Tulanian Winter 2010

Tulanian T H E M AG A Z I N E O F

TULANE UNIVERSITY

WINTER 2010

A Force of Nature

Lisa Jackson is on a quest for good science and green justice as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

IN THE COMPANY OF WOMEN From tea parties to book clubs, for 100 years, the Tulane University Women’s Association has cultivated friendship and society.

WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA? Writer Rich Cohen breaks free with stories of Jewishness and family.

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12 A Force of Nature by Mary Ann Travis EPA administrator Lisa Perez Jackson (E ’83) cleans up air and water and tackles climate change as she champions science within a milieu of politics and policy.

18 In the Company of Women by Elsie Martinez (NC ’48) Tulane University Women’s Association celebrates its centennial.

24 What’s the Big Idea? by Fran Simon Author Rich Cohen (A&S ’90) chases down what it means to be Jewish and the reality of Israel, among other things.

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page 4 President’s Perspective Scott Cowen shares lessons in crisis management.

5 Inside Track • Oliver Houck’s Taking Back Eden • Ocean skeletons reveal climate changes • Eye doctor saves sight of mother and baby • Architecture dean Schwartz most admired • TV watching and aggression in toddlers • Boost for research on cancer genetics • Rogue waves • Art by numbers • Cooling sleeves for high performance • Movers and changers • Newcomb Scholars

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10 Photo Riff King cake decorating competitors take their licks.

30 Giving Back Weatherhead Foundation makes $50 million gift for faculty development.

31 The Classes Read about what your classmates and other Tulane alumni are doing.

40 New Orleans Instant karma, 43 years in the making.

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Swinging hammers and pounding nails is a bonding experience for a group of Newcomb graduates from the classes of 1969 and ’71 during their fourth rebuilding trip to New Orleans—and they don’t plan to stop.

Front cover: Lisa Jackson illustration by Nip Rogers.

Inside front cover: The new McAlister Drive pedestrian mall, McAlister Place, is a gas-fume-free pathway to class. Photo by Paula Burch-Celentano.

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Tulanian Editor Mary Ann Travis mtravis@tulane.edu Features Editor Nick Marinello mr4@tulane.edu “The Classes” Editor Fran Simon fsimon@tulane.edu Contributors Keith Brannon kbrannon@tulane.edu Catherine Freshley ’09 Kathryn Hobgood khobgood@tulane.edu Arthur Nead anead@tulane.edu Maureen King mking2@tulane.edu Art Director Melinda Whatley Viles mviles@tulane.edu University Photographer Paula Burch-Celentano pburch@tulane.edu Production Coordinator and Graphic Designer Sharon Freeman sfree@tulane.edu

betweenThelines|backTalk Earth day and the EPA Forty years ago, the first Earth Day was held. According to the American Heritage magazine, Earth Day 1970, was “one of the most remarkable happenings in the history of democracy.”

Twenty million demonstrators and thousands of schools and local communities participated in grassroots activities that raised awareness about environmental issues.

U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, founder of Earth Day, said, “The American people finally had a forum to express its concern about what was happening to the land, rivers, lakes and air.”

That same year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was established with the mission to protect human health and the environment.

Today, Lisa Perez Jackson, a 1983 Tulane chemical engineering graduate, keeps the spirit of Earth Day alive as she leads the EPA. In “A Force of Nature,” we look at how Jackson is confidently confronting environmental challenges while listening to the concerns of Americans who have as many worries about the environment as ever.

The Tulane University Women’s Association is celebrating its centennial this year.

Longtime TUWA member Elsie Brupbacher Martinez (NC ’48) tells the story of friendship and belonging created by TUWA in “In the Company of Women.”

And in “What’s the Big Idea?” Fran Simon talks to author Rich Cohen (A&S ’90), who has written about celebrities and rock ’n’ roll icons, but whose real passion is exploring Jewish identity and family ties.

Graphic Designer Tracey O’Donnell tbodonn@tulane.edu

President of the University Scott S. Cowen Vice President of University Communications Deborah L. Grant (PHTM ’86) Executive Director of Publications Carol Schlueter (B ’99) cjs@tulane.edu

Tulanian (USPS 017-145) is a quarterly magazine pub lished by the Tulane Office of University Publications. Periodical postage at New Orleans, LA 70113 and additional mailing offices. Send editorial correspondence to: Tulanian, 31 McAlister Drive, Drawer 1, New Orleans, LA 70118-5624, or e-mail tulanian@tulane.edu.

Opinions expressed in Tulanian 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 Tulanian, 31 McAlister Drive, Drawer 1, New Orleans, LA 70118-5624.

Winter 2010/ Vol. 81, No.3

Mary Ann Travis Editor, Tulanian

Beyond 175 Thanks to all Tulanian readers who let us know the people they think deserved mention but were left out of “175 Ways Tulane Has Rocked the World,” in the fall 2009 magazine.

We’re happy to expand the list of accomplishments: • JOHN LAWRENCE SMITH, a chemistry professor, invented the inverted microscope in 1850. Lary G. Walker (G ’79) sent us this information about the added impact the university had on 19th-century microscopy.

Smith was a colleague of John L. Riddell (No. 82 on the “175 Ways”), who invented the binocular microscope in 1852. “Inverted microscopes, incidentally, usually binocular these days, are commonly employed in laboratories worldwide, particularly for the analysis of living cells and organisms in liquid media,” says Walker.

• PHILIP J. KADOWITZ, professor of pharmacology, is the one of the world’s most-cited authors and an influential researcher in the field of xenobiotics, the study of substances not natural to the body. Kadowitz was a collaborator with Tulane Nobel Laureate Dr. Louis J. Ignarro (see No. 93 on the “175 Ways” list.) They identified nitric oxide as the endothelial relaxing factor that regulates the function of blood vessels and platelets.

The American Heart Association recognized Kadowitz’s contributions to the treatment of heart disease in 1985.

backTalk • JAMES W. FISHER, emeritus professor and chair of pharmacology, is the first researcher to find that the perfused kidney produces the hormone erythropoietin. He discovered erythropoietin in the perfusates of isolated perfused kidneys in 1961 and later in 1996, with in situ hybridization techniques, demonstrated that the interstitial cells in the primate kidney are the renal site of production of erythropoietin. Erythropoietin is now used to treat the anemia in most of the more than 500,000 renal dialysis patients in the United States as well as thousands of patients who suffer from anemia associated with cancer chemotherapy. Fisher has received many prizes for his work, including the Experimental Therapeutics Award from the American Society of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.

• Research by MEL LEVY, professor of chemistry at Tulane from 1976 to 2002, is “at least as influential as mine in the extraordinary success story of density functional theory in chemistry,” says John Perdew, professor of physics, who is No. 117 on our list. Levy discovered the “constrained search,” which is a “new and more transparent way to define and think about density functionals, that is the way all of us think about the subject now,” says Perdew.

Levy still occasionally teaches at Tulane as well as at North Carolina A&T University and Duke University. In 2009, Perdew reports, Levy was elected to the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science.

• The maritime law decisions of JUDGE JOHN MINOR WISDOM(L ’29) (No. 124 on the list) also should be noted, says Joseph B. Stahl (A&S ’59, L ’62). The decision by Wisdom in the 1950s’ Offshore Co. v. Robison case “had a gigantic economic impact in the field of maritime death and injury claims,” says Stahl.

Wisdom held that a worker aboard a vessel need not aid in navigation to be considered a seaman. This decision “availed tens of thousands of roughnecks, roustabouts, drillers, toolpushers, cooks, stewards and others”

serving on offshore oil exploration vessels, “in the event of casualty,” to adequate awards, says Stahl. In the late 1980s, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Wisdom’s decision, and he is acknowledged as one of the greatest maritime law judges in the history of the nation.

• HOWARD BAKER (E ’46) was a U.S. senator from Tennessee from 1967 to ’85, serving as Senate Majority Leader (1977–85). He was White House chief of staff for President Ronald Reagan in 1987–89.

• HAM RICHARDSON (A&S ’55) won the NCAA tennis championships in 1953 and ’54. He also led the Tulane tennis team to four undefeated seasons in the Southeastern Conference tennis championships. He was ranked the No. 1 tennis player in the United States in 1956 and 1958 and among the top 10 in the world for eight years. He won the U.S. Open doubles championship in 1958 and played on the U.S. Davis Cup team in 1951–58. In addition to his tennis prowess, Richardson received a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University in Great Britain in 1955.

choral, band and chamber music to a prolific output of piano pieces that are distributed internationally.

• BARTON W.B. JAHNCKE (B ’61) and G. SHELBY FRIEDRICHS JR. (B ’62) won a gold medal for sailing in the 1968 Mexico City Summer Olympics. They sailed in the Dragon Class.

• RICHARD SCHECHNER (G ’62), a theater professor at Tulane in the 1960s, founded the Tulane Drama Review and was a producing director of the Free Southern Theater, a Black Arts Movement theater company, in 1963–65. He’s now professor of performance studies at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.

• SHELLY JOHNSON ERRINGTON (NC ’66) received one of the first “genius grants” from the MacArthur Foundation in 1981. The grants are awarded to people of extraordinary originality and dedication to their creative pursuits.

Errington is now a professor of anthropology at the University of California–Santa Cruz, specializing in visual culture, including documentary film, photography and multimedia.

• PAMELA HAYES ZIEGLER (NC ’66) and MARTHA LEVERITT DAVIES (NC ’65) were featured in Life magazine on March 22, 1963, as members of the Tulane men’s swimming team. Michael G. Goldstein (A&S ’68), who was on the swim team in 1964–68, says, “It is believed that this was the first time women participated in NCAA Division I men’s sports.”

• WILLIAM L. ARMSTRONG (B ’58) was a U.S. senator from Colorado (1979–91) and is now president of Colorado Christian University in Lakewood, Colo.

• QUINT DAVIS (A&S ’70) is producer and director of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and has been since the jazz festival’s first year in 1970.

• EUGENIE ROCHEROLLE (NC ’58) is a leading American composer of piano repertoire, especially in the field of educational music.

Thousands of students have played from her collections. (See page 32 of this issue.)

Rocherolle’s compositions range from

Your letters are always welcome.

E-mail is the best way to reach us: tulanian@tulane.edu.

You can also write us by U.S. mail: Tulanian, University Publications, Suite 219, 200 Broadway, New Orleans, LA 70118.

PHOTO OF HAM RICHARDSON COURTESY OF TULANE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES.

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president’sPerspective Calamity’s lessons The ongoing tragedy occurring in Haiti since the January earthquake should remind us of how privileged and fortunate we are as a nation. The scale of the calamity unfolding in the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere is almost too epic, too dire to comprehend: more than 200,000 of its people are dead and an estimated 1.2 million are still homeless.

Americans are indeed blessed that nothing on the order of this magnitude has shaken our nation. Still, New Orleanians who lived through Hurricane Katrina can identify with what it is to be victims of calamity. We have seen human suffering up close, know what it is like to lose contact with family, friends and co-workers literally overnight. We’ve witnessed our neighborhoods transformed into nightmarish scenes that do not reconcile with our memories of them.

We also have learned how to overcome such seemingly overwhelming adversity. Nearly five years ago, in the initial days after Katrina’s landfall, I can honestly tell you that I was not completely certain that this university or this city would be able to recover. The extent to which we have renewed both city and school may indeed seem miraculous, but it was not magical.

That Tulane University is in as strong a position as it has ever been is because we took deliberate steps to make it happen.

Over the last few years, I’ve often been asked to share my experience during the recovery of Tulane and New Orleans, and it’s something that I am glad to do.

If you would have asked me five years ago the best way to manage crises, I would have said the best way is to anticipate a potential crisis and defuse it before it happens. And while anticipating a budget shortfall or a drop in admission numbers is the best way to mitigate their effect, I don’t know how you are ever fully prepared to deal with a disastrous Category 5 hurricane or an earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale.

Crisis management is something that you have to execute even as the world is coming down around your ears. It’s still difficult to describe

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what it felt like to learn that 80 percent of New Orleans and 70 percent of Tulane University were under water. In such circumstances it’s all too easy to give in to despair. Among the first things I tell people who want to learn about crisis management is that you must focus on the light, not the darkness. At a time of great tragedy you must survive and recover, but you also need to build a better future and try to create opportunity out of tragedy, if at all possible. Dare to dream where you want to be on the other end of the crisis.

Always remember that hope is not a plan, and don’t confuse hope with planning.

Hope infuses the spirit with vitality, but it is not a substitute for careful planning.

In the aftermath of Katrina we learned the value of a careful assessment of our situation. We made every effort to gather all the data that was available. And we took the time to assess the core values of Tulane. Who are we? What is our mission?

Who do we want to be in five years?

During a crisis, you cannot possibly overestimate the value of constant communication, particularly at the outset of the crisis when circumstances are unfolding rapidly and you are barraged by new information. Constant communication reduces people’s anxiety and uncertainty in a time of crisis.

Based on an evaluation of all the information— as well as a good bit of institutional soul-searching—we were ready to act. In a crisis, you must be prepared to triage for results. You must be willing to make tough decisions and stand by them.

Among the most important lessons learned from my experiences over the last five years is, perhaps, one of the greatest lessons I have ever learned. Through my efforts with others in the renewal of Tulane and the rebuilding of New Orleans, I have witnessed the power that resides within communities and the resilience of the human spirit. When people share common goals and work together toward those goals, there is very little that can stop them.

United we stand. It’s so very, very true.

inside Track Who Dat Nation The Tulane Marching Band rolls at the Saints Super Bowl XLIV parade in downtown New Orleans on Feb. 9. The Saints football team beat the Indianapolis Colts, 31-17, in Miami two days earlier. A joyous crowd waited in the cold to catch a glimpse of players and coaches, with the band adding to the festivities. Who dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints? Nobody.

newsNotes | insideTrack environmental activism but set a precedent for ordinary people to protect the environment through legal process.

“Litigation created it and litigation pushed it forward,” says Houck, who portrays the efforts of concerned citizens in Japan, the Philippines, Canada, India, Russia, Greece and Chile in what amounts to a compelling and enthusiastic affirmation of what it means to “do good.”

“Every border it traveled, [the environmental movement] ran into the same philosophical resistance—that courts exist to protect private interests,” says Houck. “Courts are really instruments of the power structure.”

The cases presented in the book, however, were “bombshells” that changed the legal landscape by establishing what Houck calls the “revolutionary idea that citizens can enforce Taking Back Eden by law professor Oliver Houck explores an environmental principle against legal cases that changed the environmental movement. their own governments.”

