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Wooster Magazine: 2011-Present Wooster Magazine

Spring 2011

Wooster Magazine: Spring 2011Karol Crosbie

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SPRING 2011

Image Artistry: Four poets

The Night Climbers of WoosterThe Marathoners

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E D ITO R Karol Crosbie

E D ITO R IAL AS S I STANTSSuzanne Capehart ’11, Beth Wardrop ’11,

Emily Billingsley ’11

P H OTO G RAP H E R Matt Dilyard

D E S I G N E R SChristina Ullman and Alix Northrup, Ullman Design

P R O D U CTI O N D I R E CTO R Cally King

P R E S I D E NTGrant H. Cornwell

V I C E P R E S I D E NT FO R D EVE LO P M E NTSara L. Patton

AS S O C IATE V I C E P R E S I D E NT FO RC O LLE G E R E LATI O N S AN D MAR K ETI N GJohn L. Hopkins

D I R E CTO R O F ALU M N I R E LATI O N SHeidi McCormick ’86

WO O STE R (USPS 691-220) is published fall,winter, spring, and summer by The College of Wooster,Wooster, Ohio 44691. Periodical postage paid atWooster, Ohio, and at additional mailing offices.

Send address changes to Wooster Magazine, 1220 Beall Avenue, Wooster, OH 44691-2393,330-263-2327, and editorial comments to330-263-2187.Campus switchboard: 330-263-2000

Email: kcrosbie@wooster.edu,Class_Notes@wooster.edu

Visit us on the web at www.woosteralumni.org

I S S N 0894-8798 | S P R I N G 2011 | VO LU M E 125 , N O . 3 | C O NTI N U I N G THE WOOSTER POST GRADUATE , FO U N D E D 1886

P R I NTE R Angstrom Graphics, ClevelandThis publication is made with paper certified by SmartWood to the standards of theForest Stewardship Council and the Rainforest Alliance. It is printed using healthy,environmentally friendly soy inks. Cert no. SW-COC-002235

Dear Wooster alumni, parents and friends,When I graduated from The College of Wooster, I did not expect to return—at least, not sooner than my

25th reunion, by which time, in my fantasy, I would have acquired fame, wealth, and a perfect figure.When I did come back to campus in 1973, possessing none of the above attributes, it was, I thought, just

for a summer before I would move on to something else. (I’d been promised a job in Boston for the fall.) Whenthat job fell through at the last minute, I was able to secure several part-time jobs on campus, one of whichwas as a grants writer in the Department of Development. (Who says English majors aren’t employable?)

The part-time job became full-time, and responsibilities increased. In 1979,thanks to a huge leap of faith by President Henry Copeland and members ofThe Board of Trustees, I was named vice president for development. There fol-lowed years of intense activity and engagement with Wooster’s Trustees, alum-ni and friends, three comprehensive campaigns, two changes of president, andcountless trips to and from the airport. No two days were ever quite the same;nearly every day presented some new insight into the character of the Collegeand the individuals who support it.

To have work that is fully engaging, to do it with colleagues one respects andholds in great affection, to get to know thousands of the alumni and friendswhose devotion to Wooster is the source of its abiding strength and vitality, andto witness daily the “miracles”—large and small—that occur for our students andthe faculty mentors who inspire them, has been a rare privilege. The captivating

beauty of our campus in any season is food for the soul. It’s easy to see why I’ve chosen to stay at Wooster.But now, I write to let you know that I will be stepping down as vice president for development on June

30, 2011. I will have a continuing association with the College, working on projects assigned by President Cornwell, throughout the 2011-12 academic year. In the days and weeks ahead, I look forwardto expressing my personal appreciation to many of you who, individually and collectively, have made myyears at Wooster such a pleasure.

“What’s good about goodbye” is that it isn’t goodbye, not really, just a transition point inevitable in thelife of every college. I know that my successor will quickly discover the stellar qualities of all thingsWooster, but most especially that Wooster’s alumni and friends are beyond compare.

With gratitude and warm regards,

Photo: Matt Dilyard

What ’s good about goodbye?

248 12

F e a t u r e s 1 2 THE MARATHONERSAlumni run themselves to health, happiness, and the finish line.

2 2 THE NIGHT CLIMBERS OF WOOSTERThe merry pranks of Will & Company

2 4 IMAGE ARTISTRY: FOUR POETSThe words of alumni poets spark theimagination of photographers and readers.

C O V E R P H OTO : Dreamstime.com

SPRING 2011 Wooster 1

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2 Wooster SPRING 2011

As a nation, India has the largest concentration ofWooster alumni outside the United States. Our connec-tions with India go back to our earliest days and wererevived in the summer of 2008 when the Hales Fund

faculty study group traveled there (see Wooster, Fall 2008).Since then, they have incorporated what they learned intoWooster’s curricula. Our connections are an important part ofWooster’s history and a vital part of our future.

That’s why in January, Professor Shila Garg, Peg, and Iembarked on a four-city,12-day trip to meet with alumni, parents,prospective students, and Indian educators and begin mappingout ways to strengthen and deepen those ties.

In Mumbai, an alumni event hosted by Vishal Jain ’90, drewboth recent graduates and those who are mid-career profession-als, all thrilled to reunite with members of the Wooster family. Ashared sense of optimism about India’s future was evident, asrecent graduates commented that they had returned home tobegin their careers because of opportunities afforded by India’sgrowing economy. In Mumbai, we also visited a temple of SreeLakshmi, the goddess of wealth, where I attempted to promotesustainable positive returns for the College’s endowment with awell-chosen offering.

In Bangalore, Jairaj Daniel ’83 secured an appointment forus at the Bishop Cotton Boys School, where the principal called

an impromptu assembly of the junior class to watch a videoabout Wooster and hear us discuss the benefits of our approachto mentored, undergraduate research. We also met with theleaders of several NGOs where students from our Global Social

RENEWING CONNECTIONS by President Grant Cornwell

Wooster in India

Practicing social entrepreneurshipAs part of the College’s Global Social Entrepreneurship pro-

gram, two groups of students traveled to Bangalore to practiceproblem-solving skills. Under the mentorship of AmyazMoledina, assistant professor of economics and co-director ofWooster’s Center for Diversity and Global Engagement, oneteam collaborated with Dream a Dream, an organization thathelps underprivileged children. Another team worked withEnAble India, a nonprofit that prepares people with disabilitiesfor placement at Fortune 500 companies.

In only its second year, the program has already received highhonors. This spring it received the Andrew Heiskell Award forInnovation in International Education from the Institute ofInternational Education, which also administers the Fulbright pro-gram. Designed by and for students, alumni, staff, and faculty,the program harnesses entrepreneurial energy and creativity tosolve society’s most pressing problems.

In Bangalore: Chris Marino ’11, Constance Ferber ’11,Gitika Mohta ’10, Ben Bestor ’11, Lauren Grimanis ’12, MarianneSierocinski ’11, Purvaa Sampath, Prachi Saraogi ’11.

SPRING 2011 Wooster 3

Entrepreneurship program worked last summer.In Kolkata, Amit Tibrewal ’90 graciously welcomed us, and

Shiv and Smita Kaul ’00s, hosted a reception for more than 35alumni, parents, and friends, including Sandeep Bhatia ’89, aWooster trustee, and his wife, Megan ’89. Peg, Shila, and I areespecially grateful to Smita for taking us to the Kolkata flowermarket at dawn one morning. It was a moving juxtaposition ofindustriousness and poverty, of the beauty of hundreds of thou-sands of flower blossoms against a backdrop of urban squalor.

In Delhi, we enjoyed another great gathering of alumni andalso participated in a roundtable on liberal arts education spon-sored by the Fulbright Foundation, wherein Shila and I exchangedviews with our India colleagues on the question of whether orhow a liberal arts education is a fitting preparation for responsibleglobal citizenship.

We also had the good fortune to be in Delhi for the premiereof “The Poetics of Color: Natvar Bhavsara.” This documentaryabout a celebrated Indian artist was produced by SundaramTagore ’84, an art historian and gallery owner with galleries inNew York, San Francisco, and Hong Kong.

Everywhere we went, we met Wooster alumni of all genera-tions who are proud, loyal, and eager to give back to the Collegeand help it prosper. Moreover, they are eager to have a particularidentity and focus as Wooster alumni in India. To that end, plansare underway to form an All-India Wooster Alumni Leadership

Group, to help guide, par-ticipate in, and contributeto the college’s efforts inIndia. There’s more tocome; check out Woosterin India on Facebook.

Given the trajectory ofglobalization, India isstrategically important toWooster’s future. Theexcellence of our coremission will be advancedif we can develop a con-sistent and sustainableflow of Indian studentsattending Wooster, and ifour academic programincludes a variety of

opportunities for Wooster students and faculty to study in andabout India. This trip was just one step, but an important one, inan ongoing journey for Wooster in India.

far left Puneet Bhagchandani ’96 and President Cornwell outsidethe Red Fort in Delhi. Constructed between 1638 and 1648, it servedas the capital of the Mughal emperors for two centuries.above Peg Cornwell in the Kolkata flower market.

“Global social entrepreneurship enables students to think as global citizens and actas global change agents. Leaders of the future need to see borders not as barriers,but as opportunities; to count similarities, not differences.”

. . . AMYAZ MOLEDINA, assistant professor of economics and

co-director of Wooster’s Center for Diversity and Global Engagement

Exploring the artsTheater and dance faculty members Shirley

Huston-Findley, who visited India in 2008 as part ofthe Hales Fund Study Group, and Kim Tritt will leadstudents in an exploration of the arts in Chennai andKerala. For three weeks during fall semester,students will attend traditional and classical theaterand dance festivals and performances and study the-ater, architecture, and dance at the KalamandalamUniversity of Arts and Culture. They will also participatein a service project in Wooster Nagar, a small fishingvillage in Tamil Nadu, that renamed itself “LittleWooster” in recognition of donations from the citizensof Wooster following the 2008 tsunami.

left Students outside the Chamundeshwari Temple inMysore. right Lauren Crimanis ’12 gets fitted for a sari ina shop in Mysore.

O a k G r o v eHAPPENINGS AROUND CAMPUS

4 Wooster SPRING 2011

O a k G r o v eFaculty ResearchAltering mosquito behaviors

Laura Sirot, assistant professor of biology, and researchersat Cornell University and the NationalInstitutes of Health, have identifiedkey proteins in the mosquito speciesAedes aegypti. Sirot and her col-leagues will measure the effect ofthese proteins and how their elimina-tion might alter the behavior of theblood-sucking female.

Their study was conducted onmosquitoes that carry the yellowfever and dengue fever viruses, whichkill millions of humans annually. “Wehave been able to identify the pro-

teins that males transfer to the female,” says Sirot. “By distin-guishing between male-derived and female-derived proteins inthe female reproductive tract, we can begin to determine whichmale-derived proteins affect the behavior and physiology of thefemales.” The researchers hope to develop innovative new con-trol strategies, such as reducing egg production and curbing thefemale’s appetite for blood, which could serve as alternatives topesticides and reduce the spread of mosquito-born diseases.

