Tulane Magazine Winter 2013 Issue

TUlane THE MAGAZINE OF TULANE UNIVERSITY

ecology in action Research meets community activism in Ecuador.

charting a new course A new day for New Orleans Public Schools.

THE SKINNY ON LONG Huey P. Long’s papers come to Tulane.

winter 2013

Tales From the Rain Forest

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Sun-faced On a cold morning, two pedestrians occupy different sides of Freret Street as they head toward the uptown campus.

Beyond Ornamental On the cover: The long-wattled umbrella bird gathers the fruit of the chapil palm tree in the rain forests of Ecuador, a key act in the area’s ecology.

Photo by Murray Cooper.

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P R E S I D E N T ’ S

L E T T E R

Engaged Citizens

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by Scott S. Cowen

Perhaps you know the story: After the deliberations of the Constitutional Convention ended in 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked by a group of citizens as to what kind of government he and his fellow delegates had created. Franklin is reported to have replied, without hesitation, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

In his wisdom, Franklin understood that a democracy was not a static thing, and that in order to thrive, a republic must have the ongoing and vigorous participation of its citizenry. This is no less true now than it was 200 years ago. Last year, the National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement sent out something of a call-toarms to the nation’s institutions of higher education. Noting that a “socially cohesive and economically vibrant U.S. democracy” requires an informed and engaged citizenry, the report urged the nation’s colleges and universities to make civic learning and engagement an essential part of students’ education.

While many universities have strayed from this mission, at Tulane we have made a concerted effort to put community engagement and social entrepreneurship on equal footing to education and research.

Indeed, our commitment to civic engagement is part of what defines and distinguishes us as a university community—and that commitment extends in many directions.

First of all, as you are more than likely aware, all undergraduates must fulfill a public service graduation requirement. To meet the two-part requirement, students in their first two years must complete a service learning course.

And then, as we expect them to deepen their understanding of public service, we present students with several avenues for community engagement in their junior or senior year. In the second part of

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LIGHTNING iN A BOTTLE A republic derives its energy and vitality from the vigorous participation of its citizenry.

the public service graduation requirement, students must participate in one of the following: a high-level service learning course, an academic service learning internship, a faculty-sponsored public service research project, a public service honors thesis project, a public service–based international study abroad program or a capstone experience with a public service component.

These curricular service activities as well as extracurricular activities are managed by the Center for Public Service, which maintains partnerships with nearly 400 communitybased organizations.

And Tulane goes even further in its zeal to connect academics and action, classroom and communities. The Center for Engaged Learning and Teaching (CELT) provides theoretical and applied resources, tools and direction to the university community to realize the goal of engaged learning, in which students experience themselves not as passive recipients of information but as active participants both in the classroom and in the world.

On the social innovation front, we have established a new interdisciplinary minor in social innovation and social entrepreneurship.

Courses are being developed that take the concept of community engagement and building it deeply into the curriculum.

We also are promoting awareness of social entrepreneurship issues by inviting to campus some of the most remarkable social entrepreneurs working today. In February, through the NewDay Social Entrepreneurship Distinguished Speakers Series, Kristen Richmond, co-founder of Revolution Foods, spoke on campus about the effort to serve healthy food to students in lunchrooms, transforming the way kids eat.

Tapping into the desire of our students to make social change, quickly, we also offer competition for NewDay Challenge awards.

These awards of up to $20,000 in seed funding are available to Tulane students who are social innovators looking to turn their social impact ideas into reality. Past NewDay Challenge winners have included Sudz Soap, an enterprise to sell soap in the U.S. and then use the proceeds to send soap overseas to places such as Haiti and India, where the short-supply of soap is contributing to health problems.

In doing all of the above, we strengthen the educational experience of our students and move us as an institution closer to the communities in which we work and live.

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TUlane C O N T E N T S Salvaged Bloom A bouquet of recycled material, straight from the rain forest.

2 PRESIDENT’S LETTER Ben Franklin had it right 6 NEWs Northeast calamity • Taking aim at arthritis • Baseball figures • Who dat?

Bud Brimberg • Code noir • Public health in Africa • Trombone U • Cultural GPS • Atala & Chactas • Marcello Canuto

chris kraul

13 SPORTS High hopes • 21-of-21

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Ecology in Action In the rain forests of Ecuador, locals are learning how to achieve lasting conservation of their precious natural resources. By Chris Kraul

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31 WHERE Y'AT! Class notes

Charting a New Course

35 FAREWELL Tribute: James J. Corrigan

A sense of urgency and spirit of optimism fuel the post-Katrina reinvention of public schools in New Orleans. By Mary Ann Travis

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30 TULANIANS David Goodman helps repair the world • Mary Lynn Hyde travels with Tulane • Shelby Tucker • Olga Merediz • Jean Morgan Meaux

The Skinny on Long Tulane alum Jack McGuire has uncovered and donated to Tulane a trove of information about Louisiana’s most notable and perhaps least documented politician. By Ryan Rivet

38 TULANE EMPOWERS Show Chwan Chair • Ham’s trophies • Benenson Plaza • Flower Hall 40 NEW ORLEANS At the movies

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coffee, friends and the newspaper Carol Peebles sends in her homage to The Times-Picayune, “A Grand Tradition,” rendered in charcoal and paper.

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AT WHAT PRICE? In your Fall 2012 cover story “Going, Going, Gone...Is Ink Fading?” I believe Ms. Del Toro sums up completely the problem today with print journalism.

Having been employed at a daily newspaper for nine years, I have seen more than half of my newsroom coworkers laid off, our pay and benefits reduced, all while being asked to do more (now vacant) jobs associated with producing a newspaper, including taking photos, videos and posting stories online. When you have to concentrate on taking a great picture, your ability to focus on asking important questions and getting notable, relevant quotes seriously declines. I feel news consumers are aware of this and are responding in kind, by not consuming their news in a print form and instead seeking other platforms. Digital is the way of the future, but at what price?

I applaud Tulane Magazine for choosing to highlight these important issues that affect not just the Times-Pic but publications across the country, but I must note with no small amount of irony that I read the article in the magazine’s digital format.

Stacy Horany Johnson, NC ’03 Wichita Falls, Texas GRAND TRADITION My dad, Jack Peebles, L ’61, showed me your article on the demise of our beloved paper.

I thought I would show you my tribute to the many who dedicated decades of their lives to this marvelous part of New Orleans culture. It’s called “A Grand Tradition” (coffee, friends & the paper) [above].

Carol Peebles New Orleans NEW TRICKS I just received the on-line magazine and read it from cover to cover. I’m of the “older generation” but am getting used to my iPad and reading from a screen. The magazine was lovely. Good job!

Pegi Ballenger, NC ’72 Woodland Park, Colo.

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w r i t e MORE IPAD LOVE Love the ipad app! Issues download and install quickly, and they look great! Makes it much easier to catch up on my reading when I have a spare moment. Thanks!

Jodi Pollack Benaroch, NC ’90 Atlanta FRIENDLY AND FOLKSY Many thanks for another meaningful issue of Tulane. I especially wanted to express my thanks to Paula BurchCelentano for her haunting photograph of the lonely, empty Times-Picayune box. It says it all for me. I have framed it and hung it alongside two earlier photographs from your magazine, one of the interior of the St. Charles streetcar and one of the Napoleon House interior. They are part of my nostalgia shrine to wonderful days in New Orleans and at Tulane so many years ago!

Hale Boggs was also part of those memories. We voted for him in a neighbor’s garage. Politics then was such a friendly, folksy thing! He kept in close touch with a frequent newsletter recounting his accomplishments and concerns in D.C. Hearing years later of his plane lost in Alaska was so very sad.

(Small-world addendum here: A neighbor where I now live, in the Air Force at that time, was in charge of the search party which tried in vain to find the downed plane.)

Forty years on, that plane is still missing, I believe.

So it was a real pleasure to read your article on Lindy Boggs. She is a paragon of Southern gentility and leadership.

Charlotte Schrader, G ’59 Yorktown, Va.

TRAILBLAIZER I enjoyed reading Tania Tetlow’s article about Lindy Boggs. However, long before Boggs’ appearance on the national scene, another Newcomb graduate, Willey Glover

Denis, was making women’s history. After graduating from Newcomb in 1899, she was awarded an AM in 1902 (Tulane) and a PhD (cum laude) in chemistry from the University of Chicago, in 1907; possibly the first Newcomb graduate to obtain the PhD. Following a brilliant career as a clinical biochemist with Otto Folin at MGH in Boston, in 1925, she was appointed Chair of Biochemistry at Tulane Medical School, the first woman to chair a department at a major medical school.

Unfortunately, her career was abruptly terminated when she died of breast cancer four years later.

Although I am sure that many Newcomb graduates qualify as famous, certainly Denis should be included among them.

William Baricos, G ’72 Boston

was close friends with Hale Boggs and Lindy Claiborne.

By all reports he was smart, handsome and a popular young man-about-town. Sadly, I never knew him; he was killed in an automobile accident in North Carolina in 1938 before I was born.

Joan von Kurnatowski Hooper Feibelman, NC ’62 New Orleans 10 CENT DIXIE BEER NIGHT It has been years since I have received your great publication, “The Tulanian,” perhaps it is called the “Tulane Magazine” now? I look forward to again receiving issues of Tulane Magazine very much. … It seems like yesterday that I was studying in the Howard-Tilton Library; closing the library down at 11:45 p.m., and then proceeded by closing “The Boot” down (if that is possible in the first place) on 10 cent Dixie Beer night, while discussing the implications of Nietzsche’s “Being and Nothingness,” also while trying to pick-up gorgeous Newcomb College co-eds; those were the days!

Doug Gauld, A&S ’77 St. Petersburg, Fla.

ipad version of tulane magazine available for free download from the app store.

Check it out!

MAN-ABOUT-TOWN I was happy to see the picture of my uncle, Thilo von Kurnatowski (A&S ’38), in Tania Tetlow’s article “Lindy and Me” (Fall 2012). He was editor of the Hullabaloo in 1935 and

Drop Us a Line E-mail us at: tulanemag@tulane.edu or U.S. mail: Tulane, University Publications, 200 Broadway, Suite 219, New Orleans, LA 70118

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Letter From The Editor

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Editor Mary Ann Travis

Art Director Melinda Whatley Viles Features Editor Nick Marinello “Tulanians” Editor Fran Simon

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Contributors Curtis Akey Keith Brannon Barri Bronston Christina Carr Roger Dunaway Catherine Freshley, ’09 Alicia Duplessis Jasmin Michael Joe Angus Lind, A&S ’66 Ryan Rivet, UC ’02 Matt Roberts Mary Sparacello

doing it differently

After the trauma of seven years ago, it’s remarkable how people have come back to this city. Much has been said about the renewal and rebirth of New Orleans after the destruction of Hurricane Katrina. So much has been said, in fact, it might begin to sound like so much hot air.

But it’s not empty talk. The resurgence of the city is most apparent in the dramatic rise in young, well-educated people. They have migrated here from Chicago, Los Angeles, New York or Philly after graduating from Tulane or other universities. They are moving downtown or to Mid-City, or the Bywater, the Marigny or the St. Claude Avenue corridor with its booming arts and healing district.

On a recent January night in a renovated townhouse turned into a hightech office in the Warehouse District, a few members of the “Crash Generation”—people who started their careers during the Great Recession that began in December 2007—gathered to talk about the how the recession affected them. But the conversation kept coming back to how much they love New Orleans.

Those who grew up in New Orleans noted that there has been a 180-degree

turn in the city’s attitude toward people “not from here.”

Before the storm, New Orleans was largely an insular city with a closed high society and a stuck underclass. People from the “outside” often had a difficult time finding their stride. But over the past five years, a reversal has happened: Nowadays, being an outsider is considered a good thing.

Much of the influx of people is, of course, tied to recovery from Katrina.

When you have an entire city to rebuild and lots of federal money to do it, people move in. But there’s more to the appeal of New Orleans than that. Besides the meaningful work and opportunity to make a difference, New Orleans has a quality of life that is easy to access.

The rhythm and pull of the culture here attract do-gooders, entrepreneurs and creative types.

In New Orleans, if you try, you can do things differently. There’s an authenticity to the place and the people.

“Our generation was raised on the idea that we can be happy,” said one attendee at the gathering. And New Orleans is a place where it would seem that happiness is at hand or at least just around the corner.—Mary Ann Travis

senior University Photographer Paula Burch-Celentano senior Production Coordinator Sharon Freeman Graphic Designer Tracey Bellina

President of the University Scott S. Cowen Vice President of University Communications Deborah L. Grant, PHTM ’86 Executive Director of Publications Carol J. Schlueter, B ’99 Tulane (USPS 017-145) is a quarterly magazine published by the Tulane Office of University Publications, 31 McAlister Drive, Drawer 1, New Orleans, LA 70118-5624. Periodical postage at New Orleans, LA 70113 and additional mailing offices. Send editorial correspondence to the above address or email tulanemag@tulane.edu.

Opinions expressed in Tulane are not necessarily those of Tulane representatives and do not necessarily reflect university policies. Material may be reprinted only with permission.

Tulane University is an affirmative action/equal opportunity institution.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: Tulane, Tulane Office of University Publications, 31 McAlister Drive, Drawer 1, New Orleans, LA 70118-5624. winter 2013/Vol. 84, No. 3

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storm support A delegation from Tulane University visited New York University

in November to discuss the impact of Hurricane Sandy on the NYU medical school and how lessons learned during and after Hurricane Katrina might help steer them through this crisis. The Tulane group met with a group of about 200 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.

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Photo by Andrew Mills/The Star-Ledger

Targeted Therapy

Jersey Shoring The Tulane School of Architecture has joined forces with the New Jersey Institute of Technology to help rebuild the hurricane-ravaged Jersey Shore.

School of Architecture dean Kenneth Schwartz and a team of colleagues will work with NJIT and the beach community of Seaside Heights as they begin the arduous task of restoring what Hurricane Sandy destroyed.

Schwartz said his motivation for helping is simple. After Katrina, more than a dozen architecture schools from around the country reached out to help New Orleans, and NJIT was among them.

“They came down and did some good things with their students,” Schwartz said. “And we were grateful for that.”

Upon seeing the devastation of Sandy, Schwartz didn’t hesitate to reach out to his East Coast counterparts. That contact led to his connection with NJIT School of Architecture and, in November, the first of what promises to be several visits to the Jersey Shore.

Among other things, Schwartz and his staff are helping NJIT set up a program similar to Tulane’s CITYbuild, which after Katrina matched architecture schools with some of the city’s nonprofits and neighborhoods. Dan Etheridge, associate director of Tulane’s City Center, an urban outreach and research program, will lead the effort to develop along the Jersey Shore an outreach model similar to CITYbuild.

“Our school’s successful work in the community is well known nationally, and Dan will advise them on everything from collaborating with nonprofit organizations to identifying foundation funding support,” Schwartz said.

