1
20
1
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/68190bebffa74bd866b58d77fb647b47.pdf
751fce1e57d573efed8dd69e6f4f4549
PDF Text
Text
The
St.
John’s
College
•
Winter
a o o 7
Annap
W.E.B. Du Bois
In Annapolis
�“We claimfor ourselves every single right that belongs to afree-born American, political,
civil and social; and until we get these rights we will never cease to protest and assail the
ears ofAmerica. The battle we wage is notfor ourselves alone butfor all true Americans. ”
-W.E.B. Du Bois, 1906
On W.E.B. Du Bois
SIJOHN’S
College
ANNAPOLIS . SANTA FE
Imost five decades after publishing his landmark work, The Souls
ofBlack Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois stepped off a train a few blocks
from the Annapolis campus. There to greet him was Martin Dyer,
the first African-American to attend St. John’s College. Dyer had
already been accepted to a historically black institution. Coppin
State in Baltimore, but he changed his plans when St. John’s
admitted him. Dyer walked next to Du Bois with a sense of awe.
amazed at how a man with such small stature could convey such a sense of greatness,
and that a man in his Bos who had already been through many trials could be so
vigorous and lively. This issue of The College recounts Du Bois’ visit to Annapolis to
deliver a lecture.
Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois earned a bachelor’s degree at Fisk
University and then a second BA at Harvard, where he later earned a PhD. He taught at
Wilberforce University in Ohio, then at Atlanta University (now Clark Atlanta).
I’l 1905’ Du Bois helped to found the Niagara Movement and later was instrumental
in the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP). In 1910, he left his teaching post at Atlanta University to work
as publications director at the NAACP full time. He wrote weekly columns for
newspapers and was editor-in-chief of The Crisis, the NAACP’s magazine, in which
he decried lynchings, Jim Crow laws, and sexual as well as racial inequality.
Du Bois’ most famous idea was that a “talented tenth” of the black population would
lead his race to advancement and equality. To that end, he was a fierce advocate of
education and self-determination. In addition to his work for racial equality in his own
country, he was very much a citizen of the world, fighting against colonialism and
imperialism in Africa, and traveling the globe, speaking and writing, well into his 90s.
Persecuted for his political activity and disillusioned with America, he moved to Ghana,
where he died in 1963, on the eve of the historic March on Washington.
Du Bois was a marvelous writer, and The Souls ofBlack Folk includes some of
his most powerful prose. He described Lincoln as “the long-headed man with carechiselled face who sat in the White House. ...” In the poignant essay he wrote on the
death of his infant son, haunting imagery can be found: “He died at eventide, when the
sun lay like a brooding sorrow above the western hills, veiling its face; when the winds
spoke not, and the trees, the great green trees he loved, stood motionless. I saw his
breath beat quicker and quicker, pause, and then his little soul leapt like a star that
travels in the night and left a world of darkness in its train.”
There’s no record of what Du Bois thought of St. John’s, though Dyer remembers him
congratulating St. John’s for voluntarily accepting black students. But in accord with
the St. John’s way, he thought that education should go beyond preparing men and
women for work; black and white, one must have “ideals, broad, pure, and inspiring
ends of living.”
—RH
The Gollege (usps 018-750)
is published quarterly by
St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD,
and Santa Fe,NM
Known office of publication:
Communications Office
St. John’s College
Box 2800
Annapolis, MD 21404-2800
Periodicals postage paid
at Annapolis, MD
postmaster: Send address
changes to The College
Magazine, Communications
Office, St. John’s College,
Box 2800, Annapolis, MD
21404-2800.
