2003, Spring by UNM Alumni Association

spring 2003

look

again The

University

New

Mexico

A l u m n i

magazine

A s s o c i a t i o n

M I R A G E TA K E S O N A N E W L O O K , A N D L O O K S AT S T U D E N T S , A L U M N I , A N D N E W M E X I C A N S .

You went to college here. You graduated from here. Then you moved away and started your own company.

But somehow we always knew you might want to return to New Mexico. visit us at www.newmexicodevelopment.org to learn why business owners are looking to NEW MEXICO NEXT

O F

H O D G I N

H A L L

B Y

M AT T H E W

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D U N N

reflection

S TA I R W E L L

We follow our

own footsteps

and those of others.

We circle and climb,

Looking into, looking back, looking forward.

exploring memory

and possibility.

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14 Conversation: like, a fresh look at freshmen M O D E R AT E D B Y V B P R I C E , E D I T E D B Y M A R Y C O N R A D Freshman life on a big and unknown campus can intimidate even the hardy. Six UNM freshmen discuss their experiences and the programs designed to welcome new students to the fold.

contents 18 Look where he’s going!

On the Cover:

Hodgin Hall 2003 by Matthew Dunn

BY LAURIE MELLAS-RAMIREZ A look at John Probasco, UNM’s most recent Rhodes Scholar, who combines brains, poise, ambition, kindness, and appreciation for his parents to boot!

31 Perceptivity

Desert mammalogist and museum maven Michael Mares receives a unique award from the University of Oklahoma where his work has educated many about the natural world. BY DEBRA LEVY MARTINELLI

6 Letters Look out! Mirage readers make their opinions known.

9 Connections Recent accomplishments by UNM faculty and staff.

22 Con Nombre BY MICHAEL PENN A look at photographer Cavalliere Ketchum, whose story first appeared in the University of Wisconsin magazine On, Wisconsin! Senior editor Michael Penn covers the Wisconsin professor and UNM alum who is combing New Mexico’s villages to identify the unnamed subjects of depression photos.

Spring 2003, Volume 21, Number 3 THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO: F. Chris Garcia, President; Judy K. Jones, Vice President-Institutional Advancement; Karen A. Abraham, Director, Alumni Relations. EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: Steve Ciepiela, President, Albuquerque; Steve Bacchus, President-Elect, Albuquerque; Debbie Doak, Treasurer, Albuquerque; Connie Beimer, Past President, Albuquerque; Roberto Ortega, Albuquerque; Coleman Travelstead, Albuquerque. MIRAGE is published three times a year, in April, August, and December, by the University of New Mexico Alumni Association for the University’s alumni and friends. Address all correspondence to UNM Alumni Relations Office, Hodgin Hall, Albuquerque NM 87131-0016. Send all Album information to the attention of Margaret Weinrod. Send all changes of address to the attention of Records. Send all other correspondence to the attention of Mary Conrad. To comply with the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, UNM provides this publication in alternative formats. If you have special needs and require an auxiliary aid or service, please contact Mary Conrad. Phone: 800-258-6866 (800-ALUM-UNM) or 505-277-5808. E-mail to Mary Conrad: mconrad@unm.edu or alumni@unm.edu. Web address: www.unmalumni.com

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28 Insight: The Inocente B Y R U D O L F O A N AYA Receipt of one of the nation’s highest honors, the National Medal of Arts, leads Rudolfo Anaya to ponder the ways of the inocente.

34 On and Off the Field Once rival to Roger Maris’ heights, baseball great Sam Suplizio was sidelined by an injury but came back to a fabulous new career off the field. B Y C A R O LY N G O N Z A L E S

Mirage was the title of the University of New Mexico yearbook until its last edition in 1978. Since that time, the title was adopted by the alumni magazine which

34 38 Athletics: Four Years Later BY STEVE CARR Lady Lobo Jordan Adams is moving on after four stellar years in the Pit.

UNM graduates.

compiled by Margaret Weinrod.

Look for a friend on every page! Keep us posted! Send your news to Margaret Weinrod The University of New Mexico Alumni Association 1 University of New Mexico MSC 01-1160 Albuquerque NM 87131-0001. Better yet, e-mail your news to mweinrod@unm.edu. Fall (August) deadline: May 1 Winter (December) deadline: September 1 Spring (April) deadline: January 1

alumni in the write Harvena Richter, ’38 BA, has two new books: Frozen Light, The Crystal Poems, and The Golden Fountains, sources of energy and life based on the psycho-energies of Conrad Richter. Harvena is a UNM lecturer emerita living in Albuquerque. Starr Jenkins, ’48 BA, ’73 PhD, of San Luis Obispo, California, is author of a one-act, four-person play, Man of Steel: a Smokejumper Drama.

Two couples who benefited from scholarships to UNM now

A. Gayle Hudgens, ’63 BA, has spent the last 20 years working to accelerate the shift to a sustainable society and has written Collaborative Spunk: The Feisty Guide for Reviving People and Our Planet. Gayle lives in Austin, Texas.

help the next generation of students. BY ELLEN K. ASHCRAFT

Claire Wilson Brandenburg, ’67, of Taos, has illustrated a children’s book, Bigger Than a Button by Elsie Karr Kreischer.

40 See What You Can Do: Unwrapping Success

continues to publish vignettes of

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42 Looking Back: On and Off the Beaten Path A personal account of lifetime friends who fuel their friendship with wilderness adventures. BY ISABEL MILLER BEARMAN BUCHER

Laura Sanchez, ’67 BA, ’72 MA, has co-authored with Alex Sanchez, emeritus faculty, Adobe Houses for Today: Flexible Plans for Your Adobe Home, published by Sunstone Press in Santa Fe. Laura is a UNM-Valencia lecturer and lives in Los Lunas. Robert E. Adler, ’68 BS, has published a new book, Science Firsts: From the Creation of Science to the Science of Creation (John Wiley & Sons). He resides in Santa Rosa, New Mexico.

The University of New Mexico

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Patriotism and the Second Amendment

Regarding Repatriation

(Summer, Fall, Winter 2002) orn and raised in the Regular Army, this patriot thumbed a ride to the recruiting office downtown on 8 December 1941, was told to go back to the U and take his exams early and then return to the recruiter. On 17 December, he swore to uphold the Constitution, and became a dog-faced soldier. Now this 84-year-old patriot can look back on four-plus years in the Army Air Corps, 11-plus years in the New Mexico Air National Guard (a founder member), two years in the Air Force, and nine-plus years in the Air Force Reserve. His country owes him nothing for that service, but his patriotism was well rewarded. As for the Second Amendment. I took a course at UNM in the Constitution and I read the amendments very carefully. Much as I love my collection of weapons, it became clear to me that the Second Amendment was crafted at a time when every family felt the need for protection. They satisfied that need by forming local militia units and the militiamen bore the arms. When the National Guard was formed, its headquarters in DC was called the Militia Bureau; today it is the National Guard Bureau. Today we have a Regular Army, an Air Force, and a Navy with ample means to protect us from external threats. Each state has an Army National Guard and an Air Force National Guard with ample resources for the use of the Governor to protect his citizens and to assist state, county, and city officials in times of great need. Now, I can sit back, relax, and feel confident that I have no need to bear arms. I am not afraid of my government, nor am I afraid of the state. As can be read in the Second Amendment, the need to bear arms was conditional; today the arms are capably carried by our servicemen and women, so we no longer need to have a long rifle standing by the front door. Rhodes F. Arnold, Lt. Col. USAF (Ret.), ’48 BA Metairie, Louisiana

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(Winter 2002) he article on Marla Big Boy’s fight to protect the Kennewick Man skeleton omitted key information. The skeleton has unusual physical features that suggest he was more closely related to modern Asians than to modern Native Americans. This finding has important implications for the prehistoric settlement of North America, and questions the very definition of “native” when describing cultures. Any claim to a skeleton that is over 9,000 years old, based on continuity of oral tradition and tribal affiliation, defies anthropological evidence and credibility. Over 9,000 years, many cultures have come and gone in North America and are related to modern Native Americans to the extent Europeans are related to Neanderthals. Burial of the skeleton buries the potential for discovering exciting insight into the early inhabitants of North America and reinforces modern racial boundaries rather than exploring shared racial common ground. Michael McCarthy, ’96 BS Columbus, Ohio

t was with deep regret that I read the article regarding Marla Big Boy’s work in repatriation of Native American remains. While I support in general the entire movement to repatriate remains, funerary offerings, and other related ethnographic/cultural materials as covered by the federal guidelines NAGPRA and ARPA, the case of the so-called Kennewick Man (“Ancient One”) represents a rather special and more restrictive case, which has obviously been argued and litigated and, in one judge’s opinion, is not covered by these legal documents. Your one-sided representation of the issues,

which have been raised in this particular case, does not fairly explain or present to the reader the many sides to this complex anthropological mystery… A somewhat cursory review of the legal and scientific issues will reveal that: 1) No bones were exhumed… 2) The finding of the skeletal remains was serendipitous, made by untrained participants of a local festival… 3) The initial investigation of the remains, handled by the local coroner’s office, centered on a potential homicide investigation… 4) The anthropological investigation initially centered on a premise that the remains were by analysis determined to be European in nature… 5) Only after additional specialized chemical and destructive analyses were the remains carbon-dated to approximately 10,000 years old… 6) All legal permits that were required were obtained prior to the search for any additional remains and this search did not include any exhumation activities. So, the allegations presented in the article of unauthorized exhumation and non-permitted access are not substantiated by a careful review of the facts. In addition, Big Boy’s assertion that there is “no biological basis for racial determination” is not correct, as physical anthropologists, medical professionals, and biologists all can show using well established physical parameters and measurements, the relative age, race, health, lifestyle of an individual based upon examination of the skull and other bones… The Kennewick Man skeletal remains do not meet

he statement on page 34], “After the Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876, a group of native survivors of Wounded Knee formed a religious and spiritual movement ... called the Ghost Dancers ... the army massacred a group of 70 Ghost Dancers ... ground frozen ... buried in shallow graves...,” is historically confused and at variance with historical records. While it is true that some of the survivors of the Lakota-Tsitsitas victory on the Greasy Grass (translation of the Lakota name for the Little Big Horn River) in 1876 joined the Ghost Dance, it must be emphasized that the relevant Ghost Dance (there was another one) was in 1889-1890; the Massacre at Wounded Knee Creek took place in December 1890. And it is true that a blizzard roared through South Dakota that night and the bodies could not be buried for several days. But, it is anachronistic to state that a group of “survivors of Wounded Knee ... were massacred”; no such event happened. The massacre was of some of the survivors of Greasy Grass (1876) at Wounded Knee Creek (1890). Moreover, I know of no evidence of “shallow graves” and “resurfacing remains” at Wounded Knee. Indeed, photographs taken at the time show, and contemporary documents speak, of only a single deep burial trench, the same one that is still on the grounds of the Wounded Knee Church, some eight to ten feet deep… Thomas Kavanagh, ’71 BA, ’86 PhD Bloomington, Indiana

he garbled statement on page 34 is [inaccurate]: “After the battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876, a group of native survivors of Wounded Knee formed a religious and spiritual movement to deal with genocide ... called the Ghost Dancers.” The Sioux victims of the 7th Cavalry at Wounded Knee died because of circumstances associated with the Ghost Dance movement, initiated by Wovoka (Jack Wilson, a member of the Ute tribe in Nevada). The sentence inverts the relationship between movement and massacre. The article further quotes Marla Big Boy, as follows: “The tribes (of Native Americans) consider themselves to be one people with a common ancestry.” I would not want to be in her place, when asked to explain to others this insupportable nonsense, including presumably her own Oglala Lakota nation. I am sure Marla Big Boy is a worthy subject for an alumni issue focusing on rights-advocacy. It may have been wiser, however, not to have stressed her connection to litigation (Kennewick) with which she has had no direct connection for four years. The case is indeed a fascinating intersection of law and cultural questions. But, as presented, the reader receives only lop-sided rhetoric from the standpoint of what today is the losing position, at that. Howard J. De Nike, ’92 MA, ’95 PhD San Francisco, California

ith regards to Marla Big Boy’s article, it may be true that many in the past have been insensitive to presumed Native American burials. Indians too have been insensitive to remains of humans. Custer’s solders at Big Horn were violated and their belongings taken. Even NAGPRA is not a total answer. Jemez people paid no attention as to whether or not the burials excavated at Pecos might have been Spanish Padres, local Mexican-Americans, visiting Apaches, or Comanches. Scientific analysis would have answered the question and given information on historical relationships and possible knowledge of medical problems and their solutions. Some Americans seem to want to keep us in the dark and ignorant. Lloyd M. Pierson, ’43 BA, ’48 MA Moab, Utah

album John L. Kessell, ’69 PhD (Durango, Colorado); Rick Hendricks, ’85 PhD (Las Cruces, New Mexico); Meredith Dodge, ’85 PhD (Filchburg, Massachussetts); and Larry Miller, ’72 BA, ’95 MA (Albuquerque) have edited The Journals of don Diego de Vargas, New Mexico, 1700-1704, the sixth and final volume of the de Vargas Journals, published by the UNM Press. Herb Orrell, ’83 BUS, of Houston, Texas, has published a book, Unspeakable: The Truth about Grief. Jean Boyd Shannon, ’83 MA, published three books in 2002: Carrying Water in a Sieve, a collection of her poetry; Meditation for the Earth, a chapbook of poems; and Stars Scattered Like Seeds, a collection of poems and stories drawn from her early life in Virginia. Jean lives in Albuquerque. Mark Edward Mathis, ’85 BA, of Albuquerque, is the author of Feeding the Media Beast, published by Purdue University Press. It offers guidelines for an “easy recipe for great publicity” for novices in dealing with the media.

Mark Mathis, ’85

the legal requirements of resembling any of the local indigenous peoples (as detailed by NAGPRA) of the Washington area. These remains are classified scientifically as male Caucasian, thereby causing the tremendous enigma of who was Kennewick Man. Was this individual one of the First Americans or a transient to the area? The stone lance-point embedded in his hip only deepens the mystery of his life and death in modern day Washington. Steven D. Rospopo, ’73 BS/BA, ’97 BSME Albuquerque

Avrum Organick, ’96 MA, is author of three books. Blessings and Red Lake are fictionalized memoirs of the cross-cultural life he (of Jewish ancestry) and his Navajo wife have led. Canyon Boy is a children’s book based on the stories told by his father-in-law, Joseph Leo Gail, born and raised in Canyon de Chelly. Organick is a primary care physician at the Tsaile Health Center in Navajo, New Mexico. Lois Ellen Frank, ’99 MA, has published a new cookbook, Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations. She lives in Santa Fe. Pete Vordenberg, ’00 BA, has published Momentum: Chasing the Olympic Dream, an inside look into life as an elite crosscountry skier. Pete is a two-time Olympian, national champion, and current US team coach who lives in Bend, Oregon.

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(Winter 2002) t has been my fortune to meet, know, chat with, and enjoy the company of both F. Chris Garcia and Mari-Luci Jaramillo. Both exhibit a low-key approach to life, play, and work but one that is bolstered by determination, skill, and compassion. Receptive, always cordial, their professionalism and contributions to their communities represent the best of New Mexico. The accomplishments of Garcia and Jaramillo suggest that creative and positive “role models” exist not only for younger generations, but all of us. James A. Morris, ’74 PhD Baker City, Oregon

read with great interest that the University of New Mexico has a Hispanic President, F. Chris Garcia. The reason this really caught my attention is the fact that years ago, probably in the 1920s, the University of New Mexico did not allow Spanish-speaking young people to enroll as students at UNM. It was Menaul School that had the honor of breaking that barrier and of sending the first Hispanic students to the University of New Mexico. There were three boys and of the three, I only remember one name, the Rev. José Inez Candelaria…. So you see, we are very proud to have President Garcia, a Hispanic, as president of the University of New Mexico. I would like to make one comment, though: Garcia must have an accent on the “i”. Lydia García Ras-Allard, ’49 BAED Carien, Connecticut Editor’s note: Within the limits of our knowledge, Mirage uses diacritical markings in names in accordance with the name-holder’s wishes. Dr. Garcia does not use the accent in his name. Also, curious about UNM’s history of admitting Hispanics, I asked the university archivist to fill us in:

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can find no evidence that “Spanish speaking” students, meaning students with Hispanic surnames, were denied entry into UNM prior to the 1920s. If the writer means students who spoke only Spanish and no English, she is probably correct because UNM is not a bilingual teaching institution. I do find abundant evidence that Hispanics were present at UNM prior to the 1920s. Mariano Otero served on the first Board of Regents when UNM opened in 1892. The first Hispanic professor, Atanasio Montoya Jr., was hired in the fall of 1897. His biography states that he was a student at UNM for six years before becoming a professor. That would put him in the first class of students in the summer of 1892. The yearbooks prior to 1920 list students with Hispanic surnames also. They were involved in athletics and theater, served as class presidents, and also won scholarships and prizes. When UNM was created by Territorial Act in 1889, there was not a public high school in New Mexico so not many people thought UNM would survive. Because of this, it was important that UNM admit anyone qualified—even women. The admission policy in the earliest catalogs states that potential students must either take a qualifying exam or have a certificate from their former school detailing their studies and grades. Terry Gugliotta University Archivist

Foul ID! (Winter 2002)

y mother, Dorothy Burnett, was excited to see the basketball picture on page 10 of the Winter 2002 issue of Mirage. She and my brothers and I immediately recognized the 1937 Lobo hoopster as our father, Bill Burnett, who graduated from UNM in 1940. He was the leading scorer for the Lobos over his playing career. The picture caption incorrectly identifies the hoopster as Sam Shortle. While Sam was also a starter on the team, this is not his picture! Barbara Burnett Riggs Editor’s note: We appreciate your correction. And here again is your dad’s photo, correctly captioned! UNM Archives

Profile Pronouncements

Water Wish (Winter 2002)

t was refreshing to hear from four well-informed and intelligent people about the water situation in New Mexico. I realize they wish to be cooperative and non-confrontational, but at least a mention of the water wasted on golf courses would be in order. Yes, I know, money into the state, recycled water, etc.—but couldn't it be recycled for a better use? Kathleen McNerney, ’67 BA, ’70 MA, ’77 PhD Morgantown, West Virginia

Hooping it Up: Lobo hoopster Bill Burnett poses for the camera in 1937.