In March, Schwartz is taking a group of Tulane students to Seaside Heights for an alternative spring break. “They will be there for a week doing hands-on construction work,” he said. “Seaside Heights was badly damaged, and this will involve working in the community on hands-on rebuilding work.”—Barri Bronston

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Rough Ride Seaside Heights borough administrator John Camera (left) and Kenneth Schwartz, dean of architecture at Tulane, tour the shore near the ruined Jet Star Roller Coaster at the north end of the Seaside Boardwalk in Ocean County, New Jersey.

arthritis relief Aline Betancourt is developing a stem-cell therapy for rheumatoid arthritis using a patented technology she developed at Tulane.

A biotechnology startup founded by Tulane researcher Aline Betancourt will use a $400,000 innovation grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop a stem-cell therapy for rheumatoid arthritis.

Betancourt’s company, Wibi+Works, is using a patented technology she developed at Tulane to design and produce uniform adult mesenchymal stem cells to treat chronic states of inflammation.

Rheumatoid arthritis affects more than 1.5 million adults in the United States. Betancourt, a research associate professor with the Tulane Center for Stem Cell Research and Regenerative Medicine, says that current drugs for the disease are imprecise, suppressing the entire immune system to reduce inflammation in one remote problem area.

“The advantage of using stem cells is that they can actually go to the inflamed joints and modify the inflammation locally,” Betancourt says. “Targeting these inflammatory spots then allows the tissue to heal.”

Rather than being a regenerative stem-cell product that becomes part of the healed tissue, Wibi+Works’ cell products are designed to be used as a short-term therapy when needed to manage misguided inflammation. Using this targeted therapy will not compromise the patient’s immune system nor will the patient have to spend a lifetime on immune suppressive regimens, Betancourt says.

Wibi+Works also is testing stem-cell products in several preclinical models of disease including diabetic peripheral neuropathy, acute lung injury and multiple sclerosis. The company is one of several local biotechnology firms housed in the newly opened New Orleans BioInnovation Center at 1441 Canal St. — Keith Brannon

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In That Number Baseball Stats

Baseball has been famously called “a game of statistics.� From ERAs to fielding percentages, there are any number of figures that can offer a better understanding of your team, favorite player or the game in general. With that in mind, we give some lesser-known statistics relating to Green Wave baseball.

2,352 1893 6,948

The number of baseballs the team will use this year in regular season games.

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infographic by tracey bellina

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20 Miles the Green Wave will travel to away games in the upcoming season.

The year that Tulane played its first baseball game.

The number of former Tulane players playing in the major and minor leagues.

Last year’s team ranked first in Conference USA in fewest strikeouts, batting average, slugging percentage, on-base percentage and doubles.

5,131

The highest attendance in the history of Greer Field at Turchin Stadium, set on April 5, 2011, at a game vs. Louisiana State University.

The number of seasons head coach Rick Jones has led the team.

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National ranking of average attendance at baseball games last year. Over 36 home games, Green Wave attendance averaged 2,699 fans per game.

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photo courtesy university archives

Who Dat ? Jazzin’ It Up

“Everything in retrospect looks clear and predestined, but it was not,” says bud brimberg (L ’75), the man behind the creation of the coveted New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival posters. (Brimberg is pictured here in the 1975 Jambalaya.)

While a student at Tulane, Brimberg had an assignment to create a pro forma business.

Instead, he created a real one.

It was ProCreations Publishing, the company through which he produced the first of many printed posters as a fundraising effort for the nonprofit New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation.

“I went to Quint Davis [UC ’70] who was running the Jazz

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Fest and told him that I wanted to do an art poster,” said Brimberg. “When I told him that I’d sell them and give him a percentage off the top … we had a deal.”

That first poster (inset) sold for $3.95 at the sixth annual festival in 1975. It features a grand marshal hoisting an umbrella. Today, the original posters sometimes carry a price tag of more than $4,000.

Nearly 38 years later, Brimberg is still the force behind the posters, maintaining control over the selection of the artists and poster designs. But what comes first? Is it the artist or the subject of the poster?

According to Brimberg, it goes both ways.

“If I know I’m going to portray Dr. John, there is no one who can do him better than (James) Michalopoulos,” says Brimberg. “On the other hand, the 2013 Congo Square poster was done by an artist [R. Gregory Christie] whose work I really liked. So we worked together to select a subject that suited his style.”

In 1998, Brimberg incorporated Art4Now.com, an online marketplace that features a variety of Jazz Festival collectibles. With a team of three fulltime employees at Art4Now in New Orleans, he manages the business from his home in New York, where he resides with his wife, Bridget O’Brian, and his two boys, Jake and Sam.

His latest venture, BayouWear, is a line of richly colored garments featuring iconic Louisiana images such as pelicans, red beans and alligators.

—Alicia Duplessis Jasmin

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silver salute The Public Law Center at Tulane celebrated its 25th

anniversary in November 2012. Over the years, more than 150 acts of the Louisiana legislature have had their start as student drafts hatched in the clinic’s curriculum. In addition, more than 1,000 legislative drafters from 95 jurisdictions across the globe have received training through the center.

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Codes of Bondage “slave insurrection 1811” by lorraine gendron

Global, Mobile Health Care In his new book on Louisiana slave law, Vernon Palmer calls Louisiana’s effort to incorporate slavery into the Civil Law a “strange science”: It produced the rigorous and elaborate set of rules regulating bondage but wove them into a code otherwise devoted to freedom. While Through the Codes Darkly is first and foremost a legal history and analysis of slave law in Louisiana, it also is to some extent a contemplation of the society that enacted those laws.

“This was the first effort and the last effort in modern history to integrate slavery into a European-style civil code,” says Palmer, the Thomas Pickles Professor of Law. “Bringing in Spanish and Roman law, it was a very deep science.”

In incorporating slave law into the 1808 Digest of Orleans, Louisiana developed—unlike the rest of the slaveholding states of the Deep South—a “coherent, consistent, almost learned jurisprudence on the subject of slavery,” says Palmer.

There’s no end to the irony, he adds.

“Here you have [the Digest of Orleans] developed from the French Civil Code of 1804. This was a code of enlightenment incorporating all the gains of the French Revolution: freedom of property, abolition of social distinctions, the breaking up of the power of the church and so forth. And then here comes a code with all those things in it, but only for white Louisianians. For the black slaves it was only a code of darkness, a code of bondage.”

As to why Louisiana wished to create this “exceptional” kind of civil code, Palmer speculates that “they were making a statement that ‘this is our way of life. This is something important to us. We’re not just regulating field labor; slavery is very deep in our culture.’”

Palmer also traces the unwritten laws of slavery—customs that gained legal enforceability and often led to contradictions. “For instance, it says inside the code that slaves could not own property,” notes Palmer. “As a matter of fact, because of a custom that allowed slaves to keep whatever they earned in their free time, they frequently amassed enough property to buy their own freedom.

“Customs of this kind show us why it is important to understand the law in action,” says Palmer, “not just the law on the books.”

—Nick Marinello

Uprising The brutality of Louisiana’s slave regime led to the insurrection of 1811, the largest slave revolt in U.S. history.

Some of the lessons Tulane University learned in launching mobile health units and neighborhood clinics after Hurricane Katrina are finding their way across the globe.

Leah Berger, executive director in the Office of Community Affairs and Health Policy, traveled to Dakar, Senegal, in November to give workshops about the roles universities can take in building healthcare models to reach those who don’t have access to traditional hospitals or clinics.

Berger spoke at ELES 4 Africa, a global conference dedicated to sharing new strategies and technologies for public health in Africa.

She shared the successes Tulane had in opening its first neighborhood clinic and subsequent outreach through mobile clinics in areas where health facilities closed after the storm.

The disaster underscored the importance of bringing care directly to those who needed it “rather than waiting for people to come into your doors,” she says.

In addition, social media, text messaging and other mobile technologies are increasingly important to engage patients. Berger was surprised to see how health organizations even in rural areas of West Africa are using these technologies for outreach.

“Not everyone has a computer there, but the cell phone infrastructure is pretty amazing. So people are using their cell phones and social media to get their information,” Berger says.

One example is a clinic that uses Facebook and text messaging to schedule and update appointment information for patients who travel long distances to see a doctor, Berger says.

—Keith Brannon

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hair brusing for bonding Social work professor Marva Lewis has teamed up with Tulane Medical Center on an intervention for hospitalized children and their parents. In the 10-minute intervention, parents softly brush their child’s hair, developing healthy emotional attachment and building confidence in their ability to care for their sick child.

courtesy trombone shorty

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N.O. Historical

Music Mentor Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews, who started playing music at age 4, is working with Tulane University to create a corps of musician-mentors who will guide the next generation of New Orleans musical artists.

An internationally recognized musician, Andrews credits mentors with encouraging his musical development.

The Trombone Shorty Foundation is partnering with the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane to launch the Trombone Shorty Academy, which will target underserved New Orleans high school students who are musically gifted.

“If we give other young musicians the opportunity, and they want it like Troy wanted it, we will have more successful young people,” says Jesse McBride, the Tulane instructor and popular jazz pianist picked to teach high school students starting this spring. Tulane students will mentor Trombone Shorty scholars as part of the university’s service learning program.

High school performers must audition to participate in the free after-school program at Tulane. Some students who join the academy may not aspire to attend college, but organizers hope bringing them on campus will change their minds. “They will see they can be part of the Tulane community,” McBride says.

The Trombone Shorty Academy’s purpose is to teach young musicians the rich musical traditions of the region. Starting with gospel, traditional jazz and early brass band music, students will study rhythm and blues, soul and “SupaFunkRock,” Trombone Shorty’s unique take on New Orleans music.

Andrews also foresees the academy as a place that empowers youth to choose music as a career. That means teaching music fundamentals and business acumen. Once students learn to write music, McBride says, they can learn to copyright a song.—Mary Sparacello

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Brass Tacks Troy Andrews, aka Trombone Shorty, dazzles his elders with his prowess on the trombone, circa 1991, when 5-year-old Andrews plays at a jazz funeral procession.

Since 2009, communication professor Vicki Mayer has been the driving force behind Media NOLA, an interactive online repository of art and cultural resources. Now she’s taking that information to the street with guided multimedia tours that can be accessed through a phone app called New Orleans Historical.

“It’s a different and more vibrant way to curate MediaNOLA content,” Mayer says. “You can be walking down a street and have New Orleans Historical open and the GPS locator will tell you what areas of historical note you are passing.”

The user will then have the option to access more MediaNOLA information in the form of archival images, written histories, podcasts and videos.

Mayer says the project is implementing materials already posted by more than 100 Tulane students across six departments and three schools. She anticipates collaborating with tourism agencies and neighborhood associations to make New Orleans Historical a tourism alternative.

Mayer says the app, a collaboration between the communication department at Tulane and the history department at the University of New Orleans, is the first digital humanities partnership between faculty at the two universities. There is potential for future projects.

“The more we collaborate between different universities, the stronger we’ll all be,” Mayer says. “All boats will rise.”

The app is currently available for iPhone and Android devices. For more information, go to www.neworleanshistorical.org.—Ryan Rivet

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owen murphy

Gallery Randolph Rogers

Atala and chactas In 1848, American sculptor Randolph Rogers (1825–1892) created a marble sculpture depicting Atala and Chactas, characters in François-René de Chateaubriand’s famous romance published in 1801. The piece was commissioned by R.W. Montgomery, a private collector and resident of New Orleans.

The subjects of the life-size group (titled Atala and Chactas) are Chactas, who is kneeling, and Atala, who is seated on his knee. Chactas has extracted a thorn from the sole of Atala’s foot. He holds the thorn between his fingers as small drops of blood ooze from Atala’s foot.

Despite the popularity of Rogers’ earlier sculptures— Ruth Gleaning and Nydia, the Blind Girl of Pompeii—which were reproduced dozens of

times, the marble Atala and Chactas appears to have been commissioned only once.

In 1889, Virginia C. Montgomery, wife of R.W. Montgomery, donated the sculpture to Tulane University, in her husband’s memory.

The sculpture’s importance was overlooked for decades.

But in 1976, Horst W. Janson, an art historian and visiting Mellon Professor in the Newcomb Art Department, noticed Atala and Chactas displayed outdoors in a courtyard surrounded by dormitories on the Tulane uptown campus. Janson alerted university officials to the weatherbeaten sculpture’s significance, and he recommended that it be moved indoors.

The 2,269-pound sculpture has since undergone professional cleaning and repair,

restoring the freshness and luminosity of the marble.

Atala and Chactas is currently housed in the university’s off-campus art storage and preservation facility.

‘Boy With Thorn’ The thorn extraction portrayed in Atala and Chactas is a slight deviation from the story told in Chateaubriand’s novel.

According to Tom Strider, registrar for university collections, the scene never actually happened in the book. “I’ve read the book, and the thorn pulling never happened,” says Strider. “Still, it isn’t difficult to find where Rogers likely got his inspiration.”

Strider surmises that Atala and Chactas harks back to Lo Spinario, an antique bronze statue showing a young boy

pulling a thorn from the sole of his own foot. Strider says Rogers would not have been the first to borrow from Lo Spinario.

Throughout the history of art, “there have been several variations of thorn pullers,” says Strider.

The 1817 painting Daphnis and Chloe, by French artist Louis Hersent, may be the first representation of lovers in such a situation. In the painting, a couple sits beside a creek as the male pulls a thorn from the woman’s foot. The figures in Daphnis and Chloe are likely of French descent— and those in Atala and Chactas are Native American. Both works of art show “nude lovers in close conjunction,” expressing “an act of tender romance and love,” wrote Janson.

—Alicia Duplessis Jasmin

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Interview Marcello Canuto, Archaeologist Marcello Canuto is director of Tulane’s Middle American Research Institute.

What drew you to archaeology?

My parents lived in Mexico before I was born, so as a child I had the opportunity to travel to Mexico often. While on vacation, we would often go to archaeological sites. At a very young age, I became fascinated by the massive pyramids and mysterious palaces that the ancient peoples of Mexico and Central America had built.

Why did you focus on the Maya?

The ancient Maya civilization not only built countless major royal cities during a period of over two millennia, but also was nearly unique in the development and use of a complete writing system. This allowed them to develop an advanced knowledge of astronomy, record their own history and discover and utilize the mathematical concept of “zero” long before Europeans.

What’s been the biggest find of your career?

Perhaps the most notable discovery of my career came just this past year during which my project found a hieroglyphically inscribed monument that mentioned the famous “end date” of the Maya calendar (Dec. 21, 2012). Up until that discovery, Maya archaeology had found only one other such reference in all the thousands of hieroglyphic texts that have been found over the past 200 years.

Are there still lost temples and treasures left to be found?

