Mirage Fall 2021

FALL 2021

M A G A Z I N E THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO I ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

TRAILBLAZER

From Congress to the Cabinet, double alumna Deb Haaland makes history

Contents 5

LETTERS

5 CLASS NOTES

Keeping current with classmates

7

MESSAGE

From UNM President Garnett S. Stokes

8 CAMPUS CONNECTIONS

What’s going on around campus

12 MADAME SECRETARY A Q and A with Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland (’94 BA, ’06 JD)

18 DEFENDING THE CONSTITUTION Portrayed in the movie “The Mauritanian,” lawyers Nancy Hollander (‘78 JD) and Teri Duncan (’00 JD) aren’t afraid of tough fights

By Leslie Linthicum

26 VAX SISTERS

Christina O’Connell (’96 BSN,

’21 DNP) and Gabriella Blakey (’06 MS, ’13 EDD) were at the front of the COVID-19 response

By Leslie Linthicum

28 RUDE BOY UNM Alumni Association

President Michael Silva (’95 BA) finds sweet success

By Leslie Linthicum

30 A LOBO COMES HOME

Football coach Danny Gonzales (’99 BBA, ’02 MS) looks for a little normal

By Glen Rosales

32 FROM MN TO NM Richard Pitino takes over

men’s basketball

By Glen Rosales

34 SHELF LIFE Books by UNM alumni

Homecoming 2021 hosts virtual and in-person fun.

On the cover: Alumna Deb Haaland takes a seat at the Cabinet table.

Photo: Courtesy Deb Haaland

2

MIRAGE MAGAZINE

Mirage was the title of the University of New Mexico yearbook until its final edition in 1978. The title was then adopted by the alumni magazine, which continues to publish vignettes about UNM graduates and news of the University.

M A G A Z I N E

38 HONORING

ALUMNI

40 ALUMNI NETWORK

39 FROM THE VEEP

42 IN MEMO RIAM

A message from Alumni Association’s Connie Beimer

47 MY ALUMNI STORY

Snapshots from Alumni events

It’s Jacy Watley (’13 BAFA)

Fall 2021, Volume 41, Number 2 The University of New Mexico Garnett S. Stokes, President Connie Beimer, Vice President, Alumni Relations, Executive Director Alumni Association UNM Alumni Association Executive Committee Mike Silva (’95 BA) President Amy Miller (’85 BA, ’93 MPA) President-Elect Chad Cooper (’01 MBA) Past President Joe Ortiz (’14 BBA) Treasurer Connie Beimer (’76 BA, ’79 MPA) Secretary Appointed Members Kenneth Armijo (’05 BS, ’08 MS, ’11 PhD) Yasine Armstrong (’05 MA) Sandra Begay (’87 BS) Mark Herman (’91 BA, ’09 MBA) P. Michael Padilla (’03 BBA, ’07 MBA) Alexis Tappan (’99 BA, ’17 MA) Mirage Editorial Connie Beimer, Vice President Leslie Linthicum, Editor Wayne Scheiner & Company, Graphic Design

Photo: Joe Thuente

Address correspondence to MirageEditor@unm.edu or The University of New Mexico Alumni Association, MSC 01-1160, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, 87131-0001. You can also contact us at (505) 277-5808.

Web: UNMAlumni.com Facebook: Facebook.com/UNMAlumni Instagram: Instagram.com/UNMAlumni Flickr: Flickr.com/UNMAlumni Twitter: @UNMAlumni

Richard Pitino wants to bring the noise back to The Pit.

FALL 2021

3

Good things happen when we work together.

We’re proud to partner with The University of New Mexico Alumni Association. To learn more libertymutual.com/nmalumni.

Coverage provided and underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company or its subsidiaries or affiliates, 175 Berkeley Street, Boston, MA 02116. Equal Housing Insurer. ©2019 Liberty Mutual Insurance 12564942

Letters to the editor FROM THE EDITOR:

E

ven though I took on the editor duties at Mirage seven years ago and have been immersing myself in Loboland ever since, I’m still surprised again and again at the network of connections that spread like a spiderweb among UNM alumni.

Here’s one example.

Deb Haaland was tapped to lead the U.S. Department of Interior earlier this year and, of course, we immediately started to plan putting her on the cover of our next issue. She’s not only a double alumna, she’s only the second New Mexican (the late Manuel Lujan Jr. is the other) to lead Interior and the first Native American and UNM alum to serve in the post.

After she was confirmed and took on the agency that Lujan once described colorfully as trying to handle a “sack full of cats,” she was, not surprisingly, very busy. And her press staff was, not surprisingly, very protective of her time.

No, unfortunately she could not carve out time to speak to Mirage.

Then came the July 4th weekend and Connie Beimer (’76 BA, ’79 MPA), UNM’s vice president for Alumni Relations, was out for a run in Albuquerque’s bosque.

She and her running friends made room for another runner coming in the other direction and one of Beimer’s friends said, “You know who that was?”

Haaland, who is training for a marathon, was home in New Mexico for the weekend and out for her morning run.

Beimer turned around, turned on the gas and caught up with Haaland.

After Beimer congratulated her, she made a pitch for Mirage, alumna to alumna. Of course, Haaland said, she

would be happy to make time to be in Mirage. After all, she said, “I’m a Lobo!”

Within the week we had our interview.

In boardrooms, the Roundhouse, neighborhood shops and, yes, running and hiking trails, it’s not that unusual to encounter one or more UNM alumni.

Part of the reason is simple math. UNM is a large university and it counts more than 200,000 graduates. But it’s also about who UNM graduates become. Hire a lawyer or an accountant, go to a doctor, vote in a local election, grab a local coffee or IPA and it’s not unlikely you’ll find you’re dealing with a fellow Lobo.

In addition to Haaland, in this issue we’re profiling some fierce and accomplished UNM alumni — including two sisters who managed to get COVID vaccines in the arms of 100,000-plus New Mexicans, internationally known attorneys Nancy Hollander and Teri Duncan, one very determined Lobo football coach and our own Alumni Association President Mike Silva.

Silva has a vision to make that alumni connection even stronger by pairing current UNM students with alumni mentors who can help them across the commencement line and stay connected after graduation.

All the more reason to keep your eyes open for those unexpected Lobo connections.

Leslie Linthicum MirageEditor@unm.edu

Look for a friend on every page!

Send your alumni news to Mirage Editor, The University of New Mexico Alumni Association, MSC 01-1160, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, 87131-0001.

Or better yet, email your news to Alumni@unm.edu. Please include your middle name or initial and tell us where you’re living now.

Deadlines: Spring deadline: January 1 Fall deadline: June 1 1950s Dave E. Barney (’59 BS, ’61 MS), Placitas, N.M., retired from the Albuquerque Academy after 47 years as swimming coach.

1960s Katherine Kuligowski (’60 BS), Albuquerque, has published “Rehoming Love.”

Dave Barney

Nancy Gearhart (’66 BSHE), Mesa, Ariz, celebrated her 60th wedding anniversary with husband Steve Gearhart.

Luther C. Garcia (’67 BSED, ’71 MA) and Karen A. Garcia (‘68 BSED), Albuquerque, celebrated 50 years of marriage on February 6.

Thomas Horn (’68 BA), San Francisco, was awarded the French Legion of Honor, the highest award France bestows, in acknowledgment of his lifelong dedication to philanthropy and advocacy for the arts Thomas Horn and culture of France.

Horn, an attorney, also serves as honorary consul of Monaco in San Francisco.

Vicki A. Turpen (’69 BAED, ’93 MA), Albuquerque, has published “The Delicate Balance.”

1970s Enrique R. Lamadrid (’70 BA), Albuquerque, was granted the 2021 Heritage Publication Award from the Cultural Properties Review Committee.

Linda Kurth (’71 BAED, ’73 MA), Mount Vernon, Wash., has published “God, the Devil and Divorce.”

FALL 2021

5

Our UNM Legacy

“By giving to the UNM College of Pharmacy we are sending a belated thank you. UNM provided guidance when I was in high school and financial aid when I was working while attending classes. Our intention is to help other students realize the rewarding life that a career in pharmacy can provide.”

- Michael Beatrice, PhD (BS ‘71) and Kimberly Beatrice

Michael and Kimberly have provided for The College of Pharmacy in their estate plan.

They are members of the New Horizons Society, a group honoring individuals and families who have included UNM in their estate plans. For more information about how you can create a legacy at UNM or to share that you’ve already done so, please contact Bonnie McLeskey at (505) 313-7610 or bonnie.mcleskey@unmfund.org.

Look forward by giving back.

@UNMFund

UNMFoundation

@UNMFund

505-313-7600

Good to be back

A

fter more than a year of remote instruction, online gatherings and cancelled events, The University of New Mexico is delighted to return to full operations for the Fall 2021 semester. That means a return to in-person instruction, a return to meeting each other at places other than Zoom or Teams and a return to the kinds of face-to-face social interactions that are a vital part of Lobo life — and make for a lifetime of Lobo memories.

But if it feels like a return to normal, it’s not — or at least not yet. With COVID still a very real concern in communities across New Mexico and the nation, we’re doing everything we can to ensure the entire UNM community is as safe as we can possibly make it. We’re continuing to follow the science, which includes listening to our experts at the UNM Health Sciences Center, and we’ve put in place vaccination and masking requirements to keep our pack protected. Keeping our communities safe is everyone’s responsibility, and I feel good about what Lobos are doing to look out for their own health, and the health and well-being of others.

And so far, so good. The doors at UNM are fully open, and it’s great seeing, and hearing, our campus return to life. We’ve missed our students, faculty and staff, and we’re looking forward to getting together for the gatherings and activities that define the Lobo experience — whether it’s participating in our Welcome Back Days activities, cheering on our Lobo athletes from the stands, or just greeting colleagues at the SUB or meeting friends at the Duck Pond. Our alumni, too, have plenty of great activities planned, from chile roasts to tailgate parties, so keep an eye out for opportunities to get together with your fellow Lobos again. It’s been far too long.

And speaking of our Alumni Association, you may have picked up this issue of Mirage in your inbox, instead of your mailbox. Across our campuses, we’re taking to heart many of the lessons we learned over the last year — and even as the world reopens, we’re striving to make more resources more readily available online to keep you informed of what’s going on around campus and around the Lobo community, delivered in a format that works best for you.

We’re so glad to be back, and I’m grateful to our students, faculty, staff and alumni who helped us make it through the last eighteen tumultuous months. With your support and enthusiasm, the Lobo community is stronger and more connected than ever — and looking forward to a great Fall together.

Regards,

Garnett S. Stokes President, The University of New Mexico

Dan H. Lopez (’71 BA, ’72 MA, ’83 PhD), Albuquerque, former New Mexico Tech president, was named to the Western New Mexico University board of regents.

Janis A. Devoti (’72 BSED, ’83 MA), Santa Fe, N.M., the principal at Piñon Elementary School, retired after nearly 30 years.

Patricia K. Tharp (’73 BUS), Farmington, N.M., has published “The Lost Communities of Navajo Dam Vol. 1/Vol. 2.”

Gregory J. Lalire (’74 BA), Leesburg, Va., has published “Man from Montana.”

Joseph F. McGrath (’75 PhD), New Upper Falls, Md., has published “T.C. O'Connor.”

Martin A. Serna (’76 BBA, ’86 MAPA), Albuquerque, was elected to the board of directors for Nusenda Credit Union.

Theodore J. Bornhorst (’77 MS, ’80 PhD), Houghton, Mich., has announced his retirement from Michigan Technological University after 40 years with the institution.

C. Thomas Daulton (’77 BBA), Dallas, Texas, was elected to the Albuquerque Community Foundation’s 2021 board of trustees.

Mark D. Guadagnoli (’77 BS, ’81 MD), Fort Collins, Colo., has published “Final Chaos.”

C. Thomas Daulton

Holly Harrison (’77 MA, ’90 PhD), Albuquerque, has published “Rites & Wrongs.”

Del Leonard Jones (’77 BA), Helper, Utah, has published “At the Bat: The Strikeout That Shamed America.”

Edward Mazria (’77 MARCH), Santa Fe, N.M., was awarded the 2021 Gold Medal by the American Institute of Architects for his work sounding the alarm on climate change and motivating the architecture profession into action.

Nancy Hollander (’78 JD) New York, N.Y., was recently depicted in the film “The Mauritanian.”

Genevieve J. Jackson (’78 BSED, ’83 MA) Window Rock, Ariz., was appointed to the McKinley County Commission.

Judy A. Cartmell (’79 BBA, ’96 MPA), Colorado Springs, Colo., was elected to the board of directors for Nusenda Credit Union.

FALL 2021

7

Campus Connections

Dean Leo Lo

Lo said he is excited about that mix of a university press, degree-granting program and academic library, all housed in one college.

“I believe there is tremendous potential, and I am looking forward to working with the talented faculty and staff to leverage the strengths of all these units,” Lo said.

Lo was a first-generation college student and began his career as a Multicultural Studies Librarian at Kansas State University in 2009. He held positions at the University of Alabama and Old Dominion University, before moving to Penn State.

HELLO, DEAN LO Leo Lo is the new dean of the College of University Libraries and Learning Sciences.

Lo joins UNM from The Pennsylvania State University, where he was associate dean for Learning, Undergraduate Services and Commonwealth Campuses, overseeing operations at 20 campus libraries throughout Pennsylvania. He also led the strategic planning process of the University Libraries, supported the promotion and tenure process of Penn State library faculty and led the Libraries’ COVID-19 response.

Provost James Holloway lauded Lo for his “experience, vision and strategy,” as well as his commitment to equity, inclusion and affordability.

At UNM, Lo will oversee a busy library system that sees 1.5 million visits a year, offers undergraduate and master’s degrees and a doctorate in Organization, Information & Learning Sciences, and houses UNM Press.

8

MIRAGE MAGAZINE

SUNSHINE ON A CLOUDY DAY Photovoltaic panels are a triedand-true way of harnessing the sun’s power and converting it to electricity ­— except when the clouds roll in. In UNM’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ph.D. candidate Guillermo Terrén-Serrano and Professor Manel Martínez-Ramón have developed an artificial intelligence algorithm that optimizes the performance of solar power by predicting cloud cover.

Reducing the randomness of solar energy generation requires knowing when solar radiation availability is going to decrease due to cloud cover. TerrénSerrano and Martínez-Ramón’s artificial intelligence algorithm learns about cloud patterns and predicts, based on recent cloud movement, the future output of a solar panel.

The algorithm was trained using cameras and a solar radiation sensor installed on campus at UNM. The camera system was designed by Terrén-Serrano and Martínez-Ramón to follow the sun throughout the day, collecting data on both cloud cover and solar radiation at the same time.

The apparatus collects one visual image every 15 seconds and one solar radiation sample every third of a second.

The researchers plan to launch a website later this year that will allow anyone to see the data from their cameras in real-time.

“The problem with solar energy is that it is of stochastic nature: it has a random component due to the presence of clouds,” Martínez-Ramón explains.

“So, what we want to do is to reduce this randomness and when we know that we’re not going to have enough solar power then we will be prepared to supply this energy with other sources.”

JACKPOT The UNM Lottery Scholarship, which benefits one in five college students enrolled in New Mexico, is back for this school year at 100 percent of tuition.