Mirage welcomes letters to the editor. If you would like to comment on something you’ve read in the magazine, please write us. Letters will be published as space allows and may be edited for clarity and brevity. Letters must be signed. It’s helpful if you include your location and degrees. Our address is: Mirage, UNM Alumni Relations, Hodgin Hall, Albuquerque NM 87131-0016. E-mail: mconrad@unm.edu. To see the unedited version of these letters, go to www.unmalumni.com.

Beam Me Up! Professor Arthur H. Guenther

funding connections

of UNM’s Center for High Technology Materials was one of four speakers at a White House Conference on Optics and Photonics where he received the Optical Society of America's David Richardson Medal for his pioneering contributions and continued leadership in the study of laser-induced damage of optical materials.

Great Grant: The National Institute on

Drug Abuse recently named UNM as one of 17 sites in a Clinical Trials Network to improve community-based treatment of drug abuse and dependence. With start-up funding of $1.7 million, and an estimated $10 million over a five-year period, this is one of the largest addiction research grants in the state’s history.

http://www.unm.edu/news/Releases/ 02-10-21guenther.htm Prost! UNM professor Peter Pabisch,

German Studies, has been named Distinguished Max Kade Research Professor and served as panelist and moderator at a conference at the University of Graz in Austria earlier this year. Pabisch, one of only five United States members of PEN, an international association of writers, is an authority on dialectic German.

http://www.unm.edu/news/Releases/ 02-10-30nida.htm Speaking of Funding: The US Department

of Education Office of English Language Acquisition has awarded the UNM Multicultural Bilingual Education Center and Division of Language Literacy and Sociocultural Studies in the College of Education a five-year, $1.2 million grant to boost the number of educators skilled in teaching English as a second language.

http://www.unm.edu/news/Releases/ 02-11-13pabisch.htm Award of the Ages: UNM English professor Helen Damico is this year’s recipient of the

http://www.unm.edu/news/Releases/ 02-11-06ortiz.htm

Medieval Academy of America’s annual award for Outstanding Service to Medieval Studies. The award is the most prestigious given by the Medieval Academy, the premier professional organization for medievalists in the United States and Canada.

honorable connections Energizing Experience: C. Jeff Brinker,

http://www.unm.edu/news/Releases/0 2-12-04damico.htm

professor of chemical and nuclear engineering and chemistry at UNM, was one of seven recipients of the EO Lawrence Award announced by US Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham. The award is given for outstanding contributions in the field of atomic energy, which has influenced many fields of science including environmental research, materials science, and nuclear medicine.

Tr`es bien! Assistant professor Tim Castillo,

http://www.unm.edu/news/Releases/ 02-09-30castillo.htm

Anne Van Arsdall, ’01 PhD, has published her dissertation, Medieval Herbal Remedies: The Old English Herbarium and Anglo-Saxon Medicine (Routledge Press), a translation of an Anglo-Saxon medical reference used by healers in Western Europe from the fifth century until well into the Renaissance. She works at Sandia Labs. William Federici, ’39 BS, of Santa Fe, was recognized for his contributions to New Mexico during his long judicial career with the Zia Award at Homecoming 2002. Federici is a former justice and chief justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court, former president of the New Mexico State Bar, and member of the New Mexico State Bar Commission for many years. Shepard Levine, '50 BAED, of Corvallis, Oregon, taught art at Oregon State University from 1954 to 1991. He still paints every day and recently held a retrospective at the Benton County Museum in Philomath, Oregon. Ramón Huerta, ’50 BAED, ’56 MA, ’80 EDSP, was honored during Homecoming 2002 with the UNM Alumni Association’s Zia Award in recognition of his contributions in the field of education and participation in community and volunteer activities. John E. Chausteur, ’52 BABA, retired from the US Air Force in 1970; traveled; went to work for Sears in 1973, and retired from there in 1986. He lives in Albuquerque. Sam Suplizio, ’54 BSPE, has been inducted into the American Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame. Sam lives in Grand Junction, Colorado. (See story this issue.)

John H. Morrison, ’55 BABA, of Evanston, Ilinois, has been elected an Honorary Life Member of the International Bar Association. He chairs the IBA committee which assists lawyers and their bar associations in developing countries on such matters as continuing legal education, practice management, rule of law, and independence of the judiciary.

http://www.unm.edu/news/Releases/ 02-09-26brinker.htm

UNM School of Architecture and Planning, received an honorable mention by the Paris-based organization groupe e2 in the “e2-contest,” an international competition open to young architects and students in architecture, landscape, and urban design. Castillo’s submission, PARK(ING), was also selected for an international exhibition.

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Kent Hoffman, ’55 BABA, served two years in the Army and then with the American Red Cross-Service to the Armed Forces branch for 40 years. He retired in San Antonio, Texas, in 1997.

Bill Lee, ’56 BSPH, of Lovington, New Mexico, has received a bronze cowboy award from the Lea County Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center.

Matthew Dunn

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Helen Damico

C. Robert Campbell, ’58 BSAE, has received the 2002 Distinguished Alumni award from the UNM School of Architecture and Planning. He was recently elected president of the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards and is a consultant to BDA Architecture, PC, in Albuquerque. s p r i n g

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Kudos! Robert Meyers, associate director

of the UNM Clinical Research Branch of the Center on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse, and Addiction, has earned the 2002 Dan Anderson Research Award from the Hazelden Foundation. Meyers achieved the honor for his community reinforcement and family training method for engaging unmotivated substance abusers into treatment. http://www.unm.edu/news/Releases/ 02-12-06meyers.htm Top Lawyer: UNM Law professor James W. Ellis has been named “Lawyer of the Year”

by the National Law Journal. Recipients are chosen for their “impact on the law and society.” http://www.unm.edu/news/Releases/ 03-02-07ellis.htm Fellow Psychologist: Luis A. Vargas, clinical

psychologist and associate professor of psychiatry, has been elected by his peers as a Fellow of the American Psychological Association for 2003. Fellows are selected for their exceptional and outstanding contributions to the research, teaching, or practice of psychology. http://hscapp.unm.edu/calendar/output/index. cfm?fuseaction=main.release&EntryID=1047 Fellow Engineer: Professor Norman R. Roderick, department of chemical and

nuclear engineering, has been named American Institute of Electrical Engineers grade of Fellow. http://www.unm.edu/news/Releases/ 03-01-02roderick.htm Leah in the Lead: Leah L. Albers, a professor

in the UNM College of Nursing, has been named a fellow in the American Academy of Nursing, joining an elite group of nursing leaders nationwide. http://hscapp.unm.edu/calendar/output/index. cfm?fuseaction=main.release&EntryID=998 Joy Good Fellow! Joy Griffin, associate

professor of physical performance and development in the College of Education, has been elected to the Association for the Advancement of Applied Sports Psychology College of Fellows. She is one of only 58 individuals to receive the honor worldwide. Advancing to fellow status is the highest honor the association bestows.

Senior Research Fellow at the Howard R. Lamar Center at Yale University in 2003-04. Her research will focus on the study of frontiers and borders.

student connections

http://www.unm.edu/news/Releases/ 02-09-18scharff.htm

Les Etudes: UNM College of Education doctoral student Anselmo TorresArizmendi has been selected from among

Preserving Policy: Paul Nathanson, director

of the UNM School of Law’s Institute of Public Law, has been elected chair of the board of directors for the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. http://www.unm.edu/news/Releases/ 03-1-24nathanson.htm Teaching Boost: Assistant architecture professor Geoffrey Adams is the recipient

of the 2003 Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture/American Institute of Architecture Students New Faculty Teaching Award. http://www.unm.edu/news/Releases/ 03-01-29Adams.htm Showcase Scientist: Biology professor Maggie Werner-Washburne has been

Scholars All: Ron Denny, Genevieve Eros, and Julian Lucero-Emmons each received

Ford Motor Company/American Indian College Fund Corporate scholarship awards of approximately $5,000 for the fall semester. Only 12 scholarships were awarded nationally to students attending non-tribal colleges. The college fund also announced that UNM junior Sandy Marcelline Hensley received a David and Lucille Packard Foundation grant of $10,000, one of only 10 awarded nationally. http://www.unm.edu/news/Releases/ 02-10-16HTeros.htm

http://www.unm.edu/news/Releases/ 03-02-04biology.htm

Reigning Regents: New Mexico Governor

Advisor against Violence: Pamela Galbraith, behavioral health administrator

with the UNM Health Sciences Center, has recently been named to the US Department of Health and Human Services National Advisory Committee on Violence Against Women. http://hscapp.unm.edu/calendar/output/index. cfm?fuseaction=main.release&EntryID=1046 Supremely Innovative: The Rozier E.

Yale on the Frontier: Virginia Scharff,

director of the Center for the Southwest at UNM, will be the Frederick W. Beinecke

http://www.unm.edu/news/Releases/ 02-10-25jec.htm

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http://www.unm.edu/news/Releases/ 02-10-07anselmo.htm

selected by the American Association for the Advancement of Science as one of nine scientists to participate in a project to showcase achievements of distinguished US Hispanic women scientists to wide audiences of scientists, educators, students, and policymakers in Latin America.

Sanchez Judicial Education Center of New Mexico at the Institute of Public Law, UNM School of Law, has been recognized for its innovative web-based educational programming with a national award presented recently at the Great Hall of the United States Supreme Court in Washington DC.

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480 candidates worldwide to study at the International Institute for Education Planning in Paris, France.

new connections Bill Richardson has announced the appointments of four new regents to UNM’s seven-member board. They are James H. Koch, president of Daniels Insurance of Santa Fe and outgoing chairman of the state Democratic Party; Donald Salazar, a Santa Fe attorney specializing in administrative and regulatory law; Maria Griego-Raby of Albuquerque, president and principal of Contract Associates, Inc., a commercial and office furniture company, and past president of the UNM Alumni Association; and, Andrea Cook, past-president of the Associated Students of UNM who will serve as the student-regent. http://www.unm.edu/news/Releases/ 03-01-22regents.htm

Top Buy: For the seventh consecutive year,

UNM has been named in the annual report on America’s 100 Best College Buys designating the university as one of America’s best college educations for the cost. The report, compiled by Institutional Research and Evaluation, Inc., included 1,026 accredited US colleges and universities offering four-year undergraduate-degree programs that responded to the survey.

Greg Cajete New at NAS: Greg Cajete was recently

named director of Native American Studies (NAS) at UNM. He is an associate professor with NAS and the College of Education. A native of Santa Clara Pueblo, Cajete will sculpt curriculum in an effort to create a bachelor’s degree at UNM in Native American Studies. http://www.unm.edu/news/Releases/ 02-10-08cajete.htm Economic Advice: UNM President

Chris Garcia has appointed professor of entrepreneurship and strategy John Young special advisor on economic development. Young will represent the President’s Office in economic development matters involving government and business organizations and help guide the university’s participation in statewide economic development. http://www.unm.edu/news/Releases/ 03-01-27young.htm

media connections Top Notch Engineering: US News and

World Reports ranks UNM’s engineering program among the best programs at schools where the highest degree offered is a doctorate. The US News ranking relies on quantitative measures that education experts propose as reliable indicators of academic quality. http://www.unm.edu/news/Releases/ 02-09-19usnews.htm

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http://www.unm.edu/news/Releases/ Oct1bestbuy.htm Top Escuela: The UNM School of

Engineering was ranked seventh on Hispanic Engineer & Information Technology magazine’s top 21 schools for Hispanics in the November/December issue. http://www.unm.edu/news/Releases/ 02-11-19hispanic.htm As a Matter of Fact: The 2001-2002 UNM

Fact Book, a statistical book containing a wide range of information and data about UNM, is now available online. Published by the Office of Institutional Research, The UNM Fact Book is helpful in researching and discovering details about UNM, including data on students, faculty, and staff. It also contains information about degrees, program accreditation, research, finances, and UNM’s organizational structure. http://www.unm.edu/~oir/

miscellaneous connections This Could Get Sticky! This fall, the UNM

Office of the Registrar began implementing Web Grades, a new web-based, system that allows faculty to post students’ grades on the internet instead of submitting their grades on paper. http://www.unm.edu/news/Releases/ 02-11-06web.htm Check Us Out! To learn more good

information about UNM’s people, places and programs, click on the “Accomplishments” web page. http://www.unm.edu/news/ AccomplishmentsIndex2002.htm

album Grace Fink, ’58 BSHP, has been honored as one of the “Extraordinary Women in Jefferson County” by the West Chamber serving Jefferson County and EasyChair Magazine. Grace lives in Lakewood, Colorado. Adolph Saenz, ’58 BBA, of Albuquerque, continues his work in the field of security as security consultant Jim Hulsman, ’59 BSPH, has retired after 42 years of coaching high school basketball in Albuquerque. Over 34 years, he led Albuquerque High to 660 wins and seven state championships. James H. Koch, ’59 BSPH, has been appointed by New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson as a new UNM Regent. He lives in Santa Fe. Louis L. Weller, ’59 BARC, has been elected to a four-year term on the UNM Foundation Board of Directors. He is an architect in Albuquerque. W. Stewart Saul, ’60 BABA, has retired from the life and health insurance business to enjoy golfing in Garland, Texas. Lewis B. Barger, ’61 BABA, retired in 1993 after 28 years in contract administration of government/industrial contracts with various companies. He held the positions of contract administrator, manager and director of contracts, and vice president-contract administration. He lives in Leesburg, Florida. Fred Begay, ’61 BS, ’63 MS, ’73 PhD, received the Alumni Association’s Zia Award during Homecoming 2002 in recognition of his activities in furthering Native American education, especially in the area of science and engineering. Fred is a nuclear physicist at Los Alamos National Lab. Richard Gerding, ’61 BABA, ’64 JD, of Farmington, has been elected to the UNM Foundation Board of Directors. Jack Westman, ’61 BSCE, has received the “Ingeniero Veterano de Nuevo Mexico” award from the New Mexico Society of Professional Engineers. He is a partner in the Albuquerque firm of BohannanWestman-Huston, working in land development and construction. Les Adler, ’63 BA, has been appointed dean of the School of Extended Education at Sonoma State University, where he has taught since 1970. He previously was professor of history and provost of the Hutchins School of Liberal Studies. He lives in Cotati, California.

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conversation

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a fresh look

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at freshman life

Six UNM freshmen talk

During fall semester 2002, all six participants had been members of a Freshman Interest Group (FIG) taught by Yvonne Peña and Gary

about their first experiences

Ballinger, entitled “The Next Great Generation.” The FIGs are one aspect of a UNM initiative to improve the “freshman experience,” helping freshmen to

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weather the adjustment to university life.

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as university students.

Dan Hedges: I think the biggest difference

is time management. High school is all structured. At college you have class at different times. Like, if you have time in between two different classes, a couple of hours, you should get some homework done or do your laundry or all that stuff that you need to get done. Elise Athens: I find that it’s the amount

of work. In high school, I did barely the minimum and I got straight A’s and in college I’m, like, working my butt off, trying to get A’s. Valerie Steinhaus: Me, it’s the homework.

In high school, they make you do the homework. It’s required. Here, it’s, like, you do it if you want to do well and if you don’t do it, then you don’t do well. Ashley Lynch: I think the biggest

difference is with the teachers. In high school, you have to go to class. They have to teach class or there has to be a substitute. I had a class last Friday, and the teacher came in and said, “I just can’t handle this today. I’ll give out the homework. We’ll collect assignments on Monday,” and we left within ten minutes. Jennifer Siow: For me, it’s more

ethnically diverse than high school. I went to high school where, like, 90 percent of the students were Hispanic and, I’d say, five percent were Native American, and the rest, African American and Asian and others. It’s a good experience because, like, I get to know more people and about their culture and background.

Jonah Levine: One of the biggest

differences is the people, actually. I live in the dorms and, like, I live with people from all over the country. So it’s like a lot of different perspectives. When I was in high school, I got only one perspective, really. People seem more in touch with the world, things like politics, traveling. People are interested in a lot more different things.

album Ed Lewis, ’63 BA, ’65 MA, last fall received a Magazine Publishers of America Individual Lifetime Achievement Award. The Henry Johnson Fisher Award recognizes individuals who have made significant and long-standing contributions to the magazine publishing industry and society. Lewis is chairman and CEO of Essence Communications Partners, publisher of Essence Magazine.