Rosemary Harty, editor
Patricia Dempsey,
Emily DeBusk,
assistant editors
Jennifer Behrens, art director
Annapolis
410-626-2539
Santa Fe
505-984-6104
Contributors
Sally Benson (SF03)
Eva Brann (HA57)
Elizabeth Burlington (A08)
Jon Enriquez
Oliver Lemke (SFio)
Gabriel Pihas (A92)
Thomas Scally
Magazine design by
Claude Skelton Design
�{Contents}
PAGE
IO
DEPARTMENTS
Endowing St. John’s
Why building the college’s endowment is
the most important goal of the ongoing
capital campaign.
PAGE
l6
The Day Job
Five ambitious Johnnies brave cattle-call
auditions, rejection letters, and uncer
tain incomes in pursuit of their dreams.
PAGE
PAGE
z6
2
FROM THE BELL TOWERS
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
New Endeavors for Former Deans
Christopher Nelson’s Fiction Group
Celebrating Fish
Twenty Years of Karate-Do
The Man Behind the Covers
The Music of Homer
Challenging Alumni
36
Bibliofile
•
A new translation of Plato’s Republic
by Joe Sachs.
Harrison Sheppard (A61) considers
consumerism in America.
Joshua Kates (A80) deconstructs Derrida.
•
2121
Race and Human Nature
’
A Graduate Institute preceptorial
explores race through autobiography,
literature, and Supreme Court cases.
38 ALUMNI
PROFILES
38 For architect David Schwarz (A72), a good
PAGE
2'Y
opening question makes all the difference.
42 Portfolio manager Steve Bohlin (SF81)
Du Bois IN Annapouis
finds integrity and success go together.
44 At a time when most are enjoying
Alumni remember a quiet, dignified man
who came to campus.
retirement, Martha Jordan (SFGI83)
makes a leap of faith.
47 Jon Ferrier (A73) is still pursuing justice.
PAGE
Chaninah Maschler
48
Obituaries
A respected tutor emerita looks back on
an interesting life.
•
•
A Tribute to Brother Robert
Alumnus Ahmet Ertegun (class 011944),
founder of Atlantic Records
PAGE
Homecoming
50 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWS
PAGE
38
The memories of six alumni from six eras
reflect an evolving St. John’s.
ON THE COVER
W.E.B. Du Bois
Illustration by DavidJohnson
52 ST. John’s forever
�{From
the
Bell Towers}
Life After the Dean’s Office
While Michael Dink (A75) in
Annapolis and Victoria Mora in
Santa Fe have settled into the
role of dean on their campuses,
their predecessors have been
industriously using that time to
enter into new ones. Harvey
Flaumenhaft and David Levine
expound on their new lives.
The Amphibious
Mr. Flaumenhaft
The St. John’s community will
be pleased to learn that, after
his unusually long eight-year
term as dean (second only to
Jacob Klein’s nine-year stint),
Harvey Flaumenhaft says he is
“staying off the streets and out
of trouble.” What a relief.
Although he doesn’t regret
the time he spent as dean
(1997-2,005), Flaumenhaft
relishes his new freedom,
which has allowed him to
pursue his many intellectual
interests. “I’m glad I did it, but
I’m glad I’m done,” he says.
“We have a large operation
here so the dean has a wide
variety of functions, the kinds
of things that other institutions
have many people to do. You
don’t get much time to read,
study, and think. There’s a lot
of putting out fires and
preparing for the future by
talking with many people.. .It’s
interesting work, especially to
me because I’m very interested
in what kind of thing adminis
tration is. But prior to being
dean, I had never been a
manager, let alone had this
kind of responsibility.” The
difficulties of being a dean were
not limited to new administra
tive duties, he says, but also
included the things he couldn’t
do. “I had a number of writing
projects I had to put on the
back burner; that was a hard
part. I also didn’t teach because
of the demands of the job. It is
very nice to get back to the days
of writing and reading without
somebody needing me at any
moment,” he says.
Flaumenhaft, who has been
with the college for nearly 40
years, points out that St. John’s
has a unique approach to the
role of dean, which is effec
tively a safeguard of the official
relationship between the
faculty and the administrators.