“The question is,” says Houck, “if you have an insult that affects everybody—bad air, a poisoned Hudson River, or the loss of an iconic national In environmental circles, “Storm King” is shortsymbol like the Taj Mahal—does everybody have hand for a landmark legal battle that served as a a right to sue? And the U.S. broke that barrier like shot heard around the world. It’s also the fitting a sound barrier in 1965 [with “Storm King”]. And title for the first chapter of a new book that tracks when the sound barrier was once penetrated, the confluence of historical, cultural and political everybody went jet.” circumstances integral to the movement of enviThese landmark cases were also the “first ronmental litigation that has gone viral during the wedge” of civil liberties into totalitarian regimes, course of the last 50 years. says Houck.

In Taking Back Eden: Eight Environmental “What was extraordinary was the extent to Cases That Changed the World, law professor and which this rather radical idea was going to environmentalist Oliver Houck tells the stories of regimes abroad that didn’t permit any dissent of citizens across the globe who accessed their counthe government at all.” tries’ courts to defend their environment.

Environmental issues strike a common chord “These are very similar stories in very different among humans, says Houck. dress,” says Houck. “They all followed the same “There is something terribly deep about the pattern—a priceless resource and indomitable idea of water, for example,” says Houck. “Water little group of people who banded together to is more than a commodity. More than something protect it and then turned to the courts.” you buy and sell. It’s more than a necessity It all began in the early 1960s, with a utility for drinking. company’s proposal to build a hydroelectric plant “Human beings,” says Houck, “will find greater at Storm King Mountain, located in the Hudson agreement among themselves in nature than River Highlands just north of New York City. almost anything else.”

When locals wanting to protect the area’s —Nick Marinello natural and cultural heritage joined with comNick Marinello is features editor for Tulanian and mercial and recreational fishermen in seeking writer of the New Orleans column. judicial redress, they not only created a model for

Taking Back Eden

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Climate changes Brad Rosenheim, assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences, is using advanced carbon-dating techniques to look at how ocean currents have changed over time.

The study uses radiocarbon records stored in corals and sponges from several sites in the tropical North Atlantic.

“This project will produce records of radiocarbon in the ocean from decades before we were directly measuring it in the 20th century,” says Rosenheim. “We need longer records to see how ocean currents might be changing under anthropogenic climate change.”

Atmospheric carbon dioxide contains a small amount of radiocarbon and is being continually dissolved into the ocean. Sponges and corals incorporate carbon dioxide as they build their skeletons, and the radiocarbon content of these skeletons is indicative of whether the water in which they formed came from the surface or below. This gives Rosenheim an idea of how past circulation patterns from the surface to the subsurface compare to those that are measured by contemporary oceanographers.

“These stony skeletons have incremental banding, like tree rings, that have been recording the changing levels of radiocarbon in the seas for hundreds of years before we were,” says Rosenheim. “The goal is to look at changes in ocean circulation over the past few centuries of the tropical North Atlantic and how that relates to climate variability.”

—Arthur Nead Arthur Nead is a media specialist in the public relations office.

Brad Rosenheim, assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences, studies how ocean currents have changed over time.

PREVIOUS PAGE, PHOTO BY RYAN RIVET. PHOTO OF PROFESSOR ROSENHEIM BY GEORGE LONG.

insideTrack | newsNotes Baby’s eyesight rescued

Congenital cataracts are uncommon, but there are a few cases reported each year, according to Caldwell, and it is extremely important to treat the Dr. Delmar Caldwell has treated Alexa Feurtado condition as early as possible. When Ily’s mom, since removing double cataracts from her eyes Alexa, had her cataracts removed, doctors did not when she was 5 months old. On a visit to the put lenses in children because their eyes were still Tulane Ophthalmology Clinic in October for her growing, but ophthalmology has made great yearly eye examination, Feurtado, who is now 20, strides since then. brought along her 4-month-old baby, Ily, who “Now, doctors implant lenses in children that was sitting in her lap as Caldwell entered the are projected to have the right shape and size exam room. when they will be about 17 years of age, and the “When I spoke,” says Caldwell, professor and eyes have stopped growing,” Caldwell says. chair of ophthalmology, “Ily focused her attention The operations to Ily’s eyes were a week apart, to my voice, and that is when I immediately noand the bandages were off quickly. ticed she had the same condition as her mother.”

“Ily’s lenses will likely be good for her whole life,” Caldwell says, and the lenses used now are also bifocal, which gives a lot of extra power.

Ily’s father, Frank Fricano Jr., says, “Now Ily focuses a lot more. Before, I noticed that she would try to look at something, even though it was right in front of her face, and she would get frustrated and stop looking. Now she looks at something Dr. Delmar Caldwell examines Ily Fricano after removing congenital and smiles.”

—Arthur Nead cataracts from both her eyes.

Too much TV for tots?

Three-year-old children who are exposed to more TV appear to be at increased risk for exhibiting aggressive behavior, according to a report co-authored by Catherine A. Taylor, assistant professor of community health sciences.

The report in the November 2009 Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine analyzed survey data from 3,128 mothers in 20 U.S. cities to examine the association of television exposure and aggressive behavior in children.

“The study shows that there is an association between the number of hours that the television is on at home and early childhood aggression,” says Taylor. “We also found that the number of hours a child directly spends watching TV

PHOTO OF DR. CALDWELL BY ARTHUR NEAD. ILLUSTRATION BY TRACEY O’DONNELL.

Admirably done

Kenneth Schwartz, dean of the School of Architecture, was named as one of the Most Admired Educators of 2010 by Design Intelligence, the bimonthly publication produced by the Design Futures Council. He was included in a list of 25 role models who exemplify excellence in design education leadership. The Design Futures Council is a nonprofit think tank that explores global trends and ideas concerning design, architecture, engineering and building technology. The publication also noted the architecture school as being a “hidden gem of architecture education.”

is associated with increased aggression.”

The study found about two-thirds of mothers reported that their 3-year-old children watched more than two hours of television per day. On average, there were an additional 5.2 hours of household TV use per day.

Direct child TV exposure and household TV use were both significantly associated with childhood aggression, after accounting for other factors such as parent, family, neighborhood and demographic characteristics.

Taylor conducted the study with lead author Jennifer A. Manganello of State University of New York–Albany.

—Keith Brannon Keith Brannon is assistant director of public relations.

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newsNotes | insideTrack Funding supports cancer genetics research

Rogue waves in the forecast

A program that helps Tulane University attract and retain promising research scientists in cancer genetics is getting an $11.1 million boost in federal funding.

The National Institutes of Health awarded Tulane a five-year, $10.5 million Center of Biomedical Research Excellence grant to fund research projects for five junior faculty members and matches these investigators with senior scientists in cancer genetics who act as mentors, guiding research progress as well as career development.

Tulane also has been awarded a two-year, $600,000 supplemental grant from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to add a sixth junior faculty member and four mentors to the program.

The program’s goal is to grow the pool of researchers in cancer genetics in New Orleans. It emphasizes lab-based research that can translate to applications in cancer treatment.

—Keith Brannon

For eons, sailors have told tales of frighteningly freakish, humongous waves emerging out of the blue. They have described completely calm ocean waters seconds before a “rogue” wave suddenly rises steeply at a height six or more times greater than usual waves.

“The wave appears, it destroys whatever is in its path, and then it’s gone,” says Lev Kaplan, assistant professor of physics at Tulane.

Until the 1990s, scientists had not believed sailors’ stories but neither could they explain mysterious disappearances at sea. Then in 1995, a rogue wave 26 meters in height—as tall as a 10-story building—was measured hitting an oil-drilling platform in the North Sea off the coast of Norway.

Since the first laser measurement that gave definitive scientific evidence that rogue waves exist, satellite data has confirmed that 10 to 20 of these gigantic waves are forming at any moment around the world.

Ocean waves behave similarly to electron waves and microwaves, and Kaplan and his collaborators have discovered that random, chaotic waves of all types can form patterns.

Beauty in numbers

‘Mixing Forks’ is computational art by Katharine Hamlington, a doctoral student in biomedical engineering. The image depicts her work developing a portable antibody sensor to detect environmental contaminants.

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Math, science and art joined hands in a series of images produced by faculty, postdoctoral researchers and students at the Center for Computational Science at Tulane.

In December, the center held its second annual “Computational Art Show,” comprising graphic expressions of the work done by the researchers.

“Computer codes give you back a bunch of numbers,” says Ricardo Cortez, professor of mathematics and director of the center. “And you want to visualize what’s happening. … You can’t do that by looking at numbers or data. You have to look at figures or pictures.”

In creating the images displayed in the show, the researchers were at liberty to add aesthetic elements, says Cortez.

The computational art ranged from having the texture of a puzzle to looking like a landscape or something more abstract. “If you understand the

The patterns result from “focusing events” in which energy is compressed like a lens focusing light. For ocean waves, currents are the source of focusing energy.

Kaplan’s long-term goal is to calculate the probability of where and when rogue waves will form.

A probability warning for a rogue wave would be similar to the “cones of probability” used in tornado and hurricane forecasting.

“What we want to be able to do is to tell people, these are the parts of the ocean that will be particularly dangerous or more dangerous than usual over the next 12, 24 or 48 hours,” Kaplan says.

“People would be able to use that information.”

—Mary Ann Travis Mary Ann Travis is editor of Tulanian.

Focused patterns in ocean currents are the energy source for rogue waves, says assistant professor of physics Lev Kaplan.

science, great,” says Cortez. If not, the image is still intriguing and ultimately pleasing.

“I think it’s freeing for scientists because for once you don’t have to be accurate scientifically,” Cortez says.

“If my aim is to produce an appealing picture, I can do that.”

—Nick Marinello

Computational scientist Hideki Fujioka visually represents his research in ‘Distortion of Lung Alveoil Around Surfactant-deficient Acinus.’

MATHEMATICAL ILLUSTRATIONS PROVIDED BY THE CENTER FOR COMPUTATIONAL SCIENCE. WAVE GRAPH BY LEV KAPLAN.

insideTrack | newsNotes Controlling body temperature may fight fatigue In a series of experiments, students at the Center for Anatomical and Movement Sciences are dressing athletes and surgeons in “cooling sleeves” to control body temperature during physical exertion. Early results indicate that such temperature control delays the onset of fatigue.

Working under center director Mic Dancisak, a senior professor of practice in the School of Science and Engineering, the students are using liquid cooling/warming garments to apply cold or heat to specific areas of the body and then recording the time it takes muscles to reach functional fatigue.

Dancisak’s team has worked with women volleyball players and male baseball pitchers to determine how temperature control affected the athletes’ performances. They also are looking at how a cooling sleeve may stave off fatigue in a surgeon’s arms during surgery.

“We noticed that there was about a 30 percent increase in maintenance of power with the volleyball players when they used the sleeves,” said Dancisak. “With the pitchers, we looked at pitching speed. Without the sleeve, their fastball declined. But when they wore the sleeve in between innings, they were able to maintain their fastball speed through seven innings. One pitcher actually increased his speed.”

—Kathryn Hobgood Kathryn Hobgood is assistant director of public relations and web communications.

Mic Dancisak, director of the Center for Anatomical and Movement Sciences, is conducting experiments with liquid cooling/warming garments designed to delay muscle fatigue.

Tea project places first A Tulane University student team won the “Movers & Changers” competition, a nationwide search for young social entrepreneurs that aired in several episodes on mtvU, a division of MTV Networks targeted to college students.

Dubbed “WET Tea,” the winning team consisted of Tulane public health major Shea Kathryne Shelton and business majors Jay Zhao and Nic LaGatta. Their business plan envisions buying tea grown in China at fair trade prices.

The tea will be prepared in a traditional, organic and environmentally friendly way and then sold at Tulane and throughout New Orleans.

Part of the profits will go to planting cypress trees in the wetlands and raising awareness of Louisiana’s diminishing coast. As winners, “WET Tea” received a check for $25,000 in startup funds.

One of two runners-up was another Tulane team, this one consisting of medical student William Kethman and law student Stephanie Roberts, who proposed to produce SafeSnip, a small, disposable plastic clamp that cuts, seals and disinfects an umbilical cord in one step.

Kethman and Roberts invented the device with Tulane science and engineering graduates Bryan Molter and Mark Young, as well as David Rice, associate professor of biomedical engineering.

The SafeSnip invention impressed the judges so much that they added $15,000 in startup money from their own pockets to the initial prize of $5,000.

—Carol J. Schlueter Carol J. Schlueter is executive director of university publications.

Newcomb Scholars debut The H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College Institute introduced its first class of Newcomb Scholars in the fall. The 20 first-year women students have already made important commitments for the rest of their college careers at Tulane, including agreeing to fulfill a junior-year service internship and presenting their own research at a campus conference during their senior year.

The idea of the program is to create a graduate program–like experience for the undergraduate students.

Gisele Calderon, a biomedical engineering major, expects to study tissue engineering. “I am fascinated by technology that saves lives. Manipulating polymers to form plastics for medical purposes seems unreal and magical,” she says.

For Taylor Geiger, who is studying marketing and international development, the possibility to impact people’s lives lies in consumer-behavior research.

“I’m curious as to what it would take to motivate people to change their spending habits to evoke social change.”

—Catherine Freshley Catherine Freshley (’09) is a contributor to Tulanian.

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First-year students Peter Bull, Montgomery Taylor, Justin McCance and Raphael Rosalin give thumbs-up for their portion of a 400-foot-long king cake that they decorated on their way to class. They had slathered icing and sprinkles on the cake as participants in a decorating competition held on the Lavin-Bernick Center quad a few days before Mardi Gras.

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By Mary Ann Travis • s by Nip Rogers n o i t a I llust r If she were a superhero, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson would use her powers to save the planet. As a mere mortal, she has to do it the hard way.

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Lisa Perez Jackson jokes that she wishes she had her own action figure.

Sometimes, she says, she’s envious when sharing a stage with icons like California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger or actor and environmentalist Harrison Ford, who have been immortalized as the Terminator and Star Wars’ Han Solo, respectively.

A Lisa Jackson superhero might use her incredible strength and invisible rays to clean air and water, rid the land of pollution, slow down climate change, switch America to clean energy, regulate chemicals and toxins and fight for all Americans to have safe and healthy places to live and work.

A fantasy? Only the part about super powers.

The rest of the scenario fits with the actions Jackson has taken in reality as administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

A 1983 summa cum laude graduate (the top student in the class) in chemical engineering at Tulane, Jackson has headed the EPA since January 2009.