Ashley: I’ve actually had the opposite

from Jonah and Jennifer. I came from an area that was as diverse as possible. Like, it was almost equal with Hispanics, Blacks, Asians, and White people. I’ve had the opposite experience with politics, but, I was in DC so you can’t get more involved than that. VB Price: How tough was it to move from your high school to a community with 25,000 students in it—many of them older, quite a number of them a lot older than you are? Elise: It’s very intimidating. It used to

be the same people every day and now I have no idea who’s around me. And then there’s people that, they’re older, they know more, they think they’re smarter, but I’m not sure. It’s just different. You get used to it after a while. Valerie: For me, it’s the opposite. Like,

I love it! I get to meet more people. I think it’s kinda boring to see the same faces every day. I’ve made so many friends from all over the world. Dan: At first it was intimidating

because it’s hard to come from that comfort of having your solid group of friends and all of these people you’ve known your whole life. It was hard at first to meet people. It looks like

G U I D I N G L I G H T : Elise Athens (left) and Valerie Steinhaus found the countless new faces on the UNM campus both intimidating and exciting.

Ed Lewis, ’63

VB Price: What’s the biggest difference in your experience between high school and college life?

Bob Canon, ’64 BS, of Sterling, Virginia, is with SAI and works in Systems Engineer Support Missile Defense Agency. He recently received a master’s degree from George Washington University. Gary Ness, ’64 BSHP, ’66 MA, currently of Lynchburg, Virginia, is returning to Albuquerque to become head football coach at Albuquerque High School. Scott McCoy, ’65 BADA, has been a theatre arts professor at the University of Mississippi for 17 years. Having been director of the department’s directing and graduate studies for 10 years, he has recently assumed the department chair. Fred M. Almy, ’67 BABA, has had a career spanning 33 years in the petroleum industry, holding management positions in information technology and accounting. Currently, he serves on advisory boards for information systems, including Information Management Forum and Texas A&M Center for Management Information Systems. He resides in The Woodlands, Texas. Charles M. Atkinson, ’63 BAMU, of Columbus, Ohio, has been awarded a Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Humanities for the 2003-04 academic year. It will support the completion of an edition of the melodies for the Sanctus and Agnus Dei of the Roman Mass for their Tropes and Prosulas.

Knowing they had the support of friends and mentors in their Freshman Interest Group helped.

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and Dan Hedges came to UNM from distant states, Oregon and Massachusetts, respectively. Both found

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P O R T I N A S T O R M : Jonah Levine (left)

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a welcome respite in their Freshman Interest Group, part of a program developed by the university to

Matthew Dunn

help freshmen adapt to their new situation.

there’s so many people around you, but, once you settle in, it becomes more, like, comfortable. Ashley: I took to it okay. The city itself

is smaller, and having everybody in such a small area was one thing, but I was fine with the transition. Jennifer: I was fine with it because I

used to go to NMSU during the summers to summer programs. This past summer, I was here at AISB (American Indian Summer Bridge). I would stay with my sister and would attend classes here, so it was no big deal for me. Jonah: When I came here at first, it was

pretty scary. I remember my parents drove me down from Oregon and, like, it’s a totally different place. I’ve only been here once before in my life and that was a long time ago. When they left me, I was just sitting in my dorm, like, what do I do now, you know? How do I meet people? Eventually it just happens. You start talking to people and you just start to fit in.

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VB Price: Let me ask you another question about freshman retention or the academic choices program that you were involved with. How did the program help you adjust to these kinds of pressures and stresses? Jennifer: It was easier to meet people.

Jonah: It’s like having a small class.

All the other classes I had were at least 40 people. I didn’t feel like I could speak out, really, even if I had something to say. It was really nice, wanting to be able to say something and feeling like you could.

Since they’re your age, you can relate to them. And since we had two classes —we had anthropology and the FIG (Freshman Interest Group) together, you always knew someone was there, like, who had the notes if you didn’t go. That was easier.

Elise: I liked the FIG class because it

Dan: I think it helped because there

VB Price: What has surprised you the most about UNM so far?

was this one class that was, like, intimate. We had discussions and you got to hear everyone speaking in the class. It was a nice break from being in all these classes with people you didn’t even know. With the FIG, we’re all the same age. We’re all, like, in the same position at the school, at the time.

brought to the forefront issues that were facing us as college freshmen. We got more detailed information about stuff on campus. And it was easier to relate to the people in the class and have open discussions.

Ashley: I knew I was going to, like, a

decent school, but I didn’t realize how prestigious this school was until the second day of orientation when my orientation leader was talking about how we’re top in so many different departments. Some departments, I didn’t even know we had.

VB Price: I don’t think the rest of New Mexico realizes either, unhappily. That’s part of your job as alumni-to-be, to help educate New Mexico and everybody else about this school. Valerie: The classes surprised me.

There’s so much diversity in what you can take, like Portugese. I was in Brazil and, like, I had no idea they even had Portugese here. I was so excited. Jonah: Just the classes themselves—

the way they are taught, the teachers, just, like, telling you all this stuff and you need to take notes and listen. It’s pretty different. Dan: Actually, I was surprised at the

class size. I thought since it was such a huge school that all the classes were going to be huge lectures, but most of my classes, like my Spanish class, are really small, which is good. Jennifer: I guess professors surprised

me more than anything, because even with big classes, they’re still willing to hear your problems, like, if you’re having different things going on in your life, they’re still there and they still want to know what’s going on, to help you. Elise: The surprising thing about it

was, like, all the programs that they offer on campus, like CAPS (Center for Academic Program Support), because it helps a lot for people who don’t have time to go see their professors or their professors aren’t that willing to help them. VB Price: Could you all run down where you came from and what your major is or possibly will be and what your high school was and stuff like that? Dan: I’m from just outside Boston, a

suburb, Needham, and my high school is really small. I graduated with about 50 other kids. I’m thinking about

majoring in art or international studies. Maybe journalism. I really don’t know. VB Price: What brought you here? Dan: I just wanted a change. I’ve lived

in the same place my whole life and I traveled down here about three years ago with my dad for a vacation, and I just decided, why not? Jonah: I’m originally from Portland, Oregon. I went to a high school that had about 2,000 kids. I’m a biology major here right now. It might be subject to change. I want to do, maybe, something with art too. I’m interested in photography so I think I might try to minor in, like, studio arts or something. I guess I came here because I didn’t know anybody here and it seemed like a good school when I came down to visit. It’s still good, I guess. Elise: I’m from Gallup, New Mexico,

originally. Two hours away, not a big difference. There were 500-plus in my graduating class at Gallup High School. My major is tentatively computer science, just depending. I did think about going to another school, but I have a twin sister in college at the same time, so, financially it’s a burden on my parents. If I go to another school, out of state, it makes it harder on them. Valerie: I’m from Santa Fe and my high

school—Santa Fe High—had about 2,000 people in it. I’m not sure about my major yet. I have a double major. One half in Portuguese, one half in, I don’t know, maybe something international. Jennifer: I’m from Acoma and I went

to school at Grants High School. My graduating class is probably, well, my freshman class was about 300 and it became the smallest graduating class in Grants’ history with only a couple hundred because a lot of kids ended up dropping out of school. I’m undecided in my major because my parents and

album Douglas Bruce Corwin, ’67 BAFA, writes he lives happily with his wife and five children in the Napa Valley and works out of his homeoffice located in a beautiful garden growing delicious heirloom vegetables and tomatoes. Mark Johnson, ’67 BSHP, has been inducted into the American Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame. He is head baseball coach at Texas A&M in College Station. Gary Repetto, ’67 BS, transferred last summer with TRW (now Northrop Grumman) to Aurora, Colorado, where he is the recruiting and hiring manager for the Data Systems Operations Group of the Command, Control Intelligence Division. Pearl Burns, ’68 BS, of Albuquerque, celebrated her 80th birthday last summer by climbing Mt. Bierstadt in Colorado, her 15th “Fourteener.” Stephen Part, ’68 BA, ’84 MA, a social studies teacher at La Cueva High School in Albuquerque, attended the prestigious 2002 Supreme Court Summer Institute. Participants studied recent Supreme Court cases and learned methodology for teaching about court cases. Anne Yegge, ’68 BA, ’71 BA, of Albuquerque, has been elected to the UNM Foundation Board of Directors. Alex Beach, ’69 BSHE, was honored during Homecoming 2002 with the Alumni Association’s Zia Award, given in recognition of her many volunteer activities and service to the Albuquerque community and UNM. Alex is a past president of the Alumni Association. Ron Curry, ’70 BA, of Albuquerque, has been named secretary of the New Mexico Environment Department by New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. Scott Sitzer, ’70 BA, is with the US Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration. He was recently honored with a Meritorious Presidential Rank Award for his analysis and forecasting of US energy markets. He resides in Arlington, Virginia. Ronald C. Wiepz, ’70 BA, ’75 MBA, is currently on assignment in Hong Kong, working with a Chinese company on M&A/business development. He resides in Olympia, Washington. Virginia Dugan, ’71 MA, ’75 AESP, ’95 JD, ‘96 DED, is co-chair of the American Bar Association’s Marital Property Committee/Family Law Section. She is a shareholder with the Albuquerque firm of Atkinson & Kelsey, PA.

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Lyn

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participating in the same Freshman Interest Group.

Sio

at Acoma Pueblo. The two became fast friends after

Jen

metropolitan Washington DC while Valerie Siow grew up

ey distinct backgrounds. Ashley Lynch, left, hales from

F A S T F R I E N D S : They couldn’t come from more

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my family want me to pursue law, but I figured anthropology, and now I’m thinking about management or accounting. Ashley: I’m from Alexandria, Virginia

which is, like, 15 minutes outside of DC. My class had, I think, about 500 before dropouts. We ended up with 360 after dropouts and failures. I came for an experience. I wanted to get away from DC. I wanted to get away from politics. My family is from Ohio and Indiana, and I’m the only grandchild on my mother’s side not to go to Indiana for school. I was going to make sure I was not going to Indiana! The only problem with being out so far is, my friends back home and even some of my family have a hard time keeping track of where I am. Texas and Mexico come up a lot. I’m a media arts major with a minor in film. VB Price: What an interesting bunch of people. Let me ask you this. If you had a couple of UNM administrators here at the table and you weren’t

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worried about getting kicked out of school or anything like that—which of course you would never be—what would you tell them about how to improve or how to make the general freshman experience more rewarding and less intimidating? What would you say? Jennifer: One of my friends had an

FLC (Freshman Learning Community) class and they did a tremendous amount of homework. My class was easy compared to that. We have fun, we laugh. Just make it fun. That’s what I figure. Make it a good experience because, if not, then most likely the freshmen will drop out the next semester. Valerie: My roommate was in a FIG last

year and she hated it. She hated it and I loved it. Everyone I talked to hated the FIG class, so they need to structure them more like ours—not so much homework, just make it involved… Dan: Have more instructors like ours.

Valerie: Just make them teach all the

FIGs! And, maybe have the professors be more involved with the FIG class, because that helped us a lot. Like with the tests. I didn’t really know how a college test would be. For anthropology, the professor came in and helped us. Also, keep the, like, the English classes small. Ashley: I don’t know, because we did

have such a good experience with our FIG class. My roommate went home. She went to a campus closer to her home. I don’t think she was, like, willing to be outgoing. She went home every weekend. I don’t know what you could do with that. Yvonne Peña and Gary (Ballinger) were good teachers and Professor (Louise) Lamphere came over and helped us when it was time for projects and tests. That helped us a lot. Our FIG class did better than some of the other students, partly because we had the teacher there studying with us. Jonah: Try to, like, make the information

relative to students so they want to

learn it. Try to relate it to their life somehow. Like, how would this affect you? Or how has this affected you? Dan: Maybe they could keep all freshmen

VB Price, ’62 BA (anthropology), has taught classes in UNM’s Honors Program since 1986 and the UNM School of Architecture

—even if they are not signed up for the Freshman Interest Group classes—more informed on what’s going on, where certain things are, what’s happening.

book Anasazi Architecture and American

Ashley: I think it was good that FIG

Magazine, Century magazine, and

was not mandatory. I have friends at schools back east and almost all of them have mandatory freshman classes and they hate going to them. I think the fact that the FIG and the FLC are voluntary makes them better.

and Planning since 1976. He co-edited the

Design, and has edited New Mexico

The New Mexico Independent. Barrett’s latest book of poems is 7 Deadly Sins. He writes a weekly column on politics and the environment for the Albuquerque Tribune.

VB Price: I hope you have a great semester. Thank you so much.

Easing the Freshman Jitters

It’s tough being a freshman. Especially a freshman at a big university where the place, the people, the expectations are all new. Many can’t handle it, or they barely get by. That’s why UNM, under the direction of University Studies Dean Peter White, has been working diligently over the past five years to create a freshman experience that will ease the transition into college life. White and others hope to keep more kids in school and help them raise their grades enough to qualify for New Mexico Lottery Success Scholarships their second semester. On a voluntary basis, freshmen may choose among several Freshman Academic choices, including: • Freshman Learning Communities (FLCs) A group of freshmen takes two classes together. Faculty from various disciplines work together to introduce the students to the intellectual life of the university. • Freshman Interest Groups (FIGs) Freshmen enroll in a one-credit, theme-based class along with a regular, core-curriculum class. The weekly FIG meetings support academics and create bonds among students and teachers. • Living and Learning Communities (LLCs) Students not only have classes together, but live together in the Student Residence Center. According to White, all of the programs are “aimed at making this university into a closer and more personal community, where faculty, staff, and students feel identification with this place and one another.” It appears to be working. Freshman retention to the third semester grew from 70.7 percent in 1997 to 75.8 percent in 2001, with larger increases among minorities. Freshmen who qualified for the lottery scholarship (minimum of 2.5 GPA and 12 credits the first semester) increased from 53.3 percent in 1997 to 70.2 percent in 2001. Freshman enrollment in 2002 was 2,821. Of that number, 1,173, or 41.6 percent, participated in a Freshman Academic Choice.

album Daniel Lopez, ’71 BA, ’72 MA, ’83 PhD, has been honored by the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government with its first William S. Dixon First Amendment Freedom Award in Education. Earlier last year, he received the Alumni Association’s Bernard S. Rodey Award. He was also a recipient of the New Mexico Public Service Award. He is president of New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. Irene Zenev, ’71 BA, exhibits curator for the Benton County Museum in Philomath, Oregon, writes to say that in the course of inviting a local artist/teacher, Shepard Levine, to have a retrospective exhibit in the art gallery, she discovered he too is a UNM alum, class of 1950. Ron Feingold, ’72 PhD, has been re-elected as president of the International Association of Physical Education in Higher Education. He was also awarded the “Gold Cross,” the highest honor of the Federation Internationale d’Education Physique, the 19th given in its 85-year history. Ron lives in Wantagh, New York. Charles R. Hickam, ’72 BSEE, ’81 MD, has joined Radiology Associates of Albuquerque. Jim Maddox, ’72 BUS, was named the REALTORS Association of New Mexico’s 2002 REALTOR of the Year. He is president of Maddox & Co./REALTOR. Herbert J. Hammond, ’73 BS, of Dallas, has been elected to The Best Lawyers in America, a legal referral guide in the US. Frank Ruvolo, ’73 BABA, is buyer at Baker Utility Supply in Albuquerque. Ross Wirth, ’73 BS, of Claremore, Oklahoma, was recently named manager, organizational learning, at CITGO Petroleum in Tulsa. Joe Abeyta, ’74 BA, ’75 MAPA, teaches third grade at Carlos Gilbert Elementary School in Santa Fe. Bruce A. Benham, ’74 BUS, chief technology officer at RE/MAX International, Inc., has received the CIO of the Year Award 2001 from the Center for Information Technology at the University of Colorado at Denver School of Business. He lives in Greenwood Village, Colorado. Sandra Jaramillo, ’74 BAED, is the new administrator of the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives in Santa Fe. Scott Evans, ’75 MSPE, ’82 EDSP, is Albuquerque Public Schools athletic director.

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Known for his keen intellect and balanced perspective, John Probasco attends Oxford University on a Rhodeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s scholarship before returning to medical school.

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He attributes his success to his parents.

M E L L A S - R A M I R E Z Bobby Tamayo

look where heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s going!

looking at John Probasco

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Stationed around the world as a US Air Force officer, Cal Probasco and

his wife, Maria, retired in Alamogordo, New Mexico, because it was a

“good place to raise a family,” recalls their eldest son, John, ’01 BS,

born in Brindisi, Italy. Devoted to their three children—par for dad were midnight touches

on science fair projects and for mom, tireless soccer duty—the grand plan was to produce college graduates. Each Probasco child thrived. Exceptionally intelligent and personable, John has attained successes beyond the family’s wildest expectations. The 1998 Alamogordo High School valedictorian received Regents’ and Clauve scholarships from UNM and then topped those high honors with internationally prestigious Goldwater, Truman, and Rhodes prizes. It is an extreme rarity that any one student would receive all three awards. Home for the holidays this past December after his first semester at England’s Oxford University—the Rhodes award provides two years of study there—Probasco, 23, sings the praises of his parents. “I am a product of their upbringing,” he says, crediting them for his dedication, work ethic, and ability not to limit himself.