“One of the particularities of
this college is that the deanship
is not a career track. The
faculty recommends someone
from their ranks to be dean
temporarily-you do it for a
finite stretch of time then go
back to being a tutor. In a lot of
places, to be dean is the end of
being a teacher and student.
This is a way of making sure
that people who make adminis
trative decisions remember the
work and needs of the faculty.
We keep the
dean amateur, in
the best sense.
It’s good for the
faculty and good
for the full-time
professional
administrators
to have someone
who is an
‘amphibian.’ ”
After finishing
his term as dean.
Harvey Flaumen
haft:
Captivated
BY Geometry.
Flaumenhaft took
his long-overdue
year of sabbatical,
followed by a year
of unpaid leave of
absence.
So what exactly
has been keeping
him off the streets
and out of trouble?
Geometry. He
spent his sabbat
ical and this year
revising, format
ting, and editing
his forthcoming
book in two
volumes entitled
“Insights and
Manipulations:
David Levine: Exploring phronesis.
What Classical
Geometry Was
Like at Its Peak
and How It Was Transformed.”
break from professional duties
before returning to teaching.
Flaumenhaft describes the
book as “a close reading of
When describing the dean’s
major mathematical texts,
office, Levine calls it a “work
trying to understand the
room” where members of the
contrast and transition from
faculty, board. Instruction
classical to modern mathe
Committee, and student body
matics.” Students can look
are able to come together to
forward to benefiting from
meet. “Here, you’re trying to
Flaumenhaft’s “amphibious”
make it possible for people to
flexibility; after to years of
grow into and with the
administrative and intellectual
Program,” Levine explains.
exercise, he will be resuming
“And that requires a lot of
the role of tutor in the fall.
conversations and working
with the faculty, trying to make
—Emily DeBusk (Ao6)
it as effective as possible.”
During Levine’s tenure as
David Levinedean, approximately one-third
Back in the Swing
of the current faculty was
These days, an average week
appointed. “These are people
for David Levine (A67)
who will continue to shape and
includes not one, not two, but
influence the school for years
three games of racquetball,
to come, so those decisions are
something Levine claims he
momentous.”
could not have done prior to
In addition to working with
taking his sabbatical after his
the faculty to support the
five-year stint as dean. And,
Program, Levine placed
according to his playing part
priority on improving the
ners, his game is stronger than
quality of student life, lowering
ever.
the rate of attrition, and
Levine, who first came to
expanding the assistant dean
teach at St. John’s in 1986, and
position into a full-time job.
whose tenure as dean of the
During the Santa Fe campus’
Santa Fe campus was 2001presidential transition and
aoo6, is enjoying a year-long
search, however, he absorbed
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 }
�{From
the
Bell Towers}
Story Time with Christopher Nelson
In the spring of 2005, after
spending more than a year
splitting his time hetween the
two campuses while the Santa
Fe presidential search was
underway, Annapolis President
Christopher Nelson (SF70) was
eager to reconnect to the
Annapolis community. He
decided to do it the St. John’s
way-talking about hooks-and
began a study group on short
American fiction, co-led by
tutor Deborah Renaut (A68).
Open to all in the campus
community, the group has
attracted students, staff, tutors
and tutors’ spouses.
To choose his material.
Nelson spent the summer of
2005 reading more than too
short stories to select the
reading list for the study group.
He read works by authors such
as Hawthorne, Melville, and
Poe and sought advice from
faculty members. Three stories
were at the top of his list:
Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,”
Poe’s “William Wilson,” and
Wright’s “Fire and Cloud.”
“They have open, endless ques
tions and are deep, difficult,
complicated stories,” he says.
Nelson had another reason
for pursuing American fiction
in the seminar: as an exchange
student he spent his senior year
in high school in Amsterdam
and missed out on 20thcentury literature and history
classes. Also, he acknowledges,
“fiction didn’t speak to me
when I was younger the way it
does now.”