Archaeologists all over the world are only scratching the surface of what ancient civilizations have left behind for us to discover. Perhaps the gilded age of exploration is coming to a close, but there are plenty of regions, cities and buildings that still guard the efforts and secrets of the ancients.—ryan rivet

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Is that something you realize immediately, or does it take some deciphering before you know what you’ve got?

When you uncover something extraordinary, you are immediately aware of its importance. It is part of your job as an archaeologist to know that you are in the process of excavating something of great importance. However, as you are excavating it, you might not fully appreciate its meaning, size or richness.

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devlin fieldhouse In November, Tulane opened its restored basketball

and volleyball facility. Named in honor of longtime supporters Bob and Kate Devlin, the historic fieldhouse originally opened in 1933.

S P O R T S

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Perfect Season Expectations are high for the 2013 Green Wave baseball team. The team returned to the field in February with five of its top seven hitters from last season and all of its starting pitchers from last season.

Tulane ranked first among its Conference USA counterparts last season in five offensive categories: fewest strikeouts, batting average, slugging percentage, on-base percentage and doubles.

Head coach Rick Jones returns for his 20th season of Green Wave baseball, looking to add to his career victories after chalking up career win No. 1,050 during last year’s campaign.

In addition to Chad Sutter and Jake Gautreau—former players who are now assistant coaches—another familiar face will be pacing the dugout this season. Former Green Wave star pitcher Shooter Hunt is returning as an assistant coach.

With 20 lettermen returning, the Tulane baseball squad figures to find success in 2013, but as usual the Green Wave will have to defend its own diamond. They’ll have ample opportunity with 33 games slated at Greer Field at Turchin Stadium.—Curtis Akey

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Diamond Dreams

Perfection is hard to obtain in any realm of life and especially in the sporting world. In rare instances, teams and individuals achieve perfection and the moments are celebrated and written into sports lore.

This past football season, Tulane junior kicker Cairo Santos inscribed his name into both the college football and Green Wave record books with a perfect season.

Santos hails from Sao Paulo, Brazil. He prepped as an exchange student at St. Joseph’s Academy in St. Augustine, Fla. And he just completed one of the best seasons by a kicker in NCAA history by hitting all 21 of his field goal attempts. He joined Marc Primanti from North Carolina State as the only kickers in Football Bowl Subdivision history to stay perfect throughout a season in which they attempted 20 or more field goals, but Santos finished with one more make than Primanti, who was 20-of-20 in 1996.

Santos’ effort tied the NCAA record for best field goal percentage (1.000), and he led the nation with 12 field goals of 40-plus yards, including a pair of 50-yarders, and set the school record with a 57-yarder vs. Rice, which tied for the fourth longest in the nation in 2012.

For his efforts, Santos was showered with honors and awards that have already made him one of the most decorated Tulane football players in the last half-century. Santos claimed the prestigious 2012 Lou Groza Award, which is presented annually to the nation’s top kicker, was tabbed a consensus first-team All-American and was named the College Football Performance Award National Kicker of the Year.

Santos is the second Tulane player to win the Groza Award, joining Seth Marler who received the award in 2001, but is just the fifth Tulane football player to receive consensus All-America status and the first since former tackle Ernie Blandin in 1941.—Roger Dunaway

Never Missed Cairo Santos, No. 19, kicked a 57-yard field goal in the Green Wave football game vs. Rice on Nov. 3, 2012. Ryan Rome, No. 30, was the holder. Santos made all 21 of his field goal attempts in the 2012 season.

Slugger Senior infielder Brennan Middleton was named to the College Sports Madness Preseason All-Conference USA First Team in January.

He had a .357 batting average last season.

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Ecology in

Action

In the rain forests of Ecuador, locals are l e a r n i n g h o w t o a c h i e v e l a s t i n g c o n s e rvat i o n of their precious nat ural re s ource s.

by Chris Kraul

It’s five in the morning in Ecuador’s coastal rain forest, and the trek led by biologist Jordan Karubian through mist and mud to catch a glimpse of the rare long-wattled umbrellabird has paid off.

As dawn breaks, the group hears the bird’s telltale mating sounds: First, a low metallic hum resembling a tuning fork, then a furious rata-tat flapping of wings like a snare drum followed by a low rumpph that is similar to the sound of a basso toad.

Moments later, Karubian points out the magnificent bird hopping from one overhead branch to another, swinging its wattle, a long beardlike feathered appendage, and flaring its crown.

“It’s not just a visual treat, it’s ecology in action to be able to see this species up close,” says Karubian, an assistant professor in Tulane’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Nearby is Luke Browne, a second-year doctoral student in evolutionary biology. Watching the bird’s displays through binoculars, he gushes: “This is wild, outrageous.”

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Palms Up Opposite page: In an Ecuadorean rain forest, Jordan Karubian and local youth examine a sample of fruit from the chapil palm tree.

This page: A longwattled umbrellabird

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Boots & Binoculars Karubian ventures into a riverbed as he examines the canopy of the forest.

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So it’s been a radical change,” Cabrera says.

With Karubian’s encouragement, Cabrera is about to finish studies for his high school diploma and plans to start work on an online university degree this year.

Observing former subsistence farmer Cabrera transform himself into a highly competent field researcher is tremendously gratifying, says Karubian.

The fourth-graders finish their two-hour tour, still energetic after the arduous hike. Karubian says their enthusiasm for learning about conservation is typical of local youths and is a good sign that his programs are working. Another crucial test will come tomorrow, when the foundation holds its first annual environmental fair in the village of La Y de la Laguna, located about eight miles from the research station.

Games, music, talks and even a clown performance are scheduled, all to promote the themes of recycling and conservation.

But how many people will show up? Karubian wonders.

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The umbrellabird’s role in the rain forest goes beyond ornamental. He eats the fruit of the chapil palm tree, a key variety that sustains several bird and mammal species. The umbrellabird then disperses the seeds throughout the forest via defecation or by spitting them out, ensuring the tree’s regeneration and that of the animals that depend on it. Without the bird’s good offices, the palm might otherwise die out because seeds dropping within the penumbra of the mother tree have almost no chance of reaching maturity.

“It’s a flagship species,” Karubian says. “As it goes for the umbrellabird, so it goes for the forest. It’s a crucial player in the rain forest’s ecological web.”

The bird has become the symbol of Karubian’s award-winning ecology research and community-outreach project situated in northwest Ecuador’s Mache-Chindul Ecological Reserve. In simple terms, his aim is to document the interdependence of plant and animal species in the 8,750-acre Bilsa Research Station while educating not just his students but the local communities of the Quininde township on the importance of conservation so that those linkages remain intact.

Karubian’s approach to conservation has attracted widespread attention. Last year, he won the prestigious Ernest A. Lynton Award, given annually by the New England Resource Center for Higher Education to a young academic who connects his or her teaching and research to community engagement.

The Los Angeles native’s project has received funding support from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund, National Geographic Society, the National Science Foundation, the Chicago Zoological Society and other institutions.

With an annual budget of about $60,000, Karubian’s Tropical Andes Conservation Foundation catalogues plant and animal species and their symbiosis, and funds a community outreach component that instructs high school and elementary teachers in ecology so they can pass that knowledge along to their young charges. Moreover, his three full-time local “environmental ambassadors” have taught 1,000 students the basics of conservation and rain forest ecology in the classroom or on guided tours of the reserve.

“What motivates me personally is the conservation of biodiversity, slowing or even reversing the rate of species loss. And this is a great place to test theories and learn about the processes that generate diversity,” says Karubian, noting that the reserve is home to 360 bird species and 18 varieties of palm.

Because of generally lax enforcement of environmental laws in Ecuador, it’s critical to work hand in hand with residents to achieve goals. “It’s the locals who de facto will determine how things turn out,” Karubian says.

Local youth are the focus of the project’s outreach program. Later the morning of the umbrellabird sighting, Karubian accompanies staff ambassador Domingo Cabrera as he leads 12 fourth-grade school children on a half-mile hike through the reserve, pointing out various plant, insect, bird and frog species, emphasizing each one’s unique role in rain forest ecology. The kids learn about rainfall levels and where seeds floating in the Rompefrente River have come from. They are told about bejuco, the strange vinelike plant that grows upward as much as 80 feet until reaching a tree branch from which to hang.

At one point the students are asked to close their eyes, be silent for a minute and count the different bird calls they hear. “Cinco!,” answers 10-year-old Jaime Garces.

A nine-year employee of Karubian’s foundation, Cabrera, 46, has helped make the environment part of local classroom curriculum by training 15 teachers in rain forest ecology. As with the two other ambassadors, he follows up with classroom visits in addition to leading rain forest tours.

“Before I joined the foundation I was a hunter in the forest, so I know it pretty well. I used to kill things to survive, to put food on the table for my family. Now I’m trying to help conserve them.

Somewhere in the Branches Above Domingo Cabrera leads a tour through the Mache-Chindul Ecological Reserve.

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“If we’re going to achieve lasting conservation, we’re going to have to work hard with the local residents.”

—Jordan Karubian

Lasting conservation Karubian launched his foundation 10 years ago in an area of Ecuador that was in dire need of a conservation initiative.

Due to its geographical insulation, the Choco rain forest, which extends from coastal northwest Ecuador all the way up the Pacific coast of Colombia to the Isthmus of Panama, has been a place where species have traditionally flourished. The Andes to the east, the Peruvian coastal desert to the south and the Pacific to the west served as natural barriers to intrusion by other plant and animal species, resulting in a high rate of species that appear here and nowhere else.

But over the last century, much of the Ecuadorean portion of the Choco in coastal Esmeraldas province has been ravaged by loggers, cattlemen and encroaching population. In more recent times, drug traffickers have cleared scores of acres of jungle to grow coca plants, the base material for cocaine (although on nowhere near the scale of illicit cultivation in neighboring Colombia). Incalculable numbers of plant and animal species have been lost, Karubian says.

During the past two decades, much of the deforested jungle in the Mache Chindul Ecological Reserve has begun to grow back, thanks in part to the Jatun Sacha Foundation then led by U.S. environmentalist Mike McColm, who created Bilsa Biological Station for researchers within the reserve in the early 1990s.

Karubian says only community involvement and education can stem the further loss of species. The greater the appreciation of the rain forest by local children and the better the understanding by their parents of how preserving the rain forest is integrally linked to maintaining their water supply and clean air as well as stemming climate change, the better the chance that conservation will succeed.

“Our only hope is to raise community awareness of the consequences of land management practices, for better or for worse,” Karubian says as he discusses his 2013 outreach goals. “If we’re going to achieve lasting conservation, we have to work hard with local residents.”

Karubian’s scientific research hardly takes a backseat in the foundation’s outreach activities. After identifying every palm tree in a 500-acre section of the Bilsa station’s forest, Karubian and his students now collect an average 1,000 palm seeds a year to pinpoint from which tree they originated and how they were dispersed. By matching tree and seed genetic codes with the aid of an automated DNA sequencer, Karubian is showing how preserving the habitat of the umbrellabird promotes the continued survival of the chapil palm.

In addition to the umbrellabird, Karubian and his students have done original research on other bird species, some of which are at risk of “dropping out” of the Choco, including the Banded Ground Cuckoo, the Brown Wood Rail and the Purple-throated Fruitcrow. Much of that research has been done by his Ecuadorean staff, including Cabrera and his ambassador colleague Jorge Olivo, both of whom Karubian trained to collect data and develop their own analyses. Both attended the Neotropical Ornithology Congress in Cusco, Peru, last year to present scientific findings.

“The important difference is, we’re not just coming here to their forest to extract knowledge but to involve the local community in the scientific process,” said doctoral student Luke Browne.

Cradles, lampshades and flowerpots Any doubts Karubian had that the foundation’s environment fair would go over well soon dissipate as he approaches the community center in La Y de la Laguna. Attendance at the Dec. 14 event is an important indicator of local support for and awareness of his project, and it is much better than he expected. Scores of enthusiastic schoolchildren are waiting to enter. Buses clog the public square. Inside, 20 booths manned by local residents and displaying ingeniously crafted recycled goods and artisanal food items attract long lines. All told, an estimated 600 people have showed up.

The fair is organized by Monica Gonzalez, the other member of

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Karubian’s ambassador troika and the person most responsible for making the foundation’s ecology case with local school and government officials of Quininde township. She recruited a corps of student clowns from Quito to do a skit about the importance of proper disposal of electric batteries that have schoolchildren screaming with delight. On a makeshift stage, musical groups sing a locally composed hymn to, you guessed it, the umbrellabird that quickly becomes a sing-along.

Recycled items displayed at the booths include a cradle made from a used tire, lampshades from plastic water bottles and recycled DVDs, flowerpots in the shapes of swans made from newspaper and hats crafted from bejuca fibers.

“I saw a lot of beautiful stuff at the booths, including plastic water bottles converted into decorations,” says Karubian when it’s his turn to address the crowd. “But I must ask all of you who were around 15 years ago to stop and remind yourselves that back then no one got water out of bottles. You got it from streams that have now disappeared or been polluted because of logging and clearing for cattle pastures. We need to find ways to stop that from happening.”

Taking it all in is a surprise guest, Wagner Olarte, provincial director of education for Quinende township.

“This is very impressive,” says Olarte. “The fair and the foundation are significant supports for the education of our children, especially in areas of conservation and recycling. It’s a good strategy and it’s really caught my attention. I would like to adopt his teacher-training methods as permanent policy.”

Afterwards, Karubian says the success of the fair has persuaded him that he can replicate the Ecuador project in other countries. First he may launch a similar project in the rain forest of Papua New Guinea.

He’ll also go to Brazil this year to look into the feasibility of one in that country’s northeastern Atlantic coastal forest.

It’s a kind of template that Karubian says will work in any area where humans are interacting with nature in a way that is unsustainable.

“We’re ready for the next step,” he says.

A former foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, Chris Kraul is a freelance writer based in Bogota, Colombia.

Art of Recycling

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A woman displays a Christmas hat made from salvaged paper and an infant sleeps in a cradle fashioned from an old tire. Approxmiately 600 people attended an environmental fair hosted by Karubian’s group this December.

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Charting a New Course a sense of urgency and spirit of optimism f uel the p ost-katrina reinvention of public schools in new orleans.

by Mary Ann Travis It’s dismissal time at Akili Academy on Pratt Drive. The elementary school “scholars” excitedly line up to board buses. Dressed in gray polo shirts, navy blue skirts, shorts, pants and sweaters, they happily chatter with their teachers and each other.

The exuberance of the students is almost matched by the high energy of their young teachers.

Seven years ago, Hurricane Katrina damaged 90 percent of public schools in New Orleans. All Orleans Parish teachers were fired. And the state-run Recovery School District took over management of all the low-performing public schools in New Orleans. Since those cataclysmic events, the city’s schools have been transformed.

Akili is among the 80 percent of public schools in New Orleans operating under 43 different charter management organizations. Charter schools are funded with public money and held strictly accountable to Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education standards.

