ALUMNI NEWS
play college baseball, with 44 signing pro contracts. He and his wife, the former Connie Conrad, reside in Troy, Ohio, and celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary last June. Patricia O’Neil Durham, ’70, Fort Pierce, Florida, an Indian River State College retiree, is now writing for Indian River Magazine. Retired Kentucky educator Cebert Gilbert, ’70 ’73, Stanton, Kentucky, is currently the AARP and Kentucky Retired Teachers Association (KRTA) liaison.
J. P. Fisher, ’15
Gary Reece, ’70, has been appointed deputy commissioner of the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. He and his wife, Linda Parrett Reece, ’70, reside in Annville, Kentucky.
Two Majors, One Mission
James Banks, husband of Lena Hoffil Banks, ’71, Whiteland, Indiana, passed away in 2015.
Talk about your perfect marriage! J.P. Fisher, ’15, has blended two relatively new academic majors at EKU to help communities worldwide recover from disasters.
Anne Churchill Crawford, ’74, and her husband of more than 37 years, Darrell Crawford, have been raising Polled Hereford cattle in southwestern Kentucky following Mr. Crawford’s retirement from the military.
As an associate in emergency programs with AmeriCares, Fisher spent three weeks in Fiji this past spring, helping citizens of the South Pacific island nation rebuild their lives after a destructive cyclone. Previously, he was a part of teams that helped Texans rebuild their lives after tornadoes and Midwest residents recover from flooding. He never knows where he’ll serve next, only that he’ll be putting into practice lessons learned in two seemingly unrelated programs: homeland security and general business (global supply chain management).
Sharon Rowlett, ‘74, of Campbellsburg, Kentucky, is enjoying retirement after spending 34 years at Bedford Elementary in Trimble County — 27 of those as principal.
“While studying supply chain management, I was given the opportunity to explore how the course concepts could be applied to the emergency management material I was learning in the homeland security program, and vice versa,” Fisher said. “My professors were very supportive and gave me the tools to merge these two disciplines.” In his current role, Fisher works collaboratively with multiple departments, conducting partner outreach; building shipments for the delivery of medicines, medical supplies and other relief aid; conducting research on emergency response situations and regulatory changes; monitoring and addressing supply chain gaps; and deploying to help identify unmet health needs. When building shipments, Fisher considers product expiration dates, cold-chain requirements, hazmat requirements, country-specific import regulations and donor support. “One of the most important parts of the humanitarian supply chain is tracking the product from our warehouse to the health facility receiving the donation.” Fisher will long remember his experience in Fiji. “Even in the wake of a disaster,” he said, “the Fijian people were filled with joy, and treated us with kindness and respect. They were very interested in the work we were doing and always thankful for the support.” n
44 FALL 2016
Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Norman Arflack, ’75, has been appointed as Commissioner of Veteran Affairs for the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Gen. Arflack served four decades in the Kentucky National Guard, and as secretary of the Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet. Henrietta Stengel Duke, ’75, now a widow, lives in Williamsburg, Kentucky. Ray Spenilla, ’75, a standout Eastern baseball player and 2013 inductee into the EKU Athletics Hall of Fame, remains active in retirement following a 30-plus-year career in education as a teacher, coach and administrator. He now serves as an adjunct health educator at University of Virginia-Wise, a volunteer patient advocate at the Southwest Virginia Regional Cancer Center, a youth coach and mentor, and a leadership speaker at local and regional events. He and his wife, Jennifer Belcher Spenilla, ’77, reside in Wise, Virginia. Madeline Waltz-Fluhr, ’77, Columbia, Kentucky, is a retired social worker who teaches Celebrate Recovery and Life Skills classes as a jail ministry volunteer. Cordelia “Dee Dee” Harbut, ’77 ’05, has been appointed to serve as executive director of the Kentucky Commission on Women and as acting director of the Governor’s Office of Minority Empowerment. Most recently, she was director of the Kentucky Procurement Technical Assistance Center. She earned her MBA degree from Eastern. She and her husband, Tyrone Harbut, ’76, reside in Lexington. Pamela Campbell Stewart Fahs, ’78, of Endwell, New York, has been named interim dean of the Decker School of Nursing at Binghamton University. Mary Jo Baumann Roberts, ’78, married Timothy Roth in September 2014. They reside in Cincinnati, Ohio.