Prisons and Religion in Antebellum AmericaJennifer Graber’s new book, The Furnace of Affliction:

Prisons and Religion in Antebellum

America, is receiving high praise.Yale’s Harry Stout said that Graberhas provided “the most sophisticatedand comprehensive history of prisonsand religion in early America that hasever been written.” Assistant profes-sor of religion Graber describes dis-connects in the country’s early visionsfor its prisons—the quandary betweenreformation and retribution. Christianleaders who wanted to establish asystem that rehabilitated and

reformed inmates ran into resistance from government leadersand also from inmates, who resisted evangelization. “At times,religious leaders shaped the system,” says Graber, “but at othertimes, government leaders had their way.”

Two hundred years later, many of the same problems persistin the nation’s prisons, says Graber. “Most prisons are punitiveand not rehabilitative,” she says. “We need to fundamentallyrethink the entire system and consider what a rehabilitativeprogram might look like.”

The national media discoversPaul Edmiston’s Osorb

Two years ago, when we featured Paul Edmiston’s discovery(http://www.flipseekllc.com/wooster2009summer.html) themedia was just beginning to pay attention. Today it’s a differentstory. Take a look:

FROM MSNBC Business News Daily,Ned Smith, Feb. 15

Like a sponge, this new technology sucks it up: PaulEdmiston started out looking for a compound that would helpdetect explosives at airports. What he found instead was a mate-rial that hates water but loves hydrocarbons such as oil with apassion.

He dubbed the new material Osorb because it can expand upto eight times its original volume like a sponge, lift 20,000 timesits own weight and suck oil or other hydrocarbon pollutants outof water without leaving any trace of itself in the environment. Itand the hydrocarbons it removes can also be reused. “A thermosfull can lift your car,” he says.

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SPRING 2011 Wooster 5

FROM Popular Mechanics, Sarah Fecht, Jan. 21. . . As we saw demonstrated in yesterday's live webcast,

Osorb is pretty cool. Paul Edmiston, Osorb's creator, accepted abottle of fuel additive from an NSF employee and used it to liber-ally spike a bottle of clean water. He then poured a white powderinto the cocktail of jet fuel and detergents and shook it; when afoamy orange substance grew at the surface, he filtered thewater into a clear glass and casually pounded it back.

So what, exactly, is it that allowed him to drink from an oil slickand live to tell about it? A sponge made from a silicon and ben-zene polymer. Chemically, ‘it's halfway between the window-paneglass of your car and the caulk in your bathtub,’ Edmiston says.

FROM Beacon Journal, Bob Downing, March 23Osorb's biggest potential market is what the oil and gas

industry calls produced water, said Edmiston and companyCEO Stephen Spoonamore. It is the naturally occurring waterthat is pumped to the surface from both oil and natural gasdrilling. For every barrel of oil that is recovered, up to 10 bar-rels of water that contain dissolved and dispersed oil and highlevels of salt are produced.

One of the biggest pluses is that the use of Osorb wouldenable producers to recover oil that is not recoverable at themoment, Edmiston said. The volume of produced water is esti-mated at 800 billion gallons a year, enough to account for 25percent of the flow of the Colorado River— one of the largestwaste streams in the world, he said.

FROM Chronicle of Higher Education, Sophia Li,July 18, 2010

Mr. Edmiston believes that being at Wooster, a small liberal-arts college in Ohio, was invaluable to Osorb's development. Hehad no competition during the years he spent studying the mate-rial, and he attributes that to Wooster's low profile—it doesn'thave a reputation as a hotbed of chemistry innovation.

In the future, Mr. Edmiston wants his company to be a sourceof high-tech jobs for the region, an incentive for young collegegraduates to stay in the state. "I'd like to reverse the Ohio braindrain," he says. He's made a small start: Three of the company's28 employees are Mr. Edmiston's former students and Woostergraduates.

FIGHTING SCOTS POINTS OF PRIDE

The Fighting Scots men’s basketball team won a school-record 31 games (31-3), both the North Coast AthleticConference regular season and tournament championships, andwith five NCAA tournament wins, advanced to the national titlegame for the first time. But in the final national championshipface-off, the University of St. Thomas, Minn., prevailed, 78-54.

The team’s games traditionally draw huge crowds of fans thatare the envy of other Division III schools. As excitement grew forthe potential championship, fans outdid themselves, with theTimken Gym overflowing its 3,500 capacity and many studentsand fans spending spring break at the play-offs.

Earlier thisyear, thewomen’s soc-cer team beatarchrivalWittenbergUniversity fortheir first NorthCoast AthleticConferencechampionshipsince 1996.

Photos: Matt Dilyard

Faculty & staff retirements

6 Wooster SPRING 2011

O a k G r o v eHAPPENINGS AROUND CAMPUS O a k G r o v e

MARGO WARNER CURLcollections services librarian

It may be safe to say that nothing has changed more radicallyin the past 23 years than information technology. Margo WarnerCurl was hired in 1988 to coordinate the College’s shift from apaper catalogue to an online one and has been staying ahead ofchange ever since. She was instrumental in developing sharedresources with Ohio Link, which allows higher educational insti-tutions in the state to access each other’s materials, and helpedto implement CONSORT, the shared database with Denison andOhio Wesleyan Universities and Kenyon College.

As a collections services librarian, Curl has been charged withmatching the needs of a dynamic student and faculty populationwith an explosion of resources. Managing online resourcesbecame the most challenging part of her job, she says. “Eachonline journal, for example, might have a different set of regula-tions and staff might communicate with you differently. Eachinvestigation was an adventure.”

With special expertise in French (her undergraduate major),

sociology, and anthropology, Curl worked closely with studentson their Independent Study projects, with a goal of teachingthem to be effective researchers. “The challenge was steeringthem away from grabbing the first 30 sources they found towrite their paper,” she says.

She also worked with resources at the opposite end of the“tech-spectrum”— antiquated books in Special Collections. Curl,who grew up attending Woodstock, a Christian internationalboarding school in India, had a special interest in the College’svoluminous collection of materials loosely dubbed “missionarystuff,” which she analyzed, transcribed, and organized. She useda summer leave to inventory Protestant missionary materialsholdings at private colleges; this database is now housed at Yale.During another summer leave, she returned to Woodstock tohelp her alma mater set up an archive.

The high points of her tenure, Curl says, were her interactionwith other skilled and dedicated faculty and staff, and thedynamic nature of her work. “About the time I began to think,‘This is the same old thing,’ something new always came along.”

NANCY ANDERSONdirector of the student wellness center

Nancy Anderson, a nurse at the College since 1979 anddirector of the Longbrake Student Wellness Center since 1990,gets upset whenever a distinction is made between college lifeand “the real world.” The “Wooster bubble” does not, in fact, pro-tect students against illness. They get sick 24-7; they miss theirfamilies and pets; they are subject to eating disorders, sexualidentity crises, alcohol abuse, injuries, and plain old bad colds.“Life on campus is very real,” says Anderson.

Being responsive to those needs and involving the wholeCollege community in health education has been key to theCenter’s success, says Anderson, who played a leadershiprole in planning the Longbrake Student Wellness Center (agift of Martha and William A. Longbrake ’65). “We met withabout 450 students over root beer floats and cookies,” sheremembers. “We asked them, ‘What do you want our newhealth center to do for you?’”

Since the Center opened in 2002, Anderson and her staffhave implemented a wide variety of student programs. As firm

believers in students educating students, Center staff developeda first responder program and peer mentoring groups. Theyinstituted pet therapy and healthy eating education, sponsoredprogram houses dedicated to alcohol-free entertainment, devel-oped a self-help cold care and first aid center, and offered thera-peutic massage to the entire College community.

Colleges that provide 24-7 student medical care are in theminority, and Wooster’s commitment to do so has helped theCollege with critical retention efforts, says Anderson. “Parentsare less inclined to pull an injured or ill student out of school,knowing we have 24-hour nursing coverage and that our physi-cians are from the Cleveland Clinic.”

Anderson served as a mentor in first-year seminars, accom-panied students on domestic and international service trips, par-ticipated in the Worthy Questions program, and sponsoredinternational students, staying connected with them long aftergraduation.

“I’m excited about the College’s global emphasis,” she says.“Our world is so small. In order to live in a healthy way, we mustvalue other people as part of a global community.”

SPRING 2011 Wooster 7

AN ERA ENDS100 years of Collier Printing support

ROGER COLLIERdirector of publications

The College first began using Collier Printing in about1911, back when the company was owned by CharlesCollier Sr., Roger Collier’s grandfather. Collier Printing

continued to serve theCollege under the ownershipof brothers Jim and Roger,who took over managementin 1972. “I don’t know howmany people knew howoften Roger helped theCollege out with printing anddesign predicaments,” saysRobin Welty, former CollierPrinting employee and cur-rent design specialist at theCollege.

After the Collier PrintingCompany closed its doors in2000, Roger came to theCollege as director of publi-cations, where he served theentire College, includingWooster magazine. A workethic that dictated putting hiscustomers first, his steadfastpatience, and his unsur-passed technical expertisemade him as invaluable tothe College in 2011 as hisancestors were in 1911.

Margo Curl at theAndrews Library.

Nancy Anderson,with an artifact fromthe Hygeia healthcenter, which pre-dated the currenthealth center.

Photos by Karol Crosbie

Retiree Linda Hults, professor of art, will be featured in the summer issue.

8 Wooster SPRING 2011

W O O ST E R A LU M N I ACT I V I T I ES A l u m n i N e w s

Distinguished AlumniReggie Williams ’63, Angene and Jack Wilson ’61, and David Dunlop ’73 will receive Distinguished

Alumni Awards during Alumni Weekend, June 9-12. The award is given each year to alumni who bring honor

to the College through their service and/or professional accomplishments.

DAVID DUNLOP ’73: Following the paint

David Dunlop’s worldview is awash in shades of ambi-guity and contradictions. On the one hand, heacknowledges the irony of receiving an Emmy Awardfor writing the PBS series “Landscapes Through Time

with David Dunlop.” “I’ve spent most of my life painting, but Iwon the award for my writing,” he says. On the other hand, theturn of events is a perfect illustration of Dunlop’s philosophy of“Erasable Intentions.”

On the one hand, Dunlop believes that we are shaped by ourmemories. But, he says, because our memories are amorphous,our perceptions of ourselves are also in flux. “We’re alwaysrecasting memories, always changing.” (But he acknowledgesthat the memory of a Wooster art teacher, Sybil Gould, was sopermanently compelling, that he named his daughter “Sybil,”after his mentor. )

On the one hand, Dunlop says that enjoying the art of themasters is “as easy as eating a slice of apple pie.” But onthe other hand, he has become an expert on the complex

A l u m n i N e w s

confluence of disciplines—philosophy, history, psychology, andneuroscience—that shape a painting.

A religious studies major at Wooster, David Dunlop knew whathe wanted: To paint for a living. But what were the chances ofthat happening? By the age of 35, dozens of shows and commis-sions later, he discovered that he could, in fact, paint for a living. “Ialso discovered that it was lonely,” he says.” There was no one totalk to and I love to talk.” So he began teaching one day a week.

The TV series “Landscapes Through Time” resulted when oneof his students happened to be an award-winning TV executiveand producer. The 13-part series was filmed on location inEurope and the United States at sites that inspired famouspainters, i.e. Monet’s water-lily pond in Giverny, van Gogh’s asylumin St. Remy in Provence, Cezanne’s Mont Sainte-Victoire. Settinghis easel where the artists had set theirs, Dunlop illustrated tech-niques and discussed historic, philosophic, and scientific develop-ments that influenced the artists and their masterpieces.

