50 Years of Sophie: Washington College Alumni Magazine, Spring 2017

WASHINGTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE SPRING 2017

50 Years of Sophie

SPRING 2016

i

PICTURE THIS

ii

WASHINGTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE

Composing a Poem

Photo by Jay Fleming

At the intersection of poetry and book arts are cases of type and the composing stick. In the press room at the College’s Rose O’Neill Literary House, Caroline Harvey ’18 (left) and Emma Sovich ’08 choose letters that will form words, then lines, then a poem to be pressed into paper. The 2008 winner of the Sophie Kerr Prize, Sovich has returned to campus as a visiting assistant professor of English to teach the two disciplines she first explored as an undergraduate. “One of my goals for this class was to get students to slow down and to engage with the text in a different way,” she says. “Creative writing is very conceptual. Until you can hold a poem in your hands, it’s all in your head.

In this class, students are creating a three-dimensional object that has made ephemeral thoughts concrete.” Harvey, the poetry editor of The Collegian, and Sovich recently talked about their collaboration in the Poetry and Book Arts class at the annual meeting of the College Book Arts Association in Florida; Harvey was the only undergraduate there.

SPRING 2017

1

F E AT U R E S

20 The Gift That

Keeps Giving

With Sophie Kerr’s gift, WC built its reputation as “the writing college.” by wendy mitman clarke M’16

Contents

26 Sophie, We

Hardly Knew Ye

Her name is well known. But who was the woman behind the gift? by shane brill ’03 M’11

28 This Little Girl

A short story first published in 1918. by sophie kerr

36 The Book

Whisperer

Jonathan Segal ’66, senior editor at Knopf, is one of the industry’s most accomplished nonfiction editors.

D E PARTM E NTS

i

Picture This

3

Editor’s Note

5

President’s Letter

6

News Experimental composer/artist talks climate change; Tuition is FixedFor4; Kiplinger’s names WC a “best value.”

14 Faculty Elizabeth O’Connor introduces students to the works of Sophie Kerr.

James Allen Hall is the new director of the Rose O’Neill Literary House.

16 Students Young environmentalist wins science writing fellowship. Students tour the historic Stonewall Inn with WC’s Patrick Henry Fellow.

33

Alumni Update Class notes; Alumni spotlights.

50 Development Rebecca Corbin Loree ’00 funds Center for Career Development.

2

WASHINGTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE

20 28

EDITOR’S NOTE

Volume LXVII No. 1 Spring 2017 ISSN 2152-9531

WASHINGTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE SPRING 2017

50 Years of Sophie

SPRING 2016

i

Cover illustration by Marie Thomas

EDITOR

Marcia C. Landskroener M’02 ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Wendy Mitman Clarke M’16 P’20 ASSISTANT EDITOR

Karen M. Jones CREATIVE ART DIRECTOR

Dainius Jasinevicius š STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Shane Brill ’03 M’11 CLASS NOTES EDITOR

Erin Oittinen EDITORIAL CONSULTANT

Rolando Irizarry CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Julia Armstrong ’15 Lindsay Bergman-Debes ’07 Tamalene Mitman Catalina Righter ’17 ORIGINAL MAGAZINE REDESIGN

B. Creative Group agencybcg.com PRINTING AND MAILING

Dartmouth Printing Company

36

Washington College Magazine (USPS 667-260) is published three times a year

by Washington College, 300 Washington Avenue, Chestertown, Maryland 21620, in February, June, and October. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Washington College Magazine, 300 Washington Avenue, Chestertown, MD 21620-1197. Copyright 2017 Washington College.

Dear Readers, O

ver the past five decades, thanks to Sophie Kerr’s largesse, young writers at Washington College have enjoyed the privilege of meeting prominent literary figures working in all genres.

The display of literary genius on our campus has been nothing short of astonishing — from dramatist Edward Albee and beat poet Allen Ginsberg, to American novelist Toni Morrison and Irish poet Eamon Grennan, to children’s author Lemony Snickett and graphic novelist Neil Gaiman.

Each has a story to tell, and lessons to impart.

Yet until just recently, Sophie Kerr herself has been relegated to the dusty attic of remembrance, the pages of her 23 novels and 500 short stories barely ruffled in 50 marcia c. years. She had become known as landskroener the spinster aunt who escaped m’02 Maryland’s Eastern Shore to find fame and fortune in New York City. The “cat lady” who wrote light fiction for women’s magazines. The writer whose literary significance was trifling. Turns out, we’ve underestimated her.

With this issue, on the occasion of the golden anniversary of the Sophie Kerr legacy, we tell her story.

Sophie Kerr is the woman whose life — and whose stories — subverted the patriarchal status quo of the early 20th century. She was widely traveled and widely read, drawn to European modernists and other contemporaries experimenting with modernist ambiguity. And we let Sophie Kerr speak for herself. I’m delighted to offer one of Kerr’s short stories, “This Little Girl,” in its entirety.

Happy reading.

Address correspondence to Washington College Magazine, 300 Washington Avenue, Chestertown, MD 21620, or by email to mlandskroener2@washcoll.edu. (Telephone: 410-778-7797). www.washcoll.edu. PRINTED IN THE USA.

www.washcoll.edu WashingtonCollege @washcoll WashingtonCollege @washcoll

SPRING 2017

3

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP Shreyas Suresh ’18 and Jonathan Wendeborn ’17 are ready for their power lunch with Mr. Buffett. A magician (center) entertains (from left) Professor Brian Scott, Jiazhi Li ’17, Jen Tordella ’17, Brooke Burghardt ’17, and President Sheila Bair during dinner. Warren Buffett greets the full Washington College delegation.

Watch the video about the trip at bit.ly/wcOmaha

4

WASHINGTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE

PRESIDENT'S LETTER

A Private Audience With the Oracle of Omaha by sheila c. bair

ABOVE Sheila Bair mentors the women on the trip.

H

ere at Washington College, we pride ourselves on giving students rare access to some of the great men and women of our time. Luminaries from all walks of life visit our campus with some frequency. Yet when word spread that, in January, I would accompany a group of business and economics students to meet Warren Buffett, everyone recognized this as an especially momentous opportunity. It was as if we were going to visit our grandfather — a very wise and pragmatic man who has much to teach us about investing, decisionmaking, and the importance of the human element of business.

We are so fortunate that, after the financial crisis, there are still a few financial leaders who have consistently distinguished themselves with market acumen guided by a strong ethical compass, and who deserve the respect and admiration of our aspiring future leadership. Warren Buffett and his partner, Charlie Munger, clearly are two.

We’ve sent student delegations to Berkshire Hathaway’s annual stockholders

meeting in previous years, but this was the big league. And the students who competed for the privilege to attend were proven power hitters, able to hold their own during a twohour question-and-answer session as part of an audience that included MBA candidates from top programs such as Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business and University of Virginia’s Darden. Seniors Audrey Utchen and Taylor Frey, for instance, distinguished themselves by asking questions focused, respectively, on work-life balance and defying “group think” when making and sticking to decisions.

I had the privilege of getting to know Warren Buffett during the 2008 financial crisis. (We also share a mutual friend in Carol Loomis, the legendary Fortune reporter who penned Buffett's shareholder letter for many years.) But every time I hear him speak, I am inspired by his straightforward, common-sense approach to investing; his consistent search for real, long-term value in picking companies to invest in; and his lifelong disdain for the “quick profit” strategies that generally involve leverage and speculation that trip up so many investors.

This visit was no exception. He pointed to basic research tools like Moody's investor guide for picking stocks, and told students that every one of them could do what he and his partner do. Successful investing is less about IQ and more about the character and courage needed to identify true value and stick to your judgments. This free-ranging discussion went well beyond his investing strategy. Here are some insights and views he offered in response to student questions: He would never bail out a president of the United States if he/she were in financial trouble. Such a step would simply be too fraught with potential conflict and peril.

His advice to any president in that kind of situation would be to come clean with the American public.

What keeps him up at night? Weapons of mass destruction, particularly in

the hands of North Korea. On the most sleepless nights? Income inequality and the increasing difficulty of markets to more widely distribute wealth and income gains.

What's the secret to a happy, successful life? Marrying well. Here, Buffett was particularly touching in talking about his beloved late wife.

He's still optimistic about the American economy and our nation’s future, taking his famous "long view" of our potential, given his faith in our basic constitutional framework and democratic form of governance.

He's worried about health insurance premiums going up this year substantially.

He views high employee health costs as a bigger drag on U.S. companies’ ability to compete globally and create U.S jobs than corporate taxes, noting that health care costs consume 17.8 percent of GDP while corporate taxes only consume 2.19 percent.

In this short column, I can't do justice to all of the pearls of wisdom Buffett shared with us, but I hope you have enjoyed this small window onto what was a magical day for Washington College students in Omaha.

I hope you particularly appreciated these shared tidbits from the Oracle of Omaha, compliments of Washington College Magazine. It's quite a bargain. In a recent charity auction, his faithful followers made a bid exceeding $3.46 million for the privilege of a private lunch with Warren Buffett.

The fact that Buffett would take the better part of a day to spend time with students, and inspire them with his successful life's experiences, says something about the man’s integrity and character. The gesture was all the more impressive because he had flown in from New York the night before, after attending a gala in his honor celebrating a new HBO documentary about his life. That’s TV worth watching.

Sheila Bair is the former chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

SPRING 2017

5

The unforgiving and nationless continent of Antarctica serves as the perfect point of entry for considering our relationship with the natural world.

Inspired by his visits to this frozen landscape, Paul D. Miller, a.k.a. DJ Spooky, created The Book of Ice to offer his visual and textual meditations on Antarctica as a place and metaphor.

THIS PAGE Paul D. Miller, an electronic and experimental hip hop musician who performs under the stage name DJ Spooky, visited Antarctica, where he recorded sounds and images from a continent that is melting. He produced the film Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica and a gallery installation, “Manifesto for a People’s Republic of Antarctica,” that incorporate his field recordings and audio samples with print design and propaganda, he says, “to show how exploration at the edge of the world is a prism to view how nations look at one another, and how art itself is a highly politicized medium.” His latest project, The Book of Ice, uses Antarctica as a point of entry for contemplating humanity’s relationship with the natural world.

“This book casts a new and different light on the frozen terrain that has long been Earth’s most mysterious region. The book amplifies Antarctica’s frozen isolation, punctured now with ever greater frequency, and reveals its own set of hidden connections, remixing ice anew.”

—Brian Greene, author of The Hidden Reality

US $29.95 UK £21.00 CA $34.00 ISBN: 978-1-9356131-4-5 52995 9 781935 613145

6

WASHINGTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE

PAUL D. MILLER » AKA DJ SPOOKY TH AT SUBLIMINAL KID «

CAMPUS NEWS

Remixing the Residency What do Antarctica, social justice, and music have in common? As DJ Spooky demonstrated during his three-day residency, each poses opportunities for interdisciplinary exploration and interpretation.

By Lindsay Bergman-Debes ’07

C

omposer, multimedia artist, and author Paul D. Miller brought his creative talents to bear in presenting perspectives on topics from climate change to race and offering students different ways of thinking about social justice. The 2016 Frederick Douglass Fellow, who performs as DJ Spooky, was brought to campus through a collaboration among the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, SANDBOX, and the Department of Music.

The first event, “The World of DJ Spooky,” served as an introduction to remix culture and focused on Miller’s album Of Water and Ice. In traveling to Antarctica to paint the acoustic portraits of ice found on the album, Miller wanted “to see what would come out of the collision between city and the most remote parts of this world.” In Antarctica, Miller found stunning beauty on a grand scale, but as he showed photographs from his trip, he pointed out to the audience, “What you’re seeing is devastation. There should be ice.”

Through a combination of lecture and performance, Miller brought to stage the idea of the landscape in sound and data. “I think as the 21st century goes, you’re going to be seeing a lot more artists and creatives thinking about the new palette that data allows us to activate.” Data forms the backbone of his album. Joined on stage by professor Kimberly McCollum on violin and Nicole Spehar on cello, Miller showed the audience in real time how that worked. Using the mathematics of ice and temperature differentials from his trip, he mixed live music on his iPad, combining

algorithmic musical transcription with notated music inspired by Antarctica.

Miller delved further into the idea of data and humanity in his Thursday afternoon demonstration. Using the DJ Spooky iPad app, Miller pulled music from his iPad and the web to make on-the-fly mixes and explain the art of sampling. In one such example, he used “Nuper rosarum flores” by Guillaume Dufay — an isorhythmic motet inspired by the shape of the Florence cathedral — to show that mathematics and data in music date back to the early Renaissance.

In a different take on remix, Miller hosted a Q&A and screening of his radical reinterpretation of the century-old silent film The Birth of a Nation, which was significant for its advancement of modern film but also explicitly racist. Applying the logic of DJ culture, Miller reworks the story and provides the score for his version, Rebirth of a Nation.

“Seeing Rebirth of a Nation was both chilling and inspiring for me, and I think for many of the students in the audience as well,” notes C.V. Starr Center Director Adam Goodheart. “The original 1915 movie, while a landmark in the development of filmmaking, speaks to some of the darkest fears and hatreds in the history of American race relations. But Paul D. Miller proved that through artistic re-appropriation and re-imagination, an old work of art can become something new. He unearthed eloquence and ambivalence that were lurking just under the surface of Griffith’s racist propaganda.”

Listen to DJ Spooky's album, Of Water And Ice, on Free Music Archive bit.ly/DJSpookyIce

“ … you’re going to be seeing a lot more artists and creatives thinking about the new palette that data allows us to activate.”

—DJ Spooky

SPRING 2017

7

CAMPUS NEWS

A Best Value The annual listing in Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine places Washington College among the nation’s best colleges for affordability and academic quality.

F

or the first time, Washington College has been ranked among colleges and universities providing the best combination of economic value and academic quality in the annual Top 300 Best College Values by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine.

In addition to ranking 232nd among the top 300 institutions out of 1,200 surveyed, Washington College is listed 91st among the top 100 liberal arts colleges nationally.

“Washington College has long been known for its academic excellence; now, we are gaining traction through our steady efforts to control costs and focus on affordability,” says College President Sheila Bair. “Our tuition freeze for the past year was certainly a factor in this achievement. So was our performance within the salary yardstick metric, as our graduates go on to careers that provide excellent income. I’m extremely proud and gratified to see Washington College in Kiplinger’s 2017 rankings, as it directly reflects our hard work to make an exceptional liberal arts education more accessible to all students.”

8

WASHINGTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE

Using information on nearly 1,200 public and private institutions provided to Peterson’s College Data, Kiplinger’s quality measures — which are weighted at 55 percent of total points — include the admission rate, the percentage of students who return for sophomore year, the student-to-faculty ratio, and the fouryear graduation rate. Cost criteria — weighted at 45 percent — include sticker price, financial aid, and average debt at graduation.

To provide some measure of how an institution’s graduates fare in the real world, Kiplinger’s uses Education Department data on students who received federal financial aid and examines median income of those students 10 years after graduation.

“There’s no way around it: College is expensive, and it’s going to stay that way for a long time,” says Janet Bodnar, editor of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine. “So, with our rankings — which weigh affordability alongside academic quality — our goal is to help students and their parents understand what’s really worth the price.”

Tuition is FixedFor4 College President Sheila Bair’s latest salvo in combating the prohibitive cost of college is FixedFor4, a fixed-rate tuition plan that guarantees the cost of college tuition for four years.

Tackling issues of college access, affordability, and student loan debt has become the touchstone of the Bair administration since she took office in August 2015.

Here’s how FixedFor4 will work: Beginning next fall, tuition will increase 2 percent — to $43,702 — to match the respective rise in the consumer price index. That will be the fixed rate for freshmen who graduate in four years, as well as for students already enrolled.

Beginning in the fall of 2018, tuition increases for freshman classes will be evaluated annually, but the rate, once set, will remain fixed for the students’ four years.

The cost of room and board is not part of tuition and will continue to change annually depending on economic factors, but President Bair is committed to keeping cost increases at minimal levels necessary for maintaining quality services and facilities.

“FixedFor4 will help every single Washington College student currently enrolled, and their families,” President Bair says. “With each of these programs — George’s Brigade, Dam the Debt, the Saver’s Scholarship and now, FixedFor4 — Washington College is developing fresh solutions to make a college education more affordable and accessible, and establishing itself as a national leader on addressing these issues.”

New Look at History Heather Calloway, Washington College’s archivist and special collections librarian, and Raven Bishop, instructional technologist, are co-authoring a chapter for the upcoming book Library Go: Augmented Reality in Libraries. Edited by Christine Elliot, Marie Rose, and Jolanda VanArnheim, the book will be published later this year by the American Library Association.

Their chapter, “Augmented Archives: Making Archives and Special Collections Accessible Through Augmented Reality,” describes their ongoing initiative to bring the College Archives collection to life through the use of augmented reality technology. Part of the Library & Academic Technology team in Miller Library, the two have outlined best practices for incorporating augmented reality technology into special collections exhibit curation and instruction.

Growing a New Sound Rich Grouser ’16 and his former high-school bandmates, performing as Hedera, will offer a workshop on campus in early March.

T

hey opened for Andy Grammer when the singer-songwriter performed on the Washington College campus in 2014. Two years later, they recorded their first album in Nashville and began filming music videos. Now, the five young musicians who burst onto the scene during a high-school talent show in New Jersey are building a following for a sound that’s uniquely their own. It could best be described as high-energy funk rock, grounded in the precision of classical music.

Who is Hedera? Soaring vocalist Chris Federici sings in an a cappella group at Wake Forest University. Anthony Formisano, who plays keyboard/piano and guitar, is a classically trained pianist who studied jazz piano at Moravian College. Victor Logan, a computer science major at St. Joseph’s University, is a classically trained guitarist.

Percussionist Shawn Singh, a premed student at University of Pittsburgh, drives the rhythm, occasionally incorporating patterns from traditional Hindustani music. And for bassist Rich Grouser ’16, a music major who played jazz and AfroCuban music and who first learned to record music at Washington College, it is all about immaculate sound.

Grouser and Formisano both graduated from college in May 2016. Federici, Singh, and Logan will graduate this May. They write songs collaboratively by email, using Google Drive to share lyrics and progressions.

“When we play live, it’s such a thrill to get the guys together,” says Grouser. “The lights, the crowd, the energy. You get caught up in it.”

But he is particularly drawn to the recording process, with which he first experimented at WC. “I brought all the guys to WC for a week

in the summer of 2013, and we recorded everything. It was really poorly done. Really clumsy,” Grouser admits. “But we made it work and got it to a friend of ours at Mad Happy Records. Even though it was so raw and unprofessional, he heard something in it that really spoke to him. We knew we had good songs. We just needed to get them professionally engineered.”

With the 2015 Clarence Hodson Prize money from Washington College; an entrepreneurial grant from Wake Forest University, where Federici is studying music and economics; and help from a friend of a friend in Nashville, the band sprang for a week in the FlyByWest recording studio with producer Derek West. For seven days, from 9 a.m. until 11 p.m., the band recorded the seven songs that comprise Helix. When West suggested that “Marching On” would be great as a duet, Grouser asked Jocelyn Faro ’16 to fly down and record the vocals with Federici.

“Fourteen-hour days in the studio — it was a grueling process, but I loved the experience,” Grouser recalls. “It was a big leap for us.

Between that and my internship at Andover Studio in Galena, Maryland, I’m learning enough to record Hedera’s next album. I’ve got a little studio space set up so we can get some quality recordings. Getting the quality right is the most important thing. What is the vibe? What is the sound?

What about each instrument? Is it bright?

Distorted? Full and bass-y? You make all those decisions before you go in the studio.

That’s what excites me so much — the sonic quality that is determined before any editing even happens. If it starts great, the mix can only make it better.”

ABOVE Chris Federici (at left) and Rich Grouser ’16.

Grouser intends to pursue graduate degrees in recording and music production, and in acoustic architecture — and then build his own recording studio that will deliver the sound he’s looking for. It will be a place where all of his artistfriends can be their most creative selves — whether as songwriters, musicians, or graphic designers.

“I have so many talented friends; why not bring them together to do something we all enjoy? I love to imagine that, in five years’ time, we’ll be selfsustaining and successful in what we’re doing, and that we would have made an impact on the music scene in some small way.”

To listen to Hedera’s debut album Helix, visit: hederasojo.bandcamp.com/releases And to see their video submitted for NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest, visit: youtu.be/PFBJHB9Y1mg Logo by Anthony Formisano, Photo by Eric Segal.

SPRING 2017

9

CAMPUS NEWS | BY THE NUMBERS

Sophie’s Purse Every spring, members of the Sophie Kerr Committee typically read 30 portfolios — composed of short stories, collections of poems, travelogues, personal essays, or literary criticism — before convening to choose five finalists for the Sophie Kerr Prize, the nation’s largest undergraduate literary award. Past prize recipients have used the windfall to travel, to pay for graduate school, and to help with living expenses while focusing on their writing. In a public forum on May 19, the evening before Commencement ceremonies, the 2017 finalists will read from their works and the prize winner will be announced.

