Alumni News
Mary van Dyke (Former Faculty) Mary van Dyke (Former Faculty), the woman who Charles S. Dutton ’83 said “taught me how to talk,” passed away on December 29, 2007. She was 99. As a professor and voice consultant in the Acting department from 1974 to 1982, van Dyke influenced a wide range of students under her tutelage. Elizabeth Norment ’79, who calls her former teacher “my oldest and wisest friend,” shares her thoughts below. As all who studied with Mary can attest, her teachings were never just about voice, speech, text, scansion (though she was an invaluable taskmaster in all those areas); they were also about depth, truth, idiosyncrasy, capturing the essence of a soul and sculpting it into a performance. She taught us to scavenge lovingly from life, and she offered abundant examples from her own odyssey through the
complex layers of the “club sandwich” she called her life in the arts. Our adventures together continued over the years—in New York, in Ashland, in Ireland, many times at her farm in Vermont—and there was never an opinion she expressed that didn’t clarify or debunk or unlock something I’d been grappling with, and always in her terse, droll, suffer-no-fools style. I came to depend on her wisdom as I steered through my own club sandwich, and she kept teaching me, til the end. As she passed in age all milestones known to me, we navigated uncharted territory together. I felt my way through pockets of her fading memory, helping where I could and annoying her as little as possible when I couldn’t. The rhythms of our conversations changed; I learned to wait more patiently for the ends of her paragraphs, which, miraculously, always arrived, with the same force as ever. She was indefatigable. She touched countless lives. She was determined to live to be a hundred, and damn near made it. Elizabeth Norment ’79
Farewell Dick Beebe ’85 6.20.2008
George Hersey ’54 art ’64 10.23.2007
Delbert Mann ’48 11.11.2007
Mark J. Richard ’57 3.3.2008
Ralf Bode ’66 2.27.2001
Mildred W. Hoadley ’45 12.15.2007
Chris Markle ’79 7.28.2008
Pierre-André Salim ’09 11.18.2007
Norman E. Cohen ’59 7.19.2008
John D. Hough ’57 7.14.2008
Charles McCallum ’50 8.31.2007
Louise Saurel ’38 2.23.2008
Alvin Colt ’37 5.4.2008
Rosemary Ingham ’67 7.13.2008
James R. Miller ’65 8.06.2008
William Snyder, Jr. ’55 3.12.2008
Katherine DeHetre ’71 12.29.2007
Irma S. Johnson ’35 12.3.2007
Tad Mosel ’50 8.24.2008
Bros Giles Turbee ’65 9.15.2000
Jeffrey V. Dennstaedt ’87 2.5.2008
Joan Pollak Kan ’48 7.3.2007
Albert John “A.J.” Moulfair ’65 12.14.2007
Mary Van Dyke, Former Faculty 12.29.2007
Gene Diskey ’61 3.29.2008
Jane Kimbrough ’61 7.15.2007
Gary Munn ’59 12.11.2007
Edwin L. Vergason ’42 3.27.2007
Andrew H. Drummond ’66 7.31.2005
Stanley Kloth ’55 8.28.2007
Paul Newman ’54 hon ’88 9.26.2008
Zack L. York ’42 3.17.2008
Dorcas D. Durkee ’46 10.23.2007
Fritz Andre Kracht ’53 10.18.2005
Eva E. Feldman ’62 6.7.2007
Juda L. Levie ’53 1.28.2008
Roxanne Kadishov Nicholson ’71 9.24.2007
Brita Brown Grover ’59 2.20.2008
Barbara Mackenzie ’56 2.16.2006
Rebecca Hargis-Turner ’45 05.23.2004
George Mallonee ’59 12.4.2007
Francine Parker ’59 11.8.2007 Felice Anthony Polito ’68 10.19.1991 Boyce Price ’39 11.1.2007
YSD 2008
49