“I don’t perceive any borders between art, science, and history,”he says. “They have tremendous territories of overlap.” Artistsknow, for example, that humans track other humans first by look-ing at their eyes, that humans’ pupils will expand and their cheekswill flush when they’re interested and excited; that yellow is thecolor of royalty in China (but not so much in the United States);that the way cones in the eyes perform affects color perception;that our eyes send information about in-focus images and in-motion images to different parts of the brain.

Dunlop’s own art is affected by his evolving understanding ofthe biology of vision and memory. “I use layers and layers of pic-tures that give me a big field that’s both furry and blurry, and stillemotive of some condition, like architecture or a landscape. Theblurriness is like the blades of a fan or spokes of a wheel—youknow what the object is and you know it’s in motion, but youproject details from your own experience.

“The ambiguous condition triggers imagination.”His greatest personal accomplishment, says Dunlop, is discov-

ering the philosophy of Erasable Intentions. “The idea came from

DaVinci, when he said, ‘Don’t be tethered to your original idea.’ Itcame from Picasso, when he said, ‘Follow the paint.’ As soon as Imake a mark, I have changed the nature of the canvas. It’s notwhat I expected, because my intention and memory are porous.Each mark, each stroke, each line drives us to new possibilities.

“It’s true of parenting; don’t superimpose a template or you’llruin the child. Or the dog. Or the education. Or the relationship.Follow the paint. See where it’s going.”

SPRING 2011 Wooster 9

Alumni Weekend, June 9-12, 2011Find out who’s coming and register to attend at http://woosteralumni.org/

Mark your calendar: HOMECOMING Oct. 1, 2011

(left) David Dunlop at Monet’s water-lilly pond, during the PBS series“Landscapes Through Time.” (above) “New York to Rome, GrandCentral Station to the Forum: Conflating Memories,” a painting byDunlop: http://www.landscapesthroughtime.com/

10 Wooster SPRING 2011

W O O ST E R A LU M N I ACT I V I T I ES A l u m n i N e w s

REGGIE WILLIAMS ’63Taking care of his community

Clarence “Reggie” Williams has grown accustomedto the question: How did a retired full colonel withthe U.S. Air Force, where results can be achievedthrough command, make it to president and CEO

of a philanthropic foundation, where results can only beachieved by request?

Williams’ position at the San Antonio Area Foundation(www.saafdn.org), which he assumed in 2000, came after a longjourney. He grew up in Orrville near Wooster, the son of a singlemother who worked many jobs—at a foundry, on the railroad—before landing a job as a housekeeper at the College. Shestruck up a friendship with the football coach, the late Phil Shipe,and over lunch they spoke of many things, including youngReggie’s successful football career at Orrville High. WhenWilliams’ mom returned home, she often told her son stories ofthe College and Coach Shipe.

When Williams was offered an opportunity to attendWooster, he was ready to tackle the challenge. He majored inbiology and did his I.S. at the Ohio Agricultural Research andDevelopment Center. When he was a junior, his mother died. “I

learned a lot from her about how to work, and that served mewell,” he says.

To avoid the Vietnam War draft (“I wanted to choose my serv-ice rather than having it choose me”), Williams enlisted in elec-tronics school with the U.S. Air Force. He spent the next 27years as an officer in communications electronics and informa-tion technology. Following retirement, he took a position as vicepresident with the United Services Automobile Association,where he also served as chair of the company’s volunteer corps.

When he retired nine years later, he assumed his currentposition with the San Antonio Area Foundation. “Most peoplehave retirement parties,” he says. “I have rehirement parties.”

Williams is used to the question about his career path, andhis answer is ready. “One of the tenets of military command is‘Take care of the troops.’ It’s a short step to ‘Take care of thecustomers.’ And it’s another short step to ‘Take care of the people in your community.’”

Under Williams’ leadership, the Foundation’s assets havegrown from $100 million to $212 million. Under his direction,individual centers—hubs of service to the community—havebeen created. Funds for women and girls and for the Hispanicand African American communities have been developed. TheFoundation was a significant player in the creation of Haven forHope, a 37–acre campus that provides shelter, job training,counseling, and education to the homeless. The Foundation wasa major contributor and organizer of services to 25,000 evac-uees to San Antonio during the Hurricane Katrina crisis. Williamsused his electronics communication expertise to secure a grantand launch a neighbor-to-neighbor online news site. One of theFoundation’s major efforts—helping San Antonio become anAnimal No Kill community—has made stunning progress, witheuthanization down from 50,000 to 25,000; by 2012, Williamshopes they will be to close to their no-kill goal.

Williams calls his work “a grand opportunity” to link twogroups of people. “On one side are the donors, who haveamassed resources and have looked over their shoulders, andsaid, ‘I want to do something for someone else.’ On the otherside are the people willing to do the really tough jobs of society.

“If every one of us does everything we can for children,adults, education, art, biomedical science, animal welfare, hous-ing—if we do everything we possibly can—it won’t be enough.

“But when you’re all in the trenches, and everyone is doingthe best they can, you feel a partnership. We’re all responsiblefor each other. Understanding our responsibility is what makesus a civil nation.”

A l u m n i N e w s

SPRING 2011 Wooster 11

ANGENE AND JACK WILSON ’61sCitizens of the world

The year was 1961, and for Wooster seniors AngeneHopkins and Jack Wilson, the time was right to be movedby President Kennedy’s historic plea to college students tomake a difference. The pair, already a couple, had begun

chafing against the Wooster bubble (which was considerably moreopaque than it is today). They could, for example, count on onehand the number of Wooster students who were not caucasian orChristian. JFK’s message resonated: Spend two years abroad serv-ing their country by learning about others. Engage in independentaction, instead of just independent thinking. It sounded right.

So a few months before they graduated, the pair stapledtogether their applications to join the Peace Corps. While theywere on their honeymoon, a telegram arrived, announcing theiracceptance. In 1962, the Wilsons began their two-year assign-ment in Liberia. At the Suehn Industrial Academy, Angene taughtsocial studies and Jack taught English and coached the school’sfirst basketball team to a national championship.

While they were in Liberia, Camelot began to crumble, with theCuban missile crisis and Kennedy’s assassination. After theBirmingham Sunday school murders in 1963, the pair wrotehome to say that their Liberian hosts constantly confronted themwith puzzled, angry, and even pitying questions, including “AreAmericans Christian?”

The two years they spent in Liberia changed the course of theWilson’s lives both professionally and personally. When theyreturned to the States, they protested housing discrimination,lived in an integrated neighborhood, and sent their daughter to anintegrated preschool.

Angene’s higher education calling included heading theUniversity of Kentucky’s secondary social studies program for 29years and being associate director of International Affairs for sixyears. She was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the University ofWinneba in Ghana and was named Professor of the Year forKentucky by the Council for the Advancement and Support ofEducation (CASE). She is the author of The Meaning of

International Experience for Schools and co-author of Social

Studies and the World: Teaching Global Perspectives.

Jack’s work included stints as associate Peace Corps directorin Sierra Leone and director in Fiji. He continued his passionfor public service in environmental protection, and served as astate administrator in Ohio and Kentucky, retiring in 2002 as

director of the Kentucky Division of Water. Both Angene andJack are members of the Directors Circle of the NationalPeace Corps Association.

In time for the Peace Corps 50th anniversary in March 2011,University Press of Kentucky published Angene and Jack’s bookVoices from the Peace Corps: Fifty Years of Kentucky Volunteers.Based on 100 oral history interviews, the book chronicles fivedecades of volunteers who worked in more than 50 countries.Voices follows the life cycle of a volunteer, from application andadmission, through training and service, to coming home andmaking a difference.

The last stage in the Peace Corps volunteer life cycle, say theWilsons, is when volunteers become citizens of the world for therest of their lives.

“We learned more than we taught, and gained more than wegave,” says Angene. “ And most important, we gained life-longfriends who became family.”

A Liberian friend and Wooster graduate will introduce theWilsons at the awards ceremony in June.

(far left) Reggie Wilson and hisgranddaughter Madison, daugh-ter of Carrie Williams McCoy ’94.Photo by Karol Crosbie

(above) Jack and Angene WilsonPhoto by David Stephenson

(left) Already a couple in 1961Photo from 1961 Index

Distinguished Alumni Awardnominations for 2012 are due July 1You, more than anyone, know the accomplishments of your fellow alumni. We’d love tohear from you. For more information on the awards or to make a nomination, contact theOffice of Alumni Relations at alumni.wooster.edu or 330-263-2533.

12 Wooster S P R I N G 2011

tT H E M A R A T H O N E R Soday’s veteran runners remember when the American marathon was an oddity and can

identify events that sparked the beginning of the country’s love affair with long distance

running. There was, for example, Frank Shorter’s gold medal win in the 1972 Summer

Olympics. There was Jim Fixx’s The Complete Book of Running, that seminal bible that

spoke to the “miracle of running.” Whatever the reason, from the 1980s to the present, the

number of marathon runners has quadrupled.

Among the approximately 500,000 Americans who have recently completed a marathon,

there is a healthy contingent of Wooster alumni. We thought you’d like to meet a few of them.

b y K A R O L C R O S B I E

S P R I N G 2011 Wooster 13

Back in 1972, Dr. Scaff ’s conviction that well managed,long distance running can be a powerful drug to cure heartdisease was so avant-garde it was almost heretical.

JJaacckk SSccaaffff,, MM..DD.. ’’5577

Last month, at an awards ceremony honoring JackScaff as Honpa Hongwanji’s 2011 Living Treasure ofHawaii, Scaff described an event that shaped him. Itwas 57 years ago, and he was a counselor at a New

Jersey camp in the foothills of the Appalachians for New Yorkinner city kids. As a joke-a way to make the kids laugh, a way toincrease attendance at a water carnival-the camp directors askedScaff to “walk on water.” The event was well publicized, andmany gathered to see the feat.

“I ran off the board, sank, waited 30-40 seconds for maxi-mum benefit, and came up sputtering,” he remembers. “Butwhen I climbed out, there wasn’t a sound. The kids werecrestfallen. It wasn’t funny at all. ‘Don’t worry, Mr. Scaff,’ theysaid. ‘We know you can do it.’ I realized I had intentionallydeceived a group of people who believed in me. And I vowednever again to betray that kind of trust.”

It was a meaningful vow, because in the years to come,Scaff would ask tens of thousands of people to trust him.Scaff, a retired cardiologist who practiced in Honolulu, hasbeen described as a prophetic bulldog and dogmatic zealot.Back in 1972, his conviction that well managed, long distancerunning can be a powerful drug to cure heart disease was soavant-garde it was almost heretical.

In 1973, Scaff organized and launched Honolulu’s firstmarathon and took full advantage of the event to publicizehis passionate belief. One of his runners was Val Nolasco, apiano player and heart patient. With careful training fromScaff, Nolasco became the first American heart-attack sur-vivor to run a marathon. Everyone paid attention.