The Chance to Do Research Early on at UNM, the biochemistry major learned the benefits of good communication. During his Regents’ Scholarship interview, Probasco shared with the committee that he would choose to attend a university that extended research opportunities to its undergraduates. UNM has become noted for such practices—uncommon among more elitist schools. Committee

member Diane Rawls of the University Honors Program recalls Probasco’s aspirations when a Health Sciences Center research project came to her attention early his freshman year. Rawls facilitated an introduction to cell biology and physiology chair David Bear who had received a grant from the Muscular Dystrophy Association to study the largest cluster of Hispanics in the United States with oculopharyngeal muscular dystrophy. Bear invited Probasco to join the esteemed team of researchers whose findings were later published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Bear served as Probasco’s mentor throughout his undergraduate career and was so impressed with his work that he has since welcomed two more Regents’ Scholars into his lab. A student of Probasco’s caliber comes around once in lifetime, he says. “John was engaged in the project from the very beginning,” Bear says. “He was extremely motivated. He absorbed everything. He worked on a fluorescent version of a mutated protein and was able to characterize where it belonged in the cell and how it behaved. John opened new doors for us that we still benefit from to this day.” Fascinated with the workings of the human mind and the translation of basic

O N W A R D O X F O R D : Rhodes Scholar John Probasco says there is

album Frank Fine, ’75 MARC, has been appointed interim executive director for the Stockton (California) Symphony. Patricia Grant Higgins, ’75 BSHE, ’79 BSNE, ’85 PhD, has received the 2002 Distinguished Professional Service Award from the Association of Women’s Health Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses. Patricia is retired from the UNM College of Nursing and lives in Arlington, Virginia. Patricia Montoya, ’75 BSNU, ’83 MAPA, of Albuquerque, has been appointed by New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson to head the New Mexico Department of Health. Eric M. Pillmore, ’75 BABA, has been appointed Senior Vice President of Corporate Governance at Tyco International, Ltd. He resides in Doyleston, Pennsylvania. Suzanne M. Barker, ’76 JD, of Albuquerque, has been elected to the Board of Directors of the UNM Foundation. Alex Griego, ’76 BAA, has joined the Dekker/Perich/Sabatini firm in Albuquerque. Stephen M. White, ’76 BUS, is the Senior Naval Science Instructor with the Navy JROTC program at Pike High School in South Bend. His unit recently received its third straight Distinguished Unit Award. Anita Williams, ’76 BUS, CPA and CFE, has been hired as a senior tax manager to head the new state and local taxation practice at Meyners + Company in Albuquerque. Anne Kass, ’75 BA, ’77 JD, has retired as a state district judge in Bernalillo County’s Domestic Relations Division after 18 years. Steve Livingston, ’76 BABA, has been promoted to supervising senior/tax department at Meyners + Company in Albuquerque. Tom Chavez, ’77 MA, ’81 PhD, after serving as director of the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe for 20 years, has become director of the National Hispanic Cultural Center of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Tom also received the Alumni Association’s Zia Award last fall in recognition of his many contributions to the State of New Mexico. Frank Marquez, ’77 MAPA, of Corrales, has been appointed director of the New Mexico Economic Development Department’s administrative services division. Enrique Martinez, ’77 MD, is the medical director of Sierra Health Care Center in Las Cruces. Gail Reese, ’77 BUS, is the City of Albuquerque’s new chief financial officer.

no limit to what you can do at Oxford—including a touch-football game with Bill Clinton on the hallowed Oxford grounds. s p r i n g

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Support your Alma Mater on-line it’s now as easy as 1-2-3! Making a gift to UNM’s schools, colleges and programs has never been easier! Just log on to the UNM Foundation web site at www.unm.edu/foundation to join the growing number

science to clinical applications and public theory, Probasco interned for three summers doing clinical research at the National Institutes of Health in Washington DC. He focused on neurophysiology and explored behavioral disorders such as Tourette’s syndrome, Parkinson’s disease, and obsessive-compulsive disorders.

Outside the Lab Although he had his eye on medicine from the start, Probasco didn’t limit himself to scientific endeavors. “What strikes me most about John is that he is extremely balanced,” Bear notes. Aside from working several hours a week in Bear’s lab, Probasco was active on main campus in student senate and on the UNM Strategic Planning Task

Scholars Take Note In 2000, academicians nationwide began to take serious note of Probasco’s well roundedness, and he was awarded the Goldwater Scholarship, an award designed to encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in mathematics, the natural sciences, or engineering. The following year he was named a Truman Scholar, a handsome award that will help fund his education at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine following his two years at Oxford. In 2002, the oldest of the international study awards available to American students, the Rhodes scholarship, came calling. Probasco was one of only 32 recipients worldwide selected. Prior recipients include former

of alumni and friends who show their support for UNM

Probasco received Regents’ and Clauve scholarships from UNM

by using our secure, three-

and then topped those high honors with internationally prestigious

step on-line giving form.

Goldwater, Truman, and Rhodes prizes. It is an extreme rarity that any one student would receive all three awards.

UNM on-line giving— simple, safe, secure. UNM Foundation Inc. Two Woodward Center, 700 Lomas NE, Suite 108 Albuquerque, NM 87131 505-277-4503 1-800-UNM-FUND (866-3863) www.unm.edu/foundation

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Force and residence halls committees. In an effort to spend time with his younger brother, Mark, John helped coach a Rio Rancho boys’ soccer team alongside UNM communication and journalism department chair Brad Hall. For three years John was a homework club tutor at Jefferson Middle School in Albuquerque. “John is kind, considerate, and always willing to lend a hand. He could be called upon to talk to younger Regents’ Scholars. He was a great mentor,” Rawls says. “I like working with kids. A physician needs the ability to interact with people in all walks of life,” Probasco says of his shine for community service.

US President Bill Clinton with whom Probasco had the honor of playing pigskin this past Thanksgiving during a game on hallowed Oxford grounds that date back to the 13th century. “He wore a blue track suit with “Commander in Chief” embroidered across the back. The Secret Service was not thrilled,” Probasco quips. “I called home to say I can’t be home for turkey, but I just played two-hand touch football with Bill Clinton.” Oxford offers personal, seminar style coursework, a style Probasco is familiar with thanks to his experience with the UNM Honors Program, he says. As well, his upbringing suits him

F A M I L Y A F F A I R : Family is at the center of John’s support system. Donned in Oxford gear, John’s father and mother, Cal and Maria Probasco (left), and siblings, Mark and Christine (right), flank their son and brother.

album Mark R. Youtzy, ’77 BME, of Albuquerque, has been promoted to administrative liaison to the office of the director of child support enforcement division with the New Mexico Human Services Department. In December, he received a New Mexico Child Support Enforcement Division Star Award 2002. Glenelle Gray Butler, ’78 ASDH, ’86 BSDH, of Albuquerque, is one of six winners of the 2002 Pfizer/ADHA Excellence in Dental Hygiene Award in recognition of outstanding accomplishments that have an impact upon the practice and future of dental hygiene.

perfectly for school convention. “You determine how well you learn and there is no limit to what you can do at Oxford. There are no grades. All that is graded is the standing of your degree. You sit for exams at the end of the third year and that determines the rank of your degree,” he says. “John looks for opportunities and when presented with them he is willing to put in the work,” Rawls says. “He is focused, but not single-minded. Some students don’t want to detour and spend a few years at Oxford. They don’t see the advantages. But after John thought about it, he did and from what he’s said, he’s having the time of his life.” To fuel Probasco’s interest in the human mind and how it functions in relation to the health of the body, he is pursuing an undergraduate program at Oxford in psychology, philosophy, and physiology, which includes coursework in ethics. “Philosophy and psychology are interrelated to who we are and how we behave,” he says.

Probasco chose the University of California, San Francisco, for medical school because it is strong in public health and science programs. “Neurology will probably be the field I work in, but I want to wait until after my rotations to decide,” he says.

Back Home John is enchanted with the idea of ultimately returning to New Mexico. “We live in a state that has health care issues. It’s important to practice where there is a need. I intend to come home and practice,” he says. Fully supportive of any plan he makes, mom dons an Oxford tee and dad an Oxford tie. Having moved to Rio Rancho, both remain on task nurturing college graduates for future Mirage features. Christine is pursuing a BS in psychology at UNM and Mark is attending middle school, with plans to come to UNM in 2006.

Since 1998, UNM can boast 13 recipients of the nation’s most prestigious scholarships: two Rhodes and two Marshall scholars, four Truman, and five Goldwater scholars. Nearly all the recipients attended New Mexico high schools and many have been Regents’ Scholars.

Robert Keim, ’78 BS, has been appointed the associate dean for advanced studies at the University of Southern California School of Dentistry. He continues as director of the advanced education in orthodontics program there. He lives in Burbank. Delores Etter, ’79 PhD, has been nominated to serve on the National Science Board by US President George W. Bush. She is presently a professor of electrical engineering at the US Naval Academy and lives in Edgewater, Maryland. She is currently a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the Defense Science Board. Commander John E. Inman, ’79 BS, has assumed command of Navy Recruiting District, Montgomery, Alabama. Commander Joseph Jablonski, ’79 BSME, ’93 MS, was employed at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency at Kirtland Air Force Base as deputy for test operations when recalled to active duty in August 2001 to teach at the U.S. Naval Academy. He is scheduled to return to Albuquerque in June. Cynthia D. Borrego, ’80 BSED, ’83 MAPA, was recently sworn in to the board of the Public Employees Retirement Association of New Mexico. She works as a senior planner for the City of Albuquerque Planning Department. Breda Bova, ’80 PhD, received the Alumni Association’s Zia Award during Homecoming 2002 in recognition of her service to the university and the Albuquerque community. She is assistant dean and professor of education at UNM. Maria Griego-Raby, ’80 BABA, ’86 MBA, has been appointed a UNM Regent by New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. She is president and principal of Contract Associates, Inc., in Albuquerque, and is past president of the UNM Alumni Association.

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Con Nombre B Y

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With patient tenacity,

a UNM alum is

Farm Security Administration, February 1943.

linking the subjects

L I T T L E R A S C A L S : John Collierâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 1943 photograph of two young New Mexican boys was like a riddle to Cavalliere Ketchum. He studied the boysâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; faces for years, wondering if he would ever discover who they were.

of a famous photo

collection to their

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at long last,

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album Thanks to the University of Wisconsin for allowing us to reprint senior editor Michael Penn’s story, originally published in On Wisconsin!

In February 1943, the photographer John Collier Jr. tumbled off the chilly, high desert plain of northern New Mexico and onto the doorstep of a Spanish-American rancher. The house was warm, with sheepskins on the floors, and Collier was invited in. During the next several hours, he took pictures of the rancher and his family —photographs that eventually would become part of the archives of the Farm Security Administration (FSA), a Depression-era federal agency that, under the pretense of government public relations, assembled one of the best-known collections of documentary photographs in existence. Along with such notable image-makers as Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, and Walker Evans, Collier traversed the country, making thousands of memorable photographs that would help to record the face of America emerging from economic hardship. But the photographs Collier made that day are as striking for what they don’t reveal as for what they do. His photograph of two of the rancher’s young sons, for example, hints at a mystery that lies beyond the scope of Collier’s lens. In the image, the boys stand side by side in matching embroidered sweaters. But while the older one regards the camera eye to eye, with a measured gaze, his little brother, who is perhaps nine, wears the impish grin of a boy who is hiding something. The big secret, it turns out, are the boys themselves, unidentified by

caption or history. The label on the photograph, which resides among 170,000 images from the FSA project in the Library of Congress, provides only this information: “Córdova (vicinity), Rio Arriba County, New Mexico. Sons of a Spanish sheepman.” Leafing forward or backward through the sheaves of black-and-white photographs in the archives bears out thousands of similar stories. From Alabama sharecroppers to Oklahoma migrants to Wisconsin mill workers, the faces of the FSA collection are earnest, compelling, and, with very few exceptions, nameless.

Six Decades Later Nearly six decades after John Collier snapped the picture of the rancher’s sons, another photographer followed his path through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains north of Santa Fe. Driving a battered AMC Matador, Cavalliere Ketchum, ’70 MFA, navigated along the “high road”—a series of snaking, dusty lanes that ascend from Santa Fe into the dazzling indigo of the New Mexico sky. His target was a remote collection of Spanish and Indian villages that are found only on the most ambitious of maps. He, too, was looking for the face of America. But the America he sought was one faded into the sepia of an old photograph, one that he wasn’t sure still existed, and one that he had little idea how to find. Ketchum, a professor of art and photography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for more than three decades, didn’t go to the New Mexican highlands to re-create Collier’s work. He went to finish it. For nearly half of his 64 years, Ketchum has been in a

Lourdes Ann Martinez, ’80 JD, has been appointed a federal magistrate. She has been a state district judge since 1998 in Las Cruces. Pamela W. Massey, ’80 MBA, has retired from Los Alamos National Lab project leadership and is writing “a memoir about growing up female in the baby boom generation.” Victoria Atkins, ’81 BUS, is interpretation/ education lead at Lowry Pueblo in Canyons of the Ancients in Dolores, Colorado. Edward L. Chavez, ’81 JD, has been appointed by New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson to serve on the New Mexico Supreme Court. He is a resident of Albuquerque. Anita Douthat, ’81 MA, ’86 MFA, and Cal Kowal collaborated on a mixed media installation, “Lost & Found,” this winter at the Weston Art Gallery in Cincinnati. Michael Emerson, ’81 BSME, of Albuquerque, has been elected to the UNM Foundation Board of Directors. Martha Binford, ’82 BA, ’00 MA, has been elected president of the American Society for Training and Development New Mexico chapter. The Belen resident is UNM’s Continuing Education training development and instructional technology coordinator and instructor. Greg Cajete, ’82 MA, of Santa Clara Pueblo, has been named to head UNM’s Native American Studies program. Elsa Delapuente-Schubeck, ’82 MA, ’91 PhD, has retired from the Broward County School System after 33 years of teaching in the US, Central and South America, and Spain. She lives in Cooper City, Florida. Joan Butler, ’83 BABA, works as a relocation coordinator with Perot Systems in Irving, Texas. Lawrence J. Fausti, ’83 MA, ’99 DED, has received The Daily Points of Light Award for January 21, 2003. The award is given to recognize those who exemplify the best of volunteerism, a sense of caring, and responsibility for others that connect citizens and solve community problems. He is assistant professor of reading at BethuneCookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida. Kim A. Griffith, ’83 JD, recently became a shareholder and director with the law firm of Sheehan, Sheehan & Stelzner, PA, in Albuquerque. She practices in the areas of contract law, commercial transactions and litigation, construction law, employment law, and corporate business law.

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slow, patient quest, retracing the steps of Collier and other FSA photographers in an attempt to find and identify the people whom they captured on film. With each visit to New Mexico, he totes a thick file of Xeroxed photographs— the collection of history—ghosts whom Ketchum calls, in their lingo, sin nombre, without a name.

Wanting To Bring the Travelers Home During the 1960s, as a graduate student at UNM, Ketchum had traveled into many of the same villages the FSA photographers had documented, although he didn’t know it at the time. His dissertation combined his photography from the small Spanish villages in the southern part of the state with samplings of traditional stories and folk music—something the FSA very well might have done if it had been born in a multimedia age. It was only years later, after Ketchum had come to UW-Madison,

that he applied for a grant to study at the Library of Congress, where he intended to pull images from the villages between Santa Fe and Taos. While examining the black-and-white prints in Washington, he had a startling realization. He recognized several people in the photographs. Ketchum has a photographer’s eye for detail, and an extraordinary visual memory that can recall people and places he first saw years before. That gift launched his career within a career. He took the photographs back to Chamisal, a town high up among the cottonwoods and orchards 60 miles north of Santa Fe. “I asked around at post offices and grocery stores,” he says, “and finally someone said to me, ‘Ay, that’s my cousin. Where did you get this? You should show it to him.’” In Hispanic culture, to be sin nombre is a terrible consequence. It is to be more than just without a name, but without connection or culture. It is to be lost. In some communities, to take

T H E Y E A R S D I S A P P E A R : More than 60 years after Russell Lee had taken the original photo of a mother and child in Chamisal, New Mexico, 1940, Cavalliere Ketchum traced down its seemingly nameless subjects. He photographed Matilda Lovato, left, and her daughter, Elsie Rodarte, in the same place as Lee had in Matilda’s home. The original FSA photograph

Cavalliere Ketchum

sits on the table to the right.

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in a wandering stranger is to make that person con nombre—to give him or her identity. At that moment, Ketchum realized his mission. He wanted to bring all those lonely travelers home.

Detective Work Although merely a remote corner of the bigger puzzle, New Mexico seemed a logical place for Ketchum to begin assembling the pieces of history. He returned to the Library of Congress and culled 450 large black-and-white prints from a collection of 20,000 photographs taken across the American Southwest. He examined them closely, singling out 650 unique faces. Of those, eight were identified in captions. Ketchum set to work on the rest, returning to New Mexico during summers, logging thousands of miles, and paying expenses out of his pocket. Given the scant clues offered by the photo captions, the process was strictly gumshoe diligence. For most of the photos, he had only the name of a town, leaving him little choice but to drive straight into it and begin asking anyone who would talk to him, “Do you know who this is?” The world of the high road is one that functions by its own rules, almost entirely independently from mainstream ways. Villages like Peñasco, Chamisal, Truchas, and others in some ways more closely reflect the era of Spanish exploration than modern times. Many land rights are still governed by treaties signed with the Spanish government after the Mexican War. Farmers still use the long ditches, known as acequias, that their ancestors chiseled into the mountains 400 years ago to irrigate the same fields. Water or soil can be as important a currency as dollars and cents, and English, if spoken at all, is used only when

“I feel my responsibility toward these people is that they’re identified at the Library of Congress,” he says. “They’ve been anonymous for too long.”

