Saint Mary's Magazine: Summer 2012

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M A G A Z I N E

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S A I N T

M A R Y ’S

C O L L E G E

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V O L U M E 3 2 • N U M B E R 3 • S U M M E R 2 0 12

C A L I F O R N I A

SAINT MARY’S

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

PUBLISHER

Michael Beseda ’79 EXECUTIVE EDITOR

J. Elizabeth Smith EDITOR

Jo Shroyer ASSISTANT EDITOR

WHO AMONG US HASN’T CRIED OUT FOR “A LITTLE PEACE AND QUIET, IF YOU DON’T MIND?”

Teresa Castle CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Bob Ciano ART DIRECTOR

Karen Kemp GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Beth Brann POETRY EDITOR

Graham Foust CONTRIBUTORS

Chris Carter ‘97, MA ‘02 Kathryn Geraghty J.G. Preston Ginny Prior Susan Sward

The Saint Mary’s College of California experience inspires learning that lasts a lifetime. The College’s rigorous education engages intellect and spirit while awakening the desire to transform society. We are all learners here — together, working to understand and shape the world.

For more information, see stmarys-ca.edu.

Saint Mary’s magazine is published three times a year.

Please send comments to news@stmarys-ca.edu or call (925) 631-4278.

Please submit name and address changes to Donna Foster at dkf2@stmarys-ca.edu or write Saint Mary’s College, P.O. Box 4300, Moraga, CA 94575-4300.

In the ceaseless bath of news, opinion, messaging and media, personal pressures of every kind, not to mention the relentless spinning of our own weary minds, we struggle to find our own island of calm and serenity.

Many of us mothers (come on, admit it) have resorted to shutting ourselves in the bathroom for a few minutes with a beloved book just to get away from the din and demands of family life.

I once knew a fellow whose mother — the wife of a prominent architect who was often away — sent her several kids outside to play, locking herself in her bedroom for one hour every afternoon. My friend said he and his siblings tried to pry her loose by calling up the stairs to report this or that infraction or urgent hunger. She would serenely inquire, “Are you bleeding?”

“No,” they’d answer.

“Then go away.”

Of course, I don’t necessarily recommend this as a best practice in parenting.

But I understand it.

Given how difficult it is to define and create our own personal peace, or even keep peace in our families, consider the size and complexity of the problem of bringing peace to our communities and the brawling wider world?

It is a brain numbingly difficult job done by hardy humans bent on action and determined to effect change. Their work defies a cultural perception that peace is essentially passive. Not to impugn the power of passive resistance championed by some of our greatest heroes, but as a dear colleague pointed out to me: You can’t be a bystander in a peace movement; you have to be all in and willing to put others’ needs ahead of your own if you’re going to make any difference at all.

A few years back I was in Los Alamos, New Mexico, working on a book about the national laboratory that created the world’s first atomic bombs. I noticed a bumper sticker on one of the battered pickups favored by a particular breed of rugged engineer. It read ACTUATING PEACE — intended, I thought, to trump the more prevalent bumper stickers that urged us to ENVISION PEACE, as if the latter were just wishful thinking.

In planning this issue of the Saint Mary’s magazine, I couldn’t stop thinking about the difficult job of actuating peace. Not through developing the technology of mutually assured destruction, but through exercising the range of activity that begins with envisioning peace and continues through hard work and self-sacrifice.

Peacemakers and peacekeepers are heroes; they should be celebrated for the many ways they throw themselves into the difficult job of making this planet a tolerable, maybe even wonderful, place to live. We celebrate some of them in our magazine.

JO SHROY ER EDITOR

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GUARDIAN IN GANGLAND San Joaquin County Deputy District Attorney Victoria “Tori” Verber-Salazar ’87 prosecutes Stockton gang homicides and, at the same time, dedicates herself to helping young people get out and stay out of gangs.

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THROUGH THE CAMERA LENS Michael Collopy ’82 has photographed some of the world’s best-known figures, including Nobel Peace Prize winners and dozens of other peacemakers and public personalities.

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HELPING HAND FOR PEACEKEEPERS UNDER PRESSURE Bob Delaney, a 2010 graduate of the M.A. in Leadership program, has been an undercover cop infiltrating the mob, an NBA referee, and now helps veterans cope with post-traumatic stress.

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2 events 3 feedback

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C A L I F O R N I A O F C O L L E G E M A R Y’ S S A I N T

36 gael glimpses 44 in memoriam 45 endnote

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Alumni Awards | Columnist Celebrated Regular Folks | Pro Rugby Great Retires | Scholarship Honors Rugby Alumnus

NEW WAYS TO KEEP THE The M.A. in Leadership program at Saint Mary’s is changing the way California police departments keep the peace by using collaborative decision-making.

M A G A Z I N E

32 the quad

T H E

Commencement | Barry Eckhouse – Prof of the Year | New Seminar Approach | Journey to the Sacraments | Golf Walk-on Goes for Win | Field of Dreams Opens | That Championship Season | Faculty Profile: Carl Guarneri

SAINT MARY’S

4 the arcade

Cover photo: Michael Collopy ’82 photographed with his portrait of his friend Mother Teresa. This photo of him was taken with a 20X24 Polaroid camera, a huge device, of which there are only four used commercially in the world. © Tim Mantaoni. All rights reserved.

VOLUME 32

•

A VISION OF

E V E N T S

JUNE 21

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CON T I N U E S T H ROUG H J U N E 2 3

KSOE Summer Leadership Institute: Equity and Inclusion Through a Leadership Lens Soda Center 8:30 a.m. – 2 p.m.

Enjoy a thought-provoking multimedia presentation from the New Wilderness Project and presentations on testing, cultural competency and diversity by Juan Carlos Arauz, Tarah Fleming, Kathy Moore and Carol Loftin. Learn more at stmarys-ca.edu/summerleadership-institute-equity-and-inclusionthrough-a-leadership-lens.

CON T I N U E S T H ROUG H J U LY 2 2

Alumni Reunion 2012 What are your fondest Saint Mary’s memories? The Great Books? The Chapel? Jan Term? Painting the SMC? The Brothers? Your classmates? Come back to campus July 20 – 22 for the biggest and best alumni event of the year. Celebrate those days with friends and family and see what’s new. Learn more and RSVP at stmarys-ca.edu/reunion-weekend.

J U LY 8

tasting, delicious appetizers and fun! Tickets are $45 per person until August 3 ($60 thereafter); designated driver rate is $15 per person. Proceeds benefit student scholarships. Learn more at stmarys-ca.edu/alumnievents.

20 10th Annual Golf & Bocce Tournament for Graduate Business Alumni & Students Join Graduate Business alumni and students at the 10th Annual Golf and Bocce Tournament for a day of fun, sun, laughter and prizes. This event is not limited to experienced players, but rather brings together individuals of all skill levels. Afterward, enjoy an exciting raffle and delicious dinner. Learn more at smcbusinessalumni.com/golf.

SEPTEMBER

CON T I N U E S T H ROUG H S E P T E M BE R 16

The Nature of Collecting: The Early 20th Century Fine Art Collection of Roger Epperson Saint Mary’s College Museum of Art Wednesday to Sunday 11 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.

5 Mass of the Holy Spirit Chapel 12:45 p.m.

The Mass is the traditional celebration of the beginning of the academic year and an opportunity for the entire SMC community to gather together.

Roger Epperson, an East Bay Regional Parks ranger, amassed a large collection of early California art, wood block prints and lithographs, including works

Frances Gearhart; “Above the Trail”; color block print on woven Japanese paper; 1929; 12 x 10; collection of Hannah Kully, courtesy of Catherine E. Burns Fine Prints.

28 5th Quarter Family Picnic The SMC Football Alumni Chapter invites alumni, family and friends to gather for a family picnic featuring live music, great food and special guests. Tickets are $25/person ($10/children 12 and under). Learn more at stmarys-ca.edu/5th-quarter-family-picnic.

William S. Rice; “The Glacier Sierra”; color woodcut with hand coloring on laid Japanese paper; ca. 1920; 9 x 12; collection of Hannah Kully, courtesy of Catherine E. Burns Fine Prints.

by Maynard Dixon, William S. Rice, Mary DeNeale Morgan and Lorenzo Latimer, among others. Also on display: Richard Gayton: One Square Mile with exquisite drawings and watercolors by California College of the Arts professor emeritus Richard Gayton that will transport viewers to the hills, canyons and wooded trails of Mount Diablo State Park; and Beyond California, oil paintings from William Keith’s sojourns through the Northwest, Alaska, New England and Germany. Admission: $5; SMC community, museum members and K–12, free.

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SUMMER 2012

AUGU S T 11 11th Annual Women’s Soccer Inter-squad Game & Kick-Off Save the date! Meet the 2012 Women’s Soccer Team players and coaches, learn more about the upcoming season and help support Gael Athletics as we kick off the Women’s Soccer season. Event proceeds benefit the Women’s Soccer Team Fund. Learn more at stmarys-ca.edu/womens-soccer-inter-squadgame-kick-off.

12 8th Annual Summer Wine Festival 2 – 5 p.m.

Saint Mary’s College and the Alumni Association invite you to join in the Soda Center for an afternoon of wine

William Posey Silva; “Sunset Hour, Point Lobos”; oil on board; ca. 1935; 9 1/2 x 115∕8; collection of Roger Epperson.

12 MFA Sesquicentennial Celebration Soda Center 7 p.m.

Celebrate the sesquicentennial with your fellow MFA alumni, current students and faculty, and our guest speakers — SMC basketball great-turned-poet Tom Meschery ’61 and former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass ’63. To RSVP, contact Sara Mumolo, sm13@stmarys-ca.edu.

15 Sesquicentennial Mass Chapel 5 p.m.

The Mass is the official kick-off of the year of Saint Mary’s sesquicentennial celebrations. Join us for a wonderful Mass and the grand reception that follows on the Chapel lawn.

F E E D B A C K

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Leadership Coaching Program Online, with two in-person sessions A values-based coaching program to help you identify your highest values and priorities and then design specific goals and plans to move forward. Ideal for alumni who want to reconnect to the action-learning orientation and support available from SMC. Learn more at stmarys-ca.edu/leadership-center/ leadership-coaching-program.

Callot, Hans Burkhardt, Marc Chagall, Oskar Kokoshka and Sadao Watanabe. Admission: $5; SMC community, museum members and K–12, free.

17 Dine with Alums Soda Center 5:30 p.m.

In this annual event, SMC alumni share their career experience with students who are exploring potential

career paths. For more information, contact Courtney Lohmann at ccarmign@stmarys-ca.edu or (925) 631-4577.

For more information on all alumni events, see stmarys-ca.edu/alumni events. Questions?

Email events@stmarys-ca.edu or call (925) 631-8744.

OCTOBER 6 Gaelebration — A Bay Area celebration of Saint Mary’s 150th Anniversary 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.

An event for the entire Bay Area! Alumni, family, friends and the Bay Area community are invited to Saint Mary’s campus for an unprecedented day of fun and learning about the College. A carnival will include rides and attractions, plus interactive programs.

Performances from music, theater and dance groups, live bands and athletic demonstrations. Gourmet food trucks will be on hand along with carnival fare.

A true GAELEBRATION! Learn more at stmarys-ca.edu/year-of-the-gael.

Hiroshi Yoshida, El Capitan; 1925; color woodcut; collection of Roger Epperson.

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CON T I N U E S T H ROUG H DEC E M BE R 16

Cross Purpose Saint Mary’s College Museum of Art Wednesday to Sunday 11 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.

Figurative, abstract, expressionist, realist and conceptual art of the cross by such masters as Jacques

All Present and Accounted For

Thank You, Scholarship Donors

Thank you for including the photo of me with the Salesian Award from St. Mary’s High School in Stockton. Unfortunately the two who were with me were not identified. And they are very important people! And I know it was an honest error.

They are, from left to right, with me in the middle, Peter D. Morelli, ’73, the principal of St. Mary’s High School and an NFL referee, and Rev. John P. Fallon, OSFS, the president of St. Mary’s High School.

Another thing. You are doing a good job.

Congratulations!

Go Gaels!

George M. Clark ’66 Stockton

This spring nearly 200 students wrote personal notes to 142 donors thanking them for their private scholarships. Their letters expressed eloquent, heartfelt thanks for the opportunities their Saint Mary’s education provides. Now these students are off to study law or medicine, do forensic work or build careers in service, all thanks to the generous donors who believed in them. Their generosity truly changes lives. Read the students’ letters at stmarys-ca.edu/thankyoustories. Here’s an excerpt from one of them:

“Words cannot express how truly grateful I am for your generosity. I hope that I can give to others what you have given to me, an opportunity to grow as a person and serve all those in need. After volunteering [for the next two years], I plan on attending graduate school and look forward to giving back to Saint Mary’s to make the College the best it can be.”

Alex Ballew ’12

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A R C A D E

“Renaissance Man” and Social Tech Pioneer Speak at Commencement Ceremonies

“Sport has sustained my life, teaching

has inspired my life, and poetry has nurtured my life,” he said, as he advised the students to embrace their creativity in everything

Two fascinating leaders — SMC basketball

they do.

legend, poet and educator Thomas Meschery

’61 and Benetech founder Jim Fruchter-

456 students at the graduate and professional

man — shared life lessons with the audience

programs commencement by advising them

at Saint Mary’s commencement ceremonies

to embrace the power of failure, as well as the

this year.

power of personal networks and karma. “When

you succeed, it’s not always clear if you were

Meschery addressed the largest class of

The next day, Fruchterman surprised the

graduating seniors in College history — 684

lucky, or smart, or just worked hard. But failure

students — on May 19. He played for the Gaels’

teaches real lessons,” he explained.

