement:Nicholas Zeppos

V A N D E R B I L T C L U B P R E S I D E N T S

Arizona: Frederick Eugene Powell III,BA’80, 602/582-0483

Atlanta: Bruce Elder, BA’92, MBA’93,404/329-2029

Austin: Melanie Anne Ripps, BA’96,512/478-6058

Baltimore: Election pendingBaton Rouge: Election pendingBirmingham: Clarke Houston

Gillespy, BA’94, 205/871-7599Boston: Paul Moore, BA’88,

617/630-9687Bowling Green: Election pendingCentral Florida: Harvey Baxter, BA’67,

352/378-8621Charlotte: Virginia Shuler Batchelder,

BS’92, 704/366-5088Chattanooga: Joy Ammer Irwin,

BE’89, 706/820-7718Chicago: Election pendingCincinnati: Sarah Raup Johnson,

BA’77, 513/871-2575Clarksville/Hopkinsville: Robert

Preston Kennedy, BA’92, MBA’93,931/645-8476

Cleveland: Ann Hamilton Womer-Benjamin, BA’75, 330/562-4861

Colorado: Leila Hahn, BA’95,303/306-9521

Columbus: Rodd S. Lawrence, BA’84,JD’87, 614/221-7633

Dallas: Pat Parsi, BA’89, 214/965-0313Detroit: Carrie Renee Van Ess, BS’95,

248/340-2035Four Corners (Tenn., Ark., Ky., Mo.):

Roy B. Herron, MDiv’80, JD’80,Dresden, Tenn., 901/364-5782

Hong Kong: Michael Todd Miller,BA’88, 852-2913-3783

Houston: Elizabeth Alsfelder Ditto,BA’84, and Steven Christopher Ditto,BE’84, 713/664-5881

Huntsville: Election pendingIndianapolis: Eric Michael Douthit,

BS’94, 317/824-0197Jackson, MS: James Kelley Williams Jr.,

BA’88, 601/982-5118Jackson, TN: John Garrard, MBA’90,

901/424-6343Jacksonville: Christopher Martin

Thompson, BS’87, and StephanieBures Thompson, BE’87,904/287-4044

Kansas City: Diana Bliss Kreiling,BA’90, 816/636-6117

Knoxville: Election pendingLexington: William L. Montague Jr.,

BA’88, 606/269-8331Little Rock: John Earl Tull III, BA’80,

501/221-3315Los Angeles: Beth Cormier Pearson,

BA’84, 949/474-4403Louisville: David Jason Hale, BA’89,

502/292-0335Maury County (TN): Manuel

DeWayne Young, BE’85,931/388-9755

Memphis: Joel Benjamin Sklar, JD’92,901/543-8016

Miami: Election pendingMid-Florida: Thomas Kimbrough

Johnson, JD’97, and Gina DeLucaJohnson, MSN’97, 407/894-9342

Minneapolis: Joshua Lee Kammerer,BA’96, 651/290-2015

Mobile: Evan Austill Jr., BS’93,334/476-2507

Montgomery: Robert S. Hill III, BA’65,334/834-7471

Murfreesboro: Election pendingMuscle Shoals, AL: Election pendingNashville: James Littlejohn, BE’76,

615/371-0008New Jersey: David M. Kupfer, BA’78,

JD’81, Chester, N.J., 908/879-4662New Orleans: M. Lisette Carter, BA’87,

504/818-0262New York: Meghan Cobleigh Medlock,

BA’97, 212/535-0317Northern California (San Francisco):

Matthew R. Nemer, BA’96,415/292-5213

North Carolina Triangle/Cary, N.C.:Ranya Hahn, BS’96, 919/678-0728

Oklahoma City: Stephen Bond Payne,BA’92, and Lori Renee DuphornePayne, BS’92, 405/524-0906