1%

5% 10%

$2,496,023

10%

12%

Value of the Kerr Endowment

$510,878

$1,845,254

Sophie Kerr’s bequest to Washington College in 1965

Total amount awarded since 1968

25%

22% 15%

Winners’ Current Professions Fiction Writing 25% Teaching 22% Poetry 15% Journalism 12%

$9,000

$65,768

Value of the prize in 1968

Value of the prize in 2017

How the Sophie Kerr Award Stacks Up Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction

$1,000

National Book Award

$10,000

Pulitzer Prize for Literature

$10,000

PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction (1st place)

$15,000

George Washington Prize

$50,000

Sophie Kerr Prize

$63,000

Nobel Prize in Literature

$1,000,000

10

WASHINGTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE

Publishing 10% Higher education communications 10% Advertising/marketing 5% Other (medicine, sustainability)

CAMPUS NEWS

Home to Roost Sometime fairly soon, around mid-March or so, the ospreys will start returning to the Chester River to the nesting sites embedded in their memories, where they’ll reunite with their mates, rebuild their nests, raise their young, and fish from the river. And the full-circle nature of this annual migration has found a parallel in a recent gift to Washington College’s Foreman’s Branch Bird Observatory.

The Kent County Bird Club has donated $2,000 to the observatory at the Chester River Field Research Station at Chino Farms, funds that were part of a trust formed by Daniel Gibson, a former president of Washington College, and Dorothy Mendinhall, the woman who taught Jim Gruber, the station’s director and master bander, how to band birds when he was just a boy. The funds have supported ornithological research and activities in the county.

Gruber speculates that the funds may be directed to help build a new banding station at Chino, which has been in the planning stages for some time. The present banding station is housed in a former pheasant cote, and while it’s rustically charming, it is quite small and limits how many people can visit or work at a time.

Since 1998, the Foreman’s Branch Bird Observatory has banded 242,366 birds. Last year, students and scientists banded 13,138 new birds of 131 species and recaptured nearly 6,000 birds that already had been banded.

These create a long-term data set that can help begin to answer questions not only about birds, but about issues as varied as climate change and infectious disease.

“It had always been a dream of Dottie’s that a long-term banding station in the Chestertown area would be established,” Gruber says. “It would be a place to study ornithology and train new banders, as well as a place to draw researchers to discuss the latest banding techniques and research in the field. The Foreman’s Branch Bird Observatory is accomplishing what she had hoped, and I’m grateful to be part of that.”

From the Archives

By Professor Elizabeth O’Connor

ABOVE This scrapbook was among the books and artifacts Sophie Kerr left to Washington College.

I

n addition to first editions of Sophie Kerr’s 23 novels and multiple volumes from her personal library, Miller Library’s Special Collections houses a unique glimpse into Kerr’s literary and artistic interests in the early 20th century: her commonplace book.

This weighty tome, akin to a modernday scrapbook, contains clippings, draft poems, drawings, and handwritten notes by both Kerr and several friends roughly from 1903 — the date written on the cover — up through World War I. Folded into the front of the book are multiple drawings by the American muralist and illustrator Edwin Austin Abbey, a sarcastic Punch poem by Harry Graham on then-president Theodore Roosevelt, a Collier’s magazine piece on a famous 1910 boxing match in Reno, Nevada, and a 1904 Saturday Evening Post story entitled “The Diary of a Matchmaker.”

The book’s inside cover reveals a large picture of the actress Signora Duse accompanied by a short poem in Kerr’s hand that ambiguously, but hauntingly, concludes: “That all fail not, that all

are not despairing/ That all are not as I, I thank Thee God.” A few pages later, Kerr’s husband, John de Leon Underwood, whom she married in 1904 and divorced four years later, contributes the poems “An Atlantic City Idyl” and “Sophie Golfs.” Poems by William Butler Yeats and Oscar Wilde mingle with color reproductions of Japanese ukioy-e prints and party invitations. While Kerr was primarily a novelist and short-story writer, the book reveals that Kerr was also interested in poetry of all types and frequently attempted writing her own.

In 1914, near the start of World War I, Kerr attempted to place several short patriotic poems in Punch, including one that begins “Milly’s making mufflers by the millions,” but was rejected. However, the book contains several letters of praise from her fans, as well as a cartoon that depicts a woman in furs and a tiara furiously typing while suitors peeking in through the windows entice her with fancy dates, only to be dismissed with a “No Boys! Not until I finish this novel.”

SPRING 2017

11

CAMPUS NEWS

AWP: The Place for Writers to Be

The Man Behind the Museum ABOVE Emma Sovich ’07 and James Allen Hall (in front) pose with the authors whose works were published in Cherry Tree and The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review.

I

n February, the staff of Washington College’s Rose O’Neill Literary House made their annual pilgrimage to the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference. Accompanying them were six student writers— Caroline Harvey ’18, Olivia Libowitz ’18, Caitlyn Maltese ’17, Catalina Righter ’17, Olivia Serio ’17, and Lilian Starr ’17.

AWP is the largest writing conference in the country, typically attracting more than 10,000 writers, professors, editors, publishers, and students of the literary arts. This year’s event was held in Washington, D.C., so it was feasible for the College to send a group of six. The students attended readings and craft panels, and networked with the enormous writing and publishing community represented there.

“AWP is an incredible educational experience, and we are very lucky to be able to support advanced students’ attendance,” says James Allen Hall, director of the literary house. “The Lit House offers about 20 internships now, and we are very proud to be able to give students hands-on experience in the 12

WASHINGTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE

world of literary writing, editing, and publishing.”

The Literary House covered the cost of registration and travel, and, in exchange, students staffed the Bookfair booth, speaking knowledgeably and eloquently about the College and the Literary House. Students received a crash course in marketing and selling Literary House merchandise, including hand-printed letterpress broadsides and chapbooks, trade paperback poetry anthologies, and the College’s national literary journal, Cherry Tree.

Students also helped organize a reading to celebrate the Issue 3 launch of Cherry Tree at Busboys and Poets.

The reading featured Cherry Tree authors Julie Marie Wade, Betty Jo Buro, Rajiv Mohabir, Shara Lessley, and Michael Chin. The Literary House Press partnered with Johns Hopkins University Press, and the reading also celebrated the launch of their newest issue of The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review. The featured Eckleburg readers were Nate Brown, Julia Kolchinsky, L. Ann Dulin, and Vipra Ghimire.

Back in 2014, American historian Lonnie Bunch, founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, first shared with Washington College students his vision for a high-profile museum “that will sing for all of us.” At the end of February 2017, just a few months after the museum’s official opening, Bunch returned to campus to deliver the keynote address during George Washington’s Birthday Convocation.

He received Washington College’s honorary degree, Doctor of Letters, in recognition of his efforts to help us explore what it means to be American and to share how American values like resiliency, optimism, and spirituality are reflected in African American history and culture.

Bunch spent much of the day with students, sitting in on English professor Alisha Knight’s class on African American literature, having lunch with members of the Black Student Union and Cleopatra’s Sisters, and visiting with Chestertown community members and students helping to plan for Museum on Main Street, the Smithsonian’s traveling exhibition coming to Chestertown this spring. The College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience is the lead partner on the project.

Adapted from an original exhibition developed by the National Archives, “The Way We Worked” exhibition explores the role of work in American culture over the past 150 years. The exhibition will open March 31 in the historically significant Sumner Hall, a community center and restored African-American Civil War veterans’ post. The exhibition runs through May 19.

‘‘

CAMPUS NEWS | CITED IN THE NEWS

A Novel Approach

Nixon’s Way

War Stories

“Historians, archivists, and graduate students aren't at the heart of the project. Rather, the research team consists of undergrads from the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College, where the project is based. Undergraduates receive training in oral history, interview people like Tom Noble about their experiences during the war, and then transcribe and preserve the interviews for the future. Along the way, they develop oral history, technology, and critical thinking skills.

“It goes deeper than that, though, says Adam Goodheart, a historian who directs the C.V. Starr Center and oversees the project. ‘A key to the success of this program is that it involves 19-year-olds sitting down with 90-yearolds,’ says Goodheart. ‘An older person often is more comfortable sharing stories with people from that very young generation than they are with people closer in age to them. When they sit down with a group of people who look a lot like their grandchildren, they have a sense of passing along their story to a new generation.’ ” Smithsonian.com writer Erin Blakemore on the Starr Center’s oral history project, StoryQuest, Dec. 6, 2016. http:// bit.ly/2h5Ohhq

“Like Nixon, Trump represents the authoritarian rather than the libertarian proclivities of the right. And he might just be angry and vindictive enough to make conservatives tone down the government bashing and support the kind of measures they would surely excoriate if any Democrat proposed them. It is worth remembering that Nixon helped to usher in the EPA, OSHA, and Amtrak, and he advocated universal health care insurance in his first term in office.

If Trump wishes to improve upon Obamacare and give the American people a sensible and simplified health-care program, he might now be in a perfect position to force it upon his own party’s obstructionists in Congress.

“And the infrastructure spending that Trump advocates might go a long way — if properly implemented — toward assuaging the kind of economic distress that was surely one of the motivating factors within his support base.

“But if Trump’s programs fail to deliver these kinds of results, then a very dark scenario looms.”

History Professor Richard Striner writing for the History News Network. Dec. 11, 2016. http://bit.ly/2hwR8mO

“All of which suggests that if Maryland can find an extra $17.5 million to defray public school tuition costs, it ought to be carefully targeted to help those families who need it the most, either by reducing debt payments or making it possible for students to borrow less. One of the best approaches we've seen so far is at Washington College, where President Sheila C. Bair has recently taken a multi-pronged approach with programs not only to cap tuition (in four-year increments, so incoming students know what's coming) but to match 529 plan investments to reward savers, provide ‘George's Brigade’ scholarships for high-performing, low-income students, and invest in an annual ‘Dam the Debt’ campaign to reduce the debt load of the graduating class.

“Ms. Bair seeks to reward good behavior and help those who need it most. That's something a one-size-fits-all blanket tuition cap alone doesn't achieve. The children of billionaires benefit equally with the offspring of police officers and firefighters when the increased cost of a college education is underwritten by taxpayers. Of course, it's not difficult to understand why politicians often choose such a route — it's a chance to put their name on a little payout to potential voters and not just the low-income variety.”

From an editorial in the Baltimore Sun about the issue of student debt and how Maryland’s legislators are responding to the problem. Jan. 17, 2017. http://bsun.md/2jD9HpM

Criminal Nature?

“Wu and his colleagues ‘jump right to the conclusion that they found an underlying pattern in nature — that facial structure predicts criminality. That’s a really reckless conclusion,’ says Kyle Wilson, an assistant professor of mathematics at Washington College who has studied computer vision. Wilson also says this algorithm may be simply reflecting the bias of the humans in one particular justice system, and might do the same thing in any other country. ‘The same data and tools could be used to better understand [human] biases based on appearance that are at play in the criminal justice system,’ Wilson says. ‘Instead, they have taught a computer to reproduce those same human biases.’”

Kyle Wilson, assistant professor of mathematics, in a Scientific American story about how artificial intelligence picks up bias from its human creators. Dec. 29, 2016. http://bit.ly/2ijCkED

SPRING 2017

13

FA C U LT Y

The Rise of Modernism As Washington College prepares to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Sophie Kerr’s literary legacy, students in professor Elizabeth O’Connor’s Rise of Modernism class take a fresh look at Kerr’s work.

I

n the last half-century since Sophie Kerr’s death, the prevailing wisdom in literary circles has been that the prolific author wrote light fiction for popular audiences. Her short stories appeared in popular magazines of her day, including Saturday Morning Post, Harper’s, and the Women’s Home Companion. Her novels with female heroines met with little critical acclaim and gradually fell out of print. As successful as she was, her literary reputation has tarnished with age.

But, says Elizabeth O’Connor, an assistant professor of English who teaches modernism, “we’ve very much underestimated her.” Like other middle-brow modernists who appealed to lowerand middle-class female audiences, Kerr was overlooked “partly because she was a woman, but also because she didn’t market her work to the more high-brow literary avant garde.”

Tracing the beginnings of modernism from the 1890s to 1922, O’Connor’s class read the works of Henry James, Joseph Conrad, George Egerton, Sarah Grand, and Sophie Kerr, a woman historically excluded from modernist literary canon. On the syllabus were two of Kerr’s short stories, “This Little Girl” (see pages 28-35) and “Rose and Louise Were Friends,” published in 1915 and 1917, respectively.

English major Brooke Schultz ’18 found Kerr’s stories to be “a lot more readable and funny” than the work of her contemporaries. She was also struck

by Kerr’s feminist focus.

“Sophie Kerr wrote over 500 short stories. She was churning out work for public consumption.

There’s a misconception that if someone is that prolific, and they’re wildly popular with a broad readership, their literary value must not be that great,” Schultz says. “But I thought her feminism was really cool. She was telling stories about women going out and doing their own thing. And while there are flaws in her feminism, which tended to 14

WASHINGTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE

ABOVE Pictured in the Sophie Kerr Room, archivist Heather Calloway (far left) and English professor Elizabeth O'Connor (seated) examine Sophie Kerr's scrap-book with Emily Holt ’18 and Brooke Schultz ’18.

Photo by Tamzin B. Smith Portrait Photography.

focus exclusively on white, privileged women, she was putting ideas out there about career women and the importance of the creative arts.”

In her “deceptively simple” stories of female relationships and romance, O’Connor says, Kerr was also weaving in elements of modernism.

As Emily Holt ’18 notes, elements of modernist literature “symbolized that the world was changing, and Sophie Kerr was relatively progressive in her ideologies. Reading Sophie Kerr in the context of a larger social scheme, she represented a tremendous change in literature and society as a whole.”

Watch WC’s reinterpretation of Sophie Kerr’s life story in CAFFEINATED HISTORY Washcoll.edu/sophiekerr

“Sophie Kerr was overlooked partly because she was a woman, but also because she didn’t market her work to the more high-brow literary avant garde.”

—Elizabeth O’Connor

Neuroscience Matters

James Allen Hall in the House

J ABOVE Mike Kerchner

Mike Kerchner, associate professor of psychology and the former president of Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience, has been elected executive director of Nu Rho Psi, the national honor society in neuroscience.

Since its inception 10 years ago, the organization has been instrumental in establishing local chapters on college campuses around the country and awarding grants to support undergraduate research projects. Today, Nu Rho Psi supports 70 chapters across the United States, at institutions ranging from small liberal arts colleges to large public universities.

Kerchner expects that number to grow dramatically — and hopes that Washington College will be among them.

“We’ve had a very successful concentration in behavioral neuroscience since 1996,” he says. “In a recent curricular assessment, Washington College identified majors that could bolster our distinctiveness among our peers. Neuroscience was among them, so I am hopeful that we’ll consider establishing neuroscience as a major in the not-too-distant future.”

His association with Nu Rho Psi will be beneficial in that regard. “Through my work with this group, I will be able to learn more about how we can strengthen the neuroscience program here, and provide advice to our students as they look for post-graduate research and educational opportunities. As executive director of Nu Rho Psi, I will be in regular contact with faculty and students at successful and highlyregarded neuroscience programs. That’s a great resource to have.”

ames Allen Hall is well known at Washington College for his unabashed enthusiasm and his gentle yet inexorable ability to coax even the shyest of students to commit the act of bravery that is writing a poem. Now, as the new director of the Rose O’Neill Literary House, Hall hopes to infuse the heart of the College’s literary and writing community with that same exuberance.

Having served as interim director since June, Hall was tapped in October 2016 to succeed Jehanne Dubrow.

“I did not expect this. I hoped and dreamed. This is a dream job for me,” says Hall, an associate professor of English and acclaimed creative writer who joined the faculty in 2013.

Hall’s first poetry collection, Now You’re the Enemy (University of Arkansas Press 2008), won awards from the Lambda Literary Foundation, the Texas Institute of Letters, and the Fellowship of Southern Writers. His book of lyric personal essays I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well will be published later this year.

Hall has earned fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts and from the New York Foundation for the Arts, as well as the Sewanee and Bread Loaf Writers’ conferences. He has edited literary magazines including Gulf Coast, Blueline, and Cherry Tree: A National Journal @ Washington College, for which he now serves as the editor-in-chief as well as the nonfiction editor. His poems and personal essays have appeared widely, most recently in New England Review, A Public Space, American Poetry Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Story.

Hall has implemented a few changes, such as opening the Lit House in the evenings for students who want to come by and read, work, or just hang out. Also

ABOVE James Allen Hall

new are movie nights, when students can watch literary adaptations such as The Color Purple and The Silence of the Lambs on the big screen.

“I’d like to see a little more ‘home’ in the house,” Hall says. “I’d like to start a Scrabble tournament, maybe a literary trivia night. I’m really interested in things like that.”

Hall will continue to teach one class per semester, and he wants to continue to make unique opportunities available to students through pre-orientation and the school year. For instance, last fall he arranged for students to travel with him to Newark, New Jersey, to attend the 30th Anniversary Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, where students met and listened to over 50 nationally and internationally renowned poets.

He has also been instrumental in bringing some of those same writers, such as Mark Doty, Jericho Brown, and Claudia Rankine, to work with students and read at the Lit House as part of the Sophie Kerr Series.

SPRING 2017

15

STUDENTS

A Future So Bright An externship at Columbia University over fall break helped Vanna Labi ’19 solidify her plans to pursue a career in the field of public health.

ABOVE Vanna Labi ’19 greets visitors in the Center for Career Development. Photo by Tamzin B. Smith Photography

V

anna Labi ’19, a double major in biology and economics, has no trouble seeing her future from here.

It likely includes a public health summer internship through Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, where she externed last fall, and a double minor in chemistry and public health. Her studies will culminate in a medical degree as well as a master’s degree in public health.

She’s already well on her way. The firstyear student arrived at Washington College last fall with 56 college credits from her high school in Asheville, North Carolina.

“The state offers early-college programs designed for students who want to get ahead in acquiring a college degree,” Labi explains.

“After completing the five-year program, I graduated with a high-school diploma and an associate degree in science. It was very rigorous, and the program really prepared me to jump right into my undergraduate studies.”

The fact that her enrollment last fall coincided with Washington College’s launch of a public health minor is no coincidence.

16

WASHINGTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE

“I loved Washington College when I first visited, but the lack of public health coursework would have been a deal-breaker for me.”

As a student employee of the Center for Career Development, she also has ready access to new opportunities as they arise.

She applied for the externship at Columbia, where she says she got a lot of ideas for her joint senior thesis in biology and economics.

She also made some great connections.

“I attended a lecture exploring international, economic, and social factors that affect the rate of obesity, and then had lunch with current graduate students and, conveniently, a professor who sits on the admissions committee for my top choice summer internship. Having the opportunity to speak with him boosted my confidence in applying for such programs and hopefully improved my candidacy for the internship.

It was an incredible networking opportunity among many others that I have at my disposal through the internship/externship program here at Washington College.”

Clarke Wins Science Writing Fellowship What happens when you spend your early childhood traveling the seas? For Kailani Clarke ’20, who lived with her family aboard a 45-foot sailboat for five years, cruising heightened her awareness of human impact on the natural world and helped inform her decision to live her life as an environmental advocate.

“Since I was really young, I knew I wanted to be a marine biologist,” Clarke says. “Traveling as we did — through the Bahamas, Central America, Bermuda, and along the East Coast — I got to experience the wonders of the world, especially the marine world. I also got to see firsthand the effects of anthropogenic climate change, pollution, and environmental negligence. I’ve never been to a beach — no matter how remote — where there wasn’t trash.”

This February, Clarke took another step forward in her advocacy work for the planet, as a National Association of Science Writers (NASW) Undergraduate Travel Fellow. She was one of 10 undergraduates from around the country selected to attend the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston. In addition to hearing from world-renowned speakers on topical and big-picture issues scientists are grappling with today, Clarke was mentored by a national science journalist. Her feature story will be published on the NASW website.

Clarke also was invited to interview with editors from top magazines, research institutes, national labs, and other science communication outlets during an internship fair. Past recruiters include Science, Nature, Science News, and Scientific American.

“As the political conversation goes on and there persists this notion in some circles that climate change is not something to worry about, I’m learning just how important scientific writing becomes,” says Clarke, who intends to pursue a double major in environmental science and anthropology. “There are scientists who see the end of the world as we know it, if we continue down this path.”

Following the Footsteps of History For two days in November, a group from Washington College checked into the second floor of New York’s famous Stonewall Inn, relishing the site’s legendary reputation in LGBT civil rights history.

By Catalina Righter ’17

I

n the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, a police raid on a gay club on New York City’s Christopher Street turned violent.

For patrons of the Stonewall Inn and their sympathizers, that night was a tipping point in the fight against gay oppression.

Nearly 50 years later, a group of 14 students toured the Greenwich Village neighborhood where it all began. Their guide was David Carter, Washington College’s Patrick Henry Writing Fellow and author of Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution.

Carter brought his insights on the crucial 1969 Stonewall Uprising and its broader context framing the marginalization of homosexuality.

“For many years now, I have been aware that the history of the LGBT civil rights movement is not seen as legitimate United States history or as legitimate civil rights history,” Carter says.

One of the most valuable parts of the trip for students was the opportunity to meet with leaders, activists, historians, and journalists of the movement, from those who were part of the riots at Stonewall in 1969 to those who are championing LGBT rights today.

Carter planned the trip’s itinerary along with Pat Nugent, deputy director of the Starr Center. “If students were going to travel all the way to New York City, where so much

important LGBT civil rights history happened,” Carter says, “we wanted them to meet as many persons who were involved in those key moments as possible.”

The weekend was packed with activities; the group spent time exploring the historic neighborhood, viewed 1980s Keith Haring murals at the LGBT Center, and toured a "Gay Gotham" exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York.

Caroline Harvey ’18, a research assistant for Carter, was excited to visit the site of events she has spent months researching. “The lineup of speakers was amazing, particularly the opportunity to hear Ann Northrop speak about her work during the AIDS crisis. The weekend was so exhilarating that I didn't realize how tired I was until we got home and had an opportunity to rest,” she says.