In its early years, the Honolulu Marathon gained the rep-utation as the fastest-growing marathon in the United States

and then gained distinction as the marathon most likely to becompleted by participants. The reason? Jack Scaff ’s free nine-month Honolulu Marathon Clinic. The clinic, now in its37th year, has prepared thousands of runners to finish therace successfully.

In 1985, Scaff founded the Great Aloha Run, a charityrun that has raised more than $6.8 million for more than 100Hawaiian nonprofits. He was an inaugural inductee of theHonolulu Marathon Hall of Fame in 1995 and was inductedinto the Hawaii Sports Hall of Fame in 2003.

Today, at age 78, Doc Scaff no longer runs because of aninherited muscular disorder but remains a fiery lecturer,cheerleader, and advocate.

DOC SCAFF’S R U LES FOR PR E PAR I NG FOR A SUCCESSFU L MARATHON

G O O D M E D I C I N E

Jack Scaff encourages participants of the HonoluluMarathon Clinic at its first meeting of the year in March 2011. Photo by Kent Nishimuri

1. Train for at least an hour, three times a week.

2. Train no more than four times a week.

3. Pass the “talk” test while training. If you can’t carryon a conversation without gasping and choking, you’reover-taxing your cardiovascular system.

4. No sprinting. “Humble” running is good. Embarrassedto run slowly? Run in the dark.

5. Drink water every 20 minutes.

14 Wooster S P R I N G 2011

“The worst thing a doctor can do is to tell a runner to stop running.”— M A R K E L D E R B R O C K

Mark Elderbrock ’82 on one of his morning runs near his home inAshland, Ohio. As part of his duties as a physician at The ClevelandClinic, Elderbrock holds weekly clinics at the College’s LongbrakeStudent Wellness Center. His daughter, Emily, graduated from theCollege in 2009, and his daughter, Betsy, is currently a sophomore here. Photo by Allison Hoover

MMaarrkk EEllddeerrbbrroocckk,, MM..DD.. ’’8822

You know your physician is a runner if he (a) talks with you aboutyour running shoes; (b) asks you what race you’re training for (c)never, ever tells you to stop running.

“The worst thing a doctor can do is to tell a runner to stoprunning,” says Mark Elderbrock, a family practice physician at TheCleveland Clinic in Wooster. Elderbrock, who ran his first marathon inhigh school long before running races was a national pastime, chose tospecialize in sports medicine because of his love for running. Eightymarathons and 40 ultra-marathons later, Elderbrock now specializes infamily practice, finding that it allows him to practice his first love—thephysiology of wellness.

Almost regardless of the nature of the experience, Elderbrock simplyloves to run. He has run the Boston Marathon 10 times, on roads cloggedwith runners; he has run 100-mile ultra-marathons through the woods ofOhio’s Mohican State Park; and he is an old hand at the 100-mile BurningRiver Race between Cleveland and Akron. He has run a marathon downthe mountains of North Carolina and around (and around) the indoor trackat his daughter’s college, to raise money for her track team.

He shrugs off any suggestion that running around a gym 210 timesmight be hamsteresque. “It turned out to be a neat experience-the timewent very fast. Music played, and about every minute or so, 50-100 peo-ple cheered me on.”

A triathlon (cycling, running, swimming) competitor who has runHawaii’s Iron Man race four times and was named the Ohio’s maletriathlete of the year in 1986, Elderbrock values the diverse challengesand accompanying rewards of his experiences. For example, the repetitive-ness of running a one-mile course for 24 hours can be a “mental exercise.”For him, nothing beats solitary running through the countryside orwoods. “I think about anything and nothing. It’s a kind of meditation.Sometimes it frees up creative juices and lets me find solutions.”

Although Elderbrock has won three marathons (his fastest time was 2hours, 34 minutes), winning has always been less important than justsharing experiences with friends and family, including his sister and hisdaughter, Emily Elderbrock ’09, a former member of the COW trackteam and captain of the cross country team. But on occasion, Elderbrockwill identify a race where he wants to compete with the fastest runners,and he will spend two to four months training for speed.

Elderbrock, who switched majors from music to biology early in hisundergraduate career, continues to play the violin. This spring, he partici-pated in a concert of Renaissance music organized by the ClevelandClinic as a fundraiser for a local human services agency.

How long will he run? “Hopefully forever. I have no joint problems; Ihave no plans to stop. I feel blessed that what is fun for me is also a goodand healthy activity.”

S P R I N G 2011 Wooster 15

Before: Katie Boin in 2006 at thewedding of Katie Huber ’01 andNick Welty ’03 in Maui; After:Vacationing in Michigan in 2010.

Before: Noah Parker on the night before the surgery;After: Following the 2008 Baltimore marathon with hiswife, Ann, and daughters, Julia, and Molly.

“Runninghas changed my life.”

— K A T I E B O I N

“You get addicted.” — N O A H P A R K E R

16 Wooster S P R I N G 2011

KKaattiiee BBooiinn ’’0033

Katie Boin’s turning point came in 2006 at the wed-ding of good friends in Hawaii. Boin was 100pounds overweight, always out of breath, and hardlyable to enjoy the beauty of the occasion. “I had just

turned 25, and I felt the worst I have ever felt in my life,” shesays. “Something in me changed.”

In addition to losing weight, she decided she needed a goal.When she announced to her partner, Anne Fischer ’01, that hergoal would be to run in a marathon before she was 30, Fischersaid, “Do you think maybe you should start running-like now?”

It was good advice. “I had never run in my life,” says Boin.“The most exercise I got was marching in the Scot MarchingBand.” Using a program called Couch to 5K, she began by run-ning 30 seconds and then walking for five minutes. Two and ahalf years later and 100 pounds thinner, she was ready for the2009 Chicago Marathon. “I’m from Chicago and had seen whata festival the marathon is, with bands and entertainment. Italways looked like so much fun!”

Boin finished the Chicago Marathon. And then thePittsburgh Marathon. She began including biking and swim-ming in her training and this May will participate in theColumbia Triathlon in Columbia, Md. This fall she’ll runthe Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C.

Academic coordinator for the women’s basketball team atGeorgetown University in Washington, D.C., Boin travels withthe team and always packs her running shoes. “It’s a fun way tosee all these random college towns that we visit,” she says. Backat Georgetown, she tapes the route of her next marathon to thewall of her office.

“The students think I’m crazy. They keep asking, ‘How longis this marathon? You won’t win? Why do you do it?’

“Running has changed my life. There is nothing likemarathon day. I look forward to it all year—it’s like your birth-day. It’s like everything in life that you love—you just have tokeep doing it.

“My first marathon was a real victory, and I was supported by

so many people. I see Wooster friends now at reunions or show-ers, and they’re interested in learning about the process so theycan do it, too. Their interest is an affirmation of why I started,and why I continue. ”

NNooaahh PPaarrkkeerr ’’9955

Noah Parker, a development and alumni relations spe-cialist at Johns Hopkins University, became amarathon runner following gastric bypass surgeryfour and a half years ago. Shedding 300 pounds

allowed him to redefine his personality, he says, and exercisebecame central to who he is. His first marathon in Baltimore in2008 was followed by the Disney Marathon in Orlando a yearlater. Since then, he has joined Wooster buddies for what hedescribes as “a whole world of fun events.” He joined ChrisMaher ’95 for a four-person relay in Baltimore, and Brad Dixon’95 for a half marathon in conjunction with Cincinnati’s FlyingPig Marathon. Says Parker, “The ability to go farther and pushyourself—you get addicted.”

To see local TV coverage of Parker’s first race, go tohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA6PxEtzsyI.

T R A N S F O R M A T I O N S

101• A full marathon is 26.2 miles.Explanatory myth: In ancientGreece, Pheidippides ran fromMarathon to Athens, which wasabout 26.2 miles, to announce amilitary victory. Unfortunately, hethen died on the finish line.

• 26.2 miles is near the limitthat many humans can handle.Runners generally deplete theirenergy fuels around mile 20, a

phenomenon dubbed “hittingthe wall.”

• The average time for roadmarathons (cross-country takeslonger) is 4-5 hours.

• The World Olympic record wasset in 2008 by Samuel KamauWansiru, a Kenyan who ran therace in 2:06.32.

M A R A T H O N

S P R I N G 2011 Wooster 17

Wooster standouts include Todd Fach ’88, Bob Jones ’87, ScottMiller ’88, Scot Mellor ’88, and biology faculty member CateFenster, who won the women’s Marine Corps Marathon in 2008.At the front of the alumni pack is Brendan Callahan.

BBrreennddaann CCaallllaahhaann ’’0033

Brendan Callahan hadn’t always planned to runmarathons. “When I came to Wooster, I wanted toplay baseball in the spring,” he admitted. But after asuccessful cross country season in the fall, he’d already

become good friends with his teammates and developed a closerelationship with head coach Dennis Rice.

“Brendan set the tone during workouts, not only for himselfbut for the whole group,” Rice remembers.

Baseball went by the wayside as Callahan increased his week-ly mileage and began to take running seriously. “Come spring myfreshman year, I was hooked,” he says.

Eight years and four school records later, Callahan ran thefastest marathon ever known to be completed by a Woosteralum. He finished 27th in the 2008 ING New York CityMarathon with a time of 2 hours 23 minutes and 25 seconds—only a minute and a half away from the “B” qualifying standardfor that year’s Olympic trials.

A runner since high school, Callahan knows there’s moreto the sport than how fast you run your miles—it’s the mind-set behind the miles. After an injury that forced him to misshis senior-year track season, Callahan took a couple of yearsoff. But when he began his current job as a composition

S P E E D S T E R S

F A M I L Y A F F A I R SRRoobbiinn aanndd KKaattiiee HHaarrbbaaggee

Robin Harbage ’75 and Katie SwansonHarbage ’75, Chagrin Falls, Ohio, plantheir vacations around marathons. Sowhen they announced to daughter

Louisa Harbage ’03, who was living and working inFrance, that they were planning an April visit, sheknew exactly what that meant. “I could hear herrolling her eyes,” says Robin. “She knew that wasthe date of the Paris marathon.”

Robin has run 42 marathons in 28 states and sixcountries, often accompanied by Katie, who runshalf-marathons–from the winding Big Sur Trail innorthern California to the Mesa Falls NationalForest in Idaho, and across the Atlantic to the“monster of a marathon” in Loch Ness, Scotland.Their goal is to run a marathon in every state, and

at 57 years old, they plan on many years ahead tomeet their goal. Robin is an insurance companyconsultant and Katie a horticultural therapist.

“We just love running—we talk and laugh,” saysRobin. “It’s great family time.”

AAnnddyy HHeeaatthh aanndd KKaatthhlleeeenn DDoollaannAndy Heath ’88 and Kathleen Dolan ’90 ran

their first marathon in 2001 and since then have runmore than 50, with a goal of running a marathon inevery state. “We leverage our passion for running asan opportunity to visit cities and states across thecountry,” says Andy. In addition, the couple travelsthe country in their role as pacers on the Clif BarPace Team. Pacers run along at a steady pace toshow racers how fast to run to realize a specificfinishing time goal.

teacher at Amistad-Elm City High School in New Haven,Conn., he felt something was missing. “I needed that daily runfor mental clarity, and once I started running again, it washard not to set goals for myself.”

So Callahan set his sights for New York, getting back into therunning routine and training with a few friends in Hartford,Conn. In the meantime, he raced half-marathons and ran partsof marathons with friends who were competing.