The scholarship, funded by lottery ticket sales, will be $63.5 million for the fiscal year 2022, up more than 30

Vincent R. Trollinger (’79 MPA), Albuquerque, and his wife Danice, celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on January 30.

percent over 2021. The scholarship paid full base tuition for qualified students between 1996 and 2015, but was reduced to cover between 6075 percent in 2018. Last year it covered 67 percent of the base tuition at UNM.

“Due to growing concerns over COVID-19 variants and a rise in infections, we have determined that the ‘aspirational’ approach we initially adopted — to encourage, though not require vaccination — is no longer sufficient to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the UNM community,” UNM President Garnett S. Stokes said in a letter to the University. “Unfortunately, as infections have increased around the state and the nation, our vaccination rate has not kept pace in a manner sufficient to ensure we can protect our community from a similar outbreak,” said Stokes. “In short, with cases of COVID and its variants slowly increasing, if we wish to return to a fully operational campus in a manner that protects the safety of our community, encouraging vaccination and mask-wearing is not enough.”

AND, WE’RE BACK! UNM offered free vaccinations in the On campus, in-person classes — SUB and required all employees and like a lot of things interrupted at the students to provide documentation peak of the COVID-19 pandemic of full vaccination. Responding to the last year — are back for the Fall 2021 increase in COVID cases and the new, semester. UNM’s Main and branch more contagious delta variant, the campuses, which looked lonely for the University also revised its mask policy, past two semesters, are bustling again requiring everyone to wear a mask with students, staff and faculty, with indoors at all UNM locations. health and safety protocols in place.

About 80 percent of classes are being GREEN CHILE, held in person and campus buildings have undergone systems renovations RED PLANET that include fresh air flushes several UNM’s connection to exploration times a day. of planet Mars — a relationship that UNM, joining many other U.S. dates back to the 1970s — continues colleges and universities, made a to grow. record of vaccination against SARS The latest Mars/UNM connection CoV-2 a requirement for enrolling or involves — what else? — growing returning to work. green chile on the red planet.

1980s Jaima M. Chevalier (’80 BA), Santa Fe, N.M., has published “Fringe: Maria Benitez’s Flamenco Enchantment.”

Donald L. Willerton (’80 MS), Los Alamos, N.M., has published “Teddy’s War” and “The King of Trash.”

Benjamin G. Diven (’81 MD), Las Cruces, N.M., was awarded the Tim Fleming Medical Director of the Year award.

Bob Matteucci, Jr. (’82 BAS, ’08 JD) has opened his own law practice, Matteucci Family Law. Jennifer J. Pruett (’83 JD), Santa Fe, N.M., Deputy Cabinet Secretary in the New Mexico Bob Matteucci, Jr. Environment Department, retired after more than 20 years with the department.

Perry R. Wilkes (’83 BAENV), Nogales, Ariz., has published “I Always Wanted to Tell You…” and “Under Torn Paper Mountains.”

Thomas R. Leary (’84 BSPH, ’08 PharmD), Albuquerque, was elected to the Veterans Integration Center board of directors.

Richard J. Berry (’85 BBA), Albuquerque, was elected to serve as an officer the United Way of Central New Mexico’s board of directors.

Michael E. Brands (’85 MRCP), Woodstock, Vt., received the Northern New England Planning Association Chapter of the American Planning Association’s first Planner Emeritus award. Brands retired in May after 31 years as planning director for the Town of Woodstock, Vermont.

Larry T. Torres (’85 MA), Arroyo Seco, N.M., published the novel “The Children of the Blue Nun.” Barbara Vigil (’85 JD), Santa Fe, N.M., retired from the New Mexico Supreme Court and was appointed secretary of the New Mexico Children, Youth & Families Department.

FALL 2021

9

Campus Connections A proposal by UNM architects, biologists, computer scientists and engineers calling themselves the UNM CHILI HOUSE Team won first place in a NASA competition for design technologies.

The UNM team’s winning submission uses small, simple robots and water sensors to water and tend to New Mexico chile peppers on Mars, the same

The UNM team consists of five undergraduates, out of a total of 12 team members including graduate and faculty advisors, and draws from the departments of Biology and Computer Science and the School of Architecture and Planning.

The team proposes using an inflatable dome covered with protection from radiation and small meteorites. The

output that people, or computers, can understand,” Hanson explained. “We then program the robots to understand those plant signals or communications.

It may sound far-fetched that we may be communicating with plants, but just imagine ways we might need to communicate with other life forms that don’t speak.”

HOW DO YOU SPELL RELIEF?

variety of chile that will soon be growing on the International Space Station.

Teaching robots to take care of plants is a big step toward having viable food source for astronauts when they land on Mars.

“Astronauts will need to have freshly grown plants for nutrition as well for mental health,” explained Dave Hanson, UNM Biology professor and a faculty advisor for the team. “Ideally, fresh food would be available when astronauts arrive at Mars and maintained continuously on both the moon and Mars without human intervention.”

10

MIRAGE MAGAZINE

interior of the dome houses planter configurations outfitted with moisture and health sensors, which wirelessly transmit signals from the plant to a robot. When the plant needs watering, the robots collect water from a distribution point near the center of the dome and transport it to the plant.

In essence, the plants are telling the robots when they need water, fertilizer or other care.

“The on-plant sensors are working like translators for the plant. They monitor electrical and biophysical changes in the plant and provide an

On a scale of zero to 10, how nauseous are you? That question formed the basis of a UNM-based study of the effects of cannabis consumption on nausea symptoms, ranging from five minutes after consumption to one hour post-cannabis consumption. It showed that using cannabis results in an average symptom improvement of nearly 4 points on a 0-10 scale just moments after consumption, with increasing benefits over time.

Nausea, whether due to food poisoning, gastrointestinal disorders, chemotherapy or a host of other causes, is a common symptom but often difficult to treat. Cannabis has been used to lessen nausea for millennia, although its dosage and effects have been under-researched.

Although its effectiveness for treating chemotherapy-induced nausea is widely recognized, the use of cannabis for nausea remains under-researched in the general population, with no previous studies examining how quickly cannabis relieves nausea or how relief varies with product characteristics.

In a recent study, titled “The Effectiveness of Common Cannabis Products for Treatment of Nausea” published in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology, researchers showed that more than 96% of the study sample reported nausea relief within one hour. “Despite increasing clinical concerns regarding cyclical vomiting or hyperemesis syndrome in cannabis users, almost all users experienced relief,” said author Sarah Stith, an assistant professor in the UNM Department of Economics.

The study was based on data from 2,220 cannabis self-administration sessions recorded by 886 people using the Releaf App, a mobile software

The extent of nausea relief experienced by the study sample varied. Flower and concentrates yielded faster and greater relief than edibles or tinctures, while vaping yielded less relief than consuming cannabis via a joint or pipe.

The study also compared the effects of THC and CBD among consumers of cannabis flower. Coauthor Jacob Vigil, associate professor in the UNM Department of Psychology, explained that “perhaps our most surprising result was that THC, typically associated with recreational use, seemed to improve treatment among consumers of cannabis flower, while our CBD, more commonly

Fred B. Bugbee (’86 BM), Albuquerque, N.M. has become the new head of the NMSU Music Department after joining the university in 1994.

Gerald E. Baca (’87 JD), Las Vegas, N.M., is a New Mexico Court of Appeals judge.

Fred B. Bugbee

Hilma M. Chynoweth (’87 BA,’14 MA), Albuquerque, was elected to the New Mexico Public Relations Society of America.

Sheila R. Hernandez (’87 BBA), Albuquerque, was named senior vice president/customer service officer at Summit Electric Supply.

Scott Elder (’88 BA, ’97 MA, ’17 MBA), Albuquerque, who had served as Albuquerque Public Schools interim superintendent for nine months, was promoted to the permanent position in March.

Sonya F. Priestly (’88 Scott Elder BBA), Albuquerque, was elected to the United Way of Central New Mexico’s board of directors.

Joseph M. Lane (’89 BUS, ’92 BS), Albuquerque, received the UNM Staff Council’s 2021 Jim Davis Award.

Cheryl A. Matherly (’89 BA), Allentown, Pa., was named Senior International Officer of the Year by The Institute of International Education.

1990s Steven Lee Carr (’90 BA), Albuquerque, was elected to the board of directors of the New Mexico Public Relations Society of America.

Jill K. Trujillo (’90 BBA), Albuquerque, was named Mountain West Women’s Golf Coach of the Year.

Wayne E. Propst (’90 JD), Santa Fe, N.M., was named the New Mexico Public Regulation Comission’s chief of staff.

application designed to help users manage cannabis consumption by allowing them to record real-time changes in symptom intensity.

associated with medical use, actually seemed to be associated with less symptom relief.”

Eileen P. Riordan (’ 90 JD), Carlsbad, N.M., was appointed district judge by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to serve in the Fifth Judicial District, which includes Eddy, Chaves and Lea counties. (continued on page 31)

FALL 2021

11

Photo: Department of Interior

12

After her nomination, Haaland's celebrity quotient rose and so did requests for media interviews.

MIRAGE MAGAZINE

Photo: Department of Interior

Haaland is interviewed by Norah O’Donnell for CBS Evening News in April.

ONE FOR THE HISTORY BOOKS The first Native American to head the Department of Interior stays grounded in Pueblo culture

D

eb Haaland (’94 BA, ’06 JD) calls herself a 35th-generation New Mexican, tracing her family tree on her mother’s side to Pueblo inhabitation in the 1200s. Born in Winslow, Ariz., to a Laguna mother and an Anglo father from Minnesota, Haaland grew up as a military brat; her mother served in the Navy and her father in the Marine Corps and the family moved frequently with each of her father’s postings.

A single mother who has been open about her 30-plus years of sobriety, her housing insecurity and her reliance on public

assistance, Haaland walked a rough road that led — in 2018 when she was 58 — to election to the United States Congress, representing New Mexico’s 1st Congressional District.

She was one of two Native American women elected to Congress that year — a first for the country. And this March, Haaland notched another historic first, becoming the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary when she was sworn in as Secretary of the Interior.

Haaland now heads a massive federal department with 70,000 employees and

missions that range from managing the National Parks and Bureaus of Land Management and Reclamation to overseeing Indian education and the trust relationship between the federal government and 574 federally recognized American Indian and Alaska Native tribes and villages.

The double alum made time in her busy schedule of travel and meetings to talk to Mirage about her life, her new mission, training for a marathon and her continuing connections to UNM.

FALL 2021

13

Mirage: I’m always interested in families, and the relationship between our family and who we are. Your family background is a combination of Pueblo culture, Anglo culture and also military culture. How do you think your parents and grandparents shaped who you are today?

Haaland: The military part of it, my dad got his orders every couple of years and there was never any fight or question. We just packed up and moved to wherever the commander in chief instructed him to move. I feel like that part of my life has given me a real opportunity to sort of adapt to things very easily. You have to make new friends wherever you go; it’s a new house, new neighborhood, all of those things. So, I feel grateful for that. I actually feel like I was able to adapt really well to so many different types of situations and so I feel like that’s something that the military life does for a person.

With that being said, whenever my dad had a temporary duty station, meaning he was there for six months or a year, my mom would make sure that we went to stay with my (Laguna) grandparents during that time. She was adamant for us having an opportunity to grow up with my grandparents and have them in our lives.

They were part of the assimilation policies.

Not only did they go to boarding schools but they worked on the railroad in Winslow, Ariz. My grandfather was a diesel train mechanic for 45 years and my grandmother cleaned diesel train engines. Sometimes when we would go visit them it was in Winslow.

Other times it was to Laguna.

I learned how to cook from my grandmother just by watching her through the kitchen window. She didn’t like kids in her kitchen. She moved entirely too fast and you’d get run over if you even tried!

And then I’d spend time at Laguna with my grandfather in his fields. He grew corn and there were fruit trees that he would irrigate.

We’d pull weeds, pick worms off the corn.

So, I feel like it was because of my mom, who really insisted that we learn everything that we could from our grandparents, that I have that incredible perspective. When we got older of course it was hiking on the mesas and climbing rocks and all of that so I got a good taste of the outdoors as well.

14

MIRAGE MAGAZINE

My grandmother was from Mesita Village. We’re matrilineal and we follow our mother’s side.

Mirage: She really kept you grounded with Pueblo culture even though you had a very urban childhood and were moving all over the place.

Haaland: I went to 13 public schools before graduating from Highland High School in Albuquerque.

Mirage: You graduated from Highland, and then I think you were 28 when you enrolled at UNM. What was happening in that decade between high school and college and what was it that propelled you to seek a college education?

Haaland: I was working at Zinn’s Bakery. I started that job when I was in high school. I walked to work every day after school. And when I graduated from high school, they offered me a full-time job. So, I took that and I just worked. It was important that I make a living by myself. My dad wasn’t the type to let anyone sit around the house, so not working was out of the question.

You know, I just woke up one morning and asked myself, “Am I going to be doing this for the rest of my life?” And the answer clearly was no. And at that point I called my sister, I called my mom and I asked them, “Should I go to college?” And of course, they said absolutely. Neither one of my parents graduated from college. I didn’t have a lot of people telling me I should go to college. So now I do that as a role model for kids. I just plant the seed sometimes. If I’m the only one asking them, you know, “Think about going to college,” then it’s absolutely important that I raise that.

Mirage: And you were 34 and quite pregnant when you graduated. (Her only child Somah was born four days after graduation.) That sounds like a lot. And then you had a degree, you had a toddler and you started your own business, Pueblo Salsa.

Haaland: Yes, I kept that alive until I was in law school.

Mirage: Was that about the flexibility of being a single mom and being able to make your own hours?

Haaland: That was part of it, definitely.

I didn’t want to put my child in day care.

I just felt very strongly that children in those young ages, it just lasts for such a short time, I felt very confident that if I kept her with me as much as possible, I would have a strong influence over her life. And as it is, they’re doing pretty well.

Mirage: Yeah, I looked at their social media.

Cool kid! You’ve raised a really interesting adult who’s very impressive. I read a piece by Julian Brave Noise Cat in which he described in a really sensitive way this period of time when you didn’t have enough food, were really down to nothing in the cabinet, and applied for food stamps. Can you talk about your financial struggles and how you coped?

Haaland: Right. Oh, my goodness. It’s tough.

And so I understand that. It’s tough for so many people in this country. If I had all the money that I spent in overdraft fees, right?

You just hold your breath every day because you’re worried about being able to keep things going, keep a roof over your head.

I relied on friends and I relied on family.

But I recognize that’s not a foolproof way to gain financial footing, either. That’s why I’ve been very adamant about helping to level Mirage: The path to college for a firstthe playing field. Equity is an issue in this generation college student is a tough one. country that we absolutely need to work It took you a while to graduate. I’m assuming on and deal with. People need to be able to you worked your way through? support themselves. I remember filling out my application for food stamps and them Haaland: I was working. There were family telling me you don’t qualify for emergency obligations. I just wanted to do well and food stamps and I just started crying in the I thought if I don’t overload myself that I counselor’s office. I know what it’s like to should be able to do well. And it was fine. have to put food back when you’re at the Things happen the way they’re supposed to, checkout line because you don’t have I guess. enough money to pay for it.

Mirage:When you did decide to go to law school, were you thinking of a career as a practicing attorney or were you thinking of about getting into politics and just these kinds of social justice issues we’re talking about?

throughout the years and I think, yes, an awful lot has happened. It’s been wonderful.