Jackson told the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco in September, the day before Ford introduced her to speak at Schwarzenegger’s climate summit, that her top priorities are “confronting climate change and getting America running on clean energy, protecting and cleaning up our air and water, updating our country’s regulations and laws on chemicals and toxins, and expanding the conversation on environmentalism.”

An ambitious agenda? Yes. But if anyone is prepared to lead the 40-year-old EPA, it is Lisa Jackson, most observers agree. She’s equipped to enter a fray comprising environmental, business, economic, scientific and political interests.

After she graduated from Tulane, Jackson earned a master’s degree from Princeton University and then spent 16 years in the trenches of the EPA. Before President Barack Obama nominated her to lead the EPA, Jackson was head of New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection.

“I strive to be a person on the front line serving my community,” said Jackson, who was pulled toward public service by the example of her father, a mailman in New Orleans, whose

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own super powers were subtle. He knew each and every person on his French Quarter route, says Jackson. And, in the days before automatic deposits, he made sure that Social Security checks got delivered to the elderly on time because he knew how much they depended on them.

carrots and sticks “The fundamental mission of the EPA is the protection of the basic environment and the human environment,” says Mark Davis, a senior research fellow at Tulane Law School and director of the Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy.

That mission transcends vested interests and state boundaries. But it doesn’t give the agency overwhelming power, says Davis, who has worked with the EPA for years.

There’s a tendency for people to think that the EPA can “wave wands,” says Davis, “and identify pollution or environmental problems and step in and make good things happen.”

But that’s not the way it works, says Davis.

“It’s a long, hard road. The EPA has always found itself sailing in tough political waters.

And I don’t think that’s a surprise to Lisa Jackson. I don’t think she’d have taken the job if she didn’t understand that.”

While the EPA has a comprehensive, holistic mission, it doesn’t have comprehensive authority. “It can’t do all the things by itself.”

It’s the EPA’s job to figure out what environmental risks exist and how to proceed, how to do something about them. It’s always a “push me—pull you” situation in environmental issues, says Davis.

“The EPA is actually a big bundle of carrots and sticks,” he says. “There are a lot of things they can do as incentives. And they have some big sticks that, when they reach for them, can make a difference.”

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climate change To date, no action by Lisa Jackson’s EPA has stirred up more controversy than last December’s “endangerment finding” on greenhouse gases. In that report, the EPA formally declared that carbon dioxide and other gases pose a threat to public health and welfare. In doing so, the EPA staked out its authority to regulate these emissions.

“All the wheels are in motion,” said a spokesperson for the Edison Electric Institute, in response to the EPA finding. “One way or another, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will be regulated.”

In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the EPA to determine whether heat-trapping gases harmed the environment and public health.

If greenhouse gases were a danger as air pollutants, then the court said that under the 1970 Clean Air Act, the EPA was obligated to regulate them.

When Jackson became head of the EPA, in response to the Supreme Court ruling, she set in motion a review of greenhouse gases and their effect on climate change. During a 60-day comment period, scientists addressing the issue made more than 400,000 posts.

Far and away, scientists agreed that climate change is linked to increases in the concentration of greenhouse gases. The six identified greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride. As more of these gases have been released through human activity, atmospheric temperatures and sea levels have risen.

“The overwhelming amounts of scientific study show that the threat is real,” said Jackson, when she announced the endangerment finding at EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C. Look at the evidence, she said. “Polar ice caps crumbling into the oceans, changing migratory patterns of animals and broader ranges for deadly diseases, historic droughts, more powerful storms, and disappearing coastlines.”

She added, “We know that skeptics have and will continue to try to sow doubts about the science.”

But she drew her line in the sand for science.

“It’s time that we let the science speak for itself.”

As a result of the endangerment finding, in 2011, for the first time, industries such as oil refineries, coal-generated power plants, chemical plants and other facilities that generate large amounts of greenhouse emissions will be required to use the best pollution-reducing equipment available when they plan to construct or expand.

EPA had already proposed rules in October to limit greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles in a “clean cars program.”

Within days after the greenhouse gas endangerment finding was announced, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, the state’s two U.S. Senators, the governor and other state agencies, protested the EPA finding, saying it will cause economic hardship and calling on the EPA to wait for the U.S. Congress to act on regulating the greenhouse gases before enacting its own policies.

Jackson has responded that she’s all for Congress passing laws controlling the gases, but the EPA endangerment finding “echoed what many scientists, policymakers and concerned citizens have said for years: there are no more excuses for delay.”

Kryptonite If there is kryptonite lying in wait to disrupt Jackson’s efforts, it’s the public’s demand for certainty in regard to the dangers of climate change.

James Mackin, Tulane professor of communication, says that because the actual scientific argument for the dangers posed by climate change is complex and difficult to explain, it’s tempting to simplify the explanation. And, “when it is simplified, it becomes open to attack as poor science,” he says.

“Many members of the public view true science as the achievement of certainty,” says Mackin. “The current state of research does not even approach certainty.”

Sooner or later, all superheroes must deal with a short and quickly burning fuse. Lisa Jackson, says Mackin, may be running out of time to convince enough people to take seriously the threats of climate change. The public’s attention to the crisis may be swiftly moving to the next worst thing.

“People are asking whether we can afford to address this ‘hypothetical problem’ [climate change] in this economic crisis,” says Mackin.

Science Rules “Science must be the backbone of what EPA does,” Jackson told the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee during her confirmation hearing way back in January 2009.

“If I am confirmed, I will administer with science as my guide,” she promised.

There’s no argument that science is the baseline from which Jackson operates, says Dana Zartner, Tulane assistant professor of political science. Zartner has closely watched Jackson at the helm of the EPA. Science is always changing, however, and it’s impossible to be 100 percent certain of anything. “But the catastrophe that could ensue [in regard to greenhouse gas emission and global climate change] if we don’t do something is potentially great enough that we should do something,” says Zartner. It’s the precautionary principle, or better to be safe than sorry.

Zartner says that she has faith in Jackson, in her abilities as a communicator to make people aware of climate change issues and the need for action.

“It strikes me that she’s not afraid to address the tough challenges,” Zartner adds.

That Jackson adheres to the principles of science is no surprise to professors who taught her when she was a Tulane student.

“Lisa is as bright an engineer and scientist as you can get,” says Kyriakos Papadopoulos, professor of chemical engineering. “Nobody can fool her technically. If in her investigation of the science, she found something contrary to what her premise was or her hypothesis was, I have no doubt she would come up and say it.”

Papadopoulos is certain that she’s done her homework, because she always did. He taught her during his first semester at Tulane, when Jackson was a junior and already stood out as a “big brain.”

“Absolutely, I believe that she has the integrity to say what she believes through her investigations,” says Papadopoulos. “I trust that she has the highest—not only intellect that you would expect—but also the highest ethical standards.”

Vijay John, professor and chair of chemical and biomolecular engineering, also taught Jackson during his first year at Tulane. She was a senior then, and he remembers her as a “superb” student.

Jackson is a “terrific leader,” says John. She has stayed in touch with Tulane and serves on the chemical engineering department’s board of advisers.

When Jackson visited Tulane in November to speak at the John J. Witmeyer III Dean’s Colloquium, sponsored by Newcomb-Tulane College, John says he saw again the same characteristics he’s observed over the years— Jackson’s determination along with humility and an unassuming air.

“There’s a sense of integrity that comes out when you talk to her,” John says.

Jackson’s assertion that every American has the right to clean water and clean air is powerful to John. “I completely agree with that.”

Such necessities should be the right of everyone, not just a privilege for some, he says.

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Environmental justice As the first African American to lead the EPA, Jackson has said, “I have a special obligation to change the face of environmentalism.”

She tells audiences that her own perspective on the environment has been shaped by her experience as the mother of two boys. She and her husband, Kenny Jackson, have suffered many sleepless nights comforting their youngest son through asthma attacks.

Saving owls is great, says Jackson. But she points to these facts: African Americans die from asthma twice as often as whites and have higher cancer mortality rates than any other group.

Nearly 30 million Latinos—72 percent of the U.S. Latino population—live in places that don’t meet U.S. air pollution standards. Native American homes lack clean water at almost 10 times the national rate.

“These are not the voices driving the environmental debate in our country,” says Jackson.

But she is working to change that.

Nitty gritty When Lisa Jackson was in New Orleans in November, she also addressed the EPA Brownfields Conference.

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Brownfields are former industrial sites that have the potential to be cleaned up and put to good, safe use. Often brownfields are places where factories for furniture or textiles or paint once spewed out hazardous fumes or leached toxic stuff into the soil.

Having been abandoned, they leave behind eyesores and blight. Brownfields dot urban areas, small towns and rural areas, a legacy of America’s manufacturing past. They are the bread-and-butter work of the EPA. “Brownfields cleanups give people hope,” Jackson told the hundreds of conference participants, mostly EPA staffers and subcontractors, gathered in the New Orleans Morial Convention Center.

“This program brings hope to places where it has been in short supply before. Struggling auto communities have hope that old industrial centers can be restored and bring jobs back to those communities. Inner city neighborhoods have hope that polluted lots can be transformed into parks or shops. People across the nation have hope that revitalization is possible with the right investments and the right partnerships.”

It was a classic Jackson speech. Her melodious voice carried throughout the cavernous conference hall, reaching the receptive ears of the audience of mostly engineers and environmentalists, who responded with a standing ovation.

“She’s my hero,” said Lori Kroll, a community resource specialist with Draper Aden

Associates, an engineering, surveying and environmental services firm in Blacksburg, Va., “because of the energy she brings to the agency.

And she’s communicative.”

The lilt in Jackson’s voice is pleasing to listen to and easily traced to her New Orleans roots.

She gave a shout-out to the city during what was her first trip here since she became EPA administrator. “I am humbled to be in this great city,” she said. “A city that nurtured me. A city that fed my love for the wonders of nature and mysteries of science. A city that was a community and gave me and my family opportunities to learn, to grow and to achieve.”

Road home Like all New Orleanians, Jackson has her Katrina story.

Visiting her mother right before the storm in August 2005, she drove her and other family members to safety. Her mother’s house in the Pontchartrain Park neighborhood, where Jackson lived during high school and stopped by often during her college years, had water up to its rooftop in the flood.

Her mother, Marie, has never returned to live in the house. She sold it to the Road Home, the state agency created after the storm to help homeowners rebuild or recover by buying up flooded property.

During her November trip, Jackson made a brief swing by the house, which still had its Katrina National Guard markings. The markings, spray-painted in Day-Glo colors in the weeks after the storm, indicate when the house was searched and whether any bodies were found.

Although her mother lost all her possessions, she was lucky, says Jackson. And she just got other good news. The house is going to be torn down, and on the same lot, a raised, green and sustainable house will be built for another family to buy and move into.

Place matters The flooding after the storm, as most everyone knows by now, resulted from manmade engineering failures of levees that were supposed to protect the city.

Engineering failed people in another way, too. For decades, oil and gas engineers have crisscrossed marshes and wetlands to extract the valuable stuff on which America runs. And the construction of these pipelines has contributed to the destabilization of the area’s

natural defenses against storm surge.

The environmental nightmare of Katrina was a jolt to Jackson. In moments of despair after the storm, she says she briefly thought of giving up her environmental work to “go work on something important.”

She soon realized, however, that “the long-term health of this place is all about environment.”

If the storm bolstered Jackson’s commitment to the environment, it initiated it in others.

Once Jackson’s mother learned that restored wetlands could be a bulwark against future hurricane damage, it was as if a lightbulb went on.

“Today she can make as compelling an argument as any wetlands expert I’ve met about the need to protect and preserve wetlands,” says Jackson.

Her mother’s transformation into an environmentalist has been an awakening for Jackson.

She says it has helped her understand the importance of environmentalism to every community.

When Jackson toured the Lower Ninth Ward and Pontchartrain Park in New Orleans in November, neighbors collared her.

Displaced residents said to her, “I need a place to live, I want to move back, but I want to make sure before I move my kids or grandkids in that it’s safe.”

Others said, “They’re rebuilding the school, what does that mean for me in terms of the soil or the building? How about the mold?”

The intensity and passion around sustainability issues that she encounters in community members makes Jackson “happy,” she says.

That they tell her how important it is for them to rebuild, using green rebuilding techniques is “heavy stuff for somebody in my world.”

It is “like red meat for me,” she says.

Community members all over the country connect with her and are comfortable approaching her, not just in New Orleans.

She listens and hears their voices, she says.

“At the end of the day, it all comes down to where you’re from,” says Jackson. “Most environmentalism is about a place. People fight for something that is happening at home or a thing they care about, maybe a treasured landscape or water body. Sometimes people are motivated by concerns for their health.”

A

defini ng moment

After her Tulane talk, Jackson sat for a moment in the sculpture garden outside of Woldenberg Art Center next to a gurgling fountain, reflecting on this moment in history.

“I actually think this is a defining moment for the environmental movement. I think for this generation of young people, they elected a president, and I think that they are feeling a sense of political power and a sense of movement that I hope they hang on to and that translates into action,” she said.

A wonder woman? Maybe. A force of nature?

Certainly. In either case, Jackson is ready to seize the moment, eager to lead a new generation of environmentalists, tree huggers and all.

Mary Ann Travis is the editor of Tulanian.

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APRIL BRAYFIELD PHOTO BY PAULA BURCH-CELENTANO.

I

n a p om C • ome W• the

of

For a century, the Tulane University Women ’s Association has offered support and co mpanionship while creating lifelong frien dships.

By Elsie Brupbacher Martin ez, NC ’48 Images courtesy Tulane Un iversity Archives

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It was in spring 1910 that Mrs. Irving Page 18, Row 1: Mother-Daughter Valentine Tea, 1972; Newcomers Tea, 1942; “Crafty Lady” April Brayfield, 2009. Row 2: 40th Anniversary Tea, 1950; Mother-Daughter Valentine Tea, 1978; Mother-Daughter Valentine Tea, 1970. Row 3: The family of John R. Hubbard, dean of Newcomb College, graces the society section of the Times-Picayune’s Easter edition, 1958; Fall coffee hosted by TUWA and Mrs. Lucy Hackney, wife of President Sheldon Hackney, 1975. Row 4: No. 2 Audubon Place, 2009; Easter egg hunt with member Mrs. Robert Barnes as the bunny, 1962; Newcomers Tea hostess greeting attendees, 1966.