1958 – 59 “Elite Eight” team and went on to

a career in the NBA. There, he earned the

tist ended when a rocket he helped design blew

nickname “The Mad Russian” for his asser-

up. He went on to create seven high-tech com-

tive play, but his teammates also knew him

panies, five of which failed. But he kept pushing

as “Renaissance man” for his love of poetry.

boundaries and finally hit on his life’s mission

After 10 years, he changed course and devoted

when he founded Benetech, a groundbreaking

the rest of his life to poetry and teaching, win-

nonprofit company that develops “technology to

ning the U.S. Presidential Scholars Teacher

benefit all of humanity, not just the richest

Recognition Award four times.

10 percent.”

PHOTOS BY DANIEL ROSENTRAUCH

Fruchterman’s first career as a rocket scien-

Barry Eckhouse — An Unlikely Techno Prophet

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SUMMER 2012

SHOMARI CARTER ‘13

S

omewhere in cyberspace, an alternate Saint Mary’s College exists.

In this world, the college is an island, with a perfectly scaled 3-D version of McKeon Pavilion, and people can fly.

The alternate SMC is the brainchild of Professor Barry Eckhouse and several of his students, who created it on Second Life, a virtual reality website, as part of a class project to test ways to increase the profitability of McKeon Pavilion without adding seats.

It’s because of this kind of innovative teaching that Eckhouse received the Professor of the Year award this spring, but he has been providing leadership in new learning technologies for more than a decade.

He founded the successful Hybrid Executive MBA program, which

The SMC undergraduate commencement was a festive affair. Students gave their caps a personal touch (left) and SMC basketball legend and poet Thomas Meschery ’61 (bottom left) delivered the commencement speech before the new grads received their diplomas and erupted in hugs and cheers. Later, they let loose even more at “plot parties” that spilled onto lawns all over campus (top right). At the graduate and professional programs ceremony the next day, social entrepreneur Jim Fruchterman (center right) addressed the crowd and many graduates celebrated the big day with their families.

combines online and in-person learning, and was recently named director of technology and online programs for the School of Economics and Business Administration. His charge is to extend to the undergraduate curriculum the mix of digital and personal learning that has enlivened the school’s graduate programs.

However, Eckhouse, who came to Saint Mary’s in 1989, is not your average technophile. He is a man of many contradictions: His office is a computer geek’s dream — a cool, dark, ultramodern cave with an array of high-end computer screens stretching along two walls — but he writes with a fountain pen and has a growing collection of vintage writing instruments.

And although he’s a nationally recognized leader in online learning, he delights in teaching the occasional low-tech Seminar class and is seldom seen without his decidedly unhip bow tie.

At the Professor of the Year award ceremony, Eckhouse was lauded as “a tremendous scholar, teacher and innovative thinker for Saint Mary’s College.” Provost Beth Dobkin referred to him as Saint Mary’s “man of

steel” — a reference to his passion for steel writing instruments and also, no doubt, to the determination he brings to his crusade to meld the college’s traditional hands-on learning model with digital technologies.

Eckhouse has also brought national recognition to Saint Mary’s by launching EMBA-Tech, a forum that draws educators and administrators from some of the top executive MBA programs in the nation to explore the cutting edge of educational technology. This year’s forum in San Francisco focused on ways to engage students by using the hugely popular tablet computers, such as the iPad. Its keynote speaker was Matt MacInness, founder of Inkling, a pioneering digital textbook company, and author of “The Death of the Page and the Dawn of the Digital.”

For Eckhouse, digital education is all about engaging students in their own language.

“Today’s students are digital natives,” he said. “There’s never been a time when they weren’t connected.”

– TERESA CASTLE

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A R C A D E

New Seminar Approach Aims to Help Students Succeed

• Shared inquiry and student-driven discussion • Close reading of primary texts • A common reading list inspired by the Great Books tradition, and • Examination of the essential ideas and perennial questions of human existence.

At the same time, she added, the four-year approach provides “greater connections with the overall academic, social and spiritual development

LIVE SIMPLY, PRAY DEEPLY, TEACH PASSIONATELY

ALLYSON WYLIE

F

reshmen entering Saint Mary’s in the next academic year will encounter a first-year Seminar class in the spring that has been redesigned to give them a jump start on mastering the core reading, writing, critical thinking and speaking skills at the heart of the Seminar program.

The new class is part of a revised sequence of four Seminar classes that will be unveiled over the next few years. The impetus for the change was a thorough reevaluation of the College’s educational goals that began in 2006 and resulted in a new Core Curriculum designed to deliver a more holistic approach to education based on the skills, knowledge and values we want our students to take away from their Saint Mary’s experience.

The four-year sequence of classes will begin in the freshman year with “Critical Strategies and Great Questions” and then proceed to “Western Tradition I” and “Western Tradition II,” which will take sophomores and juniors from the Greek period through the 20th century. The final course, known as “The Global Conversation of the 20th and 21st Centuries,” will engage students in texts from around the world to prepare them for life in today’s global community.

The reading list for the first-year class forms a fascinating counterpoint, in which classical texts play off modern ones to emphasize the relevance of the ancient works to our modern concerns. Plato, Sophocles, Homer and Galileo rub shoulders with Virginia Woolf, Ursula LeGuin, Bruno Bettelheim and Rachel Carson.

Provost Beth Dobkin said the revisions in Collegiate Seminar preserve its most important characteristics:

of students. For example, as they begin their first Seminar course, they will have enhanced support for their development in interpretive reading, analytic writing and critical thinking.”

The ultimate goal is to enhance students’ chances of succeeding at Saint Mary’s and prepare them for life beyond the College.

The Seminar program has been a key part of Saint Mary’s curriculum since 1942, but it has undergone many changes over the years. The first SMC “Great Books of the World” class debuted in 1941, and Seminar Studies, a then-radical educational reform based on a program at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Md., began a year later. The program was greatly reduced in 1946 as the College moved to accommodate a post-WWII surge in enrollment and was further simplified to four courses in 1983.

Despite the recent changes, the goal has remained the same, as expressed in the vision statement: to give students “a solid grounding in the world of ideas” and develop them as “curious, thoughtful members of an intellectual community.”

– TERESA CASTLE READING LIST FOR NEW FRESHMAN SEMINAR:

stmarys-ca.edu/collegiate-seminar/critical-strategies-great-questions

Get Your Copy of Brother Mel Anderson’s Memoir

FOR INFORMATION ABOUT THE BROTHERS’ VOCATION AND LASALLIAN VOLUNTEERS, PLEASE VISIT:

WWW.

BROTHERSVOCATION.ORG

Read about the societal, academic and financial complexities of 1967–97 at Saint Mary’s in former SMC President Brother Mel Anderson’s memoir Years of Yearning.

or L ASALLIANVOLUNTEERS.ORG

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SUMMER 2012

Order a copy today: tinyurl.com/6umvs2t

Journey to the Sacraments Each year a few people in the Saint Mary’s community prepare to become full members of the Catholic Church. Through the Rite of Christian Initiative of Adults (RCIA) they participate in sacramental preparation for their personal journey of faith.

In April, Mitchell Allan ’14 received the sacraments of baptism, confirmation and first eucharist. Mitchell, whose godparent is Brother Camillus Sanchez, had attended Masses and numerous events that impressed upon him the strong bond uniting the participants.

I noticed how much everybody cared for each other and had a selfless attitude.

The Catholic Church works a lot like a family. When one member was down, the rest quickly responded and strived to pick them up.

I went into the RCIA program believing that by the end I would have all the answers to my questions regarding faith and God. I now realize that having questions isn’t a bad thing.

– Mitchell Allan ’14 MORE PHOTOS ONLINE

ANDREW NGUYEN ‘14

stmarys-ca.edu/baptism-2012

STMARYS-CA.EDU 7

Golf Team Walk-on Goes for the Win

A

t the 18th hole of the West Coast Conference golf championships in April, Saint Mary’s junior walk-on Ben Geyer finally had a shot at his first win in a college tournament. With the ball on the back right fringe, 20 feet from the hole, Geyer had to sink the putt to earn the victory.

Still, his initial reaction was to defer his own success for the sake of his team’s — a reaction that says a lot about Geyer’s character.

He consulted his coach, Scott Hardy. “I asked him what he wanted me to do: Did he want me to go at it? Or, team-wise, did he want me to hit a little left of the flag and make it an easy par?” Geyer recalls. Hardy told him to go for the win, and Geyer delivered.

“When it fell, I was pretty stoked about it,” he said somewhat matter-of-factly.

His top finish, along with strong performances from the rest of the team, helped secure the SMC golf program’s first WCC title and an invitation to the NCAA Division 1 regional tournament.

And Geyer, who wasn’t even a scholarship player but earned his place on the team as a walk-on,

became only the fourth Saint Mary’s player ever to win medalist honors and the first since 2005.

Hardy, who was a walk-on himself in 1994, has had his eye on the team title since his days as a college player.

“It was super clutch,” said Hardy, who was named WCC Coach of the Year. “You know, golf is an individual sport. This is the only time that you are really on a team. But he really is.” All the team members have the same goal, he said: “To make it to nationals.”

While Geyer has had an incredible season — finishing in the top 20 in 11 tournaments and recording a 72.5 average — he has come a long way since his freshman year.

In high school, he was more of a basketball

player than a golfer, and at 6'0" he looks like one. He decided to seriously pursue golf a little late, so he didn’t catch the eye of Division I recruiters. Despite scholarship offers at less competitive schools, he was determined to play for a Division I team. He chose Saint Mary’s because of Hardy’s reputation as a top amateur and his talent for developing players, along with the campus environment.

In his first year, though, Geyer only played in three tournaments and had a 76.9 stroke average.

“I probably came in a little too confident in myself,” he said. “Once I was here … I realized that it wasn’t going to be that easy, and that definitely kept me humble.”

It was training with a team that helped Geyer develop his game. “I think it has a lot to do with being surrounded by talent,” he said. “I spent my freshman year learning from the people who were older than me. When you see how they practice and when you repeat that, it is going to make you much better.”

With his first collegiate win under his belt, Geyer is looking forward to a strong senior season and has even set his sights on a professional golf career after graduation.

“I know it’s not easy,” he said, “but I am definitely going to give it a shot.”

SMC Baseball Great Opens Saint Mary’s New “Field of Dreams”

On a warm, sunny winter day, Major League Baseball great Tom Candiotti ’78 threw out the first pitch as the Saint Mary’s baseball team opened the 2012 season in the new Louis Guisto Baseball Field.

“This is a top-notch field,” said Candiotti, who was known — and feared — for his knuckleball when he played in the majors. “It will really help the baseball program.

Having a great field makes you work a little harder.”

Candiotti, or “The Candy Man” as he was called, is the biggest star to come out of the Saint Mary’s baseball program. Throughout the 1980s and ’90s, he played with the Milwaukee Brewers, Cleveland Indians, Toronto Blue Jays, Los Angeles Dodgers and Oakland 8

SUMMER 2012

– CA ITLIN GR AVESON ’11

seating capacity of 1,500, compared with 500 in the old facility. It will also boast a state-ofthe-art press box, concession stands and an SMC Baseball Wall of Fame in the stadium concourse. The ballpark is part of a planned $30 million Athletics and Recreation Corridor. A new 52,000-square-foot recreation and aquatics center is expected to be completed by the end of 2013.

“All of the SMC alumni from the last 30 years have been waiting for this field,” Soto said. “We’re playing not just for us, but for them.”

Former major leaguer, Tom Candiotti, ready to throw out the first pitch.

Donors Ken and Patricia Vincent (left), join other alumni and friends to cheer him on.

Athletics. He retired in 1999 with a 152-164 record and 3.73 career ERA and is now a TV-Radio analyst for the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Coach Jedd Soto looked on with pride as his team took the field against Southern Utah University.

He called the new ballpark his “field of dreams.”

Many donors made the dream of a new baseball field become a reality.

The K.H. Hoffman Foundation, led

by Kenneth Hoffman ’45 and his daughter, Lisa Hoffman Morgan ’81, was the lead donor for the ballpark. Among the other donors present at the Opening Day ceremony were Don (’51) and Marlene DeLong, Ken (’52) and Patricia Vincent, and Neil and Kathy Norton.

When construction is completed, the new stadium will have a

LEARN MORE AND CONTRIBUTE

stmarys-ca.edu/arc

WCC PHOTO / KYLE TERADA

A R C A D E

That Championship Season

W

hat an unbelievable year for Saint Mary’s athletics!

With three conference championships to their credit this season, the Gaels achieved success at a rate never before seen on the beautiful Moraga campus. In the first 55 seasons of the West Coast Conference, Saint Mary’s won a total of eight league titles. In the last three years, Gaels sports teams have won five WCC championships, including three this year.

“It has been a great year for Saint Mary’s athletics,” said Director of Athletics Mark Orr. “It is extremely satisfying to see the hard work, dedication and commitment of our student-athletes, coaches and staff rewarded with success. The trophy cases in McKeon Pavilion are filling up quickly!”

Last fall, the SMC men’s soccer team went on an historic run to the program’s first-ever West Coast Conference title and the NCAA Elite Eight, winning more NCAA Tournament games than any team in school history.

Four months later, the men’s basketball team earned both the WCC regular-season and tournament championships for the first time in program history and advanced to the NCAA Tournament for the fourth time since 2005. Junior Matthew Dellavedova was named WCC Player of the Year and

became the first male athlete at Saint Mary’s to earn first-team Capital One® Academic All-America honors.

During the recent spring season, Scott Hardy ’98 guided the Gaels’ golf team to the program’s first-ever WCC title, and junior Ben Geyer became just the fourth Saint Mary’s player to take home medalist honors in the tournament’s 41-year history. A native of Arbuckle, Calif., Geyer made a long birdie putt from just off the 18th green on the final hole of the tournament to clinch the title in one of the more dramatic moments in the school’s athletic history.