I’ve made some strong and beautiful friendships across the state. So it’s been great. And I’m still in touch with my college professors from UNM.

Mirage: I’m curious how you stay grounded and connected — healthy physically and mentally in this period in your life.

Haaland: I’m a runner. I’ve been running for the last 20 years. And that absolutely keeps me grounded. Yesterday morning Haaland: You know, when I was in Mirage: When you were nominated for this I got outside and ran eight miles. It was a undergraduate, I had to take English 100 job you spoke about the impacts of climate beautiful New Mexico sunrise. I’m here in when I started because I didn’t score high change and environmental injustice and the New Mexico and I’m going back to D.C. enough on my standardized test, and my Interior Department addressing those issues. later today. I pack my suitcase with red writing instructor would give us extra credit I wondered what you see as the core, the chile and green chile and corn tortillas. for going to lectures around the university theme, of the work that you want to do.

I eat New Mexican food whenever I’m and writing an essay about the lecture. And home. My mother taught us that those one of the first ones I went to outside of Haaland: Climate change is real and if traditional foods, they keep your class was to listen to John Echohawk from anyone thinks we’re not facing a climate body healthy, but they also feed your the Native American Rights Fund. I was so crisis right now, I don’t understand that. It soul, because we have a very strong impressed with him and his journey and was a month ago or something the highest tradition of agriculture here in New work he was doing. He inspired me. And carbon levels ever recorded in the history of Mexico. When you partake of that it later on in my undergraduate career I took a our world were recorded. So it’s an urgent feeds your spirit as well. class from Fred Harris, former senator from issue. When you read the front page every Oklahoma. He taught political science and day, they’re either talking about drought or Mirage: Are you training for any races he inspired me further. So I thought between wildfires. Our world is definitely changing. right now? those two I needed to go to law school.

And I feel that every single American can participate in this new era that needs to Haaland: I am. I’m signed up for the Mirage: And after you graduated from happen and I really hope that every single Marine Corps Marathon Oct. 29. law school, it was a law professor who person gets on board. put on the path of politics? Encouraged Mirage: Is eight miles a short or long you to volunteer?

Mirage: You are famously the first Native run for you?

American in charge of this agency and it’s an Haaland: My constitutional law professor agency that has such a terrible history with Haaland: When you train for a marathon, invited me to apply to Emerge New Mexico Native Americans. So this isn’t just academic you increase your mileage incrementally. and so I did that. I applied to Emerge New or policy for you – this is personal, right?

So I’m at eight miles. The next time I’ll run Mexico and the rest is history, I guess. I Do you see that as an opportunity? Does 10 and go up from there, my longest run recognized that I could make an impact on it weigh on you? being 20 miles before the marathon. things. Thereafter I just really dug in and started helping folks get out to vote. I was Haaland: You know every position I’ve had Mirage: Anything else you’d like to touch joined, of course, by many folks who feel weighs on me. If you’re a leader in anything on about UNM? passionate about our right to vote and so you’re in that position because you care I was in really good company and have deeply about the issues, and I do. I care deeply. Haaland: I would just say to the students been for a long time.

However, I feel very blessed that I’ve gotten so at UNM, you’re so fortunate to be at much support. For most things that I’ve done, an amazing university. It’s a close-knit Mirage: The rest is history! I look at your even when I was a member of Congress, I had community; everyone cares about each career as starting rather late in life, but support across the country for the things that other. I loved my time there and I keep then just taking off. From 2012 working are important that we want to accomplish. that tradition going. My child, Somah, for the Obama campaign to 2018 being So, I feel like I’m standing on the shoulders also graduated from UNM in the Theater in Congress yourself, that is a very short of so many people who came before me who Department in 2017. And so both of us, period of time. Did it seem like a real worked hard to conserve our environment, we recognize the value of being at life-changing whirlwind? who worked hard to bring issues to the hometown university like UNM. forefront so that people will care about them So just keep up the good work.

Haaland: It’s a good chunk of years, so it and I feel like I am sort of honoring those doesn’t necessarily feel like a whirlwind. But people’s legacy and that’s a part of how I feel Mirage: So, a proud Lobo mom? sometimes I stop to think how much has about the job that I have now. Many folks happened. I look through photographs I’ve have come before me and I really need to stay Haaland: Absolutely! ❂ taken that sort of document what I’ve done on that trajectory.

FALL 2021

15

Photo: Deb For Congress

Photo: ?

16

MIRAGE MAGAZINE

Photo: Department of Interior

Haaland married longtime partner Skip Sayre in August at the the Hyatt Regency Tamaya at Santa Ana Pueblo.

Also On the Biden Team Haaland isn’t the only alumnus joining the Biden-Harris administration in high-profile policy positions.

Libby Washburn (’98 JD), formerly the chief compliance officer and chief of staff in the President’s Office at UNM, now serves in the White House as Special Assistant to the President for Native Affairs.

A member of the Biden-Harris administration’s Domestic Policy Council, Washburn is involved in all aspects of the government-to-government relationships between the United States and American Indian and Alaska Native tribes.

She served as state director and legislative counsel for U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman and as the chief of staff to the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior in the Obama-Biden administration and at the Bureau of Reclamation.

Washburn earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma in 1994, a master’s in government from Texas Woman’s University in 1995 and her law degree from UNM in 1998.

Washburn, a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma, served as UNM’s chief compliance officer from 2016 to September 2018, and was appointed chief of staff by interim President Chaouki Abdallah and continued

in the role under President Garnett S. Stokes. Washburn left UNM in 2018 to move to Iowa with her husband, UNM School of Law Dean Kevin Washburn, when he became dean of the University of Iowa School of Law. Xochitl Torres Small (’15 JD), who served one term in the U.S. Congress representing New Mexico’s Second District, has been nominated to serve as Under Secretary of Rural Development in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In announcing the nomination, the White House said, "Throughout her career, Torres Small has employed her experience organizing in vulnerable, rural communities to achieve lasting investments that combat persistent poverty.”

Torres Small, the granddaughter of migrant farmworkers, who grew up in Las Cruces, left home at age 16 to attend United World College’s college in Eswatini, then known as Swaziland.

She then attended Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 2007, and returned home to work as a field organizer in colonias in southern New Mexico.

In 2008, she came home from college to work. She went to work as a field representative for U.S. Sen. Tom Udall in 2012, Inspired by Udall’s work on water in the West, Torres Small enrolled

in UNM’s School of Law to focus on water law.

If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Tom Udall (’77 JD) can add “ambassador” to the list of titles he has earned over an extensive career in public service.

Udall was nominated to serve as ambassador to New Zealand and the Independent State of Samoa by the Biden administration.

He served two terms in the Senate before deciding not to seek a third term in 2020. Before that, he was a member of the House of Representatives for 10 years, representing New Mexico’s Third Congressional District. From 1991 to 1999, Udall served as New Mexico’s Attorney general.

Udall, the son of former Arizona Congressman and Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, was born in Tucson, Ariz., and graduated from Prescott College with a pre-law degree in 1970. He graduated from Cambridge University in England with a Bachelor of Law degree in 1975 and received his law degree from UNM in 1977.

He served as an assistant U.S. Attorney in the criminal division in New Mexico and as chief counsel to the New Mexico Department of Health and Environment before he was elected to Congress.

FALL 2021

17

Teri Duncan Photo: Courtesy

FIERCE DEFENDERS

dellahi. i’s nephew, Fall Ab ris Chang and Salah Ch or at tig es inv i, , Mohamedou Salah llander, Teri Duncan From left, Nancy Ho

UNM alumnae take on tough legal cases and unpopular clients

By Leslie Linthicum

I

n the film “The Mauritanian,” which won Jodie Foster a best supporting actress Golden Globe award this year, Foster plays attorney Nancy Hollander and Shailene Woodley plays attorney Teri Duncan, colleagues at an Albuquerque law firm who take on a habeas corpus case for Mohamedou Salahi, a Bedouin electrical engineer accused of being an Al Qaida recruiter and terror plot mastermind, who was imprisoned and tortured by American soldiers at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Their work led a federal judge to order Salahi released from the government’s “black site” at Guantanamo after

18

MIRAGE MAGAZINE

being held there without charges for seven years.

Salahi stayed imprisoned for another seven years while the government appealed and was finally freed in 2016.

Both received their law degrees from UNM — Hollander in 1978 and Duncan in 2000.

The film tells only a slice of each woman’s distinguished career. Driven to uphold the Constitution even when it’s inconvenient, both have taken on unpopular cases and defended some of the most vilified defendants in the American legal system.

McCluskey against the death penalty. “By the end of the case,” she says, “I understood If it weren’t for a few twists of fate, he was this incredibly complicated, kind Theresa “Teri” Duncan might have been and connected human being who was, of a prosecutor instead of one of the nation’s course, terribly flawed. There was no most respected defenders of people facing excuse for what he did, but I came to the federal death penalty. understand why he did what he did.

After coming to St. John’s College in People are sometimes surprised to hear Santa Fe from Rhode Island, Duncan fell this, but I really like my clients.” in love with New Mexico and stayed after With each client, Duncan has gotten she graduated, working as a grant writer for a little closer to understanding human nonprofits in Santa Fe. She loved helping nature. It may come as a surprise that social causes she cared about but wanted a spending two decades involved with career that would allow her people accused of grisly murders has to more directly make a difference. brightened Duncan’s outlook.

She picked law school and enrolled “I feel better as a human being having at UNM. reached the conclusion that there is no Why law? evil. As Rudolfo Anaya writes in Bless Me, “My mother says I came out of the Ultima, there is no such thing as evil, there womb arguing,” Duncan says. are just things we don’t understand.”

It may come as a surprise, but Duncan After law school Duncan clerked for says, “I actually went into law school New Mexico Court of Appeals Judge thinking I would be a prosecutor.” She had Lynn Pickard and then joined the Public volunteered in development for the Santa Defender’s Office. She was torn between Fe Rape Crisis Center and was interested in two job openings — one in the appellate prosecuting as a way of defending people division in Santa Fe and the other in the who were the victims of violence. juvenile division in Albuquerque. When But the summer after her first year of law her car broke down and commuting to school she shadowed a public defender for Albuquerque was off the table, she took a few days and found her niche. “From then the appellate job. on,” she says, “I was a hard-core criminal Duncan was still green when defense lawyer and never looked back.” the opportunity arose to join Duncan took special interest in the the legal team defending social and psychological underpinnings of Terry Nichols, accused of criminal behavior, finding insight into the conspiring with Timothy ways childhood trauma is associated with McVeigh to blow up criminal behavior. the federal building in “I came to understand that there really Oklahoma City in 1995 are two sides to every story, that people and killing 168 people. In who are charged with criminal offenses separate trials in federal have very complicated backgrounds,” court, McVeigh was she says. found guilty of murder, She cites as an example John McCluskey, conspiracy and using who was charged with carjacking and a weapon of mass murdering a couple traveling in their RV destruction and from the Midwest to Colorado. McCluskey was sentenced was big and tattooed, an escaped convict to death. with a hefty rap sheet when he grabbed Nichols, the couple. who was “When I met him, he presented himself as this dangerous tough guy, consistent with the ‘monster’ the media portrayed him as,” says Duncan, who defended

Theresa Duncan

not physically in Oklahoma on the day of the bombing, was found guilty of conspiracy and involuntary manslaughter, but spared the death penalty when the jury deadlocked.

He was sentenced to life in prison. The state of Oklahoma then charged Nichols with 160 counts of murder and sought the death penalty.

“I came to understand that there really are two sides to every story, that people who are charged with criminal offenses have very complicated backgrounds,” she says.

Duncan had just started dating Mark Earnest, a colleague in the Public Defender’s Office who defended capital crimes, when UNM Law Prof. Barbara Bergman, who was on Nichols’ defense team, asked Earnest to help her as an investigator and Duncan to help her with writing motions. One of Earnest and Duncan’s first dates had been a trip to the prison in Hobbs to interview a witness in a murder case, so it wasn’t a stretch for the two to pack up and move to Oklahoma for a year and a half to defend a man who was accused of the country’s most deadly domestic terrorist attack.

Theresa Duncan

Photo: Roberto E. Rosales (’96 BFA, ’14 MA)

FALL 2021

19

es (’96 BFA, ’14 MA) Photo: Roberto E. Rosal

ion. cases throughout the nat but works on appellate Fe ta San in ed bas is n Teri Dunca

Even though Nichols had been tried in federal court, the new legal team started over, spending over a year investigating his involvement in the bomb making and spending months in trial. It was a valuable learning experience for Duncan and it solidified the Duncan-Earnest relationship.

They married and now own a law practice, Duncan Earnest, in Santa Fe. Nichols was found guilty of all 160 murder charges, but the jury again deadlocked on the death penalty and he was sentenced to life in prison.

Duncan then joined the law firm now known as Freedman, Boyd, Hollander, Goldberg, Urias & Ward, where she teamed with Hollander when a court ruled that Guantanamo prisoners had rights to legal counsel.

The character in “The Mauritanian” played by Woodley is named Teri Duncan, but is based on several lawyers on the team.

“There were a lot of people working on the case and there was some good drama on

20

MIRAGE MAGAZINE

the team, so rather than add a whole group of lawyers they consolidated it all into me,” Duncan says.

Duncan speaks French in the movie; she doesn’t in real life. She is portrayed as wide-eyed, innocent and fragile, and in one completely fabricated scene, Hollander fires Duncan when Duncan sees some troubling evidence that disturbs her.

“The one way I was really naive,” Duncan says, “was in my faith in the federal government. I knew that our government had done horrible, horrible things over the centuries but I was one of those Americans who thought that was all in our past. As we learned about Mohamedou’s case and the black sites, I was shocked. It’s made me a better lawyer because I no longer take the government at its word the way I used to.”

From a filmmaking standpoint, Duncan understands that her character is a relatable foil to Hollander’s strong, almost heroic, persona. “And,” she says, “I think my character personifies the question,

‘How do you represent someone who society sees as a monster?’ My character provides a passageway for the audience to overcome their skepticism, to get to know Mohamedou as a human being and ultimately to care about him and what happened to him.”

She isn’t too worried about the big screen Teri Duncan overshadowing the real-life one.

“I think fortunately that the people who know me, know me,” she says. “A lot of lawyers I’ve worked with over the years say, ‘I loved the movie but that’s not the Teri Duncan I know.’ And of course Shailene Woodley is amazing, so to be able to say you’re played by Shailene Woodley is absolutely fabulous.”

An aspect of “The Mauritanian” that rings very true, according to Duncan, is the bond she and Hollander forged with Salahi.

And Duncan credits the UNM School of Law with helping that along.

“Because of the diversity of UNM’s faculty, students and curriculum

I learned the importance of culture and understanding culture in representing people,” Duncan says.

She and Hollander learned about Islam and world history from Salahi’s perspective, connected with him as a person and because of that were able to represent him better.

Knowing and representing Salahi also taught Duncan about compassion.

“He’s such a compassionate human being and so forgiving. Watching him interact with the guards and maintain a sense of dignity and compassion, I became more compassionate,” she says.” It’s challenging to feel self-righteous and entitled when someone like Mohamedou is wrongly imprisoned in Guantanamo, brutally tortured and is still kind and respectful to the people who wronged him.”