Page 19, Row 1: Tulane Cooks, a cookbook to celebrate 75 years of TUWA, is published,1984; Christmas Tea, 1941; Luncheon welcoming Margaret Kelly, wife of Tulane President Eamon Kelly, 1981. Row 2: Newcomers Tea, 1967; Anna Many, dean of Newcomb College (right) visits with Mrs. Ernest Riedel during a tea, 1941. Row 3: Spring Garden and Home Tour, 1984; Fiesta Christmas Party at the Navy ROTC Building, 1983. Row 4: MotherDaughter Valentine Tea, 1980; Christmas Tea, 1941; Spring Luncheon at Masson’s restaurant, 1978.

Above: The invitation that started it all. During WWI, the women would bring their knitting to make sweaters for the soldiers.

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Hardesty, a newly arrived Tulane faculty wife, mentioned to some other faculty wives the idea of forming a women’s club at Tulane so they could get to know one another better. The idea caught on and the women set to work to establish the Tulane Teas Committee, forerunner of the Tulane University Women’s Association.

It took a while to set things in motion, but by December the fledgling group was ready to launch its first event, a tea party held in Gibson Hall at 4 p.m. so that the members’ husbands as well as women faculty could join the social when the day’s classes were completed. The event was a success, so much so, that the members of the Teas Committee decided to have a tea every month.

Newspaper accounts of the socials describe them as “brilliant events” and “most attractive features of the season.” Society editors said they were “delightful” and “exceedingly cordial,” and one columnist wrote, “the guests represent the distinguished and intellectual side of the city’s social life.”

While these early days of the women’s club were largely social in nature, the members guided it to have a broader focus with the start of

World War I. Founding member Selina Bres Gregory organized a Red Cross chapter, and members devoted themselves to rolling bandages and knitting sweaters for servicemen.

As the university expanded and diversified after the war so did the Teas Committee. In addition to socials it now sponsored lectures, book reviews and children’s parties, as well as evenings of bridge and ballroom dancing. Later, during the 1940s, activity groups were organized in response to the broadening interests of the increasing membership. Today, a member has the opportunity to join a book club, a bridge group, a foreign language class, a crafts group, or Women in Action, a luncheon speakers series.

The evolution of the organization’s name has reflected this growth. During the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, members referred to the organization as the Tea Club. In 1949, they changed the name to the Tulane University Club. In 1960, with the formal adoption of articles of association, the group briefly took the name Women of Tulane University. Since 1963, however, it has been known as the Tulane University Women’s Association.

Welcome newcomers One of the primary goals of TUWA (as it is referred to by members) is to welcome both women faculty and the wives of faculty to the university. The Newcomers Committee that is charged with this mission has by all accounts been highly successful, and I for one can testify to this.

Upon arriving on campus way back in 1955 as a new engineering school wife, I naturally knew nothing about a women’s association. One afternoon, I was invited by the wife of another member of the engineering faculty to be her fourth in a bridge game. There were two other engineering wives, and at one point, they all began talking about the Tulane University Club’s fall coffee.

I asked about the organization, and they were astonished that I was not already a member. In short order they made arrangements to take me to the coffee, introduce me to the officers and make sure I signed on as a member. I have been one ever since, being active in the Newcomers Committee and the Loan Closet, which offers furnishings to graduate students, as well as serving on the board and as TUWA president in 1976.

Margaret Kelly, wife of former Tulane president Eamon Kelly, vividly remembers the welcome they received from the members of TUWA. The couple and four teenaged sons arrived in New Orleans in August 1979, after Eamon accepted a position as executive vice president.

The university initially placed the family in temporary housing on Audubon Street.

“When we arrived, I found that the women of TUWA had provided the furnishings we needed from the Loan Closet,” recalls Kelly, who is still an active member in the organization. “TUWA’s Newcomers Committee provided all the information we needed to settle our family in the city—schools, doctors, churches,

grocery stores, restaurants and the Plum Street Snowball Stand. It was among those women, the spouses of faculty and staff, I found lasting friends.”

Barbara Knill, former president of TUWA and adviser to the newcomers group, remembers when she and her husband arrived on campus in 1963.

“I was pregnant—seven months along —with our third child,” says Knill. “It was hot and sticky and the city of New Orleans was full of mosquitoes. I was totally miserable.”

Within a few months, however, she was invited to join TUWA. “I suddenly found young mothers to whom I could relate and older women who took me under their wings,” says Knill. “My whole outlook on living in New Orleans changed. I was able to arrange play dates, find grocery stores, learn about schools and just pick up the phone and call a friend. All these years later many of these women are still dear to our whole family.”

As with many women in the Tulane community, Knill’s life was enriched in myriad ways by TUWA. “I was introduced to volunteer possibilities, read books I probably never would have picked up if it weren’t for the TUWA book group, met people from all over the university and visited interesting areas on trips arranged by TUWA.”

The TUWA Loan Closet was noted in the Times-Picayune in 1975.The Newcomers Teas provide attendees with information on all the activities and committees that TUWA offers.

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Generosity and creativity April Brayfield, associate professor of sociology, has been a member to the organization since her arrival at Tulane in 1992 and has twice served on its governing board.

“To me, TUWA is a community of smart, civic-minded women from a variety of backgrounds who enjoy lively conversation and doing good deeds for the university and New Orleans,” says Brayfield, who adds that she especially treasures the camaraderie of two activity groups—the Evening Book Group (founded by Margaret Kelly in 1986) and Crafty Ladies, the arts and crafts group that Brayfield founded with Marjorie Weiner and Gracibel Rickerfor in the spring before Hurricane Katrina.

“Our original objective was to make a few shawls for Tulane Cancer Center patients,” says Brayfield. “Although our meetings were delayed until the spring of 2006 because of Katrina, we collected over 130 scarves and shawls handcrafted by our members, parents of Tulane students, and friends across the United States.”

The group has continued this tradition—the Stitches of Hope project—by donating knitted and crocheted scarves, hats and baby blankets to various local women’s shelters every year.

“I love being surrounded by the generosity and creativity of my TUWA friends,” says Brayfield.

Faculty wife Margie Scheuermann, a former president of TUWA, says she is grateful for TUWA’s widespread membership.

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“TUWA was my way to meet the faculty wives whose husbands worked in other areas of the university,” Scheuermann says. “If I hadn’t been in TUWA, I wouldn’t have made the wonderful friends I have, many from departments other than the architecture school where my husband taught.”

Pam Rogers, another faculty wife and former TUWA president, remembers starting the Creative Arts Program for children. Rogers, who came to Tulane with husband Jim (who taught in the math department) more than 40 years ago, was concerned that young faculty members couldn’t afford to provide enriching classes for their children.

“I suggested that we sponsor such a program and hire for a small fee young artists to teach,” Rogers says. “That is how the Creative Arts Program began. It lasted for about 8 to10 years and I am very proud of this small service to the university.”

Each member of TUWA has a similar fond and grateful memory of her association with the organization. And, surely, all hope that the next hundred years will prove as rewarding and enjoyable for its future members.

Top left: Mrs. Bernard Lehmann volunteers at the Orleans Parish Prison library, 1967.

Right: The current TUWA book club meets once a month in the Newcomb Faculty Lounge for lively, enlightening and often funny book discussions. Below: Barbara Knill and Elsie Martinez at a 1976 luncheon.

Elsie Martinez is co-author with Margaret LeCorgne of Uptown/ Downtown:Growing up in New Orleans.

She also has co-authored with Colette Stelly a forthcoming biography of Henriette Delisle, an African American New Orleans nun who has been nominated for sainthood in the Catholic church.

TUWA BOOK CLUB PHOTOS BY RYAN RIVET.

100th HAPPY

BIRTHDAY T O TUWA Members of the Tulane University Women’s Association will be celebrating their centennial with several events during the year, including a fireboat tour of the port of New Orleans and a forum featuring the university’s new Disaster Resilience Leadership Academy. The organization got a head start on observing its anniversary in the fall, taking part in the halftime program at a Tulane football game and sharing in the 100th anniversary celebration of the Newcomb Department of Music. This spring, members will have a special celebration of their own at their annual luncheon on April 17, 2010. There will be a musical/dramatic presentation by the music department as well as reminiscences from older members.

Through the years and under various names, the Tulane University Women’s Association has involved itself in university life, from sponsoring Easter egg hunts and Carnival parties to father-son dinners and themed parties.

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IN some form or fashion, Rich Cohen’s

father, Herb, turns up in all of his books.

He embodies Cohen’s favorite character: the Jew from the neighborhood who makes something of himself through ingenuity, savvy and sheer chutzpah.

And he’s a great storyteller.

Like many American Jews, Rich Cohen (A&S ’90) was born into a storytelling family.

“He was a somewhat sickly child, small in stature, yet big in ideas. …” writes Herb Cohen on his son’s website.

“I have good ideas,” confirms Rich.

On the way to becoming a best-selling author, Cohen has interviewed dozens of celebrities for articles in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair and other publications. What guy wouldn’t want to spend a couple of days hanging out with Angelina Jolie?

But he quickly tosses that experience off with a shrug. He is more interested in talking about film producer Jerry Weintraub, the subject of his next book that will be out in the spring.

“Jerry Weintraub … is a great storyteller— he’s this as much as he’s anything else. He takes time telling stories, too. He does not rush to the punch line or ingratiate or titillate, but just tells, and tells,” Cohen wrote in a Vanity Fair article about Weintraub, who produced Oh, God!, Diner, The Karate Kid as well as Ocean’s Eleven and its two sequels. “Put all his stories together and what you get is one story, which is the story of how Jerry Weintraub, the good-looking kid out of the Bronx, went from nothing to something—how he lived, and lived, and lived.”

Cohen is fascinated by self-made guys like Herb Cohen and Jerry Weintraub.

As for himself, he thinks, and thinks. Cohen’s latest book, Israel Is Real (2009), a fresh take on the history of Israel and Zionism, is subtitled An Obsessive Quest to Understand the Jewish Nation and Its History. Its genesis can be traced back to 1977, when Cohen’s friend returned from a trip to the Holy Land wearing a T-shirt

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emblazoned with “Israel Is Real.” For the next several decades, ideas about the history of Zionism churned in Cohen’s head.

“That’s what I do when I’m not talking,” he quips.

Sometimes he comes up with crazy ideas that sell. Like the short piece he wrote for Vanity Fair about Hitler’s mustache after wearing the “toothbrush” himself for a while.

writing job at the New York Observer and then got a contract to write 12 stories for Rolling Stone. He developed rapport with Jann Wenner, co-founder and publisher of the magazine. He wrote about the band, the Rolling Stones. Twice.

He wrote continuously for the magazine until his first book, Tough Jews (1999), about Jewish gangsters, was published when he was 30.

CHUTZPAH

After Cohen graduated from Tulane with a degree in history, his father encouraged him to go to graduate school or law school. But Herb’s third child had other ideas. He applied for jobs at several magazines.

“It seems to me that if you want to do something, you should do it, not do something near it,” Cohen says. “I don’t want to be a lawyer involved with writers. I want to be a writer.”

He got a nibble from The New Yorker. He didn’t know anybody there, but finagled an interview for a position in the typing pool, a breeding ground for wannabe writers. When faced with the typing test, Cohen sat there, looking at the keyboard. Then the woman administering the test asked him what he was doing.

“I said, ‘I don’t know how to type.’ She said, ‘Why did you let me give you this test? What did you think was going to happen?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, I thought maybe it’d just come to me? I’ve heard of stuff happening like that … maybe that would happen to me.’”

Cohen begins to sound like a stand-up comedian. Once he gets started on a story he’ll keep going.

The New Yorker didn’t hire him as a typist, but he got a job as a messenger, a position that each day brought him into the offices of great writers.

He also sat at the reception desk, reading from the magazine’s vast catalog of stories.

Soon Cohen was pitching ideas and writing short pieces for the “Talk of the Town” section.

He learned quickly that you get published on the strength of your ideas.

From The New Yorker he moved to a full-time

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FREEDOM

Now, Cohen has the freedom to pursue topics that interest him, and his books are all about becoming free in some way.

“It’s all like one big book,” Cohen says.

“They’re all part of one larger work that I’m trying to figure out what it is and see the shape of it. I think it’s about, first of all, really good stories. And language. Yet every book is about being free.”

His book Tough Jews, he says, “is about Jewish stereotypes and being free from how they constrain you and make you feel like you’re not making your own choices.”

Freedom is about being able to make choices.

The Avengers (2001) is a story about a member

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of his own family—a cousin who, along with other Nazi resistance fighters during the Holocaust, chose to act courageously rather than to die trapped in a concentration camp.

In Machers and Rockers: Chess Records and the Business of Rock & Roll (2004), Cohen writes about Leonard Chess, a larger-than-life, colorful figure who brought the music of Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry out of the South and to the rest of America. The book, he says, was an experiment in writing and a warm-up for Sweet and Low: A Family Story (2006), the tale of his grandfather’s invention of the sugar substitute in the little pink packet. In both books, Cohen weaves storylines that exist in both past and present.

Lake Effect (2007) is Cohen’s tender memoir of growing up in the Midwest (ironically, in a town named Libertyville, Ill.) with his best friend, Jamie Drew, who was from a Greek (non-Jewish) background. In it, Cohen recounts how the bond of friendship remained strong even despite the choices that would separate them. After high school, Cohen headed south to Tulane while Jamie went to the University of Kansas.

Cohen says the book was about his own process of trying to get free from his past. He says that most constraints on our lives are selfimposed. If you think that you aren’t free, you convince yourself you don’t have options.

“These thoughts are all invented by you,” Cohen says. “They aren’t real.”

FAMILY SECRETS

In writing Sweet and Low, Cohen kept it real. The good and the bad. In the book, Cohen details how his Grandpa Ben rose from humble beginnings in a Brooklyn deli to invent the sugar packet and then the artificial sweetener. But there’s also a corporate scandal, FBI raid, criminal prosecution, family feud and disinheritance from the family fortune.

“Being disinherited set me free to write the book,” says Cohen. “I feel that when you take away everything else from a person, all they’re left with is the story.”

He interviewed as many family members as would talk to him—hearing the story from as many perspectives as he could. Then, imagining that they were long-dead, historical figures, he wove the saga.

In much the same way, Cohen takes on the family secrets of the Jewish people in Israel Is Real. There’s Theodor Herzl, the revered “father of Zionism,” who built his entire life around the idea of a Jewish homeland in a place he hadn’t seen. Who, in fact, asserts Cohen, neither originated the idea nor cared where the Jewish state was located.