Housed in modular buildings, Akili opened in August 2008. It is a Recovery School District charter school. (A small number of public charter schools in New Orleans are under the Orleans Parish School Board; plus a handful are directly managed by OPSB in the traditional way.)

According to federal guidelines, 95 percent of Akili students are eligible for free or reduced-cost lunches. Last year its third graders scored the highest among all RSD schools on the iLeap test, a high-stakes, state-mandated standardized test. Taken together, these two facts signify tremendous achievement coupled with lots of hard work, say Akili teachers and administrators.

But the effort was not all a grind.

Christine Fulton, a 2008 Tulane graduate in her second year teaching at Akili, says that the job of the teachers at the school is welldefined: It is “growing joyful learners.”

Fulton has taught for five years in New Orleans public schools, which practically makes her a senior member of the teaching ranks. (Her first

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three years were spent at a charter school that is now closed after having its charter revoked.) Fulton majored in early childhood education at Tulane and earned a teaching certificate through the university’s Teacher Preparation and Certification Program.

The culture of Akili is that “academics are first. Academics are why we’re here—and that learning is fun,” says Fulton.

“My kids are joyful. And it’s not just them, it’s across the school, which makes my job better,” she says.

A REBIRTH Gabie Frey and Mia Backon both graduated from Tulane in 2011 and are both in their second year as Teach for America corps members.

Teach for America is an organization that recruits recent college graduates to teach for two years in low-income communities.

Frey is a kindergarten interventionist at Akili, and Backon teaches a combined kindergarten, first and second grade class at Harriet Tubman Charter School on the West Bank of New Orleans.

Frey says that she made the Teach for America commitment because she “wanted to give back to New Orleans.” She loves kids. “I’m always so happy around them,” she says. “I come home every day with a smile on my face.”

The academic progress of students at Akili and Tubman—both managed by the Crescent City Schools charter organization—is well monitored with frequent testing and measurement. Closely tracking students’ progress “helps them succeed and helps us narrow down how to help them,” says Frey.

The Reformers The students “love coming to school,” says and Researcher Frey. “They laugh; they smile; they’re easy.

Neerav Kingsland (TC And making them feel better when they’re sad ’02), John Ayers is also a great feeling.” and Douglas Harris

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“People told me that we have to set the reset button. And we have.”

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—John Ayers, Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives

The Administrator and Teacher Blake DiMarco (B ’04) and Christine Fulton (’08)

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The rewards of teaching are evident. “Helping them learn, like seeing my scholar not being able to write anything and then writing her name, is a huge deal,” says Frey.

Backon says her students “are so happy to be at school.” They are proud of their accomplishments. “They want to make us happy, too.

They are 5, 6 and 7 years old, they just want to make everyone around them happy.”

But there is “urgency” to what she and others are doing in post-Katrina schools in New Orleans, says Backon. “You can’t really waste time. It’s got to happen now.”

In addition to educators in classrooms, the new charter schools need people on the business side of things. Administering a charter school is like running a small business.

Blake DiMarco, a 2004 Tulane Freeman Business School graduate, left a job with Goldman Sachs in New York to become the director of finance and operations at Akili in 2010.

“I wasn’t passionate about corporate finance,” says DiMarco. “I wanted to move back to New Orleans. I want to help.”

Now she keeps the buses running on time, lunches served, supplies provided, accounting in order and budgets balanced. She even taught a reading class during her first year at Akili.

When she was a student at Tulane, before Katrina, DiMarco tutored in a since-“flattened” school. She recalls how “tremendously different and disadvantaged—bleak, really” public schools in New Orleans were then.

“It’s like a rebirth, what’s happening in the city with the schools,” says DiMarco.

By fall 2013, Akili Academy will move into the completely renovated, historic William Frantz School in the Ninth Ward. Sixyear-old Ruby Bridges famously integrated Frantz in 1960.

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MORE STABILITY John Ayers is in agreement with Brown. He says that urban schools have failed children for decades because they have stayed geared to an industrial economy. Schools need “to step up to the information economy.”

Ayers is executive director of the Scott S. Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives. A veteran education reformer with 20 years experience as a “charter school” guy in Chicago, he worked on landmark urban school reform legislation in Illinois. He even founded charter schools in cooperation with teacher unions. “I was intrigued with the idea of creating focused, powerful schools,” he says.

Before he came to the Tulane-affiliated Cowen Institute this past fall, Ayers was vice president for a research organization, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, in California.

The charter activists in New Orleans should be praised for trying to “bring a very dysfunctional system—think back to the pre-Katrina OPSB [Orleans Parish School Board]—into the 21st century,” says Ayers.

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HOME IS HOME Jerry Brown is the father of Jada Brown, a third-grader at Akili. Brown and his family, including his wife, Jontell, and son Damien, a seventh-grader at McMain Secondary School, moved back to New Orleans after being displaced by Hurricane Katrina for six years (five years in Birmingham, Ala., and then a year in Slidell, La.).

He came back, he says, because “I felt like it was almost a moral duty.”

He grew up in the Gentilly neighborhood where Akili’s temporary trailers sit. All the public schools he attended—McDonogh 39, P.A. Capdau and John F. Kennedy Senior High School—are destroyed. He graduated from Kennedy in 1997 and joined the army.

And now he’s back in New Orleans. “Home is home,” he says. “It becomes normal to you. No matter how fun or bad, it’s still normal to you.”

Like most natives and nonnatives who ever lived in New Orleans, he loves the city. “I think it has huge potential,” he says.

Akili Academy is a “pretty decent school,” in Brown’s estimation, but his daughter “feels like she needs to be pushed,” and he agrees with her.

He says, “Children are limited in their ability to learn based on the task that you put at hand.” He’s concerned that with the increased emphasis on standardized tests, the bar will be set too low for students.

He’d like to see more data on what really works in education. “Look at what we need to do and implement these things,” he says.

Brown says of young children today, “Their brains are in the digital age, and we’re still teaching in an analog manner.”

Teach for America Corps Mia Backon (’11) and Gabie Frey (’11)

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However, whatever the teaching methodologies and disciplinary strategies used in the new schools, “I think that we have to recognize that parents are the first teachers,” says Ayers. “Overall, in 95 percent of the cases, parents are an asset for kids.” And communities are, too.

With all the public schools in New Orleans having citywide access, the connection to neighborhoods is sometimes missing.

Ayers says that over time the charter schools in New Orleans may want to reconnect to neighborhood structures.

The complete revamping of New Orleans public schools since Katrina is “incredible,” says Ayers. The New Orleans public school system is “off the bottom—and it was the bottom.”

Katrina provided an historic opportunity to try something new.

“People told me that as they drove back into the city, they said, ‘we’ve got to redo this. We have to set the reset button.’ And we have.”

But the storm is over. “We’ve been managing the schools in a kind of emergency mode,” says Ayers. It’s time to regularize, systematize. “I think parents are looking for a bit more stability. And we have to remember that they are the clients. They are the customers here.”

The new charters in New Orleans are “high energy,” says Ayers.

“They’re often focused on discipline. I think there’s a general belief that given the difficulties that many of the kids coming to school face, they need that. And that makes for an orderly environment and seriousness of response from the families and the kids.”

The new schools are providing opportunities for the students and their families. But, “they’re not perfect,” says Ayers. “They’re new schools, so they’re having their bumps and problems. We shouldn’t oversell them as the perfect solution.”

The Cowen Institute, established in 2007, has exhaustively gathered information about New Orleans public schools. It has produced reports on test scores, school performance scores, school facilities, finances, teachers’ years of experience, salaries, school choice, and free-andreduced-lunch status of students (the commonly used indicator of poverty). It has polled parents, teachers, administrators and legislators.

Now, under Ayers’ leadership, it’s moving into a new phase. It’s going deeper into research.

Just as parent Jerry Brown suggests, more data and more research are needed. “We’re going to figure out what works here, what’s working in other places—and try to inform the policy space,” says Ayers.

A SNAPSHOT Key to the deep research on which the Cowen Institute is embarking will be the work of Douglas Harris. Harris, an associate professor of economics, holds the first endowed chair in public education at Tulane. He came to the university this fall with a background in research on educational accountability systems that improve teaching and learning. He’s the author of Value-Added Measures in Education: What Every Educator Needs to Know (Harvard Education Press, 2011).

He plans to study the public schools in New Orleans before Katrina —“to get a snapshot of where we were”—and then to figure out if things are actually better.

“There’s anecdotal evidence that things have gotten better. And that’s probably true,” says Harris. “But it would be nice to show that and to understand that in more depth.”

No other city in the United States has gone as far as New Orleans has toward decentralized school management and parental choice in schools. But New Orleans is still not performing very well compared to other cities. Before the storm, 64 percent of schools were low-performing, and now 32 percent of schools get an “F” in the state grading system.

The bottom line for Harris is, what’s happening in the schools? What are the results in terms of performance indicators such as high school dropout rates and college attendance?

“My goal,” says Harris, “is to understand how well the system is working and how it could be made to work better.”

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RISK TAKER Neerav Kingsland is CEO of New Schools for New Orleans, one of the seven or so school reform nonprofit organizations that Tulane has provided rent-free office space since Katrina. Kingsland is a 2002 Tulane College graduate and a Yale Law School graduate. He’s staked his career on the school reform movement.

New Schools for New Orleans is a “philanthropic intermediary.” It raises money from local and national foundations and obtains government grants to help fund startup charter schools and “scale” the successful ones so that they can serve more students.

“Our job is supporting the acceleration of student achievement,” says Kingsland. “You have great educators who are running charter schools in the city, and we view our job as how can we set up the conditions where they can thrive. And for the people who are doing the best work, how can we invest in them to increase their ability to serve more students.”

Among the major grants that New Schools for New Orleans is managing is a multimillion-dollar Investing in Innovation federal grant to turn around the lowest performing 25 percent of New Orleans schools.

“One of the things we’re excited about,” says Kingsland, “is we’re trying to break the myth that a charter school won’t serve kids who are hardest to reach.”

Such undertakings are not without risk, says Kingsland. “I think for us to make great gains in public education, we have to be more comfortable with the idea of failure.”

Like parent Jerry Brown, Kingsland says that if the bar is set for 100 percent success, it’s probably set too low. “You’re probably not taking enough risks or really putting yourself out there.”

Without educators willing to take risks, “we’re not going to have the wins and the successes,” says Kingsland.

Public education systems, in general, have been stagnant and bureaucratic, leaving little room for taking smart risks. But Katrina was an “opportunity creator,” says Kingsland.

Kingsland’s view of public education in New Orleans was shaped by his experience when he was a Tulane student in a service learning course. He tutored at Woodson Middle School, a school closed after Katrina and since reopened.

At Woodson, it was “rough” and “tough” for the children. “Kids were not being served. That experience pushed me toward the path of caring and a passion for public education,” says Kingsland.

At this point, Kingsland says, “I feel incredibly lucky to be in New Orleans doing this work. I think it’s the most exciting place in the country to be working in education.”

Not all has been proven that needs to be proven. “But if we get New Orleans right, I think we have a chance to change the way the country views serving its most at-risk children.”

New Orleans could be a model school system, says Kingsland. “To go from a city that had been known for its dysfunction in public education to perhaps being a national leader is wonderful and huge for the city.”

It’s a generational opportunity—rebuilding a city and reinventing a public education system. “We joke,” says Kingsland, “that this is the Silicon Valley of education reform. Whatever it was like for Bill Gates and Steve Jobs in the ’70s to be building that ecosystem is what it feels like to be an educator here now.”

The Family Parents Jontell CyresBrown and Jerry Brown with Jada and Damien

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The

Skinny on Long

By Ryan Rivet

Tulane alum Jack McGuire has uncovered and donated to Tulane a trove of information about Louisiana’s most notable and perhaps least documented politician.

In Louisiana politics, the line between famous and infamous tends to blur. When talking state politics, chances are the conversation will include a man who was a bit of both: the Kingfish, Huey P. Long, a near mythological figure who rode a wave of populism to the governor’s mansion and later to Washington, D.C., as a U.S. senator. Yet despite his indisputable place in Louisiana history, there are precious few original documents that have come from Long’s desk.

So starved are historians for original Huey Long documents, even the most mundane are coveted. Emory University boasts of having a series of letters in which Long went back and forth with an editor at the Atlanta Constitution about the proper way to use cornbread to eat “pot likker,” the juice from stewed greens.

(Huey liked to dip, the editor favored crumbling the corn pone, if you’re wondering.)

To connoisseurs of Louisiana politics, Huey Long documents are the Holy Grail, highly sought after even while rumored to be myth. For the first time in 40 years, however, a substantial cache of papers has come to light, unearthed by collector Jack McGuire (A&S ’64), and now donated to the Louisiana Research Collection at Tulane.

Museum Quality For McGuire, a love of all things associated In his home office, Jack with Louisiana politics is a birthright passed from McGuire is surrounded

by Louisiana's history. father to son.

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“I grew up around the New Orleans city government,” says McGuire, whose father was head of public relations for the city of New Orleans under deLesseps S. Morrison. “I can remember at 6 years old being at the ‘Jones for Governor’ headquarters when Earl Long defeated him [Sam Jones] two to one.”

McGuire followed in his father’s footsteps, serving in the 1960s as head of PR under New Orleans Mayor Victor Schiro, and later taking his love of politics to the Mandeville city council for four terms.

‘Anything you can wink’ The McGuire family connection to Huey Long began some eight years before Jack was even born, when his father stood up to Long and found out firsthand how dissenters were dealt with in Long’s Louisiana.

It was 1934, and a group of journalism students at Louisiana State University, tired of Huey Long’s interference with affairs on campus and with the school’s football team, decided to publish a letter criticizing the then-senator in the school newspaper, The Reveille. Long got wind of the letter before the issue went to press and demanded an apology. Seven of the students refused to apologize. David R. McGuire was one of the group that became known as the “Reveille Seven” who were promptly expelled and refused admittance into any other school in the state. The message was clear, mess with Huey Long and life would be rough in Louisiana.

For obvious reasons, David McGuire was firmly planted in the anti-Long camp. That didn’t stop Jack from cultivating a fascination for the Long political machine. In fact, he says that was the impetus for him to scour the state for flyers, circulars, mailers—anything that could be traced back to Huey or Earl Long. Any time he travels around the state, McGuire stops in antique shops and inquires about political memorabilia, always hoping that a honey hole of Huey Long documents will be found, always disappointed.

Namesake The lack of substantial materials from An architectural renderLong’s political life can be attributed to what ing of a bridge to cross the Mississippi River. made Huey infamous rather than famous.

“I’ve always felt very strongly that a lot Note how Long names the structure with an an- of Huey Long’s associates just destroyed the notation at the bottom. papers—letters, correspondence and other

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items—as a way to protect themselves,” says McGuire.

The dearth of material can also be attributed to the fact that Huey simply didn’t put a lot down on paper, a trait shared by his younger brother, three-term Louisiana Gov. Earl Long.