Duncan, who decompresses by walking her dogs and hiking in the forest outside Santa Fe, tries cases with literally life and death consequences for her clients.

“It’s a struggle,” she acknowledges. “I’m fortunate to have people in my personal life and my professional life who are supportive of me and who I can reach out to when it feels too heavy. I do have to stay after my mental health. There have been times and there will be times in the future when it almost feels like too much.”

toddler son and taking off for Albuquerque with nothing besides their clothes and her cameras, Hollander dropped the idea of becoming a doctor, earned a law degree and has used it for more than 40 years in the defense of civil rights, the rule of law and some famously unpopular criminal defendants.

The theme of her career has been standing up to authority.

“I don’t do well with authority,” Hollander says. She traces her rebellious streak to her parents — her father, a labor organizer in his youth, and her mother, a feminist who rose to be vice president at a major publishing company.

“My mother taught me at a young age to be a feminist,” Hollander says. Growing up in Dallas, Hollander was in elementary school when her mother handed her Henrik Ibsen’s critique of the patriarchy, “A Doll’s House,” and said, “Read this. It will make you a feminist.”

When Hollander landed at Michigan she quickly joined a student activism group that would become a chapter of Students for a Democratic Society and became its

president, introducing Malcolm X at a campus event. When she found herself in Albuquerque, working for the New Mexico Civil Liberties Union and looking for another career, she found her life’s calling in law school.

“The only thing I wanted to do was criminal defense work,” says Hollander.

“I never was interested in anything else. I like to say I’ve been fighting the government since I was 17 and got arrested in Ann Arbor, but now sometimes I get paid to do it.”

“People tell me sometimes that I look like Helen Mirren when my hair’s short,” Hollander says. “Then, all of a sudden it was Jodie (Foster) and I said, ’Wow!’” After 14 months with the Public Defender, Hollander joined what was then Freedman, Boyd and Daniels and quickly became a national name.

She, along with others in the firm, defended Wen Ho Lee, a Los Alamos National Laboratory mechanical engineer who was accused

Nancy Hollander The first time Nancy Hollander got arrested, she was 17, a pre-med freshman at the University of Michigan refusing to move at a sit-in for fair housing at Ann Arbor’s city hall. Three years later, she was arrested again during an anti-apartheid sit-in on Wall Street.

After graduating from Michigan, Hollander moved to Chicago and was arrested for her third — and last — time while she was taking pictures of police at City Hall during a demonstration.

Since fleeing a chaotic marriage with her

Jodie Foster + Nancy Hollander

FALL 2021

21

Hollander Photo: Courtesy Nancy

in 1999 of stealing nuclear secrets and giving them to China. After he was held in solitary confinement for nearly a year, the government’s case crumbled and all but one of the charges were dropped in 2000.

As part of a settlement, he pled guilty to improper handling of restricted data. The judge overseeing the case apologized to Lee for the way the case had been handled.

That same year, Hollander sued the government on behalf of União do Vegetal, a Brazil-based religious organization with congregations in New Mexico after customs agents seized hoasca tea, which contains a small amount of an illegal hallucinogen. In 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of União do Vegetal, affirming its members’ right to use the tea as a sacrament.

Hollander teamed with Duncan to defend a top official of the Holy Land Foundation, the largest Muslim charity in the country, against federal charges the charity conspired to support Palestinian militant group Hamas.

22

MIRAGE MAGAZINE

hamedou Salahi.

Nancy Hollander with Mo

She and partner Vince Ward (’01 JD) handled Army Private Chelsea Manning’s appeal of her court martial and sentence of 35 years in military prison under the Espionage Act for disclosing thousands of military documents to WikiLeaks, and also represented Manning in her appeal for clemency, which President Obama granted, commuting Manning’s sentence in 2017 after she had spent seven years in prison.

And she and Duncan had earlier, in 2005, teamed to take on the habeas corpus case of Mohamedou Salahi, held in Guantanamo, Cuba, by U.S. authorities under suspicion of terrorism.

Hollander and Duncan traveled frequently to Guantanamo to meet with Salahi and another of their clients, Abd Al-Rahim Al-Nashiri, a Saudi/Yemeni who is alleged to have been the mastermind behind the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole.

In 2010, Hollander wrote an op-ed for the International Herald Tribune titled

“A Terrorist Lawyer, and Proud of It,” in which she defended herself and other attorneys who represented those imprisoned at Guantanamo.

While Hollander has grown a thick skin against criticism during her decades defending people accused of horrible crimes, it was the suggestion that lawyers who defend terrorism suspects are disloyal to the country that pushed Hollander to speak out.

“Contrary to recent attacks by those who claim to be supporters of American justice, my defense of people accused of serious and sometimes horrific crimes is not an endorsement of those crimes,” she wrote. “Rather, it is a testament to the strength of my belief in, and commitment to, the American system of justice.”

Hollander now handles al-Nashiri’s cases only in foreign courts, including the European Court of Human Rights and the International Criminal Court,

“And I thought if it hadn’t been for COVID, I’d be somewhere with her in a fancy dress,” Hollander says.

Despite her international acclaim, Hollander still describes herself as “a down-in-the-dirt criminal defense lawyer.” She moved to New York about three years ago to make international travel more convenient.

She sold her condo in Albuquerque and all of her furniture and shipped her BMW to Florida to be inherited by a teenage granddaughter.

“I don’t own anything,” says Hollander, who rents an apartment on the Upper West Side and stays with a friend when

she comes to Albuquerque to work and visit her standard poodle Luna, who she co-parents with a friend. She is also perhaps the only woman in Manhattan who comes to Albuquerque to get her hair done, returning for cuts to her longtime stylist Roberto Vasquez.

At 77, Hollander is less of a trial warrior these days.

“I don’t want to have to go to court.

Trials are really stressful,” she says. “I’ll do cases — edit briefs, maybe argue some things. I have trouble with the word retirement. I don’t like it. I like to say that I’m changing.” ❂

Photo: Courtesy Nancy Hollander

which means she no longer travels to Guantanamo.

“For me, she says, “it has been a bit of a blessing. I hated going there. I hated leaving Mohamedou. We’d walk out and we’d hug.

I’d start crying. He’d said, ‘No, don’t cry.’

I just hated leaving him there.”

While handling Salahi’s habeas corpus case, Hollander and Duncan also fought to get the memoir he had written while at Guantanamo released so it could be published. “Guantanamo Diary” was published in 2015 and was the basis for the film, “The Mauritanian.”

Hollander and Duncan negotiated film rights to the book and while it was in development Hollander thought about who might play her if the movie ever came to screen.

“People tell me sometimes that I look like Helen Mirren when my hair’s short,” Hollander says. “Then, all of a sudden it was Jodie (Foster) and I said, ’Wow!’” Foster’s Hollander character has some aspects taken directly from the real-life Hollander: the bright red fingernails, the fast cars and a curt demeanor.

Other aspects are fiction, notably Foster’s wigs of steel-gray helmet hair and her absence of a sense of humor.

“I’m the first living real person she’s played,” Hollander notes. “She wrote to me and she said (the portrayal) will be some of you and some of me. And it wasn’t an impersonation. I think she’s meaner than I am. I think she’s harsher than I am. (Although some of my friends would disagree with that.) I’ve gotten used to it now because I’ve seen the movie so many times. But it was just an odd feeling to see someone else being me.”

Foster, in an interview with Deadline, the entertainment industry news site, said, “I always say, even though I dress like her in the movie, and we look a little bit alike, the real Nancy is a lot nicer than my Nancy.

No, way nicer.”

When the movie was released, Hollander did weeks of Zoom press interviews. She was at home watching the Golden Globes ceremony on TV when Foster won the best supporting actress award.

Hollander with Ahmed Salahi, Mohamedou Salahi’s son and her godson.

FALL 2021

23

NOVEMBER

Events 11 VETERANS DAY CEREMONY: ALUMNI MEMORIAL CHAPEL 13 UNM CALIFORNIA CHAPTERS FOOTBALL TAILGATE @ FRESNO STATE 16 GEOGRAPHY WEEK: CHAPTER ACTIVITIES 26 UNM FOOTBALL TAILGATE: UTAH ST. GAME

24

MIRAGE MAGAZINE

DECEMBER

FEBRUARY

3

HANGING OF THE GREENS

LOBO LIVING ROOM

16 PHOTOS AT THE U FOR GRADUATING SENIORS

BLACK ALUMNI CHAPTER RECOGNITION RECEPTION & DINNER

16

GRADUATE COMMENCEMENT

24

UNM ALUMNI WINTER AWARDS

17

UNDERGRADUATE COMMENCEMENT

28

LOBO DAY

18

NEW MEXICO BOWL MARCH

JANUARY ALL MONTH MEN’S & WOMEN’S LOBO BASKETBALL WATCH PARTIES 17

6-12 MOUNTAIN WEST BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT 15

SCHOLARSHIP NOMINATIONS OPEN

START OF THE SPRING SEMESTER

FALL 2021

25

Photo: Roberto E. Rosales (’96 BFA, ’14 MA)

VAX SISTERS

Christina O'Connell

Gabriella Blakey

They nursed their mother through a serious bout of COVID and then they both contracted the illness themselves. So when the Duran sisters — one a nurse and the other a school administrator — were asked to stand up two of New Mexico’s largest COVID-19 vaccination efforts, they jumped in to meet the challenge.

By Leslie Linthicum

26

MIRAGE MAGAZINE

O

n the Saturday morning in May when they met for coffee on a sunny patio in Albuquerque, sisters Christina O’Connell (’96 BSN, ’21 DNP) and Gabriella Blakey (’06 MA, ’13 EDD) had seen the welcome news from the state’s health department: 55 percent of New Mexicans were now fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Cases had dropped to just over 100 and hospitalizations were plummeting.

New Mexico was heading for herd immunity and it looked like coronavirus might be on the run.

For O’Connell and Blakey, vaccination progress was personal. The native New Mexicans — who grew up with the surname Duran in a family of Lobos — had both contracted COVID-19 and had nursed their mother through a serious bout of the novel coronavirus. But more than that, they had each played a pivotal role in getting their fellow New Mexicans vaccinated.

Before the pandemic struck, O’Connell, who managed the UNM Hospitals Southeast Heights Clinic, was preparing for flu season. When the pandemic hit, her focus shifted to instituting COVID-safe practices at the clinic.

Blakey, then an associate superintendent for the Albuquerque Public Schools, was overseeing the schools in the Southeast Heights. When COVID arrived in New Mexico, she moved deep into the logistics of moving the state’s largest school system from in-person to virtual education while keeping students, staff and school properties safe.

She was promoted to interim chief operating officer for the district in July, and began working with the City of Albuquerque’s Emergency Management Department and the New Mexico Department of Health in anticipation of COVID vaccines becoming available.

APS became a partner in community-wide vaccination, offering empty schools as vaccination sites.

“I’ve always thought of education in terms of community,” Blakey says, “so partnering to help the community made perfect sense to me.”

In December 2020, O’Connell was also asked if she would take on additional duties.

Could she manage the rollout of UNM’s

vaccination effort once vaccines were approved and available?

O’Connell jumped at the chance.

“I think I felt very helpless at the time with the pandemic and was wondering how I could help,” she says.

Blakey’s first vaccination site opened on New Year’s Eve at Albuquerque High School with school nurses administering vaccines to medical personnel and first responders.

“It was pretty emotional,” Blakey says.

“Schools being closed, it being New Year’s Eve and to see the actual vaccination for the first time, it was this overwhelming feeling of hope.”

As it turned out, there were four vaccine doses left over at the end of the night, and Blakey was chosen to receive her shot.

O’Connell opened what would become one of the busiest vaccination centers in the state in a few weeks later in January, moving thousands of people through the iconic Pit concourse every week and eventually administering 100,000 vaccines.

O’Connell was nervous the day the site opened, but those nerves dissolved as hundreds of people showed up and the lines moved quickly.

“It snowed the first day, so that was a little chaotic, but it was the most positive vibe. This excitement, energy, hope, people in tears. It turned out to be much more of a project than I expected,” O’Connell says, “but also probably the most rewarding work I’ve ever done. People were so grateful. And that was something I personally needed at the time, just to be in a positive place.”

O’Connell, 47, and Blakey, 45, who grew up in the Southeast Heights in the Hispanic/ Italian Duran family, dived into their roles with a zeal borne of personal experience.

“For us,” O’Connell says, “there was a real personal drive to help with vaccines.”

Their mother contracted COVID while recovering from an automobile accident in a rehabilitation facility. Blakey and O’Connell cared for her when she was discharged and they also both contracted the virus, although with less severe cases than their mother.

When the Pit clinic opened, O’Connell and Blakey found themselves in meetings

together and talking to each other on the phone every day.

Finding themselves in this strange convergence, was odd and completely unexpected for the sisters.

“I remember pretty early on saying, ‘Who would have thought that our careers would have converged around vaccinations?’”

O’Connell says.

A lot of people found themselves stretched to the max during the pandemic — ­ juggling working from home with managing children’s at-home school, maybe taking care of a sick relative and dealing with the challenges of isolation. O’Connell and Blakey can relate. In addition to both being ill themselves and caring for their mother, who was hospitalized twice for COVID, the women ran their households, hosted virtual holiday celebrations and held down their regular jobs. Neither got a break from their already full-time professional responsibilities while they took on the vaccine; in fact, both were promoted to even more challenging roles — O’Connell as executive director of Ambulatory Primary Care Services for UNMH and Blakey as COO for APS. But pitching in to help community is a family value taught by their parents to Christina, Gabriella and their brother John (’00 BA), an attorney.

Their mother, Maria Duran, is a nurse who ran school-based health programs through the UNM School of Medicine before she retired. Their dad, Don Duran (’03 EdD), was a longtime APS principal who also served on the school board.

“Growing up, we were raised with this sense of being helpful and a real sense of social justice,” O’Connell says. “This experience completely spoke to that and it was just so special that we were able to share it. Our parents are so proud of us.”

One morning, O’Connell was driving to work at the Pit when she found herself crying. “It just hit me that this inspiring thing was part of my job and that people were getting this hope.”

Blakey agrees.

“It was a very rewarding experience during a time when everything was dark,” she says. ❂

FALL 2021

27

Photo: Roberto E. Rosales (’96 BFA, ’14 MA)

ALL ABOUT COMMUNITY

From ska beats to cookie batter, Alumni Association President Mike Silva keeps it real

By Leslie Linthicum

A

snapshot of Michael Silva’s life before age 8: Violence on the streets of South Central Los Angeles. Chaos at home.

A fearless little man fighting to survive a tumultuous and violent childhood.

Michael after age 8 when his mother snatched up her three kids (with a fourth on the way) and moved to Albuquerque to start fresh: With space and calm, the angry kid begins to relax. He finds the saxophone in band class and a passion is sparked.

People come into his life who are helpful and kind. From his house in the Kirtland Addition, he can see The Pit and University Stadium. He begins to dream of going to college, specifically UNM. The Central Avenue location of Rude Boy Cookies, Silva’s business for the past seven years, is not yet open as Silva (’95 BA) sits in a comfortable booth and reflects on the course his life has taken, the “then” and “now” that seem entire worlds apart.

28

MIRAGE MAGAZINE

But as Silva reaches new heights — two successful businesses, a stable, loving family, a circle of friends and accolades and awards from his community — he is reminded that everything he is today has roots in that scrappy, damaged kid from L.A. “My childhood was pretty hardcore.