Time in Pursuit Lately, Ketchum’s search has had a tinge of desperation. He’s running out of time. Not only is he getting within a few years of retirement, but the people he’s looking for are pushing the envelope of longevity. The young boys in the matching sweaters, for example, would by now be entering their 70’s. “It really scares me,” he says. “We can still find these people, but we have to do it in the next five to eight years.” The clean mountain air seems to have preserved many of the people Ketchum has been seeking. He has found numerous FSA subjects—even those who were adults when Collier came through—still alive and alert in the towns that raised them. He has located a woman who is now 105, and others who are in their 90’s. But there is a sense of passing in New Mexico, and it’s not just the subjects that Ketchum worries will perish. The culture itself seems to be withering on the bone. “Younger people are not staying,” Ketchum says. “They want more than the ability to make a subsistence living. The abuelitos and the abuelas are there, but in most cases, their grandchildren have moved on. I don’t know what will happen to these villages once they’re gone.”

album Jeff Huser, ’83 MD, of Albuquerque, has been enrolled in the second class of the USC master’s of medical management program. Joseph M. Maestas, ’83 BSCE, has been elected to the board of directors of the Hispanic Elected Local Officials. He is an Española city councilor and lives in Santa Cruz. Robert M. Turner, ’83 BABA, is human resources director with Tetra Pak Carton Chilled, Inc. He has an MS from Chapman University and a PhD from LaSalle University, both in human resources management and development. He lives in Maplewood, Minnesota. Napoleon S. Ferraris, ’84 BUS, is director of operations at the Military Sealift Command Far East, Yokohama, Japan. Laura Harris, ’84 BA, is now executive director at Americans for Indian Opportunity (AIO) on Santa Ana Pueblo. AIO is a national non-profit advocacy organization that draws upon traditional tribal values in its efforts to promote innovative problem-solving, develop leadership, and create contemporary institutions to solve problems. D. Bradley Leech, ’84 BUS, was recently named associate vice chancellor for development and alumni affairs at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock. Karen J. Schultz Site, ’84 BABA, is an associate member of Moore Stephens Tiller, LLC, a regional CPA firm. She lives in Sugar Hill, Georgia. Cristina Jaramillo, ’85 BA, ’90 MBA/JD, has been appointed to fill a vacancy on the Metropolitan Court in Albuquerque. Jeff Apodaca, ’86 BA, is now vice president of integrated sales and marketing at Univision in Los Angeles.

Jeff Apodaca, ’86

Spanish won’t suffice. It’s not the sort of place that strangers can roll into— waving old pictures of relatives— without some risk. Ketchum invested years warming up the long-established families of the mountains, winning their trust, establishing boundaries, and, eventually, learning their histories. He handed out copies of the FSA photographs and made judicious use of his own camera. He learned that in northern New Mexico, you can often still trade goods for cuentos—stories of life and customs— and so he traded photographs for information. As the years went by, he began to learn to whom the faces in the old images belonged. He was surprised to discover that many of the people he was looking for hadn’t moved much at all from where Collier had first found them. At times, when Ketchum arrived with his photographs, people were as astonished to see their younger selves as they might have been to see a long-dead relative. Matilda Lovato, for example, nearly fainted when Ketchum introduced himself with a photo of her and her daughter, Elsie, taken in 1940 in their home in Chamisal. But soon, Lovato, who still lives in Chamisal, was spilling stories and fond memories. Rarely have the people Ketchum has found recalled the FSA photographs being taken, and none had copies of them. In those days, a camera would have been a rich person’s toy, and certainly a foreign object on the high road, where to live well was to survive. The photos from the government archives are like pages from the family albums that they could never afford to keep. Ketchum is now confident of the identities of more than 150 people who are not named in the FSA photographs.

So Near Yet So Far Alicia Fedelina Chávez, a UW-Madison professor of educational administration and a native of the region, says she knows firsthand the culture Ketchum is trying to record. [See sidebar.] Her family settled near Taos in the 1500s

E. Carolyn Johnson, ’86 PhD, is an associate professor with the Washington State University graduate program in exercise science in Spokane.

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and has tended sheep there ever since. When her aunts and uncles speak, you can hear traces of the original dialect their ancestors brought with them from Spain, untainted after four centuries. Her father, Gabriel, and uncle, Miguel,

were the basis for the movie And Now Miguel, a semifactual account of Miguel’s desire to become a man by joining his older brothers as they moved the family’s sheep flock high into the mountains. Later a Newbery

Award-winning children’s book, the story is well known throughout the Americas. Jobs and education have taken Chávez away from the area, but she says she feels the responsibility to preserve and promote her heritage from afar. The former dean of students at UW-Madison, she studies diversity in higher education, and says Ketchum’s work “reminds me why I choose to study culture. It’s so important to recognize how it defines people.” “We should try to contribute something to the lives of the subjects we study,” Chávez says. “I’m very proud that Cavalliere is contributing by giving back these memories. And what a wonderful gift he’s giving.”

Epilogue: At Home, Con Nombre

Alicia Chávez came home for good this past fall when she accepted the position of director of UNM-Taos. She once again feels con nombre herself, she says. “Although I have been very much with my family name of Chávez, I have in many ways felt sin nombre while I have been away from New Mexico and especially away from Taos. To be the ‘only one’ or one of very few who lives by the rhythms of Northern New Mexico has been very painful. Here I am known through my family as well as through my own work. That is such a comforting feeling.” Chávez says her experience of Hispanic cultures all over the United States has been one of connection. “A startling trait of Latino cultures is that of wanting to place people in the context of their families, and names are a very sacred part of this process.” “Being placed in the context of a large extended family has its challenges,” she says, “yet there is always the comfort of not being alone regardless of what you are going through. There is also the comfort of having those who have known you since you were born, who share histories and tease you about your idiosyncrasies and remind you that first you are a sister and daughter and aunt... not a title. “Hispano/Latino cultures often do take in wandering strangers and make them con nombre... my family certainly does this all the time. It is the process almost of making sure that each person is connected. Visitors to my hometown of Taos often remark that people took them in whether they wanted to be taken in or not! That is the messy side of connection, yet in the long run I find that even those who were uncomfortable with this connection at first, in the long run find being con nombre to be a precious part of their lives.”

The Missing Piece For all his success in locating the lost souls of the FSA files, Ketchum was for years frustrated by what should have been his simplest find. John Collier's photographs of the rancher’s sons had him stumped. On many fruitless trips along the high road, he began to wonder if he would ever find that little boy and decipher his knowing smile. The problem, ironically, was that some of the photographs Collier took were identified. The photo of the boys indicated that they lived in Córdova, in Rio Arriba County. Another image named their father as Blas Sánchez. Ketchum went to Córdova, a mountain town well south on the high road, but no one knew the man. Strangely, no one even recognized the house or the landscape. He searched the town’s cemeteries, but not only did he not find Blas Sánchez, he encountered very few Sánchezes at all, certainly not enough to suggest a large family living there.

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F A T E ’ S I N T E R V E N T I O N : Alicia Chávez considers her colleague’s discovery of her family in depression-era photographs “not simply a cosmic coincidence, but a grand stroke of fate,” writes Michael Penn.

It was only in a speck of an outpost off the high road known as Llano de San Juan that Ketchum caught a break. A teacher there said the man in the photo resembled her fourth cousin. “But, she said, ‘He doesn’t live in Córdova. He lives in Los Córdovas, way up north,’” Ketchum says. He got back in his Matador and drove 70 miles across the mountains to Los Córdovas, seated near Taos on the desert plateau below the range. It was there that a man looked at the photograph and pointed over Ketchum’s shoulder toward a house. Although Ketchum didn’t know it, it was the house in which Alicia Chávez’s father grew up. The young boy with the devilish smile was Gabriel, standing next to his big brother, Blas Jr. “You can see someone typing away in Washington DC, saying, ‘Sánchez, Chávez, what's the difference?’” says Ketchum. The difference, it turns out, was the distance between anonymity and the father of a UW-Madison colleague. The short stroll to Alicia Chávez's office—and to her father’s name—might have taken Ketchum a few minutes at lunch one day. Instead, it took 58 years. Ketchum, who by this point in his work has grown used to coincidences, is flabbergasted by the bizarre circuit that led back to Madison. After being led to the Chávez house in Los Córdovas, Ketchum caught up with Alicia’s uncle Miguel, a former master craftsman who now owns a vacation rental business in Taos and carves angels from cedar in his free time. Miguel helped Ketchum identify his relatives in the old images. Blas Chávez Sr. evidently was a favorite subject of Collier’s, and with Miguel’s help, Ketchum unearthed more than a dozen photographs of the Chávez family, taken during two separate

visits. Casually, Miguel asked Ketchum, “What university did you say you're from?”—and thus was fit that last elusive puzzle piece that reveals the image.

The Same Rascally Look “We don’t have photographs of our family,” Alicia says later. “That was a wealthy person’s thing to do.” Looking at the photograph of her father as a boy, she smiles. “He has the same rascally look on his face as he does now. I think he must have been born with that look on his face.” Some years after posing for Collier, Gabriel Chávez became a lieutenant colonel in the US Air Force, serving in the air defense command. After retirement, he moved back to the ranch, where he now tends sheep and takes care of the many elderly people in his extended family and community. After her grandmother’s death, four months after Alicia first saw the family pictures that she had not known existed, Alicia joined her father one morning as he strode purposefully up from the valley and onto the plain, taking in the same vista captured by Collier’s camera. They walked silently, hoping to spot the family of coyotes that frequents the land, and enjoying the solitude of the desert. The altitude and the chill made the air as sharp as needles. The sky was so blue, Alicia says, that it hurt her eyes. Gabriel told cuentos as they walked, recalling his parents and the forays he made as a child into the looming purple peaks. After a while, he fell silent, tending to his private thoughts. Alicia didn’t pry or try to fill the open spaces with idle chatter. She was just happy to be home.

album Angela Martinez, ’86 JD, has joined the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center as general counsel. Christen Coburn, ’87 AABA, has been promoted to senior vice president and trust officer at Los Alamos National Bank. Jack Newsom, ’87 MA, has joined HAS Commercial Real Estate in Albuquerque as senior vice president of finance/development in the corporate real estate services and PrimeCare divisions. Richard Rolston, ’87 MD, has been named chief executive officer of Lovelace Health Systems in Albuquerque. Alison Stallcup, ’87 BSED, ’89 MA, and her husband have a company in Englewood, Colorado, called “People Honoring People.” It focuses on honoring the sacred nature of relationships everyday, everywhere. Camille Flores, ’88 BA, is now managing editor of The Taos News. Eileen Iles, ’88 BABA, ’92 MACT, has moved to Sugar Grove, Illinois, where she is senior manager with Crowe Chizek and Company, LLP. Abel Ponce Montez, ’88 BA, is now director of student affairs at Fordham University School of Law’s Lincoln Center campus in New York City where he is responsible for academic advisement and counseling and providing other necessary services to fulfill the school’s academic mission. Rob Spaulding, ’88 BUS, and partner Mark Campbell are the new owners of Maria Teresa Restaurant in Albuquerque’s Old Town. Lisa Dettweiler, ’89 BA, of Albuquerque, is the new area vice president and general manager of Comcast Cable Communications, Inc., in New Mexico. Linda L. Ellison, ’90 JD, has opened a law office bearing her name in Albuquerque. She lives in Los Lunas. Lorenzo Brizeno, ’91 BABA, is self-employed as an enterprise management consultant in Round Rock, Texas. Kevin J. Fernlund, ’92 PhD, is assistant professor of history and secondary education at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Howard Geck, ’92 BUS, last year graduated from the US Army Psychological Operations Officer Court, received an MA in organizational management from the University of Phoenix, and was promoted to the rank of major. He is residential advisor for Lambda Chi Alpha at UNM.

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The Inocente B Y

R U D O L F O

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Colleagues and fans gathered at a

reception last fall for UNM professor emeritus Rudolfo Anaya who had received a National Medal of Arts from US President George W. Bush earlier in the year. He spoke to them about his trip to

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Washington in truly New Mexican terms.

el inocente. Estevan Arellano has written a wonderful portrayal of the village inocente. Inocencia, que no escarda, ni siembra, pero siempre se come el mejor elote. (Innocence, which neither reaps nor sows but always eats the best corn.) We jokingly say of the inocente “que le faltan tuercas” (he’s missing some hardware/ wingnuts). In the contemporary idiom, it is a person “whose elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top floor.” The inocente experiences life differently than ordinary people.

What does it mean to be inocente, and why do I feel that the writer must be inocente? For me, the inocente is constantly in contact with the marvel, the beauty, and the mystery of life. So it seems that with the passage of time I am each day more in awe of the creation. The simplest experiences take on a marvelous aura that reveals a deeper reality. It is that reality I try to capture in my writings. Where does it begin? It begins in childhood, in dreams, in memories, in feeling that a divine spark animates the world and the cosmos. To be inocente means one feels a transcendent power working in our ordinary lives. The world is as much spiritual as it is material. A large part of the life of a writer and of the inocente is lived in memory and dreams. I remember the river of my childhood as if it were yesterday. There I heard voices, spirits moved at dusk—not only la Llorona, a spirit I really feared, but other powers. Powers of place. The river was alive and it

spoke. I tried to capture that experience in Bless Me, Ultima and some readers were surprised. How can the river be alive? they asked. I thought everyone had heard the presence of the river speak, its natural soul revealed. I heard the groans of the giant cottonwoods, those ancient grandfathers. The sky at sunset spoke volumes, not only of the weather but of the history of the people. The stones of the hills were as animated as the animals that roamed there. It’s fantasy, some said. It’s real, I replied. Now, today, in this hall of Zimmerman Library, I feel not only your presence but I am surrounded by the lives of those who once walked on this hill. The old people of the Tiguex pueblos, Mexican sheepherders who walked here long before there were buildings. Professors who taught here and are gone, students who studied here. They hover nearby. I am here not only as I am today, but as I was as

M E T T L E O F A M E D A L I S T : Rudolfo Anaya suggests following

album Janice Eisenman Lincoln, ’92 MA, has retired after 31 years of teaching in Montana Public Schools. She lives in Kalispell, Montana. The Council for Exceptional Children awarded her the Professionally Recognized Special Educator certificate for special education teaching in 1993. Brian R. Moore, ’92 BS, ’96 MD, is senior associate consultant physician in pediatric emergency medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, as well as instructor of pediatrics at Mayo Medical School. His duties include those of pediatric medical director for Gold Cross Ambulance in southeast Minnesota. John B. Edward, ’93 MBA, has an insurance and real estate services firm in Albuquerque. He also hosts a radio show on 1310 KBTK-AM radio on business, music, policy, economics, and not-for-profits. Clara Ann Padilla-Silver, ’93 BUS, ’96 JD, has been elected president of Icon Real Estate Companies, Inc., Las Vegas, Nevada. Trevor D. Thielbar, ’93 BABA, of Richley, Florida, is co-owner of Pavement Services, Inc., which manufactures machines for road construction. Beth Ulibarri, ’93 BABA, ’98 MBA, and husband Rick are the owners of Newport Furnishings, an Albuquerque discount furniture store that sells upscale furnishings.

Beth Ulibarri, ’93

We have in our culture an oral tradition of a character called

Thomas Hammill, ’94 MA, received a doctorate in clinical psychology from CCU in 1999. He lives in New York City. Paul Owen, ’94 JD, has become a shareholder in the Albuquerque law firm of Montgomery & Andrews, PA. Rohit Ranjan, ’94 MBA, works for Citicorp as country head-channel sales in Mumbi, India (formerly Bombay). Visiting Lobos are encouraged to get in touch at rohit.ranjan@ citicorp.com

the way of the inocente—who “talks to the good soul in all of us”— as we deal with difficult times. s p r i n g

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a young man who matriculated here. I left something of my self here. You see, everywhere we go we leave part of our souls. I am sure each one of you carries memories of the past, places that were magical to you, people you loved. Part of your soul is there with those people, in those places. The inocente understands that. The soul is not only in our bodies, it is everywhere we have been. Each morning I look at the rising sun and give thanks. I offer a blessing at sunrise: I bless all of life. My wife fixes breakfast and I am startled at

afternoon sun, and each blade of grass shines with its unique character. Every flower sings its song. Clouds, like marvelous and gorgeous women, move across a transparent blue sky. I marvel at the beauty and diversity of life. For this I got a medal? I was asked to tell you what it was like receiving the National Medal of Arts. We flew to Washington DC for the ceremony. Patricia, our granddaughter Kristan, and I got on a plane and flew to the capitol. Maybe I should write a story about our experiences. “An Inocente Goes to Washington.”