“Earl Long used to say ‘don’t write anything you can talk, don’t talk anything you can nod, don’t nod anything you can wink,’” McGuire says.

Stories and anecdotes are McGuire’s stock-in-trade, which is not to say that he doesn’t have a firm grip on hard data such as dates and places. His grasp of the minutia of the state’s political landscape is encyclopedic. But if his knowledge is the meat, his personal connections to the people provide the spice.

An air of familiarity with the titans of Louisiana politics permeates the conversation when McGuire really gets going. Former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards is simply “Edwin,” and when he’s deep into an anecdote about Earl Long’s campaign for Congress, he refers to Long as “Mr. Earl” in the same manner that those close to him would have more than half a century ago.

More than dribs and drabs It’s his close proximity to the politicians and other political junkies that allowed McGuire to acquire the collection. He keeps the particulars about where the collection came from close to the vest, preferring to say that he’s acquired it from “several sources” over a couple of years.

He says that people will often get in touch with him when they have something to sell, because he’s so well known in both political circles and the collector community.

“Over the past several years, I’d acquired dribs and drabs,” McGuire says. “Then a much more substantial amount in this most recent collection that I have given to Tulane.”

“Substantial” in terms of Huey Long documents is a relative term.

When viewed in boxes on a library cart, the physical size is underwhelming—maybe three linear feet. Upon further inspection about what’s in the boxes, however, their importance is revealed.

“These documents have been rumored about for generations,” says Leon Miller, head of the Louisiana Research Collection. “They’ve been whispered about for 50, 60, 70 years. And now they suddenly turn up as not just being rumors, but being real and we have them.

It’s a big deal.”

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Parting Shot Right: This (signed) photo, made in Oklahoma City, is the last image taken of Long in public; he was assassinated nine days later.

Top: in a telegram sent to President Roosevelt, Long seeks to influence Cabinet selections.

McGuire agrees that this discovery is a big deal. When asked about what’s in the collection, his eyes light up.

The only thing McGuire likes better than collecting political memorabilia is talking about what he’s got in what he calls a “priceless collection.”

Among the collection are signed agreements that show the extent of Long’s political maneuvering. While running for the Senate, Long made a deal with the Old Regulars, a conservative political organization in New Orleans, promising then-Mayor T. Semmes Walmsley (also chief of the Old Regulars) a bridge over the Mississippi River in return for the political organization’s support. There have been rumors about the document, and Long’s original signed copy is among McGuire’s collection.

There is also an accord that ended Long’s ongoing feud with Standard Oil over tax revenues, signed while Long was in the Senate. Long had no executive authority over Louisiana and the state’s taxation, yet he signed the agreement on behalf of the Louisiana Democratic Association, his political machine. McGuire says items like this show how extensive Long’s power really was.

The collection includes speeches with Long’s corrections in the margins and even handwritten notes for the original “Share Our Wealth Plan,” which made Long a hero to some, yet prompted others to call him one of the most dangerous politicians in the nation.

There are items that turn 70 years of history on its head. One example is a drawing of the Huey P. Long Bridge that spans the Mississippi River in Jefferson Parish. It was generally accepted that the bridge was named for Long posthumously. McGuire disagrees, and he says he’s got the proof.

“So you have the bridge. Most people, including the State Highway Commission, think that it was only after he died on Sept. 10, 1935, that the state decided to name it for him. However when Long sent the drawing back to the engineers, he wrote in, ‘will set as the Huey P. Long Bridge over the river at New Orleans.’ This is Huey making sure that the bridge would be named for him.”

Another item McGuire is particularly excited about is a screenplay for a film called The Kingfish, written in the first person, that McGuire believes is Long’s own draft dictated to his secretary.

“There are letters going back and forth with producers and two drafts of the script,” McGuire says.

“Knowing him, he decided that he wanted his story to be told in his way.”

As McGuire talks about the collection, his excitement is obvious. If he collected baseball cards, this find would be Honus Wagner. If he collected comic books, this would be Action Comics No. 1. Knowing this, one wonders why someone who found the Holy Grail would turn around and give it away?

“A lot of collectors collect stuff for their own ego,” Miller says. “They collect stuff and they keep it and put it in filing cabinets and every once in a while they go and look through it. Jack is a donor who wants this kind of stuff to be preserved and used.”

“I want it to be available to the public,” McGuire says. “What good would hoarding it do history or understanding events of that period? What good would hoarding it do for knowing what these people were really like?”

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FUN AT MARDI GRAS Kim Marie Vaz (NC ’81, G ’83) tells the story of the first masking, streetwalking groups of women at Carnival in The “Baby Dolls”: Breaking the Race and Gender Barriers of the New Orleans Mardi Gras Tradition (LSU Press, 2013).

These African American women wore short, satiny skirts and babyish bonnets and had fun while parading through neighborhoods. The practice continues today.

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Golden Rule David J. Goodman (B ’86), who lives and works as a certified public accountant in New Jersey, has brought 12 groups of volunteers to New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina. He and two friends have organized more than 300 volunteers to help the Crescent City’s renewal.

Goodman, who is president of the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey, cites the Jewish concept of tikkun olam—repairing and healing the world—as a personal tenet driving his volunteerism. The idea of volunteering in New Orleans came naturally to him after he saw the devastation of Hurricane Katrina on television.

“My heart just broke,” he says. “Being somebody who had lived in New Orleans, I felt the people there deserved a lot better than what was happening to them. I felt I needed to go back and rebuild it. I got a lot out of going to school and being in New Orleans, and I felt other people should have that experience.”

Now in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, his home state needs help, too.

“What we’re doing down in New Orleans in no way diminishes what we are doing up here in New Jersey,” says Goodman, whose latest trip to New Orleans with volunteers to help in rebuilding was in January.

With temperatures at 20 degrees in New Jersey this winter, Goodman said, “A spring rebuilding effort would be best.”

He is working with the Tulane Center for Public Service to offer an alternative spring break in New Jersey, where his Klean Up Krewe will work alongside students as they assist in the recovery effort.

Goodman and his group also worked with Hands On in Biloxi, Miss., to clean up a community park. Goodman led the effort at his local Jewish federation to raise $50,000 to help rebuild a synagogue in Biloxi.

—Fran Simon

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Renewing NOLA David Goodman shows off his painting skills in January. He made his 12th trip in seven years from his home in New Jersery to New Orleans to help build houses.

Now he’s recruiting volunteers to rebuild in his home state.

roman holiday Italy is one of the many destinations offered through Tulane University Alumni Travel.

Mary Lynn Hyde (UC ’66) signed up for a trip to Tuscany through Tulane University Alumni Travel many years ago, and since then she has become hooked on travel. The resident of La Jolla, Calif., has been on 17 trips through the alumni travel program.

Tulane Travel is for people who believe in lifelong learning.

“All of our alumni travel programs have an educational component, and they’re designed for university alumni groups,” says Will Burdette, director of marketing and communications in the Office of Alumni Relations.

“I love to learn as I travel,” says Hyde, who is past president of the Tulane University Alumni Club—San Diego and on the board of the Tulane University Alumni Association. “These educational travel programs give me an opportunity to see, to do and to know.”

Tulane alumni and their friends are making all kinds of connections on trips through Tulane University Alumni Travel.

“I’ve recruited 10 to 12 other travelers, easily,” Hyde says. “Beginning with my first trip, I’ve met several travelers that I’ve stayed in touch with, and we plan yearly trips together.”

By booking through one of the affiliated travel agencies, the Tulane Alumni Association benefits from your travel dollars. For more information and a list of upcoming travel opportunities, go to tulane.edu/alumni/travel/.—F.S.

TRACEY BELLINA

CHERYL GERBER

GlobeTrotting

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Dispatch Shelby Tucker W H E R E

Y ’ A T !

1950s BILL TUCKER (E ’51, ’56) has authored five books since he retired, including novels Widow’s Walk, Running Through the Sprinklers and Moonglow; a collection of short stories titled Goodbye World; and a memoir.

MARION J. SIEGMAN (NC ’54) is a professor and chair of molecular physiology and biophysics at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. Siegman recently celebrated her 45th anniversary with the college, where she has taught 11,000 medical students. Her research is funded by the National Institutes of Health.

DEDE WILSON (MARILYN COCO) (NC ’59) announces her fifth book of poetry, Near Waking, published this spring by Finishing Line Press.

JOAN HALIFAX (NC ’64) is featured in Everyday Heroes: 50 Americans Changing the World One Nonprofit at a Time, for her global charitable contributions. This visual book includes portraits and narratives that give insight into the minds and motivations of today’s social pioneers. For more information, visit welcomebooks.com/everydayheroes.

MARILEE EAVES (NC ’66, SW ’91) retired from social work in 1998; since then, she has walked labyrinths, given and received Reiki treatments and completed a manuscript of memoir stories. Eaves is researching self-publishing and platform-building. She lives in Seattle and often travels to New Orleans to visit family.

LUCILLE NOBILE PERRY (NC ’67), a psychologist in private practice, has served for the last three years as the clinical director of the Day Reporting Center/Reentry Project in New Orleans. The project works with at-risk probationers and parolees and their families to reconstruct their lives. Perry calls the work “an inspiring challenge.”

HOWARD M. MAZIAR (A&S ’68) recently served as president of the Georgia Psychiatric Physicians Association, an affiliate of the American Psychiatric Association. Among other appointments, Maziar has served on the board of directors of the Physicians Institute for Excellence in Medicine since 2009. Maziar is a native of Atlanta, where he lives with his wife, Patty. They have two adult children.

JAMES P. FARWELL (A&S ’69, L ’71) announces the publication of Persuasion and Power: The Art of Strategic Communication by Georgetown University Press in December 2012.

SUSAN JAYNE (formerly SUSAN HILL COCHRANE) (G ’69) is president and CEO of

JACKSON HILL

1960s DONALD J. PALMISANO (A&S ’60, M ’63) announces the publication of The Little Red Book of Leadership Lessons, a collection of quotes from antiquity to the present. Palmisano interviewed many of the present-day leaders quoted in the book.

LAWYER, VAGABOND, WRITER After “reading law” at Oxford University in England, Shelby Tucker (L ’59) received his law degree from Tulane.

His stint in New Orleans paid off in two ways—he met his wife, Carole Shelby Carnes Tucker (NC ’62), and his legal practice provides money for Tucker to do what he really wants to do: travel and write.

Tucker is a born storyteller. “I was born in Tennessee in the same bed as my father,” he begins.

One of his favorite stories takes place in Shreveport, La., when he was 17 and staying with his father. Tucker got the idea to hitchhike to Mexico. He left a note, sneaked out and took off. But it’s a much more romantic story when he tells it.

He relates being expelled from East High School in Memphis, Tenn., because “I didn’t see any use for books.”

He has held jobs varying widely from shoveling potatoes and working in oil fields to selling mutual funds and practicing law.

“I learned that I didn’t need much money to travel,” says Tucker, whose main motivation is curiosity.

His wanderlust has led him to most corners of the world. He married Carole, also a lawyer, in Zanzibar. He was imprisoned in India for three months, and he taught at a mission school in India.

He has practiced law in New Orleans, London, New Zealand, Australia and New York. And he has hitchhiked through Afghanistan, Iran, India, Australia, South America and Africa.

All these experiences were good material for his books, including The Last Banana: Dancing With the Watu; Among Insurgents: Walking Through Burma and Burma: the Curse of Independence.

His latest book, Client Service, a novel that takes place in the world of finance, is his first work of fiction. As he continues to travel the world, Tucker is working on Two Roads, a book about hitchhiking around India 50 years ago.—F.S.

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NFL PLAYERS REBUILD Bernard Robertson (UC ’01), president of the National Football Players Association Former Players Chapter in New Orleans, led a collaboration with the Home Builders Association of Greater New Orleans to build—just in time for Super Bowl weekend in February—three energy-efficient homes in the Lower Ninth Ward, a neighborhood still devastated from effects of Hurricane Katrina.

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the Society Against Technological Slavery to combat the abuse of medical and dental implants, as well as other devices.

1970s DAVID E. BOOHER (G ’71) announces the publication of Planning With Complexity, by Routledge, with co-author Judith Innes. Booher has recently delivered talks about the book at Harvard University, University of California– Los Angeles and the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Booher is senior policy adviser and adjunct professor at the Center for Collaborative Policy of California State University–Sacramento.

HAROLD T. GONZALES JR. (A&S ’72) released a book, How to Impress Your Online Instructor: Quick Tips to Success for the Virtual Student, available on amazon.com. Gonzales has spent the last 38 years as an aviator, educator and instructor. In 1986, he earned a master of aeronautical science at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, where he is now an adjunct professor.

MARLENE ESKIND MOSES (NC ’72, SW ’73), a family law expert and founder of MTR Family Law, was reelected vice president of the International Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.

ROGER OGDEN (L ’72) received a Weiss Award from the New Orleans Council for Community and Justice for his humanitarian work.

The council is a nonprofit human relations organization dedicated to fighting bias, bigotry and racism. Ogden is a co-founder and board member of Stirling Properties. He has been a leader in several civic organizations.

JEFFREY A. COHEN (A&S ’73), a professor of neurology at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth University, was appointed interim chair of neurology. Cohen also serves as director of the clinical neurophysiology fellowship program at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center.

WILLIAM ODOM (G ’73) announces the publication by Skyhorse Publishing of his translation from German of Bombing Hitler: The Story of the Man Who Almost Assassinated the Führer

by Hellmut Haasis. Odom has been teaching German for more than 40 years. He currently is a professor at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Miss.

DAVID WILLIAMSON (G ’74) has written three more books on the American Civil War: The 47th Indiana Volunteer Infantry: A Civil War History (McFarland, 2012), The 47th Indiana Volunteer Infantry Court-Martial Case Files, and Slack’s War: Selected Civil War Letters of General James R. Slack, 47th Indiana Volunteer Infantry, to His Wife, Ann, 1862–1865. For more information, visit williamsonbooks.wordpress.com.

DAVID WEINER (A&S ’75) has published his first novel, The Name of His Fathers. The

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book, which is set in New Orleans at Monroe University (Tulane), tells the story of a young Jewish man who returns to tradition (the opposite of The Chosen). The book is available as a Kindle book at amazon.com. Weiner practices law in Dallas.

1990s CATHERINE “CAT” CARLTON (NC ’90) was elected to the Menlo Park, Calif., city council.

She was sworn into office in December 2012.

ART LIUZZA (UC ’77, G ’82) retired after coaching football for 30 years at Slidell High School in Slidell, La. In December 2012, Liuzza had completed his sixth season as head coach.

MICHAEL D. CARTER (L ’90) is a superior court judge in Los Angeles County (Burbank, Calif.).

Carter was appointed to the bench by Gov. Gray Davis in 2003 and has held court in Burbank for more than two years. His wife, Lia R. Martin, also is a judge.