"All of it was amazing,” echoes Naomi Black ’18. “Just being in those places with those people — it’s like being able to meet Lincoln or Rosa Parks! It was absolutely unforgettable.”

For Carter, one of the most important goals of sharing Stonewall’s history is to “counter and undercut” misconceptions about that night and its context. “For any really important event in history,” he says, “the facts are always going to be more powerful than any Hollywood or politically driven narrative that is not based on credible evidence.”

ABOVE Students explored New York's West Village, famous still for its diversity and dedication to tolerance and inclusion.

SPRING 2017

17

STUDENTS

In Tune With the World From sea shanties and Neil Young to Batá drumming, Jordana Qi ’18 is following a musical path of her own composition.

F

or music and psychology major Jordana Qi ’18, Sting’s Broadway musical flop The Last Ship was actually a spark of genius that inspired four years of academic inquiry. Faced with the prospect of a 20-page research paper for professor Jon McCollum’s Theory and Method in Ethnomusicology class and a seven-hour train ride to a family member’s wedding, the freshman Qi immersed herself in the soundtrack about the troubled lives of shipbuilders in a struggling British town.

“I’m a huge fan of musical theatre, so I promised myself that if I got all my schoolwork finished before leaving for the wedding, I could buy the soundtrack.”

By the time her train rolled into Boston, she could sing along with the soundtrack, which reflected the traditional music of the northeast region of England where Sting grew up. She also had the premise for her research paper.

“I started thinking, ‘This story happened less than 100 years ago, and Sting was using sea shanties to help tell it,’” Qi recalls. “I wanted to see how this historical genre is being preserved in today’s musical culture.

One of my classmates, Lexie Sumner ’15, who lives near Mystic, Connecticut, put me in touch with some musicians who perform during the Sea Music Festival there every year. They bring in musicians from all over the world — Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands. It’s a really cool experience.”

With the support of a Gerda Blumenthal grant, Qi attended the Mystic Seaport Sea Music Festival and interviewed musicians Bob Walser and Cliff Haslam, a Smithsonian Folkways artist. She also attended an academic symposium that illuminated the expansive breadth of the genre that includes songs of the American Northeast, the Pacific Northwest, the Great Lakes, and the English and Irish coasts.

18

WASHINGTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE

ABOVE Jordana Qi ’18 and Philip Meyer, a presenter at the Sea Music Festival, visit the seaport in Mystic, Connecticut.

The pivotal moment that solidified Qi’s academic path came when the associate director of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, Atesh Sonneborn, visited Professor McCollum’s class and welcomed internship applications.

“That was it for me,” Qi says. “I declared a music major with a minor in ethnomusicology and applied for [and landed] the internship. That summer, I lived at American University and commuted downtown to Smithsonian Folkways, which is best described as a cross between a museum and a record label.”

Working in the marketing department, Qi wrote abstracts and blurbs for album covers and helped with preparations for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, held every summer on the National Mall. Here, amid the throngs of visitors, she encountered a Latin jazz musician, John Santos, known for Afro-Cuban Batá drumming — a genre of particular interest to music professor Ken Schweitzer. She also made another intellectual connection of personal relevance.

“I really appreciated that the Smithsonian considered how to make the festival universal for everyone — visitors with visual and hearing impairments,

mobility issues, autism. I’ve done some volunteer work with the visually impaired, but I was not expecting my interest in disability and accessibility to cross over into my interest in music.”

Qi had already studied the History of Disabilities in the United States with Patrick Henry Fellow Benjamin Irvin, which led to a conversation with music professor John Leupold about his interest in teaching music theory to students with visual impairments.

That led to a two-week research opportunity — funded by the College’s Clarence Hodson Prize in Music — with Phamaly Theatre Company in Denver, a performing arts group formed entirely of people with disabilities from across the spectrum. The group will be staging a musical production this summer.

“There are both medical and social models of disability,” Qi says. “The medical model considers disability something to be fixed. The social model accepts people as they are. Disability gives you a different way of moving through the world. That’s something I would not have considered before. I’m interested in observing how disability affects the rehearsal process and how it is used in performance.”

Working at the Smithsonian When a dream internship turns into a dream job, students usually point to their Washington College connections. It happened for Bethany Palkovitz ’16, an art history major who spent her summer as a curatorial research intern at the Smithsonian American Art Museum under the expert guidance of Eleanor Harvey, the senior curator there who happens to be a Washington College parent.

“The Smithsonian is fortunate; we get our pick of interns who are at colleges from all over the country and, in fact, from around the world,” says Harvey. “I can say without exaggeration that the three students who have worked for me held their own and outperformed students from universities whose names may carry a little more weight. It is quite clear that the research and critical thinking skills that these kids are being taught at Washington College vault them to the top when it comes time for them to do more than just chase down my ideas, but actually bring their own ideas to the table.”

Impressed with Palkovitz’s research skills, Harvey offered her a year-long position as a curatorial research assistant to continue her work on the Alexander von Humboldt exhibit, which Palkovitz happily accepted.

Palkovitz was given the opportunity to work under Harvey through the Comegys Bight Summer Internship Program, which places up to 10 students each year in fields related to American history and culture.

Southwest Storyteller Traveling to sacred spaces in Native American history as part of the Southwest Seminar, anthropology major Barbara MacGuigan ’18 found that the most important part of the trip was the human element. “The ruins were beautiful, but for me, talking with native people, hearing their stories, was most inspiring,” says MacGuigan.

She and her classmates rafted down the San Juan River, hiked in Chaco Canyon, and visited Durango, Santa Fe, Mesa Verde, and the Navajo Nation. One night around the campfire, a rafting guide told a tale of Navajo folklore about skinwalkers — people who can transform into any animal. This was the inspiration for MacGuigan’s own story, Ghost Sickness.

“My goal," she says, “was to write a piece grounded in native culture that also encompassed the feel of the place we visited.”

The Paper Trail Ryan Manning’s interdisciplinary approach to the study of the written word has taken him from the history of papermaking to digital publishing technology. by Tammalene Mitman

ABOVE Ryan Manning ’17

F

or his senior capstone Experience, Ryan Manning ’17 is translating the centuries-old craft of hand papermaking into a greener scientific procedure.

His experiments in the transformation of bark to paper seem an appropriate reflection of four years of study — and change.

“My intention is to try to take a more scientific approach to the established materials and techniques of hand papermaking and try to make small improvements from a green chemistry perspective — water usage, material usage, toxicity to humans and the environment, efficiency,” he explains.

He’s already done so much. Manning, a dual major in chemistry and English with a minor in creative writing, has been an intern and manager of Pegasus, president of the Writers’ Union, treasurer of the Veterans Association, and is president of WIGS, the college gaming club. As a summer intern at the Rose O’Neill Literary House, he coproduced events bringing webcomic artist Danielle Corsetto and young-adult author Christa Desir to campus.

Now that the activities, labs, and lectures are coming to an end, Manning was to have jumped into graduate school, pursuing a fine arts degree or conducting chemical research.

But his plans have changed.

As a fledgling Lit House intern, Manning learned how to use Adobe InDesign, editing and designing the Sophie Kerr Prize Anthology 2013 & 2014 by himself. He has, he discovered, a talent for it.

Two professors hired him to copyedit an anthology of essays. More recently, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research hired him to lay out a 330-page research report, “Renewable Maryland,” on a tight deadline. “That was really great,” Manning says. “It was a bigger project than I’d ever done before, and I’d never done something that scientific before — lots of figures and charts. I know a lot more about what my limits are, where my skills are, and how quickly I can work.”

It’s work he loves to do, an unexpected benefit of his education. He may still go to grad school, he says, but he’s leaning toward rhetoric, to enhance and enable his career as an editor and designer.

SPRING 2017

19

20

WASHINGTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE

The Sophie Kerr Prize gets a lot of attention.

But it’s the other half of Kerr’s legacy — the Gift — that cultivates and nurtures the writing heart of Washington College.

by Wendy Mitman Clarke M’16 P’20 illustration by Dainius Jasinevičius

SPRING 2017

21

W

hen Claudia Rankine came to Washington College in September 2015, her book Citizen: An American Lyric had recently won the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and was a finalist for the National Book Award. It was the only book of poetry ever listed as a New York Times bestseller for nonfiction, and it was chosen as the first-year read for the Class of 2019.

That the book, which is a hybrid poetry and essay form, was momentous from a literary perspective was clear. But it was the backstory of Rankine’s talk in Decker Theatre — when she challenged every person in that hall to examine their roles, conscious or unconscious, in the institutional racism that she argued continues to dominate American culture — that made her visit to Washington College one of the most powerful events of the academic year.

Just five months earlier, Baltimore had erupted in riots at the death of Freddie Gray, and it had been nearly a year since the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, helped ignite the national conversation about police violence against young black men. That conversation was reaching a fevered pitch by September 2015, although it all seemed quite distant from the relative quiet of the upper Eastern Shore and Washington College’s campus.

Until Rankine, invited by the Sophie Kerr Committee, the Black Studies Program, and the Dean’s Office, read from Citizen. And, in the course of her talk, said, “We cannot let the dominant culture curtail our humanity. And then call that level of aggression and violence normal.

It’s really unacceptable to allow those moments of aggression to be read as normal.”

The next day, she sat down with a small group of students and faculty in the Rose O’Neill Literary House to discuss elements of craft.

“Mind-blowing,” is how Emma Sovich ’08, now a visiting assistant professor in English teaching creative writing and book arts, described Rankine’s visit. “That we’re exposing our students to that! Having these really cutting-edge people coming here is big league.”

Sovich won the Sophie Kerr Prize in 2008 and went on to earn two MFAs from the University of Alabama, in book arts and creative writing. She says winning the prize was metamorphic for her, validating 22

WASHINGTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE

her purpose as a writer, and, from a more practical perspective, acting as a financial safety net that allowed her more freedom and choice in navigating her post-graduate path. But there’s no question in her mind and those of others in the College’s writing program — past and present — that the most powerful and influential part of Sophie Kerr’s 50-year legacy at Washington College has little to do with the prize, and everything to do with all of the other programming it enables and the culture of writing it nurtures.

“The prize is so splashy, so large, so lifechanging for one student,” says Kathryn Moncrief, chair of the Department of English. “The really important part is the other half, the endowment, which has created opportunities for so many students …. It is always signaling that writing matters here, [especially] when someone like Claudia Rankine reads here — it was the book of the moment. And she was here. Citizen was our first-year book supported by Sophie Kerr funds.”

When she died in 1965, Sophie Kerr designated Washington College a residual beneficiary with a half-million-dollar trust fund. As set out in her will, half of the annual disbursement of the fund would go to the prize, given to one senior whose work shows the most potential for future literary endeavor. But the second half —what Kerr called “the Gift”— arguably has had the greater impact in creating an ethos of literature and writing that underpins, cultivates, and fosters the College’s writing culture and its reputation as a writing campus.

“It pervades everything that happens here,” says James Allen Hall, associate professor of English and director of the Rose O’Neill Literary House. “We’re known as the writing college because the Sophie Kerr endowment allows us to bring really renowned writers who give readings and lectures, and who also meet with students about their writing or spend time with them talking about craft.”

“The legacy of Sophie Kerr made the writing life at Washington unique mostly because, to me, the funds helped create an atmosphere of creativity,” says Tim Marcin ’13, an English major with minors in business and creative writing who won the Sophie Kerr Prize that year. “I loved being around my colleagues and learning from passionate professors. People who love good writing are drawn to WAC, and I can't stress

enough how much that shaped my college experience.”

The gift enables the Sophie Kerr Lecture Series, through which hundreds of writers have visited the campus over the past 50 years. A walk through the Lit House, where the posters and broadsheets announcing their visits are framed and hung, leaves avid readers slack-jawed that writers of such caliber would make their way to a small campus tucked into the rural corner of the upper Eastern Shore. Toni Morrison. Allen Ginsberg. William Burroughs. Billy Collins.

Peter Matthiessen. Jane Smiley. Edward Albee. Gwendolyn Brooks. Joyce Carol Oates. Tim O’Brien. Donald Hall. Jonathan Franzen. Robert Pinsky. And, more recently, Mark Doty. Jacqueline Woodson. Jericho Brown. Lauren Groff. Claudia Rankine.

(See the comprehensive list at https://www. washcoll.edu/departments/english/sophiekerr-legacy/visiting-writers.php ) “Part of building the writing community here has been bringing writers to campus — from emerging writers to National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winners — to have conversations about and create our culture of writing,” Moncrief says. “They model writing, have conversations with students.”

“I went on to a very fine graduate program at a very large university, and I've since taught in a number of highly rated writing programs, and none of them can match both the quality of the reading series Sophie's gift made possible and the intimate involvement undergraduates had (and, I hope, still have) with those visitors,” says Peter Turchi ’82, who won the Sophie Kerr Prize in 1982 and has gone on to publish stories in top reviews including Tin House and Ploughshares, and to teach fiction and nonfiction at the highly regarded MFA programs at Warren Wilson College and the University of Houston.

“Having the country's greatest writers drop by every month or so was so common that we had no idea how unique our opportunities were. Just off the top of my head, I think of hearing Allen Ginsberg respond to my (dreadful) poetry, listening to C. Michael Curtis, the fiction editor of The Atlantic Monthly, dissect my fiction, sitting beside Gwendolyn Brooks in church, grilling hamburgers with William Gass …. In graduate school, we were lucky if visiting writers came to one of our classes.”

“I sat knee-to-knee with Li-Young Lee in the Lit House living room,” says Sarah

the plight of the African American in a way that’s so beautiful.” A Maryland native, Wicker worked on the campus newspaper, The Elm, during all four of her years at Washington College and served as editor-in-chief during her senior year.

A Jacoby Grant recipient and Sophie Kerr Prize finalist, she now works as a journalist in the Washington, D.C., area.

PAIGE KUBE ’15 A budding physician, Paige Kube ’15 majored in biology and minored in chemistry, but she discovered that an additional minor in creative writing added to her success. “My writing informs my ability to talk with others and communicate, and my passion for and curiosity of medicine informs my writing.” A Sophie Kerr Prize finalist, Kube continues to write at the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine, where she studies medicine and is an editor for Akesis, a journal of narrative medicine created and run by students. “Washington College was a place where I could explore all my interests, scientific and literary.

“The Literary House was someplace I fell in love with when I first visited the college as a high school student; four years later I was practicing my Sophie Kerr Prize reading in that same place. It held so much in between those two moments, too. To me, it was always a safe space to be whoever you needed to be, hoped to be, and couldn't be elsewhere.”

— Paige Kube ’15 KAY WICKER ’14 Appearances by world-renowned authors and poets are memorialized by a framed broadside of their work, produced on the Lit House letterpress and signed by the visitor. Among the broadsides hanging on the walls is a quote from Sula, by Toni Morrison, who came to the campus in 1987. That visit and her work continue to inspire. When asked what she likes to read, Kay Wicker ’14 said she was a big fan of the Nobel Laureate. "She presents

“Honestly, the Lit House—with its massive bookcase, the chalkboard wall in the kitchen, classes in the sun on the porch, and of course Langston the cat—was the final selling point when I toured the school. That, and of course Birthday Ball.

I think the 16-year-old me recognized that if an institution were going to erect such a place all in the name of writing, then I would receive a great literary foundation."

—Kay Wicker ‘14 AILEEN GRAY ’14 As a Lit House summer intern in arts administration, Aileen Gray ’14 organized and executed her own event. When Penguin and Random House merged, Gray realized that, although students had wonderful writing opportunities and met many authors, meeting editors, literary agents, and publishing executives would also be useful. So she made it happen.

Her event, “Literary Publishing from the Inside Out: How to Publish Your Work & the Work of Others,” brought poet, editor, and professor Mary Biddinger to campus. Today, Aileen works as a senior analyst and the company editor for THRUUE, Inc., a D.C.-based management consulting firm that helps leaders and organizations navigate the intersection of strategy and culture.

"My time interning in the Lit House, and the opportunity to organize an event, set me up for great success in my career post-college."

—Aileen Gray ’14

SPRING 2017

23

Blackman ’02, that year’s Sophie Kerr Prize winner who has since gone on to earn an MFA from Alabama and become the fiction co-editor of DIAGRAM, founding editor of Crashtest, and the director of creative writing at the Fine Arts Center, a public arts high school in Greenville, South Carolina. “I had lunch with Eamon Grennan and drove Gerald Stern over the Bay Bridge from the airport. I watched Sharon Olds and Ruth Stone tell each other jokes on the porch …. I was 22 when I graduated, and I knew that the world contained real people who wrote real poems, still alive, still writing; that writing wasn't the provenance of the ancient but a living expression of the now. That was big. I didn't realize how big until much later.”

“The first writer I remember discovering through WC was the great Junot Diaz,” says Kay Wicker ’14, a Sophie Kerr Prize finalist who now works as a journalist in the Washington, D.C., area. “He’s one of my absolute favorites now. His Pulitzer Prizewinning novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, was our first-year book. A major writer like that in my freshman year made me appreciate how serious WC is about literary endeavors.”

Roy Kesey ’91 says the prize drew him to Washington College because “I didn’t know there were places in the world where writing mattered so much. That’s what got me here as a student.” But it was when poet Jorie Graham came to read at the Lit House that he had an epiphany about his work. “I never would have had access to brains like that without the Sophie Kerr Gift,” he says.

Kesey, whose short stories, essays, poems, and translations have appeared in over 100 magazines and anthologies, including Best American Short Stories, won an NEA grant for fiction and a PEN/Heim grant for translation. Recently, he has been a writerin-residence at the College — yet another aspect of the Sophie Kerr Gift.

“For the first time, teamed up with the Lit House, we are hosting a writer-in-residence, once every three years,” Moncrief says. “This 24

WASHINGTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE

is a more deeply embedded opportunity for students, that goes beyond the one-time visit, to have someone here all semester teaching a course, being on campus.”

The gift also enables the Sophie Kerr Scholarships, three $1,500 scholarships for matriculating freshmen who’ve shown a strong interest and ability in writing, which they keep each of their four years.

Being a Sophie Kerr Scholar recognizes their potential and also gives them special opportunities with faculty, such as a dinner that happens each fall.

“The faculty is here, and students from each year, and everyone is talking, and the first-year students are like, ‘Wow, I’ve gotten myself into something great,’’’ says Hall. “It really inducts the student into this life of the mind and the power of words.”

Another lesser-known but no less important benefit of the gift is the purchase of books, databases, and periodicals,

Moncrief says. Currently, the fund pays for new books and is used to subscribe to magazines and English-related academic periodicals and databases — all of which are available to anyone who uses the College library.

Recently, the Department of English has been conducting a search for a new poetry professor, and Moncrief says it’s been interesting “to listen to how many people said, ‘You are known for writing, I want to be at a place with this kind of writing culture.’

If it were just the prize, it would put us in the papers once a year, but it’s all those other things,” Moncrief says. “I don’t know if it would be possible in the same way without this gift.”

Kerr was “one smart lady,” Moncrief says.

“And she was very purposeful in her writing career, she was prolific, she was invested in herself as a professional writer, and I think she put some thought into this. In some ways

SARAH BLACKMAN ’02

TIMOTHY MARCIN ’13

Sarah Blackman graduated from Washington College in 2002 and won that year’s Sophie Kerr Prize. Since then, she’s received her MFA from the University of Alabama, become the fiction co-editor of DIAGRAM (thediagram.com), founding editor of Crashtest (crashtestmag.com), and the director of creative writing at the Fine Arts Center, a public arts high school in Greenville, South Carolina. Her poetry and prose have appeared in many publications and her story collection, Mother Box, was the winner of the Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Contest and was published by Fc2 in 2013. Her novel, Hex, was published by the same press in 2016. Asked whether the Sophie Kerr Prize was a factor in why she chose Washington College, Blackman replied, “Yes, but the Lit House was a bigger one. I wanted that space. I wanted all those grungy sofas. I wanted the books books books. I got all of those things. Isn't that a happy ending?

“Writing is wrangling an overwhelming world, condensing it into something lucid, almost inherent,” said Tim Marcin ’13 in the introduction to his Sophie Kerr Prize portfolio. Marcin won the award, as well as the Veryan Beacham Prize for writing about vital issues in public life, and the William Warner Prize for writing about nature and the environment. A four-season starter in soccer, Marcin co-captained the Shoremen team his junior and senior years and edited the sports pages of the campus newspaper, The Elm, his senior year. Since then, he’s graduated from Northwestern’s Medill Graduate School of Journalism and he’s now a breaking news reporter for International Business Times (ibtimes.com), a digital global news publication. He’s wrangling our overwhelming world into words.

“My fondest memory of the Lit House is sitting on the living room couch watching that giant portrait of Marianne Moore in her funny hat stare back at me. She was clearly thinking: 'Poetry; I, too, dislike it,’ and that word 'too' gave me so much permission to be my own thorny, funny-hat wearing woman. Hurrah for Marianne Moore! And for places in the world that hoist her up over the mantel.”

I think she knew how important it would be. I don’t think she predicted how big it would be.

I bet she’d be really pleased, though, that her gift continues to enrich the campus and the lives of aspiring writers.”

Kesey also notes that while the legacy of the gift “insists every year with every speaker who comes and every prize that gets awarded, over and over again, that literary writing matters,” it’s important to recognize that the gift came directly from Sophie Kerr’s prolific success as a hard-working writer of popular fiction.

“I think for a lot of writers of literary fiction and creative nonfiction, it’s an easy thing to be snobby about, and it’s easy to forget who’s keeping the lights on at the publishing houses,” Kesey says. “It isn’t us.