“You don’t really know how you’re going to feel till youstart running, but I didn’t go out too aggressively, and I nevercrashed. It was a blast.”

Callahan placed 54th in the 2010 Boston Marathon and 4thin the 2010 Hartford Marathon. At publication time, he is train-ing for the April Boston Marathon.

By Suzanne Capehart ’11, Wooster editorial assistant and member of Wooster’scross country and track team.

Brendan Callahan ranthe 2008 ING NewYork City Marathon in2:23.25, finishing in27th place.

Robin Harbage and Katie SwansonHarbage

18 Wooster S P R I N G 2011

Emily Freeman ’88 completed her first half-marathonin Boston last June to raise funds for Crohn’s diseaseresearch, in honor of two nephews diagnosed with thedisease. In addition to completing the race, there were

two highlights, says Freeman. “It was hosted by John Fernandez’87, and I ran into Tim Dorr ’88 at the start line. I felt like it wasa Wooster reunion.”

Meg Anfang Faust ’88 runs marathons for Joints in Motion,in honor of her 7-year-old daughter, diagnosed with juvenilerheumatoid arthritis. “I figure if my daughter can get up and moveeveryday despite her pain, I can run in her honor,” says Faust.

Ann Fine ’06 just completed her first marathon in honor ofher mother, who recently died of breast cancer. Patricia Ross ’06,ran her first marathon in Chicago in 2010 in honor of her highschool friend, an accomplished marathoner, who had died justdays before the race.

Eric Olson ’76, who began running marathons in 2001, ranthe Marine Corps race in Washington, D.C., to raise $4,000 forthe Organization for Autism Research, in honor of his twinsons, who have autism. At the time, his sons were members oftheir high school cross country team and Olson was runningwith them and helping to facilitate practices. “It was especiallymeaningful,” he says.

The Marine race qualified Olson to run in the BostonMarathon, which had been a goal for many years. In the Bostonrace, he raised $4,000 for Parkinson’s disease research, in memoryof a friend and as part of the Michael J. Fox team.

B E F O R E & A F T E R T H E M A R A T H O N

Jeff Steiner ’74 has been a runnermost of his life. He began run-ning when he was 12 years oldwas on his high school track

team and Wooster’s cross countryteam. But it wasn’t until he turned50 that he decided to run amarathon. New York, Chicago, andColumbus marathons led up to hisculminating 2009 Boston run.When Sandy Eyre Nichols ’94,director of alumni relations, heardthat Steiner (then serving as analumni trustee) would be running,she convinced him to run in a kilt.

The Boston race is one of themost colorful of the city marathons,with bands, balloons, and thousandsof spectators. Steiner heard shouts of“Go, guy in kilt!” and “Hurrah,Wooster!” But the course is also ahard one, with 16 miles downhill.

“I was happy. But I was sore.”Although Steiner believes

Boston will be his last marathon, heanticipates always being a runner.Like many other athletes, he calls

the experience “almost religious”and can identify the mentor whohelped make it so. James Bean ’72,Wooster track coach, professor ofFrench, and ordained minister, wasa close friend who performed theceremony for Steiner’s wedding toHeidi Arn. “Coach Bean ran withus, and then when practicing wasdone, he did his own workout. Heran into his 60s and 70s. There ishope,” says Steiner.

Carey Pelto ’81, a physician inColorado Springs and a formermarathoner, was also deeply affect-ed by his coach. “My lifelong lovefor running was fostered by CoachBean, who emphasized that run-ning is a lifestyle, not just a week-end sport. He took great efforts totell us that he was more concernedabout us developing a lifelong lovefor running than winning the nexttrack meet.

In Coach Bean’s heart, there wasno finish line.”

R U N N I N G F O R A C A U S E

Jeff Steiner, who completed the Boston marathon in 2009, was encouraged byspectators who cheered, “Go, guy in kilt!”

Kevin, Eric, and Carl Olson after a local 5-K race.

S P R I N G 2011 Wooster 19

20 Wooster S P R I N G 2011

One autumn evening I attended aslide show in Scovel Hall presented bygeography instructor Barry Floyd.Many of his slides were of his almamater, Cambridge. One in particularcaught my eye. It was of KingsCollege Chapel, a twin-toweredEnglish Gothic masterpiece whoselight-colored stone eerily resembledKauke Hall’s Midwestern crenellatedfacade. When Barry mentioned thatplayful students known as nightclimbers sometimes scaled those tow-ers and between them suspended apunt (flat-bottomed boat) from theRiver Cam (conveniently only a fewdozen yards away), a seed was planted.As November came on, it sprouted.

The old chapel was our first climb.Carrying a large sign painted by fellowfreshman, Jim Gwynne (who’s still anartist), we set out late in the evening.

Those who remember the old chapelwill recall a small vestibule at its north-west corner through which the facultyentered daily chapel.

They will also recall that chapel wasthe only time the student body was

together in one place. It was the idealsetting for spectacular surprises. Wescaled the vestibule with the pole,climbed onto the main roof, and fol-lowed the ridge to the base of thechapel tower.

We didn’t dare shinny up the pole.If it had toppled to either side, some-body would have had a long fall to abrick sidewalk. So we used a three-manAlpine climbers’ technique called acourte échelle. That got only one of us upthere, but it was enough. Next morn-ing’s chapel-goers couldn’t miss thesign: Greetings From The NightClimbers!

Emboldened by the notoriety, wenext tackled Kauke, climbing the backside from the fire escape to the roofon the old, rotten copper downspouts.(Kids: Don’t try this!) We carried acardboard punt fashioned by theever_imaginative Gwynne and hoistedit between the twin flagpoles. I’ll neverforget the view. A thick layer of fog layacross the Killbuck Valley, with only thetowers of Kauke and the radio stationsouth of Wooster showing above it, and

a bright full moon shining down onthe woolly sea. Just to make life moredifficult for those who would undo ourwork, we tossed the hoisting-ropesonto the tops of the towers.

The old chapel badly needed to bereplaced. Shaped like a barn, with alow-pitched slate roof, it was spreadingat the eaves. Steel rods with turnbuckleshad been installed to slow it down; buteven when we only walked across theroof, it groaned beneath us.

Those rods, high above our heads,spawned another scheme. Kauke wasstill equipped with dark, 9-foot-longblackout shades from the SecondWorld War. We took one to JimGwynne for his usual ministrations,stapled the top edge to a piece of lathequipped with bent coat hangers ateach end to hang from a rod, andfastened an old windup alarmclock on top. The clock was set togo off during chapel. When it did,the unwinding alarm key released aloop of cord, and the sign unrolledwith a loud swoosh: Merry ChristmasFrom The Night Climbers!

I’m not quite sure what inspired us. For me, perhaps, it was the shock of moving from the hillsand mountains of home to a flat surface described by Professor Charles Moke in Geology 101 as“an elevated, dissected peneplain.” This meant that all the hills–such as they were–went downinstead of up. The motive to climb them was not so much to get a view as to get out of a hole.

Night Climbersthe

Woosterof

b y W I L L E M L A N G E ’ 5 7

S P R I N G 2011 Wooster 21

getting the sign up there had been an adventure. First we threwa fishing line over the rod and with it pulled up a length ofparachute shroud line. With that, we pulled up a climbing ropewith a double bowline in one end for a seat. The man in theseat went up and pulled the apparatus up after himself with theparachute cord. He checked the clock and descended. The oldroof creaked and groaned whenever his weight came on or offthe rope.

There were other episodes-turning every other pew back-wards, for example, so that on the next day, students would faceeach other. But the crowning achievement was the bell in theorgan. I was jogging one day around the track that circled theupper part of the gym. Down below, the maintenance menwere switching the fire alarms from a 6-volt to a 110-volt sys-

tem. As I passed a big discarded 6-volt bell on the way out, Ithought, “That’s going to come in handy someday.”

It burned a hole in our imaginations: what to do with it?We decided finally to put it into the organ, a massive instru-ment hidden by a green curtain behind the faculty, who sat intiers facing the students. We needed a battery, but 6-volt wason the way out.

Someone thought of football coach Mose Hole’s Wooster-emblazoned station wagon. But when we sneaked up to hisside yard to get the battery, something began growling at usfrom inside the house. We left. In the end, we pinched the24-volt battery from the College bus parked under the stadi-um. It was a brute; it took two of us to carry it. But we got itinto the organ on a little catwalk, rigged the alarm with loops

Photo courtesy of ’51 Index

22 Wooster S P R I N G 2011

of doorbell wire that would complete the circuit when onerotated, and ran off to bed. Next day’s chapel was a speech, sonobody was likely to take offense on religious grounds.

But at the chosen moment, it failed! There was a little ringingof the alarm clock that nobody heard but us–and also the fearsomedean of women, “Ma” (Marjory) Golder, who glowered stonily atour innocent faces. She knew! Still, against our better judgment,we returned that night, fixed the problem (some insulation hadslipped), and rewound the clock.

Next day was the day everybody was leaving for vacation.Dean Wilhelm Taeusch was in charge of the occasion. Afterwishing us well, he launched into a prayer for the safety of thestudents wherever they might travel, by car, train, or— he wasinterrupted in mid-orison by a ferocious, irresistible clangingbehind him. Very few people have ever heard a 6-volt fire bellblasting its life away on 24 volts. Fire! thought the students,and leaped to their feet.

Prank! they realized, and sat back down. Waves of nervouslaughter rippled through the congregation. Dean Taeusch,motionless, gripped the podium with white knuckles. The facultysat pokerfaced. Ma Golder stared down at us with undisguisedhatred. “You are going to die!” was, I think, the message.

In the end, a young faculty member clambered up behindthe drape and shut off the bell, to hearty applause. DeanTaeusch finished his prayer as if nothing had happened, andwe left for home.

But that wasn’t quite the end of it, for when the Collegedriver went to get the bus to take students to the train station,he discovered that the battery was dead-missing, actually. Thefaculty and their cars, recruited for the emergency, recreatedthe 1940 evacuation of Dunkirk.

“I don’t know how you did it, and I don’t want to know,”Dean Racky

Young said, just after advising us of our rights. “I’m justtelling you that it mustn’t happen again.” I couldn’t help butnotice that he hadn’t asked for any promises. I knew that,consummate Christian gentleman that he was, he had at leastone more act of forgiveness left in him. And it turned out Iwas right!

WILLEM LANGE was a child of deaf par-ents, grew up speaking sign language, and wentto prep school in New England as an alternativeto reform school in his native New York State.Will earned a degree in only nine years at theThe College of Wooster in Ohio. In betweenthose scattered semesters, he worked as aranch hand, Adirondack guide, preacher, con-struction laborer, bobsled run announcer,assembly line worker, cab driver, bookkeeper,and bartender. He also found time to hike andclimb in the Adirondacks, the White Mountains,the Mexican volcanoes, the Rockies, Tetons,Wind Rivers, and Cascades. He writes a weeklycolumn, “A Yankee Notebook,” which appears inseveral New England newspapers, is a com-mentator for Vermont Public Radio, and the hostof New Hampshire Public Television’s weeklyshow Windows to the Wild. His annual readingsof Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol began in1975 and continue unabated. He has publishedeight books and received an Emmy nominationfor one of his pieces on Vermont PublicTelevision.