To be inocente means one feels a transcendent power working in our ordinary lives. The world is as much spiritual as it is material. the beauty of our relationship and how the very act of eating fills me with thanksgiving. The inocente is a person constantly saying Wow! Look at that! ¡Mira! Sun and clouds. Geese flying south. Apples hanging on a tree. Flowers going to seed. ¡Mira! Inocentes sense the divine spark that illuminates the simplest acts of the day. The inocente knows this intuitively, for that is how he lives, that is how he is most alive. I look at your faces and see beauty: I see beneath the skin a psyche that shines with innocence. I smile. They say the inocente goes around with a silly smile on his face. For me, that smile is a sign of wonder. Let us practice going around with silly smiles on our faces. Let us slough away the pretense of what we should be and be who we truly are. Inocentes on the road of life, friends to each other. In our jardín, under my ramada in the back yard, Patricia and I sit in the

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They got us together in a room, and we met Johnny Cash. Yeah, I went up to him and said, “Hello, Mr. Johnny Cash. I’m Rudolfo Anaya from Alburquerque and I want you to know I love your songs. New Mexicans love you. Here’s my wife and granddaughter.” You see, that’s an inocente talking. He talks to the good soul in those he meets. Some people say, “You didn’t tell Johnny Cash that, did you? ¡Qué pendejo! Don’t you have manners?” What are manners to the inocente? We deal with the soul in the person, the daimon that drives us, the essence. Forget the formalities, go for the spirit. Tear down the fences that separate us. That’s what the inocente teaches us. And we met Kirk Douglas. And I said the same thing. “¿Cómo ’stá, don Kirk? What an honor. I like that movie you did with Burt Lancaster where at the end you plow the train into Mexico. I also liked ‘Spartacus.’ Here’s my wife and granddaughter. We love your movies.”

The inocente, even though he is in pain and he knows there is suffering and poverty in the world, smiles. He sees the quality of a corresponding goodness in people. We all have that innocent quality. Inside. Deep in the soul. And I told the President, “No nos estés fregando tanto. (Don’t irritate us so much.) Lighten up. Take care of la gente pobre. Help the kids get an education.” Pues, I really didn’t say that, but the inocente in me thought it. The way I looked at him, he knew what I was thinking. I was very civil to the First Lady. She told me she had read Bless Me, Ultima. I said, “thank you,” and I thought to myself, there’s hope. If we read good books there’s hope for us humans. I am always thinking. People from the past come to visit me. Those are the spirits of the ancestors. They are here with us. I speak to them and they to me. What are characters in our stories but spirits who want their stories told? Sometimes my characters are more real than real people. And all my characters are inocentes at heart. All are learning that there are many secrets hidden in our souls. We have to bring them out. We have to not be afraid to speak to each other as inocentes. I know there are gente in the world who are muy cabrona. Somebody always trying to get the better of somebody else. Tyrants of all sorts making people suffer the worst atrocities. But if we inocentes get together, we can be stronger than the bad guys. Let us practice that virtue of innocence in our souls. Let it shine. Let the power of this place and all the spirits who inhabit this place make us strong. I think this medal they gave me in Washington DC is for all of us. Especially for all the inocentes who have enriched my life.

Michael Mares, an internationally known expert on desert mammals,

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makes his mark in the prairie.

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album Susan Wycoff, ’94 PhD, has been appointed to the editorial board of The International Family Journal, which advances the theory, research, and practice of counseling with couples and families. She is associate professor and coordinator of the community counseling program at Cal State-Sacramento. Bruce Allen, ’95 BUS, ’99 MBA, is a systems analyst with the PGA Tour in Jacksonville, Florida. J. Elena Arellano, ’95 BABA, ’99 MS, works as treasury and investment accountant for PGA of America in Jupiter, Florida. Donna Lane, ’95 BSED, ’98 MA, is now a development specialist at RCI, Inc., in Albuquerque where she will do assessment and intervention services for children showing cognitive, social, and physical delays. Sarah Elizabeth Koetters Schwarz, ’95 MA, ’02 PhD, after completing her doctorate, has moved to Radcliff, Kentucky, where she lives with her husband, Capt. Gregory E. Schwarz, US Army. Amanda J. Shepard, ’95 BUS, enjoys working for the City of Portland (Oregon) Office of Neighborhood Involvement. Walter P. Herring, ’95 BUS, has joined Bala Technologies as director of voice and data cable design in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania. Suzanne Wall, ’95 BABA, ’97 MBA, is supply chain management business manager at Lam Research Corporation. She lives in San Jose, California. Marilyn Ruiz Dunphy, ’96 BSED, is spending the year on a Fulbright Teacher Exchange in the United Kingdom. Mary Daniel Hobson, ’96 MA, showed her artwork at three group exhibitions last fall in Ketchum, Idaho, San Rafael, California, and Palo Alto, California. Larry Morris, ’96 BABA, has been promoted to manager/tax department at Meyners + Company in Albuquerque. Scott Treibly, ’96 BABA, is a tennis coach currently at the Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Bradenton, Florida. His email address is streibly@imgworld.com. Grady Barrens, ’97 MBA, of Albuquerque, has joined Assure Financial as a financial representative handling mutual funds, variable annuities, and other investments.

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Michael Mares’ stature at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History is mammoth. Mares

Bill Moakley

raised the funds for the University of Oklahoma

Laura J. Putz, ’97 BABA, has been promoted to tax supervisor at Pulakos & Alongi, Ltd., in Albuquerque. John Stringer, ’97 MAMU, lives “the dream” in Xalapa, Veracruz, where he performs with the Xalapa Symphony Orchestra.

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Michael Mares, ’67 BS, has a passion for his vocation. But he didn’t always know what that vocation would be. Even as a pre-med student at UNM in the mid-1960s, Mares had no idea what he would soon make his life’s work. “I was pre-med because I didn’t know what else to do,” says the internationally known expert in the evolution and adaptation of mammals to deserts. “I took an anatomy course from [professor emeritus of biology] Jim Findley, and I thought it was terrific. Then I took his mammalogy class. We didn’t

Oklahoma Museum of Natural History but continues to serve as the museum’s curator of mammals and to teach zoology at OU—earned a master’s degree from Fort Hays Kansas State College and a doctorate from the University of Texas. At UT, he jumped at the chance to study mammals in Argentina for two years.

Museum Mission In 1981, Mares accepted a joint position at OU as associate professor of zoology and curator of mammals at the university’s natural history museum.

The award is presented to a faculty or staff member who exhibits keen perceptivity; manifests intuitiveness,

than 5 million objects, but didn’t know it. The collections—housed at the time in wooden barns with a burn time of seven minutes—were the best-kept secret in Oklahoma,” says Mares, who himself never entered a museum until he went to the Smithsonian Institution at age 21. Mares’ vision was realized when the $44.5 million, 198,000 square foot Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History opened its doors in May 2000. In less than three years, more than half a million people from almost every state and at least 30 foreign countries have visited the museum. While Mares says those numbers don’t sound like much for New York or Los Angeles, “they’re a lot for the middle of the prairie.”

instant comprehension, and empathy; is observant and Insight and More In April 2002, Mares was recognized interprets from experience; and whose insight benefits society and the broader community. have the Discovery Channel then, and I thought that one mouse was the same as another. But that class, which included field trips, set my life on a path.” Findley calls Mares part of a talented group of graduate and undergraduate students who shared an enthusiastic interest in field biology. “We respected each other and took a great deal of joy in pursuing questions in science together,” he says. After graduating from UNM, Mares—who recently stepped down after 20 years as director of the University of Oklahoma’s Sam Noble D E S E R T D U D E : Michael Mares’ interest in mammalogy was piqued while he was an undergraduate at at UNM. Since then he has become a world-renowned expert on desert mammals.

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Two years later, he was appointed museum director and began efforts to establish a new home for the museum’s extraordinary collections. “The state of Oklahoma and the city of Norman [where OU’s main campus is located] had gathered these great collections but had no place to keep them. The public owned more

with OU’s inaugural Otis Sullivant Award for Perceptivity. The award, which carries a $20,000 prize, is presented to a faculty or staff member who exhibits keen perceptivity; manifests intuitiveness, instant comprehension, and empathy; is observant and interprets from experience; and whose insight benefits society and the broader community. His colleague Laurie Vitt, professor of zoology and the museum’s associate director of collections and research,

describes some of the qualities that make Mares a perfect choice for this award: “A very small handful of people throughout history have had the intuition to determine future needs and directions and make the kinds of decisions necessary to make spectacular things happen. Dr. Mares is one of those. His intuition and ability to make necessary decisions in a timely manner, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, goes much deeper than the structure of the museum that we are all so proud of today.” While the creation of the museum is certainly one of Mares’ most notable achievements, the former Fulbright Scholar, National Chicano Fellow, and Ford Foundation Fellow is a widely respected professor, writer, and researcher who has discovered and described eight mammals and had three organisms named in his honor. His field experiences are detailed in his recent book published by Harvard Press, A Desert Calling: Life in a Forbidding Landscape. He has authored 11 other books—including Encyclopedia of Deserts, which provides information on the world’s deserts to the general public, and Mammalian Biology in South America, considered a classic among South American biologists—and nearly 200 articles. He served as an adviser and consultant to the Interim Working Group of the White House on Biodiversity, Ecology, and Ecosystems and the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research, and as a member of the board of the Fulbright Commission and the Commission on the Future of the Smithsonian Institution. While Findley, Mares’ UNM mentor, says Mares’ published contributions to mammalogy are a matter of record— “As I glance at my bookshelf, a large volume, The Bats of Argentina, by Barquez, Mares, and Braun, catches

my eye,” Findley says—he considers Mares’ most important contribution to science his role in bringing young Latin Americans into the scientific mainstream through encouragement and mentorship.

Desert Devotion More than 30 years after taking his first mammalogy course from Findley, Mares is more passionate than ever about his chosen field. He plans to spend even more time researching and writing now that he has relinquished his post as museum director. Return trips to South America and Africa are on tap, and he’s currently collaborating on an interactive CD-ROM about the mammals of Argentina—the first such survey of the fauna of that country. Not all of Mares’ writing, however, is scholarly. He’s working on a screenplay —“I can’t tell you what it’s about because people are always looking for ideas”— and is writing a novel—“Nothing has been published yet.” He does much of his writing during his frequent visits to Albuquerque, where he has a townhouse in Old Town, just steps from where his 88-year-old father lives. Findley praises Mares for staying true to his New Mexico upbringing. “He has remained an Albuquerque homeboy with his roots and values deep in the culture and history of our old town,” Findley says. “I think it is that, more than anything else, that for me makes him an outstanding man.” These days, Mares has more time to spend with his wife, attorney Lynn Brusin Mares, and their two sons, both of whom live in Seattle. He and his wife have talked about moving to Washington, but Mares, who has lived the past 22 years on the Oklahoma plains, isn’t sure he could tolerate the lack of sunshine in Seattle. Maybe we’ll move to eastern Washington,” he says. It’s a desert there.”

album Juan R. Buriel, ’98 BA, ’01 MA, is working on a PhD in comparative literature at UC-Irvine. He lives in Santa Ana, California. Juan C. Corpion, ’98 MBA, has moved to Los Alamos where he is a project leader. He says he has left general management and found a niche in project management. Kathryn M. Davis, ’98 MA, has a joint position as curator of contemporary art at the Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and as assistant professor of contemporary critical theory at the University of Tennessee. Natalie A. Martsh, ’98 BA, of Santa Ana, California, is a social worker at Adult Day Services of Orange County in Huntington Beach. Reyna Sandoval, ’98 BA, works at Los Alamos National Laboratory doing advertising and recruiting. She lives in Santa Fe. Steven Allen, ’99 MBA, is an attorney with the Jontz Dawe Gulley & Crown firm in Albuquerque. Lesla Andrews, ’99 BAA, is a staff accountant at the Pulakos & Alongi, Ltd., in Albuquerque. Robert C. Guarino, ’99 BABA, is production manager with Android Industries in Atlanta, Georgia. Jennifer Riordan, ’99 BA, senior public affairs representative with the office of public affairs, UNM Health Sciences Center, has been named “Member of the Year” by the New Mexico chapter of the American Marketing Association. Celia R. Baca, ’01 BABA, works in Chicago at The San Jose Group, an advertising, marketing, and public relations company that specializes in the Hispanic market. Phyllis Chisholm, ’01 MA, of Tijeras, New Mexico, works on contract with the US Forest Service, a job she attributes to the master’s degree in geography she received in her early 70s. Shana Gibson, ’01 BABA, of Albuquerque, is owner of ModernCowGirl.com, Inc, which sells high-fashion women’s western wear and tack for horses. Sarah M. Karni, ’01 JD, has joined the Albuquerque law firm of Atkinson & Kelsey, PA. Rayburn A. Massiah, ‘01 BA, has received his commission as ensign after completing Officer Candidate School in Pensacola, Florida.

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The Lobo-turned-Yankee-

Sam Suplizio

turned-manager-turnedcommissioner is the go-to man for Colorado baseball

On and Off the Field

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Given the chance to make a serious gubernatorial run in Colorado, Sam Suplizio, ’54 BS, bowed out because it would prevent him from attending Major League Baseball’s spring training in Arizona. Lovers of the game get it.

Suplizio began his career at UNM in 1951 playing quarterback

under football Coach Dudley “Dud” DeGroot. His second year on

the team, the Lobos went 7-2, and set a college football record by shutting out five opponents, says JD Kailer, sports editor of the Albuquerque Journal from 1950-59. “They had the best defensive team in the country.”

DeGroot and Suplizio’s relationship began before DeGroot came to UNM, when he offered Suplizio a football scholarship to the University of West Virginia. DeGroot took the UNM coaching job the summer of 1950, and quickly persuaded Suplizio and others to come to UNM,” Suplizio says. For Suplizio, from DuBois, Pennsylvania, and a few of his eastern teammates, coming to UNM was their first time out West. “It was the best move of my life. I’ve found a home in the Rockies,” says Suplizio, who lives in Grand Junction, Colorado. Suplizio played football, basketball, and baseball at UNM. He dropped basketball first and, after suffering a dislocated and separated shoulder in football that threatened his baseball career, he dropped football, with DeGroot’s approval.

The Brightest Star In baseball, Suplizio shone. “Sam was an outfielder and a hitter. He hit over .400 in ’51 and ’52 and almost .500 in ’53,” recalls Kailer. The Yankees recognized Suplizo’s talent and signed him at the end of his junior year. Suplizio’s father insisted that Sam sign only if the Yankees would allow him to report for spring training following finals and agree to pay for and allow Suplizio to return to UNM to complete his senior year and his degree in education, although he would be ineligible to compete at the collegiate level. The Yankees agreed. “I moved real fast in the system,” recalled Suplizio, who spent only two years in the minors at a time when most players averaged five. His first year he played in Binghampton, New York, in the Class A Eastern

Olivia A. Ortega, ’01 BABA, is assistant staff accountant at Neff + Ricci, LLP, in Albuquerque. She is also on the board of directors for First Financial Credit Union. Catherine Porto, ’01 MAPA, of Los Alamos, is now president of the New Mexico Health Information Association. She is a registered health information administrator and is employed as the team leader, Health Information Administration, Occupational Medicine, at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Matthew Barbour, ’02 BA, of Edgewood, New Mexico, is working on the excavation on the north side of the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe. The excavation is in preparation for the construction of a new wing of the Museum of New Mexico’s history museum. Kasey R. Daniel, ’02 JD, has become a director and shareholder in the Albuquerque law firm of Keleher & McLeod, PA, where she represents clients in civil litigation, including nursing home litigation and medical malpractice. Tina Frank, ’02 MBA, has been appointed director of sales and marketing for Keystone Resort and Convention Center, the largest conference and convention center in the Rockies, based in Lakewood, Colorado. Previously, Tina was director of sales and marketing at the Albuquerque Hyatt Regency.

Tina Frank, ’02

Kelly Gomez, ’02 BUS, works at UNM Hospital as a patient observation attendant where she provides one-on-one care to patients who are confused or suicidal or to children who don’t have families. She plans to attend graduate school and return to her hometown of Gallup, New Mexico.

P R I Z E D Y A N K E E : As a Lobo, Sam Suplizio was drafted by the Yankees in his junior year. s p r i n g

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IN THE BIG LEAGUES: Sam Suplizio would have been tough competition for Mickey Mantle, above, and Roger Maris, below, had he not been injured eight days before heading to the Yankees. Eventually, Sam turned

League, then one of the strongest minors leagues in all of baseball. In 1955, he hit more home runs than Roger Maris who was then in the Indians system in Reading, Pennsylvania. Suplizio beat Maris 24-21. Suplizio had a terrific year in his first full season, leading the All-Star team with more votes than Hall-of-Famers Maris and Bill Mazeroski. His second season, in 1956, was so good that he and Tony Kubek were called up to the Yankees’ early camp in 1957. The Press and Radio Guide listed Suplizio and Kubek on their best minor league prospects roster. “We were invited to early camp so we could get used to playing with the great Yankee team before the ’57 season,” says Suplizio. At the end of the ’56 season, Casey Stengel, then manager of the Yankees, called Suplizio, who was then playing in Birmingham, to New York to get used to playing in Yankee Stadium. Stengel was planning to move Mickey

In 1956, with eight days left before heading to New York, he was playing in a game against Nashville. “I was running toward second base and saw the shortstop attempting a double play. I was trying to break it up by tripping him and my right forearm caught his kneecap,” recalls Suplizio. In that instant, his career as a major leaguer was over. Both bones in the forearm snapped. He suffered a compound fracture making a slide he’d made hundreds of times. “It all ended right there,” he says.

Changing Trajectory For the next few years, with a wife and two children to support, he worked while trying hard to rehab the arm. “I worked in a lumberyard in Grand Junction, I loaded box cars and carried bricks—anything I could do to build the arm up.” His wrist calcified, preventing him from throwing and hitting.

his talents to coaching, with the

“With a ball, bat, and glove you can take a young man and turn him into a good citizen with baseball as the vehicle,” Suplizio says.