The Gael rugby team also had a sterling year. After beating No.1 ranked Cal 20 –18 in Moraga in April, the team went on to finish the regular season undefeated in the Pacific Coast Conference and ranked No. 2 in the country. In May, they defeated Utah 25 –15 in the D1-A quarterfinals before falling to Arkansas State in the semifinals, which were held at Saint Mary’s.

SMC’s women’s sports teams also had a strong year. Although none won their conference championships, the softball team earned a spot in the Pacific Coast Softball Conference championships, the women’s basketball team appeared in the WNIT, and the women’s tennis team earned a spot in the NCAA, becoming only the second team in Saint Mary’s history to advance to three straight NCAA Tournament appearances.

COURTESY OF SMC ATHLE T ICS AND RECRE AT IONAL SPORTS

SMC ATHLETICS / TOD FIERNER

Top row: The men’s basketball team, led

by Player of the Year Matthew Dellavedova, celebrated after winning the West Coast Conference championship. Bottom row (left to right): women’s tennis competed in its third straight NCAA tournament; coach Scott Hardy ’98 led the golf team to its first WCC title; the men’s soccer team captured the WCC title and made it to the NCAA Elite Eight; and rugby competed in the D-1A semifinals.

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A R C A D E

A Love Affair With the Past: Carl Guarneri

Guarneri is a popular figure around the College.

He won the Professor of the Year Award in 1995 and was given the Research Scholar Award at the 2011 Scholars’ Reception.

He is also widely recognized in his field. He received a Pulitzer Prize nomination for his 1994 book on Fourierism, an American utopian moveome people believe that your destiny is ment, and his 2007 textbook, America in the determined before you are born. Oth- World: United States History in Global Context, ers believe that you make your own fate. is used in classrooms across the country.

For Carl Guarneri, his fate was sealed “Carl is a brilliant and prolific historian,” when he was a newborn in the cradle of his New said History Professor Gretchen Lemke-SantanYork walkup. gelo. “He gives his all and brings out the best in The Italian patriarch of the apartment build- others. He is one of the scholars who puts Saint ing declared, pointing down at Guarneri in his Mary’s on the national academic map.” cradle, “This one is the professor and that one,” he Guarneri spearheaded an elaborate Civil said, pointing at his twin brother, “is the clown.”

War reenactment on campus last year, complete “As a historian, I’m not supposed to believe in with a cannon and musket-wielding soldiers, and determinism,” said Guarneri, a history professor helped to organize a Lee and Grant exhibit at the at Saint Mary’s since 1979. “But there it is right in Hearst Art Gallery. Because of his expertise, he the cradle that he had us pegged, and we kind of has become the go-to guy for the local media, such grew into the roles.” as the Contra Costa Times and NBC It was a far-fetched prophecy at Bay Area, about all things Civil War. FACULTY PROFILE the time. No one in Guarneri’s famAs an undergraduate during the ily had even graduated from high tumultuous era of the Vietnam War, school, much less taught at a college. Growing up Guarneri saw the chaos and antiwar protests takin a working class Italian family, he never even ing place around him and it awakened his unique went on vacations. Instead, he immersed himself view of history. He realized that he was living in historical novels, encyclopedias and geography. through a momentous era and that history was He was able to feed his hunger for travel through not restricted to the distant past. the books he read.

“It got me more interested in finding out “The past was a kind of foreign country about my own time and using historical methods where I could explore without leaving home,” he about the near past,” he said. said. “It was a kind of time travel for a kid.”

He has tried to pass that passion for In fact, the bespectacled, silver-haired Guar- history — the “lump in your throat, chill down neri looks a little like a grown-up version of his your spine, swooning feeling,” as he calls it — to favorite cartoon character as a child — Sherman, his students. the curious student who followed the dog-pro“Touching the past by being in the place fessor, Mr. Peabody, on his travels through fas- where something important happened or hancinating moments in history in the Rocky and dling a document that was signed by someone Bullwinkle series. like Lincoln gives you a feeling of connection to Interestingly, it would be his scholarship in people in the past,” he said. “It can show you the history that would later become his ticket to travel similarity of basic human experiences and ties to those distant lands he had only read about as a between the generations.” child. His unique focus on United States history His characteristic enthusiasm and infecin a global perspective has led to invitations to tious laugh win over students, with whom he has lecture in such faraway locales as France, Italy, worked closely to decipher important documents the Netherlands, Brazil and Turkey. from the past. Students in his History Thesis class With his buttoned-up collar and constant have even transcribed diaries from Civil War solappendage of a briefcase filled with graded essays, diers that were donated to the College.

Guarneri is rather shy and modest when it comes to speaking about his own life and accomplishments, preferring to keep the spotlight on icons of the past.

“The funny thing about history is that you are losing yourself in your subject in a way,” he said.

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“It doesn’t feel natural Professor Carl to talk about your own Guarneri’s fascination with the Civil War has biography as if you led to a reenactment were a history subject on campus and inspired his current yourself.” work on Lincoln’s He is currently assistant secretary working on a biogra- of war Charles Dana. phy of President Lincoln’s assistant secretary of war, Charles Dana, which he hopes to release by the sesquicentennial of the end of the Civil War in 2015.

Dana is best known for his postwar career as the editor of the popular New York Sun. Little has been written about his behind-the-scenes role during the Civil War. But he witnessed many important events and had close relationships with the key players of the war. He was even right there after Lincoln’s assassination, at the Petersen House where the dying president was carried from Ford’s Theater, and sent out urgent warnings by telegram to General Ulysses S. Grant.

“Dana was present for so many different events that it gives me a chance to tell the story of the war through his eyes,” he said. “And it gives me the chance to take a fresh look at endlessly fascinating figures like Lincoln, Secretary of War (Edwin) Stanton and General Grant. It’s fascinating to see them through the eyes of someone who had daily interactions with them but whose impressions haven’t been fully recorded in history.”

Just like history, he explains that we live our lives forward but can only really see the turning points by looking backward.

“There are so many junctures that are only in retrospect very visible as turning points,” he said. “We can see later that they were crucial episodes or lucky escapes.”

One of those lucky escapes for Guarneri was his battle with recurrent cancer when he was in his mid-30s.

“I was not supposed to live,” he said, “so I feel very lucky to be here and keep my explorations going.”

Some people have a life-changing epiphany once they go through a near-death experience, but Guarneri just knew he had to continue to do what he loved — to teach. And continue to fulfill the prophecy that the wise Italian oracle made as he looked down on Guarneri in his cradle more than 60 years ago.

– K ATHRYN GER AGHT Y

LORI BARRA

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Peace can be made in many ways. Some people make peace with their voices, by speaking out. Some make it with their hands, by building bridges or helping victims of natural disasters. Michael Collopy ’82 has made his contribution to peace with his camera, and his heart. A nationally known portrait photographer, he has captured the

A Vision of

thro ugh

the

PEACE Camera

Lens

BY TERESA CASTLE PHOTOGRAPHS BY MICHAEL COLLOPY

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images of an unlikely mix of celebrities, politicians and human rights activists over the years.

The Dalai Lama, Mikhail Gorbachev, Bono, Bill Clinton and hundreds of the most notable people of our time have all sat before Collopy’s camera.

But he is probably best known as the creator of Works of Love Are Works of Peace, a photographic journal that grew out of his 15-year friendship with Mother Teresa, and Architects of Peace: Visions of Hope in Words and Images, a collection of 75 of his portraits of “peacemakers,” including 16 Nobel Peace Prize winners and dozens of others who have contributed in some way to a more peaceful and just world.

Collopy didn’t set out to photograph

Frank Sinatra (left) helped to launch Collopy’s career, and the two remained friends throughout the singer’s life. From the time Collopy met Mother Teresa (right) in 1982, she was an inspiration to the photographer, who was impressed with her willingness to accept all people for who they are.

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peacemakers. Instead, he was initially drawn to pop stars. In fact, he was so “star-struck,” in his own words, that while he was still a student he took a job as an usher at the Circle Star Theatre in San Carlos just to be around the hottest pop and Motown singers of the day.

And it was there that he met one of the two people who would most strongly shape his career — Frank Sinatra. Collopy, who was just a kid, really, was competing with a more experienced photographer to take pictures of Sinatra before he went onstage. The singer’s advisers told him to go with the pro, but Sinatra said, in his nonchalant style, “Give the kid a chance.”

Over the next 10 years, Collopy photographed Sinatra dozens of times, and the two became friends. “He either loved you or he hated you. There was no gray area with Mr. S.,” Collopy said. He added, jokingly: “We had a great relationship, but I always felt like I was one bad picture away from ending up in the bay with cement shoes.”

Through Sinatra and the Circle Star Theatre, Collopy met and photographed many of the big stars of the day and built an impressive portfolio: John Lee Hooker, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, B.B. King, Fats Domino. More importantly, he said, “as a shy 20-year-old, I learned to adapt to all sorts of personalities — including some big egos.”

By the time he was a senior at Saint Mary’s, he had already mounted his first photo exhibition — at the College’s library — with portraits of Ansel Adams, Michael Douglas, O.J. Simpson and Sophia Loren, among others. Being around such big stars at a young age prepared him well for a career photographing some of the most recognizable people of our age, including five U.S. presidents.

“I’ve never been intimidated by anybody — not even Sinatra or the president — and I hope that comes through in the photos,” he said.

It does. In fact, the most remarkable thing about Collopy’s portraits is the way they seem to allow the viewer to see right into the person’s soul.

“I want to give the viewer the sense of being there with them, looking into their eyes,” he said.

Collopy’s fascination with people and his desire to capture their essence on film began early, even before he graduated from Saint Mary’s College in 1982, when he fell in love with the stark black-and-white photography of Ansel Adams and Richard Avedon. What he did next says a lot about how Collopy has become such a success.

“I called 411 to see if Ansel Adams was listed in the phone directory,” he recalled. Sure 14

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Maya Angelou became a close friend of Collopy’s family and has mentored one of his sons who is an aspiring writer.

Hollywood celebrities often commission portraits from Collopy.

He and George Clooney have a friendly rivalry on the basketball court and make time for hoops whenever they meet.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and farmworkers’ rights advocate Cesar Chavez are among the world leaders and activists who have posed for the photog­ rapher.

Children’s rights activist Marian Wright Edelman (right) inspired Collopy to photograph Nobel peace laureates around the world, such as South African antiapartheid crusader Nelson Mandela, who told Collopy he learned in prison to forgive his enemies.

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enough, he was, and the photographic legend invited the young student to his home. Not long afterward, Collopy flew to New York to meet with Avedon, who told him: “Look through the camera, not from behind the camera. It forces you to have a conversation with the person you’re photographing.”

Collopy emerged from the meeting inspired to build a career as a portrait photographer. “I would never have been happy being a ‘fly on the wall’ photographer,” said Collopy. “I wanted to be one-on-one and get to know my subjects.”

These days, the gregarious Collopy is completely at home in the world of celebrity. He hangs out with Paul McCartney whenever the former Beatle is in town. And he has a running basketball match going with George Clooney. They’ve even put up their homes as collateral. “If I win, I get his home in Lake Como,” Collopy said with a laugh.

He doesn’t take himself too seriously, and he values people for who they are, not for their outward fame.

In fact, when he was asked at a recent speaking engagement who he’d most like to go on a camping trip with, he chose Frank Sinatra and, after a moment’s thought, Mother Teresa. No doubt, there are very few people in 16

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the world who would The Dalai Lama (above and right) writes in mention Sinatra and Collopy’s “Architects Mother Teresa in the of Peace” book that same breath, but Col- “love and compassion and a sense of univerlopy had his reasons. sal responsibility are “I miss Frank the sources of peace Sinatra because he had and happiness.” so many great stories,” he said, “and Mother Teresa had a great sense of humor” and would be helpful around camp because “she was extremely handy.”

It was a chance meeting with Mother Teresa in 1982 that turned out to be the other pivotal event in Collopy’s life.

He had gone to Saint Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco to hear her speak and was making his way through the basement up to his seat at the front of the church when he turned a corner and saw Mother Teresa directly in front of him. She approached him and handed him a business card with her name on it that said: “The fruit of love is prayer. The fruit of prayer is faith. The fruit of faith is love and the fruit of love is service.”

So began their long, close friendship. Over the next 15 years, he “traveled around the world with her a couple of times,” photographing her as she carried out her work. Although she didn’t

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care a bit about fame, she recognized that a certain amount would promote her efforts to help the poor. “She joked that she had a deal with God: For every picture taken, a soul was released from purgatory.”

In 1996, Collopy published a selection of the photos in Works of Love Are Works of Peace — Mother Teresa of Calcutta and the Missionaries of Charity.

Over the years, he learned a lot from Mother

Teresa, he said. One day, as they were driving around, he mentioned that she never seemed to judge anyone. She replied: “I never judge anybody because it doesn’t allow the time to love them.”

While he continued to photograph the famous — and does to this day — over time Collopy began to turn his lens on a different kind of subject: superstars of peace, you might say.

He had always had an interest in social justice, which was cultivated, he said, by his mother and

his father, George Collopy, a well-known graphic artist who was a 1946 graduate of Saint Mary’s.

He was inspired to act on that impulse after hearing a speech by Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund. Speaking at a State of the World Forum in San Francisco in 1996, she asked, “How can we leave our children a better world?”

Collopy, who has two sons with his wife, Alma, took the message to heart. He asked himself: Maya Lin (left) is a true “architect of peace”; she designed the iconic Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall in Washington, D.C. Carlos Santana (right) and Collopy were friends from childhood, and he has photographed the musician throughout his life. In his book, he includes this quote from Santana: “The most valuable possession you can own is an open heart. The most powerful weapon you can be is an instrument of peace.”

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Collopy began photographing musicians like B.B. King (left) even before he graduated from Saint Mary’s.

His portrait of the blues guitarist’s hands (far left) is one of Collopy’s studies of hands that speak volumes.

Rock musician Bono (below), who has been nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize, is quoted in the book saying, “Distance does not decide who is your brother and who is not.”