NED HALLOWELL (M ’78) appeared on “The Dr. Oz Show” in November, to discuss women and attention deficit disorder. Hallowell is a child and adult psychiatrist and founder of The Hallowell Center for Cognitive and Emotional Health in Sudbury, Mass., and New York.

In December 2012, ROD WEST (L ’93, B ’05) was honored with a Weiss Award for humanitarianism and civic leadership by the New Orleans Council for Community and Justice. West has served as chief administrator of Entergy since 2010.

1980s LINO GARCÍA JR. (G ’81) has donated all of his articles on colonial Spanish Texas history to the special collections of the University of Texas–Pan American in Edinburg, Texas.

García has taught at the university for 45 years.

He currently is professor emeritus of Spanish literature; he previously was assistant vice president for academic affairs.

In November 2012, TIM GRIFFIN (L ’94), who is serving his 17th year as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve, Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps, was promoted to lieutenant colonel.

Griffin, a U.S. representative from Arkansas, is one of only nine members of Congress currently serving in the military. A. BROOKE BENNETT (L ’05) serves as Griffin’s legislative director in Washington, D.C.

CLARK PAGER (A&S ’81) is one of the founders and executives of Restaurant Depot, a national cash-and-carry warehouse. The company recently opened a location in New Orleans.

Pager says Restaurant Depot buys from many Louisiana-based companies and is a partner in promoting Louisiana seafood. He is based in the company’s corporate office in New York.

AMY DAVIS (NC ’95) earned the designation of fellow from the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine for her dedication and scholarship in the field of palliative care.

GEOFFREY L. SQUITIERO (A&S ’82) has joined Halloran & Sage as a partner in its New Haven, Conn., office. Squitiero practices in the area of civil litigation and real estate law.

PETER J. FOS (PHTM ’85, G ’89) was sworn in as the first president of the University of New Orleans, now part of the University of Louisiana system, in an investiture ceremony at the lakefront campus in November 2012.

GLORIA CLOUD CROOM (UC ’86) donated a piece of art titled Survivor to the Slidell Memorial Cancer Center in Slidell, La., in October 2012.

REGINA HURLEY (L ’86) was recognized as a “Super Lawyer” for family law by New England Super Lawyers and Rising Stars.

GLORIA DUNN (NC ’87) and her husband, Bill Belk, have been working to fight corruption in the Turks and Caicos Islands, where she was appointed adviser to the statutory bodies.

STEVEN K. DICKENS (A ’89) received a merit award from the Washington chapter of the American Institute of Architects for his entrance canopy design for an Art Moderne apartment building in Washington, D.C. His design restores the glamour of the original while fixing its myriad functional problems.

KIRSTIN MEINZ HAWTHORNE (B ’95) and her husband, Mike, announce the birth of Alexis Sandra on Nov. 1, 2012. Lexi joins her older brothers Owen, Derek and Kyle.

LORI HOEPNER (PHTM ’95) is co-author of the paper “Seven-year neurodevelopmental scores and prenatal exposure to chlorpyrifos, a common agricultural pesticide” (Environmental Health Perspectives, 119:1196–1201), which was named the 2012 Paper of the Year by Environmental Health Perspectives. The award honors the journal’s most cited paper published during the preceding year.

After 15 years on Wall Street, MICHAEL WHITE MORFORD (E ’95, B ’96) founded an environmental oilfield services company, Nemaha Water Services. The company focuses on handling, recycling and disposing of the toxic wastewater that is produced by oil wells.

ROB SANDERS (A&S ’95) was reelected in November to his second, six-year term as commonwealth’s attorney for the 16th Judicial Circuit of Kentucky. Sanders also personally prosecutes a full caseload. Sanders and his wife, Delana, live in Ft. Mitchell, Ky., with their 5-year-old daughter, Anna Grace.

HEATHER M. VALLIANT (L ’96) joined Curry & Friend as a partner practicing in the firm’s New Orleans office. Valliant practices primarily in the areas of environmental litigation and toxic tort defense.

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Dispatch Olga Merediz

NADINE FARID JOHNSON (L ’98) and her husband, Brian, welcomed Emma Aziza on July 2, 2012. The family lives in Abuja, Nigeria, where the Johnsons work with the U.S. Department of State.

TIMOTHY J. SMITH (A&S ’98) has received the William C. Strickland Outstanding Young Faculty Award for the College of Arts & Sciences at Appalachian State University of the University of North Carolina system.

YURBIN VELASQUEZ (L ’98) and ASHLEY WILSON VELASQUEZ (NC ’02) announce the birth of Amelia Elizabeth on Nov. 24, 2012. The family resides in Austin, Texas, where Ashley Velasquez is a development director of the Texas Medical Association Foundation, and Yurbin Velasquez has his principal law office, primarily practicing personal injury law.

MICHELLE ARENS (NC ’99) received a master’s degree in supply chain management from the University of San Diego last fall.

FORD GRAHAM (TC ’99) is president of the Council of American States in Europe, which includes 15 U.S. states with full-time offices in Europe. The council provides assistance to European companies planning to establish or expand their business in the U.S. Graham currently leads South Carolina’s Europe office in Munich, Germany. Graham was previously the director of international investment for South Carolina’s commerce department.

ALAN E. MARKS (L ’99) is assistant vice chancellor for academic affairs and athletics counsel for the University of Texas system.

CRAIG PLATT (TC ’99) is senior vice president, creative director of mOcean, an entertainment advertising, marketing, branding and production company. Platt was awarded The Hollywood Reporter’s Key Art Awards for work on The Dark Knight Rises and Project X. 2000s GARY CHISHOLM (B ’00) joined Miraca Life Sciences, a state-of-the-art dermatopathology laboratory, as sales director last February.

Chisholm’s territory includes Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and North Florida.

BROOKE PRATT (NC ’00) is founder of Sucre Shop, which produces and sells eco-friendly, hand-printed, wooden utensils and party accessories. Items retail through Etsy and wholesale internationally to more than 50 stores. Sucre products have been featured on “The Today Show,” in Martha Stewart Living, Redbook and People, as well as on a number of blogs.

kristin hoebermann

ALISON JORDAN BRULEY (NC ’99) and her husband, Kenneth, announce the birth of Mae Helen on Oct. 22, 2012. Mae joins brothers Coleman, 3, and Knox, 1.

BALANCE AND AMBITION By her own definition, Olga Merediz (NC ’78) is the consummate New Yorker. “[New York] is a place for ambition,” she says. “It’s just a very busy town.”

Merediz is a Tony-nominated actress-singer-writer. She has three movies coming out this year (with the likes of Robin Williams, Bradley Cooper and Eva Mendez), but voice-overs are her “bread and butter,” she says. Among many jobs, she is co-writing a sitcom.

But right now, “I need to concentrate on [my] writing—to do my own thing rather than everyone else’s passion project.”

Her own “passion project” is a deeply personal theater piece. “My mother and her sisters were singers,” she says. “I’m writing about how they influenced me in New York and about part of my family being communists and part being successful capitalists and how that influenced me as a performer.”

Merediz was born in Cuba and escaped with her parents to Miami by way of Jamaica when she was 5 years old. The family later moved to Puerto Rico, where she grew up.

This isn’t the first time Merediz’s heritage has played a role in her career. To play her part in In the Heights, the Broadway show for which she scored the Tony nod, Merediz drew on memories of her mother and grandmother.

The experience was powerful, she says. “It would bring up so many memories and feelings. I would be out there singing a song, and it would touch something. Feelings would flood me.”

But heartfelt experience isn’t the simple key to success, she says. Success also is about control. “You have to create a balance. You can’t cry. You want to let them [the audience] cry, and you have to sustain that.”—CATHERINE FRESHLEY

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Dispatch Jean Morgan Meaux W H E R E

Y ’ A T !

DEREK D. BARDELL (G ’01, ’02) was named a 2012 fellow at the Loyola University New Orleans Institute for Environmental Communication.

VALERIE TIMMERS CALENDA (B ’01, ’08) and ALEX CALENDA (TC ’03) welcomed Vivienne Arianna on Nov. 17, 2012.

MEREDITH FEIKE CRANE (NC ’01) and her husband, Max, welcomed their first child, Charlotte Ann, in April 2011. Crane recently joined the Disaster Resilience Leadership Academy at Tulane and was elected for a second term as vice president of the Newcomb Alumnae Association.

A recent paper by Crane will be published in the forthcoming book, Urban Ethnography: The New Orleans Ninth Ward Lives Post Katrina.

THOMAS MULLIGAN (TC ’01, G ’07) is serving as a regional affairs officer in the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, Colombia. Mulligan joined the Department of State in 2008 after receiving his master’s degree in philosophy from Tulane.

CHRISTINA TAYLOR GREIFZU (B ’02) and JOHN M. GREIFZU JR. (TC ’03) announce the birth of Elizabeth Ryan on April 13, 2012. The baby’s godparents are PAUL WALSH (TC ’04) and ERIN RILEY VILLASENOR (E ’03). John Greifzu is a litigation associate at the law firm of Wiggin and Dana in New York. Tina Greifzu is the global head of product development and management for K2 Advisors in Stamford, Conn. The family lives in Darien, Conn.

TRAN CASSANDRA HUYNH (NC ’02) and her husband, David, welcomed their first son, Aiden Huynh Stewart, on Nov. 21, 2012.

BEN SILBERT (B ’02) is founder of Bar & Club Stats, which provides age verification services and data collection to bars, nightclubs and marketers. Bar & Club Stats will be spotlighted this spring in an episode of “Bar Rescue” on Spike TV. ROBERT M. FROHM (M ’03) was appointed medical director at the John Peter Smith Ambulatory Surgery Center in Fort Worth, Texas. Frohm is an anesthesiologist for Sheridan Healthcare of Texas. He resides in Colleyville, Texas, with his wife, Lindsay, and their three children, Dean, Doug and Tilly.

MEREDITH BRIZENDINE CASE (NC ’04) and E. GLENN CASE IV (E ’05) announce the birth of Maddox Nicholas on Aug. 30, 2012. Maddox joins big brother Greyson, 2. The family resides in Maple Valley, Wash.

KIRK SOODHALTER (TC ’04) received a PhD in applied mathematics from Temple University in May 2012. Soodhalter started a postdoctoral research position at Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria, in June 2012.

34

from JEAN MORGAN MEAUX

REBECCA LOEB (NC ’01) is president and CEO of Coterie Spark, an international meeting and event management firm based in Houston.

ALASKA: THE LAST FRONTIER Most Americans wouldn’t recognize their names: Charles Hallock, Caroline Willard, Harry de Windt, Mary Hitchock. Yet, their stories are as integral to the larger story of America as anyone’s, says Jean Morgan Meaux (L ’88), who has written about these and 23 other “hardy souls” who in the 19th and early 20th century traveled to Alaska to discover and record the last and largest of American frontiers.

Her book, In Pursuit of Alaska: An Anthology of Travelers’ Tales 1879–1909, (University of Washington Press), is something of a labor of love for Meaux, who began compiling the first-person accounts from the Alaskan wilderness back in the 1980s, when she was herself a resident of the state (and where she is pictured here).

Working as a journalist and freelancing for the Anchorage Daily News, Meaux began to research the little-known narratives of people who traveled to Alaska for a variety of reasons. As she read their accounts, Meaux realized these intrepid folks fell into three groups: explorers and adventurers, wealthy tourists and fortune hunters who comprised the great Klondike Gold Rush.

Despite the disparity of reasons that drew them north, all shared a commonality of spirit, says Meaux.

“There’s a wonderful buoyancy and determination and resiliency in these people,” says Meaux. “They believed they could do anything they set out to do.”

Meaux, now an attorney living in Folsom, La., says she carried a rough draft of the book in a cardboard box for decades before returning to the project.

“A couple of years ago, I realized the one pursuit I really cared about more than anything in this world is this book, and if I didn’t do it, nobody would.”

Along with excerpts from accounts written by Meaux’s 27 subjects, the book, which will be published in May, includes introductions and other material by the author.

—NICK Marinello

CASEY HAUGNER (NC ’05, B ’06) married RYAN WRENN (E ’05) on Sept. 1, 2012, in Nashville, Tenn. Members of the wedding party included TERESA WHITNEY HALBROOKS (B ’05) and BRETT PARKER (TC ’05). The wedding was officiated by MATHEW BRADLEY (E ’05). Casey Wrenn works for the Tennessee Department of Education, and Ryan Wrenn is a research engineer for Vanderbilt University.

Belgrade, Serbia, and then sailed the Adriatic together. CHANTAL MAILHOT (E ’06), NICOLE PARAGGIO (NC ’05), LILJANA JOHNSON (PHTM ’08), NABIL BADDOUR (TC ’05, PHTM ’08), MICHAEL GOLDSTEIN (B ’05, ’06), ANDY TOWBIN (TC ’06, A ’08), KATHRYN SPRUILL ROMAN (NC ’04, B ’07), ADAM BLOCK (B ’04, ’06) and NINA MOFFA (NC ’02) attended the reunion. The couple resides in Pointe-Noire, Congo.

ADAM KWASMAN (TC ’05) was elected to the Arizona State Legislature as the state representative from legislative district 11.

ADAM STEPHENS (TC ’06), who participated in the Tulane University ROTC program, graduated from the Navy’s TOPGUN school as an F-18C pilot last September. He is now a tactical flight instructor in the Navy’s Strike Fighter Weapons School. His wife, LAUREN MATHEWS STEPHENS (B ’05), earned her MBA from Mississippi State

Tulane alumni reunited to celebrate the wedding of JACKIE LOONSTRA (NC ’05, G ’06) and VELJKO CULAFIC (G ’06) in the groom’s hometown of

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HIGH ON THE HOG Daniel Vaughn (A ’01), aka The BBQ Snob, has written a book profiling Texas barbecue legends. The Prophets of Smoked Meat will be released in May by foodie Anthony Bourdain’s new book imprint with HarperCollins’ Ecco. Vaughn blogs at Full Custom Gospel BBQ.

F A R E W E L L University in May 2012 and continues to work for Rabobank as a relationship manager.

BEN EL-BAZ (’07) has been living and working in China for five years. He is director of product development for Hatch, a boutique consumer electronics development firm and subsidiary of Shenzhen CE and IT Ltd. Among his responsibilities, El-Baz manages the product development team and develops mid- to long-term product strategy. His projects have included customdesigned digital cameras and Android tablets.

Elizabeth Wilson Lyle (NC ’31) of Meridian, Miss., on

Elodie Diodene Fleming (NC ’47, UC ’88) of New

Benjamin M. Goodman (A&S ’33, L ’35) of Shreveport,

J. Olton Hebert (A&S ’47) of New Iberia, La., on

Joyce D. Sabatier (NC ’37, SW ’43) of New Orleans on

Harry L. Heintzen (A&S ’47, G ’51) of Washington, D.C., on Oct. 10, 2012.

Nov. 3, 2012.

La., on Oct. 9, 2012.

