Class Notes - July 7, 1999
Class notes features
William "Windy" Strawbridge '44 died on April 8 at his home in Cape Coral, Florida, but that didn't stop him from attending his 55th reunion. In what surely was a first in Princeton history, Strawbridge's classmate Herb Hobler carried his friend's ashes in the P-rade on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. Immediately afterward, Hobler and other classmates scattered the ashes on Lake Carnegie.
Hobler attended the Hill School with Strawbridge before coming to Princeton with him. He recalled his friend as a lifelong Tiger who played football and baseball as an undergraduate. As an alumnus, he became a dedicated schools committeeman in the Chicago area, where he spent most of his working life.
"Windy was determined to come to his 55th reunion, and by golly he did it," says Hobler. "He had also expressed a desire to have his ashes cast on Lake Carnegie. His daughter Pam sent them to me -- she and her mother, Jan, thought the whole thing was a wonderful idea. The ashes arrived in a small tin box that fit conveniently in the pocket of my reunion jacket."
So in body and spirit, Windy Strawbridge accompanied Hobler to all the weekend festivities. "It was great," says Hobler, "because I thought about him all weekend. It was a wonderful Princeton celebratory experience, not just for me but for many of Windy's classmates."
At a ceremony in the Jimmy Stewart Theater on Saturday morning, the class honored its 275 deceased members by reading their names aloud. As Hobler later related to the Strawbridge family, it was then that "I shared with everyone that it was in the spirit of our departed classmates that I had Windy Strawbridge with me -- and raised up the box to show everyone."
Later that day, after Windy passed the P-rade reviewing stand and the PA announced his presence, Hobler and three classmates -- Jack Wagenseller, Jack Van Ness, and Bob Greeley (Strawbridge's former roommate) -- drove down to the Washington Road bridge over Lake Carnegie. While Greeley's daughter Susy snapped pictures, they opened the box and carefully removed its contents, which were sealed in a plastic bag. Then, with a blessing, they scattered Windy's ashes on Princeton's waters.
-- J.I. Merritt '66
Dan White '65 retires from the Alumni
Council
When asked what is Princeton's greatest need, Dan White '65, the outgoing
director of the Alumni Council, pauses before answering. "Princeton's
continuing challenge is bringing together people who are so bright and who
are such achievers. It's a particular challenge to develop a nurturing community."
White, who retires next month, is a soft-spoken, lean man with a thoughtful air about him. As he sits back in a cushy chair at a local Princeton coffee shop, he reflects on his 31 years of working at the university. "I came to the Alumni Council in the summer of 1968," White says. "I had taught for three years at St. Christopher's School in Richmond, Virginia. One day I received a letter from Princeton announcing an opening at the Alumni Council, and I applied." When White got the job of assistant secretary (later renamed assistant director), he thought he'd stay at Maclean House three years, but instead stayed three decades.
"That first summer was grim," he says, noting that Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King had been assassinated only months before. Being an administrator at a university during the late '60s and early '70s was at times difficult. "There was a lot of upheaval for a few years. The trustees decided to go coed, and there was all the unrest relating to Vietnam," White says. "But it was an exhilarating time to be at Princeton."
Then, as now, alumni were often divided by the changes happening at Princeton. It falls to the administrators at the Alumni Council to keep the divisions from becoming major fault lines. "Our role traditionally has been both to represent the university to the alumni and to bring the alumni concerns and interests to the university," White explains. "In the beginning, during the turbulent time when both the university and society were caught up in major changes, it was a real test for all of us. We had to explain what was happening at the university and to build support among the alumni. We had to deal with the anger being expressed and answer questions from people who didn't understand fully what lay behind the issues and the decision to go coed. We were part of a team of people who fanned out across the land to explain what was going on."
At the same time that White was oiling the waters for the Alumni Council, he was coaching lightweight football (and later freshman football) and writing. He coached for 12 years, but relinquished those responsibilities when he was promoted to director of the council in 1980. He's written eight books, including a biography of former basketball coach Pete Carril.
White admits that recently the times have been less contentious. "It is still an exciting time at the university. To be with an institution that places such an insistence on excellence is wonderful."
Asked about the Alumni Council's greatest need, White again pauses before answering, "The Alumni Council's continuing challenge involves figuring out how to accommodate an alumni body that keeps expanding in numbers, ideas, and enthusiasm. We need to retain personal contact."