There’s Ariel Sharon, seen as not the warmonger but “a personification of the strong, inarticulate new Jew,” one who had been wounded in battle and was driven to withdraw 8,000 Jewish settlers from Gaza out of his love for Israel.

And then there’s New Orleanian Sam Zemurray, president of United Fruit Co. (and a generous benefactor to

Tulane), whose influence in Central American countries may have helped sway the United Nations in 1947 to vote to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states.

Cohen tells tales (all of them true, he swears) based on the mythologies of the wandering Jew, Jews with “Holocaust syndrome,” the Jew of the shtetl, Jews who wanted to have a Jewish homeland so that they could choose to be Jewish or not.

“The way I make sense of things is to turn them into stories,” Cohen says.

Cohen weaves provocative views that may not be popular with conventional Jewish thinkers.

After the Jews were expelled from ancient Israel, Judaism became an idea without a place, says Cohen.

“The Jews came to live in the past and in the future—everywhere but in the present,” Cohen

writes. “In this way, the Jews came unstuck from time. In this way, the Jews left history.”

Which, in Cohen’s view, may have been critical to the survival of Judaism. By reestablishing the locus of Judaism in a specific place and time—the current-day nation of Israel—Jews have made themselves more vulnerable, perhaps more vulnerable than they have ever been since the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70.

What would happen if Israel were destroyed again?

“It’s a great irony that it was more secure as an idea than it’s ever been as a nation with an army,” Cohen writes. “In our time, the Book was turned back into a temple. In the wake of another destruction, would the community dwindle and vanish, or, like a soul freed from its body, would it resume its eternal wandering?”

Now, as he recovers from a book tour promoting Israel Is Real, Cohen enjoys some downtime with his wife and three young boys at home in Connecticut, an hour’s train ride from Manhattan.

When asked what kind of Jew he is, he pauses, apparently forgetting that he’s already answered that question in the final pages of Israel is Real, where he pens, “The crying on the inside kind, I guess.”

Reminded of this, he looks up, a bit startled out of reverie. “I wrote that in the book? Oh, yeah.”

Already, he is lost in thought on the next big idea.

Fran Simon is editor of “The Classes” section of Tulanian.

TULANIAN WINTER 2010 | PAGE 29

givingBack Weatherhead gift advances faculty achievement achievement The Weatherhead Foundation has made a major commitment of $50 million to fund professorships for outstanding faculty members at Tulane University who have made significant contributions as artists, researchers and scholars. The professorships will be open to faculty in all of the university’s schools and from any academic discipline.

“This fund will reward faculty achievement whether it has resulted in new technologies in science or engineering, trendsetting visual or performing arts, novel medical therapies, transformative reinterpretations of ideas or wholly new professional agendas in architecture, business, law or social work,” said Albert J. Weatherhead III. Albert Weatherhead and his wife, Celia Scott Weatherhead, a 1965 graduate of Newcomb College and member of the Board of Tulane, oversee the Weatherhead Foundation, an Ohio-based family organization that supports higher education.

Tulane faculty members designated as Weatherhead University Professors will be given wide latitude in arranging their schedules in

order to devote their time and energy to creative enterprises, research and scholarship.

“We are extremely grateful for this gift and the faith the Weatherheads have shown in giving it to us,” said Tulane President Scott Cowen. “This gift will be transformative for Tulane as we continue to recognize and encourage exceptional scholarly achievement, civic engagement and build one of the nation’s best faculty. This, in turn, will help us attract the very best students and garner more support from both private and public sources.

“Most importantly, the funding will advance knowledge, creativity, technology and engaged citizenship for the benefit of all.”

KIMMERLING ENDOWS ZALE WRITER PROGRAM Martha McCarty Kimmerling and Dana Zale Gerard share a passion for reading and writing.

And now the two Newcomb College graduates share in the new name of a 25-year-old distinguished literary institution—the Zale-Kimmerling Writer-in-Residence Program.

Kimmerling, a 1963 graduate, has established an endowment that promises to support in perpetuity the writer-in-residence program founded

by Gerard in 1985, the year she graduated.

Through the Zale Writer-in-Residence Program, every year, a renowned woman writer

Associate professor of English Michael Kuczynski (at the front of the classroom) leads a discussion.

Weatherhead University Professorships will recognize and support faculty members who make significant contributions as artists, researchers and scholars.

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is invited to campus for a week to interact with students in creative writing classes as well as in the writer’s area of interest. The week consists of traditional public readings and interviews, as well as coffees, dinners and social gatherings in more intimate settings. (See “Wind in Their Sails,” fall 2009, Tulanian.)

Even though they live near one another in Dallas and both have strong philanthropic commitments to their communities, Gerard and Kimmerling only became acquainted with each other last year.

When Kimmerling decided to endow the writer-in-residence program, she solidified Gerard’s wish that the program become a permanent part of the Newcomb College legacy.

In honor of Kimmerling’s commitment, the program has been renamed.

Through annual gifts, the M.B. and Edna Zale Foundation of Dallas has sustained the Zale Writer-in-Residence Program over the years. Since 2006, Barnes & Noble College Booksellers also has provided support while a permanent endowment was sought.

BE IN THAT NUMBER Join in and support the talented and dedicated students, alumni, faculty and staff of Tulane University by making a gift to the Tulane Fund.

Outstanding Tulane students have demonstrated a commitment to academics and to civic engagement and public service that is unprecedented. With a focus on improving the overall human condition through better health care, public education, housing and much more, Tulane programs benefit the community while providing students with the opportunity to become changemakers and leaders.

Each and every gift to the Tulane Fund—at any level—enhances scholarship and supports the work that Tulane students and faculty are doing on campus, across the community and around the world.

Make your gift and make a difference today.

Visit tulane.edu/giving.

—Maureen King Maureen King is a writer in the Tulane Office of Development.

s e s s a l C e h t

Home Builders Friends reconnect again constructing a Habitat for Humanity home in New Orleans in December 2009. The original group (see winter 2009 Tulanian), along with newcomers, came back to rebuild for the fourth year. “It’s powerful to be part of a continuum to improve the city we love,” says JUDITH FAGIN (NC ’71). Front row, from left: CHERYL JOSEPH ZACCARO (NC ’69), AMY GOLDBERGER, Fagin, SHERRY FLASHMAN (NC ’71), MARILYN ZWICK STORCH (NC ’69), LINDA LEWISMOORE (NC ’69), DEBBIE BROWN BRITT (NC ’69), JANIS DROPKIN SMYTHE (NC ’69). Middle, seated: RACHELLE GALANTI PARKER (NC ’69); standing: PUDDIN’ BROWN COX (NC ’71) and CAROL NATHAN McKEGNEY (NC ’71). Back: Habitat staff.

classNotes | theClasses 1930s The family of JAMES J. COLEMAN SR. (L ’37) has established a visiting professorship at Tulane Law School in his memory. The professorship enables the law school to invite a distinguished international legal scholar each year to teach a course in an advanced international subject. Coleman practiced law for 40 years while leading local and international businesses. The law school thanks the Coleman family, especially DOROTHY JURISICH COLEMAN (NC ’41) and JAMES COLEMAN JR. (L ’68) for the gift.

1940s ALBERT CHARLES LEDNER (A ’48) received the Medal of Honor from the Louisiana chapter of the American Institute of Architects at its design conference in San Destin, Fla., on Aug. 4, 2009. The medal recognizes outstanding service in architecture and the community.

1950s The Woman Who Would Be Pharaoh, a second novel by WILLIAM KLEIN (A&S ’58, L ’60), was published by Kunati Books in May 2009.

The novel is based on records in the palace archives of the Hittite King Suppiluliumas (1344–1322 B.C.) and covers the tumultuous period of ancient Egypt’s 18th dynasty.

A commissioned work, “Sonata No. 1 for Flute and Piano” by EUGENIE ROCHEROLLE (NC ’58), premiered on Oct. 4, 2009, at the Wilton Library at a Connecticut Composers concert.

Rocherolle also is publishing a new collection of piano compositions this year. She presented her work at the Music Teachers National Association annual convention in March in Albuquerque, N.M.

1960s Pelican Press has published A Pattern Book of New Orleans Architecture by ROULHAC B. TOLEDANO (NC ’60).

RAÚL J. VALDÉS-FAULI (A&S ’65) is a member of the board of directors of Florida Memorial University, a private university in Miami Gardens, Fla. A managing partner at Fowler Rodriguez Valdés-Fauli law firm, he focuses on the areas of corporate law and banking.

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Valdés-Fauli is honorary consul of the Republic of El Salvador and has been decorated by the governments of Argentina, France, Italy and Spain. He also has held several elective offices including mayor of the City of Coral Gables, Fla., and is board chair for BBU Bank.

PATRICK BREAUX (M ’66) was inaugurated as the 130th president of the Louisiana State Medical Society on Jan. 29, 2010. He has been on the medical staff of Ochsner Medical Center since 2005, where he is section head of consultative cardiology and medical director of cardiology. Board-certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine in internal medicine and cardiovascular diseases, Breaux is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology and the American College of Physicians.

1970s DAVID J. BERTEAU (A&S ’71) testified on Dec. 9, 2009, before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade. It was his fourth appearance before Congress in 2009. Berteau is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

JOHN W. DOMMERICH (A&S ’71) was appointed in 2008 to the Circuit Court bench by Florida Gov. Charlie Crist. He is assigned to the criminal docket in Charlotte County (Punta Gorda, Fla.). He previously served as a county judge for 18 years. He lives in Fort Myers with his wife, Beverly, and has two sons—one in college and the other in law school.

MARLENE ESKIND MOSES (NC ’72, SW ’73) is president of the Tennessee Supreme Court Historical Society, which honors the justices who have served on the court and preserves the court’s records. Moses is founder and partner with the law firm Moses and Townsend in Nashville, Tenn., concentrating her practice on marital and family law litigation, mediation, negotiation and collaborative law. She also is president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers and vice president of the National Board of Trial Advocacy.

LEILA PERRIN (NC ’72) is vice president of marketing for the Better Business Bureau

of Greater Houston and South Texas. Houston Woman magazine named Perrin to its list of “50 Most Influential Women of 2009.”

JEFFREY ALLEN COHEN (A&S ’73) has been appointed to the Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs Advisory Committee of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Cohen is a professor, section chief of neurology and director of the clinical neurophysiology fellowship program at Dartmouth Medical School.

Addicted to Laughter: Humor in Hospitals

by Patients and Staff by MEL A. GORES (PHTM ’73) was published in November 2009 by Wheatmark. Gores is a senior executive with the Veterans Administration Boston Healthcare System.

LeMieux Galleries of New Orleans presented “Signs of the City,” an exhibition of paintings and drawings by SHIRLEY RABÉ MASINTER (NC ’73, G ’89) in fall 2009. Focused on literal “signs” of New Orleans, the work ranged from contemporary neon lighting and decaying electric signs to folk lettering in advertisements for groceries, bars and beauty parlors.

Architect and developer MARCEL WISZNIA (A ’73) is converting the Maritime Building, New Orleans’ oldest skyscraper, into a mixeduse development with 105 market-rate apartments, retail space on the ground floor and offices on the second floor. The 11-story building, originally constructed in 1893, is located at Carondelet and Common streets in the Central Business District.

CRAIG A. BACHNER (A&S ’76) and his wife, Karen, enjoy living in Shanghai, China, where they have resided for five years. His company, Genesis Electron Devices, continues to grow.

ROBERT BETZ (G ’76) is chair of the D.C. Advisory Board and chair of the National Capital Area Command Advisory Board for the Salvation Army. He is president of Robert Betz Associates in Arlington, Va., a consulting firm specializing in health policy issues for healthcare providers, large corporations and associations. Betz also serves as president of the American Association of Eye and Ear

theClasses | classNotes Centers of Excellence. He is an adjunct professor at George Washington University, where he teaches political science and health policy.

One Year: And Beyond, a book by THOMAS KARL HOFER (UC ’76) about a year of service he spent at Hope House in New Orleans helping needy people, has been published and is available for purchase from iUniverse.com.

LAWRENCE M. SCHLOSS (A&S ’76) is chief investment officer of the New York City Office of Comptroller, which serves as the custodian and investment adviser to retirement systems with assets of approximately $100 billion. Schloss supervises the Bureau of Asset Management and develops overall investment policies, standards and guidelines. Schloss also is co-founder, chair and CEO of the private equity firm Diamond Castle Holdings.

JOSEPH V. TRAHAN III (A&S ’76) received the Public Relations Society of America’s 2009 Lloyd B. Dennis Distinguished Leadership Award at the society’s international conference in San Diego in November 2009. The award recognizes an exemplary individual who has used his or her public affairs skills to promote truth, has demonstrated high standards of integrity and honesty in business dealings, and has helped affect positive change within an organization. During the past decade, Trahan has trained more than 3,500 people annually in media relations across the United States and internationally. His contributions include managing the U.S. Army’s information bureau in Normandy, France, and he served on the president’s task force, handling public affairs during the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew.

practice focuses on probate trusts and estates and tax law. A board-certified tax attorney, he has taught corporate tax law at the University of Southwestern Louisiana.

THOMAS ABSHIRE (M ’79) has joined the Blood Center of Wisconsin as senior vice president of medical services and chief medical officer. He also directs the center’s new Medical Sciences Institute, bringing together clinical care, education and clinical research.

Previously, he was professor of pediatrics and director of the comprehensive hemostasis program at Emory University School of Medicine and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta for 13 years.

RICHARD M. MARTIN JR. (A&S ’77, L ’80) and his wife, ELIZABETH WYNNE MARTIN (NC ’80), announce that their son, Harrison, graduated from Colgate University in 2009 and is now a fifth-generation “Greenie” pursuing a master’s degree at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. Their daughter, Olivia Leigh, is in the 2013 class at Dartmouth University and daughter, Julia, is in the 2010 class at Newman School and has just been accepted into Tulane.

EDWARD P. GASKELL III (A&S ’77) says that the lives of his family were changed forever when Hurricane Katrina destroyed their home and business in the Lakeview neighborhood of New Orleans.

The Gaskells owned the West End Tennis Club from 1990 until 2005. Gaskell was hired in January 2006 as chief operating officer and general manager of the Bocage Racquet Club in Baton Rouge, La. The southern division of the U.S. Tennis Association named him general manager of the year in 2008 and 2009. Gaskell played tennis at Tulane in 1973–77 and later served as men’s head coach in 1998–99.