There was a lot of loss, there was quite a bit of trauma,” he says. “As an adult now I’m finding that I’m still processing some of that stuff and dealing with it. But it’s work that I’m fully engaged in, I’m active in and I’m committed to because now I’m a father.”

The president of the UNM Alumni Association chokes up when he thinks about that kid who is still inside him.

“It’s heavy and it doesn’t go away. It doesn’t matter how successful you are.

It doesn’t matter how much community equity you have,” Silva says. “If you don’t deal with that stuff, it never goes away, it always comes back. So, because of all of the

loss and the abandonment that void in me is filled by tremendous amounts of love and grace and kindness.”

Silva first picked up the accordion as a kid in L.A., but it was the saxophone that hooked him on music.

By the time he landed at Del Norte High School as a freshman, he was an accomplished musician. “That was my life,” Silva says. “I was laser focused. That’s all I cared about. It became my direction. It became my path.”

When he neared graduation, he targeted UNM and a degree in music. “I grew up in the shadow of the University.

My love of the University began to grow at a very young age and I knew I wanted to go to UNM.” His first semesters were tough. He wasn’t clicking with his classes. His study habits weren’t cutting it. He struggled to afford tuition and living expenses. And scheduling an 8 a.m. math class didn’t help.

He was teetering on the edge of dropping out when he decided to try a different major as a sophomore and see if his interest in history and politics might help him find a focus.

He switched majors to political science and began to excel.

“I had some unbelievable professors who helped me, pushed me, guided me.

I had Fred Harris for several classes. He was very impactful.”

Still, performing on a stage with a band held a powerful sway. Silva put law school on hold (becoming the next junior senator from New Mexico could wait) and pursued music. He played sax and drums in Cool Runnings, a 10-piece reggae band, and in Giant Steps, a seven-piece ska band that had regional success, cut a few albums and toured with some national acts.

When it came time to get to down to more traditional work, Silva went into hospitality and sales. Getting fired from a sales job persuaded him to become his own boss and he and fellow Lobo Jesse Herron (‘03 BBA, ’05 MBA) hatched the plan for ABQ Trolley Co. in 2007 over chips, salsa and five hours of conversation at a Taco Cabana.

Once their custom-made trolley was delivered in 2009, they launched the tour company, switching off driving and microphone duties, and grew the company into what it is today — Albuquerque Tourism and Sightseeing Factory, an umbrella for the four divisions of the company: trolley tours, which include the wildly popular Breaking Bad tour; a walking ghost tour; a party bike business and ABQ in a Box, a gift company.

For his next entrepreneurial venture, Silva looked to two of his passions — ska and reggae music and cookies.

Ska music, which originated in Jamaica and shares an offbeat with reggae, has an inclusive ethos (its early “two-tone” bands were racially integrated) and an upbeat energy and message.

Two-tone fashion is a black-and-white checkerboard and when Silva played in ska bands he wore the sharp black-and-white ska uniform favored by Rude Boys, the fervent ska fanatics — a neat black suit, white shirts and black skinny tie and sharp shoes.

“My life is ruled by checkerboard.

It’s everywhere and in every aspect of everything I do,” Silva says. In 2014, Silva wanted to start another business. There was no cookie bakery in Albuquerque at the time, so he decided to launch one with a former co-worker, Kristin Dowling, a dedicated baker who had a culinary degree from CNM. They opened Rude Boy Cookies in 2015 with the intent of satisfying sweet tooths and also engaging with and supporting Albuquerque.

“To me, there’s much more to life than the bottom line,” Silva says. “I want to be successful. But there’s more important things than just making a buck.”

Silva, whose 23 and Me results show is 60 percent Black and 30 percent Spanish, was traumatized and then galvanized by George Floyd’s murder under the knee of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in 2020. With members of his circle of brothers, a group of Black professionals in Albuquerque, he helped to organize a silent His favorite cookie: Chocolate chip, forever.

Top three tracks on his all-time playlist: “Three Little Birds” by Bob Marley; “Ghost Town” by the Specials; “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire.

Family: Wife Penimah Silva (’11 BA), office administrator at the Keleher & McLeod law firm; daughter Ariella, 8.

How he spends a day off: It’s all about his family and his back yard, which got some major love during the pandemic.

Life-changing moment: When he was 18, Silva was hired as a baseball and basketball coach at Camp Greylock, a

protest at Civic Plaza, and another along Central Avenue. They formed BURQUE Against Racism and Silva is committed to helping the less fortunate and, in his words, “lifting up all Black lives in Albuquerque.”

“I am going to stand up for what’s right and I’m outspoken about it,” he says.

“I’ve maybe lost business because of it but I can look at myself in the mirror every single day and know that I’m doing the right thing.”

Silva is honored to serve as president of the UNM Alumni Association and he wants to use his year as the head of the board to help build pride and connection to an institution that lifted his family and changed his life.

After arriving in Albuquerque, his mother, Martha Washington (’84 BA, ’87 JD, ’94 MA) began attending UNM and was an academic advisor for athletics and then a student in the School of Law while Silva was an undergraduate.

“The University became a huge part of me,” Silva says. And it helped lift us up. I bleed Cherry and Silver with a little tinge of checkerboard.”

The goal for this year is engage active students to build excitement and a loyalty to UNM so that they become alumni with a strong connection to the Alumni Association.

Silva hopes to make a whistle-stop tour across campus to engage with undergrads in all majors and to build something like a Big Brother/Big Sister storied sleepaway camp in Becket, Mass., and found a mentor there, camp director Bert Margolis, who would change his life.

Silva returned for the next 13 summers and became head counselor.

“Bert Margolis became the first true father figure I ever had in my life. He stuck around, seemed to care, taught me the life lessons I still live by.”

About that Rude Boy name: “Fans of ska music are called Rude Boys. A Rude Boy is somebody who shows up at a ska show, dressed in a really nice suit, with a skinny black tie, really slick shoes and a pork pie hat.”

mentor network between alumni and at-risk students.

The Alumni Association, Silva says, is the school’s front porch.

“Every alum is an ambassador to the University and it’s our job to engage people. To me it’s about asking people to be great ambassadors by speaking, by sharing the love of the place.” ❂

FALL 2021

29

Photo: UNM Athletics

WELCOME HOME, COACH GONZALES You Can Unpack Your Suitcase Now

By Glen Rosales

C

haos and organization were the themes football coach Danny Gonzales (’99 BBA, ’02 MS) kept coming back to as he completed a rookie season completely upended by the COVID pandemic. As he embarks on a second season, hoping quarantines and monthslong hotel stays in Nevada are behind him, Gonzales can see the benefit of his team bonding through the dark days of 2020.

Gonzales’ debut with the Lobos — the feel-good story of hometown boy returning to his alma mater — was derailed almost immediately as restrictive public health orders all but curtailed the team’s ability to be competitive.

While other Mountain West schools —and football teams around the country —were going through standard practices under their local public health directives, UNM was permitted only small group settings of five for non-contact instruction and was forced to cancel its season opener at Colorado State and play its “home” game against San José State in California.

30

MIRAGE MAGAZINE

“You have to give the kids credit.

We kept dangling these carrots in front of them and it was like Lucy from Peanuts — she kept yanking that ball out,” Gonzales said, referencing Charles Schulz’s famous cartoon story line that always ended with Charlie Brown flat on his back after whiffing at the open space where a football used to be.

Unable to practice or play at home, the Lobos headed to the bedroom community of Henderson, Nev., a town they would call home until the season ended with a 2-5 record and not a single game played at home.

“The chaos and organization,” Gonzales said of those uncertain months of August, September, October and November.

“You couldn’t have any organization because day to day things seemed to change. At some point those kids had to think, ‘This guy is a liar. Screw this,’ and do something stupid, have a party, because we’re not playing anyway. And they never did. They kept down the path, kept down the path.”

Hotel living certainly was no vacation as players were limited to their rooms except during practices, position meetings and meals. For 42 days.

“Sitting in a hotel room with one roommate was very challenging for (six) weeks,” Gonzales said. “It was a lovely hotel.

We had a ballroom for our meeting room, so it was a big ballroom. So, they'd come down and hang out with the coaches. And I mean, I missed my family dearly. That was the hardest part of this whole deal was being away from my wife and kids. But the opportunity to be around the guys and figure out who loves football and who really wants to be good — and the ones that don't really care about football, and it’s not that important — was very telling.”

New Mexico went on to lose its first five games, but Gonzales remained undiscouraged.

“We’re 0-5, losing to Utah State and me telling them how terrible we were, which I won’t take back because we were. We were coaching them terrible. We were playing terrible,” he said.

And then, the Lobos started to win.

“The last two games gave them a belief: ‘Everything they asked us to do does work.

There is a reason behind this.’ Being the most physical team. Playing through the whistle.

Doing all of those things actually works.”

True freshman quarterback Isaiah Chavez threw the game-winning touchdown against Wyoming and came back the next week to lead a victory against Fresno State.

The stunning performance from Chavez, a walk-on from Rio Rancho High School who started the season as fifth-string under center, sent New Mexico into the current season with significant optimism.

“Momentum is good. A lot of people think we’re never going to lose again: we’re not that good,” Gonzales said. “We’re better, but we’re not a good football team.

We will be a good team. But they definitely have the understanding of what it’s going to take and they’re willing to work. They’re a great group of kids. We’re not the most talented team. I tell them that, too. We out-work people and we can out-physical people and we have enough talent to be competitive.”

That kind of mirrors the way Gonzales, 45, has moved in his football career.

Before committing to football, Gonzales played soccer at Valley High School in Albuquerque. When he broke his leg on the pitch, however, the Viking football coaching staff convinced him to turn to the gridiron full time.

He walked on at UNM as a safety and a punter, eventually earning three letters and the Chuck Cummings Memorial Award, which is given for morale and spirit.

Gonzales started his coaching career under another UNM alumnus turned Lobo head coach, Rocky Long. He began as a grad assistant, then became video coordinator before taking on safeties and special teams for three seasons.

Gonzales graduated in 1998 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and general management and earned a master’s degree in physical education and recreation while he worked for the Athletics Department.

When Long left New Mexico in 2008 and took the position at San Diego State, Gonzales followed along, eventually

becoming defensive coordinator for the Aztecs.

Before coming back to Albuquerque, Gonzales left Long’s tutelage to work as defensive coordinator at Arizona State in the PAC-12 Conference.

“To be honest with you, I thought I’d never leave here,” he said “I thought the goal of the plan was to coach here forever.

I mean, I grew up in Albuquerque, never left and had the opportunity to have a Division I football job at my home school.”

When that plan was interrupted by Long’s departure, Gonzales was caught off guard and had to regroup, which turned out to be a blessing in the long term.

“I would not have been prepared to have this opportunity had I not left here,” he said.

And now there is no place he would rather be.

“I’m living my dream because we have an opportunity to compete for championships,” he said. “If we didn’t or if that ever changed — the opportunity to compete for championships — then this wouldn’t be the right place.”

That, Gonzales said, was his main concern in returning to New Mexico.

“When the whole interview process started, (I’m asking), ‘Are they really in it to be the best team in this league?

Because if they’re not, I’m not coming.’”

Gazing across his desk and out at the open horseshoe end of University Stadium, with the gleaming field awaiting the next game and the Sandias peeking out from behind the eastern bleachers, Gonzales knows what he wants to see when he finally gets the chance to see his Lobos down there.

“The three things we told our kids to are effort, attitude and want to. No matter what happens, no matter the situation, no matter what they take away, they can’t take that away from you,” he said.

“You decide how hard you’re going to work. You decide what your attitude is going to be — whether it’s going to be crappy or positive. And how bad do you want it? How bad do you want to be good? Those three things, no matter what the situation, they can’t take it from you unless you let them.” ❂

Kenneth E. Sickenger (’90 BA), Albuquerque, a reporter for the Albuquerque Journal, was named the 2020 New Mexico Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sports Media Association.

Sanjay I. Engineer (’92 MARCH), Albuquerque, vice president at FBT Architects, was elected to the Albuquerque Community Foundation’s 2021 board of trustees.

Carol J. Matindale-Taylor (’92 BA), Albuquerque, published “Unfinished: In This Life and The Next.”

Jacquelyn M. Marushka (’92 BA), Nashville, Tenn., was named board member for the Tennessee Latin American Chamber of Commerce.

Fernando G. Baca (’93 BA), Albuquerque, is the new vice president of commercial lending in Santa Fe at WaFd Bank New Mexico.

Julie J. Vargas (’93 JD), Albuquerque, is a justice on the New Mexico Supreme Court.

Thomas E. Antram (’94 BA), Albuquerque, was elected to the Albuquerque Community Foundation’s 2021 Board of Trustees.

Laura C. Parajon (’95 MD, ’99 MPH) was appointed Deputy Cabinet Secretary for the New Mexico Department of Health.

Michael M. Silva (’95 BA), Albuquerque, joined the Presbyterian Healthcare Foundation board of directors.

Melissa M. Garcia (’96 DM), Albuquerque, is the new medical director for True Health New Mexico.

Robert L. Metzger (’96 BSN), Dallas, Texas, received the 2020 Texas Nurse Practitioners’ NP of the Year Award. Metzger is the advanced practice provider manager for surgical services at Parkland Health & Hospital Systems.

Jackie Lindsey (’97 BA), Santa Fe, N.M., has become Santa Fe County’s first female fire chief. A former Olympian and Albuquerque firefighter, she is also currently on the FEMA National Advisory Council.

Renee Salazar-Garcia (’97 BAED, ’91 MA), Albuquerque, is Santa Fe High School’s new principal.

Susan J. Wilson (’97 BA), Albuquerque, was elected to the United Way of Central New Mexico’s board of directors.

FALL 2021

31

GOODBYE MN, HELLO NM Richard Pitino Is Loving Loboland

Photo: Joe Thuente

By Glen Rosales

N

ew Mexico’s new men’s head basketball coach is just about everything that recent coaches were not.

Richard Pitino is stylish and snazzy, with a certain hip confidence. He rubs shoulders with national champs, like his dad, Rick Pitino, or mentor Billy Donovan.

32

MIRAGE MAGAZINE

He would never ride a Harley-Davidson down the Pit ramp.

Pitino, 40, was out of a job at Minnesota for less than 24 hours before being offered and accepting the New Mexico job in March.

And now he’s setting out to right the Lobo program, put the fannies back into the

Pit seats and figure out a way to win a few NCAA Tournament games along the way.

When he was let go by Minnesota, Pitino had one goal for his next chapter: “I wanted to be at a place that I felt like their stature in the conference was one of the best basketball jobs in the conference,” he said. “And I don’t

Karen Dressler Argeanas (‘98 MA), Moriarty, N.M., had her art work featured at La Galería @ The Shaffer in Mountainair, N.M. Patricia A. Gonzales (‘98 AAS, ’00 BUS, ’06 MA, ’10 CERT1), El Prado, N.M., was named one of Taos Behavioral Health’s new board officers.

know why we can’t be that. I think we’ve traditionally been that. I know that we’ve got a lot of work to do, but I truly believe that the West needs New Mexico to be great. So it checked every box for me. I wanted to be in a town where basketball was a big deal, and it certainly is to Albuquerque. I wanted to be in a place where the community and the athletic director were invested in our success, so there’s more checks, all the boxes. We have a lot of work to do, but I feel like we can build it. We can build something special.”