Palm Beach/Broward County: BradHelicher, BA’99, 954/489-2395

Pensacola: Robert W. Moulton, BA’62,850/432-5617

Philadelphia: Keri White, BA’88,215/592-9633

Pittsburgh: Erika R. Smith, BE’91,MBA’98, 724/625-1339

Richmond: Heather Hewitt Daniel,BA’82, 804/353-5873

Rome (Ga.): Robert M. Hammond Jr.,BA’71, 706/291-4259

St. Louis: William F. James Jr., BA’73,573/875-5000

San Antonio: Kenneth W. Thomas Jr.,BE’70, 210/828-8771, and SusanThomas, BA’70

San Diego: Adrienne Steltenpohl,BA’89, and Robert Steltenpohl,BA’89, 619/437-8837

Seattle: Matt Cotner, BE’97, and LizCotner, BE’97, 253/759-0689

Shelbyville/Highland Rim: Joan ToddGray, BS’65, 931/684-2833, and JohnPitts, BA’76, 931/684-2561

Shreveport: Election pendingSouth Carolina-Piedmont: H. Mills

Gallivan, BA’73, Greenville, S.C.,864/297-5934

Tampa/St. Petersburg: Ryan Barack,BS’95, 813/251-6689

Tri-Cities/Johnson City, TN: JohnAdams Butler, MBA’96,423/915-0240

Tri-States: E. Phillips Malone, BE’63,Owensboro, Ky., 270/685-2041

Tulsa: G. Lawrence Fox, BA’80,918/743-9397

Tupelo: Daniel Brasfield, BA’64, andFrances Joyner Brasfield, BA’64,601/844-3490

Washington, D.C.: Eric S. Purple,BA’90, 703/524-3899

West Alabama: Alyce M. Spruell, BA’80,Tuscaloosa, Ala., 205/752-3330

Western Kentucky: Election pendingWestern Michigan: George L.

Whitfield, BA’60, LLB’63, GrandRapids, Mich., 616/752-2000

Dore2Dore has all this and more.

…Coming Soonto a Computer Near You

Imagine being able to locate former classmates

and other alumni with the click of a mouse.

Imagine having one permanent e-mail address,

no matter how many times you change e-mail

service providers.

Imagine an online career network exclusively for

Vanderbilt alumni.

Vanderbilt’s new multi-feature, online community is foralumni and current students only. You’ll find details onVanderbilt happenings, including club events in your area.You’ll find contact information on classmates. You caneven sign up to help other alumni through theCommodore Career Connection. With Dore2Dore, you’llfind more reasons to go online than ever before.

Watch the mail for your Personal Identification Number(PIN) and complete information on accessing Dore2Dore.Or visit www.vanderbilt.edu/alumni to learn more.

Dore2Dore is made possible by the Vanderbilt Alumni Association and byVanderbilt’s Division of Institutional Planning and Advancement.

VA N D E R B I LT U N I V E R S I T Y

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2 3 0 1 V A N D E R B I L T P L A C E

N A S H V I L L E , T N 3 7 2 3 5 - 7 7 0 3

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NONPROFIT ORG.

U.S. POSTAGE

P A I DNASHVILLE, TN

PERMIT NO. 219

A Good ThingJust Got BetterYou love seeing the old gang at Vanderbilt Reunions.But you also love spending a long, leisurely MemorialDay weekend with family. What’s a loyal alum to do?

This year you don’t have to choose.

Reunion 2001 is moving from Memorial Day weekend to the first weekend in June.Don’t miss out on a fun-packed weekend as undergrad-uate classes ending in “1” and “6” reunite and reminisce.

Visit www.vanderbilt.edu/alumni/reunion to:• See what was going on when you were a student• See what activities are scheduled for your class• Chat with classmates on your class message board

Reunion 2001 � June 1–2Have your cake and eat it too.

(Not to mention cookies, pie, wine and cheese…)

Reunion OfficeVanderbilt University205 Alumni HallNashville, TN 37240Phone: 615/322-6034E-mail: reunion.office@vanderbilt.edu