How can I make a difference with my work? And he conceived of an ambitious project to photograph Nobel Peace Prize laureates and others around the world who were paving the way for peace.

He was tireless in his pursuit of peacemakers. One year, he said, he logged 200,000 miles as he traveled the globe photographing his subjects. Remarkably, he never had any trouble getting access.

“These celebrated people are just like us,” he said. “They don’t see themselves as heroes.”

The project culminated in the book, Architects of Peace: Visions of Hope in Words and Images, which was published in 2000. Photos from the project are now permanently exhibited at the National Civil Rights Museum, the Hoover Institution at Stanford and Santa Clara University, among other places.

Along the way, he met some remarkable people, including such well-known Nobel peace laureates as Nelson Mandela, Shimon Peres, Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter and less well-known ones like Chinese democracy activist Wei Jingshen.

The book also includes some less obvious choices, such as Colin Powell and Carlos Santana.

The only person he was a little daunted by was the Dalai Lama. But the Buddhist monk quickly put Collopy at ease by pretending to primp for the camera, playfully stroking his bald head and asking, with that famous twinkle in his eye, “How does my hair look?”

For the book, Collopy asked each of his subjects to contribute a statement about peace. The result is a book of great beauty and wisdom.

Collopy, who co-founded the Architects of Peace Foundation in 2008 to promote peace studies, is now working on a second volume in the series. Among others, it will include 33 Nobel Peace Prize winners, but not everyone in it will be famous.

“I’m interested in people who are making a mark and leaving a legacy,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be a celebrity. Each of us can do something. Each of us is of incredible worth.”

After all the miles and all the photo sessions, Collopy learned a lot from staring through the lens into the eyes and souls of these visionaries.

The common bond in all their writings and their conversations is “the virtue of forgiveness,” Collopy said. But for him, the greatest lesson he has learned is that: “it’s important to recognize the face of God in each of us.”

FOR MORE PORTRAITS, SEE

michaelcollopyphotography.com

STMARYS-CA.EDU 21

Peace NEW

WAYS TO

KEEP THE

BY TERESA CASTLE PHOTOGRAPHS BY TOBY BURDITT

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Chief Dave Spiller wears all the trappings of the stereotypical police chief: There are four stars on each collar and four bars on the left sleeve of his crisp, navy-blue uniform, and a handgun is holstered on his hip. But he’s bringing a whole new brand of leadership to the Pleasanton Police Department, thanks in large part to a program at Saint Mary’s College.

And he’s not alone. In 10 years the Master of Arts in Leadership program has trained nearly 100 police or probation officers among its 540 graduates. They have learned a style of leadership that emphasizes influence and collaboration.

It’s a far cry from the traditional law enforcement model — a top-down, very regimented command-and-control approach. “That’s great in a crisis, but as standard operating procedure it doesn’t serve the well-being of the organization or the community,” said Ken Otter, director of Leadership Programs at Saint Mary’s. “Nobody wants to be dictated to on a daily basis.”

Students in the 19-month Saint Mary’s program move in cohorts through 11 courses, from values development and cross-cultural studies to organizational change and the future of leadership, employing both online learning and

in-person weekend meetings. “The cohort model creates a learning community that models how people should relate in their everyday work,” said Otter. “They learn from each other.”

Among the lessons they learn: nonviolent communication; techniques for building problem-solving teams; how to work your sphere of influence; and ways to bridge differences.

But the central lesson is to replace the concept of “authority” with the idea of “leadership.”

Along the way, most graduates come to embrace this new leadership style, and some gain something more — a new outlook on life.

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Chief Dave Spiller ’04, Pleasanton Police Department

Just in case anyone wonders what Chief Dave Spiller stands for, a large plaque in his office spells out “Chief Spiller’s Vision for the Pleasanton Police Department.”

Many of the tenets are inspired by the lessons he learned in the Saint Mary’s program.

They include working together with “a greater level of connectedness,” “remaining prideful but not arrogant,” and “recognizing that our authority comes from the public we serve.”

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It helps to have people around who know this new language of leadership. One of his captains was so impressed by Spiller’s performance that he signed up for the Saint Mary’s leadership program and is now a graduate. Two other officers are currently enrolled in the program.

That pattern has played out in police departments throughout the Bay Area. The program has now trained more than five officers in both the San Francisco and San Jose police departments and seven in Pittsburg. “It’s having a ripple effect,” Otter said, particularly since many graduates, both in the Bay Area and beyond, step into high-ranking leadership positions.

For Spiller, policing is a true calling.

He started thinking about becoming a police officer after a childhood friend, Mark Stall, was kidnapped from home at gunpoint. He managed to escape, but the experience pushed both young men toward law enforcement. The two remained close friends through the years. Then, around the time that Stiller joined the Pleasanton force in 2002, Stall decided he wanted to live “somewhere safer” and moved to Boise, Idaho. A few years later, he was shot and killed in a routine traffic stop.

“I carry that with me,” Stiller said with emotion. “He never had the opportunity to be a chief.

I’ve been blessed in my career. I celebrate my successes in his memory.”

Since he took over as chief of police in Pleasanton, Spiller has instituted regular meetings called “The Leadership Track” to share his philosophy with officers from the ranks. And he makes a point of being open to new ideas.

“Before, ideas would move up the ranks and get killed at the lieutenant level because people would say, ‘The top brass will never accept that.’

It stifled the potential for innovation. Now, everything makes it here,” he said.

Although Spiller is a convert to the more collaborative style, he is quick to point out that, as a peace officer, you need to know when to practice this brand of leadership.

“When you’re dealing with budgets and personnel issues, that’s a great opportunity to practice the 21st-century leadership model of collaboration,” he said. “When you’re setting up a command post on the hood of a car and coming up with an attack plan for a hostage situation, you fall back on hierarchical structures.”

The key — and the big challenge for law enforcement officers — is to know when to shut off the “emergency” mode and return to a more humane management style.

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“I can be the guy with four stars on my collar but it’s really the credibility and trust I’ve developed over the years that matters,” he said. “What I’m trying to instill in this department is that we all have the capacity to be leaders.”

Sergeant Janna Munk ’09, San Jose Police Department

A

After graduating from college with a degree in economics, Janna Munk drifted through a number of jobs but never felt really fulfilled, so she sat down and took stock of what she truly loved in life: being outside, working independently, and doing something for a cause, not just for money. Plus two more things — “adrenaline and drama.”

Not surprisingly, she decided to go into law enforcement. This July, she’ll celebrate two decades with the San Jose Police Department.

Over the years, she has served in the violent crime and gang units, field training, community policing, and as a pilot in the helicopter unit.

She’s even been called on to pose as a “prostitute for a day” to help with stings.

“I tried really hard to be the stereotypical police person,” she said. But over time she realized that although she loved her work, she didn’t quite fit the tough-as-nails mold. “In the Saint Mary’s program,” she said, “I learned to embrace my uniqueness and be more comfortable with it.”

She was promoted to sergeant halfway through the leadership program, and not long ago she took over the Court Liaison Department.

It wasn’t an easy management task. Among her staff are both civilians and police officers, including a fair number in “special circumstances,” such as cops recovering from injuries, dealing with disciplinary problems, or counting the days to retirement. To top it all off, morale was poor because of severe budget cutbacks that reduced staffing levels.

“Without Saint Mary’s, I would have drowned,” she said with a laugh. But a year and a half later, the office has become “a really positive unit,” and officers who struggled elsewhere have thrived.

“I’m warm and embracing, but I hold them accountable. People feel entrusted and they produce in a whole new way,” she said. Even one policeman on the verge of retirement who came to the department with the nickname “Officer Grumpy” has warmed to her. “If you have a good

boss, you can do good work,” he said as he joked with her in the office.

These days, she passes along what she learned at Saint Mary’s by teaching at the San Jose Leadership Academy, a program for high school juniors. She also credits the program for giving her more than new leadership skills.

“My character has changed,” she said.

“When I enrolled in the leadership program, I wanted to get promoted. Now, I want to be fulfilled in my work. I feel really successful.”

LaDonna Harris ’05, Acting Alameda County Chief Probation Officer

W

When LaDonna Harris retired in 2010 after more than 30 years of service with the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department, she thought she’d have time to relax. But in March, the county reached out to her to take over as interim chief probation officer when the head of the department stepped aside amid allegations of sexual harassment.

It’s a huge responsibility. The office supervises 18,000 probationers, and she oversees 700 employees and a $90 million budget. But she comes to the job with serious credentials.

She was the first female commander of the Sheriff’s Department and the first African American female to be named a division commander.

Although she had served in many positions of responsibility before coming to SMC, she said “I wouldn’t have had the view of leadership I have if it weren’t for Saint Mary’s.” The most important lesson for her was that “leadership is a relationship of influence,” not authority.

“I can say, ‘This is how it’s going to be’ and it will be — as long as I’m looking!” she joked. “So often we don’t get the best result because people are afraid. We have to make room for failure. It has to be a safe place.”

Harris’ mantra is “holding people accountable and supporting them,” and she extends that philosophy to the parolees her department supervises. She has supported a number of innovative programs aimed at cutting Alameda County’s recidivism rate, which stands at about 52 percent, slightly lower than the state average of 58 percent.

Among them is MOMS (Maximizing Opportunities for Mothers to Succeed), which she co-founded. Along with several others from the SMC leadership program, she teaches communications and leadership skills to mothers and

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pregnant inmates who are serving time in Santa Rita Jail or have recently been released.

Harris said she learned more than leadership skills at Saint Mary’s; she also learned an important personal lesson.

She was diagnosed with breast cancer about six months into the M.A. program. The chemotherapy took its toll and she considered dropping 26

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out. But her cohort said, “You can’t quit. We’ll help you.” At the graduation ceremony, they all wore pink ribbons to support her fight against breast cancer. “I never felt so loved in my whole life,” she said.

The experience changed her. “I used to think I had to be able to endure all things,” she said. “In seven months of cancer treatment, I

missed a total of 45 days.” Now, free of cancer and in her new position at the probation office, she no longer feels she has to be a tough cop all the time.

“I’m more willing to acknowledge the value of the heart in the workplace,” she said.

“We have to put the heart and soul back into the workplace.”

A Helping Hand for Peacekeepers Under Pressure

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Bob Delaney, a 2010 graduate of the M.A. in Leadership program, is one former police officer who knows a bit about stress.

As a young state trooper in New Jersey, he infiltrated the mob in 1975 as part of an organized crime investigation called Project Alpha. For a year and a half, he lived a double life as trucking company executive Bobby Covert, often wearing a wire to record conversations with gangsters.

It was nerve-racking work. “I would leave a meeting and pull over to the side of the road to throw up,” he recalled.

Despite his alias, the mobsters welcomed him into their fold, and the evidence he gathered helped convict more than 30 members of the notorious Genovese and Bruno crime families.

Afterward, instead of breathing a sigh of relief that he had escaped detection — and certain death — he found himself spiraling out of control, caught in a maelstrom of emotions and behaviors that he couldn’t understand, including isolation, avoidance, anger and paranoia.

“My personality was chipped away,” he said. “Bob Delaney was in the rear-view mirror. Bobby Covert was who I believed I was.”

Years later, he would co-author a book with journalist Dave Scheiber about the experience called “Covert: My Years Infiltrating the Mob.” But at the time, he was in turmoil, and unsure how to handle it.

One day, after he’d given a speech about his undercover work to a local group, a psychology professor approached him and said: “You’re going through post-traumatic stress.”

That’s how Delaney began to learn even more about stress, and especially about Posttraumatic stress, a syndrome that haunts people who have experienced severe or prolonged trauma. For those who suffer from it, random events like a car backfiring can remind them of gunfire, for instance, and send them right

back to the moment of trauma. Even without such triggers, sustained or suppressed psychological distress can lead to erratic behavior, violence and even suicide.

“It’s common among those who wear uniforms. They think they can leap tall buildings and handle anything, but it takes a toll,” Delaney said. “Trauma is like an earthquake. It’s felt strongly at the epicenter; then the aftershocks rock you for days or weeks or months.”

To relieve the stress, Delaney turned to one of his passions — basketball. He had played on the State Police basketball team, and in the early 1980s, he began refereeing at Jersey Shore League games just to unwind. At one game, Darell Garretson, then the National Basketball Association’s

head of officiating, happened to see the young ref.

And that’s how Delaney ended up spending 24 years as one of the top referees in the NBA, from 1987 to 2011.

If there’s anything almost as stressful as infiltrating the mob, it might be refereeing an NBA game, where a disputed call can bring you face-toface with a seven-footer like Shaquille O’Neal or a coach with anger management issues. But Delaney didn’t see it that way. For him, it was relaxing.

It was during his years in the pressure-cooker world of the NBA, that he started dreaming of attending the Saint Mary’s leadership program.

He carried an ad for the program around in his briefcase for years, and finally, at the age of 56, he enrolled. Because much of the instruction is online, he was able to continue officiating, flying in for the bimonthly meetings from wherever he was on the road.

Like a lot of students in the program, he already had quite a bit of leadership experience.

“I saw it in action first. I learned leadership around the kitchen table, in the community, even

from the mob — the wrong kind of leadership,” he said. “I wanted to understand it from an academic perspective.”

The program helped him to become more tolerant and also more reflective, he said, adding, “I wish I had done it at 26 instead of 56.”

It also helped him to make the transition to the next stage of his life. While still in the master’s program, he was recruited as an NBA Cares ambassador to provide post-traumatic stress education, prevention and awareness training to the military, law enforcement and firefighters. In 2009, he traveled to Iraq to work with soldiers in the 25th Infantry Division, and after four Oakland policemen were killed in a shootout with a suspect, he was called in to offer his counsel.

General Raymond He has a special Odierno feeling for police officers presents the because his father was a U.S. Army Outstanding cop. Quoting Matthew Civilian Service 5:9, he said: “Blessed are Award to the peacemakers, for they Delaney on May 23 at shall be called the children Fort Myer, Va. of God. Every time I hear that, I think of my dad.