Sept. 17, 2012.

Anna May Ricks Maunz (NC ’38) of Metairie, La., on

Nov. 27, 2012.

Jane Waddle Myers (NC ’38, G ’40) of Hamilton, Ohio,

For the inauguration of President Barack Obama in January, Elizabeth Bordelon (’11) was a member of the task force that coordinated ceremonial support for members from all branches of the armed forces. A Coast Guard petty officer 2nd class, Bordelon was in Washington, D.C., for several months as a media relations expert.

JESSIE LINGENFELTER (’11) is an uptown New Orleans columnist and writer for The TimesPicayune. Lingenfelter also is public relations director and online creative specialist for Trashy Diva, a dress boutique in uptown New Orleans.

MICHAEL J. SMITH (G ’11), an Iraq veteran and chief warrant officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, is director of the Marine Forces Pacific Band stationed in Hawaii. Last summer, Smith led the band in a performance in New Zealand commemorating the 70th anniversary of American forces’ arrival in the country during World War II. The performance won the Marine Corps Band Performance of the Year award.

Dee R. Hunter (B ’47) of American Fork, Utah, on

Lyle Dawson Eichsteadt (NC ’40) of Woodburn, Ore.,

Thomas S. Kane (A&S ’47, G ’49) of Kittery, Maine,

Miriam Scales Garrett (NC ’40) of Saint Francisville,

Chester A. Peyronnin Jr. (E ’47) of New Orleans on

Sept. 15, 2012.

Irma O'Keefe Scardino (UC ’40) of Metairie, La., on

William B. Ragland Jr. (A&S ’47, L ’50) of Charlottesville, Va., on Oct. 21, 2012.

Douglas C. Augustin (B ’42, UC ’55) of New Orleans

Helen Hamilton Bailey (SW ’48) of Lafayette, La., on

Charles Schwartz Jr. (A&S ’43, L ’47) of Metairie, La.,

Peggy Michel Bernhardt (NC ’48) of New Orleans on

Martin B. Harthcock Jr. (M ’44) of Raymond, Miss.,

Egbert D. N. Buniff (A&S ’48) of Canoga Park, Calif.,

Norma Rosenson Kost (NC ’44) of Houston on

Edmund B. Martin Jr. (A&S ’48) of Sarasota, Fla., on

MEAGHAN CALLAHAN (’08) married Jonathan DeSoto of Marrero, La., on July 1, 2012, in Marblehead, Mass., where the couple lives.

Callahan is a teacher and her husband is a chef.

2010s NIC BONSELL (’10) is director of disaster response for New York Cares, a nonprofit working alongside city, state and federal hurricane recovery efforts to mobilize volunteers.

Harry H. Howard (B ’47, L ’49) of Kenner, La., on

July 22, 2011.

Sept. 29, 2012.

on April 19, 2012.

MARIELLE SOPHIA NEWMAN (’09) received her MPH from the University of Illinois School of Public Health in her native Chicago. Newman is completing mental health research in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on a Fulbright Award. She writes about health and Bangladesh for various publications and at www.msophianewman.com.

Oct. 7, 2012.

on Dec. 10, 2012.

JOHN MARSHALL (B ’07) is a managing partner of Room Reserves. The company, based in New Orleans, partners with hotels to make blocks of rooms available to fans of teams playing in highprofile sporting events. For more information, visit www.roomreserves.com.

CATHERINE FRESHLEY (’09) married her high school boyfriend, Tom Leineweber, in Oysterville, Wash., over Labor Day weekend. Freshley is a strategist with Peter Mayer Advertising of New Orleans. Leineweber is a captain in the Air Force and flies the KC-135. They live in Spokane, Wash.

Orleans on Sept. 26, 2012.

La., on Oct. 17, 2012.

on Oct. 1, 2012.

on Nov. 3, 2012.

on Nov. 26, 2012.

Sept. 8, 2012.

Antoninette Dingraudo Oddo (NC ’44, G ’57) of Metairie, La., on June 3, 2012.

Paul Trautman (M ’44) of Portland, Ore., on

Jan. 18, 2012.

Dec. 12, 2012.

Nov. 24, 2012.

Nov. 22, 2012.

on Sept. 11, 2012.

Oct. 21, 2012.

Randolph D. Peets Jr. (B ’48) of Jackson, Miss., on

Oct. 26, 2012.

Sigmund J. Rosen (A&S ’48) of Birmingham, Ala., on

May 8, 2011.

Nov. 23, 2012.

Elaine McFaul Norsworthy (NC ’45) of Slidell, La., on

Philip S. Ambler III (UC ’49) of Mount Pleasant, S.C.,

Henry G. Simon (A&S ’45, M ’48) of New Orleans on

Ethel L. Eaton (NC ’49, G ’63) of Destrehan, La., on

Dec. 14, 2012.

Dec. 10, 2012.

Marjorie Zengel Tipler (NC ’45, G ’53) of Centralia,

on Nov. 21, 2012.

Nov. 23, 2012.

James W. Hendrick (M ’49) of Jacksonville, Fla., on

Wash., on Oct. 31, 2012.

Dec. 5, 2012.

H. Glenn Doran (B ’46) of Cottage Grove, Tenn., on

Winston C. Lill (A&S ’49) of New Orleans on

Elliott H. Igleheart (A&S ’46, G ’51) of Tallahassee, Fla., on Dec. 12, 2012.

Dec. 2, 2012.

John J. Burke (E ’47) of New Orleans on

Maxine Scoggins Rushing (SW ’49) of Meadowlakes,

Catherine Hilderbrand Cooper (NC ’47) of Annapolis,

Rose F. Spicola (NC ’49) of Tampa, Fla., on

Nov. 5, 2012.

Nov. 29, 2012.

Md., on Sept. 9, 2012.

Warren Paul Deckert (B ’47) of New Orleans on Sept. 29, 2012.

Patricia Peres Fauxan (NC ’47) of Tampa, Fla., on Sept. 4, 2012.

Edward D. Fischer Jr. (A&S ’47) of Metairie, La., on Dec. 13, 2012.

Nov. 1, 2012.

William A. McBride (M ’49) of Alexandria, La., on

Texas, on Oct. 1, 2012.

Nov. 21, 2012.

Christopher Tompkins (UC ’49, L ’52) of New Orleans

on Sept. 13, 2012.

Gloria Ratchford Volkert (NC ’49) of Lewisville,

Texas, on Sept. 29, 2012.

Bernard J. Conroy (B ’50) of Towson, Md., on

Nov. 5, 2012.

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PRIME PEDIATRICIAN Nell-Pape Williams Waring (M ’51), of New Orleans, a clinical

associate professor of pediatrics at Tulane University, died on Oct. 20, 2012. Among the first women to attend medical school and one of the first female physicians in New Orleans, Waring was known for developing effective care plans for children with asthma and training programs for their families to prevent asthma attacks.

F A R E W E L L Marian R. Loehlin Davies (G ’50) of Los Altos Hills,

Russell D. Krogsgard (A ’54) of Mandeville, La.,

Charles J. Cohen (A&S ’59) of Cordova, Tenn., on

Calif., on Dec. 1, 2012.

on Dec. 6, 2012.

Streuby L. Drumm Jr. (A&S ’50, B ’51) of New Orleans

Crawford W. Long (A&S ’54, M ’57) of Atlanta on

on Nov. 10, 2012.

Nov. 2, 2012.

Dec. 7, 2012.

J.L. Foretich (A&S ’50) of Houston on May 25, 2012.

Melvin M. Melancon (B ’54) of Baton Rouge, La.,

Katherine Graham Townes (NC ’59) of Grenada,

G. Robert Richardson Jr. (A&S ’54) of Lafayette,

Barbara Selph Smith (UC ’59) of Tyler, Texas, on

Herbert E. Hauer (E ’50) of Mandeville, La., on Sept. 26, 2012.

Bunky Healy (A&S ’50, L ’55) of New Orleans on Nov. 20, 2012.

Theodore W. Kessler (B ’50) of Toledo, Ohio, on Sept. 3, 2012.

Albert D. Rood (M ’50) of Jacksonville, Fla., on Sept. 1, 2012.

Edward S. Schlesinger (A&S ’50) of Scarsdale, N.Y.,

on April 24, 2012.

Walter D. Gindl (E ’51) of Deland, Fla., on Nov. 5, 2012.

Harold G. Smith (G ’51) of Oak Ridge, Tenn., on Oct. 9, 2012.

Thomas W. Thorne Jr. (A&S ’51, L ’53) of New Orleans

on Oct. 20, 2012.

La., on Oct. 19, 2012.

Oscar L. Berry Jr. (A&S ’55, M ’58) of Shreveport,

Evelyne Berger Smason (NC ’59) of Los Angeles on

Miss., on Sept. 5, 2012.

Sept., 14, 2012.

Richard W. Winters Sr. (PHTM ’60) of Eden, Texas,

La., on Sept. 12, 2012.

on Oct. 3, 2011.

Carlton L. Carpenter Jr. (M ’55) of Baton Rouge,

Bruce J. Borrello (L ’61) of Mandeville, La., on

Robert L. Hopkins Jr. (B ’55) of Ashland, Va., on

Nicholas L. Weinsaft (A&S ’62) of Branson, Mo., on

James P. Nowakowski (A&S ’55) of Bluffton, S.C.,

H. William Sellers (A&S ’63) of West Chester, Pa.,

La., on Sept. 4, 2012.

Nov. 10, 2012.

on Nov. 23, 2012.

Roger V. Pailet (UC ’55, PHTM ’56) of Metairie, La., on Dec. 3, 2012.

Oct. 7, 2012.

Nov. 28, 2012.

on Nov. 9, 2012.

John G. Hankins (M ’64) of Mountain Brook, Ala., on March 28, 2012.

Stanley H. Frank Jr. (B ’56) of San Antonio on

Annell McGee (G ’64) of New Orleans on Dec. 2, 2012.

John C. Lipsey (M ’56) of Blacksburg, Va., on

on Oct. 9, 2012.

Sept. 2, 2012.

on Oct. 16, 2012.

Sept. 3, 2012.

Edward B. Benjamin Jr. (L ’52) of New Orleans on

Jose J. Sequeira (A ’56) of Spring, Texas, on

Fred L. Bowden (L ’52) of Temecula, Calif., on

Gayle T. Strickland (G ’56) of Baton Rouge, La., on

Oct. 23, 2012.

Dec. 10, 2012.

Feb. 16, 2011.

Alfred E. Michon (B ’64) of North Falmouth, Mass., Thomas H. Naylor (G ’64) of Charlotte, Vt., on Dec. 12, 2012.

Barbara M. Bayless (G ’65) of Dallas on March 22, 2012.

July 5, 2011.

Oct. 13, 2012.

Ehud J. Cohen (B ’52) of Pikesville, Md., on

Franklin D. Barkdull (A&S ’57) of Laurel, Md., on

Feb. 8, 2012.

Sept. 30, 2012.

Paul N. Polizzi Jr. (A&S ’52) of Hobe Sound, Fla.,

Jack Q. Causey (M ’57) of Centreville, Miss., on

on Sept. 1, 2012.

Sept. 9, 2012.

H. Frank Boswell Jr. (M ’53) of New Orleans on

Harold N. Richmond (A&S ’57) of Woodbridge,

Fla., on Oct. 2, 2012.

Lionel J. Skidmore (E ’57, ’59) of Vienna, Va., on

Oct. 30, 2012.

Nov. 19, 2012.

Elaine Utay Greenberg (SW ’53) of Houston on Dec. 18, 2012.

Nell Holley Miller (UC ’53) of Aurora, Ill., on

Jan. 8, 2012.

Saul A. Mintz (A ’53) of Monroe, La., on Sept. 15, 2012 Edward D. Perreira (UC ’53) of Longwood, Fla., on Sept. 15, 2012.

N.J., on Sept. 23, 2012.

Oct. 3, 2012.

Madolene Stone (NC ’57) of Lubbock, Texas, on Sept. 27, 2012.

Frederic A. Youngs Jr. (B ’57) of Denham Springs,

Don P. Miller (G ’65) of Las Cruces, N.M., on

Oct. 12, 2012.

James E. Peguesse (PHTM ’67) of Tucson, Ariz., on April 26, 2011.

Harold B. Probes Jr. (L ’67, ’69) of Wesley Chapel, David A. Murphy (A&S ’68) of Portland, Ore., on Gertrude Cooper Bernauer (SW ’69) of Slidell, La., on Oct. 24, 2012.

Marvin T. Bond (G ’69) of Decatur, Ga., on

La., on March 7, 2011.

Oct. 20, 2012.

Alfred N. Clement (B ’58) of Picayune, Miss., on

Mead P. Miller (A&S ’69) of Mobile, Ala., on Nov.

Oct. 20, 2012.

26, 2012.

Nov. 20, 2012.

Darwayne W. M. Coburn (E’ 58) of Slidell, La., on

Leroy R. Nolan (G ’69) of New Orleans on Oct.

Sept. 30, 2012.

30, 2012.

Mildred Conover Watson (G ’53) of Lexington, Ky.,

Donald M. Hall (L ’58) of Hillsboro, Ore., on Sept. 6, 2012.

Betty M. Foree (PHTM ’70) of Manchaca, Texas, on Jan. 27, 2012.

Warren T. Weathington (PHTM ’53) of Tallahassee,

Walter J. Landry (L ’58) of Arlington, Va., on

Thomas J. Schroeder (E’ 70) of Logan, Utah, on

Barbara Murphy Brooks (SW ’59) of East Point, Ga.,

Carolyn Louis Shultz (SW ’70) of Tucson, Ariz.,

James A. Villarrubia (UC ’53) of Metairie, La., on

on Nov. 12, 2012.

Fla., on April 21, 2012.

Alfred R. Gould (M ’54) of Missouri City, Texas, on Sept. 8, 2012.

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Oct. 24, 2012.

on Nov. 20, 2012.

Nov. 17, 2012.

on Sept. 14, 2012.

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Tribute James J. Corrigan = Bobby L. Poarch (G ’71) of Valdese, N.C., on

Nov. 26, 2012.

Jon H. Spence (G ’71) of Athens, Ga., on July 5, 2011.

John M. Bauer (A&S ’72) of Hickory, N.C., on Dec. 16, 2012.

Charles F. Lozes (L ’72) of Metairie, La., on Nov. 22, 2012.

Brian Miller (A&S ’72) of Greenwich, Conn., on

Feb. 4, 2012.

Jane Capella Silva (NC ’73) of Metairie, La., on Carlton J. Hicks (L ’74) of Alexandria, La., on

Sept. 27, 2012.

Kenneth J. Stumpf (L ’74) of New York on Oct. 23, 2012.

Ronald A. Cahanin (SW ’76) of Covington, La., on Dec. 11, 2012.

Timothy A. Jones (L ’76) of Lafayette, La., on

Aug. 27, 2012.