One of the greatest innovations that has come out of Maclean House goes a long way to keeping things personal among alumni. "With substantial initiative and help from CIT and a volunteer from Seattle, Jolanne Stanton '77, we established TigerNet, an 'electronic courtyard' for the Princeton family," says White. TigerNet, an Internet-based communication system, serves as a way for far-flung alumni to reconnect via e-mail and online discussion groups.
Next month, White himself may begin using TigerNet to reconnect. White, who has two children (one of whom, David '91, went to Princeton) and two grandchildren, is leaving the university to devote more time to his writing and to build an alumni-relations consulting business. Will he miss Princeton? "Of course. I'll miss the sense of place and the people. But I'll be back for Reunions."
-- Lolly O'Brien
When I first came to work at the Wildlife Conservation Society's Bronx Zoo (WCS) in 1996, I had no idea I would soon be involved in the most elaborate exhibit project the zoo had ever undertaken -- Congo Gorilla Forest. A 6.5-acre African rain-forest exhibit designed as a home for gorillas, okapis, mandrills, monkeys, and much more, Congo has been 11 years and $43 million in the making and opened at the Bronx Zoo on June 24. Congo is more than just another zoo exhibit, however. It is a rain-forest immersion experience that represents the direction in which the 21st-century zoo is moving -- by connecting each individual visitor with the opportunity to participate in saving wildlife in Africa.
As part of the Bronx Zoo's education department, I have been working on creating educational materials to accompany Congo for the past two years. These materials target parents, teachers, children, and general visitors. Focusing on African rain-forest wildlife, the project challenged the Congo education team, which included Stacey Motland '91, to create songs, storybooks, lesson plans, posters, and guidebooks that would address conservation in a fun and understandable way.
A project this big involves hundreds of people. I soon learned that Princetonians were everywhere. In addition to Stacey and myself, Michelle Carr '74 runs the zoo's membership and gift-planning department, where membership has doubled in the last five years. Richard Harding '66, president of Humphreys & Harding, is the construction manager for Congo. But the most visible Tiger of all and one of Congo's major creators is John Gwynne '71, WCS's director for design.
Gwynne, who was responsible for overseeing the entire development, planning, and construction of Congo, is enthusiastic about it for many reasons, particularly the exhibit's direct connection to African conservation. Visitors pay a $3 entry fee, which provides them with not only a journey through the rain forest and a visit with gorillas, but also the opportunity to choose to which conservation project WCS sponsors they would like their entry fee to go. Every dollar goes directly to support conservation in Africa.
"WCS is uniquely situated between saving great bits of wild places before it is too late and bringing people in our urban audience closer to nature," says Gwynne. "Probably no other exhibit of any kind allows you to actually affect the outcome of the exhibit's subject. We hope to teach our visitors about the African rain forest, inspire them to care, and then give them the opportunity to participate in state-of-the-art conservation. And there is no more articulate advocate for conservation than a living gorilla inches away from you."
Creating an exhibit of this size and scope has many challenges. "How do you create a walk-through story that makes sense?" Gwynne asks. "It's like walking through a book."
Gwynne, who has always been interested in the marriage of art and science, is up to the challenge. When his parents asked him what he wanted for his 15th birthday, he told them he wanted a pond. Instead of laughing it off as a teenage quirk, they promised to rent a bulldozer and driver for a day. Gwynne says the pond was at first a disaster as landscape architecture, but today is a working ecosystem.
While at Princeton, where he majored in art history and took courses in biology, he also began illustrations for his first book -- The Birds of Panama, with Robert Ridgely '71. To illustrate more than 1,000 birds, he traveled to Panama in the summers. After Princeton, Gwynne earned a landscape-architecture degree at Harvard and shortly thereafter saw what he describes as "awful" new plans for the Roger Williams Park Zoo in his home state of Rhode Island. He called up the director, who asked him to come in to talk with him about the plans. At the end of that conversation, Gwynne was the head of its exhibit department. Since then, he has worked on dozens of landscape architecture projects and zoo exhibits, both in Rhode Island and at the Bronx Zoo.
"I feel very fortunate to have gone through Princeton at an extremely idealistic time, when we really felt we could change the world for good." Gwynne says. He hopes that Congo will inspire millions of 21st-century zoo visitors to feel the same way.
-- Sharon Katz '93
Sharon Katz '93 majored in ecology and evolutionary biology. She is currently the curriculum developer for Congo Gorilla Forest at the Bronx Zoo.
