letters r e a d e r r e sp onse
The Rice University Board of Trustees
TO THE EDITOR
I beg to differ with the author of the ring story (Winter 2016, Page 48) on the subject of the style of Rice rings. My high school math teacher, H. Lel Red, was a member of the Rice class of 1916. Her Rice ring had a lovely bas-relief owl’s head [and not a seal]. I understand from her nephew, a member of my high school graduating class, that Miss Red’s ring is now in the Rice archives. Miss Red was also my father’s high school math teacher (Sam Houston High School class of 1929), and he remembered her with as much affection as I do. I would love to see a photograph of that ring. Miss Red’s fifth-period class had a number of future Rice graduates in 1955–1957, including Earl Van Zandt, Charles and Charlene Prescott, Wendy Rainbow Germani, Judith Helmle Shaw, Bill Middleton, Gene Marshall, John Wolf, Mike Bowen and Carlos Hamilton. Unlike many teachers today, she followed us throughout high school, teaching algebra, plane and solid geometry, and trigonometry. She allowed the few students who could afford them to use calculators in math class and believed that our children would be using calculators in elementary school — a radical idea in 1957.
Robert B. Tudor III, chairman; Edward B. “Teddy” Adams Jr.; J.D. Bucky Allshouse; Keith T. Anderson; Doyle Arnold; Nancy Packer Carlson; Albert Chao; T. Jay Collins; Mark Dankberg; Doug Foshee; Lawrence Guffey; Patti Kraft; Charles Landgraf; R. Ralph Parks; David Rhodes; Lee H. Rosenthal; Ruth Simmons; Jeffery Smisek; Amy Sutton; Gloria Meckel Tarpley; Robert M. Taylor Jr.; Guillermo Treviño; Randa Duncan Williams; Huda Zoghbi. Administrative Officers
Selected Survey Results: Rice Magazine Winter 2016
David W. Leebron, president; Marie Lynn Miranda, provost; Kathy Collins, vice president for Finance; Klara Jelinkova, vice president for IT and chief information officer; Kevin Kirby, vice president for Administration; Caroline Levander, vice president of Strategic Initiatives and Digital Education; Chris Muñoz, vice president for Enrollment; Allison Kendrick Thacker, vice president for Investments and treasurer; Linda Thrane, vice president for Public Affairs; Richard A. Zansitis, vice president and general counsel; Darrow Zeidenstein, vice president for Development and Alumni Relations.
Most-read feature “Lost at Sea: How ‘boat people’ fleeing the aftermath of the Vietnam War discovered safe haven in Houston — and how their stories found a home at Rice.”
Creative Services–MS 95 P.O. Box 1892 Houston, TX 77251-1892 Phone: 713-348-6768 ricemagazine@rice.edu
— JUdy Cole Talkington ’61
In September 2001, my husband, Pat Jones ’55, and I spent a few nights in a hidden hotel on a cliff in Santorini, Greece. One morning we had breakfast on the terrace, which was separated from the adjoining terrace by a low wall. A young couple sat down to breakfast on the other side of the wall. As we greeted each other, I noticed they wore Rice rings. It was a serendipitous encounter. The second story is about Pat, who graduated with honors as a mechanical engineer. All his life he refused to wear rings. But when he was age 79 and suffering with dementia, he began wearing his Rice ring, which he never removed. When he died in March 2015, our son, a civil/transportation planning engineer, removed it from Pat’s finger and is now its keeper. I still wear mine, as do Pat’s sister, Angela, and her husband, Hugh Miller ’57. This ring is beautiful, unusual and well-earned. — Barbara veyon Jones ’56
Editorial Offices
timed
“I lived 26 years in Houston and never knew that’s why we had so many Vietnamese immigrants! I’m very glad to learn about that, and it’s very welltimed considering the Syrian refugee crisis.”
Most-read department Abstract
81 percent of survey takers agreed or strongly agreed with this statement: Reading Rice Magazine helps me stay connected to Rice University. Have a comment, criticism or story idea? Write to us at ricemagazine@rice.edu.
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Send address changes to: Rice University Development Services–MS 80 P.O. Box 1892 Houston, TX 77251-1892 ©May 2016 Rice University