GAY GOMEZ (NC ’78, G ’81) published The Louisiana Coast: Guide to an American Wetland (Texas A&M University Press, 2008).

The book is part natural history and part field guide. Gomez, associate professor of geography at McNeese State University, is a professional nature guide and a longtime activist and champion for the preservation of Louisiana’s wetlands.

EUGENE F. POLLINGUE JR. (A&S ’78, L ’81, B ’82) is on the board of directors of Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Palm Beach, Fla. He also is chair of Young Friends of the Palm Beach Opera. A certified public accountant and partner with Fox Rothschild in West Palm Beach, Pollingue represents clients in a range of areas from estate planning and tax planning for commercial transactions to tax controversies with the Internal Revenue Service. His

PHOTO OF DEBBIE GOLDSTEIN SMITH BY PORTRAIT INNOVATIONS.

DEBBIE GOLDSTEIN SMITH (SW ’79) is Dootsiedum the Clown in Reston, Va., entertaining at children’s birthday parties and community events.

Smith has worked as an adoption social worker and music teacher. To find out more about Dootsiedum, go to www.dootsiedum.com.

1980s BARBARA DANOS CRANNER (NC ’80) is executive vice president and co-founder of Dr. Holmquist Healthcare, a company that manufactures Bruise Relief, a product based on her 100-year-old family recipe. The company, headquartered in New Orleans, has signed a distribution deal with Walgreens, the nation’s largest drugstore chain, to sell the gel.

BENJAMIN VARGAS (A ’80) has been selected by the American Institute of Architects as the recipient of the 2010 Whitney M. Young Jr. Award. The award is given to an architect exemplifying the profession’s responsibility

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classNotes | theClasses toward current social issues. Vargas, who has worked to instill the value of diversity and inclusiveness into the AIA, will be presented with the award at the AIA national convention in Miami in June. He is president of the Bartizan Group in San Juan, Puerto Rico, whose notable projects include the Puerto Rico Baseball Academy and High School and Hogar de Ninos Que Quieren Sonreir, a cancer hospice for children.

KEVIN WALSH (A&S ’81) has been promoted to vice president of nuclear operations at Entergy’s Arkansas Nuclear One site. Previously, he served in other leadership positions during his 20 years with Entergy at the Waterford 3 Nuclear Plant, west of New Orleans.

DAVID G. LERNER (A&S ’82), formerly a shareholder of Litchford and Christopher in Orlando, Fla., is associate general counsel/litigation to Stock Building Supply in Raleigh, N.C. GREGORY MAYER (M ’82), executive medical director of Hospice of the Valley, serves on the board of directors of the Mayo Clinic Alumni Association. He was the recipient of Hospice of the Valley’s Vision Award in 2009 for “setting the standard of excellence for end-of-life care.” He joined the staff full-time in 1998 after closing his general surgery practice to focus on palliative and hospice care. Mayer has spearheaded the hospice’s palliative care partnerships with the Mayo Clinic Hospital, St. Joseph’s Hospital and Phoenix Children’s Hospital. He oversees medical directors, inpatient services, centralized services/triage and admissions departments.

NATE BENNETT (A&S ’83, G ’84) announces the publication of a book he co-authored, Your Career Game: How Game Theory Can Help You Achieve Your Professional Goals. Bennett is the Wahlen Professor of Management at the Georgia Institute of Technology. For more information, go to www.yourcareergame.com.

ANDY MILLS (B ’83), president of Medline Industries, is a member of the board of directors of the HIDA Educational Foundation, a nonprofit organization affiliated with the Health Industry Distributors Association, a

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leading trade association representing medical products distributors. The foundation’s mission is to build a more effective and efficient healthcare supply channel through networking, business intelligence and educational opportunities. Mills also is on the board of directors of NorthShore University HealthSystem.

STEVE OATS (L ’83) chairs the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission for 2010.

He has served on the commission since April 2007. A Ducks Unlimited lifetime sponsor, National Rifle Association lifetime member, Coastal Conservation Association member and an instrument-rated pilot, Oats is a partner with the Oats and Hudson law firm, which has offices in New Orleans, Lafayette and Baton Rouge, La.

ELLEN SHAYMAN ROGIN (NC ’83) is co-author of Great With Money: The Women’s Guide to Prosperity. A CPA and certified financial planner, Rogin is president of Strategic Financial Designs in Northfield, Ill. G. MARTIN MOELLER JR., (A ’84) senior vice president and curator at the National Building Museum, received the Glenn Brown Award for 2009 from the Washington, D.C., chapter of the American Institute of Architects and the Washington Architectural Foundation. The award honors an individual who has raised public awareness of architecture and its benefits to society and who has improved the quality of life in Washington. Moeller is a visiting scholar at the American Academy in Rome this spring. He is studying changing attitudes about the relationship between modern and historic architecture with a focus on the work of emerging local practices.

MELINDA RAINEY THOMPSON (NC ’85) coauthored I Love You: Now Hush. The book, a collection of humorous essays on topics on which men and women disagree, was written with Morgan Murphy, a student in Thompson’s English 101 course at Birmingham-Southern College, where she was a faculty member from 1988 until 1994. Thompson is married to Bill Thompson, presiding judge of the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals. They have

three children, Warner, Nat and Lily. The Thompsons live in Birmingham, Ala.

GREGORY GROSS (A&S ’86) and his partner, Rafael Esquer, have launched a new brand of hand-drawn, graphic T-shirts. Their debut collection, Seven Deadly Sins, inspired by Mexican engraver José Guadalupe Posada, can be seen at alfalfa-seeds.com. Gross is creative director in advertising and Esquer is creative director in design. They live in Manhattan, N.Y. Gross can be reached at gregorywgross@gmail.com.

EDOUARD FONTENOT (A&S ’87) is managing clinical director for psychotherapy and psychological testing services at Commonwealth Psychology Associates, a multidisciplinary private group practice with offices in Boston’s Back Bay and financial districts and in Newton, Mass. Fontenot was recently reelected to the board of governors of the Danielsen Institute at Boston University, where he earned a PhD in psychology and religion in 2002. Fontenot lives with his spouse, Christopher Bellonci, assistant professor of child psychiatry at Tufts School of Medicine, in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood and in Truro, Mass.

JACKIE GARCIA BELMAREZ (B ’88) received a master’s degree in education from the University of Texas–Pan American in December 2009 and plans to begin the doctoral program this fall. She received a Teaching Excellence Award from the Texas Regional Collaboratives for Excellence in Science and Mathematics Teaching at the organization’s annual meeting. She currently is an academic strategist for Mission Consolidated Independent School District.

ROBERT ROSENBERG (M ’88) is director of pediatrics at White Plains Hospital Center in White Plains, N.Y. His practice, Hartsdale Pediatrics, is located in Hartsdale, N.Y.

CARLO DI FLORIO (A&S ’89) is director of the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations of the Securities and Exchange Commission. He previously was at Pricewaterhouse Coopers. In his new position, he oversees the SEC’s nationwide examination programs for investment advisers, broker-dealers, mutual

theClasses | classNotes funds, credit-rating agencies, self-regulatory and other organizations.

ERIC SEEGER (A&S ’89, B ’91) completed a master of arts in leadership studies from Lancaster Bible College. He consults with law firm leaders on strategy and management issues with Altman Weil in Newtown Square, Pa.

DAVID J. GARDNER (B ’91) and his wife, Olcay Bulgun-Gardner, announce the birth of their son, Nicholas Ronin, on Dec. 1, 2009. The family resides in New York, where Gardner is a corporate vice president with New York Life, and Bulgun-Gardner works in the business operations-investment banking group of Thomson Reuters.

1990s

In December 2009, President Barack Obama appointed SANFORD COATS (TC ’94) to be the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Oklahoma. Coats had been assistant U.S. attorney since 2004, including a six-month detail to the Eastern District of Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. Coats and his wife, DANIELLE BROOKS COATS (NC ’93), live in Oklahoma City with their three children.

JOSE R. CARLO (A ’90) finished his first Ironman triathlon, including a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bicycle ride and 26.2-mile run, on Oct. 24, 2009, in Clermont, Fla. Carlo placed 52nd out of 262 competitors. He raced in the “Crawfishman” triathlon 20 years ago when he was a student at Tulane.

AMY FISHER (NC ’90, M ’94) married Nathan Thompson on June 16, 2007. LEE HOFFMAN (A&S ’91) and CAROLYN VAN NEWKIRK HOFFMAN (NC ’91) attended the wedding.

The Thompsons welcomed Caroline Maclean into the family on Aug. 4, 2009. The baby joined sisters Megan, 12, and Katie, 9. The family lives in Allentown, Pa.

SUSAN FOX-GREENBERG (NC ’90) and Jason Greenberg announce the birth of Sonya Benny on Sept. 7, 2009, in Boca Raton, Fla. They also have a 3-year-old son, Leo. The family lives in Parkland, Fla.

KELLY BURKE JACOBS (NC ’90) and her husband, Jay, welcomed their fifth son, Angus, in October 2009. They returned to the United States in July 2008 after five years in Munich, Germany, where their fourth son, Felix, was born. The family lives in Laguna Niguel, Calif.

DARRYL MASLIA (B ’90) and his wife, Missy Jacobs Maslia, announce the birth of Alexa Sasha on Sept. 30, 2009. The baby joins her brother, Mason, who will be 2 in April. The Maslia family lives in Dunwoody, Ga.

ROB BINDEMAN (A&S ’91) and his wife, Betsy, announce the birth of Jacqueline Helene on Dec. 26, 2009. Bindeman is president of Landmark Realty, a property management and development firm. The family resides in Bethesda, Md.

PHOTO OF ALEX MCMURRAY BY SALLY ASHER.

Daily Record newspaper in Baltimore. The award recognizes members of the legal community who have devoted time and energy to bettering the profession and played an important role in mentoring future professional and community leaders. Guarnaccia is a partner at Ballard Spahr in the firm’s public finance department.

ALEX McMURRAY (A&S ’91) performed the national anthem at the Green Wave season opener basketball game in Fogelman Arena on Nov. 13, 2009. He is a New Orleans singer, guitarist and songwriter, playing with bands such as Tin Men, Royal Fingerbowl and 007. His latest record, “How To Be a Cannonball,” was released last year. For more information, go to alexmcmurray.com.

CLARK REYNOLDS (A&S ’91) is CEO of Millennium Relief and Development Services, a Houston-based network of international development centers and field workers who live long-term among the people they serve and design social investment projects to help solve problems. Reynolds and his wife, Michelle, live in Bellaire, Texas, with their three children.

KEVIN W. BARRON (B ’92) is director of managed care at McLeod Health, a three-hospital, nonprofit health system based in Florence, S.C. Barron is responsible for managed-care relationships and related business development activities.

TERI MENKE GUARNACCIA (NC ’93) received the 2009 Leadership in Law award from The

LAURA McGINTY TATE (NC ’94) and her husband, Patrick, reside in Pawleys Island, S.C., with their two daughters, Molly, 5, and Lucy, 3.

Patrick Tate is a software engineer for Cisco Systems, and Laura Tate is a full-time mother and volunteer.

ARDIS ESCHENBERG (NC ’95) is completing a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in endangered language documentation. Her work centers on the verb system of Omaha, an endangered Siouan language. She has been granted a sabbatical from her position as academic dean of Nebraska Indian Community College to complete this research.

Eschenberg resides with her children, Beatrice, 4, and Cetan Kinyan (Flying Hawk), 2, in Walthill, Neb.

KIRSTIN MEINZ HAWTHORNE (B ’95) and Michael Hawthorne welcomed their third son, Kyle Joseph, on Dec. 1, 2009. Hawthorne is director of development for the Lorton Community Action Center, a human services nonprofit organization in northern Virginia.

STEVEN M. DEMATTEO (TC ’96), a financial adviser with Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, was named to the firm’s Blue Chip Council recognition program for the second consecutive year. He also was promoted to second vice president of wealth management. In the Rancho Bernardo, Calif., branch, DeMatteo is

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classNotes | theClasses a partner in the Benter Group and focuses his practice on private wealth management and corporate financial services, including an award-winning national 401(k) retirement plan service model. DeMatteo and his wife, Kristine, live in Rancho Bernardo with their two children, Nicholas and Dylan.

Middle District of Louisiana, on Aug. 31, 2009.

She has moved to Atlanta to become an associate at Thomas Kennedy Sampson and Tompkins in the firm’s litigation section.

Williams primarily practices in the areas of labor and employment, premises liability, medical malpractice and insurance defense.

MESHONDA DONALDSON WOMBLE (B ’96) was reappointed as executive director of the Dallas Veterans Administration Research Corp.

DAVID ELDRIDGE (L ’98) and his wife, Sara,

GILBERTO ESPINOZA (TC ’97, L ’02) and STEPHANIE ZIEMBA ESPINOZA (L ’02) welcomed Jacob Eduardo on Aug. 16, 2009. In Chicago, Gilberto Espinoza is an associate with Michael, Best and Friedrich, and Stephanie Espinoza is an associate with Marwedel, Minichello and Reeb.

BRIANNA E. GUERIN WILLIAMS (NC ’97) completed a two-year clerkship for Ralph E. Tyson, chief judge in the U. S. District Court in the

ELIZABETH BELLINO HEALING HAITI’S WOUNDS TULANE DEGREES: BA, anthropology; MPH, international health

RESIDENCE: New Orleans

PROFESSION: Pediatrician

QUOTABLE: “I’m passionate about international health.”

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announce the birth of their second child, Abigail, on July 14, 2009. She joins her sister, Louisa, 5.

ALICE LEVANDOVSKAIA FISHER (NC ’98) and her husband, Robert, announce the birth of Alexander on Nov. 11, 2009. The family lives in a Boston suburb. Alice Fisher is a radiologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Robert Fisher is a partner at the law firm Foley Hoag.

JESSICA GREEN GICHNER (NC ’99) and her husband, Jason Gichner, announce the birth

Elizabeth Bellino (NC ’98, PHTM ’99) rushed to Haiti after the January earthquake and spent nine days there tending to wounded children.

In Port-au-Prince, she worked in two large tents at a field hospital in the United Nations compound near the airport. She saw many children with crush wounds, facial injuries, limbs that needed to be amputated and infections in wounds that had not yet been treated.

Bellino had packed 40 pounds of antibiotics but wished for more antibiotics and painkillers. The children were calling for their parents, who were nowhere to be found.

“It was a nightmare,” says Bellino. “I was hysterically crying on the plane home. But it makes me want to do this work all the more.”