In 1973 Will founded the Geriatric AdventureSociety, a group of outdoor enthusiasts whosemembers have skied the 200-mile AlaskaMarathon, climbed in Alaska, the Andes, andHimalayas, bushwhacked on skis through north-ern New England, and paddled rivers north ofthe Arctic Circle.

Biography from: http://willemlange.com/

about the authorPrank! they realized, and sat backdown. Waves of nervous laughter rippled through the congregation.

An old climbing photo, taken on the East Face of Longs Peak, Colorado, about the time Will was shenanagigging at Wooster.

S P R I N G 2011 Wooster 23

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t e x t b y K A R O L C R O S B I E

p h o t o g r a p h y b y M AT T D I L YA R D | J O S H J A L B E R T | H AY E T R I D A

24 Wooster S P R I N G 2011

My father has secretly taken up whittling.He’s hollowed a piece of pine into a boxand inside I find tiny, unfinished toys–lopsided tops, and snowflakes small as jacks,with missing points. The wood is so softI could press my thumbprint into it.

A long winter is coming. I can tellby the way the hogs huddle silent in their pen.I stand on a bowed, gray slat of their fenceand they don’t even look, their curved white backslined up like dim eggs in the failing light.

In my grandmother’s house an artist stands at his easel. His canvases are everywhere–all larger than himself, and all the same:paintings of a doorframe open to darkness.The room is only doors. I walk out

past the swaybacked barn, past the mailbox.A moonlit dog trots toward us–silvered dust,his eyes the color of water. And then a manappears, my grandfather. I know him from dreams,his smile, his slouch hat. He opens the pasture gate.The dog bounds ahead of us, into the posted woods.

After the Auction of My Grandmother’s Farm

Debra Allbery describesherself as “a poet of theeye,” inspired by whatshe sees-a hauntinglandscape, a work of art,

details from a dream. Sheis also inspired by other writ-

ers and painters, and her most recent book,Fimbul-Winter, pays homage to diverse mas-ters, including Emily Dickinson, John Keats,Vermeer, John Milton, Ralph Waldo Emerson,and Sherwood Anderson.

Allbery grew up in Clyde, Ohio, the settingfor Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio,

and she has long felt a kinship with theAmerican author. At Wooster, she wrote herIndependent Study on Anderson, and he isfully present in her first book, the award-win-ning Walking Distance.

Allbery, who is in her second year ofdirecting the MFA Program for Writers atWarren Wilson College in Asheville, N.C., hasmade her home in Ohio, Michigan, NewHampshire, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.The diverse landscapes of her life are asource of inspiration. “Writing about land-scape becomes a reflection of self. Ratherthan saying, ’I’m feeling a little down today

and here’s why,’ you say, ‘Here’s what I see.’By projecting outward into place, you becomemore inclusive. It’s not just your story.Anybody can enter.”

Allbery has a special interest in old Englishand Anglo-Saxon literature, well represented inher most recent book. She knows exactly whenand where the interest was born. “At Wooster,(the late) Deborah Hilty gave us an extra creditassignment to write an Anglo Saxon poem. Iwas enthralled. She set in motion a passion thathas become a lifelong study for me.

“I’m indebted to her. I wish that she couldhave seen this book.”

Debra Gildea Allbery ’79

“My father never talked about my grandfather. But once when I asked him to tell mesomething about him, he said, ‘You know that hat that Indiana Jones wears? He had a hatlike that, and he wore it all the time.’ My father supplied that detail, and my mind held ontoit. So sure enough, when I dreamed of my grandfather (who I never met), there he was,wearing that hat.

“A lot of my poems employ dream imagery, which for me serves the same purpose as land-scape. It deflects from the self, even as it derives from it, so that the poem is more encompass-ing. It speaks to all of us and doesn’t feel insular or private, or ‘I know what I’m talkingabout-who cares if you get it?’ That’s never the way a poet should feel.

Image does a lot for inviting a person into a poem.” – Debra Allbery

S P R I N G 2011 Wooster 25

Photo: Matt Dilyard

The Wakeful Bird Sings Darkling

Our tiny plot of a cottage was cloakedin pine at the graveled close of a sidestreet,

undercover, overgrown, September sprawl of raspberries lost again to the blackbirds.

The sun could never find its way to our windows; the walls were thick as a bunker’s, stolid, stone and stone

and stone. The baby sick again,as he was for most of his first year,

his fevered sleep fast in my arms. That morningthe phone rang, my husband out in his real life,

calling just from work, but the line statickedand broken as if from a great distance,

saying to turn on the TV. And so I did,just in time to see the first tower fall, then

the slant silent drift of a plane, the little bloom of fire, the smoke’s ashen pillar and pall.

The baby’s glittering eyes fixed only on me.

We went out back then, sat on the crumbling stoop,where just three months before our yellow cat,

Rover, had dragged himself after a stroke.Back left paw trailing, curled under, his pupils

faint pinpoints of terror. Lamb of God,my husband would call it when he draped him,

purring, like a stole over his shoulders,but his last day he wouldn’t even let me touch him,

hissing from the closet’s dark. The vet had to come for him, wearing falconer’s gloves.

That September morning’s iris of sky just as fierce,stripped and raw, too close; I shielded the baby

with my shadow. Then the quiet was ripped by the ratchet of a kingfisher plummetingfrom the power lines into the dark mirror

of our pond. The whole world a dim window I couldn’t see through, my focus only this

instant, this infant listless and flushedin my arms. I whispered the rapid count

of his breaths per minute, trying to determine the line between self-reliance

and when we’d need help.

Photo: Hayet Rida

On Jan. 27, Garrison Keillor read Allbery’s “Produce” from Walking

Distance at the conclusion of his five-minute NPR program, “Writer’sAlmanac.” To hear the reading, go to http://writersalmanac.publicra-dio.org/index.php?date=2011/01/27.

26 Wooster S P R I N G 2011

l i s ten up

Firelands

Of my childhood I remember almost nothing.Backyards rubbed raw by hard play and chained dogs.The sepia velour of our Pontiac, flat blur of cornfields and refineries. In summer,propping up my bedroom window with a scrap of plywood, the heft and heavy rattle of warped glass.Cut grass. The slams and sighs of factories.

One August night when I was twelve, I woke to the silent swoop of alarm, my bedroom bright from a fire at the Silver Fleece, a closed cannery two blocks away. The abandon of those flames,shooting out of nowhere, smoke scouring the stars.I watched it. I let everybody sleep.

A mine fire burned beneath my mother’s southernOhio hometown for a hundred years.My grandfather could remember water boiling in their wells, baked potatoes in the gardens.Cut a gash in a hillside and smoke would rise.Now that country is all ghost towns, the strikers’ rage smoldering finally into depletion and collapse,sink holes opening behind the abandoned schools.

Firelands, the signs said around my own small town-banks, a real estate office. But that was history’s ash,the British burning the Western Reserve. The world is on fire,wrote Sherwood Anderson, who grew up four streets over from my house. The sidewalks and feed store are burning up,decay you see is always going on.

We knew that there, the pocked pith of railroad ties crumbling into dust, the hitching rails no one had bothered to remove leaving smears of rust on our hands and clothes. There was nothing in that still town to be afraid of, but night after night I wrenched myself from dreams I refused to repeat.My mother would sit beside me in the dark,consigning every worry back underground.

ClinicIn the center of the waiting room there’s a talk show-jabbed speech, a hazard of accents, the dull mirrorof audience smiling up at themselves.

And around the television a thick, blurred orbitof inattention, a scattered askance. Women staring,then glancing down at magazines, their worn pages

gone soft as cloth. The TV dissolving to snow.Its little sparks, its busy horizon. Quarks from the beginningof beginnings still blinking their first messages.

Poems from Fimbul-Winter, 2010, winner of Grub Street’s National Book Prizein Poetry. Reprinted with permission of Four Way Books. All rights reserved. Photo: Matt Dilyard

Photo: Josh Jalbert

S P R I N G 2011 Wooster 27

Debra Gildea Allbery ’79

“I read somewhere that the snow you see on TV contains ancient signals-quarks-and I loved that idea. Thepoem comes from a time when I was seeing a doctor quite a bit and observing how women behave in thatodd environment that’s no place-a purgatory kind of place, neither here nor there. The poem is a respectful(I hope) exploration of privacy.” – Debra Allbery

My mother a nugget. Boygirl. Silken bean.In utero, did she stir? as her cells divided, tiny buds of limbs:sprig, branch, vein, opening and closing, present and tense.

When the bomb struck twenty miles away and the house’s paper doors sailed in their wood tracks, wheezed shut,when the other thing divided, subtracted– did she hear?

Beyond my mother in her mother in the house,a horse snapped its tail at a blue fly.The fly spun away, lit the bark of a willow tree.A leaf dropped, a long leaf stayed.A narrow canal flowed over stone.

In utero, was she still? or did she swing in a warm blood sac as her mother paced the room,before she would look for her mother in the city,before white light and black rain were named.

Egg within egg, seed in blind seed,the child whose name would be Reiko, the sound of ringing bells.Now I imagine, as the great wind gusted,the bronze bell at Otake’s shrine

swayed and tolled, and the ringing widened like waves a stone hitting water makes–out and out–traveling more slowly than light, singing as far as the melon field and pasture where the horses didn’t burn.

The Bells — Otake, Japan, August 6, 1945

28 Wooster S P R I N G 2011

As a child growing up inTokyo, April Naoko Hecktook the stories of herancestors for granted. Itwasn’t until she came to

Wooster that she under-stood their power.

“I can trace my idea for The Bells backto my first workshop at Wooster with DanBourne. The idea of my mother being in thewomb of her mother, while my great grand-mother was on the outskirts of Hiroshimawhen the bomb was dropped is such a richimage-creation, new life, and destruction hap-

pening simultaneously. So I wrote a poem.Dan Bourne was very encouraging and it wasthat year that I decided to become a poet.”

The first year at Wooster, Heck’s fatherdied, and she also wrote about present-daygrief. “Dan Bourne had also lost his fatherand was writing about that subject. He wasan absolutely crucial mentor to me.”

To develop her poems for her MFA thesisat the University of Maryland, Heck returnedto Tokyo and to the home where her ances-tors had lived. A Shelter of Leaves includespoems about a childhood she describes asone of “both nurturance and instability, com-

plicated by economic hardship, issues ofidentity, and my father’s addictions and sud-den passing.”

Heck, who is the readings coordinator atthe New York University Creative WritingProgram, has seen her poems published inArtful Dodge, Borderland: Texas Quarterly

Review, Epiphany, and Shenandoah. Shecontinues to pursue a publisher for GreenCoolness (based on her thesis). “I sent thebook to 22 publishers last year. I was inthe top 10 finalists for one, and that wasmeaningful.

“I’m hopeful.”

April Naoko Heck ’93

In the fall of third grade, when my teacher assigns the leaf-book project-collect and name at least a dozen tree leaves– my dad drives our family to an arboretum,he brings a field guide and we’re all leaf-picking,all saying gingko, chestnut, walnut, buckeye.Mama writes down American names,learns too that rootbeer-scented sassafras bear three kinds of leaves: mittens, gloves, and palms.