Brewers, Yankees, Reds, Orioles,

courtesy Sam Suplizio

and Athletics.

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Mantle to right field to accommodate Suplizio in centerfield as the team chased the pennant. The move was designed to give Suplizio the chance to play in Yankee Stadium while giving Mantle’s ailing legs a rest. Things couldn’t have looked better for the young rookie out of UNM. He had made the league All-Star teams in ’55 and ’56 and he had been named best defensive player in the Yankee organization three years running because of his skills in centerfield.

The Dodgers bought Suplizio’s contract from the Yankees and he spent a year with their Texas League team in Victoria. His arm didn’t strengthen or heal. At the end of the 1957 season the Dodgers asked Suplizio if he would like to manage. “I found myself in Thomasville, Georgia, getting my feet wet as a manager. At 23, I was managing players who were 25 and 26. As I managed, I played a bit, but I just couldn’t do it,” he says.

album Off-season, Suplizio worked at Home Loan Investment Company, in Grand Junction, Colorado. “I took the job with the understanding that I would be gone during spring training,” he says. He eventually owned the investment company and bank and ran it for 45 years before selling it five years ago to some locals. “They’re former baseball players,” he says. Of course. Turning a “negative into a positive,” Suplizio put that college education to work on the baseball field coaching across the minor and major leagues. He’s held positions with the Milwaukee Brewers, New York Yankees, Cincinnati Reds, Baltimore Orioles, and California—now Anaheim—Angels. Suplizio coached the Brewers against the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1982 World Series. Coaching the Cards was Suplizio’s friend and former Yankee teammate Whitey Herzog. The Brewers lost. “But we went seven games,” Suplizio quickly notes.

Rocky Mountain Legacy Baseball in Colorado has thrived under Suplizio’s watchful eye. As chair of the Colorado Baseball Commission, Suplizio saw himself as “landlord for the taxpayers” who invested $250 million in the Colorado Rockies’ new stadium, Coors Field. He then served on the Denver Football Commission, building the Denver Broncos’ new stadium, Invesco Field at Mile High. Suplizio stands out as the only individual to serve on both commissions from the projects’ inception through completion. The Colorado Rockies played their first season at the Broncos’ old stadium, Mile High. Suplizio said that it took four or five years to build the Rockies club from the ground up. “We insisted that the new stadium, Coors Field, be

downtown. We received a letter from the Denver Police Department thanking us because the officers no longer had to travel in pairs in the vicinity of the stadium. That’s how much it improved the area,” he says. Suplizio even has his own field of dreams in Grand Junction. The Junior College (JUCO) World Series is played each year at Suplizio Field, a 9,000-seat stadium adjacent to Mesa State College. Suplizio has also traveled to Spain, France, Italy, and Israel to teach the sport of baseball at the bequest of Major League Baseball. “With a ball, bat, and glove you can take a young man and turn him into a good citizen with baseball as the vehicle,” Suplizio says. Baseball Hall of Famer Rod Carew coached in the Angels system when Suplizio did. Still a good friend, he understands Suplizio’s love of the game. “He loves the kids. He is genuinely interested in seeing them learn. All the players who worked with him appreciated his insight into the game,” Carew says.

Lifetime Treasures In 1997, some of Suplizio’s friends took note of his ability to get things done and decided that he should run against Roy Romer when he was making a bid for a second term, raising between $3 and $4 million in campaign contributions. But Sam doesn’t regret his decision not to run: “Seeing two stadiums built and riding in the parade on opening day at Coors Field, establishing Major League Baseball in the Mountain West Time Zone, the JUCO World Series, coaching in the ’82 World Series, and playing in old-timer games—these are more of a treasure than being governor ever would’ve been.”

Patricia Lopez, ’02 BA, of Sherman Oaks, California, has a position as a “global trainee” at Warner Brothers Studios working in the production department for the senior vice president of production operations. Matthew Watson, ’02 JD, is an associate with the El Paso law firm of Scott, Hulse, Marshall, Feuille, Finger & Thurmond, PC, where he practices in the general liability litigation section. He passed the Texas bar exam last fall. Brian T. Wolf, ’02 BS, was commissioned to the rank of Navy ensign after completing Aviation Officer Candidate School in Pensacola, Florida.

marriages Janie Gilmore, ’77 BAED, and Michael Daniels Linda Jean Fenow, ’86 BS, and Terry Frank Sumski Michael Gallegos, ’86 BA, ’89 JD, and Amanda Highley James Frank Sattler, ’88 BAA, ’95 MCRP, and Jill Alyssa Worley Barbara Martinez, ’88 BABA, and Kevin Carson Thomas Mucci, ’88 BA, ’97 MA, ’01 JD, and Carla Gutierrez A.J. Salazar, ’89 BA, ’93 JD, and Liberty Hope Moruno Ann Hooker Clark, ’92 JD, and Duncan L. Clarke Ivy Schumer, ’92 BA, and Tate Duewall Leonard Chris-Ruiz, ’94 BABA, and Denise Antoinette Garley Chris Berkheimer, ’93 BA, ’00 JD, and Martina Kitzmueller Michael Anthony Baca, ’95 BA, and M. Magda Martinez Vicki Ventura, ’95 BSNU, ’00 MSNU, and David Blake Dionne Watkins, ’95 BA, and Israel J. Ruiz Stacy Beske, ’96 BS, and Andrew Radford Richard F. Gomez, ’96 BABA, ’99 MBA, and Rosario Martinez Aleta Dawn Best, ’97 BS, ’02 MD, and Robert Phillip DaSilva, ’02 PHAR Tammye Cox, ’97 BS, and Shawn Quinn, ’98 BSPH Robert A. Griego, ’97 MA, ’00 MCRP, and Debra E. Garcia

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Four Years

Later

Watch Lady Lobo star Jordan Adams as she meets the challenge.

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She was one of the best women’s basketball players ever to don the cherry and silver at the University of New Mexico. At 6-foot, 3-inches, Jordan Adams was an intimidating force on the court for Head Coach Don Flanagan. The Overton, Nevada, native dominated the paint with her uncanny ability to get strong position and her knack for scoring down low, especially with a deadly hook shot anywhere within six feet of the basket. During her recently completed senior season, Adams was a legitimate All-America candidate and was publicized as such by the UNM Athletics Media Relations Department. “She’s one of the most talented basketball players to play here,” says Head Coach Don Flanagan. “Throughout her career she’s had some ups and downs, but I think it was mostly confidence coming from a smaller high school to play Division I basketball. She’s had the talent, but sometimes I think she didn't believe she had the talent. This past year she has matured a great deal.”

C L O S E L O O K : Lobo center Jordan Adams gets a good look at the basket. With spring here, she’s

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Laura Mann

also taking a look at her future.

A four-time Mountain West Conference honoree, Adams led the Lobos in scoring (averaging nearly 16 points per game), rebounds (more than 6.0 per game), and blocks (averaging a little more than 2.0 per game). But Adams’ success on the court didn’t always come easy. Everyday life and the challenges of playing the game of basketball can be tough on anyone, especially a student-athlete.

No Longer Just for Me “Learning to deal with different pressures—mostly outside pressures— has been a really big battle for me since high school,” says Adams. “Basketball used to be about a game just for me. That’s kind of bad to say, but that’s just how I played it. It was just me and my team on the floor and I didn’t care about anything else. And now, there seemed to be a lot more added to it. “You have the whole crowd situation, people always watching you, a lot of expectations and dealing with all those kind of pressures. The one thing that I have pulled out of, though, reverting back to high school, is that it’s about me and about the team and nobody else. This year I learned to take things that bothered me and make them better by helping other people. For example, helping the freshmen get acquainted with the situation. It’s hard for them to come into a college atmosphere. I would say nice things to them and make them feel comfortable. I found that helping others on the team helped me feel better. So I was basically helping myself at the same time.”

Motivation Adams is one of five children, four girls and one boy. Playing basketball was her ticket to college. “Coming from a family that didn’t have very much money, my biggest obstacle was to get to college,” says Adams. “My only way to get there was through basketball and my parents sacrificed a lot for that. I played one summer of AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) basketball and that was kind of my way into the whole situation with college.

“My only real motivation was to just be all I can be and to do whatever I can do personally and not try to be somebody else—in all aspects of my life. I’ve always wanted to be an individual and do my own thing.”

Adapting Along the way Adams learned quite a few lessons, both on and off the court. She has always enjoyed solitude. But it is one area of her life where she had to adapt her personality to the situation she faced. It’s a lesson she’ll be able to utilize when her basketball playing days are over. “There are so many lessons I’ve learned,” Adams says. “In the past I’ve been known as a solitary person and for keeping to myself, but I’ve learned to work with people in different ways. In pressure situations you’re always going to be able to use that.”

Moving On Graduating in May with a bachelor of university studies with an emphasis on journalism and athletic coaching, Adams would like to move on to the WNBA, her main focus after school. “I think she is certainly capable of playing at the next level,” says Flanagan. “It depends on how important that goal is to her. I watched her play in the USA Trials and she scored against all the top post players in the nation. Offensively she did very well, but defensively she had problems guarding some of the better players. I do think her defense has improved considerably this year.” “I would love to do that (play in the WNBA),” says Adams. “If not, I think I’ll go overseas and play over there just for the experience. After that, maybe someday I’d like to teach or work in a newsroom. I’d like to teach journalism or maybe physical education. I just want to teach and I’d like to coach too. I love kids.” If Adams turns out to be the same kind of teacher as she is basketball player, then a number of kids will benefit from her life’s lessons.

album more marriages Heather Herzog, ’98 BS, and Joshua Spies Julio P. Marchiondo Jr., ’98 MBA, and Nancy Moore April Mokina, ’98 BS, ’01 MS, and Jose Alvarez, ’75 BUS Lora L. Smalley, ’98 BA, and Miles Fisher Antonia Trujillo, ’98 BSED, and Dalon Bynum Meredith N. Ford, ’99 BA, and Mark A. Koski, ’00 BSPE Daniel Puzak, ’99 BAA, ’02 MARC, and Lisa Martinez Tina Waggoner, ’99 BS, and Dale Huber Valerie Marie Barela, ’00 BABA, and Frank Anthony Sedillo, ’82 BABA, ’87 JD Nancy M. Cimermanis, ’00 BUS, and Gary Brault Jon Ryan Courtney, ’00 BA, and Katherine Evita Ortega, ’01 BA Jennifer Kipping, ’00 BS, and David York Samuel Abraham Morrah, ’00 BARC, and Melissa M. Stiles Michelle Lee Negrette, ’00 MCRP, ’01 MLA, and Joshua Andrew Allison Maggie Mae Richardson, ’00 BSNU, and Andrew Thomas Faber, ’96 BA Leona Zamora, ’00 BS, and Kevin Gustafson Venessa De Los Santos, ’01 BABA, and Isaac Jerome Finn, ’01 BABA Elizabeth Marie Johnson, ’01 BSNU, and Robert Guild Brown, ’01 BABA Shannon Nagel, ’01 BS, and Keith Keetso Jr., ’94 BSEE Courtney A. Thompson, ’01 BA, and Eric W. Woods Casey Creel, 02 BUS, and Elizabeth Anderson Robert Nance, ’02 JD, and Kimberly Michelle Schiller Annette Vasquez, ’02 BSNU, and David Aguilar, ’02 BSNU

For final 2003 Lady Lobo results, go to www.unmalumni.com.

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unwrapping success

see what you can do

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Out of gratitude for their own educations, two alumni couples give back. K .

A S H C R A F T

“You can’t replace the gift of education,” asserts Veronica Sapien, ’93, BABA.

“To us, it’s helping people help themselves. The [ideal] future of every child is

to be educated and to have opportunities and doors opened because of that,

for whatever they want to do.” Veronica and her husband, John, ’92 BABA, unwrapped that gift themselves through UNM’s Presidential Scholarship Program. Today, they sponsor a Presidential Scholarship themselves. Another Anderson Schools of Management alumni couple, Brett and Karla Newberry, both ’81 BABA, also sees education as a gift that brings success. “My wife and I feel education is critical if you want to be successful in life because of technology and the complexity in our society now.” They give to UNM through a different avenue than the Sapiens: the President’s Fund for Academic Excellence, which supports the University’s Freshman Learning Communities. Through this unrestricted gift, they are encouraging UNM freshmen to stay in school so that they can unwrap success as well.

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Family Values For these couples, education’s value is clear. Both Sapiens come from families with humble beginnings. John’s father moved from Colorado to Bernalillo, New Mexico, after doing migrant farm work alongside John’s grandparents, who were from Mexico. Veronica’s parents, from Las Vegas, New Mexico, raised her and her siblings in Grants, New Mexico, where her father worked in uranium mining. They saw a college education as a way to create better opportunities for their children. Presidential Scholarships helped Veronica attain an accounting degree, and John, a degree in finance.

Brett Newberry, whose degree is in accounting, says he attended UNM because of the atmosphere, the beautiful campus, and the good academic reputation. “I have a lot of passion for UNM. It gave me a good education and a lot of my success is due to the university,” he says. “My father was the first college graduate of his family. He instilled in me the importance of education if you want to be successful economically, have security, and provide nice things for your family.” Karla agrees. “We’ve told our children that their main job is to get good grades and to stay in school,” she says of daughter Kristi, 17, and son Scott, 15. “We’ve really stressed to them that they will be going to college.”

Career Paths After college, Veronica Sapien became a CPA and performed tax and audit work for six years. After that, she was a controller for an automotive group. Today, she works from home as senior financial analyst for Marriott’s Senior

Matthew Dunn

B Y

O N T H E R O A D : Veronica and John Sapien hit the road for students who have followed in their tracks at UNM by sponsoring a Presidential Scholarship and encouraging others to do the same.

Living Services Division, which operates retirement homes in 120 communities nationwide. “I do a lot of consolidated reporting for the company—analysis, looking for trends,” she says. John began his career as a claims adjuster with State Farm Insurance Companies for nine years, during which time he made visits throughout the country on a national catastrophe team. Two years ago, he followed the footsteps of his father, receiving the company’s blessing to take over his dad’s agency. “State Farm has grown out into financial products, and it is right in line with my degree,” he says happily. Brett Newberry enjoys business ownership, too. He became a CPA and partner in his father’s accounting practice; the firm recently opened an office in Farmington. Brett’s work focuses on income tax preparation, tax planning, estate tax planning, and gift planning. “I also spend a lot of time consulting to help businesses manage their operations more effectively,” he says. After earning her accounting degree, Karla was a CPA alongside her husband at Newberry and Associates for a decade, before deciding to stay home with their children. “When the kids were 2 and 4, we decided it would be good to have more hands-on experience with them,” she says. “I still help out at tax season.”

Philanthropy and Service The Newberrys learned about the President’s Club from their friend and client Arlene High, a UNM Foundation Board member. The President’s Club allows a donor to designate part of a gift to any UNM school or program but requires that part goes to the President’s Fund for Academic Excellence. “Through the President’s Club, I’m able to support athletics, which I’m passionate about, and the academic area I feel

strongly about as well,” Brett says. “We really like to give back to our community, our church, and serve on school boards and different committees,” says Karla. “We’ve tried to encourage that with the kids. It’s great for them to learn that now.” The Newberrys certainly set the example. Among other activities, Karla has helped with her daughter’s Girl Scout Troop and has been treasurer of the swim team booster club. Brett’s current roles include Gallup Kiwanis Club president and Gallup-McKinley County Chamber of Commerce treasurer. He serves on a local hospital foundation board, chairs its subcommittee for charitable giving, and is treasurer for a private school. In addition, he is in the New Mexico Amigos, a group of official goodwill ambassadors for the state. Despite heavy work schedules, the Sapiens have given time and talent to Toys for Tots (they ride a HarleyDavidson together), the Leukemia Foundation, the New Mexico Alliance, Christmas in April and South Valley Charter High School. John has also approached Bernalillo Public Schools about “talking to the students on a regular basis about how money can grow positively through investments or negatively through credit card debt.” As Friends of the Presidential Scholarship Program, the Sapiens help to bring in more sponsors for the program. Though they would like to give multiple scholarships, they currently sponsor one, crediting State Farm’s matching gifts program for relieving some of the financial burden. “We can’t afford to do 10 scholarships,” comments John. “But we have the time and the skills to hopefully energize 10 people to give 10 scholarships.” John notes that without their scholarships, he and Veronica “would not be in the position we are today— we’d have student loans; we’d have debt.” Veronica adds, “We wouldn’t have the opportunities that we’ve had. We really have been blessed to have the things that have come our way.” Indeed, education has been key to these couples, and their gifts are helping others unwrap success, too.

33 for

Three key Alumni

Association leaders pick three topics of interest to them.

Steve Ciepiela President, UNM Alumni Association, 2002-2003

3 impressions from My Year’s Service • The Alumni Association makes a huge impact, touching 117,000 alumni plus students, faculty, parents, and legislators. • Everything the Association does is high quality, from receptions to lobbying efforts to awards banquets to communications. • The Association does all this with a small staff and a small budget—without charging dues.

Plus 1 word—Thanks! To all the people I’ve worked with this year, from staff to leadership to volunteers. UNM has an incredible amount going on—it’s exciting to be part of it again. I hope you’ll get involved also—it’s rewarding, informative, and great fun!