We would still be handing out mimeographed sheets on street corners if it weren’t for Stephen King and James Patterson and these other writers, who we may or may not read in our spare time, who we may or may not idolize in terms of the sentences they write.

But they keep the lights on. And the Sophie Kerr Gift is a magnificent and long-lasting example of that, and I really like it for that reminder.”

Turchi, who won the prize in 1982, has had some time to reflect on the influence of both it and the other half of the Sophie Kerr legacy. He says if he’d had to choose between the two, “I wouldn't hesitate: the ‘other’ prize, those other uses of the gift, truly were priceless.

“I should add that everywhere I've gone, as a teacher and as a program director, I have tried to recreate, in some fashion, the sort of literary and writing community Washington College offered me,” Turchi says. “I'm sure that's true of many other alumni. In that sense, then, Sophe Kerr's gift has benefited countless young writers around the country — more than any of us can know.”

“The Lit House is one of the great and defining features of Washington College. It provided a forum to talk, to listen, and to share. I always found it to have a spirit of openness and acceptance, and the world could probably use more places like it.”

—Timothy Marcin ’13

Visiting writers pictured in this story: Claudia Rankine, on page 22, and Mark Doty, this page. We found the illustration, opposite, in Sophie Kerr’s scrapbook.

—Sarah Blackman ’02

SPRING 2017

25

Sophie, We Hardly Knew Ye While the impact of the Sophie Kerr legacy is well known, details of Sophie Kerr’s life have faded like the embroidered silk pillows plumping the sofa of her New York brownstone.

Here’s a glimpse of the woman who continues to surprise us. By Shane Brill ’03 M’11 26

WASHINGTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE

W

e at Washington College know the trappings of her legacy. We know the Sophie Kerr Prize, the SK Scholarships, the SK Lecture Series, the SK Room, and Sophie’s Café. We recognize her initials as readily as GW — an indication of the esteemed company in which we place our namesake.

Yet for all that we celebrate Sophie, each year obscures her beyond another layer of literary lore. “Who was Sophie Kerr?” a future student might inquire. Cats everywhere would gasp in dismay. Let’s venture into her world, reappraising her gift to the College in the context of her life. And in the style, of course, of Sophie Kerr.

A map of Paris, dated 1731, hangs on the wall of her study. Rows of pine bookcases flank a solitary desk, where she sets a sheet in her typewriter. The din of New York’s East 38th Street motorists can scarcely be heard through her concentration as she writes, as she has, every morning since resigning her position as managing editor of Woman’s Home Companion.

At the height of her editorial career, days stretched into evenings with phones ringing, staff meetings, messenger boys, and pressmen seeking her input. With her own writing compressed to weekends, Sophie still managed to publish dozens of short stories in magazines from Collier’s to Woman’s Day — as well as her first three novels. And with 20 more novels to come, she enlisted a succession of cats for companionship. None particularly cared for her writing, except for Useless and Worthless, “My discreet, disdainful, decorative and delightful cats,” to whom she dedicated the novel Tigers Is Only Cats.

Peerless Percy Perkins purred at Sophie’s side next. Then Thomas Hardy, who has offered to guide us, gentle Reader, through her spacious brownstone while she completes her 19th novel. Finding her lap of less interest than the needlepoint chairs in the drawing room, he saunters down the circular mahogany staircase to sharpen his claws.

Cellophane jackets! He sulks past the French chocolate pot that holds her after-dinner coffee and proceeds to the first floor dining room, bedecked with a collection of silver cups and plates of royal provenance, and antique silver perfume boxes once sniffed by fine ladies across Europe.

Our brief tour with Thomas Hardy ends at an expansive window overlooking an evergreen garden. From this vantage he can observe not only the occasional fauna, but visiting literati who savor Sophie’s conversation as much as her epicurean meals.

He thinks absently of Spain. Why? Sophie recounted the best bread of her life at the

inn of Ribadeo on her way from Oviedo to Coruña. Such gourmand proclivities she began cultivating not in her travels abroad, but as a child on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where she is about to return to receive an honorary degree from Washington College.

The year is 1942, the 50th anniversary of coeducation at the tiny school.

To Chestertown by train, Sophie finds herself honored at Commencement alongside Mary Adele France — the first president of St. Mary’s College — and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Among Sophie’s accolades are a play produced on Broadway and subsequently made into a film, several screenwriting credits, best-selling novels, and hundreds of short stories, including a coveted O. Henry Award.

Afterward, when the honorees gather with dignitaries for a photograph, Sophie spies something out of frame that no one else sees, her eyes sincere in their amusement.

Perhaps she feels lighthearted, being so close to her childhood home on a day reminiscent of long ago meadow picnics — ah, spring asparagus and strawberries with early peaches and young fryers.

As a girl on her family’s homestead in Denton, she meandered along the banks of Poor Man’s Run until it emptied into the Choptank River. She accompanied her father on the Joppa — the noon steamboat to Baltimore — where he sold plums that she packed in baskets so they wouldn’t shake or crush. She helped him nail up small crates and stencil labels, and savored the rich smell of the fruit mixed with the smell of the new wood crates. She learned how to fasten bud grafts and tend truck crops. She discovered where to forage for wild persimmons and paw paws, where the southwest breeze carried the scent of honeysuckle through the osage orange hedge.

Evenings Sophie read by lamplight, indiscriminately voracious for all manner of books and magazines. Only 14 years old, she enrolled in the new Woman’s College of Frederick, soon to be renamed Hood College.

The summer before she graduated with its first baccalaureate class, her mother taught her how to bake bread on the family’s wood stove with yeast extracted from grated raw potatoes.

After college, with a secondhand Underwood typewriter, Sophie wrote the first short stories she sold to Country Gentleman, Ladies’ World, and Truth.

She enrolled in the University of Vermont for a year of graduate study with Professor of History Samuel Emerson, who partly blamed the admission of women to college for the declining “ideals of Culture and Humanities.” At once humbled and inspired by his fierce opinions and intellect, Sophie

praised the man for profoundly sharpening her mind.

From grad school she wrote correspondence pieces for the Pittsburgh Gazette, which led to a position on its staff.

“No shamrock was ever half so green as I,” or so she felt as she learned to maneuver through the disorder of the newsroom.

Mentored by veteran staffers, by 22 she was editor of the “Woman’s Sunday Supplement” of the Pittsburgh Gazette Times.

After a four-year marriage to civil engineer John D. Underwood, Sophie relocated to New York to begin her career as a magazine editor. Before quitting the job, she purchased the townhouse where she would spend the duration of her writing career.

By 1964, Thomas Hardy no longer sleeps on the satinwood furniture. Sophie has published the last of her 23 novels, a collection of Eastern Shore stories entitled Sound of Petticoats, and a cookbook.

The World’s Fair is in town, along with Washington College First Lady Helen Gibson and her daughter Jill. Sophie invites the pair to Murray Hill for lunch at her home.

They met a dozen years earlier when Sophie accepted Helen’s invitation to address the Women’s Literary League, which provides scholarships for Washington College students and materials for Miller Library. They remained friends with a shared appreciation for literature, arts, food, travel, and a deep fondness for trees — indeed, Helen was instrumental in creating the campus arboretum.

We do not know what the women discussed in the last year of Sophie’s life.

Nor do we know why Sophie chose to endow scholarships for Washington College students and materials for Miller Library.

And the Sophie Kerr Prize, who knows?

But we can feel confident — absolutely confident — that they spoke of one thing.

Sophie introduced her Chestertown guests to the last cat of her life: Zuzu.

Washington College videographer and cat lover Shane Brill ’03 M’11 read many of Sophie Kerr’s works and researched her biography for a video project he produced to commemorate the writer’s legacy. Find it at washcoll.edu/sophiekerr

SPRING 2017

27

This Little Girl

by Sophie Kerr

In this story, first published in 1918, the author explores the changing roles of women and their place in the world. The work articulates a cultural shift towards feminism, as the female protagonist moves from a small town to pursue a career in the arts, and weighs the pros and cons of marriage. She ultimately chooses the path toward independence.

“

N

ow folks — this lil girl — lil Miss Marty Golden — Golden Marty — is the greatest lil Charleston baby on ol’ Broadway — she eats — sleeps —breathes — the Charleston — an’ her motter is — let not your right foot know what your left foot doeth. She’s all ready an’ waiting to prove it to you — an’ I want you all — to give her — a Great — Big — HAND!” In the spatter of applause this announcement raised, Rod Slavin, proprietor and manager of the Moidore Night Club, stepped aside.

The spots turned from white to cold blue, from blue to dazzling green, from green to warmest, richest gold — and into the golden beam slid a golden girl, golden hair, golden skin flushed with Indian rouge, golden 28

WASHINGTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE

dress, and glittering golden slippers on her little bare feet. Her long eyes, fringed with mascara, were without expression, and her lips wore the professional’s stiff smile. To the riot of drums and saxes, she began to strut her stuff.

The banked tables, with their blurred highlights of dress shirts, of women’s bare arms, the strange pinkish blots that were faces and shoulders, the shimmering stripes that were bare-kneed legs in palest thin silk, all became motionless, a painted background of concentration for that golden figure swimming in the polished dance floor like a dragonfly above a pool of still water. For in the drift of news that washes up and down Broadway among the wise-crackers there had lately been a persistent question: “Seen that Marty kid dancing at the Moidore? She’s a wow.” Added to this was the rumor that Slavin — the clever guy — had spotted her in a bum Harlem cabaret and tied her up with a two-year contract at less than half of what she ought to get.

The music quickened, deepened, the dancer tilted up her elfish face as if to hear it better, her smile became real, vivid. Shaking knees — rubber ankles — hands crossed — uncrossed — quavering — flying — she was no longer human but a puppet on mad wires, and automaton gone crazy to the broken, rushing throb and beat of barbaric rhythm.

Her hair swung out, a rough golden fleece; her body, slender and boneless, became a scrap of golden willow withe, twisted into a thousand eccentricities of awkward, exciting grace. Her little heels beat on the floor the melody of a heart run wild. The blurred pink faces leaned and gloated — She had circled the dance floor twice, paraded the center three times. Now for the last — the hardest, the newest step, her great effort … a triple drum beat was the signal.…

“George — it is Min Scott — it is!”

She heard it, the sharp nasal whisper, just as the drum pounced.

For the slightest catch of breath she paused. Min Scott! Now who in the world, in this strange night world of Broadway, knew that Marty Golden, the dancer, was Min Scott? But this was no time to speculate on anything. She leaped into the new step, her second’s hesitation an accent of its vehemence.

But when at last, with another harsh triple drum beat, the music stopped and she came back to bow and bow again to the clapping hands, to the shouts of enthusiasm, she took the opportunity to look coolly at the table whence that tell-tale whisper came. A thin young man and a fat young woman were staring at her pop-eyed through the smoke fog that was the Moidore’s characteristic atmosphere. Marty made no sign, but went back to the performers’ room. She was very hot, very tired, and in that state of high nerves that comes with violent physical effort. Mechanically she smoothed her hair, freshened her makeup.

“Shall I — or shan’t I?” she kept saying to herself. “If I only knew — wonder how they ever got the jack to pay the cover charge — she with a tongue like a knife — and he, the poor boob! Glory, how they’ll dish the dirt when they go back! Maybe — maybe —” Rod Slavin was raising a penetrating roar to herald his troupe of Russians as Marty slipped out of the performers’ room and headed for the table of the whisper. Rod liked his people to mingle with his patrons, and he had more than once bawled out Marty for highhatting various genial butter-and-eggers who had expressed a wish to meet her. He would, therefore, be gratified to see her out among those whom he so affectionately addressed as “Folks.”

Heads went round to see Marty as she passed, but the thin young man and his companion were so intent on the Volga-ing Russians that they did not know of her approach until she was beside them. They started, confused, at her greeting.

“Glad to see you, Ralph and Lola! Whatcha doing in the great city — wedding trip, not?”

She sat down with them while they stammered a sort of welcome.

“Min — I couldn’t believe my eyes, I reelly couldn’t! Is it you — honest—in that dress — and — and everything?”

“It’s sure me. How’d you like my act?”

“Say, Min, it was great, simply great!” This from Ralph, with unfeigned enthusiasm.

Lola scowled at him. “I sh’d think you’d hate being in a place like this.”

Marty trumped the scowl with a smile. This was going to be fun!

Only — she must find out one thing first. “You poor old stick-in-themud,” she said with deliberate aim, “you don’t know a good place when you see one. The Moidore’s the slickest night club in the world, and anybody who gets on here is made for life. I got offers from managers this minute for more a week than Ralph makes back home in the bank in a year. I don’t really see how you can afford to come here, even once.

It is your wedding trip, isn’t it? And Ralph said you’d got to have a real time, — don’t care what it cost.”

“Yes, it is our wedding trip,” Lola flung that at her, tried again for the ascendant. “We had a big wedding, Min, — biggest in Thomasville for years and years! — I wish’t you could have been there. We got lots and lots of presents; the bank gave us a grand silver service. We’re going to live in the old Jameson place.”

“My, my, think of that!” Marty pretended to be impressed. “And how much longer you going to stay in the great and wicked?”

“We got to go back to-morrow morning,” said Ralph. “I’m two days overdue at the bank as it is.”

Marty had found out what she wanted to know. She sat up and registered regret. “What a shame! I’d’ve just loved to have you come up and see my little place on Park Avenoo — it’s only twelve rooms and five baths, but it’s kind of sweet and homelike. And I got a Jap cook who’s a whiz. What that fella can do with chicken and asparagus is a crime. So you’re going to live in the Jameson place. Where did they move to?”

“Didn’t you know? Old Mrs. Jameson died last June and Bert’s gone down to the hotel.”

“Well, for goodness’ sake! I sh’d’ve thought he’d get married and live in the house himself.”

Lola’s fat little turned-up nose quivered with malicious curiosity.

“No, he hasn’t got married, but he has a good time. He beaus around every new girl that comes to town. I guess that was why you two broke off, wasn’t it? You got mad because he took that red-headed girl who visited his folks to the Easter hop.”

“You always could cook up a good story out of nothing,” said Marty tranquilly. “I’d forgotten all about that red-headed girl till you reminded me.”

“Bert Jameson is real well off. He’s a catch.”

“Catch for who? Catch for those small-timers down home, maybe.

But for me! Say, listen, Lola, I don’t wanta brag, but I can go out on a party every night of my life, with men who could buy and sell Bert’s garage business with their loose change. My maid — ” she paused to let the two words sink in, “my personal maid, I mean, gets all fagged out with fighting off interviewers and photographers and people who want me to use their cold cream and perfume and silk stockings and such. I can’t have my phone number in the book because the bell would ring all the time and drive me dippy.” She raised her hand, displayed her rings and bracelets. “I bought the most of those with one week’s salary, except that diamond bracelet, which was sent to me in a box of orchids with just merely a card and written on it was ‘From an ardent admirer,’ and I never did find out who it was. It’s nice I happened to wear this stuff to-night and didn’t leave it in my safe deposit box with the rest of my jewelry, for I’m glad to show ’em to you.” Her wide eyes made a mocking survey of Lola’s string of pearl beads, her minute

diamond solitaire. “You simply got no idea how much money I make, or what fun I have. I wish you’d tell Bert about it when you get back. It might spread his ideas.”

“Bert never reelly cared for any girl but you, Min,” said Ralph solemnly. “He told me so himself.”

Marty laughed loudly. “Get off the comic strip, Ralph. That’s the best joke I’ve heard in years.”

“I think that’s funny, too,” put in Lola. “Bert’s always been such a hand with all the girls. Go on, Min, tell us some more about yourself.

Gee, I wisht we could see your apartment!”

“Too bad you can’t,” Marty agreed. “How’d you like me to send you one o’ my Oriental vawses for a wedding present? I collect ’em. But I’d love to spare you one.”

Lola licked her lips greedily. “That’s real nice of you — I’d be crazy about it. My goodness, won’t folks down home talk when I tell ’em I’ve seen you, and all about what you’re doing. I don’t want to make you cross, Min, but reelly, you know that dress is — extreme! Nothing but those strips across the back, and so short, and then — no stockings!

Your father would turn over in his grave if he could see you.”

“I hope he does,” said Marty. “I hope he knows how well I’ve done and how much money I make and what a good time I have. He hated anybody to have a good time — it was poison to him. Now about this dress —” she eyed Lola speculatively. How much more would she swallow? “About this dress — you see, Lola, I have all my clothes designed over in Paris, and this is the French idea and the very latest

“You got mad because he took that red-headed girl who visited his folks to the Easter hop.” for this kind of dancing. As for not wearing stockings — that’s the French idea, too, and after I saw it over there I made up my mind to introduce it here — and now — all the girls that can,— do.”

Her explanation was lost in a greater wonder. “Oh, Min — have you ever been abroad?” breathed Lola, and if she had asked, “Have you been to heaven?” her voice would have held no more awe.

“Oh yes, I been back and forth quite a few times. I do love the ocean. I got an offer to dance for next season in the Follies Brujare over there, and I may go, for it does broaden your education to get around and see the world. Well, I’ve got to leave you,— I usually have a massage between my appearances, but seeing old friends I thought I’d rather come out and have a little chat. It’s been mighty nice to see you both, and you’ve got my best wishes for your success and married happiness, I’m sure. So long, Lola — good luck, Ralph.”

She swaggered away, leaving them staring, dazed and envious, at her gold latticed back, her twinkling, sure-stepping shoes. Marty made a good exit. In the performers’ room she relaxed, dropping her smiling mask and dumped herself wearily beside the Clox sisters, Zoe and Chloe, who were waiting to sing their famous ballad, “I got the mygod blues.”

“Nothing’s so long as a night in the night club,” remarked Chloe Cox, yawning.

“You said it. And nothing smells so bad as the Subway when you’re going home at three a.m. And you don’t get your proper rest during the day. The woman I room with has just got a new roomer, with a piano — a jazz-hound for fair. I’d leave in a minute if it wasn’t so cheap. I got so many old bills to pay up from last year I got to squeeze every nickel.”

SPRING 2017

29

“Yeah,” agreed Chloe. “There’s always sumpn. Besides, we don’t know but what this place’ll be pinched any night of the world. And that’ll make another little group of talent wearing out their shoes hunting new jobs. The performers that’s out of work, dearie, right this minute. It’s terrible.”

“I know it,” said Marty. “Listen, Chloe — coupla hicks from my home town out there to-night and I’ve just been talking to ’em. She’s a regular cat, but he’s not so bad, kind of a dumbbell, works in the bank.

It made me sick, thinking how secure she’ll be, all her life. Nice house on a nice street, with trees — three squares a day — nice friends —” her voice trembled, caught.

Chloe Clox looked at Marty curiously. To her associates the golden dancer was usually cool and a little remote. “I’ll bet you got a boy friend back there, and they was talking to you about him, and you got all worked up,” she deduced sagely. There’s always a man mixed up in everything, seems to me. Don’t cry, dearie, you’ll ruin your makeup.”

“You said it, Chloe. Well I wasn’t going to let him think but what I was having a swell time and going strong, was I? I had to spread the three-sheets and shoot the hop, didn’t I, to let him know what he’s missed? I handed them a line of patter to take back to him that’ll give him a jolt, anyway. I got my pride. The stuff those two boobs swallowed you’d never believe. I told ’em this junk was real, and they though it was true.” She shook her rings.

“How some folks manage to run along, missing on every cylinder!” sympathized Chloe. “But there you are, dearie — they’re all right out in the sticks, but they’d never make a dent in New York.”

Marty relapsed into silence. She had already begun to regret her confidences. No use spilling the stuff all around, even if you were all worked up and nervous. Eat your smoke — that was the thing a good sport always did. But Marty reflected drearily on the amount of smoke she had already eaten. It had been a long, hard way to travel, from the night she had quarreled with Bert about the red-headed girl, quarreled again with her mean old father about Bert, and in desperation and fury against each separate item in her small world had crammed such clothes as she had into a straw telescope, and taken the trolley to the next town where a carnival show was closing. She has besieged the manager for a job.

“What can you do?” he had asked, struck with the wild-eyed young thing, tense as a whip, who eyed him savagely and demanded work without a trace of the bucolic awkwardness and simpering shyness of the usual small-town candidate.

“I can dance,” she had flung at him. And without further parlay had danced for him, a clog and breakdown that she had seen her grandfather’s colored farm boy do.

So, as she was pretty, and yellow-haired and had the youth that most of the women in the show lacked, the manager signed her on.

That was five years ago. She was seventeen then.

The things she had done! She had sung songs, she had sold tickets, she had eaten fire, toyed with the traps, tommed it one season doubling as Liza and Little Eva, gone up with a balloon and down with a parachute, done a little juggling, been a target for Great Kalisto the Klassy Knifethrower, but always and incessantly she had danced. She had learned the stuff of every other dancer who was in the show or whom she saw in the occasional show she had time and money to attend. She was never too tired to practice, never rebellious at going on for an extra turn if it might be dancing. It had been a hard, meager life, but Marty wouldn’t go back home. As she had told Chloe Clox, she had her pride.

And she had something more — she had the true artist’s belief that somehow, some time, she would be famous. She believed in her dancing, she exalted in it, she was sure of its quality. But always things 30

WASHINGTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE

had broken wrong for her. She had had a chance at big time vaudeville, but the flu had caught her overnight, and for six weeks she was in bed, emerging, finally, weak and spiritless, and stony broke into the bargain. She had taken, at last, an engagement in what she knew was a “bad joint,” but it paid enough to keep her from starving, and Marty could take care of herself without a qualm, no difference who was rough, or to what extent. There Rod Slavin, who regularly scouted through every dive in the city in search of talent, had found her, and put her on at the Moidore.