Pitino knows about special, having watched his father coach at Kentucky, where basketball comes right after breathing in terms of life lessons learned.

“Kentucky is very, very unique,” he said. “The fan base, in a lot of ways, the Lobos fan base is similar. I mean, they’re knowledgeable and they know who we are and they’re going to come up and talk to you. They’re going to tell you what they think. And certainly the Kentucky fan base is one of the best in all of sports. And so, you know, that that experience is unique, very, very unique, because you’re in a small town.”

“New Mexico is an equal rival to that intensity,” Pitino said.

“I think the level of support throughout the community is real. That’s why I took the New Mexico job. I didn’t have to go through this year. I had the opportunity to sit down and still get paid by Minnesota, but I just felt like this was a special place. And the more that I’ve been here, the more I’ve realized that. I mean, they care very, very deeply about local basketball — and not just basketball. They care about the University.

They care about the state. And every day

when I meet people, I feel that. And that’s why I made the right choice.”

As for the team he wants to put on the it floor, Pitino said the players will play hard defensively.

“I think when you say that you want to play fast, everybody just thinks you’re going to fly up the down the court. I mean, you want to be really, really hard to score on,” he said. “And if we’re hard to score on and we’re a great rebounding team, that’s going to give us opportunities to get off on the break. And that’s where you got to play fast. Or it’s creating skills to where you can get out on the break and play. And that’s the key, so it starts with defense and defensive rebounding.”

It also comes down to teaching, because that’s what coaching is really all about, Pitino said.

“I think everybody looks at the money that you make and that you’re on TV, but, quite frankly, all of us are teachers. We’re getting these guys in the formative years of their lives. And, yes, we want to win and we understand that our job is to win,” he said.

“But we also want to forge these relationships with these guys so that they can become the best people, that they can become the best fathers, the best husbands. They’ve got to be role models in society. There’s so many things that are out of your control as it pertains to coaching basketball, but investing in their lives, teaching them about things that you may have done good or bad in the past and learning from those experiences.

Because we all remember college — that’s the best time of your life. And they want to win, but we want them to win and we want them to grow and mature.” ❂

Lois E. Frank (’99 MA, ’11 PhD), Santa Fe, N.M., has partnered with Heritage Hotels in their 2021 virtual culinary tours.

Jeanette Hargreaves (’99 BFA), Austin, Texas, has published “The Day I Threw Banana Bread and Almost Went to Jail” and has launched her temper management website TemperCoaching.com.

2000s Leslie D. Cordova-Trujillo (’00 BS), San Pedro, Calif., has published “Dear Her: Letters to Teenage Girls and Young Ladies About Lessons Learned Through Education.”

Theresa M. Duncan (’00 JD), Santa Fe, N.M. was recently depicted in the film “The Mauritanian.”

Karli R. Massey (’00 BA), Albuquerque, was elected to the New Mexico Public Relations Society of America’s board of directors.

Briana H. Zamora (’00 JD), Albuquerque, was appointed to the New Mexico Supreme Court. She was previously a New Mexico Court of Appeals judge.

Martha I. Chew-Sanchez (’01 PhD), Canton, N.J., has coedited “Scattered Musics.”

Kimimila L. Locke (’01 BA), Standing Rock, N.D., has been named a 2021 Bush Fellow.

Brenda Maloney Shafer (’01 JD), a partner in the national law firm Quarles & Brady’s Health & Life Sciences Practice Group, has been appointed to the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Legal Assistance for Military Personnel.

Joshua J. Sanchez (’02 BA, ’06 JD), Belen, N.M., is a judge in the Second Judicial District Court of Bernalillo County.

Allison Elaine Burnett (’03 PHARM, ’03 PharmD), Albuquerque, has been named president of the Anticoagulation Forum.

Candace A. Sall (’03 MA), Columbia, Mo., is the new director of the Museum of Anthropology and American Archaeology Division at the University of Missouri.

FALL 2021

33

Shelf Life

Books by UNM Alumni

Stargazer (HarperCollins, 2020), the most recent installment in the Tony Hillerman mystery series, takes us afield from the core of the Navajo reservation, where these engaging stories have been set for 50 years. The action takes place mostly on the Alamo Navajo Reservation, a satellite community west of Socorro. Author Anne Hillerman (’72 BA), who picked up the storied Leaphorn/Chee series after the death of her father, focuses once again on Chee's wife, Navajo Nation police officer Bernadette Manuelito. Manuelito is drawn into a Socorro police investigation of a man shot to death in his Jaguar near the reservation boundary because the main suspect is an old college roommate of hers. Readers of the series expect accurate and engaging description of reservation and New Mexico landmarks and tutorials on Navajo history and culture. Hillerman does not disappoint. Stargazer takes us inside the Very Large Array and the field of radioastronomy as well as ancient Navajo astronomy. Side plots touch on the very current topic of missing and endangered indigenous women and the challenges women face juggling marriage, career and caring for elderly parents.

N. Scott Momaday (‘58 BA), one of UNM’s most celebrated and important alumni authors, has won a Pulitzer Prize for his novel A House Made of Dawn as well as numerous literary awards. A member of the Kiowa tribe, he is best known for his poetry and his poetic novels set in Indian Country. Earth Keeper (HarperCollins 2020) is a slim volume of single-page personal essays, none more than a couple of hundred words long, that tell the story of Momaday’s connection to the land. In an introduction he calls the volume “a kind of spiritual autobiography” and it can be read — slowly, if you can — like a book of psalms to the Earth.

Have a few dozen words ever so perfectly captured the prelude to autumn?

“Dusk descends on the late afternoon. A flaming sunset has given way to a darkening old silver sky, and the edges of the landscape soften and barely glow. It is the end of summer, and there is a shiver on the leaves and grasses in the waning light. In the dim distance a coyote moves like the slow shadow of a soaring hawk in the long plain. The earth is at rest.”

Momaday has also released a volume of new and selected previously published poems, The Death of Sitting Bear (HarperCollins 2020).

Joy Harjo (’76 BA), the nation’s poet laureate, describes Momaday as a master poet. His mastery is evident from the title poem, told in the voice of Kiowa warrior Sitting Bear, to Poem, After Lunch, a meditation on a simple meal shared outside: Cheeses, fruit, exotic tea/A simple repast, garden side,/Under a yellow umbrella./ Bright sampler of the afternoon./ Not only that. I tasted of/ That entity that was the two/ Of us, that composition/ Of conjoined being/ In the clarity of autumn.”

American Orphan (Arte Publico Press 2021) isn’t an autobiography, but the story of Orlando Lucero, imprisoned at an early age, in love with words and trying to find his way to a life of letters, mirrors the life of

34

MIRAGE MAGAZINE

author Jimmie Santiago Baca (’88 BA, ’03 HOND). Baca, a poet, essayist and novelist and also a runaway and ex-con, chronicles young Lucero’s attempts to live in the free world after a lifetime of institutions — from an orphanage to youth detention. Relocating from Albuquerque to South Carolina to live with his prison pen pal, a woman with her own demons, Lucero marvels at simple acts like fishing or carrying groceries home from the store. But none of it is easy. “I have no training in this kind of stuff, the stuff called free-living,” Lucero thinks. “Getting up, working, talking to people, doing what people do.”

Baca has had a prolific pandemic, also releasing Laughing in the Light (Museum of New Mexico Press, 2020). A follow-up to Working in the Dark: Reflections of a Poet of the Barrio, published in 1994, Laughing in the Light contains 30 essays that reflect with laid-bare honesty on the passage of time, “I had a death wish for the longest time, and it stemmed from my fear of living without drugs, living without being high to guard against being vulnerable and open and embracing the world.” As he puts it in the essay Caught Up!, which bemoans the nation’s 45th president and the ideological battle lines we have drawn, Baca has developed “an addiction to joy. Laughing in the light has been my choice of drugs.”

Joseph Traugott (’94 PhD) writes the forward to Sharing Code: Art1, Frederick Hammersley, and the Dawn of Computer Art (Museum of New Mexico Press, 2020). It’s a large-format book in black and white, the color palette of computer-generated printed patterns. As Traugott explains, Albuquerque is the birthplace of computer art, which grew out of the atomic research of the Manhattan Project. While Los Alamos produced the theoretical research behind nuclear weapons, Sandia National Laboratory developed delivery systems for the bombs and UNM launched a computer engineering program in support. At UNM, computer engineering met the Department of Art and the computer program Art1, which allowed artists to use computers to make art, was born. Sharing Code contains four dozen examples of early computer art by a dozen different artists, each managing to use the form with surprisingly different results.

In Lágrimas: Poems of Joy and Sorrow (Judith Literary Press, 2020) Nasario Garcia’s book of poems, the verse is first written in Spanish, followed by the same poem in English. Garcia (’62 BA, ’63 MA), a folklorist and prolific author, has published many books that zigzag between Spanish and English, as well as two previous bilingual collections of poems. As he has many times before, Garcia brings the reader into village life in the Rio Puerco Valley where he was raised. The Woman is an example of Garcia’s efficiency with language: “The power of a woman at home, with the door open. And the latch that opens and closes the spirit she shares day upon day with her husband and children, with honor and pleasure. With a strong woman there’s no latch that will not open.”

Friendship: The Heart of Being Human (Baker Academic, 2020) speaks to what author Victor Lee Austin (’82 MA) calls our heart’s desire for intimacy and companionship. Austin is a pastor and he explores one of life’s fundamental and often vexing components through a Christian perspective, arguing that friendship is the key to being human and that “there is a hole in our reality where friendship used to be.” To explore the importance of friend connection, he goes back to Socrates, Cicero and Aristotle, and of course Scripture. And he explores aspects of friendship from marriage to moral friendships to friendships with God. The true story of Cathy Williams, a slave in Mississippi who fought for the Union and enlisted in the U.S. Army’s Buffalo Soldier brigade at the end of the Civil War, forms the foundation for Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2020), the 10th novel published by Sarah Bird (’73 BA). Historical record of Williams’ incredible life is scant, and Bird takes liberties in her sweeping piece of historical fiction that spans from the Civil War through Reconstruction.

While Williams was an infantrywoman (posing as a man) and based in New Mexico, Bird’s character is a member of the cavalry and stationed in Texas. Not lost in the battle scenes and romantic plot turns is the bravery of Private Williams amid the Army’s war against Native Americans as she fights for her personal freedom and reconnection to her family.

Lacey Chrisco (’20 BA), assistant curator at the Albuquerque Museum, teams with museum Director Andrew Connors and Curator of Art Josie Lopez to chronicle the museum’s vast, diverse and impressive permanent art collection in Common Ground (Museum of New Mexico Press, 2020). If you’ve ever spent an afternoon in the Old Town museum and thought you’d pick up some postcards of what you saw for souvenirs, this big heavy book — with a large depiction of an artwork on nearly every page — will find a permanent place on your coffee table. In addition to exciting the eyes, Common Ground explores some important questions: Is any heritage in New Mexico completely pure of outside influence? What is the real New Mexico?

“During her long professional career,” Jaima Chevalier (’80 BA) writes in Fringe (Atomic City Lights, 2019), a large-format biography of flamenco legend Maria Benitez, “Maria spoke through footfalls and body language and gestures as much as she did through words.” The daughter of a mother of Chippewa, Algonquin, Oneida and Iroquois parentage and a Puerto Rican father, Benitez grew up in Taos and ventured to Spain to study flamenco dance, then returned to New Mexico where her legend grew as a teacher and performer. Fans of Benitez will appreciate nearly 100 pages of photos the dancer.

ATTENTION PUBLISHED ALUMNI AUTHORS: We would like to add your book to the alumni library in Hodgin Hall and consider it for a review in Shelf Life. Please send an autographed copy to: Shelf Life, UNM Alumni Relations 1 UNM, MSC01-1160, Albuquerque, NM 87131

Sophie Martin (’03 MBA, ’13 JD), Albuquerque, is director of Communications, Education, and Outreach for the National Conference of Bar Examiners in Madison, Wisc. Martin Sophie Martin previously was the executive director of the New Mexico Board of Bar Examiners.

Holmon D. Wiggins (’03 BA), Tuscaloosa, Ala., a former Lobo running back, has been promoted to assistant head coach of offense for the University of Alabama.

Rebecca M. Roose (’04 JD), Santa Fe, N.M., is Deputy Cabinet Secretary at the New Mexico Environment Department.

Nicole J. Aiken-Shaban (’05 BA), Baltimore, Md., has been promoted to partner at Reed Smith LLP in the firm’s Philadelphia office.

Purvi P. Mody (’05 MACCT), Albuquerque, is the new special director of the New Mexico Department of Health.

William D. Duncan (’06 MA), Albuquerque, retired after serving for 16 years as Rio Rancho High School’s activities director.

Matthew J. Pacheco (’07 BBA), Albuquerque, became partner at Burt & Company CPAs, LLC. Sureyya C. Stone (’08 BA, ’16 BSN, ’20 MSN), Albuquerque, joined Lovelace Medical Group’s team of health care providers.

Lancing C. Adams (’09 BA, ’14 MPA), Santa Fe, N.M., is development director at the New Mexico Tourism Department.

Leigh A. Caswell (’09 MPH), Albuquerque, was elected to the United Way of Central New Mexico’s board of directors.

Ricardo S. Gonzales (’09 BA, ’17 MA, ’20 JD), Los Lunas, N.M., has joined Montgomery & Andrews, P.A., as an associate.

Charles B. Kraft (’09 BA, ’13 JD), Albuquerque, has become a partner at the law firm of Butt Thornton & Baehr PC. Jennifer H. Watkins (’09 MA), Santa Fe, N.M., has published “So Pipe the Young.”

FALL 2021

35

“If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.”

– Booker T. Washington

At The University of New Mexico, each of us defines all of us. This is seen by the diversity of our students, faculty, and staff who come to UNM with hopes, expectations, and goals just as diverse as the individuals they represent. It is also seen by the generosity of donors, like you.

Your generosity helps UNM provide top-tier education, research, and programs that support our students, faculty, and staff who are making a difference and achieving their dreams. At UNM, every gift makes an impact.

Visit unmfund.org to make a gift today.

@UNMFund

UNMFoundation

@UNMFund

505-313-7600

THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO

ALUMNI MEMORIAL CHAPEL IS A PLACE TO CELEBRATE

WEDDINGS • VOW RENEWALS • MEMORIALS • CELEBRATIONS BEAUTIFUL NEW MEXICO LANDMARK // NONDENOMINATIONAL // LOCATED ON MAIN CAMPUS

505-277-9083 • UNMALUMNI.COM/CHAPEL

FALL 2021

37

Alumni Award Recipients 2020-2021

Beverly Coho, ‘73

Bernard S. Rodey Award

William Baker, ‘68 Lobo Award

Judy Rothman Rofé, ‘74 ‘78 James F. Zimmerman Award

Eliseo ‘Cheo’ Torres

Erna S. Fergusson Award

Hon. Manuel Saucedo, ‘57 ‘77 Katya Crawford, ‘05 Zia Award

James Besante, ‘15

Inspirational Young Alum Award

Faculty Teaching Award

Katie Witkiewitz Research Award

The Higher Education Distinguished Legislator Award

Joshua Hernadez

NM State Representative

Dayan Hochman-Vigil, ‘11 NM State Representative

The University of New Mexico Alumni Association U N M A LU M N I .CO M

From the Veep

W

e Lobos are resilient. And, after more than a year and half of pandemic restrictions, we are cautiously optimistic that we can gather to collectively share our memories as members of the Pack. As we approach this new academic year with in-person classes on campus and green chile roasts

around the country, we are embracing a renewed sense of the importance and impact of connection.