The night before my book’s due, he stays up.He helps sort leaf after leaf, irons them between waxpaper pages he’s cut.By the circular light of a lamp he grows younger and I grow older,typing labels, tracing diagrams.Does he know that my teacher will show my book to the class? that I’m looked at enough, the one mixed kid? They’ll stare

like they stared when I was called from class to be tested for the “gifted program.”I rose from my chair, carrying the too-big,man’s leather briefcase he’d loaned to me for good luck. But like the kids’ snickers it only confused me. The test did too:Can you name three things made of aluminum? “No.”How tall is the average man? I answered with all I knew, my own height, “Four feet tall.”

When I told my dad I’d failed, he called my principal: “Your test is wrong,” he said,“This is your regional spelling champ,honor roll student, first chair in band.”He listed bell choir, softball, swim team,even states and countries I’d seen. But I have to try harder, I have the wrong kinds of love:scarlet oak, white oak, black oak, laurel and pin,memorized by size and color, lobe and vein.

The Leaf BookPhoto: Josh Jalbert

S P R I N G 2011 Wooster 29

30 Wooster S P R I N G 2011

Jimmy Carter’s in office,meaning my dad’s still job hunting,meaning I get him to myself these days.He takes me to see Lake Erie frozen,the heaped shore the waves have sculpted,white tundra and half-circle of horizon beyond, immense– the stillness is dense, church-hushed.We hike, kicking ice clumps that break open,showing rows of tiny pale-green glass pipes.One frozen crest splashes water,glossing layer on layer, making itself.It’s safe, he says, though I wonder at the rest of the lake beneath our feet,where grease ice and slush must heave like labored breath,with the weight of centuries of changing shapes and names:Lake Maumee, Arkona, Whittsley, Wayne.I’ve learned them in school,how Erie won’t last long in geological time,clay cliffs where swallows nest are eroding.Months before the electric company hires him, I think he hopes I’ll know more forms of water than worry– Tomorrow, he says, we’ll bring your sled.

Winter RecessPhoto: Matt Dilyard

April Naoko Heck ’93

Thom Ward likes to quote Miles Davis: “Man, itsure takes you a long time to sound like yourself.”The author of poems that have been published in

more than 150 journals, magazines, newspapers,and in seven books, Ward knows how to sound like

himself. He defines himself not only by his voice butalso by his ear-his ability to use sound to inform thought. “He makeshis language thump,” wrote one critic.

Ward has received significant awards and recognition for hispoetry. But that’s only half the story. He has also mentored otherpoets to receive awards and recognition for their poetry. Ward servedfor 18 years as editor and production director of BOA Editions Ltd.,a poetry publishing house that guided writers, a number of whomwent on to receive national prestigious nominations and awards. Heis currently a freelance poetry mentor and capstone reader of poetrymanuscripts at the graduate creative writing program at WilkesUniversity, in Pennsylvania.

A poem that will communicate with its readers, he tells protégés,should “think and sing, sing and think.” A successful poem, he says, willnot steamroll the reader with flabby language or with too many words.

Ward has been described as a poet who can “poke you in the ribsand take you by the hand,” and his poems are often darkly playful. Thenarrator may be a glass of vodka, a child, a pronoun, or the family dog.

With his ear for delivery, Ward is a sought-after speaker and hasgiven more than 100 poetry readings. He has memorized more than200 poems (a valuable entertainment trove when he is stuck in traffic,he says).

Thom Ward ’86

— From Green Coolness

To hear Garrison Keillor read Ward’s “Going on the Belief WalleyesEat Late,” go to http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2010/07/12.

l i s ten up

Small Boat with Oars of Different

Size, Carnegie Mellon University Press,

2000.

Tumblekid, Devil’s Millhopper Press/The

University of South Carolina-Aiken (win-

ner of the Devil’s Millhopper poetry chap-

book contest, 2000).

Gold: Greatest Hits 1993-2000,

Pudding House, 2001.

Various Orbits, Carnegie Mellon, 2003.

Fog in a Suitcase, Picadilly Press, 2003.

The Matter of the Casket,

CustomWords Press, 2007.

Etcetera’s Mistress, Accents

Publishing, forthcoming

books by thom ward

S P R I N G 2011 Wooster 31

The Bible on the Counter

in Pat Verrazano’s Paint Shop is spackledwith various acrylics,stays openwith the help of a stir stick

so that we can browse a passageor two, revisitthe feats of David and Moses,

the visions of Isaiah, thoughmore oftenthan the prophets, I find myself

drifting toward Job. Virtuous,upright,ever-fearful of God, each moment

cognizant that his wealth will increaseif he makesthe proper offerings, if he’s good

to his servants, respects the kids,his wife,honors the work of his donkeys,

a hundred assiduous bulls.Job, whose lifehas settled into itself like water,

the titanium dioxide in a gallonof Brilliant WhiteSemi-Gloss Latex Enamel, stain

resistant, covers any surface;lucky paintthat for years has reviewed the worldfrom a shelf high above the scrapersand drop cloths,so many nervous little brushes . . .

Of course, it’s Yahweh’s business,has beensince He opened shop in this stretch

of the universe, and He’s a methodicalpersnickety owner,keeps tabs on his inventory, rotates

stock, is known for his suddenliquidation sales.And today is no exception–

He wants to move product, enticea few customers with giveaways, perhaps some free

caulk to the next angel who floats in,which, turns outto be the fallen day star himself,

in the middle of a job that requiressandpaper, sponges,one gallon of paint. Any brand

will do. It doesn’t matter,he says. They all eventually buckle, inevitably crack.

Not this one, Yahweh answers,grabs a stepand reaches for the top shelf,

The Brilliant White Semi-Gloss Latex Enamel.This one has always been different.

He descends the ladder, walks over to the table,wedges the gallon into the mixer,

tightens each clamp. Add a thousand contaminantsand this paint will keep its color,

maintain its constant luminosity;Is that so,Satan says, his eyes now locked

on the old bucket furiously shaking,his mind focused,already priming the wager.

Poem from:

Various Objects,

Carnegie Mellon

University Press, 2004

Photo: Josh Jalbert

32 Wooster S P R I N G 2011

From: Small Boat with Oars of Different Size, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2000

Sowe roam the bulk foodsas I’m trying to school himon double-saver coupons,how we don’t buyfor the whole damn winter,how our days are spent in questof frosted Pop Tarts, Kraft macaroni and cheese, that smartshoppers use pagan spells to summonindustrious elves, those little Keeblerswho bake our cookies stuffedwith polyunsaturated fats, gum sorbate,the recommended daily allowance of riboflavin,but he’s not listening, those gray-goshawk eyesaren’t steeled on the frozenSwanson entrée I’m holding.No, he’s zeroed in on Grandma Brown, wantsto telegraph the bespectacled and kind,(and very much dead), leguminous matriarch.

And he’s miffed, can’t find directionsto her farm on the label, can’t extrapolateif she plants beans deep in rows,if the same enemies–crawlers, woodchucks,crunch her crop for lack of johnswort.He wants answers and so asks me:What has she learned of beans? Is she busy about them? How,under the laws binding the firmament,has this woman grownsugar cane in eastern woodlands ?It’s enough to make his brow runnellike the furrows he digs, his facethe color of McIntosh.From her perch above the label, Grandma says nothing, hersecrets nitrogen-rich, her coy, molasses grin that is so disturbing, displeasing,to his excellency, the bean king,to Hank.

Shopping with Henry David ThoreauPhoto: Matt Dilyard

Thom Ward ’86

Moving Day

I don’t want your plague of dying catsOr wasps like thunder under the siding,

Your pocket doors that dangleyour roof of jittery holes.

I don’t want your double-hung windows,Cross-eyed and hexed with no weights or ropes

Or the sneaky ghost who swoops your stairs To frighten the cats for fun.

I do not want your thousand spidersWho tiptoe the ceiling,

your jig-sawed crown mouldingWhose gaps gape like wicked absent teeth.

Your drafts, creaky peaks,All of your un-square footage–

Somebody will relish in your abundant fodder,But leaning house, it isn’t me.

S P R I N G 2011 Wooster 33

Jen Kindbom is inspiredby everyday things. Manyof the poems in her firstmajor collection (herIndependent Study) were

responses to daily experi-ences: the huge tree outside

her window in Kenarden Hall, the time KyleKindbom–who would become her husband–presented her with a fuzzy caterpillar, theastonishing greenness of the quad grassone spring day.

Her new online journal of poetry andphotography is aptly titled FloorboardReview. “When I decide what to publish inFloorboard,” she says, “I look for concrete,

vivid images that will knock your socks off.Abstractions . . . not so much.” Subjects inher first book, A Note on the Door (FinishingLine Press–flpbookstore@aol.com) includeher daughter Lilly, a departed family dog,and trees from all corners of her life. Thepoems are, she says, the best of her thesisfrom Ashland University, where she receivedher MFA.

Kindbom, who teaches writing atAshland University, likes to open her firstday of class by introducing herself and thenreading a poem. “It captures the students’attention,” she says.

From Dan Bourne, her Wooster adviser, shelearned to be critical of her own work. “Dan

was the first person to be completely honestwith me about my poetry. If it was good, he’dtell me, and if it wasn’t, he’d tell me that, too.”

From her faculty mentor at Ashland, shelearned to dig deeper into poems that wereoriginally only quirky, goofy observations.“My professor said, ‘OK; very funny. Butthere has to be a greater truth.’”

Both as a lifelong learner and a teacher,Kindbom has learned the power of throw-ing away something that isn’t working andstarting over. “Once a poem is saved onyour computer you have to struggle toremember it isn’t saved forever. Deleting islike the physical act of ripping off pages. Itcan be freeing and creative.”

jen Schade Kindbom ’02

Photo: Hayet Rida

Your birth hairFalls away like the copper beams of an old day

and new locks replace it, painted allhay and peaches

I could live forever with my nose to your head–

Here on this vast shelf of the start of your lifeYou are poised–

You seem to memorize something–This room, my face, the width of cotton beneath your head –

To pull upon this early knowledge later,After it grows and takes my place for me,

When you rise, still poised,

into the world–

brand new tearsThat flow all around your head

When I must tend to your brother’s bath

your soft nails that peel so easily, like cellophaneYour reflexive hug that grips the gift bear from your grandfather

Your gaping gummy smile,All for me in the morning–

Come with me, child,Bundled in blanket and hat

And see the snow–With such little discretion

It lights lightly on the lawn

The table of stump–Cauterizing the massive wound

See-it wraps its palm around the other trees,Lilly, presses its hand onto the roofs of houses and garages

who lean into and away from it–

see it land, a cloak on our backslingering a moment–

Lillian Ode

34 Wooster S P R I N G 2011““After I spent time with complex, colorful Lilly, I saw I couldn’t use just one picture. One moment she wanted to be inside—then she wanted to beoutside. She wanted to play, and then she didn’t. She wanted her picture taken, and then she was tired of it.” – Hayet Rida

jen Schade Kindbom ’02

Photo: Hayet Rida

Photo: Josh Jalbert

All poems from A Note on the Door, FinishingLine Press, www.finishinglinepress.com

S P R I N G 2011 Wooster 35

Rosary

What I do with the wrist rosary my mother brings me from your houseafter you die is complicated because of the brassy links between the HailMarys. You said Our Lady of Somewhere reached down and touched themand that’s why their silver plate turned to brass–and so at fourteen, Idon’t know what is an appropriate thing to do with this relic of you,

this relic whose plastic purple beads have gone to white at the edges andseams.