An art dealer turned medical doctor
Not too long ago, the proprietor of Jennifer Wheler Fine Art, at 253 East 77th Street in New York City, also became known as Dr. Wheler. In May she graduated from Cornell Medical School, and she begins a residency in family medicine at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York later this summer.
At Princeton, Wheler, who graduated in 1988, produced a creative thesis for the art history department: a photography exhibit of 50 black-and-white portraits of her extended family. In her senior year, she did an internship at Pace Wildenstein MacGill, a prestigious New York photography gallery, and when she graduated, the gallery hired her full-time. She loved her work as assistant to the directors of the Old Masters Prints and Modern Prints departments but wasn't quite satisfied. An eclectic career path followed: she did promotion for a start-up magazine called Smart (now defunct); took architecture courses at Columbia University and worked as an assistant to the well-known architect James Polshek; and served as design coordinator for Edwin Schlossberg Incorporated (ESI), where she wrote design specifications for museum exhibits. All this activity didn't mean she couldn't focus, though. While still working for ESI, she began taking chemistry courses at Hunter College and soon joined its premed program as a full-time student, excelling enough to win a spot at Cornell.
As demanding as her schoolwork was, she was always spurred to do more. "In my second year of medical school, I was spending all my time in the library," Wheler says, "and I really missed the arts. My only contact was going to the Met on Friday nights." She wanted to get back to her own photography, but found that shooting and developing pictures that met her standards was too time-consuming to combine with her studies. So she hit on the idea of representing the work of other artists. "Starting a business was something I could do in discrete periods of time," explains Wheler. "It wasn't all-encompassing like creating my own art." She started with Judith Hinton Andrew, an old family friend whose painting she had admired for years. Andrew is a breast-cancer survivor whose experience with illness has a strong effect on her art.
Wheler gave her first show of Andrew's work in her apartment in February of 1997, and a second in June of the same year. "It was a very intuitive decision," Wheler says. "If I had thought about the idea for too long, I probably wouldn't have done it. In the early stages of this business, like most others, you spend more money than you make. It was not a wise financial investment for a student." Still, she loved every aspect of it. "And surprisingly," she claims, "I even started doing better in school at that time. I wasn't as stressed out about studying because I had something else of value going on in my life."
She is now the New York representative for seven artists, all women. Four are Princeton graduates: Margaret Wicker Azzoni '81 *84, Natasha Bult '91, Rokhaya Waring '88, and Mary Weatherford '84. The others are Nina Bovasso and Margaret Watts, of New York City. Wheler is planning a group show later this year, and in the meantime the artists' work is available for viewing by appointment.
"I am passionate about all of my work," says Wheler, "and I hope all the pieces will fit together someday. But medicine and art are not as different as some people think. Medicine is an art. Both require a lot of sensitivity, good judgment, and working with your hands. Medicine moves at a fast pace, while art is more contemplative, but there's a tremendous amount of overlap."
-- Heather Liston '83
Secretaries, Paw enjoy a smashing
party
Class secretaries mingled with paw and Alumni Council staff at the annual Class Secretaries' Reception at Maclean House. Left-to-right, front row: Dave Kreitler '31, Mac Macdonald '44, George Brakeley '61, Turhan Tirana '57, Damon Carter '42, Paul Sittenfeld '69, and Lissa Kiser '75. Middle row: Adrienne Rubin '88 (Alumni Council), Stan Medina '37, Bob Miner *56, Alan Flippin '84, Al Kracht '49, and Gregg Lange '70. Back row: Jay Siegel '59, Ace Bushnell '47, Bob Willis '46, Leslie Bennett '80, Jack Kellogg '32 (who, despite having taken a bit of a spill on his way to the party, smiled as brightly as ever), Dick Paynter '51, Bill VandenHeuvel '56, John Paul '55, Hugh Richardson '53, Lesley Carlin '95 (paw), and Love Slipock '98. Erik Barnouw '29 was fashionably late due to a delayed campus shuttle; we missed him for the photo, but were happy he joined us later. To Mac, Al, Alan, and all the other class secretaries who are retiring this year, we thank you for your service, and we hope you don't wake up panic-stricken every other Friday morning this fall thinking you've forgotten to send in your class notes!
Living with addicts
Jessica Hulsey '98 now fights drug abuse
Even by the high-achieving standards of Princeton grads, Jessica Hulsey
'98 would have to be classified as precocious.