In all that time Marty had never written home, had never seen a home-town face until to-night. She learned that her father had died from an item in a religious weekly, picked up casually on a train when her troupe was making one of its jumps. Her father had been a leader in the local church; the weekly said that he had left all he possessed to foreign missions. He would, Marty knew, even if he was perfectly aware that his only child was without two dimes to rub together. Marty had sold her soul to the devil when she defied her godly parent and ran off with a show — either item being quite sufficient in her father’s opinion to bring her eternal damnation.

So no matter what her need, she could never appeal to her father, — not that she ever would. All the bitterness of misunderstood, repressed youth had made in Marty’s heart a wall against him. As for Bert Jameson, — there she was less empathetic. She wouldn’t, of course, ask him to help her in her straits, but she couldn’t think hard thoughts of him. He had been the handsomest of all the town boys, the greatest catch, as Lola had said. She had been so overwhelmed with love and gratitude when he singled her out for attention! But he was spoiled; he liked to flutter among all the girls. Marty’s very intensity, her helpless adoration of him bored him. She knew it, but it made her still more helpless. Yet she was sure that, in spite of the others, she held him. Only, that was not enough. Because it was not enough they quarreled, and because that had quarreled — Lola had divined it — she had run off to work and starve and be battered about the topsy-turvy world of shows and troupes and carnival entertainers and cabarets and night clubs, and to gather harsh knowledge therefrom.

Through all of it Marty had never seen a man who could push Bert out of her heart, or dim his luster. She loved him just as foolishly, just as unreasonably, just as fondly as ever she had done.

And now here were Lola and Ralph Banks, telling her that he loved her still, and all she had done was to send him hateful, almost insulting messages. She had to send them, even as she protested to Chloe, lest he should think she still cared about him, or that if she saw him again it would mean something to her. Oh, she had to do that! She wouldn’t let him think she was anywhere but on the top-most crest of the highest wave.

She looked at the clock. She went on again at two-thirty and then she could go home. It was almost time for her now. She must go over her makeup again, warm and limber herself a little as a preliminary.

An old-timer she had worked with in a medicine show had taught her that. She wondered if Ralph and Lola had stayed; she thought madly for a moment of rushing out to them and sending Bert a little personal message, a word that might bring him — but she remembered the tale of her apartment, her jewels, she had stuffed into Lola! If he came, he would find her out to be a liar, a four-flusher. She peeped out of the door and her question was decided for her. Lola and Ralph had gone, and their table taken by a blonde doll and her bald fat sugar-daddy. She heard Rod Slavin begin her announcement. “Now, Folks, this lil girl …”

When her second dance was over, she got into her street clothes and went out into the cold autumn morning. The Subway odor and the queer, sleepy three a.m. crowd were too usual to be depressing. Her street was lonely and furtive, shadowy things seemed to lurk down in the gaunt areas before the bleak towering old brownstone fronts, and she ran the last block, holding her latchkey in her hand. But the warm, stuffy hallway was reassuring, and once in her own little third-

floor back stronghold, she proceeded to light her gas stove and make her nightcap of hot cocoa as usual. While it was brewing she hung up her dress and coat carefully, put on her nightgown and worn flannel kimono, brushed her hair and gave her face a thorough cold cream cleansing so no vestige of makeup remained. Her trunk gave up a halfempty box of graham wafers and with this and the cocoa she sat down in the one chair to eat and drink and be not at all merry. She was still stirred and uneasy, and racked by a thousand stabbing memories.

“But it’s no use,” she kept telling herself. “It’s no use. I shut that door for good and all. I couldn’t do anything else. Before I’d let Bert Jameson know what I’ve been up against, or how I feel about him, after all this time — well, he’d laugh his fool head off, and he’d have the dare. And yet, Ralph said —” she went over it again and again.

At last, longing to cry, but holding back her tears defiantly, she huddled into bed and went off to sleep to dream of Bert’s dark eyes, his teasing laughter.

She was awakened by loud, dexterous jazz played on a piano, seemingly placed on or within her right ear, which happened to be the one out of the pillow! Marty sat up straight in bed and used language unbecoming of a lady. The new roomer was at it again! And at the unearthly hour of nine o’clock in the morning. Evidently he had moved his instrument and placed it jam against the wall which divided his room from Marty’s — a wall of the cheapest and thinnest partition material, put in to make two rentable rooms grow where but one bloomed before. Marty held her head and groaned. The jazz pounded her, bruised her ear-drums.

“That’s the loudest piano in the well-known world,” she told herself. Then, with the tribute of one artist to another, “But that’s some sweet jazz.”

It was some jazz. The pianist was breaking the well-worn classicisms of Mr. Mendelssohn’s “Spring Song” into splinters,

She had the true artist’s belief that somehow, some time, she would be famous. She believed in her dancing. tearing them into rags, tossing them to the winds of modernity in rhythms broken cunningly, assuredly, exotically. Instead of a pastoral of green leaves and warbling linnets and skipping lambskins of snowy innocence, spring was chortling a bacchanal of fierce spotted leopards and screaming red flamingoes and naughty purple passion flowers.

Listening, Marty’s toes began to twitch, she almost forgot her anger.

Almost, not quite. After all, a working girl must have her proper sleep.

She couldn’t lie there in that tornado of sound, so she got up and dressed. Then she went out in the hall and knocked at her neighbor’s door. The piano stopped, the door was opened, and a brisk young man stood before her, a checked suit, red tie, slick-haired young man, debonair, jaunty, and smiling at sight of her.

“I don’t want to disturb you,” began Marty politely, “but I’ve got the room next door, and I don’t get in any night till after three. Now I ask you is it reasonable I should be waked up in the morning at nine by jazz, be it ever so good, and you certainly are a wiz, as I freely acknowledge.”

“Say, I’m sorry,” said the young man. “I didn’t know. I got to keep in practice, but I had no intention of disturbing a lady.”

Marty looked at him more closely. The checked suit was threadbare, and there were cracks in his bright patent leather shoes,

and his smile, though bright, had no joy in it.

“At liberty?” asked Marty, using the show folks’ phrase.

“You guessed it. I’ll introduce myself.” He stepped back into his room and took a professional card from his dresser. This is what was printed on it.

RANNY P. RUGGLES The Prince of the Land of Jazz “I didn’t like to call myself King yet, you know,” he explained modestly. “But later, when I get my own orchestra, I thought I might unless Whiteman or Lopez cops it first. What d’you think?”

He hesitated, looking appealingly at Marty. “I’d hate to keep a lady standing like this, but I can’t ask you into this dump, even leaving the door open. Y’understand?”

This speech showed Marty that Ruggles was a gentleman. She was sure from his appearance that he was out of a job and putting up a front, and Marty knew all of that cold, cheerless business. She suspected that he had had no breakfast.

“I’m just going to make myself a cup of coffee,” She said. “And eat a roll. Will you join me? I c’n tell you why even jazz as good as yours don’t listen like anything to me this time of day while we’re eating.”

The young man flushed, became confused. “I’m not hungry, thank you,” he said. “And I’ve got to hustle out to the agencies; you know there’s not much use going before ten o’clock.”

So besides being a gentleman, he had class. He wouldn’t take any woman’s charity; he’d rather not eat. To Marty, accustomed to expert fakers and cadgers of every variety, to men willing to borrow a girl’s last dollar and never so much as try to pay it back, young Ruggles was a miracle.

“You not been in the show business so long?”

“Little over a year. I was a salesman in a piano store in Detroit, but I was always crazy to play in public, and finally I got a chance with Batty Heather’s Jumping Jazz Orchestra. His pianist had quit him in Chicago — he was sick. Of course, soon as he got well and I found out he was a married man with a coupla kids, I made him take his place back.”

“Say — seems to me you’ve been awful noble. Listen, I can’t stand talking here, but I’ve got a lot more I want to say. Wait for me — and go on playing.”

She retreated to her own room, got very busy with her coffee brewing. Ranny Ruggles, meantime, was making the partition tremble with a barbaric fantasy new to Marty’s ears. But if her ears paid it no tribute of recognition, her feet felt its value. She did a little step or two before the gas stove and when she came back to Ranny, filled coffee cup in her hand, big hot roll, split and oozing butter balancing on the saucer, she was doing as much of a gentle clog as her burden permitted.

“Quit it, or I’ll spill this coffee,” she commanded — then, also commandingly — “Now, you got to drink this for I won’t have my coffee slighted by anybody.” She put the cup down, went back and brought her own, and tugged along a chair, which she placed in the hall, outside Ranny’s door. “Now we’re all set and we can talk. Where’d you ever learn to jazz like that, and what was it you played that last time?”

“I composed it myself — I haven’t named it yet. I — excuse me — but I don’t know your name, miss. If you would be so kind —” “I’m a boob for manners. My name’s Marty Golden and I dance at the Moidore.”

“For Pete’s sake — what you doing here, then? Everybody knows Mrs. Klingan’s is the last stand of the down-and-outers. Pardon my asking, and if you don’t want to answer, all right. And let me say that this is just the grandest coffee I ever tasted. It’s — it’s superb. I can’t thank you, Miss Golden — I —” “Spill it all,” urged Marty, for Ranny Ruggles’ voice was shaking.

For the moment, he was not a slick, smart young man, but a discouraged, pathetic little boy.

SPRING 2017

31

“I’d ought to be ashamed, but you’re so kind, and I was so hungry.

But I been getting along on one meal a day, — and it’s only a question of a week till I have to let my piano go. I can’t seem to land a thing, anywhere. I’d go back to a salesman’s job, if I could find one. I’ve hunted, and hunted —” “There’s always something just around the corner — don’t you worry. You’ll probably fall right into it to-day or to-morrow — honest, it’s happened to me too many times to count.”

“You cheer me all up. I wish there was something I could do for you.”

“There is. You play that jazz of yours all over again, not too fast, and I’ll slip on a pair of soft shoes and try a step I been working on.

I can do it right here on the landing. I haven’t been able to find any music that had the right beat, and it struck me maybe yours has.”

They set about twenty minutes of practice, Marty calling instructions: “Faster — slow down while I do that again — accent the break there — slow again, that’s trick stuff — repeat —let’s go — now I got it — easy — easy — hey, boy — now we’re going —” while Ranny Ruggles painstakingly followed.

“Say, you’re splendid — of course you would be to get on at the Moidore.”

“You’re good yourself. You get the idea — and that’s everything.

We’ll run over this again till it’s right, and if I can, I’ll get you on with it, with me, I mean.”

“You will — honest!”

She cut short his delighted thanks. “Now you better beat it out and look round the agencies,” she directed. “Me, I’m going back and finish my slumbers.”

She was in bed again and drowsing off when it occurred to her that she hadn’t thought of Bert Jameson all morning. No, not once. And last night she could think of nothing else. The whopping lies she had told Ralph and Lola had not intruded either. “Other people’s troubles always make you forget you own,” thought Marty wonderingly, “and I always do feel sorry for a kid that’s up against it.”

She did not wake until well along in the afternoon, and then it was time for her to go for her daily practice in a gymnasium popular with show people. After that came dinner in the automat, and a moving picture to fill the evening until she must go round to the Moidore. She was early, but she had brought a couple of magazines, trade papers of the theater world, to read and, moreover, she wanted audience with Rod Slavin, sometimes a difficult favor to obtain.

To-night he was in the little hole-in-the-wall office, as plain and dingy as Marty’s hall bedroom, a queer contrast to the lavish luxury of ombré taffeta draperies, futuristic dolls and cubistic birds, lights in tinted, frilled balloons, tables and chairs of scarlet lacquer in the club itself. And Slavin’s smart dress suit and silk hat were an absurd compliment for his battered old golden oak desk. It was all explainable to those who knew Slavin. “Nothing showy where it don’t show,” was one of his favorite maxims.

“Well, girlie, what’s on your mind?” he asked Marty. “If this is a hold-up, you’re wastin’ your breath.”

“It’s not a hold-up. I just want to tell you I’m framing a new dance, and it’s a nifty. I run across a piano player who’s got the stuff for it, and we’re working it out together. When we’re ready I want you should give him a try-out, as otherwise I don’t get the music. He wrote it himself and he’s as tight with it as if it was glued. But you can get him cheap, and I tell you straight, Slavin, he’s a comer, and he’s a wow.”

“If I can get him cheap enough, all right, provided there ain’t no padlock on the Moidore before you’re ready. These district attorneys, 32

WASHINGTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE

honest, you’d think they never heard of the water being turned to wine in the Bible. There’s no religion in them birds, no heart. Here’s a quiet, classy place, with a refined show, nice folks —” Marty listened politely while he raved on. Better to humor Slavin, especially when you’ve just asked a favor. Then Emile, the head waiter, appeared with the night’s reservation list, and slipped out. Except for her interview with her employer, it was a night like any other night.

She danced twice, talked a little with Chloe and Zoe Clox about the ever-rising tide of Russian entertainers, which threatened to put all honest-to-goodness American performers on the fritz for fair, — although Zoe conceded generously that she supposed Russians had to eat, like everybody else, and if you’re thrown out of your own country you had to go to somebody else’s country, only she did wish such a lot of ‘em wouldn’t pick on America to come to.

Marty read her magazines, with special attention to the ads, but could find none suited to the needs of Ranny Ruggles. There was no disturbing encounter with old friends to-night, nothing to remind her of home, or Bert, or the peaceful, easy life she might have led if she hadn’t run away. Just a night like any other night … no, a little different. For if she and Ranny Ruggles could work out this new dance, it might lead to something — something more stable than the Club Moidore. A musical comedy good for a long, long run, a big revue with Marty Golden as a featured act, a big-time vaudeville booking as headliner — Marty dreamed of them all. Why not — such things happened all the time, and to girls who couldn’t step half as well as Marty. With the theater’s rampant superstition she wondered if Ranny Ruggles might prove to be her mascot, and her meeting with him the lucky rift that starts a girl toward the sight of her name in bright lights on Broadway. Whether it was anything so fortunate or not, he was a good kid, and she’d give him a lift if she could, for he was there with the stuff.

His piano did no wake her the next morning, but she found a note slipped under her door. “Dear Miss Ralston: Fell into a day’s work, maybe two. It was the pep talk that coffee gave me made me get it.

Hope you will let me practice with you again soon, as it was a pleasure and a privilege. Yours respectfully, Ranny Ruggles.”

Marty read the note with approval for style. He knew how to write to a lady, just as he knew how to talk to one. And she was heartily glad he’d found a bit of work. Work would buck him up more than anything else in the world. Marty knew all about that.

She devoted an hour to the consideration of her own financial state.

She was paying regularly on her last winter’s debt, and as regularly putting five dollars a week in the savings bank as a life-line in case of stormy seas. There was her room, her food, and the never-ending expense of shoes. The Moidore provided her gowns, but not the slippers, which must be well-fitted, well-made, and which could not be worn after they became scuffed and shabby, always distressingly soon. Marty was cranky about her shoes, and paid for this crankiness heavily in the coin of the realm. There was just one man who could make them to suit her, and he was a crabbed, obstinate old Swede with whom she fought violently over every last, every change in heel or vamp, and from whom she demanded perfection. Foolishness for a little unknown dancer to make such a fuss; the other girls bought theirs at any handy shoe-shop and were satisfied, but Marty had learned that a well-fitted foot danced twice as well, and looked immeasurably better, than one in a slipper that bulged and gaped and slipped and creased. All the same, these dancing shoes did run into money painfully, for the Swede knew how to charge as well as to argue.

It was not a pleasant hour, this, with her stubby pencil and all too skinny bank book. She was only a little way from the ragged edge, and if the Moidore got pinched, that ever-present worry, she’d be in deep again in no time. Maybe she was a fool to try to pay up those back debts, but no, she wouldn’t have it on her conscience that she owed anybody money. That was something she’d inherited from the harsh old man who otherwise had left her nothing good. Now, again,

“Permit it — I’m just perishing to try it again. I must get that dance right. And I think I can get it on at the Moidore, and you to play it — I’ve spoken to Slavin already.”

His eyes beamed with surprise and joy. “You did! If you’re not a topnotcher! Look here, Miss Golden, I got an awful funny feeling about you. Ever since the morning when I met you I’ve kinda felt as if you were my mascot, as if you’d started me right, turned the trick for me, honest, I have. It come over me when I got the message at the agency, and it’s seemed more so ever since. Don’t think I’m saying it in any but the most respectful way, will you — but that’s how you seem to me, and I can’t help thinking it. On at the Moidore — say, wouldn’t that be the snake’s hips!”

And she had thought of him as her mascot! But she said nothing of that.

“Slavin’d pay you just as little as he could, I guess you can imagine.”

“I don’t care — it’s the chance I want. Just the chance.”

“Well, then,” said Marty, becoming very businesslike. “We got to get to work. I can get a studio room for an hour in the evening from a friend of mine, and as soon as your rehearsal’s over you can meet me there. We’ll begin to-night.”

It would be a real pleasure and privilege to me if you would “Miss Golden, you must permit me to go fifty-fifty on the rent join me for lunch at twelve o’clock at the Red Fan tea room on of the studio, you know, and on any incidental expenses. Because West 47th Street, and give me the favor of a little chat as I am in it is a business venture and we will be partners, and you know the need of your kind advice. success means more to me than it can possibly mean to you. You’re an Yours Respectfully, established artist, and I am not.” He was very earnest.

R.R.” she thought of Lola, so secure in her nice comfortable house, with a husband who was a reliable meal-ticket, if not much else, and no need to worry about shoes or engagements or anything at all except whether she’d have steak or chicken for dinner. Lola … in the Jameson homestead! Bert had always said that he and Marty would live there.

It was a fine square house with big rooms and a front porch. Marty looked at the confines of her bedroom and sighed. It brought it all back, this worry about money. If only Bert … yes, but he didn’t, he wouldn’t. She wondered what Lola had told him. It had been a good story, she knew that, for Lola was born to exaggeration as the sparks fly upward and she’d inflate every lie Marty had told her.

“I’d like to be a little mouse under the sofa and hear what he says and see how he looks when she spills that stuff to Bert,” thought Marty. Well, no use going into all that again. She’d better get around to the gymnasium.

The next morning there was another note under her door.

“Dear Miss Golden,

“He’s got paid some money and he wants to return that breakfast I gave him. That’s a real nice spirit,” commented Mary. “He’s alright, just as I said from the first, that lad.”

He was beaming when she appeared at the Red Fan tea room. “This is certainly kind of you,” he said, shaking hands like an old friend. “I appreciate it. Miss Golden, as soon as you’ve chosen what you want to eat, I want to tell you about the chance I got, and you tell me what you think. Creamed chicken and a cuppa coffee, — I guess I’ll take the same, only tea, as the coffee anywhere would make me sick after that you gave me, — and how about some fruit salad and a piece of caramel cake for dessert? Yes? Well, it’s this way: a fella who’s rehearsing this new show, ‘Jamboree,’ his pianist got a touch of ptomaine, and everybody he knew was busy and he sent a hurry-up call to the agencies, and I came along and copped it, right in the nick of time.

He wanted somebody who could read and transpose and everything, see, and I went right over, and I worked all day yesterday and most of all night, and this morning, and it went fine and the other fella’s not well yet, not that I wish him any hard luck. Seems as if I always get the places when somebody gets sick, don’t it? And I got ten dollars for yesterday, and I’ll get ten dollars for to-day —“ “And you had to ask me round to eat up nearly half of it,” Scolded Marty. “Not that I don’t appreciate it, and was pleased to come, but you oughta be practical and look out for yourself.”

“Yes, I noticed that’s what you did day before yesterday,” he returned. “You knew I wanted that coffee and you made me take it without feeling like it was a handout. I guess I didn’t see. Say, I’ll be grateful to you s’long as I live.”

“Such a fuss about a cuppa coffee!” “’Twasn’t the coffee; it was the spirit you did it in,” maintained Ranny.

They were getting on very well. Marty liked him more and more, but proprieties must be catered to. “You said you wanted my advice about something?”

“He flushed. “It wasn’t about anything, really. I wanted you to celebrate with me, and that’s the honest truth. And I wanted to ask you when I could play for you to practice your new dance again, if you’d permit it.”

There was … nothing to remind her of home, or Bert, or the peaceful, easy life she might have led if she hadn’t run away.

“That’s fair enough,” conceded Marty. “I wanta hear lots of your other stuff, too — when I listen to music I get lots of new ideas for dancing.”

“Say — that reminds me — in the music store where I used to work an old fella used to come in and listen to me play and he said — le’me see if I can remember it—he said, ‘Music is a release and a spring to the imagination.’ I thought that was kind of interesting and I always remembered it.”

They chatted on about themselves. Ranny Ruggles, it appeared, had no kin and no ties any more than had Marty, and this made a bond between them. He came originally from a little town much like Thomasville, from his description. And even as Marty had always had the urge toward dancing, he had always loved the piano and neglected everything else for any chance to play. At last Marty, with a reminiscent Bertish throb, asked a question.

“I s’pose you left behind a girl back home who’s waiting for you to make a big hit and come back and marry her?”

Ranny’s young face turned fiery red. “I give you my word, Miss Golden, I never was one for girls. I’m afraid of them. I never went regularly with a girl — a lady — in my life. You’re the first lady I’ve talked to, except in the way of business in the music store, who didn’t make me feel paralyzed and numb all over. But you’ve been so kind, and — and — well, so kind, I’ve really said more to you than I ever said to a lady in my life before.”