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looking back

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friends for MOUNTAIN WOMEN: Trekking through Washington's Olympic Mountain Range added another dimension to the longtime friendship among alumnae (l-r back) Evelyn Rosenberg, Isabel Bearman

Solberg, (l-r front) Diane Becker, and Michaela Karni.

courtesy Isabel Bearman Bucher

Bucher, Anita

On and Off the Beaten Path BY ISABEL MILLER BEARMAN BUCHER, ’60 BS, ’68 MA

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life

Judy Jones UNM Vice President for Advancement

Diane Klinge Becker, ’61 BADA, ’68 BAFA, and I met in 1958, in a Mitchell Hall Spanish class. She was an Alpha Chi and I was a town girl who mostly crawled onto the 6 a.m. bus from Sandia Base, laden with Edith Buchanan’s everlasting English compositions, her relentless corrections, and my deathless rewrites. There was no duck pond. Instead, the black-topped parking space was lined with sawed off telephone poles to mark its boundaries. Diane and Stephanie Kimbrough Spinks suffered through frequent whiplash while I learned to drive, because I backed into every one of the poles, using my parents’ Flowmaster black-and-red Buick like a battering ram. Then, tuition was a big $50 a semester, and if you spent $25 on books, it was something to talk about. There were about 4,500 students. Diane and I met daily at the old SUB, now a museum, for good coffee and fresh cake doughnuts served on thick restaurant white china. Often we sat with N. Scott Mommaday, Neil Frumkin, and some guy who was positive that the radical organization for students called the SDS was the future of the world. Diane and I joined for two bucks because he was pretty cute, and we wanted to date him. In subsequent years, we wondered if the FBI would hunt us down and rip the paper cards to bits in front of a tribunal dealing with heretics. Now a team referred to as “Mutt and Jeff,” Diane, a tall and blond Chicagoan, and I, short and dark, became fast friends throughout all the rest of our years at UNM. We studied together, hit the beer busts, soulful poetry sessions, and shoulder-to-shoulder parties over on Pine Street, where the word “Beatnik” was gaining approval, along with Joan Baez’s voice. I took up playing and singing with a five-dollar hockshop guitar and managed a two-chord “Michael Row

3 ways New Mexicans View UNM (from the university’s 2003 statewide survey) • More than 70 percent rank their overall impression of UNM as either extremely good or good. • Asked why they feel positive about UNM, the highest response (43 percent) is the quality education UNM offers. • One-quarter of the respondents say we have enough parking and shuttle buses— who are these people?

Karen Abraham Executive Director, UNM Alumni Association

3 things I’d Like You to Do

• Send us your e-mail address—register at unmalumni.com.

• Interact with us—send us your opinions, reconnect with your friends through our online community, respond to our surveys. • Take pride in your alma mater—it’s a world-class university!

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Your Boat Ashore.” We were assured party invites because of my huge talent. Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and author Jack Kerouac got off the road, stopping in Albuquerque, joining the rest of the totally hip, fringe groups we floated into and out of. Diane and I progressed from semester to semester, and even once climbed up a ladder, flattening ourselves on the roof at a party in the Country Club when the cops raided it. Since it was winter, two freezing anonymous hours later, cowards that we were, we snuck down, raced to our car and beat it.

off to Central and South America; I left to teach school with the US Army in southern Germany. She, now the mother of three kids, two girls and a boy, moved back to Albuquerque, and was here for me and my two little daughters, when I lost LeRoy to a totally wrecked heart when he was only 41. She was there at my re-marriage four years later taking the photos. Somewhere along the line, we realized we loved putting one foot in front of the other, and on Thursdays took to the hiking trails surrounding Albuquerque. We were soon joined by three other sisters of the heart, all UNM

On week-long trips, we solve problems, laugh, cry, fight, get things straight, and throw lifelines out into that beauty, where everything is real, as it is, a stunning perfection that comes from time, just like our long, enduring friendship. We both graduated and got teaching jobs with APS: I landed a first grade and she did junior high English/Drama. She came to live with me at my parents’ home. Somewhere along the line, a young Sigma Chi named Tom Becker entered the scene. He swept my bud away completely when he threw a striped blanket over his shoulder, hunkered down, and sold cheap Southwest trinkets he’d bought at the five-and-dime, across the street from the burning of Zozobra. Well, he was, after all, a business major gaining marketing experience. I had met cub reporter LeRoy Bearman, and was now tap dancing around this on again-off again relationship. On a wonderful August day in 1962, Diane and I whizzed along the back roads of the Sandias in my snazzy convertible ’55 turquoise T-Bird, singing “Moon River” at the top of our carefree lungs. It was the last time we were together for years. She married a few weeks later and went

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grads: artist/sculptor Evelyn Edelson Rosenberg, ’71 MA, author Michaela Jordan Karni, ’64 BA, and teacher Anita Ferebee Solberg, ’65 BSED. All risky personalities, we took our first backpack trip into the Grand Canyon in September of 1980. While training on La Luz trail, Diane got strep-infected heel blisters, and was benched for the trip, bawling her eyes out. She’s never let us forget that in her book this was a clear case of abandonment. I borrowed Art Gardenswartz’s pack and learned the meaning of step-whop. Every time I took a step, it whopped me in the back of the head. Hopelessly hooked since, the five of us, sans husbands, have done a backpack a year into some remote American wilderness. We’ve eaten Glacier dirt and Durango bugs. We’ve been stranded at 13,000 feet when lightening made our hair frizz and hail drummed knots on our skulls. We’ve been lost for a half day, been paced by a huge black bear, crawled across

storm-swollen North Carolina streams, and come back to find our sleeping bags floating inside our tents. The little Santeetlah had risen, and we did what any great mountain women would do— we bailed and checked into motel, dried out and went back in. We’ve spit on head gashes, pulled cactus out with our teeth, dug latrines, and massaged trail-weary feet. We’ve linked arms and sung to the great Olympians of Washington state, slept on canyon-solid rock, and laughed until we thought we’d burst. At night, Diane, our fire wizard, can always get flames started; Evelyn poses great weighty philosophical questions, Anita, the mother, the youngest and the strongest hiker, gets supper started because we’re all crawling into camp beyond exhausted. Mikey quotes poetry and reads topographic maps constantly, while I sing to the mountain. On week-long trips, we solve problems, laugh, cry, fight, get things straight, and throw lifelines out into that beauty, where everything is real, as it is, a stunning perfection that comes from time, just like our long, enduring friendship. At night, we sit close, cuddle stream-water cocoa, and reminisce. We take joy in our 11 grown kids, celebrate our long marriages, and talk about how much we cherish each other. Diane and I often look into each other’s eyes, and think about the passage of 46 years that seems like five minutes. But, for us both, we’re still those very same Mutt and Jeff UNM teenagers, who hid out on a rooftop. Then, the wilderness takes us unto her, zips us into our tents and bags, turns out the light, and fills the starry night with a billion stars. Note: In July, the Mountain Women will do their annual trip in a remote place outside Golden, British Columbia. They’ll jump off a helicopter, and run around the woods for a week.

in memoriam

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Edward James Cristy, ‘20 Olive Boone, ‘25 Mary M. McDonald, ‘27 Mary Gunn, ‘28 Gaylord Myers, ‘28 Fred M. Pyle, 29 Gladys Dorris Barber, ‘30 Dorothy Diver Partee, ‘30 Rufus H. Carter Jr., ’31, ‘53 John C. Thompson, ‘31 Beth Gilbert Hagaman, ‘32 Everett “Beans” Renfro, ‘32 Will J. Arnott, ‘33 Anna Marie Reardon Edwards Harris, ‘33 Tom O. Meeks, ‘34 Frances N. Holland, ‘36 Mary G. Klusman, ‘36 Arthur P. Stanton, ‘37 Mildred Mock Walker, ‘37 Nellita Elizabeth Walker, ’37, ‘67 Wadette Goze Abraham, ’38 Mabel Downer Bennet Durning, ’38, ‘53 Milton L. Rose, ‘38 Sabra Ware, ‘38 Fred B. Evans Jr., ‘39 Jose Adelaido Medina, ‘39 Charles Wesley Trask, ‘39 Ed Black, ‘40 Ralph E. Frank, ‘40 Robert Benjamin Troxel, ‘40 Archie W. Allen, ‘41 Kathryn Felicitas Trainor, ‘41 Ralph E. Fisher, ‘42 Dorothy Knode Gillespie, ‘42 Stephen Smithson Koch, ‘42 Petrita S. Marquez, ‘42 Ruth Jurgensen Starks. ‘43 Marx Brook, ‘44 Jeannetta E. Wood, ‘44 Robert E. Rutherford, ‘44 Harold Rosenthal, ‘44 Zachary Homer, ‘45 Wilfred E. Torres, ’45, ‘47 Frances K. Ward, ‘45 Chad L. Wiley, ‘45 Robert B. Rountree, ‘46 Charles W. Sisty, ‘47 Sabine Ulibarri, ’47, ‘49 William Warder, ‘47 Robert H. Brown, ‘48 Paul Graham “Buzz” McHenry Jr., ’48, ‘75 Ergeal C. Brown, ’49, ‘51 William R. Erdman, ‘49 H. Frank Sowers, ‘49 Sherman M. Stanage, ‘49 Edward W. Taylor, ‘49 Henry “Hank” Trewhitt, ‘49 Eloy Gil Padilla, ‘50 Mary Frances Blanchard Rohn, ‘50 Bettie Lou Snapp, ‘50 John W. Thompson, ‘50 Add L. Webster, ‘50 Albert A. Williams, ‘50 Mary E. Brooks, ’51, ‘60 Lloyd R. Irish, ‘51 Ross Kailey, ‘51 Andrew Marchese, ‘51 L.A. “Lee” Putnam Jr, ‘51 Donald Earl Rhoades, ‘51 Elvira Sattel, ‘51 Hallie Goss Harber Smith, ‘51 Roscoe Frank Thomas, ‘51 Ione Vogel, ‘51

James B. Wade, ‘51 Dean C. Watland, ‘51 H. Barry Gordon, ‘52 Robert P. Kelly, ‘52 Al Lucas, ‘52 Dorothy J. Pannell, ’52 Rick Raphael, ‘52 James Zartman, ‘52 Richard Stanley Clark, ‘53 G. Ward Fenley Jr., ’53, ‘55 Roger Gilbert, ‘53 Pete C. Hernandez, ‘53 Richard A. Neff, ‘53 James Charles Pulte, ‘53 Ruth Cooper Streeter, ‘53 Curtis Franklin Hardison, ‘54 Theodore J. Nowicki, ‘54 Jewell M. Richards, ‘54 Enzo Uliana, ‘54 Carter C. Mathies, ‘55 Alvin Mulica, ‘55 O. Howard Stockton, ‘55 Robert Emmett White, ‘56 Joe D. Womack, ‘56 Lucille Joan Dague, ‘57 Robert L. Gault, ‘57 Frederick G. Smith, ‘57 James Frank Thompson, ’57, ‘67 William Macas, ‘58 David Austin Reece, ‘58 Paul A. Sweitzer, ‘58 John Herman Muller, ‘59 Priscilla D. Biggs, ‘60 James Carol Shipp, ‘60 Leslie Robert Thomas, ‘60 Roger W. Horn, ‘61 H. Elizabeth Link, ‘61 Grace Elizabeth Young Richardson, ‘61 Loretta Sharon Wyatt, ’61, ‘64 Betty Z. Cummings, ‘63 Abelardo Villarreal, ’63, ‘65 Lana Sue Murphy Garcia, ‘64 Carol L. Kirby, ‘64 Jarrod Taylor Simmons, ‘64 Emiliano De La Fuente Jr., ‘65 Jack W. Phillips, ‘66 Jasmin J. Smith, ‘66 Robert K. Cover, ‘67 Walter Goetz, ‘67 Esther J. Mailander, ‘67 Jack Marvin Nelson, ’67, ‘68 Jeanne Suzanne Ratchner, ‘67 Jo Anne Bachand Rhudy, ‘68 John Ward Jr., ‘68 Robert Lee “White Eagle” Canard, ‘69 Benjamin Anthony Sanchez, ‘69 Mark H. Shaw, ‘69 William G. Sullivan, ‘69 Lorraine V. Trujillo, ‘69 David Carroll Bardé, ‘70 James D. Copeland, ‘70 Donald P. Garland, ‘70 Beverly Ann Goldrick, ‘70 Michael E. Johnson, ‘70 Robert L. Daby, ‘71 Donald Lee Greenstreet, ‘71 James D. Johnson, ‘71 Patrick J. Neal, ‘71 James S. Patterson, ‘71 Billy D. Stearnes, ‘71 Jose Florio Vigil, ‘71 Colleen Ann Miller, ‘72 Sandra Brown Phillips, ‘72 Floyd Rubi, ‘72 Janet C. Triplett, ‘72

Ann Dudley Edwards, ‘73 Edward D. Oglesby, ‘73 Nancy B. Pigg, ‘73 Lawrence Rodgers, ‘73 Dale Sherrard, ‘73 C.E. “Joe” Young, ‘73 James Edward Bridge, ‘74 Curtis C. Chang, ‘74 Jeffry S. Deshong, ‘74 Donal C. Phibbs, ‘74 Joseph Kevin Valencia, ‘74 Adrienne Pata, ‘75 Suzanne Stillinger, ‘75 George M. Chambers, ‘76 James Robert Kelsey, ‘76 Mae Beth Myers, ‘76 William Leonard Sabo, ‘76 Sara A. Balcomb, ‘77 Tillie Ann Wagoner, ‘77 Nancy Davis, ‘78 John Gregory Hoffman, ‘78 Jim C. Johnson Jr., ‘78 Harry Mason, ‘78 Sue Ann Reynolds, ’78, ‘81 Karn M. Sigmond, ‘78 William D. Petty, ‘79 John A. Shankland, ‘79 Dorothy Gay Grooms Morell, ‘80 Valerie A. Sivinski, ‘80 David Robert Pieyns, ‘81 Elinor Coates, ‘82 Dorothea A. Overstreet, ‘83 Susan Williams, ‘83 Greg H. Illanes, ‘84 Sylvia Ann Shipley Abeyta, ‘85 William L. Miller, ‘85 Edward M. Thomas, ‘85 Walter Carl Wohrer, ‘86 C. Paul Kircher, ‘87 Nicholas Constantine Nellos, ‘87 Donald Eugene Lott, ’88 Winifred “Gene” Zeedyk, ‘88 Patricia J. Butler, ‘89 Lisa Marie Driskell, ‘89 Danny Wayne Gresham, ‘89 Judith Miller Stiteler, ‘89 Robert Richard Viramontes, ‘89 Barbara Jean Watchman, ’89, ’92, ‘95 Lois V. Williams, ‘89 Donna Anders, ‘92 Annette Sanchez Gabaldon, ’92, ‘97 Ramon Sanchez, ‘92 Susan L. Stone, ‘92 Sharon Charlene Collins, ‘93 Vita Picone, 93 Paula Renee Pringle, ‘93 Erica P. Trujillo, ’93, ‘97 Marshall J. Waite, ‘93 Perri Abbott Yarbrough, ‘93 Patricia Vardeman, ‘94 Cristino B. Griego, ‘95 William Scott Hays, ’97, ‘99 Gary E. Chavez, ‘00 Christopher Schultz, ‘00 Robert J. Kinney, retired faculty John Linsley, emeritus faculty Harold Shaw, Special Events Coordinator Henry “Hank” Trewhitt,‘49 Sabine Ulibarri, ’47, ’49, emeritus faculty Gene C. Walton, friend

2003 UNM Alumni Educational

Travel Adventures Following is our line-up of educational travel opportunities coming up in 2003. We hope to see you on one of our trips in the near future!

May 14-22 Alumni College in Scotland

August 2-14 Russian Waterways

September 12-20 Alumni College in Bordeaux

September 29-October 7 Italian Lake District

November 30-December 8 German Holiday Markets Trips and dates are subject to change. For additional information, contact Charlene Chavez at the UNM Alumni Relations Office, 505-277-5808 or 800-258-6866.

Carnaval

on the Rio Grande UNM Homecoming 2003 September 30-October 4 Watch for more information in the fall Mirage.

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Chapter Calendar April 5

New York Chapter Re-Energize/ Re-Organize Meeting

Washington DC Chapter Lobo Day Brunch

12 Los Angeles Chapter Lobo Day Event 26 Dallas Chapter Lobo Day Event

May 3

Denver Chapter Re-Energize/ Re-Organize Meeting

tba Chicago Chapter Lobo Day Event

The cerulean skies of our souls.

June tba Los Angeles Chapter Beach House Bistro Get-Together

July tba Los Angeles Chapter Women’s Pro Basketball—LA Sparks tba Chicago Chapter Summer Celebration tba Norcal Chapter Evening by the Bay

August 2-3 Los Angeles Chapter Deep-Sea Fishing Adventure 10 Los Angeles Chapter Hollywood Bowl Picnic & Concert 16 Seattle Chapter Island Getaway

September 7

Washington DC Chapter Green Chile Roast & Picnic

Los Angeles Chapter Green Chile Roast & Picnic

20 Norcal Chapter Green Chile Roast & Picnic

October tba Lobos vs. SDSU Tailgate and Game tba Las Vegas, Nevada, Chapter Green Chile Roast & Picnic For additional information, visit our website at http://www.unmalumni.com, call our office at 800-258-6866, or refer to event fliers sent to chapter areas before events. All dates are subject to change.

V I G A S ,

H O D G I N

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