Days after returning from Haiti to Tulane, where she is a clinical instructor of pediatric infectious diseases, Bellino left again for a six-month Piper Fellowship in International Health and Medicine in Uganda. She is conducting a study to prevent and treat tuberculosis in children.

—Fran Simon

of their first child, Lucy, on Aug. 30, 2009.

Jessica Gichner is a partner in the Nashville, Tenn.–based law firm Waller Lansden Dortch and Davis. She practices in the areas of commercial lending, mergers and acquisitions and securities. Gichner also serves on the firm’s Diversity Committee and is a member of Leadership Health Care. She earned her JD from Vanderbilt University in 2002.

2000s BLANCHE RAMSEY (NC ’00) founded Geo Sight, a geologic consulting business, in 2008, and has been involved with more than 50 horizontal wells across East Texas in different reservoirs. For more information, visit www.geosightllc.com.

A book edited by ELIZABETH B. ZECHELLA (NC ’01)—Salon to Biennial: Exhibitions That Made Art History, Vol. 1, 1863–1959 by Phaidon Editors and Bruce Alsthuler—won the Sir Banister Fletcher Award for the best new book on art or architecture from the Authors Club of London. Zechella earned a master’s degree in curatorial studies from Bard College in 2004.

ROSS BERKOFF (TC ’02) married Rebekah Hafler on Oct. 25, 2009, in Tarrytown, N.Y. In attendance were PETER BENNINGER (TC ’01), BRIAN TAYLOR (TC ’01), IAN WATT (B ’01), NATE DUNCAN (B ’02), DAVID FLOYD (E ’02) and MIKE DE MARCO (TC ’02). Berkoff served in the U.S. Army for seven years and now works for BAE Systems as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense on politicalmilitary issues in Afghanistan. He completed a master’s degree in public management at the University of Maryland–College Park.

ERIC ZYMBOLY (E ’02) received an MBA from the College of William and Mary in August 2009 before accepting reassignment to the Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency in San Antonio, Texas.

This March, he deployed to Afghanistan for six months.

The architectural firm of JING LIU (A ’04), and her husband, Florian Idenburg—SO-IL Solid Objectives Idenburg Liu—was selected as the

PHOTO PROVIDED BY ELIZABETH BELLINO.

theClasses | classNotes 2010 winner of the Young Architects Program of the Museum of Modern Art and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York. In its 11th year, the Young Architects Program focuses on designs that address sustainability, recycling and reuse. The winning landscape, “Pole Dance,” will be on view in P.S.1’s outdoor courtyard starting in June.

participate in projects through his architecture and design firm, studioSML.

MIKE MILLER (SW ’05) is a social worker and director of supportive housing placement at UNITY of Greater New Orleans, a nonprofit organization addressing the city’s post-Katrina homeless problem. His work with New Orleans’ homeless population was featured in a TimesPicayune column, and his essay, “My Home Is New Orleans” was published in This I Believe II: More Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women. He blogs at www.blog.unitygno.org.

JENNIFER PELC (A ’05) was named to the

BENJAMIN DAVIS (B ’02) walked down the red carpet at the Primetime Emmy Awards with his mother, GEORGI LEWIS DAVIS (NC ’76), in September 2009. He is a vice president at the AMC TV network, where he is responsible for managing the creative aspects of “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad.” “Mad Men” won the Emmy for best drama on TV. For his work on “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad,” Davis also has won Peabody awards. In addition, he has worked on the awardwinning mini-series “Broken Trails” starring Robert Duvall.

will reside in New Orleans until May, when they plan to relocate to Denver, after Matthew Altaras graduates from Tulane Law School.

2010 Supplemental Experience Task Force of the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards. A member of Eskew+Dumez+ Ripple based in New Orleans, Pelc has been a leader in the firm’s move toward a strong stance on architectural licensure. The firm received the Intern Development Program Outstanding Firm Award for 2008–2011 from the American Institute of Architects. Since receiving her license to practice in 2008, Pelc has served as the firm’s intern development program coordinator and auxiliary coordinator for the American Institute of Architects.

ALISON CLARK (A ’06) married Will Binford on May 9, 2009. EMILY VINSON (NC ’05) was a bridesmaid. In attendance were PATRICK BABIN (TC ’05), AMBER COMBS (E ’05), DAN DARILEK (A ’06), DANE DYSERT (A ’06), KARA ELDRIDGE (A ’06), CORRIE HOOD-HOWARD (A ’06), JULIE KAMINSKI (A ’06) and CURTIS LAUB (A ’06). The couple resides in Austin, Texas.

MARK SYLAJ (’07) received a master’s degree in school counseling with a focus on mental health counseling in 2008. He is taking courses at Manhattan College while studying mental health disability law part-time at New York Law School. He lives in Westchester, N.Y., and volunteers at public schools.

DANIEL ZANGARA (A ’07) married VICTORIA HERNANDEZ (A ’08) on Dec. 12, 2009, in New Orleans. Daniel Zangara is an architect with Trapolin Architects and Victoria Zangara is a project manager at Walton Construction. The couple lives in New Orleans.

MATT PENNEBAKER (B ’08) is an account manager for Pennebaker Fifth Ring in New Orleans. He consults with attorneys on presentation technology and document management and assists in courtroom presentation and account services.

CYNTHIA SCOTT (G ’08) exhibited several sculptures and an installation in “Matters Arising” at the Legion Arts Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in spring 2009. In June, she created two large installations for the show “Frontier Preachers” at the Soap Factory art space in Minneapolis. Scott also was selected by curator Nicholas Bustamante to participate in the national September Competition Exhibition at the Alexandria, La., Museum of Art. Her installation “New World Wailing Wall” was featured in the autumn/winter 2009 issue of the British art journal Afterall.

CHRISTOPHER EVERETT (’07) married Ashley SARAH EDGAR (B ’05) married Robert Keepers in Dallas on Nov. 14, 2009. The wedding party included ASHLEIGH HITE (’07), MEG JOHNSON (NC ’05), LAURA PENNEBAKER GALLICHIO (E ’04), SARAH WALLACE (NC ’05), TESS WHITNEY (B ’05), KERRY WALSH STOCKWELL (NC ’05), LEORA ROCKOWITZ (NC ’06) and business student WILL GARRETT.

SPENCER LEPLER (A ’05) is manager of ethics and audit of the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards. He continues to

ALLISON R. POFIT (’07) and MATTHEW G. ALTARAS (B ’07) were married on Jan. 2,

WARREN H. COHN (B ’09), special assistant to U.S. Congressman Ed Towns of New York, helped deliver about 2,000 pounds of medical supplies to a field hospital in Haiti in January after the earthquake. DealMed donated the medical supplies with cargo space and flights provided by JetBlue.

2010, in New Orleans. Among their attendants were MAILLE E. FAUGHNAN (’07), KENT M. WATSON (’07), ALAN J. WILLIAMS (’07), and current Tulane students CHRISTOPHER R. P. STARK and KATHARINE A. POFIT. The couple

TIA TUCKER (PHTM ’09) is a doctor of medicine candidate at the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana, Cuba. Her interest lies in practicing medicine in resource-poor areas.

Genz-Foster, on May 31, 2008, in St. Louis. He works with Synthes Spine, a medical device company, as an associate sales consultant.

The couple resides in Burlington, Iowa.

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Deaths | theClasses Lorena Walker Connaway (NC ’34) of Helena, Ark., on Aug. 28, 2009.

Mary Nelson Guthrie (NC ’34, G ’36, ’57) of New Orleans on Dec. 14, 2009.

Mildred Masson Davis (UC ’35) of Ridgeland, Miss., on May 10, 2009.

Lucy E. Weed Riegel (NC ’35) of Mechanicsburg, Pa., on Dec. 19, 2009.

Owen Royce Jr. (M ’35) of Mequon, Wis., on Dec. 4, 2009.

Mary Castlen Tindall (NC ’35) of Greenville, Miss., on Nov. 11, 2009.

Cesil Kohlman Levin (NC ’36, G ’66) of New Orleans on Dec. 25, 2009.

Lionel J. Bourgeois Jr. (E ’37) of New Orleans on Oct. 21, 2009.

Adrienne Gottschalk Dawson (NC ’37) of Jackson, Miss., of Dec. 23, 2009.

Herbert A. Graf Sr. (A&S ’37, L ’39) of Baton Rouge, La., on Nov. 29, 2009.

Evelyn Katz Halle (NC ’37) of Springfield, Va., on Dec. 29, 2009.

Yvette Sherman Jackson (NC ’37, L ’39) of Houston on Nov. 15, 2009.

Joseph W. Weaver (M ’37) of Ormond Beach, Fla., on Dec. 8, 2009.

Arthur C. Hollister Jr. (A&S ’38, M ’41) of Walnut Creek, Calif., on Oct. 3, 2009.

Dietrich A. Neyland (A ’38) of Little Rock, Ark., on Nov. 23, 2009.

Herbert H. Thomas (M ’38) of Birmingham, Ala., on Sept. 28, 2009.

DAVID C. TREEN (A&S ’48, L ’50) of Metairie, La., on Oct. 29, 2009

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Mary-Ashley Greene Osterhous (NC ’38) of Virginia Beach, Va., on Sept.

29, 2009.

Lorraine Leidinger Belanger (UC ’39, G ’59) of New Orleans on Dec. 14, 2009.

Lionel L. Cazenavette Jr. (A&S ’39, G ’41) of New Orleans on Oct. 5, 2009.

Mary Lemann Dalferes (NC ’40) of Covington, La., on Oct. 4, 2009.

Fred A. Coon Jr. (L ’41) of Monroe, La., on April 18, 2009.

Luba Bersadsky Glade (NC ’42) of New Orleans on Nov. 26, 2009.

Edward B. Leverich (E ’42, A&S ’49, M ’52) of Charlevoix, Mich., on Oct. 15, 2009.

J.F. Auguste Lorber Jr. (B ’42) of Pass Christian, Miss., on Nov. 18, 2009.

Granville I. Walker Jr. (M ’42) of Windsor, Conn., on Nov. 19, 2009.

Samuel A. Arny (A&S ’43, G ’49) of Springfield, Va., on Oct. 13, 2009.

James H. Miller Jr. (E ’43) of Atlanta on Oct. 6, 2009.

Esther Levin Momberg (NC ’43) of Saint Petersburg, Fla., on Nov. 29, 2009.

Jane Hotard Morgan (NC ’43) of Salinas, Calif., on March 18, 2009.

Ruth Gottesman Cohen (NC ’44, G ’68, SW ’82) of Boston on Dec. 6, 2009.

Gov. David Treen was elected Louisiana’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction in 1979 and served one term (1980–84). He also was a four-term U.S. Congressman, representing Louisiana’s 3rd Congressional District in 1973–80.

While governor, Treen established the Louisiana Dept. of Environmental Quality and the Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts on the campus of Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, La.

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Stanley J. Orloff (A&S ’44, M ’46) of Greenwich, Conn., on Sept. 16, 2009.

Frank C. Ruys (M ’44) of San Francisco on Oct. 23, 2009.

Merrel Loubat Caire (NC ’45) of Baton Rouge, La., on Nov. 21, 2009.

Elmer C. Doerries Jr. (E ’45) of Houston on Oct. 14, 2009.

Homer A. Jackson Jr. (E ’45) of Birmingham, Ala., on Sept. 27, 2009.

Ralph Lazarus (B ’45) of Newton Center, Mass., on June 9, 2009.

George N. Lewis (A&S ’45, M ’49) of Tallahassee, Fla., on Dec. 17, 2009.

Maria Fulham Schwertz (NC ’45) of Atlanta on Oct. 8, 2009.

Lawrence R. Taylor Jr. (A&S ’45) of Dallas on Aug. 6, 2009.

Marion Dear Weber (NC ’45) of Alexandria, La., on Nov. 19, 2009.

Henry M. Yonge (M ’45) of Pensacola, Fla., on Nov. 24, 2009.

Ernest J. Brin (A&S ’46) of Metairie,La., on Dec. 2, 2009.

Beverly McClure Clapp (NC ’46, SW ’48) of New Orleans on Nov. 30, 2009.

George W. Liskow (A&S ’46, L ’47) of Arcadia, Calif., on Oct. 17, 2009.

Milton W. Talbot Jr. (M ’46) of Austin, Texas, on Sept. 24, 2009.

Frederick H. Schmidt (A&S ’47, G ’49) of New Orleans on Dec. 30, 2009.

Harriet Zimmerman Martin (SW ’49) of Wilmington, Del., on Dec. 30, 2009.

Paul A. Newell (B ’46, B ’50) of Shreveport, La., on Dec. 28, 2008.

Betty Powell Hayes (B ’47) of Beebe, Ark., on July 6, 2008.

Walter G. Heffron Jr. (E ’47) of Cincinnati on June 30, 2009.

John G. Miller Jr. (L ’47) of Metairie,La., on Oct. 18, 2009.

Edward Walter Plodzik (B ’47) of Austin, Texas, on Nov. 20, 2009.

Noel C. Duvic Jr. (A&S ’48) of Houston on Dec. 27, 2009.

John B. Eastman (A&S ’48) of Phoenix on Sept. 25, 2009.

Harry D. Evans (E ’48) of Pensacola, Fla., on Aug. 16, 2009.

Frank J. Broussard (A&S ’49) of Lafayette, La., on Oct. 4, 2009.

C. Stocker Fontelieu (A&S ’49) of New Orleans on Dec. 14, 2009.

Lawrence X. Frey (A&S ’49) of New Orleans on Nov. 27, 2009.

Clarence L. Geier Jr. (E ’49) of Metairie, La., on Oct. 13, 2009.

Emile F. Ibele (B ’49) of Covington, Ga., on Oct. 19, 2009.

Phillip M. Harris Jr. (B ’49) of Forest, Miss., on Oct. 22, 2009.

John B. Jameson Jr. (A&S ’49, M ’52) of Camden, Ark., on Dec. 29, 2008.

Catchings B. Smith (B ’49) of Jackson, Miss., on Oct. 6, 2009.

Byrnes T. Carriere Sr. (A&S ’50) of Metairie, La., on Dec. 30, 2009.

Homer G. Ellis (A&S ’50, M ’55) of Fort Smith, Ark., on Nov. 26, 2009.

Tom K. Farris (M ’50) of New Orleans on Dec. 25, 2009.

Nathalie Ganucheau Ewing (NC ’50) of New Orleans on Dec. 24, 2009.

Joseph Maselli Sr. (UC ’50) of New Orleans on Oct. 18, 2009.