He was a peacemaker.”

He shares his experience with the officers, and it helps them to open up and express emotions they have kept bottled up inside.

“People breathe a sigh of relief when they realize: I’m not crazy. I’m not the only one here that’s experiencing this,” he said. “Having the courage to speak up is not only freeing for yourself, it’s freeing for others.”

Since retiring last year, he has thrown himself into this work and he has released a new book, “Surviving the Shadows: A Journey of Hope into Post-Traumatic Stress.”

Logging thousands of miles, he has traveled to Afghanistan with the U.S. Embassy Sports Diplomacy Program and has visited nine different military institutions. He’s been to Iraq several times and to Landstuhl, Germany, working with America’s “wounded warriors,” including soldiers recovering after IED attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Post-traumatic stress is “a human condition, experienced by many people. We have to look at it as a human condition, not a disorder,” he said, adding “Those who serve us are being put at risk and we have an obligation to take care of them.”

– TERESA CASTLE

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ANGLAND

Deputy District Attorney Victoria “Tori” VerberSalazar ’87 remembers the moaning of the two mothers that day in a San Joaquin County courtroom as if it were yesterday.

At a sentencing hearing seven years ago, one of the mothers had heard the judge impose a sentence of 75 years to life on her 16-year-old son for slaying a member of a rival gang. The other woman was the mother of the victim slain by the defendant.

“Outside the courtroom the two mothers embraced — they shared the pain of losing a son: The one mother would only get to see her son through Plexiglas and the other would never see her son again,’’ said Verber-Salazar, who has been prosecuting Stockton gang homicides since 2005. “The pain and sufferYoung people ing was overwhelming. It was learn about life difficult to watch.” behind bars by connecting Since 1987, when she with former started out as an intern in gang members the San Joaquin County disduring a video­ conference trict attorney’s office, Verconducted ber-Salazar has dealt with

by District Athorrors most people would torney Victoria Verber-Salazar. find unbearable to face: babies beaten to death, brutal rapes, bloody bodies. But the case that made the two mothers cry, which was prosecuted by one of Verber-Salazar’s colleagues, hit her hard.

It was then that Verber-Salazar pledged to bring peace to the streets of Stockton by rehabilitating young gang members before she had to prosecute them and send many to prison for life. Her work since then earned Verber-Salazar a meritorious service award from SMC in 2011.

“I understand people’s anger over crime,’’ said the 46-year-old mother of three, in her office in the green and gray walled Stockton courthouse. “But what we had been doing wasn’t working; the jails and prisons are maxed out.’’

Over the years, Verber-Salazar has relied on lessons learned from her family and from her education at Saint Mary’s High School in Stockton and at SMC. “I see the suffering the victims endured,’’ she said. “I hear the screams of their loved ones as they arrive on the scene. I see such agony that some days you feel you cannot take any more, and that’s where Saint Mary’s High School and Saint Mary’s College come into play. They gave me the foundation to believe, to fight for social justice and for those who need it most.’’

Born in Stockton, Verber-Salazar had strong role models. Her grandmother fed and gave a bed to those needing help, and her mother established a school for homeless young children.

STMARYS-CA.EDU 29

Former gang member Carina Garza refers to VerberSalazar as her guardian angel.

Several members of her family have worked in law enforcement: her deceased father and an uncle were police officers, her brother is a deputy sheriff and her great-grandfather was sheriff of Mokelumne Hill in Calaveras County.

Verber-Salazar has worked for 25 years in the district attorney’s office, having earned her law degree at Patino Law School, attending 30

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classes three nights a week while working during the days. She still throws herself into her work, beginning at 5 a.m. on days when she is in trial. Married to attorney Joseph Anthony Salazar, who handles the cooking at home, VerberSalazar works her schedule around her children’s sports and school activities as much as she can, relying on family and friends for backup when

she is in a demanding gang trial.

“In trial, she is very straight-on, sticking to the facts, and she can introduce fireworks if it’s called for,’’ said Deputy District Attorney Janet Smith, who also prosecutes gang homicides. About Verber-Salazar’s role urging young people to leave gang life, Smith said, “If there is anything to do to make the community safer and to deter people from

coming before her in court, she’s going to do it.’’

In one such effort to stem the flow of young gang members into prison, Verber-Salazar has moderated 12 videoconferences since 2007 in which inmates at Valley State Prison for Women at Chowchilla answer audience questions via video. So far thousands of students and juvenile offenders have watched these videoconferences.

The Chowchilla inmates speak frankly about how their sentences are so long that they will die in prison for their roles in such crimes. The maximum penalty under state law for gang-related homicides is life in prison or death.

In an effort to support young women trying to leave gangs and create a different kind of life, Verber-Salazar cofounded Girls in Transition with Maria Alacazar.

“The first time I saw Tori speak to kids, I saw her willingness to give our kids something to strive for,’’ Alcazar recalled. “The kids could not believe at first that someone like her, being a D.A. prosecuting gang members, would take an interest in them and want them to succeed.”

Valerie Frazier, a former state prison parole officer who also works with Verber-Salazar in this effort, said, “I have been in law enforcement a long time, and Tori is one rare jewel.’’ Frazier, who heads a Stockton-based group called Hope Ministries, also wonders when Verber-Salazar finds time to sleep. “She does her prosecutor job relentlessly, but her heart and passion is to mentor kids and bring them around.’’

After years of prosecuting gang members, Verber-Salazar knows the labyrinthine structure of the Stockton gangs — Flyboys, Spring Street, Tiny Rascals, Mixed Team, Smack Team, Northside Gangster Crips and Loctown Crips. Gone are the days when fists settled disputes; now it’s done with guns. Brothers and former close friends are sometimes in rival gangs, and the reason behind the gunfire often seems inconsequential. Typically, it’s some instance of perceived disrespect or it’s when gang members are caught “slipping” — meaning they are unarmed and out of their turf — on neutral or rival gang turf.

Verber-Salazar’s message to her young audiences is always: Clean up your act now. She said, “You don’t want to see me as a prosecutor, because by then it is too late.’’

On a recent gray spring day in Stockton, a city of 292,000, the streets do not look particularly threatening. There is an old-time, comfortable feel to many small homes in the tree-dotted neighborhoods surrounding the downtown. But there is no true peace here.

Through April 2012, there had been 17 homicides in Stockton — 14 of them gang-related.

That tally is three times the number of homicides by the same time last year.

Verber-Salazar calls the conditions fueling the bleak homicide numbers “a perfect storm.”

Methamphetamine ravages families, leaving many children adrift. Unemployment is high — at more than 15 percent and the financially stressed city’s foreclosure rate is one of the highest in the nation. The poverty rate, too, is high.

Looking back, Verber-Salazar recalls how bad crime was in 1980s Stockton. But police increased intelligence gathering and often spotted volatile situations before gang violence erupted. They confiscated many guns, and community policing helped. But with budget cuts, all that is mostly gone. Today the number of sworn officers in Stockton is 320, down from 440 in 2007– 2008.

“We saw what our work achieved in crime suppression over the years and we have seen it all taken away,’’ Verber-Salazar said. “We have lost the ability to get ahead of situations, so a lot of young people are losing their lives.”

Still, she reaches out to young women who others might consider beyond the pale.

In 2007 Carina Garza, then 24, was picked up by police for her role as the driver of a car speeding away from a robbery-involved shooting that left a man dead. “The police had me in custody in the homicide division for 18 hours, and they gave me a choice. I had two little girls.

I could pick the gang or my kids. I decided to go with my kids,” she recalled.

Garza testified for the prosecution and then, she said, her former gang retaliated against her: “I was jumped, beaten up. Another time they surrounded my house and banged on the windows.’’ Garza and her children moved out of the house.

When she and some other girls met VerberSalazar, Garza was surprised. “She talks to us not like a D.A. but in our language — she doesn’t talk to us like an authority figure. She told us about the positives of living a normal life — it would be more calm.’’

As Garza worked with Verber-Salazar, Frazier and Alcazar, she said she began to change.

She got married and runs a small business stocking vending machines. Much of the time she stays with her three girls in the home she and her husband bought.

“I wouldn’t have made it this far without Tori, Maria and Valerie,’’ Garza said. “They keep in constant contact with us — like they fell out of heaven as our guardian angels. At first, I thought it was just too good to be true. But it’s true.’’

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More than 150 alumni, family and friends were on hand Saturday, April 28, for the Alumni Association’s annual awards ceremony. As part of a tradition that goes back to 1959, the Alumni Board of Directors selected five deserving recipients, including the Alumnus of the Year, Joe Crane ’53. The other award recipients were Rev. Caesar Caviglia ’50, Cindy Cooper ’96, Professor Chris Jones and Derek Smead ’02. In addition, John Arnaudon ’81 and Miles McAfee (posthumous) were inducted into the Athletic Hall of Fame.

Alumnus of the Year: C. Joseph Crane ’53

Joe Crane ’53, who died Saturday, May 19, gave a lifetime to serving Saint Mary’s College, his community and the church. During more than 50 years in financial services, Joe found time for leadership on numerous community boards — as director of the Business Council, Inc. of San Joaquin County; vice chair of the St. Joseph’s Medical Center Board of Trustees; chair of the Better Business Bureau; president of the Yosemite Club; director of Goodwill Industries, Inc.; director of the Hanot Foundation and more.

Crane also served as president of the Saint Mary’s College Board of Regents and dedicated himself to supporting his alma mater, serving on the Alumni Board and hosting events. A mentor for Stockton-area students attending Saint Mary’s College, he established the C. Joseph Crane Endowed Scholarship Fund in 1996 to help graduates of Saint Mary’s High School in Stockton heading to Moraga. More recently he established a second scholarship fund to cover additional financial needs. “I truly believe I owe everything I have to Saint Mary’s,” Crane said.

He generously supported the same opportunity for today’s young Gaels.

Signum Fidei Award: Rev. Caesar Caviglia ’50

Father Caviglia ’50 has been described as the most powerful man in Nevada politics. Born to Italian parents who immigrated to the Nevada mining 32

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DAN ROSENTRAUGH

Alumni Awards

Alumni and friends mingle at the reception before the annual awards ceremony, which was held at the new Moraga Country Club.

town of McGill, Father Caviglia went on to serve as a priest in the Diocese of Las Vegas. Now retired, Father Caviglia, who once also served as president of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, was named the 2011 Nevadan of the Year by the state’s Board of Regents. He is credited with founding Henderson Community College of Southern Nevada, where the main building on campus is named in his honor.

Meritorious Service award: Cindy Neander Cooper ’96

While she was serving on Saint Mary’s Alumni Board of Directors, Neander made it her business to find out what alumni events and activities were most important to Gael graduates. She quickly learned that the Beer and Wine Festival, which had been discontinued, was something they sincerely missed. Given the Christian Brothers’ rich tradition of winemaking and the notable Saint Mary’s alumni presence in the winemaking industry, she thought it was high time to bring back the cherished event. With her leadership, the Summer Wine Festival revived the tradition, and the annual event has raised more than $100,000 for the Alumni Legacy Scholarship Fund over the past seven years. Neander has built the highly attended Summer Wine Festival into one of the most successful community events each year, increasing alumni engagement, building College visibility in the community and supporting the educations of future Gaels.

G.O.L.D. Award: Derek Smead ’02

Derek Smead is passionate about Saint Mary’s and the College’s mission. As a member of Saint Mary’s Board of Regents and the advisory council for the Saint Mary’s College Museum of Art, Derek has been instrumental in supporting the College’s critical priorities. As president of the Walker Foundation, Derek has helped identify funding to support conservation and collection activities at the Museum of Art and developed a robust internship program in honor of Brother Cornelius, who acquired the paintings that now form the core of Saint Mary’s considerable William Keith collection. Derek’s efforts have also supported marketing and outreach efforts for the museum and the funding of student scholarships.

The Walker Foundation also supports Mission and Ministry and was a key sponsor of “Mary in the Modern World,” a Saint Mary’s conference on the Blessed Mother. Derek is the founder and principal at Sustaina Beverage Group, LLC, and co-founder of Apollo Enterprise Solutions, a web-based debt-management company. As a young alumnus building a successful career, he has always made time to contribute to the future of his alma mater.

De la Salle Award: Chris Jones

Since coming to Saint Mary’s in 2003, Professor Chris Jones, chair of the department of mathematics and computer science, has made significant contributions to student life and

learning. In the best Saint Mary’s tradition, Chris devotes himself to a student-centered approach to teaching and mentorship, serving as a student resident director for more than eight years and developing learning communities to enhance students’ academic success. He founded and directs the Science Living-Learning Community, which, in concert with the Honors Community in Assumption Hall, has made great strides in student retention rate. Chris also created and directed the Student Math Center, an evening tutorial program designed to help students succeed in lower division math courses, and last year he and Professor Wewei Pan launched the College’s first summer math camp for gifted high school students. Meanwhile, he also finds time to coach the women’s club soccer team.

Athletic Hall of Fame Inductee: John Arnaudon ’81, Football

John Arnaudon lettered in football from 1978 to 1981 and is sixth all-time at Saint Mary’s in reception yards (1,522) with 90 career receptions. In his senior season he had 39 receptions for a total of 552 yards and four touchdowns. In 1980 against Santa Clara in the Little Big Game, Arnaudon had his best game, catching eight passes for a total of 92 yards. He also combined with Terry Cottle on the longest pass reception in school history at the time. He finished his college career with 10 touchdowns.

Athletic Hall of Fame Inductee (posthumous): Miles McAfee, Baseball Coach 1973–80

Miles McAfee, who coached the Gaels from 1973 to 1980, was one of the first African Americans to serve as a Division I head baseball coach and remains the alltime leader in wins for the Saint Mary’s baseball program. He coached five players who went on to the majors. His career record in eight seasons at Saint Mary’s was 215 –188 –7 including a Northern California Baseball Association (NCBA) and West Coast Conference record of 104–107–1.