I hang it on the corner of my shadowbox for awhile, up on the wall withthe ceramic animals. It will be safe here from earthly contamination andthe floor. Then I put it in a boxand take it out now and then and remember you. I do this for nine years.

Now I’m grown, and I still don’t know what to do with your rosary. Howmany have I had and lost? It is in my jewelry box, its worn beads andmiracle brass–those silent beads

from which you squeezed so much God.

Matt Dilyard is the College’s photographer.

Josh Jalbert, a former photography instructor at the College, is professor of photography atSavannah College of Art and Design. His students assisted in the creation of the images.

Hayet Rida ’11 is a double major in studio art and communications from Ghana who studiedunder Josh Jalbert. Her current advisers are Bridget Milligan, studio art, and Margaret Wick,communications.

photographersabout the

Legacy students, Class of 2013Generations of families have a wayof sticking with us. Here are first-year studentswho are descendants of Wooster alumni.

S T U D E N T S

Katherine Carwile 2014Father, John L. Carwile ’81Mother, Karin C. Hauschild ’84Grandfather, William L. Hauschild ’55Grandfather, Clifton L. Carwile ’56Great Uncle, Lester P. Hauschild ’57Great Grandmother, Margaret McKee Hauschild x ’223rd Cousin, Anastassia C. Sharpe ’09 John Carwile Karin Hauschild William Hauschild Clifton Carwile

64 Wooster SPRING 2011

Sarah Allard 2014Father, Clayton Allard II ’86Mother, Martha Lowry Allard ’84

Daniel Baker 2014Father, Frederick D. Baker ’73Grandmother, Mary Posey Baker ’69Great Aunt, Sue Randall Baker ’73Uncle, John P. Baker ’80Uncle, Robert S. Baker x ’682nd Cousin, Susan Baker Leo ’722nd Cousin, Kathleen D. Baker x ’712nd Cousin, G. Earl Walker ’642nd Cousin, Mary E. Byers Walker ’65Grandfather, John Wesley Baker, professor, political science, ’58-69

Daniela Bartlett-Asenjo 2014Father, Stephen D. Bartlett 1980Sister, Mara C. Bartlett-Asenjo 2011Grandmother, Katharine Griswold 1956Great Uncle, Lincoln T. Griswold 1952Great Aunt, Maud M. Griswold Bishop 1954

Leah Bowers 2014Father, Richard Bowers, M.D. ’82/transferMother, Miriam Rader ’83

Kyle Burden 2014Father, Jay Burden ’78Cousin, Abigail Johnson ’05Grandmother, Geraldine Rice Burden ’48

Grandfather, *William Burden ’49Aunt, Michele Burden Johnson ’71Sister, Corinne E. Burden x ’10

Chelsea Campton 2014Mother, Sharon Leech Campton ’77Aunt, Susan Leech Boardman ’71Uncle, Thomas A. Boardman ’70Cousin, Cari Boardman Robertson ’94Cousin, Andrea Boardman Michalski ’97Cousin, Alexander Boardman x ’99

Catherine Clemmens 2014Mother, Laura Ingraham Clemmens ’78Aunt, Catherine Ingraham x ’79

Coleman Dine Fitch 2014Father, Robert Dine Fitch ’77Mother, Sally Dine Fitch ’77Brother, Corey D. Fitch ’02Twin Brother, Logan Dine Fitch ’14

Logan Dine Fitch 2014Father, Robert Dine Fitch ’77Mother, Sally Dine Fitch ’ 77Brother, Corey D. Fitch ’02Twin Brother, Coleman Dine Fitch ’14

Erin Flannelly 2014Father, Michael W. Flannelly ’78Mother, Margaret Shave Flannelly ’80Brother, David F. Flannelly ’10

Uncle, Douglas J. Flannelly x ’80Cousin, Sarah C. Flannelly ’09

Lauren Fleming 2014Grandmother, Suzanne Carmany Thomson ’54Aunt, Nancy Thomson Cinnater ’83

Catherine Friant 2014Grandfather, Robert Van Wyk ’61

Margaret Frick 2014Father, Jay E. Frick ’74Mother, Annie Baird Frick ’74Cousin, Madalyn M. Myers ’12

Elise Gifford 2014Grandfather, Robert F. Watson ’58Grandmother, Janice Moser Watson ’58Aunt, Margot Watson ’83Cousin, Emily LeCompte ’14

Erica Hartsough 2014Grandfather, Don M. Hartsough ’55Great-grandmother, Eloween Dowd Hartsough x ’ 29Cousin, John C. Dowd ’ 55/trustee emeritusCousin, David D. Dowd ’51

Catherine Herst 2014Grandmother, Jeanne Tuttle Herst ’49Grandfather, Robert E. Herst ’49Aunt, Deborah Herst Hill ’73Uncle, Richard A. Hill ’74Cousin, Jeremy T. Hill ’98

The Family ofKATHERINECARWILE

Sarah MortensenPatton

Peter Mortensen

Florence Painter Griffith

Richard R. BensonDavid L. Benson

Andrea Patton 2014Father, Kim D. Patton ’85Mother, Sarah Mortensen Patton ’84Grandfather, Peter Mortensen ’56Grandmother, Sara-Rae Griffith Young x ’58Great Grandmother, *Florence Painter Griffith ’27Great Grandmother, Mary LetitiaBrown Mortensen ’27Great Great Aunt, *Sarah Painter ’25Great Great Aunt, Harriet Painter Hopkins ’32Great Great Uncle, *W. Dean Hopkins ’30Great Great Aunt, Miriam Painter Palmer ’28Great Great Uncle, Fred A. Palmer x ’28Great Aunt, Virginia Griffith Watson ’52Great Uncle, David S. Mortensen ’64Great Aunt, Jean BowmanMortensen ’64Great Aunt, Barbara Mortensen Rosnagle ’53Great Uncle, *Robert S. Rosnagle ’53Great Great Aunt, Grace Brown Neuffer ’30Aunt, Karen Mortensen Harris x ’86Aunt, Linda Mortensen Hill ’82Aunt, Kelly Mortensen Hebble ’83Uncle, Thomas B. Hebble x ’83Cousin, Katherine Jean Mortensen ’90Cousin, Jacob Mortensen Haning ’11

Elizabeth BakerBenson

The Family ofIAN BENSON

Ian Benson 2014Father, David L. Benson ’83Grandfather, Richard R. Benson ’47Grandmother, Elizabeth Baker Benson ’48Aunt, Susan Benson Collins ’72Uncle, Malcolm L. Collins ’71Cousin, Andrew L. Collins ’12

Mary Letitia BrownMortensen

The Family ofANDREA PATTON

McDowell A. Jones 2014Father, Brock D. Jones 1988Mother, Elizabeth Fowerbaugh Jones ’88Brother, Damon E. Jones x ’902nd Cousin, Carl Schopf ’93

Erin Kezele 2014Father, Gregory Kezele ’81

Helena Kondow 2014Father, Alexander J. Kondow ’80

Julia Land 2014Father, David M. Land ’81Uncle, Alec E. Land ’79Uncle, James G. Land ’84Aunt, Nora Land Murphy ’86Uncle, John S. Murphy ’86

Emily LeCompte 2014Mother, Margot Watson ’83Grandmother, Janice Moser Watson ’58Grandfather, Robert Watson ’58Cousin, Elise Gifford ’14

Curtis Lockhart 2014Father, Curtis M. Lockhart ’77Sister, Mary Kate Lockhart ’11Sister, Gretchen P. Lockhart ’10Uncle, *Dan F. Lockhart ’74Uncle, Charles G. Lockhart ’73Aunt, Deborah Falls Lockhart x ’76Aunt, Patrice Lockhart ’81Cousin, Charles D. Lockhart ’07

Jordan McNickle 2014Father, Kent L. McNickle ’87Mother, Donel Hartswick McNickle ’88

Peter Mehlich 2014Father, Robert Mehlich ’73

Angela Neely 2014Father, John M. Neely ’78Mother, Cathryn Frazier-Neely ’78Grandfather, David A. Neely ’43Grandmother, Margaret Welsh Neely ’44Grandfather, Robert W. Frazier ’49Great-Grandmother, Elizabeth Miller Neely ’51Great-Great-Grandfather, Edward Burgett Welsh ’01

Great Aunt, Lois Neely Roadarmel ’50Great Uncle, Norman P. Roadarmel ’50Great Aunt, Miriam Neely Keller ’45Great Aunt, Elinor Welsh Dixon ’55Great Uncle, Dale D. Dixon x ’55Great Aunt, Elizabeth Welsh Swegan ’47Aunt, Mary B. Neely ’69Aunt, Deborah A. Neely ’71Uncle, Mark W. Frazier ’81

Kelly Porten 2014Mother, Ruth McKee Porten ’84Uncle, Daniel J. McKee ’832nd Cousin, Dwight L. McKee x ’702nd Cousin, Margaret C. McKee ’67Great Uncle, Richard L. McKee x ’36Great Aunt, Florence Johnson McKee ’37

Elizabeth Reinthal 2014Father, William Reinthal ’81Mother, Carol Armstrong Reinthal ’80Aunt, Barbara Armstrong Buckley ’84Cousin, Donald Rice ’81

Trevor Roston 2014Father, Daryl A. Roston ’76Uncle, Stephen F. Roston ’85

Danielle Shepherd 2014Father, James R. Shepherd ’85Mother, Sherry Gross Shepherd ’87

Julie Shuff 2014Mother, Jeanne O'Brien Shuff ’77

Nicholas Ryan Spencer 2014Grandfather, David E. Bowser x ’60Grandmother, Mary Schneider Takacs x ’60Great Great Uncle, Grant E. Rose ’39Great Great Aunt, Margaret Bowser Rose ’ 38Sister, Samantha R. Spencer ’11

Alexandria Stout 2014Grandfather, Byron E. Morris ’55Grandmother, Jane Gustin Morris ’57Great Uncle, Thomas Gustin ’55

Thomas Valentine 2014Grandmother, Edna Hyatt Schaub x ’46

I N D E P E N D E N T M I N D S , W O R K I N G T O G E T H E R

The College of Wooster | 108 Ebert Art Center

1220 Beall Avenue | Wooster, OH 44691-2393

I n C l o s i n g

CRAZY 8THMatt Dilyard

Junior Luke Knezevic became the firstmale diver in school history to earn first-teamAll-American honors, finishing in eighth placein the one-meter event at the NCAA Div. IIIswimming and diving championships inKnoxville, Tenn.

Photographer’s notes:

This composite image came about as I wastoying with the original image of LukeKnezevic entering the water for my blog(http://underthekilt.scotblogs.wooster.edu). Iliked it much better presented upside down,but it was too disorienting. I opened both versions, made flipped copies of each,and found that I was the proud owner of aneight, exactly where Luke finished at theNCAA meet. As I cropped the image tighterand tighter to close the eight at the top,another smaller eight presented in the cen-ter. Outside of the flipping and normal toningadjustments, no pixel chicanery was involved.