Dione Routh Suthon (UC ’76) of League City, Texas,

on Oct. 15, 2012.

Joseph I. Giarrusso Jr. (L ’77) of New Orleans on

Sept. 12, 2012.

Martin V. King (A ’77) of Houston on Sept. 30, 2012.

Isabel L. Ochsner (NC ’77) of New Orleans on Nov. 6, 2012.

James G. Wyrick (A&S ’77, L ’79) of Metairie, La.,

on Dec. 15, 2012.

Rebecca C. Chavez (PHTM ’78) of Lakewood, Colo., on Dec. 12, 2012.

George D. Long (A&S ’78, M ’82) of Atlanta on Nov. 15, 2012.

tulane UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES

Sept. 2, 2012.

OPENING DOORS While moving through one’s career, it’s important to acknowledge and remember those who opened a door and changed the direction that one eventually follows. James J. Corrigan, former dean of Tulane School of Medicine who died in Tucson, Ariz., on Dec. 19, 2012, was one of those important people to me.

As a relatively junior faculty member I served at then-dean Vincent Fulginiti’s request on the search committee that chose Jim Corrigan, a distinguished pediatrician from the University of Arizona who was recognized as a clinician and researcher in hematology with a passion for medical student education, as vice dean of academic affairs at Tulane medical school. Several years later, after Jim assumed the position of dean, he moved me into his former role, following which we worked together closely.

I looked forward to our weekly meetings, which gave him an opportunity to serve as mentor and friend and discuss everything from the direction of medical student education to the latest escapades of his beloved basset hounds.

Jim was never afraid to let everyone know where he stood but he did so out of his great interest for the medical school’s success. What always came across was his passion and caring about his patients, the students and the personal interests of all those around him to create a successful team. It is with warmth and gratitude that I remember Jim for his outstanding mentorship and leadership for the School of Medicine.

—N. KEVIN KRANE (M ’77) Kevin Krane is professor of medicine and vice dean for academic affairs at Tulane University School of Medicine.

Corinth L. Thoma (PHTM ’78) of Woodstock, Ga., on May 28, 2012.

James Benton Walters (UC ’78, E ’86) of Chalmette,

La., on Nov. 3, 2012.

Frank Deloume Jr. (UC ’79) of Metairie, La., on

Nov. 22, 2012.

Egbe K. Ikhinmwin (PHTM ’82) of Richmond, Texas, on Oct. 10, 2012.

Peter E. Hess (L ’84) of Wilmington, Del., on Jan. 12, 2012.

David L. Wahl (UC ’86) of New Orleans on Oct. 11, 2012.

Ann E. George (G ’87) of New Orleans on Aug. 28, 2012.

Wade A. Young (M ’88) of Tuscaloosa, Ala., on Oct. 9, 2012.

James D. Hamlett (A&S ’89) of Montgomery, Ala., on

Oct. 11, 2012.

Andrew J. Pape (A&S ’89) of Middlebury, Conn., on

John C. Floyd (M ’85) of Houma, La., on Oct. 7, 2012.

Nov. 7, 2012.

Frederic R. Lexow II (A&S ’86) of New York on

Maurine Fontenot Goodman (PHTM ’91) of Decatur,

Sept. 22, 2012.

Steven D. Vaughan (B ’86) of Murfreesboro, Tenn., on Sept. 28. 2012.

Ga., on Nov. 26, 2012.

Emma Buhrman Hutcheson (L ’95) of Minneapolis

on Oct. 2, 2012.

Brenda J. Hill Simmons (PHTM ’96) of Manassas, Va., on Aug. 12, 2012.

Bill G. Robinson (PHTM ’00) of Pasco, Wash., on April 11, 2012.

James M. Bliss (M ’02) of Santa Barbara, Calif., on Nov. 10, 2012.

Stephen Inscore (PHTM ’02) of San Antonio on July 5, 2012.

Tamara L. Minikus (L ’02) of Astoria, N.Y., on Sept. 4, 2012.

Bryan J. Fritz (M ’05) of New Orleans on Oct. 14, 2012.

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96% of Goal

EMPOWERS Campaign gifts to Tulane Empowers connect Tulane students with community outreach projects that make a difference in people’s lives.

As of Jan. 31, 2013, the campaign had received $96 million toward its $100 million goal.

T U L A N E

E M P O W E R S

tracie morris schaffer

Team Work

Dr. Paul K. Whelton offers a one-word recommendation for physicians treating patients with multiple chronic illnesses: collaboration.

When leaders in multiple fields and institutions work together, patients’ lives improve and healthcare costs decrease, says Whelton, who in December 2012 was invested in the new Show Chwan Health System Chair in Global Public Health at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.

“The chronic diseases we are seeing around the world today require that we make progress in small increments, and the only way to do that is through collaboration,” said Whelton. That spirit of global connectivity is the focus of the new chair.

An international authority on cardiovascular and renal disease, Whelton first came to Tulane in 1997 as dean of public health.

He also served as dean of the medical school and senior vice president of health sciences at Tulane University before taking the helm of the health sciences complex at Loyola University–Chicago from 2007–2011.

As chair, Whelton will administer the public health school’s programs in Asia.

The Show Chwan Chair was established b y D r. M i n Ho Huang, an internationally recognized developer of hospitals and a parent of three Tulane University graduates. Huang is founder and pre sident of Taiwan’s Show Chwan Health Care System.

—Matt Roberts

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Tennis Ace

Just inside the doors of Ben Weiner Hall, Hamilton Richardson’s 147-piece trophy collection gleams in the afternoon light, reflecting a lifetime of achievements by Tulane University’s greatest tennis athlete. On Nov. 10, 2012, the Hamilton Richardson Memorial Trophy Collection was dedicated at a ceremony in the James W. Wilson Jr. Center for Intercollegiate Athletics.

Richardson (A&S ’55) died in 2006, but there was never a question where his trophies and awards would eventually reside, said his wife, Midge Richardson, before her death in December. “Ham felt a deep connection to Tulane.” The family’s hope is that the display will provide inspiration to Tulane tennis players and others who see it. “We also hope it will encourage everyone who cares about Tulane to remember its past and support the university as it strides toward the future,” said Midge Richardson.

A native of Baton Rouge, La., Hamilton Farrar “Ham” Richardson survived juvenile diabetes to become one of the most prolific tennis players of his generation. Diagnosed at age 15, Richardson won the national junior tennis championship two years later. At Tulane, he was a two-time NCAA singles champion, won four Southeastern Conference singles titles and led the Green Wave to four conference championships. Always an amateur, he was the top-ranked tennis player in the United States in 1956 and 1958, won 17 national tennis titles and played on seven Davis Cup teams.

Richardson stopped regularly competing in tournaments in 1958. He was a successful investment banker for 35 years and served as president and chairman of the board of Richardson and Associates in New York City. Richardson was a member of the Tulane President’s Council, and he established the Hamilton Richardson Tennis Endowment in 2004 to underwrite scholarships for the Tulane tennis programs. The university encourages gifts to the fund in memory of Richardson.—Michael Joe

Top of His Game Ham Richardson won multiple national tennis titles in the 1950s. Now his trophy and awards collection is housed in the James W. Wilson Jr. Center for Intercollegiate Athletics.

THINKING GLOBAL Dr. Paul K. Whelton is the holder of the Show Chwan Health System Chair in Global Public Health.

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T U L A N E

A Place for Research

The tradition at Tulane University of encouraging outdoor classes, events and gatherings continues thanks to the construction of Benenson Plaza, located at the historic Newcomb Hall on the uptown campus. A dedication ceremony on Dec. 12, 2012, celebrated this latest milestone in Tulane’s landscape renewal plan.

Benenson Plaza is a carefully designed space that provides improved lighting and numerous benches and tables for relaxation, studying and fellowship. The plaza is the third phase of a project designed to join the quads between Newcomb Hall and McAlister Auditorium and transform the green expanse in the middle of campus into a scenic environment.

At the dedication ceremony, speakers noted that the beautification project is part of a long-term strategy to foster a pedestrian-friendly culture at Tulane.

Tulane President Scott Cowen said the plaza will attract people to the outdoors. “This magnificent plaza,” he said, “enhances the view from Newcomb Hall all the way over to McAlister.”

Benenson Plaza is part of the NewcombMcAlister Unified Green beautification project that started with turning McAlister Drive into the McAliser Place Pedestrian Way. The new outdoor landmark is the gift of Clement and Stephanie Benenson, both of whom received their undergraduate degrees from Tulane in 2004; Clem’s father, James Benenson Jr.; brother, James Benenson III; and their families.

Clem Benenson, a member of the Board of Tulane, said his family’s goal is to make Tulane as successful aesthetically as the university has been in fulfilling its academic mission. “I see this as a celebration of Tulane,” he said.

—Mary Sparacello

SALLY ASHER

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Outdoor Attraction

E M P O W E R S

The opening of the Donna and Paul Flower Hall for Research and Innovation signals that a new era of scientific discovery is under way at Tulane University. The building was dedicated in December 2012.

Located on the front part of the uptown campus adjacent to other science and engineering facilities, Flower Hall provides a contemporary space for studies that bridge academia and industry—work that will spur an increase in research publications, technology licenses, patents and startup businesses, said Nick Altiero, dean of the School of Science and Engineering.

The four-story, 24,000-square-foot building includes a modernized Francis Taylor Laboratory and features that encourage creativity and collaboration. “One of the main reasons we’ve put so much emphasis on creating an open, innovative environment is that our entrepreneurial students and faculty have demanded it,” said Altiero.

Creating a force for the growth of New Orleans was the objective motivating the Flowers’ support for the building, said Paul Flower, a 1975 Tulane engineering alumnus. “In a way, our gift is self-serving.

We want Tulane and New Orleans to provide more opportunities for our grandchildren and the youth of our city to stay here.”

—Christina Carr

Collaborative Space The four-story, 24,000-square-foot Flower Hall offers an “open and innovative environment” for students and faculty to pursue research projects bridging academia and industry.

The facility opened in December 2012.

benenson plaza On the Newcomb quad side of Newcomb Hall, the new plaza features improved lighting, benches and tables.

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ANGUS LIND A 1966 graduate of Tulane, Angus Lind spent more than three decades as a columnist for The Times-Picayune.

O R L E A N S

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Ya Neighborhood Show

by Angus Lind I grew up on one side of a double shotgun house at Lowerline and Garfield streets, and the closest neighborhood theaters were the National on Magazine near State or the Mecca on Adams between Maple and Hampson.

The easier bike ride for a kid was the Mecca. Go straight up Lowerline, cross St. Charles Avenue, take a left at Hampson, go a few blocks to Adams and before you could say, “That right, Kemo Sabe,” you’d be sitting in the Mecca for an afternoon matinee, waiting for the Lone Ranger and his faithful sidekick, Tonto, to track down the Cavendish gang or fight other bad guys. “Hi-yo, Silver! Away!”

But on a Friday night at “ya neighborhood show,” as people called it, chances were you’d see a 15-to-20-minute serial—action-packed episodes that always left you hanging at the end to make sure you came back to the theater for next week’s chapter. My favorite was Commando Cody, “The Original Rocket Man” (accept no substitutes), who also was known as the “Sky Marshal of the Universe.”

As a 10-year-old, I was duly impressed that C.C. wore a bullet-shaped steel helmet and a leather flying jacket while being chased through the stratosphere. Evil rulers of dying galactic civilizations were always trying to invade the Earth, and it was Commando Cody’s duty to save it from certain destruction, which he did.

Neighborhood theaters (and drive-ins), once so much a part of the cinema scene in New Orleans, were not as fortunate. Of the 110 or so that once served the area, only one remains—the venerable Prytania Theater. It was here, back in November, that the theater operator, 91-year-old Rene Brunet Jr., and noted theater buff and preservationist Jack Stewart unveiled their book, There’s One in Your Neighborhood: The Lost Movie Theaters of New Orleans, a Chronicle of a Bygone Era.

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pass the popcorn The neighborhood theater as a social gathering place is long gone and much lamented.

Some interesting tidbits: •T he well-named Happy Hour theater in the 2000 block of Magazine Street was located next to a saloon.

• The Happy Hour and the Mecca were two of five local reverse-screen theaters. (Unlike most theaters in which you walk in toward the action, these had screens situated over the entrance.)

• In 1954, the Arabi on St. Claude Avenue had an exclusive showing of the Rocky Marciano-Ezzard Charles heavyweight boxing championship.

• The Beacon and the Lakeview were across Harrison Avenue from each other. The Beacon advertised a free parking lot with “a competent attendant in charge.”

• Tulane students and university area residents frequented the Mecca, National and Poplar on Willow near Carrollton and still go to the Prytania.

You don’t have to be a mental giant to figure out what happened to these neighborhood gems. In 1946, Darryl F. Zanuck, the head of 20th Century Fox Studios, dismissed the hypnotic power of television by saying that “people will get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.” But television fared a little better than the studio mogul’s prediction.

Then there was the advent of the multiplescreen theater complexes, where as many a dozen different movies are simultaneously shown—and there are huge parking lots to accommodate lots of cars.

Eventually, the neighborhood theaters would fail, their structures turned into everything from churches and condos to rug shops, warehouses, dance studios and roller skating rinks. Many fell victim to fires and hurricanes. In a bit of irony, the Tivoli on Washington Avenue became a funeral home.

The beauty of neighborhood theaters was that no matter what was showing it was a social outing. You were going to see somebody you knew. Brunet laments the loss of neighborhood theaters and cherishes the Prytania, which he runs with his son Robert and granddaughter Paige.

“A lot of people walk here from their homes,” he said. “Sometimes I’ll get someone telling me, ‘Hey, we know this movie is playing out at the multiplex but we don’t want to drive way out there. If you advertise that you’re going to run this picture, we’ll wait and see it at the Prytania.”

And see some friendly faces, for sure.

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3 Meaningful Gifts

That Cost You Nothing Now

S SOMETIMES THE SIMPLEST THINGS make the biggest difference. Here are a few easy ways you can make a big difference for Tulane University: 1. Bequest. Next time you meet with your attorney to draft, update or supplement your will, consider making a bequest to Tulane. A bequest can be a specific amount, or all or part of what remains after family needs are met. Visit giftplanning.tulane.edu for sample bequest language.

2. Life insurance. Name Tulane a beneficiary of your life insurance policy, or name the university contingent beneficiary and take care of family first.

3. Retirement plan. Same as with the life insurance above — just put Tulane down as a beneficiary of your retirement plan.

Visit giftplanning.tulane.edu today to see what others are doing and get more ideas of ways to support the university you love. Or call us at the number below.

Your Gift. Your Way. Office of Gift Planning • 504-865-5794 • toll free 800-999-0181 Bequests • Gift Annuities • Charitable Trusts • Retirement Plan Gifts • Securities Gifts • Real Estate Gifts • Insurance Gifts

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TUlane M A G A Z I N E

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