McAfee coached the 1977 squad to the best program record in history at 41–13, ultimately finishing second in the NCBA. – CHRIS CA RTER

Obituary: Stan Gilliam ’45 Celebrated Average Sacramento Residents in Bee Column 1924 – 2011

BY ROBERT DAVILA

S

tan Gilliam, a veteran journalist who extolled everyday life in his native Sacramento in a popular column in The Sacramento Bee, died December 18, 2011.

He was 87 and had colon cancer, his family said.

Gilliam joined The Bee as a part-time copy editor while teaching high school and became a full-time employee by 1965. He went on to write restaurant reviews with a chatty, witty style before taking over a daily lifestyle column in 1978.

For almost 11 years, he wrote “Stan’s Sacramento,” a genial glimpse of ordinary people and happenings around town. Items that didn’t qualify as “news” — from high school reunions to 60th wedding anniversaries, from back-fence gossip to legends about local sports heroes — found a welcome home under his byline.

Gilliam said he found purpose in celebrating people, traditions and small-town values in his column as the capital grew into a metropolis.

“It’s easy to write about the movers and shakers,” he said in 1989. “I tried to get in as many names as I could of the lesser-known people. It meant a lot to them to get their names in the paper. You could say that I never wrote for my editors, but for my readers.”

Charles Stanley Gilliam was born to Flora and Charles Gilliam in 1924. He graduated from Christian Brothers High School in 1941.

He earned a bachelor’s degree from Saint Mary’s College and a master’s degree from California State University, Sacramento. He spent a total of 17 years as a teacher at Grant Union High School and Sacramento High School.

He was an old-school journalist who smoked, drank copious cups of coffee from a Thermos he toted from home and continued to pound out his column on an electric typewriter after computers entered the newsroom. He was scrupulous about grammar and gregarious with readers and colleagues.

“Stan had no pretensions about him,” former Bee ombudsman Art Nauman said. “It sounds clichéd, but he was a regular guy.”

After retiring from he Bee in 1989, Gilliam wrote a column for the weekly Senior Spectrum

paper until 2007. He received distinguished service awards from Saint Mary’s College and CSU, Sacramento. He was active in many civic and social groups.

He was predeceased in 2008 by his wife, Joan, who was known to his readers as “the Independent and Argumentative Joan JonenGilliam.” Married in 1950, they had three children and lived in the River Park neighborhood for 52 years before moving to Mercy McMahon Terrace in east Sacramento in 2004. He moved to a Carmichael assisted-living center after he was diagnosed with cancer in December 2010.

A gifted storyteller and historian, Gilliam often claimed — partly in jest — that he was responsible for accidentally burning down Edmonds Field in 1948. He recalled dropping a lit cigarette on peanut shells under the wooden bleachers during a Sacramento Solons game hours before a raging fire reduced the structure to ashes.

“I was going to pour some beer down there and put it out,” he told The Bee in 2000. “But beer was 15 cents a bottle, and I didn’t want to waste too much. So I poured a little down there and thought that would do the trick.”

Copyright, The Sacramento Bee, 2011 STMARYS-CA.EDU 33

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Rugby Pro Kevin Swiryn ‘08 Retires With No Regrets

K

evin Swiryn ’08 retired from playing competitive rugby earlier this year after an outstanding career that saw him play in one of the world’s premier professional rugby leagues in France and represent the U.S. as a member of the national team in World Cup competition.

It’s a career that never would have happened if Saint Mary’s hadn’t discontinued its football program.

Swiryn came to Saint Mary’s on a football scholarship in 2003 and worked his way into the Gaels’ starting lineup as a wide receiver early in his freshman season. Then the College dropped football in March 2004.

“At the time, it was devastating,” Swiryn said. “I’d worked so hard to play Division I college football, and now everything was just crumbling. I thought it was the worst thing that could have happened to me.”

Dozens of his football teammates transferred immediately, but Swiryn decided to stay through his sophomore year to accumulate enough credits to transfer to UC Davis and try to resume his football career there. It was during his sophomore year that he found rugby — or, rather, rugby found him.

“A couple of rugby guys came to me and said, ‘Dude, just come out for rugby, it’s fun,’” Swiryn recalled. “I was thinking I would just use it to stay in shape to go back to football eventually. But I just fell in love with rugby. By March of my sophomore year I decided to stay at Saint Mary’s. Academics were more important to me by then. I figured sports comes and goes but academics is for life. I really enjoyed the academics at Saint Mary’s, and I decided rugby could fill the athletic void. Even though I love football and wished I could have played longer, it ended up being a really good thing for me.”

Swiryn had seen only a couple of rugby

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matches before he went out for the team and didn’t know the rules. But by the time he graduated in 2008 with a degree in kinesiology he was a three-time All-American, had led the Gaels to college rugby’s Final Four and had earned a prestigious United States Rugby Football Foundation grant to take part in a three-week international training academy in New Zealand.

“It wasn’t until my last season at Saint Mary’s that I started realizing my potential as a rugby player,” Swiryn said. “Before that I wasn’t dreaming of being a national team member.

I didn’t think that was possible, but Tim and Johnny (SMC head rugby coach Tim O’Brien and assistant Johnny Everett) kind of forced that

belief onto me. Tim applied for me to go to New Zealand, and when I went down there and did really well, that was kind of the catalyst for me to say, I can do this.”

After earning most valuable player honors at the academy, Swiryn was invited to try out for the national 7’s team and made the squad, eventually becoming the captain. He also earned a spot on the national 15’s team the following summer.

(Rugby is played in two versions, using the same field and rules, one with seven players on a side and the other with 15 on a side.)

Then after a good performance during his first season on the national 15’s team, Swiryn took the next step and in 2010 signed a two-year contract with a professional team in the French “Top 14” league. There he faced two disadvantages: he was an American in a sport that few Americans are able to play at the highest professional level, and he didn’t speak French.

“I had a choice between going to France and England, and that was a big reason why I went

to France was to get to learn a second language,” Swiryn said. “I knew no French. None. Zero. My team was in Agen, which is a smaller town. It’s not like Paris where everyone speaks English. In Agen no one speaks English. The coaches spoke no English. We had translators, but that’s tough.

“By my second season I didn’t need a translator with the coaches. I can speak French now. I’m not fluent by any means but I can hold a conversation and get around town.”

Swiryn’s second season in France, which began last fall, was marred by injuries: a broken collarbone, a broken nose, then a strained calf that was traced to herniation in his back. “I’d also been playing with a torn labrum in my hip that was going to need surgery, and I was looking at either surgery on my back or a long period of rest,” he said. “I had to decide what’s worth more, a couple more years of rugby after heavy rehab just to get back, or having a better quality of life after.”

Swiryn decided on the better quality of life, so he was bought out of the remainder of his contract in France and returned to the U.S. this spring. He and his fiancée, Lauren Shaughnessy ’08, have settled in a suburb of Seattle, her hometown. Shaughnessy played point guard for the Gaels basketball team and also played rugby while at Saint Mary’s; she went on to play for the national women’s 7’s team and now works as a financial adviser.

Swiryn proposed to her on the field at the end of one of his national team’s matches and they will be married at Saint Mary’s on June 30.

Looking back, Swiryn realized he learned a valuable lesson from how he dealt with the end of football at Saint Mary’s. “I don’t feel it was fate that led me to rugby; it’s just my life turned, drastically, and I tried to do what I could with it. What I realized was, if you stay positive, most people will make good of any situation.

My life wasn’t what I had dreamt it to be, but I’m still really happy with it. I have no regrets.”

– J.G. PRESTON

VIDEO OF KEVIN’S PROPOSAL TO LAUREN

tinyurl.com/boo58fv

Scholarship Fund Honors SMC Rugby Alumnus Dan Otter ‘82

BY GINNY PRIOR

R

ugby players are known for their camaraderie — on and off the field. But what alumni players at Saint Mary’s College are doing in the wake of teammate Dan Otter’s death goes far beyond friendship. They’re raising funds at a furious pace for an endowment in Otter’s honor.

It takes $50,000 to set up a permanent endowment and the Saint Mary’s College Rugby Alumni Association showed its commitment early by donating $22,000 in proceeds from its annual Pat Vincent Dinner and Fundraiser last fall.

“It’s very difficult to raise the money without a ‘big money’ guy behind it,” said Tom Carroll, Saint Mary’s Assistant Athletic Director for Development. “But the way Dan passed away, the people behind him, we knew there would be support for him.”

Otter died unexpectedly last July at the age of 51. The news touched his teammates and friends in a profound way.

“You know, he was just such a good guy,” said Rugby Alumni Board member Mike Wise, who played football with Otter in the early 1980s.

“There’s a very strong alumni community of guys who played for Saint Mary’s,” he said, “and Dan was a big supporter of the Alumni Association.

He said it also hit home that Otter died so suddenly. “He was close to my age,” said Wise.

“Fifties is a little young. We thought, ‘We ought to do something to memorialize this guy.’”

Wise said Otter packed a lot into his time here on earth. “When he passed away in Lake Tahoe on a bike ride, he was actually there for a nonprofit board meeting for Alzheimer’s.” Otter was a leader when it came to raising money and awareness for the fight against neurologic disease.

He was just 12 when his father died of Alzheimer’s, and in later years his mother succumbed to the same illness. His friends say he dedicated his life to finding a cure.

Otter was also an avid outdoorsman who loved fishing and cycling and camping with his wife and three young children. He was active in

Left to right: David Starkey ‘85, Bob Lenz ‘86 and Dan Otter ‘82, at the Las Vegas Masters Rugby Tournament.

Boy Scouts and coached Little League and was known as a deeply devoted husband and father.

Otter was also an Academic All-American when he played rugby and football at Saint Mary’s. He graduated with honors in 1982.

“After his death — the next week — a whole string of guys was contributing stories by email about Dan,” said Wise, who shared his own story about Gaels football camp back in 1980. “There was rookie hazing at the camps and Dan had to get up and sing. He sang ‘Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown’

by Jim Croce. It was unbelievable. He just nailed it.” Wise said Otter was always comfortable in his own skin.

After graduating magna cum laude, Otter went on to earn his MBA from UCLA. He set up his first company in Palmdale, California, where he built shopping centers and business parks. By the time he turned 50, he’d spent almost

30 years in a successful commercial real estate career, winning numerous awards for his designs and development.

Through it all, he was never far from his roots at Saint Mary’s. Otter played with the Diablo Gaels Rugby Football Club until a year ago, traveling with the team to tournaments around the state. His passion for rugby was the catalyst for the Dan Otter Rugby Scholarship Fund, which will help rugby players with tuition assistance at SMC. “I think he’d be thrilled to help a student athlete in need,” said Wise. “Dan wouldn’t want his name out there — he’s not that kind of guy — but I think he’d be honored.”

MORE PHOTOS AND STORIES ABOUT DAN OTTER:

stmarys-ca.edu/otterscholarship

STMARYS-CA.EDU 35

GARRETT LEE

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1

2

3

2011 [1] After aspiring to be a math teacher throughout his undergraduate career, DJ Bowen, center, with Chris Jones, Math Department chair, left, and Desiree Lopez ’10, right, has been hired as a full-time math teacher at Pittsburg High School, teaching Algebra 1 and 2.

[2] Matt and Sara (Cardoso) Beutner met during their freshmen year at Saint Mary’s and were married on June 19, 2011. They were married in the Saint Mary’s chapel, with family members and fellow alums Karl Beutner ‘71, Karl Beutner ‘06 and Katherine Beutner AS ‘07 in attendance. Their reception was held at the Hacienda de las Flores in Moraga. Sara is in the Multiple Subject Teaching Credential program in the Kalmanovitz School of Education and Matt is pursuing a post-baccalaureate degree in Health Professions at UC Berkeley.

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political campaigns. He recently relocated to Santa Fe, N.M., to work as the assistant to the chief strategist and campaign coordinator for a state House of Representatives campaign.

2009 [4] Eleanor Eldredge MA (Kinesiology) was proposed to live on the QVC shopping network by Adam Mills ’05 (BS Business) and she said yes! Eleanor, a QVC fan, was beyond surprised by this thoughtful and creative proposal. The couple, pictured on the QVC set, plan to marry in summer 2013.

[5] Taline Kuyumjian, pictured with gallery visitors, announces that after working first at the Saint Mary’s College Museum of Art and then at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento she will begin the Museology Graduate Studies program at the University of Washington, Seattle, this fall. Taline considers herself lucky to have discovered her passion for museum administration while a student at SMC and is excited to see where it takes her.

2008

4 5

7

Delaney Diskin is currently working as an adoptive parent intake counselor for the Independent Adoption Center in Pleasant Hill, Calif. She also is in her first of three years at Cal State East Bay working toward a master’s degree in social work. If you or anyone you know is interested in domestic, open adoption, feel free to contact her at the IAC. [6] Marilyn Drobenaire started her own local CPA business in September 2009.

In January 2011, Marilyn incorporated her business and hired her first half-time employee.

She continues to grow her business by using local independent contractors to serve her clients and is looking forward to bringing on interns from Saint Mary’s as soon as it’s practical. sfbayaccounting.com

2006

6 [3] Lauren Rose O’Leary, shown with Tori Verber-Salazar ’87, left, organized and directed a charity concert — A NIGHT FOR OUR KIDS — for the Stockton Boys & Girls Club. The event raised over $20,000, which will allow inner-city children a safe place to play, learn and grow in the art of dance.

2010 Elizabeth Patterson, currently a student at the McGeorge School of Law, wowed the Merced City Council and many in attendance when she spoke for residents fighting a controversial real estate development. Read more about her in the Feb. 9 Merced County Times tinyurl.com/8xvcmhx Politics major Jordan Tenedora is putting his education to use working on

A short story by Rashaan Alexis Meneses MFA, “Like Fish to Ginger,” published by UC Riverside’s Coachella Review, was recently nominated for a Sundress Best of the Net Prize.