The Alumni Relations staff and the association’s volunteer leaders have flexed their creative muscles to find safe and innovative ways to transition responsibly into in-person opportunities and Connie Beimer partnerships to connect our alums to the University and to each other. We’re looking forward to this year’s Homecoming and invite you to join in our myriad events, both online and in-person.

Last year we were “connected by the unexpected” and this year we are “unmuted” — reigniting the Lobo spirt in all of us. We’ll see you the first week in November.

Every year we refocus our programming to reflect the needs of our alums. We couldn’t help but reflect on the success that our programs had when we transitioned into digital platforms — platforms that allowed us to connect with alumni nationwide and even internationally through virtual basketball and football watch parties, Lobo Living Rooms, Operation Safe Paws and green chile roasts by post — selling over 3,000 pounds of chile to Lobos in every state, Puerto Rico and the UK. Our chapters, constituent groups, committees and individual alums are working hard to create programming that ensures everyone can participate this fall, whether virtual or in-person. We welcome your ideas and input. Much of our planning and volunteering is being done by our Alumni chapter groups. Please consider connecting with your fellow alums by signing up for one of our cultural chapters or a regional chapter in your area, whether it’s Albuquerque or New York or an affiliate chapter connected to your school or college.

We’re all Lobos for Life!

Connie Beimer

Vice President for Alumni Relations

Isaac Leon (’09 MBA, ’19 JD), Albuquerque, joined Sutin, Thayer & Browne as an associate attorney.

Frankie Solomon (’09 BBA), Dallas, Texas, Lobos defensive back in 2006 through 2009, recently played for the U.S. flag football team in Denmark.

Issac A. Leon

2010s Sheldon Spotted Elk (’10 JD), Denver, Colo., has joined the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges as program director for tribal justice partnerships.

Brandi N. Bowman (’11 BS, ’15 PharmD), Albuquerque, joined Presbyterian Medical Group’s team of health care providers.

Kristen Gamboa (’11 BBA), Peralta, N.M., is the new senior economic developer for the village of Los Lunas.

Miquela C. Martinez (’11 BS, ’16 MS), Santa Fe, N.M., was named to the spring All-Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference volleyball team.

Ranah B. Yaqub (’11 BA), Cedar Crest, N.M., was awarded the New Mexico Smart/ Maher VFW National Citizenship Education Teacher Award on Feb. 6, 2021.

Landon Brown (’12 MD), Albuquerque, has joined New Mexico Orthopaedics West Side Clinic.

Lauren M. Crabtree (’12 BSNE), Albuquerque, was recognized for her studies in engineering by the International Atomic Energy Agency and selected for the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship Program.

Daniel J. Galvan (’12 BA), Albuquerque, was promoted to commander of the Alamogordo National Guard Unit and also received the Army Achievement Award for his service overseas.

Florencio “Flo” Olguin Jr. (’12 BA, ’15 MPA), Albuquerque, was named academic operations officer for the UNM College of Fine Arts.

Florencio "Flo" Olguin, Jr.

FALL 2021

39

Alumni Network Snapshots from Alumni events

UNM Alumni Board of Directors with Head Football Coach Danny Gonzales (’98 BBA, ’02 MS) and retired UNM Baseball Coach Ray Birmingham.

Director of African American Student Services Brandi Stone (’14 BA, ‘17 MPA) with the UNM Black Alumni Chapter President Deidre Gordon (’98 BA), Treasurer Patrick Barrett (’14 BA), Vice President Dee Dee Hatch Sanders (’93 BUS), and their Joe Long Scholarship Recipient Monice Aguilar (middle).

40

MIRAGE MAGAZINE

Ryan Brophy, Duncan Cruickshank (’87 BA, ’90 MBA), Donald “Don” Appleby (’90 BBA), and Victor “Vic” Perini(’91 BSPH) climbed and summited the Emmet glacier route to Mount Rainier, 14,410 feet, Washington State with the leadership of RMI guides.

Brophy was a baseball player and the other 3 – Cruickshank, Appleby and Perini were four-year swimming lettermen.

Chapter Leader Paul Tyhurst (’12 BBA) and UNM College of Fine Arts Dean Harris Smith get their spicy fix at the annual Salt Lake City Green Chile Social.

UNM Albuquerque Chapter welcomes students back to campus.

UNM alumnae Lindsay Scott (’18 PhD) and Mariah Mármol (’16 BA) at the Austin Green Chile Roast & Picnic.

Outgoing UNM Alumni Association President Chad Cooper (’01 MBA) celebrates transition of leadership with incoming President Michael Silva (’95 BA).

Scott Sanchez (’16 BA) and Chapter President Alissa Vandel (’00 BA) cheer on the Rockies with fellow Denver Lobos.

FALL 2021

41

In Memoriam We remember alumni who recently passed away.

1930 - 1939

John Herschel Lewis, ‘51

Edward C. Mould, ‘57

Adelina M. Timofeyew, ‘35

Kenneth Martin Porter, ‘51, ‘56

David B. Syme, ‘57, ‘59

Marie Louise Hennessee, ‘38

Guy C. Willis, ‘51

Nancy Louise Turnbull, ‘57

Lalo Garza, ‘52, ‘86

James Marvin Williams, ‘57, ‘64

1940 - 1949

Diane M. Kranzler, ‘52

Kathleen Burke Anthony, ‘58

Louise Stambaugh, ‘40

Floy B. Padilla, ‘52

George E. Hamilton, ‘58

Nicholas Arthur Cordova, ‘42

Barbara Jo Postlewaite, ‘52

Billy D. Hill, ‘58

Robert David Darnell, ‘44

William V. Radoslovich, ‘52

Arthur A. Key, ‘58, ‘63

Doris L. Harrison, ‘44

Elton D. Rhodes, ‘52

Janie L. Mossman, ‘58

Audrey Salas St. John, ‘44

Mary Ann Sparks, ‘52

Ruben Salaz, ‘58, ‘62

James W. Patton, ‘45, ‘55

Dorcas Knudsen Doering, ‘53

George J. Unterberg, ‘58

Marilouise Marion, ‘46

Lois Cox Granick, ‘53

Nancy K. Werner, ‘58

Harroll D. Robinson, ‘46

Andrew Jacob Hulette, ‘53

Walter Warren Wood, ‘58

Harold A. Smith, ‘46

Roman L. Latimer, ‘53

Patricia J. Bisbee, ‘59

Thomas Benton Parks, ‘47

Grant Clayton Logan, ‘53, ‘61

Frank A. Nechero, ‘59

Howard A. Romme, ‘47

Letitia C. Peirce, ‘53

Margie Lee Peterson, ‘59

Margaret K. Burlingame, ‘48

Eugene C. Stone, ‘53

George Harald Radcliffe, ‘59

William S. Cooke, ‘48

Jean T. Tixier, ‘53

James R. Stevenson, ‘59, ‘87

Kay R. Hafen, ‘48

Paul P. Franco, ‘54

Starr Jenkins, ‘48, ‘73

Betty Jane Corn, ‘54

1960 - 1969

Louis Dale Kaiser, ‘48

S. P. Johnson, ‘54

H. Thomas Baird, ‘60, ‘68

Miller H. Pavlides, ‘48

Melvin H. Keiffer, ‘54

Howard S. Cottrell, ‘60, ‘66

Carolyn Marie Wheelock, ‘48

Marvin G. Spallina, ‘54

Adelita M. Craig, ‘60

Walter Arthur Wilson, ‘48, ‘71

Ronald Ray Calkins, ‘55, ‘56

Donald C. Davidson, ‘60

Richard Keith Bailey, ‘49

Julianne J. Green, ‘55

Victor J. Fattor, ‘60

William A. Hatcher, ‘49

Douglas William Lowell, ‘55

Robert W. Geisler, ‘60

Margaret P. McKinley, ‘49

Walter N. Randle, ‘55

Gilbert L. Lopez, ‘60

Marc E. Myton, ‘49

Janice Evelyn Roberts, ‘55

Robert E. Morris, ‘60

Fayne L. Shead, ‘49

Lillian Tomasi, ‘55

Mary R. Salazar-Sutton, ‘60

James T. Stokes, ‘49

Esmael Eutimio Candelaria, ‘56

Barbara Joanne Silverthorn, ‘60

Kenneth W. Drake, ‘56, ‘63

Glenn W. Stillion, ‘60, ‘62

1950 - 1959

Jerelyn L. Eisenberg, ‘56

Charles E. Weld, ‘60, ‘68

Robert D. Blagg, ‘50

Glenroy Emmons, ‘56

Edna Maurine Yandell, ‘60

David B. Givens, ‘50, ‘52

Herbert Eugene Hartman, ‘56

Gerald K. Kelso, ‘61

Jean Marie Gotchall, ‘50

John A. Horn, ‘56

Angela Margaret Lodin, ‘61

James R. Matthews, ‘50

Bill Lane Lee, ‘56

Thomas O. Mueller, ‘61

Virginia M. McGiboney, ‘50, ‘78

Betty S. Weagley, ‘56

Francis Gilbert Ortiz, ‘61

W. Jack Nicholas, ‘50

Joyce M. Abbott, ‘57

Mike Pittman, ‘61

Homer Smith, ‘50

Duane E. Blickenstaff, ‘57

William C. Tharp, ‘61

Thelma Baker, ‘51

Mark R. Cameron, ‘57

Thomas Raymond Weaver, ‘61

Ruth J. Calkins, ‘51

Frank Ernest Chavez, ‘57

Jerry A. Whorton, ‘61

Theresa Valentina Hooper, ‘51

James R. Fleming, ‘57

Franklin B. Zecca, ‘61

Robert Porter Langford, ‘51

Ferdinand L. Iacoletti, ‘57

Lewis L. Anderson, ‘62

42

MIRAGE MAGAZINE

In Memoriam Betty Jean Horner, ‘62

Marcella B. Farmer, ‘66, ‘68

George Thomas Kerry, ‘62

Sandra Lee Ferketich, ‘66, ‘77

Lester F. Luehring, ‘62

Martha Anne Hanns, ‘66

Sharon Lee Neely, ‘62

Bonnie R. Husler, ‘66

Richard P. Ortiz, ‘62

K. Rama Mohan Rao, ‘66

Raymond A. Packert, ‘62

Joseph S. Rhodes, ‘66

Allen Vernon Robnett, ‘62

Ramesh Shah, ‘66

Samuel D. Stearns, ‘62

Dana Skabelund, ‘66

Kenneth M. Timmerman, ‘62

Larry Reed Trussell, ‘66

Erwin A. Ulbrich, ‘62

Donald A. Butel, ‘67

Bonita A. Braasch, ‘63

Billy D. Engman, ‘67

Ralph B. Clark, ‘63

Geraldine Gonzales, ‘67

Kenneth L. Corazza, ‘63

Barbara Joan Goodman, ‘67, ‘71

G. Michael Dempsey, ‘63, ‘68

George E. Lamb, ‘67

John P. Malinowski, ‘63

Dana McCausland, ‘67

Anna K. McCormick, ‘63

Veljee Patel, ‘67

John C. Peck, ‘63

Paul W. Plomp, ‘67

Jerald L. Sutherlen, ‘63

Charles D. Ray, ‘67

Richard J. Young, ‘63

Jose Antonio Vigil, ‘67

Felipe L. Chavez, ‘64

Patricia R. Ayre, ‘68

Jon Michael Dietmeier, ‘64

Myrna Jacquelyn Breeden, ‘68

C. Dan Durham, ‘64

James C. Campbell, ‘68

Joseph Anthony Fernandez, ‘64

Tina Claghorn, ‘68, ‘72

Margaret M. Gilman, ‘64

Frank C. Foy, ‘68

William L. Hupp, ‘64

Melinda Lane, ‘68

Gloria M. Olds, ‘64, ‘69

Frank A. Newlander, ‘68

Norma Kay Shaw, ‘64

Alessandro Salimbeni, ‘68, ‘70

Carl A. Calvert, ‘65, ‘77

Regina W. Scott, ‘68

Hal M. Dean, ‘65

Michael E. Brown, ‘69, ‘75

Patrick L. Inglefield, ‘65

Robert Lewis Love, ‘69

Paul W. Lashbrooke, ‘65

Scott Neal Oliver, ‘69

Charles L. Maak, ‘65

John W. Pope, ‘69, ‘73

Robert Eugene Meade, ‘65

Cynthia Ann Robinson, ‘69

Dwight Elvin Nunn, ‘65 Claire Mae O'Dowd, ‘65

1970 - 1979

Veronica Reed, ‘65

Joe M. Acosta, ‘70

Thomas A. Townsend, ‘65

Samuel H. Brennan, ‘70

David Edmund Turner, ‘65

Bernard H. Bueffel, ‘70

Robert L. Turner, ‘65

Thomas L. Carr, ‘70

Thomas Markwood Cannon, ‘66

John Charzuk, ‘70

Thomas L. Cordell, ‘66

Eusabio A. Contreras, ‘70

Kenna E. Del Sol, ‘66

Thomas Charles Couture, ‘70

James Fredric Desler, ‘66

Sharyn G. Cozzens, ‘70, ‘75

Kendra N. Pesko (’12 PhD), Albuquerque, was promoted to technical director of infectious disease at TriCore Reference Laboratories.

Stephanie K. Rodriguez (’12 BAPD, ’14 MCRP), Albuquerque, was confirmed as Cabinet Secretary for the New Mexico Higher Education Department.

Tiffany J. Rawls (’13 BBA, ’15 MBA), Albuquerque, joined the Albuquerque Community Foundation in the role of senior accountant.

Emily B. Allen (’14 MBA, ’14 MEMBA), Corrales, N.M., was elected to the Albuquerque Community Foundation’s 2021 Board of Trustees.

Alexander M. Greenberg (’14 BA, ’17 MBA), Albuquerque, is the new financial program specialist at the New Mexico Economic Development Department.

Graciela A. Ruiz (’14 BFA) San Francisco, Calif., was named one of Forbes Magazine’s 30 under 30.

Kari E. Olson (’14 JD), Santa Fe, N.M., was elected shareholder at the Montgomery & Andrews law firm.

Gavin K. Green (’15 BLA), Albuquerque, will be representing Malaysia in the 2021 Summer Olympics in Tokyo in men’s golf.

Victor V. Perez (’15 BA), Séméac, France, represented France in the 2021 Summer Olympics in Tokyo in men’s golf.

Lucas L. Baca (’16 BA), Albuquerque, was elected to the New Mexico Public Relations Society of America board of directors.

Robert J. Johnston (’16 JD), Albuquerque, a lawyer with Sutin, Thayer & Browne, served as attorney coach for the Albuquerque High Mock Trial Green Team. This year’s team earned second place overall in the statewide competition.

Andie E. Mirabal (’16 BBA), Albuquerque, was elected to the New Mexico Public Relations Society of America.