SPRING 2017

33

Marty’s experienced eye told her he was speaking the truth, and she further divined that his sporty clothes were largely an attempt to hide his native simplicity. She warmed to him pleasantly. He was, yes, he was, a good kid.

“You’re the only one like that in the show business, I can tell you that,” she said.

“Well it’s true,” he laughed. “The other fellas always used to poke fun at me and try to get me out on parties with girls, but I wouldn’t go.

I said my old piano was the only friend I wanted.”

It had been a very pleasant lunch, reflected Marty as they parted, Ranny to go back to rehearsal, she to seek her Swede shoemaker, — a very pleasant lunch and a very pleasant talk. And if they could work out that dance — she realized with a start that she was thinking “we” and “us” in this connection where she was wont to use only “I” and “me.”

“But we’ll be partners if we do put it over,” she reminded herself.

She thought of his declaration of bashfulness as regards girls, and smiled as she went along the street. “He’ll get over that fast enough, if he once makes a hit,” she thought. And added, as if to convince herself, “Not that it’s anything to me, of course.”

Yet it was astonishing how smoothly their acquaintance progressed. They practiced together seriously and painstakingly and she found that he could offer very acceptable suggestions and criticism. After practice, he played for her, and the more she heard his stuff, the more she was convinced that he was a comer, a sure-fire big timer, once he got his chance. And he was willing to work, just as hard and long as Marty herself — it was never he who called a halt.

This quality made a big appeal to Marty, who hated laziness beyond all else. For the rest he was always the same, polite, thoughtful, his conversation varying from a stilted respect garnished with phrases taken from film captions and old-fashioned novels, to downright kid high spirits and jokes which included Marty as a playfellow and pal.

He made her laugh a great deal more than she had done at any time in the five hard years just past. Perhaps it was the laughter that kept any touch of sentiment out of their relations. He was just the good kid, the working partner, but this was quite enough to make the basis for a solid liking, an enjoyment of his company, an interest in his welfare.

This last was still precarious. The job of rehearsal accompanist had not lasted long enough to put him on Easy Street, though it paid up his room rent, saved his piano from hock, got his daily food and provided him with some new shoes which looked as though they might have strolled on that desirable thoroughfare.

At Marty’s counsel he ferreted out a few oddments and remainders of jobs in Tin Pan Alley, but they brought only the merest subsistence.

All of his hopes, his energies, were bent on the new dance to be produced at the Moidore. Slavin was as good as his word; he would give Marty and the jazz-hound a tryout, provided he liked their stuff when he saw it in rehearsal. But if he didn’t, nix, no, nothing doing at all, and no beefing about his decision — see!

More and more as they worked on it, Marty believed in the dance.

More and more she based great hopes on it. Surely, surely, a dance so new, so surprising, so good technically, and so diverting to see would win for her and Ranny Ruggles a recognition that would carry them far up and out and beyond the Moidore. Of course there was Slavin’s contract, but Marty had seen too many contracts successfully broken to bother about that. Besides something might turn up — the everpresent possibility of the Moidore being padlocked might turn into a reality and then — the contract would be nil. So why worry? The first thing to do was to get the dance absolutely perfect, and get it on. After that — well, it was no crime to dream great dreams.

On the night before they were to have their trial under Slavin’s critical eyes, Marty was in such a state of tension that flying to the moon seemed entirely possible at any moment. She pranced to the Moidore, she pranced in her dressing-room, she fumbled her grease 34

WASHINGTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE

paint, she bungled the hooks of her frock, and the ribbons of her slippers, her fingers were all thumbs, because she was nothing but a seething little bunch of dancing firecrackers, all ready to explode.

More than once she checked herself, thought warningly, “I’m flying too high. Something’s going to happen,” for she had learned in a bitter school to distrust good fortune.

When the time for her act came, she flung herself out under Slavin’s outstretched arm before the last word of his announcement was out of his mouth. She couldn’t wait, not even for the “Great — Big — HAND” he asked for her. She must dance.

She who had been so sure if she ever saw Bert again and he gave her the least scrap of encouragement that she’d fling herself into his arms and weep her joy and bliss!?

And she danced as she had never danced before, in a frenzy of excitement, a mad need of violence of the pounding broken rhythms.

Slavin, watching her, his silk hat jauntily poised on his bald head, his conductor’s baton half-forgotten, spoke to his nearest musician. “The kid’s there,”—which from Slavin was the highest compliment he could possibly pay.

And then, as she took her applause, backing slowly toward the door and bowing and bowing and bowing, — for the Great — Big — HAND had become an enormous, an overwhelming big hand now — Marty almost stumbled over Bert Jameson. He was at the very last table at the side, and he was alone. He was trying to speak to her. “Minnie —” he was saying “Oh, Minnie — Minnie —” over and over again, and he was pale with excitement and his big dark eyes that she remembered so well were little black holes in his face, and his hands were shaking.

Marty’s heart turned over, twice, and then jerked itself bang right up into her throat and choked her. That was all in the first half-second.

Then she turned away, finished her bows, and at last spoke to Bert.

“Just a moment and I’ll be with you,” she said.

Back in her dressing-room she was quite calm. She arranged her hair, and did over her makeup as always. She flung her glittering scarf around her and went back.

“How d’you do!” she said. “This is quite a surprise, I must say.”

Bert, who had always been so self-possessed, so cool with girls, so assured, stammered with awkwardness. “You were wonderful, Min, wonderful. I never even imagined — of course Ralph and Lola said — but it was way beyond — you were wonderful!”

“Glad you liked it,” said Marty. “How’ve you been since I last saw you?” It was very strange, but Bert didn’t look nearly as tall and broad shouldered as she had remembered him. And he certainly was fatter — he had a double chin! His dress suit didn’t fit and his tie was abominable. She couldn’t help noticing. “Queer,” she thought, “I always thought he was the swellest dresser!”

And he seemed to find difficulty in talking. Marty waited. Let him flounder — it was balm to the hurt she’d nursed for five years.

“How’ve I been? All right, I guess,” he said at last, “and I’ve thought about you every day since you went off. Min — why didn’t you write to me?”

“I didn’t have anything to say.” She could hardly believe that it was herself handing out that stony reply. She who had been so sure if she ever saw Bert again and he gave her the least scrap of encouragement that she’d fling herself into his arms and weep her joy and bliss!

“I deserve that,” he admitted. “I didn’t treat you right. I was an awful fool, Min, ever to look at any other girl when I had you. There hasn’t been a day since you left but I’ve told myself so.”

Marty listened with amazement, not at him, but at herself. Why wasn’t she overcome with hearing the very thing she had so longed to hear, why wasn’t the sight of him wallowing in remorse more moving, and why, why did she feel absolutely no response to his avowal? “Have I been kidding myself that I was in love with this bird all these years?”

Marty demanded acidly of her ego. And the ego insinuated, firmly, that it feared she had indeed been doing exactly that.

Bert was talking on, talking heavily and leaning on the table, touching her arm. She moved it away. “When Ralph and Lola told me they’d seen you and what you were doing and how you’d prospered, well, I said to myself, well, I said, I’ll go and see her at least, and ask her to forgive me, and —” “I’ve not got a thing to forgive you for, Bert. I don’t know where you get that stuff.”

“I always felt it was my fault you run away and your father got so down on you —” “You can stop worrying. You had nothing to do with it. I’d made up my mind to have a career.” Marty chose the most devastating word she knew.

“Yes, I can see that. But — this isn’t the life for a girl, Min, not for a good girl, you must know that.”

She looked at him, cold with anger. Of all the cast-iron nerve, Bert Jameson preaching to her! And to her who’d never let a man so much as lay his finger on her, for all their chasing. She couldn’t speak for rage.

“And I thought, maybe, somehow, you might be willing to let bygones be bygones and come back to Thomasville as my wife, as Mrs. Bert Jameson. I’ve done very well, Min, since Pop passed on, and I’d build you a residence out in the new district by the river, and you’d have your own car, and you could buy pretty near whatever you liked, for you know I’m the one to deny my wife nothing. Ralph and Lola told me you made a big salary and had everything fine, lots of jewelry, but that isn’t all you need when you grow old, Min. You can’t dance forever, and a nice home, and a substantial life right amongst all your old friends, and a good man’s love means more in the long run to any woman with sense, and you’ve always had plenty of that.”

Marty’s rage was gone; she was thinking fast. So, she’d got it, the safety she’d envied in Lola, for the taking. She could have the nice house, the good food, the freedom from care. She’d be sheltered, protected, cherished. No more hall bedrooms, no more rough backchat from managers and agents. No more pinching and scrimping and starving, no more loneliness, no more grinding work, no more wind and rain to beat against a too-thin coat. To return to Thomasville with a humbled, devoted Bert as her husband, what a triumph!

She thought of her debts, her cramped room, her meager savings, the three-in-the-morning smell of the Subway, and that last long fearful block that she always ran in terror of waylay or insult. She thought of the long, long chance it was that she would ever see her name in bright lights on Broadway, would ever achieve the success with which Bert credited her, and then, suddenly, she remembered the new dance. Why, if she said yes to Bert and safety and shelter and comfort and luxury, if she gave up, she’d be letting Ranny Ruggles down, she’d be letting him down, flat. She’d be a quitter, nothing less, a poor sport, a two-timer, and a darned cold fish to boot.

Of course he was just somebody she’d picked up, he hadn’t the least possible claim on her, he’d have no right to say a word, and to do him credit, she knew that he’d urge her to do the best for herself and never

give him a thought. He was that kind, Ranny, that good kid.

“Haven’t you got anything to say to me, Min?” said Bert tremulously. “can’t you even give me any hope that you’ll consider it?

I’d wait as patient as the next one if you’d only let me hope that you — and you can find out whether I’m all right, financially, I mean. You can look me up. I’ve got a good rating, if I do say so, and I’m a director in the bank, and on the Board of Trade, and if we start a country club, like we’re talking of, I’m to be the first president.”

He swelled and swaggered very pridefully and Marty made the discovery, as he surged over the table, that he had a stomach as well as a double chin. Bert with a corporation! Bert the substantial citizen, the club president! Why, what had she to do in this galley! Nothing, nothing at all. She knew it now.

“Bert,” she said softly, “I’m sorry, but you’ve not got a Chinaman’s chance.”

He couldn’t quite believe it, at first, but after a while he saw she meant it. He became very mournful. Marty was thankful when he decided to go. He tipped the waiter meanly, she noticed.

She went back to the performers’ room and sat down by herself, ignoring the chair by Chloe Clox. She felt curiously empty, and hollow, and lonely. She’d lost her old image of Bert; she’d lost her love for him, at least she’d lost thinking herself in love with him; she’d lost a perfectly good husband, a home, a secured and tranquil life. No wonder she felt lonely. And why had she dumped them all, — why? She didn’t quite know. She was unfamiliar with the moral philosophers who write so convincingly of the inner necessity of living up to one’s highest ideals. Yet, in her own way, she expressed their conclusion when she said, half aloud, “Maybe I’ve pulled a big boner, but I’m not sorry.”

But the loneliness persisted. She’d cut herself away definitely from the past. Always there had been a tie of memory, of hope, a little green pathway that might after all her wanderings and adventurings lead her back home. Now the pathway was gone. She must still wander and adventure on the same dark and grimy roads she had chosen in young and angry ignorance, and she must go alone.

She went through her second performance mechanically, got into her street clothes, and slipped out of the back door into the alley behind the club, a dim-lit dreary tunnel that emphasized her mood.

The single light might have burned cobalt and ultramarine, indigo and syenite at her approach, she was so steeped in blues. She walked slowly down the tunnel, each step weighted with hopelessness.

But as she turned into Broadway someone came briskly across the pavement to meet her, someone who flung away a cigarette and lifted a hat, and spoke in a boyish, confused voice.

“I waited for you, Miss Golden,” said Ranny Ruggles, “I hope you don’t mind. I been thinking that last block up to the house wasn’t so good for you to be walking through alone this time of night.” He repeated anxiously, “I do hope you don’t mind.”

It was magic, his friendliness, his solicitude. The blues scintillated into rose color, the loneliness vanished. The awful empty space in Marty’s emotions hastily contracted and became almost unnoticeable.

What price old smarty Bert, now? Here was a lad who couldn’t offer her a garage, or a house, or a car, or anything but kindness, and comradeship, and understanding, but he wouldn’t grow fat and stodgy and prosy, he would laugh and jazz to the end of his days.

She gave a little dancing step of pleasure, and linked arms with Ranny Ruggles.

“I don’t mind,” said she. “I don’t mind a bit.”

Editor’s Note: We have chosen to reproduce the original printed work, with its odd punctuation and dialect. This story was included in Confetti: A Book of Short Stories, published in 1924, and is now part of the public domain.

SPRING 2017

35

The Book Whisperer

36

WASHINGTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE

Photos by Brad Hess

A

s vice president and senior editor at the book publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Jonathan Segal ’66 rubs shoulders daily with New York’s literary elite (and aspiring authors). So it’s no surprise that renowned journalist Carl Bernstein was the one to present his friend Segal with the 2015 Editorial Excellence Award from Biographers International Organization. In his remarks about the man who edited his biography of Hillary Clinton, Bernstein said, “Jon Segal is interested above all in the truth… especially the truth of the lives that his writers are exploring, or the truth of the events they are investigating, and their meaning.”

Segal’s own true story took a dramatic turn when, growing up in New York City, at the age of nine he was diagnosed with polio, which infected hundreds of thousands of children in the 1950s. At home, recovering from the disease after a hospital stay, he became a passionate reader.

When he’d consumed everything on the family’s wellstocked shelves, his parents brought more from the library.

He devoured Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Treasure Island. He was such a voracious reader that he skipped two grades and, ironically, graduated from the city’s highly competitive, math- and science-focused Stuyvesant High School. But reading remained paramount.

Today, Segal occupies an office lined with books at Knopf’s New York headquarters. He is one of the industry’s most respected and accomplished nonfiction editors. Seven of the books he signed up and published have won Pulitzer Prizes; one, a National Book Award; there have been several National Book Critics Circle and Los Angeles book prizes as well. He has published books by Elie Wiesel, Tony Blair, Bill Bradley, Robert M. Gates, Andre Agassi, Arthur Ashe, Nicholas D. Kristof, Gay Talese, Dexter Filkins, Robert B. Reich, Joseph Lelyveld, and Gary Taubes, to name just a few. Of his extraordinary childhood reading habit, he says, simply, “In 1955, television didn’t even start until 3 in the afternoon. So I listened to the radio and read. What else could I do?”

Small Satisfactions, Larger Lessons When it came time for college, he had his eye on something small and, after Stuyvesant’s all-boys environment, coed.

“My father was a wonderful man and a huge influence in my life,” Segal says. “He had gone to a small college, Ripon College in Wisconsin, for a year and said it was the greatest year of his life. He adored the independence, the size of the school, the camaraderie. I wanted that kind of intimate environment.” He and his dad hit the road, visiting Dickinson, Muhlenberg, and Bowdoin colleges, among others. “I know it sounds corny,” he says, “but when I looked

at the Washington College campus, I just loved the way it looked. It felt right to me. I’ve never regretted the choice I made.”

Segal considered following in his father’s footsteps by pursuing medicine, but during his initial foray into organic chemistry he hit a roadblock. He soon was an English major. During the summers in New York he worked for a neighborhood newspaper. A creative writing course he took in his junior year with Professor James Miller focused his attention. The path ahead was beginning to become clear.

“When I started to spend hours and hours at college reading,” Segal says, “whether for introductory courses or, later on, a course on Victorian literature, I knew I either wanted to write or somehow be involved in publishing.

Gerda Blumenthal, a professor who’d survived the Holocaust, gave classes at night to a very small group, seven or eight students. I attended her class on Dostoyevsky one semester. Somehow that sealed the deal.”

In the 1960s, education, as always, expanded beyond campuses, including at Washington College, with its location in still-segregated rural Maryland. Segal’s social consciousness grew in the face of anti-Semitism and racism.

“I worked in the dining hall, which required me to get up at 7 in the morning and spend a few hours cleaning tables and mopping floors,” he says. “I got to know some of the black folks who worked in the kitchen, and they invited me to their homes in Chestertown, as well as a few of the nightspots. Seeing the signs in town for ‘colored takeout’ chilled me. Discriminatory fraternities and sororities on campus that wouldn’t have blacks, Jews, or in one case, Catholics, struck me as profoundly wrong. That had a lot to do with why I got into journalism, and with the kind of books I’ve done throughout my career, many of which have to do with social justice and race.”

“Jon is a profoundly decent, humane man who loves his authors, loves his business, and believes that books and authors can make the world a better place,” says author T.J. Stiles, whose The First Tycoon and Custer’s Trials, both edited by Segal, won Pulitzers. “He wants a beating heart, pumping passion and conviction, and a moral sensibility throughout the book.”

In his senior year, Segal became student body president and worked for change on campus. “I could see that you could make a difference if you put some effort into it, organized, put some people’s feet to the fire, and simply defended the rightness of certain causes,” he says.

With graduation looming, Segal considered going to grad school for a Masters in Fine Arts in creative writing, but also applied to work at The New York Times (where his mother had worked in the 1930s). The crown jewel of journalism offered him a job as a $60-a-week copy boy. He jumped at the opportunity.

SPRING 2017

37

editing [persona],” Stiles recalls. “Then he grabbed my shoulders and said, ‘Aren't you glad I made you cut out all that stuff about Nicaragua?’ ” But beyond the accolades—the prizes and best-sellers, the famous authors and the books dedicated to him— Segal prefers to remain behind the curtain.

“If I don’t help a writer make his book better, then I don’t deserve to have this job,” he says. “But I want to be invisible. Nobody needs to know what I do on a book. It’s between me and the author.”

Instead, he finds his own reward in his authors’ successes. “One of the books I edited just went on the Times best-seller list,” he says. “I was so happy for the author, because he’s so good and he’d never been there before.”

Character Reflections

The Editor’s Instinct Segal says what he loves most about his work is that he continues to learn new things, whether about General George Armstrong Custer’s opportunism, the birth of America’s financial industry, or what it’s like to be an astronaut. At the Times, he learned the finer points of editing.

“I had the good fortune to work for a couple of editors who, out of sheer decency, took some horrible stories that I wrote and turned them into some pretty good stories,” he says. “I would take edited stories home with me at night and study them like a textbook.”

He eventually became an editor and writer for the paper’s Sunday sections and transitioned to books in 1974, working for the New York Times Book Company (then Quadrangle Books and, later, Times Books), Simon & Schuster, and Summit Books before joining Knopf in 1989. Segal says the Knopf culture under its chairman and editor-inchief, Sonny Mehta, suits him. He is devoted to both the company and its head.

38

WASHINGTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE

As for his day-to-day work life, “The most fun I have in this job is the editing process,” Segal says. “You get so close to a writer’s mind, to a writer’s heart. The very intensity of the experience of going word to word, sentence to sentence, is the thing that gives me the greatest pleasure. If I can help a writer go from a fine book to one slightly better, that is an incredible satisfaction.”

“He is a master of keeping a book on track, with a keen eye for unnecessary digressions,” says Eric Lax, author of Woody Allen: A Biography. “There are times he has a clearer idea of what I mean to say than I do, and he has saved me from myself countless times.”

Stiles knows all too well how Segal’s touch can transform a story. Having turned in his manuscript for The First Tycoon, about Cornelius Vanderbilt, he got an email from Segal: “You have to cut vast swaths of material out about Nicaragua.” It was painful, says Stiles, but he did it. In 2009, he was sitting with Segal at the National Book Awards dinner when Tycoon was announced as the nonfiction winner. “Jon jumped up and bear-hugged me for a long time, the complete opposite of his all-business

Parts of the publishing industry have changed dramatically with the rise of digital platforms for both delivery and sales. But Segal says the purpose of publishing hasn’t changed, and it’s where he finds enduring satisfaction.

“Reading and writing became my life, and I’m very grateful for it,” he says. “The greatest thing about my job is that it’s a form of continuing education. What do I do all day? I talk to very gifted writers. I read books that inform me. Not so bad.”

For him, biography is especially compelling. “Following a person and seeing how he changes, the dramas in his life, whether he’s moral or immoral, how he deals with crisis, with women, with racial issues, infirmity, disappointment, success—these are the things that all of us go through in our lives. We read these books because we see ourselves in them.”

Segal’s story speaks to an age of editorial excellence, intellectual curiosity, rich storytelling, and common humanity. “What gives him rare happiness,” says author and friend Paul Hendrickson, “is sitting in his favorite chair on the 12th floor of his 9th Street apartment in the East Village with the sun slanting in from behind, poring over a just-received manuscript or an urgent new book proposal.”

Segal might resist the poetic description.

“Lately I quit on books in the middle if I don’t like them,” he says. “I’ve gotta do it; I’m running out of time.”

CLASS NOTES 40 | BIRTHS & ADOPTIONS 45 | WEDDINGS 46 | OBITUARIES 4 8

A WAY WITH WORDS English Professor Norman James leads a class discussion in Bunting Library.

Readers, if can you identify the students and the era, please contact mlandskroener2@washcoll.edu.

SPRING 2017

39

A L U M N I U P DAT E | C L A S S N O T E S

WC Alumni: Share your news!

We are proud to share your stories with our community in “Class Notes.” Submit your alumni news and photos to CLASS_NOTES@WASHCOLL.EDU

1950

Howard Tilley is living well in an independent living facility near Atlanta.