[4] Adam Mills was recently engaged to Eleanor Eldredge MA ’09 (Kinesiology) on QVC, where they were photographed, on Feb. 24. He started a new job as a senior analyst for Episcopal Senior Communities (ESC) in Walnut Creek, Calif.

ESC is a nonprofit that provides upscale living and care facilities for seniors. Eleanor is the executive assistant to the VP at 24 Hour Fitness in San Ramon.

[7] Jonathan Morales and Mary Barnes were married March 5, 2011, at Saint Mary’s College. They met at Saint Mary’s in 2004 as cast members of the musical “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”

Among the bridal party were maid of honor Amanda Travale, bridesmaid Leah Wright and groomsman Aman Mahal.

Mary is an associate at the Dolan Law Firm in San Francisco and Jonathan is a publicist at San Francisco State University.

Jake Murray has been hired as a consultant with HFS Consultants in reimbursement practice. Murray joins the STMARYS-CA.EDU 37

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company from Toyon Associates where he held a similar role. He is a graduate of Saint Mary’s College of California with a B.S. degree in business administration and holds an MBA with a concentration in finance from California State University, East Bay.

2005 [8] Emma (Arellano) ME ’06 and Jose Flores ‘04 married in 2006 and welcomed their daughter Naima Itzel Flores on June 1, 2011.

[9] Courtney Carmignani ’05, ML ’08 and Christoph Lohmann MS ’05 were married by Father Thomas McElligott in the Saint Mary’s Chapel on New Year’s Eve. Brother Martin Yribarren ’71 played the organ, Ron Willet ’05, MBA ’07 played the piano, and Michelle Batista ’02, ECR ’05 served as the cantor. The happy couple rang in the New Year in the Soda Center with fellow Gaels from across the

decades, including: Matron of Honor Megan (Walling) ’05 and husband Phillip Goldsby ’05, Maid of Honor Mariana Ramos-Rodrigues ’05, Bridesmaid Therese Pietsch ’05, Bridesmaid Melissa (Beck) ’05 and husband Patrick Young ’05, Marc Dominguez ’96, ECR ’04, MC ’05; Kate Koens ’01; Milad Sarkis ’04; Natalie Wilson ’04; Teohn ’03, ML ’11 and Lyone Conner ’04, ML ’11; Rebecca (Adam) Teames ’02; Chris Swain ’04, ECR ’07; Franny Little ’11; Rob Walters ’96; Mark Chiarucci ’91; Jeff Walling ’08; Ron Turner ’79; Michael Viola ’99, MC ’04; Sean Park MS ’05; Louie Senador MS ’05; Molly Matles ’10; Dominic Villa ’09; Ryan ’97 and Kim (Filipas) Thompson ’97, ECR ’06; Chris ’97, MS ’02 and Katie (Kelso) Carter ’97,

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ECR ’04; Lloyd Schine III ’98, ME ’04, ECR ’10; Scott ’05 and Heather (Showalter) Martinez ’05; Geoff ’95 and Christine (Hauser) Reimer ’95; and Tom ’04, MS ’07 and Stacey (Coleman) Carroll ’03. Allyson Wiley ’02 photographed the wedding, and Andrew Verducci ’07, ECR ’08 was the DJ. They may now hold the record for most Saint Mary’s alumni at a wedding.

[10] MonaLisa and Jay Como MBA and SEBA Advisory Board member welcomed Sofia Isabella (7 lb., 4 oz., 20.5 in.) on Dec. 20, 2011.

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[11] After graduating Gina Damiano worked as an executive assistant, project manager and event planner in San Jose, Calif..

She recently decided to attend law school, and relocated to San Diego to attend California Western School of Law. Her adventure began in January 2012, and she is enjoying the challenges of being a first-year law student, as well as the opportunity to be able to live the life of a student again. Gina hopes to have a career in family law, practicing in either San Diego or the Bay Area.

Keri Martin EE works at the Pinole branch of Bank of the West. She prides herself on using the skills she learned at Saint Mary’s to encourage and motivate the team in Pinole.

Keri also helps with community projects at the Richmond-Pinole Lions Club. Her last project, in conjunction with Rebuild Richmond and Lions District 4C3, helped refurbish six houses in a low-income area of Richmond.

2003 Denny Bulcao is in Warwick, R.I., working as a senior writer/editor for MetLife.com while closely following SMC Athletics.

[12] Stacey (Coleman) and Tom Carroll ‘04, MS ‘07 welcomed daughter Aubrey Leigh Carroll on Sept. 9, 2011.Aubrey rarely misses a basketball game and was on hand in Las Vegas to cheer her Gaels on to victory in the WCC Tournament. Stacey recently returned to work at Williams-Sonoma, Inc., in San Francisco while Tom continues as the assistant athletic director for development at Saint Mary’s College.

[13] Julia Chapman ECR ‘04 is Teacher of the Year 2012 at Discovery Bay School in California. From a young age I was in love with education. After eight years of teaching I have experienced many changes, challenges and moments that have allowed me to become the teacher I am today. I enjoy what I do and appreciate the opportunities that education has afforded me and strive to give that back to those students in my classrooms.

[14] Corinne Devin was crowned Ms. Texas and will compete in July for the title of Ms. United States.

2002 [15] Meagan (Salmon) and Brian Houle welcomed their second child, Landon Scott, on Jan. 16, 2012. Big sister Madison, 4, adores him. Brian was officially sworn in as a correctional officer for the Solano County Sheriff’s Department and Meagan operates a small baking business, Wine Country

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Confections, while staying home with their children. The Houles live in Napa, Calif.

Mike Sotelo is now the director of residuals in programming finance at Showtime Networks. His kickball team, Balls Deep, has won back-to-back Venice League championships.

2001 [16] Natalie (Wilson) and Matthew Medeiros were married on Oct. 29, 2011, at Tehama Golf Club in Carmel, Calif. Fellow Gaels Nikki Ferraiolo ‘02 served as a bridesmaid and Ross Dielissen ‘02 served as a groomsman. Matthew is the co-founder and technical director of Performance Technic, a BMW auto boutique in Pleasanton, which recently received the 2011 Best of the Bay Award. The couple lives in San Ramon.

2000 [17] Peter Sousa ’00, MS ’11 and Jacquelyn Cammaroto were married among family and friends in the Chapel at Saint Mary’s College on Sept. 10, 2011, fifteen years after they met as freshmen at Saint Mary’s. The bridal party included alumni John Antonini, John Newell, Erik Dokken, Luigi Di Ruocco ’99, Chris Trenholm ‘99, Liz (Larussa) Mechelke ‘95, De Anna Federico and Jen (Hallmark) Rhudy.

Lauren Lovett is in her ninth year teaching as an inclusion specialist at Berkeley High School. In August 2011 she was engaged to Brendan Illingworth; they are pictured at their engagement party in October; they are planning an August 2012 wedding in Monterey, Calif.

1999 Jennie Durant MFA ‘06 was just accepted into a Ph.D. program at U.C. Berkeley, where she will study and write about sustainable agriculture in the Environmental Science and Policy Management program.

[18] Frank Knight III ‘99, his wife, Allyson, and big brothers Shane and TJ welcomed another little boy, Josiah S. Knight, on June 7, 2011. Josiah weighed 6 lb. 12 oz. and was 21.5 in. long.

1997 Erika (Chan) Moore resides in her hometown of Visalia, Calif., with her husband, Billy, and their three daughters, ages 8, 5 and 3.

Since her time at SMC, she has taught 4th, 6th, 7th and 8th grades, served as the executive director of ImagineU Interactive Children’s Museum in Visalia, and even worked as a bartender at a local sushi joint. Currently, Erika is a freelance grant writer for various nonprofits in Tulare County and co-owner of Moore Electric. In her spare time, Erika enjoys playing upright bass, reading from her book club list, and most recently, cooking. She looks forward to a reunion with fellow Gael alumni.

[19] In preparation for his upcoming wedding, Tony Galletti spent five days in Puerto Vallarta with his brother Terry ‘03 and friends Brett Fuiks, Trigger Reital, Ryan Thompson, Chris Carter ’97 MS ‘02, Brian Corrick, Scott Kinsey ‘97 MBA ‘00, Travis Calabio ‘97 MBA ‘02 and K.C. Sheipe.

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1996 [20] Scott Murrow, wife Maria, and daughter Liliana recently welcomed Vaughn Webb to the family. Born on Sept. 29, 2011, Vaughn hopes to one day gallop with the Gaels.

In other news, Scott’s band, Grill Sergeants, released an album on iTunes called “When the Evening Comes.”

1994 [21] Patrick Rabelo is vice chairman of the 2012 governing board of Doctor’s Hospital, Manteca (DHM). Patrick has been serving on the DHM governing board since January 2011.

1993 Jay Jasper earned his MS in school and career counseling from Sacramento State in 2003. He works as a counselor at Pleasant Grove High School in Elk Grove, Calif. Jay and his wife have two sons: Mason, 3, and Micah, 1. They are active members in the church where they first met, Living Stones Christian Reformed Church. Jay enjoys snow skiing, golf and fantasy football.

1991 Since November 2011, Ron Susa EMBA was assigned the role of senior compliance and internal controls analyst with Chevron Corporate Business Development. July 2012 will mark his 32nd anniversary with Chevron.

Ron is married to Connie, with three children: Sean, 22, Tyler, 19, and Cameron, 17.

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1990 [22] Mike and Lauren (Ford) ‘99 Recupero are living in Orange County, Calif. with their two daughters: Sofia, 6, and Sadie, 4.

1989 Arturo Jacobo remembers his freshman year and being awakened to climb the SMC hill and slide down the letters with wet paint, staying out pretty late and then having to get up early for class.

[23] Tim Oswald, wife Mary Ann (Notre Dame ‘91) and their children: Sam, 13, Grace, 11, and Molly, 8, attended the Saint Mary’s game in Denver the night before Thanksgiving. The outcome wasn’t what they hoped for, but Coach Bennett appreciated seeing the support in Denver. Molly, Grace and Sam Oswald posed for a photo with Coach Bennett. Tim owns Accounting & Business School of the Rockies; Mary Ann is a part-time substitute teacher; and the kids go to a Catholic grade school. Sam will be attending a Christian Brothers high school next year.

Carolyn West EE is president of East Bay Trusts and Estates Lawyers. EBTEL creates and sustains educational and social opportunities to benefit lawyers who practice estate planning, trust and probate law in the East San Francisco Bay area. It supports and assists the function of the probate courts in the East Bay, and it supports local nonprofit organizations that facilitate public access to the probate courts.

1985 [24] Brenda McDermott Baldacci and girls from the SMC class of 1985 love their yearly mini reunions! From left to right: Debbie (Garaventa) Ternan, Tessie (Wagner)

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Pease, Gaby (Asfour) Thompson, Rosanne (Parodi) Maloney, Siobhan (Reilly) Riehl, Carmel (Mahoney) Karczewski, Margaret (Leatham) Doyle and Brenda.

Ronald Southwick EE retired from Pacific Bell in 1991 and went on to become general manager of Mosler Inc. in San Francisco. He left there and became general manager for Sonitrol Corp. He retired for good in 2000 and moved to Hot Springs Village in Arkansas. He became very active in the VFW there. He has been post commander and district vice commander. He works regularly with the committee to assist homeless vets in Little Rock. He loves to travel, play golf and tennis and is very thankful to Saint Mary’s for making all of this possible.

1986 [25] Scott Peralta is married to Jodi and has three boys: Maxwell, age 11, Jake, 10, and Charlie, 7.

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1984 John Hemmenway and classmates — Chris Peters, Jim Ghelfi, Kevin Mills, Brian Riordan, Joe Motta, John Krpan, Tony Carda and Mark Giovanetti — celebrated the release of Brother Mel’s new book by having dinner and a book signing with him prior to the SMC-Santa Clara basketball game.

Terri (Shreve) Pope, after seven years as a stay-at-home mom, has taken on a new venture. She is the membership director at Meadowood, Napa Valley. She and her husband and two children, Michael, 16, and Jamie, 7, have lived in Napa for seven years.

1983 Louis Lotorto was cast in the Santa Barbara Ensemble Theatre Company’s

performance of “The 39 Steps” in February.

[26] Jeanne (Risso) Sellgren has been married for 26 years and has a 21-year-old son studying at Purdue University. Jeanne lives and enjoys life in central Oregon. She is pictured here with friends from the class of ’83 — De Deterding, Therese Louk, Jeanne Sellgren, Sharon Healey, MaryAnn daSilva and Teri Ferem — who recently enjoyed a girls’ weekend together.

Cres (Saintiago) Salonga ME, ECR had three children who graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy. Cres retired as a captain of California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, teacher, CEO of group homes, and real estate investor. She enjoys visiting her two grandsons and traveling with family during her retirement.

Bruce Slater EE recently became a partner with Crawford Group-Merger & Acquisition firm, in Portland, Ore. Bruce will direct all marketing communications, business development and technical writing. Bruce and his fiancée, Paulette Dockter, recently traveled to Oahu, Hawaii, with excursions to Pearl Harbor, catamaran sailing, snorkeling and diving to see turtles. Both of Bruce’s daughters and their families also live in Portland. Holly, Bruce’s eldest granddaughter, recently flew solo in a glider-plane on her way to earning her glider pilot’s license. She hopes to be a pilot in the U.S. Navy or Air Force. Bruce’s two grandsons and two granddaughters are “A” students. Are they SMC bound? Bruce reports that his education at Saint Mary’s College has been a guiding light to his success.

When in the Bay Area on business, Bruce always takes time out for a visit to the SMC campus. In 2011 Bruce and classmate Bruce Andrade EE reunited for lunch for the first time in 28 years. Relationships are important, no matter how long it takes to shake the hand of a fellow classmate.