Minnette L. Starts (NC ’50) of Knoxville, Tenn., on Dec. 12, 2009.

Shirley Gerard Wimberly Jr. (L ’50) of Stockbridge, Ga., on Sept. 17, 2009.

Jesse J. Wolfe Jr. (B ’50) of Gautier, Miss., on Oct. 25, 2009.

Beth Henican Durant (NC ’51) of New Orleans on Dec. 9, 2009.

August A. Leber (E ’51) of New Orleans on Oct. 26, 2009.

Ruth Kirschstein Rabson (M ’51) of Bethesda, Md., on Oct. 6, 2009.

Henry L. Denton Jr. (UC ’52) of Jackson, Miss., on Oct. 10, 2009.

Gale F. Kirkpatrick (A&S ’52) of Brandon, Fla., on Sept. 22, 2008.

Thomas O. Sistrunk (G ’52, ’53) of Carthage, Miss., on Nov. 18, 2009.

Winslow J. Chadwick Sr. (B ’53) of Metairie, La., on Sept. 28, 2009.

Wilson P. Couch (A&S ’53, M ’56) of Luling, La., on June 11, 2009.

Morris M. Crisler Jr. (M ’53) of Belleair, Fla., on Aug. 12, 2009.

Donn H. Lipton (B ’53) of St. Louis on Oct. 27, 2009.

Guy C. Lyman Jr. (A&S ’54, L ’58) of Monteagle, Tenn., on Nov. 24, 2009.

PHOTO BY LEOPOLD ROSS.

theClasses | Deaths John J. Read Jr. (A&S ’54) of Picayune, Miss., on Oct. 10, 2009.

Roger P. Sharp (A&S ’54) of New Orleans on Feb. 28, 2009.

Leonard D. Stone (B ’54) of Metairie, La., on Dec. 30, 2009.

Frank C. Allen Jr. (E ’55, L ’64) of Pass Christian, Miss., on Sept. 29, 2009.

Jaime N. Palencia (UC ’55) of New Orleans on Oct. 17, 2009.

Michael J. Schafir (M ’55) of Bountiful, Utah, on Oct. 29, 2009.

Bernard Segaloff (A&S ’55) of Boynton Beach, Fla., on July 8, 2008.

Clifford H. Flathers (UC ’56) of Covington, La., on Oct. 5, 2009.

Harvey H. Gardy (A&S ’56, M ’59) of West Palm Beach,Fla.,on Oct. 24,2009.

Steve G. Kirkikis (A&S ’56, M ’59) of Shreveport, La., on Nov. 17, 2009.

Ada M. Oliver (NC ’56) of Lafayette, La., on Nov. 6, 2009.

Clyde L. Owings (M ’56) of Ann Arbor, Mich., on Nov. 9, 2009.

Norman A. Schinetsky (E ’56) of Plano, Texas, on Jan. 5, 2009.

Betty Jane Trosclair (NC ’56) of New Orleans on Oct. 4, 2009.

Thomas J. Clemmons Jr. (PHTM ’57, M ’63) of Lubbock, Texas, on Sept.

14, 2009.

Richard O. McLeod (E ’57) of Mobile, Ala., on Dec. 3, 2009.

Catherine A. Calvery (G ’58, G ’60) of Vashon, Wash., on June, 6, 2009.

Dorothy Lang DuVall (UC ’58, G ’68) of Los Angeles on Oct. 28, 2009.

William H. Dyer (B ’58) of Paducah, Ky., on Nov. 4, 2009.

William M. Hinson (M ’58) of Selma,Ala., on Oct. 18, 2009.

Fred H. Lowery (B ’58) of New Orleans on Dec. 9, 2009.

Jules R. Scallan Jr. (UC ’58) of New Orleans on Nov. 26, 2009.

Elbert W. Sutton (M ’58) of Milton, Fla., on Nov. 12, 2009.

Joseph Q. Cipriano (UC ’59) of New Orleans on Dec. 1, 2009.

Gerald L. Conley (A&S ’59) of Grand Prairie, Texas, on Feb. 28, 2009.

Leo W. Tucker Jr. (B ’59) of Newark,

Calif., on Oct. 2, 2009.

Benson B. Martin III (A&S ’60) of San Francisco on Oct. 1, 2009.

Eugene D. Anderson (SW ’61) of Johnson City, Tenn., on Oct. 18, 2009.

Jenny Galbraith Collier (SW ’61) of Memphis, Tenn., on Sept. 21, 2009.

Mary Hobart Key (NC ’61) of Austin, Texas, on Dec. 1, 2009.

Harry McEnerny III (B ’61) of Sandy Springs, Ga., on Sept. 19, 2009.

Beatrice Enloe (SW ’62) of Mansfield, La., on Oct. 14, 2009.

Hugh C. Rogers (M ’62) of Kansas City, Mo., of Dec. 24, 2009.

Joe H. Hamner Jr. (A&S ’63, L ’69) of Washington, D.C., on July 31, 2009.

Marcia Silverberg Lobman (NC ’63, G ’70) of Anchorage, Alaska, on Oct. 4, 2009.

Frances Baldwin Alvarez (UC ’64) of Mobile, Ala., on Sept. 30, 2009.

Wallis E. DeWitt (PHTM ’64) of Snellville, Ga., on Oct. 3, 2009.

C. Warren Robertson (G ’64) of Hickory, N.C., on Nov. 4, 2009.

Paula Chane Gebhardt (G ’65) of Covington, La., on Nov. 13, 2009.

Guy T. Vise Jr. (M ’65) of Jackson, Miss., on Dec. 14, 2009.

Carolyn Whitley Strickler (NC ’66, G ’70) of New Orleans on Dec. 3, 2009.

Sophie Watts Aramburo (G ’67) of Harvey, La., on Nov. 4, 2009.

Robert B. Kirby (A&S ’67) of Winter Park, Fla., on June 17, 2009.

Frederick H. Wirth Jr. (M ’67) of Minden, Nev., on Oct. 5, 2009.

Margaret Jane Allen (SW ’68) of Toomsuba, Miss., on July 4, 2009.

Edgar G. McKee (M ’68) of Austin,Texas, on Sept. 18, 2009.

Linda Rookwood Robinson (G ’68) of Portales, N.M., on Jan. 26, 2009.

Andre B. Corbeau (G ’69) of Redding, Calif., on July 10, 2008.

Elizabeth M. Greicus (G ’69) of Frankfort, Ind., on Aug, 24, 2009.

Arthur Lee Guy III (A&S ’69) of Needville, Texas, on March 30, 2009.

Randall B. Hibbard (UC ’69) of Bryan, Texas, on Oct. 17, 2009.

Col. “Red” Wetzel served as a pilot in the U.S. Air Force in World War II. In 1957, he became director of the Titan intercontinental ballistic missile program in the Strategic Air Command.Awarded a Legion of Merit, he retired from military service in 1965.

Wetzel worked at Tulane for 25 years as a vice president and adviser to the president. He is in the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame and the Tulane Engineering Hall of Fame.

Ruth Gonzalez Mullen (G ’69) of New Orleans on Dec. 21, 2009.

Toshimitsu Takaesu (L ’69) of Seattle on Oct. 8, 2009.

Stephen J. Uman (M ’69) of Los Angeles on Nov. 6, 2009.

Miles T. Bivins (A&S ’70) of Amarillo, Texas, on Oct. 26, 2009 Robert D. Rodrigue (UC ’70) of New Orleans on Dec. 4, 2009.

James S. Elliott Jr. (A&S ’71) of Macon, Ga., on Oct. 6, 2009.

Jane S. Haydon (SW ’71) of Erie, Pa., on Dec. 24, 2009.

Henry W. Glindmeyer III (E ’72, ’77) of New Orleans on Oct. 30, 2009.

Pam Frank LeNoir (NC ’73) of New Orleans on Oct. 24, 2009.

Daniel T. Morris (UC ’74) of New Orleans on Dec. 31, 2009.

John L. Rokovich Jr. (A&S ’74) of Helotes, Texas, on Oct. 7, 2009.

Mary D. Latter (NC ’75) of Covington,La., on Dec. 5, 2009.

Kimberly Bird Conlon (NC ’76) of Marshall, Va., on May 12, 2009.

Susan A. Jackson (PHTM ’76) of Newburyport, Mass., on Dec. 15, 2009.

Roger T. Bell (E ’77) of Smyrna, Ga., on Nov. 1, 2009.

Zane A. Goff (B ’77) of Bryan, Texas, on Dec. 3, 2009.

ALBERT J. “RED” WETZEL (E ’39) of New Orleans on Dec. 26, 2009

Elizabeth Ann Jones (SW ’77) of Baton Rouge, La., on Sept. 21, 2009.

Joseph P. Lassus (A&S ’77) of Brentwood, Tenn., on Nov. 15, 2009.

Stephen T. Hampton (A&S ’78, M ’85) of Bedford, Ind., on Oct. 16, 2009.

Thomas E. Magill (L ’78) of Atlanta on Oct. 5, 2009.

Kirk R. Jackson Sr. (E ’79, B ’95) of Gonzales, La., on Oct. 11, 2009.

Marian D. Quackenboss (NC ’80) of Santa Rosa Beach, Fla., on Nov. 11, 2009.

Jonathan L. Bookman (B ’81, L ’81) of Pine Bluff, Ark., on Dec. 26, 2009.

Vina Geraci Musgrove (G ’81) of Spokane, Wash., on Dec. 12, 2009.

William T. Chapman (L ’82) of Fairlee, Vt., on Oct. 2, 2009.

Brian G. Odell (E ’82) of Mobile, Ala., on Nov. 3, 2009.

Peter B. R. Suthon (E ’83) of Seabrook, Texas, on Dec. 21, 2009.

James R. Cox (E ’84, L ’93) of Madison, Ind., on Sept. 17, 2009.

Bartholomew Fitzgerald (E ’84) of New Orleans on Dec. 15, 2009.

Wilton T. McCay III (E ’91) of New Orleans on Nov. 27, 2009.

Jodi A. Buerger (B ’93) of Medfield, Mass., on May 8, 2009.

Jason B. Wertz (A ’01) of Jacksonville, Fla., on Oct. 2, 2009.

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newOrleans Hand of God

by Nick Marinello When Saints field goal kicker Garrett Hartley booted the ball through the uprights during the overtime period of the NFC championship, claiming the title for his team, the pandemonium that erupted inside the Superdome was echoed not only in the streets of New Orleans but also along the network of telephone lines connecting the city to the larger world.

If you tried to dial into the 504 area code during the period of time shortly after the game you were likely greeted by a message saying that all circuits were busy. You may as well have tried to place a collect call to the Pearly Gates.

Talk about coming full circle.

The last time anyone had such trouble dialing the area code was in the days and weeks after Katrina, when the wind- and water-ravaged city hung twisting, its infrastructure paralyzed and its dispersed citizenry isolated from each other because their cell phones wouldn’t work.

When New Orleanians finally returned home, the number “504” became a kind of numerical equivalent to the fleur-de-lis, a symbol to rally around.

And five years out, we are still looking for signs and symbols, coincidences and incongruities, and other trinkets in which to invest meaning. This, perhaps, is what happens to a group of people when they sense the hand of God in their lives.

There was a lot of talk about “divine intervention” this year as the Saints chartered their improbable course to the Super Bowl. Some softened the discourse by using the word “karma,” and those not so religiously inclined framed similar conversations around “destiny.”

In any case, the sentiment was that there was something larger at play during this football season, something beyond statistics, strategy and even the occasionally quirky bounce of the football.

This was a compelling storyline and one that

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derived its energy from the preceding 43 years of heartbreak and frustration that characterized the team’s history.

Has there ever been an athletic entity that so embodied and reflected the psyche of a city?

If the Saints were lovable losers, so were we.

If they had somehow hitched their fate to an unreliable star, so had we. If they could endure the miserable mess of mediocrity, then so could we. If the Saints were cursed, then maybe, just maybe, so were we.

At the same time, another story was weaving itself during the season, one grounded much more closely to the gridiron and having to do with good management, smart coaching, hard work, shared goals and good plays.

This storyline, built one game at a time, painted the picture of a team that exhibited not only proficiency, resiliency and fortitude, but also a profound desire for redemption, as well

as the virtues of faith, loyalty and, yes, love.

Again, has there ever been an athletic entity that so embodied and reflected the psyche of a city?

Does God talk to us through football?

Seems silly, and even the most faithful might hesitate to say that he does. But even the most skeptical cannot assert with absolute certainty that he does not.

“Pigs have flown, hell is freezing over,” broadcaster Jim Henderson giddily announced at the end of the NFC championship game. Two weeks later the Saints would go on to the Super Bowl and win it convincingly.

New Orleanians poured into the streets after the game, horn-honking and high-fiving—happy, startled and bewildered by an unfamiliar feeling.

The Saints were winners, after all.

And, after all, so were we.

Nick Marinello is features editor for Tulanian.

ILLUSTRATION BY MARK ANDRESEN.

Touching the Future THE YEAR WAS 1966. The nationally televised quiz show “College Bowl” had captured the attention of the Tulane-Newcomb community for weeks as a team of four Newcomb College seniors took part in the competition.

Captain of the team, Elsa Freiman Angrist, remembers it well. “It was great fun,” she says.

“We were especially pleased when we beat allmale teams. In those days, women, especially Southern women, were not expected to be all that bright. But, of course, we were.”

Elsa Freiman Angrist (NC ’66) in her role as captain of the Newcomb College Bowl Team

ANGRIST IS STILL A CHAMPION for Tulane University. In 2005, she made a gift to the university that established the Elsa Freiman Angrist Scholarship Endowed Fund.

The fund supports female undergraduates based on need and promise in their chosen field. She has since added to it with gifts of appreciated securities and has included a bequest in her will to grow the fund at the end of her lifetime.

“It’s really exciting to think about,” says Angrist. “These women will be studying subjects and living in a world that we cannot even imagine today. I feel as though, in a small way, I’m able to touch the future.”

Learn more about Ms. Angrist and her gifts at www.plannedgiving.tulane.edu.

Your Gift. Your Way. Office of Planned Gifts • 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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hiddenTulane Designs of Mardi Gras. Illustrations of float concepts for the Proteus Carnival krewe in 1892 are in the Louisiana Research Collection of the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library.

The theme of the parade that year was ‘The Vegetable Kingdom.’ Top, left, is a detail of ‘Sunflower,’ and right, ‘Lilies.’

The bottom image is ‘Green Peas.’