1961

Philip Whelan and Jack Maun ’61 both graduated from the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 1965, so it was “very nice and doubly nostalgic” for the two former undergraduate classmates and medical school colleagues to have dinner together during their 50th class reunion in May 2016. The medical school class reunion was postponed a year, Dr. Whelan says, because of the 2015 riots in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray. Both now retired, Dr. Whelan worked as a pathologist at Maryland General Hospital, and Dr. Maun worked as a radiologist in Ridgewood, New Jersey.

1964

Linda Schemm Wessells retired in June 2007, after teaching for seven years in Anne Arundel County and 20 years in Baltimore

In August 2016, Barry Evans ’63 and his wife, Pat, celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary at Disney World with all 17 family members.

County. She has four grandchildren ranging in age from 11 years to one month.

1974

Susan Barrett -Bullitt retired after 30 years with the University of Pennsylvania Veterinary School - New Bolton Center. She now lives on a farm in Lancaster County, raising Labrador retrievers and sheep. She finds she is busier now than when she worked. Susan has seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild, with more on the way.

1977

In recognition of the achievements of his nonprofit, the Committee for a Better New Orleans, and his role as president, Keith Twitchell was named an Urban Hero for 2016 by the Urban Conservancy and profiled as an “Everyday Hero” by the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Keith is still fighting for community participation and still writing a little satire here and there.

Robert ’59 and Helen Hull Tyson ’57 hosted several friends and former classmates at their home in Chestertown this summer. Pictured in front, left to right: Helen Tyson, Karen Fitzgerald, June Winkler, Barbara Townsend Cromwell ’55, Pat Gates, Treeva Wishart Pippin ’58, Sally Ann Groom Cooper ’59, Robert Tyson, and James Hughes ’58. Second row: Bob Cleaver ’58, Dick Fitzgerald ’60, Bill Russell ’53, Doug Gates ’59, Bob Shockley ’58, Marion Waterman Moore ’56, Bobbie Dew Shockley ’57, Bea Clarke Griffith ’58, and Sue Elliott Murphy ’58.

40

WASHINGTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE

1980

Carolyn Choate-Turnbull P’15 solo hiked from Copenhagen to Lejre, Denmark, where she recited Chapter 12 of Beowulf for those gathered at the Lejre Museum of Cultural History on July 30.

Carolyn, a Stage 3 breast cancer

survivor diagnosed in 2003, with a second mastectomy in 2012, raised over $3000, dividing the funds between the Danish Breast Cancer Organization and the New Hampshire Breast Cancer Coalition for patient services.

On August 2, she met then U.S. Ambassador to Denmark Rufus Gifford at the American Embassy, where he awarded her a medal of honor for her endeavor. Carolyn received her master’s degree in literature in 2006. She is working on her memoir, My World is Flat but I’m Coming Around, highlighting not only her solo global hiking and biking adventures post-cancer but how she came to accept and embrace her life without breasts.

1989

2016 brought lots of changes for Melanie Wade Siewert. She bought a new home in Roswell, Georgia; got married; and started a new job as vice president of customer engagement at Worldpay US. Life is good!

1990

After more than 20 years in corporate America as a vice president for human resources, Katina Smith McKinney recently launched her own HR consulting firm, KBM Solutions.

A L U M N I U P DAT E | S P O T L I G H T

Jude M. Pfister M’93 has published his sixth book, Charting an American Republic: The Origins and Writing of the Federalist Papers, with McFarland Press. He also has signed with McFarland for a new book on the early Supreme Court.

Making the Cut Patrons of Papi’s Tacos in Baltimore have long enjoyed the culinary creations of Faith Paulick ’07. With her television debut on Chopped, she proved to new audiences just how adventurously delicious a taco can be. by Erin Oittenen

1998

Natalie Diane Smith received her Master of -Social Work degree in 2000, worked as a trainer for a national crisis line for 10 years, worked as an instructor of social work for four years, and is now working with children.

2004

Joshua Lewis was featured in the New American Writing Festival, held Nov. 15, 2016 at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York.

2005

Ryan Miller is currently a real estate agent in the Baltimore/ Harford County area and loves his job. He has traveled, still plays soccer in his free time, and is engaged to be married in the spring.

2006

Christopher Alan Ehmer received his MBA from Alfred University while coaching college basketball. He earned his first college head coaching position at Sarah Lawrence College in 2012. In 2015, he was promoted to associate director of athletics and continued as men’s head basketball coach. This past summer he married Emily Rau. Amanda Szampruch is now living in New Orleans with her husband, a U.S. Marine, and their two sons.

Amanda is an employment and transition specialist for military members and spouses.

2007

Molly Weeks Crumbley earned her first Dan black belt in taekwondo on Aug. 13, 2016. She has been training for the past four years. She works as a taekwondo and Muay Thai instructor.

ABOVE Faith Paulick’07 (third from left) beat out three other great chefs to win the Food Network's Chopped culinary competition in December 2016.

I

n the 10 years since her graduation, Faith Paulick ’07 has gone from a line cook at the Cove in Hodson Hall to the executive chef of three restaurants. In December 2016, she clobbered the competition to become Food Network’s Chopped champion.

Chopped pits four chefs against one another, the clock, and baskets of mystery ingredients.

Over three timed rounds, chefs must turn their mystery basket ingredients into an appetizer, entree, and dessert. Each round, a panel of judges removes one competitor from the competition, and the winner receives both culinary regard and a $10,000 prize.

Paulick’s episode, which aired December 8, was taco-themed, requiring competitors to make a taco for all three rounds. Working with difficult ingredients such as tripe, hoisin sauce, and goat milk, she drew on years of study and passion for Mexican food to beat out her fellow chefs and win the cash.

For Paulick, who gained her love of Mexican cuisine and culture as the head chef at Papi’s Tacos in Baltimore’s Fells Point, the win was a validation of the time she has put into learning the Mexican kitchen. “It didn’t come

by surprise. It didn’t come because I randomly got lucky with some basket ingredient. It came because I poured my heart and soul into learning this cuisine,” she says. “That was the best part of winning Chopped.”

Paulick is now head chef at Baltimore restaurant Joe Squared, where she has turned her attention from tacos to coal-fired pizzas.

Though she retains her love of Mexican food and intends to open a Mexican restaurant in the near future, she is taking a break from the business of food to return to her roots as a cook. “It’s nice to be in that kind of a creative environment. It’s definitely a craft where I’m learning something new every day.”

She credits Washington College with much of her success. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I have a successful career even though I didn’t go to culinary school, because I had such a great education. I have a different way of looking at things than a lot of my peers in this industry. That’s what has helped me become a chef, not just a cook.”

Paulick plans to spend the $10,000 prize on a food tour of Mexico.

SPRING 2017

41

A L U M N I U P DAT E | S P O T L I G H T

2008 Shoremen Strong Washington College athletes are well aware of the power of sport to bring people together. But not until a former soccer player lost his sister to a brain aneurysm did he recognize just how strong those bonds could be. by marcia c. landskroener M’02

ABOVE After running the Baltimore Marathon, Jack Taylor ’13 (left) and Matt Sedney show off their hardware,

J

ack Taylor ’13, a tennis player and business management major, and Matt Sedney ’13, a soccer player and economics major, were good friends in college.

As freshmen, they both lived in Kent House.

By senior year, they were sharing a house on Washington Avenue. So when Taylor heard the devastating news that Sedney’s sister Jennifer suffered a fatal brain aneurysm on Christmas Day 2013, he knew that no card, no Facebook posting, no flower arrangement would be enough. He knew he wanted to do something 42

WASHINGTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE

meaningful that would honor Jennifer’s legacy.

“I wanted to shed light on what happened to Matt’s sister, and to do something nice for him and his family,” Taylor explains. “I also wanted to push him to do a full marathon. Running is something that Jennifer enjoyed. Their dad is a runner. It seemed like the right thing to do.”

“My cousins started The Bee Foundation shortly after Jennifer passed away, and every year my friends gather in Philadelphia to support and raise money for brain aneurysm awareness," Sedney notes. “But Jack wanted to do something more. He wanted to do a charity race for Jennifer, and he wanted me to run it with him.”

Taylor, a serious runner who had completed the San Francisco Marathon two months prior, pushed the running novice to train long distance. Sedney advanced from running the Turkey Trot in his hometown of Ridgefield, Connecticut, to a succession of five halfmarathons. By 2016, he was ready for his first full 26.2 in Baltimore.

In the meantime, Taylor was also gearing up for the big race, organizing a GoFundMe campaign to raise money in Jennifer’s memory.

With a goal of $1,500, the campaign raised nearly half again as much.

The two ran the first 23 miles side by side, until the course swept downhill. Taylor ran ahead to the finish line, to see Sedney come in 17 minutes later. “I definitely teared up seeing him finish,” Taylor recalls.

“It was awesome. My family is incredibly grateful,” Sedney says. “Jack was super dedicated about running the race for Jennifer.”

Sedney, a financial analyst with Mercer Investments in New York City, is still pounding the pavement, and Taylor, a commercial real estate broker in Baltimore, wants to do more long-distance trail running. And the two friends are considering where to run their next charity race for Jennifer.

Katie Juromski graduated from the general pediatrics residency program at Thomas Jefferson University/AI duPont Hospital for Children and is currently completing a chief residency.

2009

Capella Elisabeth Meurer moved to Australia shortly after graduation, spent almost four years as a social worker helping homeless families, and is now completing graduate studies at Monash University. Capella is undertaking combined master’s and doctorate degrees in counseling psychology, with a focus on how people with eating disorders understand their experience of recovery and how this can improve treatment outcomes.

Jan Wouter van Ewijk obtained a master’s degree in history from the University of Amsterdam and a Master of Public Policy degree from Maastricht University. He has worked at Google in Dublin

Mary Helen Holzgang Sprecher ’86 medaled in tennis at the Maryland Senior Olympics in September. She is now qualified to represent the state at the national level in both singles and mixed doubles tennis in 2017 in Birmingham, Alabama.

A L U M N I U P DAT E | C L A S S N O T E S

AJ Schmalfuhs was welcomed as a first-term medical student in the class of 2020 during the White Coat Ceremony at Trinity School of Medicine on Sept. 3, 2016.

2015

Connor Harrison was the first student from Washington College to attend the master’s degree program in accounting at the College of William & Mary. He graduated last spring and passed all four sections of the CPA exam on his first sitting.

Kappa Alphas from the 1950s and ’60s had their 18th annual golf outing at the Maple Dale Golf & Country Club in Dover, Delaware, on Sept. 28, 2016. Pictured left to right: Frank Everett ’64, Jim Francis ’66, Dick Wunderlich ’67, Bob Clagett ’63, Dick Natwick ’66, Eric Purdon ’66, Jack Shannahan ’65, Dick Frank ’62, Jim Holloway ’59, Jerry Jenkins ’65, Bob Leitch ’62, Phil Tilghman ’64, and Vance Strasburg ’66.

and is now a corporate communications consultant with Citigate First Financial in Amsterdam.

2009

Benjamin Majors completed his Master’s of Science in biostatistics in May 2015 from the University of Iowa. He is currently working for Chase Bank as a business systems analyst.

2011

Kristina Kelley completed a Master’s of Fine Arts at Temple University in May 2016. Kristina is currently teaching at Temple and beginning to work in the non-profit arts sector in Philadelphia. She is living with her fiancé, Ben Majors ’09. They were engaged last year and will be married in Delmar, Maryland, in September 2017.

2012

Last summer, Hannah O’Malley studied emerging models in conservation and education, as well as spiritual connections to nature in Thailand. Hannah, an education coordinator at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, lives in Orlando, Florida, and took the graduate course in pursuit of her master’s degree from Miami University’s global field program.

2013

After three years working in project management for a technology company, Sara S. Braunstein left to pursue a career in financial analysis. She has been at 2U as a financial analyst for one year and started her MBA at American University in January 2017.

After graduation, Rebecca Helene Sussman attended Emory University School of Law, where she earned her juris doctor degree in May 2016. At Emory, she was vice president of the graduate student government, vice president of the student bar association, president of the National Security Society, and worked at the Environmental Law Clinic and the International Humanitarian Law Clinic. Rebecca is now an associate at U.S. Grid Company in New York City, where she works on contract drafting and negotiations.

2014

Ana Maria Lipson is enrolled in the Emerging Media Graduate Program at Loyola University Maryland. This fall she worked as a digital translations intern for Hillary for America.

Robert Anderson is enrolled in medical school at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Darius Johnson is a development data specialist with the Department of Neurology & Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore.

Megan Conway is continuing her career in the hospitality/hotel industry. She recently started a new career as an executive meeting manager at the Hamilton Crowne Plaza Hotel in Washington, D.C.

2016

Rebecca Ann DeSantis is a graduate student at American University, where she is pursuing a Master’s of Public Administration degree with a concentration in international management.

Duke’s Top Doc

H

ow was it that the son of Ukrainian immigrants who grew up in a tough neighborhood in Brooklyn managed to achieve the pinnacles of success in the field of medicine?

In his memoir, A Chancellor’s Tale: Transforming Academic Medicine, Washington College alumnus Ralph Snyderman ’61 shares what propelled him to Duke University, and how he led one of the nation’s best academic medical centers into exciting new directions. During his 15-year tenure as Chancellor

of Health Affairs, Snyderman revolutionized America’s healthcare industry through several initiatives. Under his leadership, Duke became known as one of the world’s most preeminent academic medical institutions, having • created the Duke University Health System, a new model for academic medicine • created the Duke Clinical Research Institute, the largest clinical research institute in the world • initiated the field of integrative medicine, and • created the field of personalized medicine, now a model for health care in the United States.

Dr. Snyderman, a member of Washington College’s Board of Visitors and Governors, is now director of the Duke Center for Research on Personalized Health Care. He holds many honors and awards, including the North Carolina Life Sciences Leadership Award and the Personalized Medicine World Conference’s Pioneer Award.

SPRING 2017

43

A L U M N I U P DAT E | C L A S S N O T E S

Mystery Photo

LEFT Washington College turned out to celebrate the investiture of Jonathan Newell ’92 as Circuit Court Judge for Caroline County, Maryland. In back row, left to right: Sally Livingston Haynsworth ’93, Chip MacLeod ’86, Judith Ames, Frank Creegan, Jonathan Newell ’92, Jeffrey Newell ’92. In front row, left to right: Sylvia Maloney, Amanda Newell, Barbara Creegan, Judie Berry Barroll ’88, M’91, John Nunn ’80, and Matt Katz ’17.

I

n the photo that opened the Alumni Update section of the latest WCM, George C. Williams ’71 and William Bollinger Sr. ’71 prepare for a road trip to Daytona Beach following graduation. Williams had been drafted and was scheduled to enter the U.S. Navy within the month. Two freshmen women also packed into that little Volkswagen for the long ride to Florida. Williams, now retired from private practice, pursued a career in dentistry and has served on the faculty of the University of Maryland School of Dentistry for 37 years.

LEFT Suzanne FischerHuettner ’95, Pam Hendrickson Scott ’94, Cheryl Bull Overend ’95, Steve Huettner ’91, Amy Draper ’95, Bill Halagarda ’92, and Scott Overend ’93 pose on their annual trip to the Outer Banks. Geoff Rupert ’94 also attended.

ABOVE Thomas Albright ’96, pictured with his daughter, participated in the Shootout for Soldiers fundraiser for the fourth time. This year, Washington College alumni, current players, and family comprised the entire field. Thomas says he is proud to be a Shoreman and sends his thanks to Andrew Manos ’94 for leading the charge and organizing the WAC group again.

Se

end

rse f Alumni W C r eek Y t

Save the date to set your course to Washington College!

Join us in Chestertown to celebrate Alumni Weekend 2017.

Catch up with friends, visit your favorite faculty and staff, and explore the newest changes to Campus. Accommodations Suzanne Fischer-Huettner ’95, Pam Hendrickson Scott ’94, Cheryl Bull Overend ’95, are available both on and off campus, and events are open Steve Huettner ’91, Amy Draper ’95, Bill Halagarda ’92, and Scott Overend ’93 pose on their annual trip to the Outer Banks. Geoff Rupert alsowhole attended. to’94 the family. Mark your calendars!

Registration is coming in Spring 2017.

See you in June!

Wa s June 2-4, 2017 e g e hingt C l 44

WASHINGTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE

Latoya Gatewood-Young ’11 and Mark Henckel ’76, Classes & Reunion Committee Co-Chairs

A L U M N I U P DAT E | B I R T H S & A D O P T I O N S

Oh Baby!

Akin Walker ’10 and his wife, Kevona, had their first child, Micaiah James Walker, on Sept. 29, 2016.

Ray Pagano ’11 and Meghan Livie ’09 and their son Bay were delighted to welcome a baby girl, Flora Suzanne Pagano, to their family on Nov. 27, 2016.

Anna Cowden ’10 and her husband, Bogi, welcomed a baby boy, Ýmir Bragi Cowden Bogason, on Aug. 9, 2016.

Peter Knox ’06 and his wife, Andrea, are excited to share the birth of their daughter Riley Helen Knox, born Oct. 6, 2016.

Yuko Yahara ’05 and her husband, Inje Yeo, welcomed their first baby, Sali, in Annapolis, Maryland, on July 20, 2016.

Molly Weeks Crumbley ’07 and Boothe Crumbley ’03 are excited to announce the adoption of their 3-year-old son, Sebastian. They arrived home with him from Peru on New Year’s Day 2017, and he is settling in beautifully. They waited a long time to bring him home, and he was worth every minute.

Christine Smith ’94 is the proud mother of daughter Caroline Hope Smith.

Leland M. Currier was born Dec. 5, 2016, to Lee and Alicia Moore Currier ’07.

Patrick Timothy Page was born Oct. 23, 2016, to Denise and Robert Page ’01.

SPRING 2017

45

A L U M N I U P DAT E | W E D D I N G S

Just Married Nick Faherty ’04 and Bridget O’Brien were married at the Fairmont Hotel in Pittsburgh on Oct. 8, 2016.Pictured left to right: Phil Baker ’08, Ryan Miller ’05, Sean Mulcahy ’03, Geoff Foltyn ’04, T.J. Velykis ’03, the bride and groom, Steve Yurchak ’03, Lauren Baker ’05, Tom Baker ’05, and Brian Kearney ’04.

Jamie Frees ’12 married Craig Miller II June 11, 2016 at the Inn at Mitchell House in Chestertown. Their early summer wedding was well attended by WC alumni and staff. Pictured in the back row, left to right: Dan Small, Maren Gimpel, Mike Hardesty ’05, Jemima Clark ’95, Chris Bigelow, Shane Brill ’03, Liz Seidel, John Seidel, Jesse Schaefer ’12, Robyn Levitan ’09, Michael Drake ’12, Bridget Mahoney ’12, Marshal Cahall ’11, Ben Ford, Darcy Klinedinst ’13, Brendyn Meisinger ’13, and Kate Livie. In the front row: Kathy Thornton ’13, Bill Schindler, and the bride and groom.

Katie Juromski ’08 married Brian Kennedy alongside bridesmaids Tonie Domino ’08 and Alicia Murphy on April 30, 2016 in Philadelphia.

Katie and Brian met at UMDNJ Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and now live in Philadelphia.

46

WASHINGTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE

A L U M N I U P DAT E | W E D D I N G S

Melanie Wade Siewert ’89 married Jeff Siewert on September 3, 2016, in a very small beautiful wedding on a perfect day!

Maria Whitman ’11 and Chris Harvey ’10 celebrated their marriage in Greenville, Delaware on May 21, 2016. Pictured from bottom of stairs: Traci Daeleamans ’12, Julianna Sheehan ’09, Page Allen ’11, CJ Price ’09, Trish Tomczewski ’09, Caitlin Ward ’10, Isabel Derera ’12, Maria Whitman ’11, Helen Veasey Murphy ’11, Leah Sbriscia ’12, Kendal Mulligan ’12, Alysia Long ’13, Kelli Canada ’09, Megan Easter ’11, Catie Wise ’09, Jason Price ’08, Chris Harvey ’10, Alex Herz ’09, and Dominick Iaquinto ’10.

Diana Watts ’06 and Jon Francis ’06 were married Oct. 9 at Camp Wright in Stevensville, Maryland. Pictured top row, left to right: Brooke Burkett ’06, Julia Lange ’06, Ashley Morris ’06, Bridgette Brown ’06, Julianne Meagher ’06, Mikey Meagher ’04, Katie Philipp ’06, and Mike Philipp ’06.

Bottom row: George Best ’06, the groom, the bride, and Alana Wase ’06.

Meg Lundquist ’08 married Jamie Minkler on Sept. 10, 2016 at Widehall, home of Professor Andrew Oros and his partner, Steve Clemmons.

Pictured left to right: Lauren Beam ’09, Madeline Rahe ’08, Stephanie Voucas ’08, Kathleen Nealon ’08, Julie Burke ’05, April Rosenburger ’05, Alysia Miller ’05, Kelly Nealon ’05, Ally Bauer ’08, Sunni Lange ’05, Kristen Panos ’08, and Cheryl Acerbo ’08.

Jennifer Fenton ’09 and Kent McClintock ’09 were married Sept. 24, 2016 at St. James Episcopal Church in Woodstock, Vermont.

The reception, attended by many alumni, was held at The Woodstock Inn. Pictured from left to right: Ryan Cates ’08, Dori Charles Cates ’08, Anna Yon ’09, Joe Coveney ’09, Andrew Curren ’09, Eric Shea ’09, Ned Foster ’10, Kent McClintock ’09, Conor Freeze ’09, Jennifer Fenton ’09, Mark Alderman ’08, Molly Billmyre ’09, Lindsey Burns Williams ’09, Greg Eckenrode ’08, Lauren Beam Ottenhoff ’09, Lindsay Brown Sutter ’09, Mike Sutter ’08, Anna Chay Curren ’10, Colleen Kelly ’09, Neilly Hortsman Alderman ’08, and April Rosenberger ’05.