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1982 [27] Vito LoGrasso announces that the newest event in his life is his volunteer service to the SMC Alumni Class of ’82 reunion. Working with Duke Powers, Tim Desmond, Mario Alioto, Joe Wright, Mary Hassett and Karrie Hagedorn ’08 is a great experience! Please join us July 20–23 and RSVP today.

article at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AnnaMaria_ Cardinalli. AnnaMaria’s upcoming book about Afghanistan has just been signed with a major literary agent, and the YouTube video gives a hint to its content.

John Moffat retired as the director of labor contracts after a 39-year career with PG&E. He continues to reside with his wife, Nancy, in Pleasanton, Calif.

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1971

Henry Sroka feels fortunate to continue working for the Dallas Cowboys. His wife, Linn, is the center of their family; their oldest daughter, Pilar, will graduate this winter; son Dominic, will be a senior at Notre Dame de Namur in Belmont, where he plays soccer; and the youngest, Mikael, (all-district punter/PK) will be a senior at Liberty Christian High School in Argyle, Texas. Coach MAC and Coach Mannini had much to do with where I am.

God bless you.

[30] Raymond DeLea has been married for 40 years to his wonderful wife, Pattie. They have one daughter, Daniella-Rachel, who graduated magna cum laude in Chinese and Asian Studies from California State University, Long Beach and is completing her master’s degree there in linguistics. Ray and Pattie founded Rivers in the Desert Ministries in 1992 and have just completed publishing a series of books, Wisdom for Young Hearts, to teach Bible-based wisdom to young children through 6th grade. Ray continues to enjoy gardening, hiking, singing and guitar playing in addition to landscape photography. Since his graduation at SMC, he has worked as an aerospace engineer for Hughes Aircraft Co./Raytheon in El Segundo, Calif.

[31] James R. Quandt, chairman emeritus of the Board of Trustees of Saint Mary’s College, announced the signing

1976 Kathryn (O’Neill) Maurer’s eldest son, Brian Maurer, was married to Tanya Novak in October on the beach in San Diego.

Kathryn is pleased that they plan to settle in Pacific Grove.

1973 [28] John Kukulica started working for Saga Food Service in the cafeteria at Saint Mary’s College in September 1969. After graduation, he stayed with Saga, serving first as a food service manager at Fairchild Semiconductor in Mountain View and then as district manager of the Business & Industry Division of the San Francisco Bay Area through 1979. He went on to spend much of his career in the culinary, hospitality and restaurant industries. He bought the venerable Iron Horse Restaurant on San Francisco’s famed Maiden Lane in December of 1979 and met his wife, Ghyslaine, there, marrying her in 1988. They have one child, Dominic. John went on to own and manage a number of San Francisco and other California eateries. After moving to Reno, Nev., he managed a number of hospitality businesses there, served as regional director for German crystal stemware manufacturer Stolzle USA, and now is an independent insurance agent with Aflac. He continues to serve with a number of hospitality industry groups encouraging young people to consider careers in the hospitality and restaurant industry.

1972 [29] Jayne (Crow) Cardinalli announces that her daughter, AnnaMaria Cardinalli ‘97, Ph.D. (winner of the Louis LeFevre award for outstanding graduate in Performing Arts and SMC “Woman of Influence” award) was the first SMC student with two Gael parents. After returning from work in Iraq and Afghanistan, she was recently cast in a principal role in an opera in Rome.

Combining these two divergent aspects of her life, she recently posted a video on YouTube which has gone “viral,” at youtube. come/watch?v=14tuxDqlvQ . Her research in current wars has been groundbreaking to the point that it’s warranted a Wikipedia 42

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McNalis, a freelance artist and one-time art director with the Walt Disney Company, has focused much of his artistic and activist efforts over the past 15 years on the democracy movement in Burma. Many of McNalis’ sculptures depict key figures in the country’s fight for democracy and raise the profiles of some of Burma’s renowned political prisoners.

According to McNalis, his sculpture of Aung San Suu Kyi is his most well-known artwork, especially among the global community of Burmese exiles, expatriates and refugees.

Aung San Suu Kyi and McNalis will set a date in the coming months when he will deliver the original sculpture to her in Rangoon. “The sculpture has always belonged to her,” McNalis said, “but because of the political situation in Burma for the past 20 years, it has been impossible to get it to her.

The current easing of tensions there has created an opportunity to finally bring it home where it belongs.”

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29 32 of Tim Tebow for a significant advertising endorsement contract for the FRS Company, headquartered in Foster City. Quandt serves as chairman of the board of the FRS Company as well as managing partner of Thomas James Capital, Inc., headquartered in Aliso Viejo, Calif.

1967 [32] When he’s not out designing trails, Mark Flint has added backpacking to his recreational pursuits, squeezing in multi-day trips into the Grand Canyon when he’s not riding a horse or mountain bike. He is pictured here riding a horse named Wyatt in Saguaro National Park. The author of a manual on designing and building trails in the desert, he continues to do some writing and editing, but has gradually shifted most of his work into his passion for trails.

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Brother Brendan Madden has been appointed to assist in recruiting undergraduates from Lasallian high schools in Hong Kong, Singapore and Manila. He also helps students as a scholarship counselor and has helped five SMC students acquire Fulbright Awards.

[33] Jim McNalis has just returned from Burma (Myanmar) where he visited Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. McNalis created a sculpture of the world’s most renowned dissident. Since Suu Kyi has spent most of the past 20 years under arrest by the military dictatorship, the sculpture has stood in for her at tributes, birthday celebrations and other events honoring the famed democracy advocate. While traveling in Southeast Asia, McNalis received an invitation to visit with Suu Kyi at her residence in Rangoon.

Walt deFaria writes that he keeps retirement at bay by being active in theatre, something he first experienced at Christian Brothers High School in Sacramento with Brothers Jerome and Walter. Then at Saint Mary’s, Yale Meyers kept his interest alive and now, after a 50-plus year career in movies, television and theatre, he is still busy. This summer he directs Disney’s Beauty and the Beast for Pacific Repertory Theatre at Carmel’s historic outdoor theatre.

Meanwhile on the film front, he executive produced the recently released Disney animation “The Secret World of Arrietty.” For Christmas 2012 he is executive producing a new BBC/Working Title movie for television, “The Borrowers,” set for ABC-TV.

1947 Jerry Murphy, 88, retired in 1991 from UC Davis, where he was a professor in the rhetoric and communication and English departments.

After graduating from Saint Mary’s, he earned his master’s degree and Ph.D. at Stanford, where he taught for six years.

After six years at Princeton, he and his family moved in 1965 to Davis, where he founded the rhetoric and communication department at UC Davis. In this essay in the Davis Enterprise, Jerry recalls six miracles in his life, beginning with a harrowing landing of his sqadron’s B-24 during WWII: tinyurl.com/7tjxv7t

1941 Alumnus Lionel Holmes grew up in the Pocket neighborhood of Sacramento, where he was raised by his grandparents, who lived on a 40-acre ranch that sold produce at the public market. He edited the Collegian during his junior and senior year at SMC and went on to work as a copy editor at the Oakland Tribune before being drafted into the Army. He served with the medical complement of the Transportation Corps during WW II and after discharge in 1944, Lionel went on to a career in advertising and publishing.

James ‘61 and Mary Ellen Bahan, Dr. William MBA ’93 and Sandra Feaster MBA ‘89

At the President’s Circle Dinner On April 14, Saint Mary’s and Brother President Ronald Gallagher, FSC, honored the College’s most generous benefactors. The event at the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley celebrated the many donors who make possible student scholarships, library resources, Gael athletics, mission and service projects, and faculty development and research.

MORE PHOTOS FROM THE EVENT

stmarys-ca.edu/ pcircle2012

DEGREE KEY ECR Education Credential EdD Doctor of Education EE Extended Education EMBA Executive MBA HON Honorary MBA Graduate Business MC Counseling ME Graduate Education MFA Fine Arts ML Leadership MLS Liberal Studies MS Science N Nursing P Paralegal Certificate

Saint Mary’s magazine will publish two Glimpses per year for any graduate of the College.

Please post more frequent updates at stmarys-ca.edu/glimpses.

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ALUMNI Charles V. Amaral ’78 Renee Gayhardt-Bell ’81 James R. Blair ’42 Douglas A. Boyett ’89 William Breitholle, Jr. ’27 George Cantwell ’39 Andrew Carey ’53 Robert F. Carlson ’49 Eugene V. Cattolica ’60 Daniel J. Clark ’63 Gregory Cole ’75 C. Joseph Crane ’53 Louis N. Desmond ’49 Suzanne (Sammi) Laura Destruel ’81 Thomas A. Donato ’70 David T. Fritz ’50 C. Stanley Gilliam ’45 Kennerth H. Guice ’87 Susan M. Hall ’89 Herbert M. Hauser ’40 Randy L. Haves, ECR Raymond A. James ’67 William J. Jefferds, Ed.D ’50 Suzanne C. Jehik ’84 Carl J. Johnson ’43 Susan L. Lam ’86, ECR Robert G. Lamp ’50 Lynne A. Leroy ’89 Velma J. Linscheid, ECR Robert L. Lippert ’50 Albert Maggio, Sr., THO Robert J. McAndrews ’32 Blythe E. McCool ’99 George McDermott ’32 Elaine A. McKeon, Former President of Board of Regents / Former Chair of Board of Trustees Guido J. Mei ’49 Lyman M. Munson ’93 Gary V. Nelson ’70 Thomas F. Purtill ’49 Philip G. Ratton ’79 Thomas A. Remus ’77 Theresa Marie Smallen Shields ’80 Alabert E. Silva ’44 Frank R. Soares ’40 Margaret A. Spaugh ’01 Alfred J. Speckens ’41 Lois V. Tooker ’89 Robert E. Von Burkleo ’62 Edward Waffen ’61 Walter E. Weber ’41 Brother Raphael W. Willeke, FSC ’66 Gabriel H. Wilson ’50 Ronald N. Yamaguchi ’90 44

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FAMILY AND FRIENDS Dario A. Baciocco Lucille Boero Victor J. Cabasso Agnes C. Conrad Thomas J. Cordoni, Parent of Mrs. Nicole A. Wallingford ’97 Thomas George Croda John C. Cronin III Howard Daschbach James E. Delehanty Francis B. Dillon Patricia A. Disney, Former Regent Annette Euphrat Shizuko Nishiyama Fujita John M. Headley Jim (Coach Mac) McDonald Ron Moschel William E. Perkins, Professor Emeritus Richard C. Perry James M. Ryken Jean E. Seban Dale Wendling

ELAINE MCKEON 1926 – 2012 When former Saint Mary’s President Brother Mel Anderson first met Elaine McKeon, who passed away earlier this year at age 86, she was the shy, retiring wife of George McKeon, a construction company executive and major College donor. After she lost her husband, who died at age 51, Elaine transformed her life and became one of the most remarkable people Brother Mel has ever known.

Elaine McKeon served on Saint Mary’s Board of Trustees from

1980 to 1990 and was chair of the board from 1983 to 1985. In 1996 she was chosen to help chart the College’s future as a New Century Committee member.

Brother Mel sang the praises of Elaine’s distinguished service as

chair of the Saint Mary’s Board of Trustees. “She was always upbeat, but firm, and knew how to get things done,” he said. “She didn’t rush to make judgments, but was very thoughtful about what she did.”

She cared deeply about everyone and on one occasion hosted a

surprise party at her Hillsborough home for Brother Mel’s 25th anniversary as SMC president. On another, she invited the entire basketball team to celebrate their success at a sport of which she and George, the owner of the Sacramento Kings, were very fond.

Although neither of them attended Saint Mary’s — George’s older

brother did, but he was killed in Europe in World War II — the McKeons

Saint Mary’s magazine prints the names of recently deceased alumni, Christian Brothers and friends who have given to Saint Mary’s. Names of other friends of the College, as well as family members of alumni, faculty and staff, appear in the online version of the magazine.

became some of the school’s most generous donors, funding many projects, including McKeon Pavilion.

Elaine’s other passion, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,

consumed nearly three decades of her life. She served as board president from 1989 to 1995 and chair of the board from 1995 to 2004, guiding the institution during a major move and expansion. The museum closed early one afternoon in January so her friends and family could honor a woman who touched the lives of everyone she met.

– JUDY JACOBS

COURTESY SF MOMA

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IT MAY BE ABSURD TO HAVE HOPE BUT WHAT ELSE WOULD YOU DO Children waltz down the street with shouts And wave toward points of light on tangerines and bottles Spilling into the noisy cloud of business hours But I am behind the cloud’s glory With dense sensations of distance I still check newspaper dispensers for stuck quarters to buy a pack of gum Where’s my pill and where’s my mother I can’t see her mind float away from my warehouse loft A fat face is just a different kind of sadness That tethers a person to your pity and your memory In her living room grandfather clock splits The known hours into fair portions I live on the edge of the only world I’ve breathed in And so it’s a corner Newborn crying under a full moon, Beautiful things in waves that mean The moon a rock without light that we all revere Watches broken brothers breaking bread And the cloud now parting rears back to show his face – SARAH LOUISE GREEN

OLIVIA WISE

Sarah Louise Green graduated from Saint Mary’s with an MFA in Poetry in 2010. Her manuscript, The Birds Have Never Failed Me, was a finalist for the 2012 Yale Younger Poets award.

She lives and writes in Oakland.

NON-PROFIT ORG. U.S. POSTAGE

PAID OAKLAND, CA PERMIT NO. 1788

P.O. Box 4300 Moraga, CA 94575-4300 www.stmarys-ca.edu Address Service Requested

In honor of our

150 Gaelorious years,

Saint Mary’s is having a yearlong celebration. Invitees include:

THOMAS MESCHERY ’61

HERE ARE JUST A FEW WAYS TO JOIN THE PARTY

yearofthegael.com