Jayson C. Peters (’16 AA), Belen, N.M., was awarded the 2020 Citizen of the Year award by the Greater Belen Chamber of Commerce for his role in the Believe in Belen initiative.

Nicholas Estes (’17 PhD), Albuquerque, co-curated the online exhibition “Seven Generations of Red Power in New Mexico,” detailing the Native rights movement.

FALL 2021

43

In Memoriam Jack M. Douthett, ‘70, ‘83, ‘94, ‘99

Michael O. Stone, ‘74

Erik John Schwendeman, ‘78

David Thomas Harris, ‘70

Judith M. Williams, ‘74

Doris Elaine Shorey, ‘78, ‘79

David Lightwine, ‘70

George Austin-Martin, ‘75, ‘76

David Alwyn Stivers, ‘78

James E. Perry, ‘70

Steven L. Bauer, ‘75

Carolyn Platero Velarde, ‘78

Larry A. Osborn, ‘70

Carol Marie Carman, ‘75, ‘81

Anne C. Bullock, ‘79

P. J. Sullenberger, ‘70

Wayne A. Delamater, ‘75

Donald A. Peterson, ‘79

Suzann I. Trout, ‘70, ‘76

William C. Gallagher, ‘75

Oland Dale Thompson, ‘79

William C. Winkler, ‘70

Maureen O. Hollander, ‘75

Evelyn Booms, ‘71

Leroy J. Martinez, ‘75

1980 - 1989

Nick Billy Carrillo, ‘71

Ted A. Martinez, ‘75

Virgil Pat Copp, ‘80

David Vega Chavez, ‘71

Thomas Alan McKinley, ‘75

Alex Anthony Fajardo, ‘80

Virginia Conty Conway, ‘71

Julia Elizabeth Sanchez, ‘75

J. Patrick Josey, ‘80

Leonard J. DeLayo, ‘71, ‘74

Gloria D. Sandoval, ‘75

Vickie M. Nelson, ‘80

Lucille Falling, ‘71

Jimmy Curtis Shorty, ‘75

Linda L. Williams, ‘80

David Ernest Grebe, ‘71

Francisco Antonio Sisneros, ‘75, ‘84

Michael H. Begay, ‘81, ‘87, ‘98

Robert Joseph Jones, ‘71

William Terry Ulibarri, ‘75, ‘79

Timothy James Dabbs, ‘81

Alberto Orlando Lovato, ‘71

Joseph Raymond Anaya, ‘76

Timothy A. Franklin, ‘82

Richard Craig Thompson, ‘71, ‘73

Robert James Avila, ‘76, ‘79

Amy G. Hernandez, ‘81, ‘97

Sheila J. White, ‘71

David Michael Burt, ‘76

Len Ray Ramsey, ‘81

William Alexander Whittaker, ‘71

Angelica R. Conseen, ‘76

Verdree B. Stanley, ‘81

John Carneal Wilson, ‘71

Gary E. Landon, ‘76, ‘80

Barbara Jo Vanderwagen, ‘81, ‘99

Dona Anne Butts, ‘72

Jacqueline Lee Morgan, ‘76

Agnes J. Cardenas, ‘82

Andy Cameron, ‘72

Louise R. Ramsey, ‘76

Timothy A. Franklin, ‘82

Jeffrey Peter Campbell, ‘72, ‘84

Barbara S. Rosen, ‘76

Brendell Joseph Gallegos, ‘82

Jack L. Dage, ‘72

Ellen S. Spangler, ‘76

Ronda Maureen Jones, ‘82

Marsha S. Holloman, ‘72

Cherese Alene Towndrow, ‘76

Charolotte J. Lewis, ‘82

William Francis Redmond, ‘72

Josephine Vandermeer, ‘76

Julia A. McIntosh, ‘82

Kenneth Wylie Robinson, ‘72

Mary Ann Anderson, ‘77

Elsie Cheschilly Naranjo, ‘82, ‘88

Angela Gutierrez Salazar, ‘72

Jay Gilbert Davis, ‘77

Jeffrey Alan Baldwin, ‘83

Robert Greathead Sloan, ‘72, ‘77

Michael Gerard DeGregorio, ‘77

Ruth Loraine Eaton, ‘83

Carder Vaughn, ‘72

Susan Carol Doering, ‘77

James Homer Elliott, ‘83

Glenn Norman Von Dreele, ‘72

Patricia R. Hamilton, ‘77, ‘84

Lorene B. Ferguson, ‘83

Steven L. Winton, ‘72

Lisa Miscione, ‘77

Merilyn Humphries Fish, ‘83

Raymond Anthony Baehr, ‘73

Anna M. Muller, ‘77

David Daniel Grisham, ‘83, ‘91

Nancy Jean Conrad Martinez, ‘73, ‘77

Paula Young C. O'Neil, ‘77

Nancy P. Hampton, ‘83

Timothy Wilson Rogers, ‘73

Joe Leon Turrietta, ‘77

Merilyn Humphries Fish, ‘83

Chris Sanders, ‘73

Ruth Ann Welscott, ‘77

Beatrice Paula Kavanagh, ‘83

E. Judy Toledo Casaus, ‘74, ‘83

Martin Robert Woodward, ‘77

Walter L. McMurtry, ‘83

Geraldine Lucille deVesty, ‘74

Karen Elaine Beck, ‘78, ‘94

Douglas Michael Smith, ‘83

Douglas Allen Driesner, ‘74

Mary E. Castillo-Scullin, ‘78

Dorothy Turrieta, ‘83

David Arthur Franz, ‘74

Gloria Ann Hultine, ‘78

Robert Gerard Marcotte, ‘84

Robert Thomas Giffen, ‘74

Owen Michael McKenna, ‘78, ‘85

Rahel T. Mariategui, ‘84

Anthony C. Martinez, ‘74

L. Bess Oliver, ‘78

Rose Ann Sena, ‘84

44

MIRAGE MAGAZINE

In Memoriam Charles Lee Barth, ‘85

Paul Joseph Martinez, ‘93

Constance Louise Bibyk, ‘85

Carol Winslett Rider, ‘93

William Harvey Broughton, ‘85, ‘88, ‘94

Duane Sandoval, ‘93

Matthew T. Byers, ‘85, ‘90

Joseph B. McCachren, ‘94

Theresa Ellen Duran, ‘85, ‘04

Ruth Ann Christensen, ‘95

Tom D. Tutt, ‘85

Heidi A. Dexter, ‘95

Marilyn Sue Hope, ‘86, ‘91

Mark Jerome Husman, ‘95

Kirk Anthony Lucero, ‘86

Quintana Platero, ‘95

John Phillips Blackburn, ‘87, ‘91

Barbara Lillian Simon, ‘95, ‘99

Christy Lee Butler, ‘87

Donita Lynn Brown, ‘96

Linda Adleen Carpenter-Fisher, ‘87

Herman James Chee, ‘96

Pearl Louise McCully, ‘87, ‘97

Christine Olivia Burroughs, ‘96

Mary Claire Bujnowski, ‘88

Sylvia Porter McCabe, ‘96

Shane R. Hall, ‘88

Sean Edward Moore, ‘96, ‘00

Lawrence K. Inouye, ‘88

Thomas P. Trowbridge, ‘96

Mary E. Woods, ‘88

Cameron Dwayne Ethridge, ‘97

Leo Lino Bottos, ‘89

Lewis Frazer Geer, ‘98

Ruby Montoya, ‘89

Rodney Curtis Ward, ‘98

Janice Lee Mudd, ‘89

William David Shoebotham, ‘99

David Joseph Vigil, ‘89 2000 - 2009 1990 - 1999

Terry Rodney Molina, ‘00, ‘02

Mark Anthony Basham, ‘90

Adrian Benally Jr., ‘01

MaryEllen Carr, ‘90

Phyllis Bailey Chisholm, ‘01

Nancy Isabel Lee, ‘90

Mary Taylor Hurst, ‘01

Noel Velasco Marquez, ‘90

Margaret Anne Sanders, ‘01

Joe Lee Yazzie, ‘90

Kip Layne Brown, ‘02

Donna Hugg, ‘92

Mary Hagarman, ‘02

Martin Avery, ‘93

Glenda Lewis, ‘02, ‘10

Gregory Blaine Everett, ‘93, ‘94

Joseph Tobias Michael, ‘02

Ruthe Lynne Jowers, ‘93

Christopher Peter Allen, ‘03

Have a Good Howl Our monthly email newsletter, The Howler, keeps Lobos up-to-date with Alumni Association news and events, as well as additional alumni profiles not published in Mirage. You can read it online at UNMAlumni.com/howler or subscribe to the email version by sending a request to alumni@unm.edu.

Rachel L. Garcia (’17 BSN, ’20 MSN), Rio Rancho, N.M., joined Lovelace Medical Group’s team of health care providers.

Valinda Coretta Shirley (’17 BS), Rock Point, Ariz., was confirmed by the Navajo Nation Council as the executive director of the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency.

Corey Bojorquez (’18 BLA), Bellflower, Calif., was signed to the Los Angeles Rams as a punter.

Lawrence A. Sanchez (’18 MBA), Los Lunas, N.M., was elected to the United Way of Central New Mexico’s board of directors.

Jason T. Sanders (’18 BA) Orange, Calif., re-signed through 2026 as a kicker for the Miami Dolphins.

River E. Marquez (’19 BA), Albuquerque, was elected to the board of directors of the New Mexico Public Relations Society of America.

Rebecca G. Prinster (’19 MA), Albuquerque, co-curated the online exhibition “Seven Generations of Red Power in New Mexico,” detailing the Native rights movement.

2020s Makayla E. Grijalva (’20 BA), Las Cruces, N.M., was elected to the board of the Rio Grande Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalism.

Amelia F. Kloer (’20 BAA), Albuquerque, has joined Modulus Architects Inc. as an architect intern.

Remy L. Link (’20 BA), Albuquerque, is a volunteer with ProtectNM, an organization founded by UNM medical students to collect and deliver PPE to medical organizations responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cody Moezzi (’20 BA), Albuquerque, a volunteer with ProtectNM, an organization founded by UNM medical students, delivered and distributed 45,000 KN95 masks to high-risk medical organizations in his home town of Alamogordo.

Teton W. Saltes (’20 BA), Albuquerque, was awarded the 2020 Wuerffel Trophy for his community service, athletic achievements and excellence in the classroom.

Teton W. Saltes

FALL 2021

45

In Memoriam Jerry Carl Blankenbecler, ‘03

Michael Francis Brett, ‘15

Robert W. Benson

Rene Carrillo Fernandez, ‘04

Edward Jude Davis, ‘16

Claude Harry Bowles Brown

Richy Charles Green, ‘05, ‘11

Bobby Dale Gibbs, ‘16

Scott Burchiel

Kaaren Kay Rougeux, ‘06

Veronica Iturralde, ‘16

Thomas J. Carlow

Brandelin N. Clark, ‘07

Adrienne Kelsey Lawless, ‘16

Edwin Chappabitty

Joanna Wilkins, ‘07

Benjamin Michael Smith, ‘16

Melba Clark

Graham R. Golden, ‘08

Rebecca S. Cox, ‘17

Robert R. Cope

Judith A. Johnson, ‘08

Shirley Ann Ashley, ‘18

Lawrence M. Cullum

Aaron Albert William Carrillo, ‘09 Laura C. Rasmussen, ‘09

Michael J. Donnellan PENDING GRADUATE

Frederick M. Hart

Felix J. Rael

Basia Anna Holub

2010 - 2019

Barbara Edwina Mitchell

Paula A. Ferguson, ‘10

OTHER ALUMNI

Arleta L. Pickett

Hannah Helen Philbrick, ‘10

Bernie Butterfield

Armin M. Rembe

Kermit A. Yonnie, ‘10, ‘15,

Edward W. Whaley

Marc E. Ritsema

Theodore Raymond Bolstad, ‘11

Steven A. Sisneros

Manuelita I. Chapman, ‘12, ‘17

FACULTY AND STAFF

Joanie A. Swanson

Jonathan M. Lucero, ‘12

Roger Y. Anderson

Henry J. Tobias

Michael E. Watts, ‘12

Pratap S. Avasthi

Wilber C. Voss

Pack Your Bags The UNM Alumni Association gives Lobos with wanderlust the opportunity to continue their education by traveling the world through the Alumni Travel Program.

Travel has been challenging lately, but with a number of unique trip opportunities in 2021 and 2022 — from Tanzania to Thailand — the Alumni Travel Program sets you up for success by handling all the travel plans and arrangements for you while offering amazing discounts too.

To view Alumni Travel Program options and book, visit UNMAlumni.com/travel.

Charm of the Amalfi Coast October 27 – November 4, 2021

Majestic Switzerland: Interlaken & Vevey June 22 – July 1, 2022

Legends of the Nile November 16 – 27, 2021

Cruise: The Rhine and Mosel Rivers July 18 – 26, 2022

United Arab Emirates: Featuring the Dubai Expo January 28 – February 6, 2022

Alaskan Heritage & Wildlife August 7 – 14, 2022

Tanzania Safari March 10 – 21, 2022 Spain: Andalucia in a Parado May 26 – June 3, 2022

46

MIRAGE MAGAZINE

Portugal: Romance of the Douro River September 26 – October 7, 2022 Singapore, Thailand & Angkor Wat October 18 – 31, 2022

My

ALUMNI STORY

I was born and raised in Las Cruces and when I graduated from high school I realized I needed to leave to experience more things. The goal was to get out of town.

UNM was a great choice. It’s so diverse. You meet so many people on campus from so many walks of life. I’ve met so many people who have broadened my world view.

®

I majored in art studio and I especially enjoyed my time in the printmaking studio. All through my time getting a degree at UNM I was also a student employee. I worked as a mentor/tutor for ENLACE, going to high schools to tutor students and promote higher education. And in the summers I worked for UNM’s College Prep Programs hosting summer camps for high school students.

Art’s not a lucrative career and I knew that going in. After I graduated I was able to use my experience in student jobs to get a position with UNM as an admissions advisor and then as a recruiter.

And then I was out on the road, selling the school to high school students and transfer students at junior colleges.

For five years I drove all over New Mexico — Las Vegas, Tucumcari, Raton, Farmington, Chama, Clovis. And I went to Denver and Dallas.

My selling points: We’re D-1 in sports, Tier 1 in research, we’ve got a great price and a beautiful campus.

Now I work in the College Enrichment Program helping students succeed and making sure they’re doing everything to maintain their scholarships.

Since 2006 when I enrolled as a freshman, I have been immersed in UNM. Two years ago, I made my ties to UNM even stronger and became a board member of the UNM Young Alumni Chapter — just another way to show my Lobo pride.

Go Lobos!

Jacy Watley (’13 BAFA)

Stay in touch with your Alumni Association at UNMAlumni.com. Click on “Connect.”

FALL 2021

47

M A G A Z I N E

The University of New Mexico Alumni Association MSC 01-1160 1 University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001

GO GREEN LOBOS We’re not talking about chile (this time).

Opt-in to ensure you receive the next issue of Mirage, Lobos! In an effort to go green and use less paper, we’re encouraging all Alumni to sign up to have Mirage delivered to their email inbox.

Your Spring 2022 Mirage will be 100% digital, with new interactive features we know you’ll love, so visit UNMAlumni.com to verify your subscription preferences. alumni@unm.edu 505.277.9083