The ink was barely dry on her diploma when the 22-year-old English major found herself being celebrated in print by a powerful member of Congress. There's an entire chapter on Hulsey and her efforts to combat drug abuse in Courage is Contagious, a recently published book by Rep. John Kasich, an Ohio Republican who chairs the House Budget Committee.
Kasich first heard Hulsey speak at the 1997 presidential summit on volunteerism in Philadelphia and was so impressed he tracked her down at Princeton. He was determined to include her story in the collection he was compiling to celebrate "ordinary people who do extraordinary things."
Her story begins in her childhood in Orange County, California, where she grew up on the squalorous fringes of a couple of desperate lives.
Hulsey's mom and dad were heroin addicts. Watching them shoot up is one of her earliest memories. For her baby sister and her, growing up meant gypsying from one provisional living arrangement to another, with drug dealers for babysitters and sometimes a car for a home. "We spent a lot of time pulling lice out of each other's hair," Hulsey says in Kasich's book.
Hulsey found refuge in the home of her maternal grandmother, a full-blooded Chippewa Indian who eventually went to court to get custody of Hulsey and her sister. Help also came from sympathetic teachers and counselors in the Orange County schools and friends in the Episcopal Church.
Her road to Princeton began when Peter Ochs '65, a retired Orange County real estate developer turned philanthropist, met Hulsey when she was a senior in high school. It was at a United Way luncheon in Santa Ana, where Hulsey spoke about the effects drug abuse had had on her life.
"I was very touched," Ochs says. As a sometime interviewer for his local Schools Committee, he was also interested. "I saw a spark," he says, "some qualities I thought could really be developed at Princeton."
After interviewing Hulsey, he became convinced that she "would add a huge amount to the university and also gain a huge amount by being there."
Hulsey, who felt Princeton would be way beyond her family's modest means, applied mainly to humor Ochs. When she was offered "a great scholarship," her first thought was to reject it. "I was terrified."
And with good reason. The world Hulsey entered after being convinced to take Princeton up on its offer was new and astonishing -- but not always brave, at least when it came to assimilating the grim realities of her life. Hulsey remembers one prominent professor peppering her with questions about her parents, then lapsing into stunned -- and, to Hulsey, stony -- silence when she told him the truth. "It was like he had nothing more to say to me. We had nothing in common," she says, her voice still betraying the hurt.
She also remembers her first night out on Prospect Street. "I went to a club where they were squeegee-ing beer off the table," she said. "I almost threw up."
Hulsey, who rejected drugs and decided not to try alcohol until she was 21, found herself something of a social outcast on a campus where "everyone drank" and "marijuana was everywhere."
The first time she bickered at Cottage Club, "I was hosed because I didn't drink," Hulsey says.
But as culture shock wore off, Hulsey's can-do spirit kicked in. "At Princeton there are really open places and really closed places," Hulsey said. "I decided to try to insert myself into the closed spaces."
She went back to Cottage Club for another bicker. She still didn't drink, but this time she got in. She became president of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. Active in the Episcopal Church and the Student Volunteers Council, she devoted countless hours to Corner House, a drug prevention center on Witherspoon Street. She helped find campus mentors for local public school students.
Though she considered majoring in the Woodrow Wilson School, she decided to "do something fun" and opted for the English department. But the war against drugs is "my passion," Hulsey says, and today she works for Civic Solutions, a Washington, D.C., consulting firm that works with nonprofits and foundations.
Hulsey remains close to her family. Her mother has been off drugs for years but is struggling with serious medical problems as a result of her long addiction. Hulsey tries with less success to stay in touch with her father, whose home, she says with a sad shrug, is "the streets of L.A."
Her No. 1 prescription for winning the war on drugs? More treatment facilities. "Addicts are people," says Hulsey. She sees their problem as a disease that too often goes untreated. "If someone has something wrong with their liver or pancreas, we don't just turn them away from the hospital."
She's not without a sense of humor. Her working title for a possible autobiography is Never a Dull Moment, she says with a grin. Hulsey says her target audience is "me, 10 years ago. I'm hoping some 13-year-old out there in the country can pick it up and find direction from it."
If she seems a bit young to be writing her memoirs, Hulsey explains: "I'm hoping all the interesting stuff happened before I was 20 and that it's going to be pretty boring from here on."
Somehow that doesn't seem likely. For Jessica Hulsey, it looks like the story is just getting to the good part.
-- Kathy Kiely '77
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