SPRING 2017

47

A L U M N I U P DAT E | O B I T U A R I E S

In Memoriam Sept. 4, 1948. She loved boating, tennis, bridge, and socializing with friends, but most of all loved fishing with Bill.

Retired Navy Lt. Cmdr. William M.D. Roe ’43

Retired Navy Lt. Cmdr. William M.D. Roe ’43 died Oct. 2, 2016.

He was 94. At Washington College, Bill belonged to Theta Chi fraternity and attended summer school so he could graduate in January 1943 and begin active duty in the Navy. He served in the Pacific Theater during World War II and married Elizabeth Bailey Phillips in 1944. After retirement from the Navy in 1964, he returned to the family home and worked in the Sudlersville Bank of Maryland for 25 years, retiring as its president in 1989. Bill was a charter life member of American Legion Post 18, a member of the Queen Anne’s County Board of Education for 10 years, and on the Board of Trustees of Chesapeake College.

Phyllis R. “Bucki” Dulin ’47 died Oct. 20, 2016 with her two sons and friends present. Bucki was born on Aug. 17, 1925 in Baltimore.

As a girl she spent many enjoyable summers on the Chesapeake Bay with her loving family. At Washington College, she majored in English, began her P.E.O. Sisterhood association, and met William E. Dulin, whom she married on 48

WASHINGTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE

Katharine Stone Bucher ’48 died Aug. 13, 2016 at age 89. She was the loving wife of George Conrad Bucher, a wonderful mother to five sons, and a doting grandmother and great-grandmother.

Katharine was a competitive duplicate bridge player. She had a career in science long before most women worked outside the home.

In 1948 she received a bachelor’s degree in medical technology from the University of Delaware, and worked for DuPont in immunology and toxicology research.

William Elwood Wright ’49 of Galena, Maryland, died Sept. 11, 2016. He was 88. An avid Boy Scout, Bill attained the rank of Eagle Scout at 16. At a young age, he discovered a lifelong love of chemistry. Following his graduation, Bill served in the U.S. Army from 1951 to1953. He married his college sweetheart, Dorothy Groves Wright ’52, in 1955, the same year he received a master’s degree in chemistry from the University of Delaware. He worked for the Tennessee Eastman Company, and then in research and development for IBM for 24 years. After retiring to Virginia, Bill pursued his second passion, raising Scottish Highland cattle.

Rev. John G. Shoemaker ’50 of Salem, Oregon, died July 29, 2016.

He was 87. Following his time at WC, Jack graduated from the Virginia Theological Seminary in 1954. He was an Episcopal priest for 62 years, taking his ministry from the Washington National Cathedral in D.C. to Honolulu, where he met and married his wife,

Roxanne. He remained passionate about civil rights in all its forms throughout his life. Jack and Roxanne began serving as Protestant chaplain and flutist on cruise ships and were fortunate enough to travel much of the world during this 20-year ministry.

Marlene Meyer Hubbard ’53, of Cambridge, Maryland, passed away Aug. 8, 2016. She was 84.

Marlene married her college sweetheart, the late Milton “Mickey” Hubbard, Jr. ’50, and settled in Cambridge, where she taught for the public school system for 35 years. After retiring in 1994, she remained active in the Dorchester County Retired Educators Association, serving on the board of directors for many years. Marlene was a devoted mother, grandmother, teacher, and friend who dedicated her life to serving others.

Channing Moore Chapman ’54 passed away in Rockledge, Florida, on Sept. 30, 2016. He was a patriotic, dedicated, and hardworking entrepreneur. Channing is survived by his wife, Susan, and daughters Karen Barber, Ellen Yamamoto, and Allison Chapman.

in history. She married Bruce R. Laumeister in 1957. Virginia loved raising her three sons, playing tennis, figure skating, and hosting dinner parties. She earned her master’s degree in library science at Rutgers University and was a reference librarian at the Colonie Town Library in New York from 1989 until her retirement. Virginia was a gracious and empathic woman who accepted each person just as they were.

Andrew Jackson Dail III ’55 passed away Nov. 28, 2016. Jack was born at home in Dundalk, Maryland, on Aug. 25, 1933. After Washington College, he joined the U.S. Navy, becoming a pilot on the U.S.S. Randolph. While serving his country, he met and married Shirley Katherine Marble. After the Navy, Jack obtained his Master of Education degree from Arizona State University and began his career in the public school system as an administrator. Jack is fondly remembered and missed by all the people he met on his life’s journey.

Richard E. Snyder ’55, born in 1933, died June 13, 2015. He graduated from Washington College with a Bachelor of Science degree and married Dejah Stier in 1956. He was an account manager with Xerox Corporation until his retirement. Richard resided in Colorado Springs from 1996 until his death. He is survived by his wife, Dejah; son, David; daughter-in-law, Christa; and two grandchildren, Ashley and Courtney.

Cynthia J. Hodges ’54, of Wilmington, Delaware, passed away Oct. 17, 2016. She was 83. Cynthia was a medical receptionist and worked at WSFS Bank. She was a loving wife, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother.

Virginia Scott Laumeister ’54 passed away Oct. 11, 2016, surrounded by family. She was 83.

Virginia was born in Boston and grew up in Tucson, Arizona. A selftaught tennis player, she played for Washington College, where she earned a bachelor’s degree

Mary Ellen Gillis ’83

Robert Ross Beaton ’57 passed away Dec. 24, 2016. He was 86.

Bob was born in Orange, New Jersey, on May 2, 1930. He met his wife, Joanne, in 1954 while earning his bachelor’s degree in economics at Washington College. They were married in 1957 and were together 59 years.

Bob served in the U.S. Navy on the USS Saipan during the Korean War, and then as a plant manager for the American Can Company for almost 30 years. After retiring, he quickly moved on to two part-time careers, with the Texas Rangers and H&R Block for 28 and 27 years, respectively.

James M. “Mac” Connell ’57, of Edgewater, Maryland, passed away Aug. 15, 2016. He was 81.

Mac spent his entire life in the Edgewater area, briefly relocating to Chestertown to attend Washington College. He became a budget officer in Anne Arundel County and retired as Anne Arundel County’s fire chief in 1991. Mac was a lifetime member of Woodland Beach Volunteer Fire Department and the Annapolis Elks Lodge. His hobbies included collecting model trains and antique cars. Mac is survived by his wife of 61 years, Shirley Ann, two children, and four grandchildren.

Rodney L. Harrison ’58, of Annapolis, Maryland, died Aug. 21, 2016. He was 93. Rodney enlisted in the Navy V-5 aviation cadet program during World War II, graduating with a commission in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve in 1943. He was assigned to pilot the Dauntless dive bomber and received the Distinguished Flying Cross with Gold Star for his courage and expert airmanship during 54 missions. After returning to Oxford, Maryland, he earned his degree in physics at Washington College, followed by graduate studies in aero- and hydrodynamics at Johns Hopkins University. He worked for a series of small naval architecture firms in Annapolis and Washington, D.C., and was especially proud of his

work on the Ridgely Warfield, a 100-foot research vessel operated by the Chesapeake Bay Institute.

Until his retirement in 1989, Rodney was a key member of Westinghouse Oceanographic Division’s Naval Architecture Group.

Phyllis E. Morway ’59 died Nov. 3, 2016 in Newtown, Pennsylvania. She was 79. Born in Easton, Maryland, she had resided in Buckingham Township for the past 50 years. Phyllis was a retired research psychologist with the Department of the U.S. Navy at the Naval Air Development Center in Warminster. She was a trustee of the Hughesian Trust in Buckingham and a member of the National Audubon Society, and served as president of Handweavers of Bucks County.

Robert E. Brown Jr. ’60 died Dec. 17, 2016. He was 80. After earning his bachelor’s degree from WC, Rob served as head of the math department at Sudlersville High School. He joined Legg Mason Wood Walker and rose to become its senior vice president and market strategist. He later was chief market strategist at Ferris Baker Watts. Rob was an avid reader and enjoyed long walks through Govans and the Loyola University Maryland campus. He followed the Ravens and Orioles and was a University of Maryland basketball fan.

John Austin Buchanan ’61 died Sept. 23, 2016. Born Nov. 14, 1939 in Idaho, he moved to Maryland when he was 14. At WC, he played lacrosse and was a member of Theta Chi fraternity. After graduation, he earned his law degree in 1964 from American University.

He loved Washington College, returning every year for Alumni Weekend. He and his daughter, Laura Buchanan ’92, had a tradition of visiting Chestertown to see a lacrosse game each spring.

Holly Burke ’62 died Oct. 13, 2016. She was 75. A Kent County native and graduate of Chester-

town High School, Holly earned a bachelor’s degree in English at Washington College and went on to earn a law degree at Rutgers University. She retired from Guest Services Inc. in Fairfax, Virginia, as vice president of human resources in 2005. In retirement, she enjoyed travel, cooking, and volunteer work.

Sarah Elizabeth Kester Wagner ’63 passed away New Year’s Day 2017. She was 75. Betty studied for one year at Elmira College before transferring to Washington College, and also attended the University of Maryland and Morgan State College. Throughout her life she held many jobs, finally retiring in 2000 to do graphic and web design for the Bookplate in Chestertown. Betty traveled the world with Eugene, her husband of 54 years; learned several languages; had a son and daughter; and moved back to Kent County with her family in 1980.

Leslie Holt Bocchino ’65 passed away Dec. 24, 2016. She was 73. Leslie was born in Los Angeles, California, and grew up in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and Montclair, New Jersey. She delighted in her American heritage and was a proud member of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America.

Donald Vernon “Chip” Lewis ’65, of Baltimore, died Oct. 12, 2016. He was 73. After graduation, Don joined the Maryland Department of Agriculture’s State Chemist’s office, where he worked until his retirement in 2010. On Aug. 20, 1966 he married his college sweetheart, Jane Clapper ’66, now deceased. Both were talented musicians and often played together in their church and at home, to the delight of their three children. They also shared a love of gardening and helped found the Baltimore Herb Festival. Don’s passion for science and commu

John Austin Buchanan ’61

nity service led him to tutor many college students at University of Maryland, College Park, and travel to various high school classrooms in Baltimore City teaching chemistry and physics.

Richard William Marr ’81 passed away Oct. 29, 2016. He was 57. After graduation, Rick owned a successful real estate appraisal business for over 30 years. He enjoyed fishing, hunting, gardening, and cooking with family and friends, and was well known for his culinary skills and his generosity in sharing his delectable creations. He is survived by his father, children, and grandson.

Mary Ellen Gillis ’83 died Nov. 20, 2016. She was 55. Born in Chestertown, she was a kindergarten and first-grade teacher at Bakerfield Elementary until her retirement. An active member of Grace United Methodist Church, Ellie helped serve the pancake breakfasts, worked with the puppet ministries, and was a member of the Carillons Bell Choir. Her greatest joy was spending time with her family. She is survived by her husband, children, and grandchildren.

These obituaries are excerpted from published newspaper accounts.

SPRING 2017

49

DEVELOPMENT

Alumna Invests in Students’ Career Success A $1 million gift from Washington College Trustee Rebecca Corbin Loree ’00 promises to be a gamechanger for career development.

ABOVE Loree’s gift will help the College place more students in jobs immediately upon graduation.

W

C students will have new opportunities for launching careers, thanks to a generous gift from alumna Rebecca Loree and her husband, Jim. Their contribution of $1 million, dispersed over five years, makes possible an endowment for internships, job shadowing, strategic survey data, and crucial program assessments at the College’s Center for Career Development, giving students important advantages as they plan their professional futures.

“Ideally, the funds would be used to develop a best-in-class, four-year career development program that yields a significant increase in job placement, both in terms of quantity and quality, as well as other positive outcomes,” Loree says. “I would love to see this program be a recognized strength and differentiating factor in the college search process. To do this, we must invest in both leadership, technology, and other resources.”

“This is the sort of opportunity that

allows us to be creative, think big, and achieve our vision of becoming one of the pre-eminent career development operations at a small liberal arts college,” says Sarah Feyerherm, vice president and dean of students. “We're incredibly grateful to Rebecca who, as an alumna, is a testament to the kind of career success achieved by so many Washington College graduates.”

Loree graduated cum laude and with departmental honors in business management. In 2007, she founded Corbin Perception Group, an industry-leading investor relations advisory firm. She serves as editor-in-chief of Inside the Buy-side®, the firm’s cutting-edge market research, and is a recurring guest on CNBC. Loree is also president of the Jim and Rebecca Loree Foundation, a not-for-profit charitable organization that she co-founded with her husband in 2009.

As a college student, Loree was the first recipient of the Schottland Business Leadership Award, which

“Ideally, the funds would be used to

develop a best-in-class, four-year career development program.”

– Rebecca Corbin Loree ’00

50

WASHINGTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE

honors a senior who has demonstrated outstanding leadership potential and academic excellence. She also received the Department of Business Management Award, which recognizes a graduating business major who has demonstrated outstanding qualities of scholarship, character, and leadership. Even as she charted these achievements, she lacked ready access to top jobs.

“Not all students have the means or network to secure ideal positions,” she says. “I didn’t, and it’s why I am committed to ensuring that we give every student at Washington College the opportunity to be successful.”

With this gift, the building that houses the career center will be named the Rebecca Corbin Loree Center. Loree has also supported the Terrence Scout Endowed Scholarship and The Washington Fund, both of which help defray the cost of a WC education. In 2013, she established the Rebecca Corbin Loree Internship Fund, which helps business and economics students pursue summer internships leading to careers in the financial industry.

“Helping our students find their purpose and passion in life has always been central to the Center for Career Development’s mission,” Feyerherm says.

“Rebecca's generous gift will allow us to enhance existing programs and launch new, innovative initiatives that will ensure all of our students leave Washington College ready for meaningful work and fulfilling lives.”

Every Gift Matters

218 218 218 218 218 218 100 100 100 100 100 100 54 54 54 54 54 54 30 30 30 30 30 30 25 25 25 25 25 25 15 15 15 15 15 15 10 10 10 10 10 10

Your gift to Washington College, however modest, has an impact. Take a look at the difference you make with just a few dollars each year.

$25 gifts to feed one full scholarship student for a semester

$10 gifts to transport 32 students to Mt. Vernon and back

$15 gifts to supply lacrosse heads for 12 athletes

$10 gifts to fund one semester’s textbooks for a George’s Brigade scholar

$

$23 gifts to provide students with an annual subscription to the Journal of Finance

$

$ $ $

$

$

$18 gifts to house a Chesapeake Semester student in a new tent

$10 gifts to provide an expense stipend for a student externship

Hodson Trust Gives $3 Million

C

ontinuing a deeply valued, decades-long relationship, The Hodson Trust awarded $3 million in December as its annual gift to Washington College. The funds will further endow merit scholarships, support student research, and make the College more accessible and affordable for exceptional students with limited means.

The largest grant, of $1.8 million, will add to The Hodson Trust Merit Scholarship Endowment, which provides four-year awards to students who have demonstrated outstanding academic achievement, character, and citizenship.

In addition, $850,000 will augment George’s Brigade, a program that covers tuition, room, board, and fees for a select group of college students with high academic potential and great financial need. Thanks to this level of support, the College will be able to cover the costs for a George’s Brigade student from the first day he or she arrives on campus until graduation, in perpetuity.

A grant of $350,000 will boost The Hodson Trust Undergraduate Research Scholars Fund. The fund supports collaborative faculty-student research in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and

natural sciences. Particular emphasis is placed on research opportunities that connect student learning to the social, historical, cultural, and ecological context of Chestertown, the Eastern Shore, and the Chesapeake region.

The family of Col. Clarence Hodson established the Trust in 1920 to benefit four private educational institutions in Maryland: Washington College, Hood College, St. John’s College, and The Johns Hopkins University. Col. Hodson served on the Board of Washington College from 1920 until his death in 1928. He received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Washington College in 1922.

The Hodson Trust is the school’s largest single benefactor to date.

Starting with a grant of $29,884 bestowed in 1936, the Trust has given Washington College nearly $76 million.

“We are tremendously grateful to The Hodson Trust for its 2016 grant to increase the endowments of student scholarships and undergraduate research funds,” says College President Sheila Bair. “As we continue to address the twin issues of access and affordability, The Hodson Trust remains our most steadfast champion.”

SPRING 2017

51

THE LAST WORD

Cocktails with Cain

By Jamie Kirkpatrick

S

o I’m sitting at my desk, minding my own damn business, when the phone rings. It’s a dame I know.

“Busy?” she asks.

“A little,” says I. “I want you to read a book. You do know what a book is, don’t you? It’s Jimmy Cain’s long- lost novel. About a cocktail waitress.”

And she hangs up. That’s how it all started, I swear it.

Jimmy Cain, as in James Mallahan Cain to you. The same James M. Cain whose father was president of Washington College from 1903 to 1918. The same Jim Cain who graduated from that very college in 1910. The same wiseguy who learned to write dialog from talking to the guys laying down the brick sidewalk along Washington Avenue.

The same guy who became a hard-drinking Hollywood writer who earned a reputation as a master of noir fiction with novels like The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce, and Double Indemnity. The dead man that Roy Hoopes, vice president for college relations back in the Cater days, wrote a biography about instead of the one he was supposed to write about Doug Cater. That Jimmy Cain.

So I dialed up Amazon and plunked down $7.99 for The Cocktail Waitress, all 453 pages of it. You know what? It wasn’t half bad …

OK, enough is enough; I’m not really a noir guy. To be honest, it’s a genre I tend to eschew, but now that I’ve had a sip of it, I’m beginning to wonder why. The plot line is simple enough: widow with great legs, a beckoning balcony, and a fiery temper whose recently deceased husband was an abusive drunk loses toddler son to spiteful, childless 52

WASHINGTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE

sister-in-law, gets job as a cocktail waitress (turn the page), weds a rich but sickly old man, falls for handsome swain (turn the page), gets into a bunch of trouble, and I’ll leave it at that for now.

If writing — at least noir writing — is all about plot, dialog, locations, and characters, then The Cocktail Waitress is right up your dark alley. You’ll want to leave a big tip for Joan Medford, the you-can’t-help-but-stareat cocktail waitress — who serves up drinks and Cain’s lowbrow storyline without spilling a drop of either — and her down-and-out circle of friends. (Think Garth Brooks’ “I’ve got friends in low places/where the whiskey drowns and the booze chases/my blues away.”) Maybe you’ll come to pity Earl K. White III, the rich old man with angina who falls for Joan and her shipwreck story. You’ll swoon over Tom Barclay, the handsome rogue with the rakish grin “that defied you not to like him” and “a scent that took something loose in a woman and coiled it up tight.” All the while, you’ll be soaking up the seedy atmosphere, snarky dialog, wrong-side-ofthe-tracks locations, and sudden plot twists that are the hashtags of Cain’s hardboiled crime novels.

Speaking of plot twists … well, I won’t, except to say that no story of Cain’s is a straight line, and in this one, the final twist may well take place after every author’s favorite final words: The End. But no matter: noir is noir, and what’s not great prose can always be shined up with some good storytelling.

James M. Cain died in 1977 at the age of 85. At the time of his death, there were rumors about an unfinished novel, but it

ABOVE

James M. Cain, Class of 1910

would take researchers seven years to find the missing manuscripts. (Notice the plural.)

What they really found were scenes — variations of scenes, in fact — so what editors ultimately polished and eventually published as The Cocktail Waitress was more like the ghost of a Cain novel — or maybe more like an unclaimed body in the morgue, if you catch my drift.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and the Baltimore Sun. To read more of his writing, visit www. musingjamie.com.

Washington College Magazine Volume LXVII No. 2 Spring 2017 ISSN 2152-9531

In Person: Saoirse ’20 Stories matter to her. Words matter.

Names, even.

At 14, she legally removed her surname. She kept her first, Jeannie, but later selected a chosen name, Saoirse. It means “freedom” in Irish.

It matches, she says, her philosophy of life.

Saoirse pays attention to every word. That’s one reason why she left her native India to study at WC. “I’m interested in how the literature we write affects the society we live in, and how society affects the literature we write,” she says. An atheist who studies mythology, Saoirse examines the ways stories change over time.

In India, she explains, myths have been passed from parent to child for 4,000 years.

“We’ve noticed that when these stories are passed on from memory, everyone changes the story slightly, and they infuse it with their own values and beliefs.” Saoirse has studied the evolution of story at the micro level, comparing grandparent’s version to grandchild’s, and on the macro level, on a timeline of centuries.

Her immediate family is trilingual (English, Hindi, Punjabi); her extended family speaks eight languages. At family gatherings over the dinner table, “You speak in the ones you’re comfortable with, and it works out for everyone,” she laughs. Conversing in English isn’t difficult for her; conversing only in English is.

She enjoys writing multilingual poetry.

She’s been an LGBT history research assistant, a student guide for the Global Education Office, and is a member of four clubs on campus: EROS, TaNGO, the Writers’ Union, and the Poetry Club. She attends almost all of the events at the Literary House and the Starr Center. She runs a blog about literature. And she’s just starting her second semester.

Classes that foster student discussion, a curriculum that encourages interdisciplinary work, and professors who are open and available are all reasons for her progress thus far, she says. None of that is the norm in India.

Her ultimate goal is to support herself through her writing. Meanwhile, she’s aiming for a doctorate. “I know education is the only way I can rise in the world."

Photo by Tamzin B. Smith Portrait Photography