Every other week. Nelson is
joined by about six to ten
“regulars” who attend most of
the study groups. Among them
is Jeff Peters (AGI06), who
plans to pursue a doctorate in
18th-century British literature.
Although he was an English
major at St. Mary’s
College, Peters says
the seminars connect
him to fiction
without considering
secondary sources.
He also finds it fasci
nating to look at the
short stories of
authors who are well
known for greater
works. “These are
works I never would
have read.”
Another regular,
Eileen McFarren,
additional responsibility
while Annapolis president
Christopher Nelson commuted
between campuses and was not
always available.
“I used to joke during
difficult times that I couldn’t
get paid enough to do this job,
but other times, I wanted to say
‘you’re paying me far too
much.’ When you know how
much people are learning and
you hear people playing the
piano and the conversations in
the coffee shop-all of these
things that wiU lead to one’s
personal growth-then it’s well
worth our efforts.”
Relinquishing some adminis
trative responsibility and
returning to his life as a tutor is
a transition that agrees with
Levine. “I’m happy to read and
write and talk. Our primary
role is to teach. Will I be happy
to be back in the classroom?
Absolutely.”
For the moment, however,
Levine is enjoying his time off.
He and his wife, Jackie, have
traveled to visit their children
and eight grandchildren as well
Short
lunch:
attends the study group not just
for the readings and discussion,
but also to feel more a part of
the college community.
McFarren and her husband,
tutor Louis Petrich, moved to
Annapolis five years ago.
“When we lived overseas we
both taught American fiction.
I was automatically part of a
group since the ex-pats hung
out together,” she says. “Here I
know a lot of other tutors and
their spouses, but not in the St.
John’s way-through a seminar.
3
So this group gives me that
chance.”
McFarren finds that the
discussions she likes the most
are about the stories she likes
the least. “I’m forced to see the
story in a completely different
way,” she explains.
Nelson and Renaut plan to
lead the fiction study group next
year, though Nelson hints that
there may be a shift away from
short American works to collec
tions by a single author. “ ‘The
Dead’ may be the greatest story
in the English language,” he
says of Joyce’s story.
—Patricia Dempsey
stories and
Frank
Rowsome, Jeff
Peters (AGI06)
and
Chris Nelson (SF70).
as made a trip to Greece.
Several intellectual projects are
also in the works. Levine is
finishing the last two chapters
of a book he began some years
ago, which is about one of
Plato’s smaller dialogues, the
Charmides. “a dialogue about
‘moderation’ featuring two of
Athens’ most politically
notorious figures.”
In the spring, Levine plans
to follow up on his fourth
dean’s lecture on Aristotle
and Plutarch, which explores
the question ofphronesis, or
{The College - St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 }
practical sense. He believes
that this project will hkely
result in a book, but for now,
he simply wants to find out
what’s next. “What is the next
question, and where does it
lead?” Levine asks. “Which
authors might help me under
stand the questions better?”
Is there a relationship
between these two projects,
practical sense and modera
tion? “That’s a longer story,”
says Levine, smiling.
—Sally Benson (SF03)
�4
On Fish
More than 100 students, tutors,
staff, andparents turned out in
Octoberfor a ceremony to
welcome back the denizens of
the Santa Fefishpond, housed
temporarily in Schepp’s Garden
and at President Michael
Peters’house while thepond
was repaired and improved last
year. A giftfrom the Class of
2005 helpedfund theproject.
Among the speakers was tutor
Ewen Harrison, who asserted
thatfish are the true center of
the St. John’s Program:
As some of you may know, I
spent many years studying the
evolution and behavior of fish,
before I saw the light and came
to teach and study at St. John’s.
I thought that when I came to
St. John’s I would put my fishy
ways behind me. How wrong
could I have been! Over the
past few years I have come to
understand that contemplation
of fishes is the true heart of the
St. John’s Program. I offer
you rr brief observations to
help you see the truth of this
radical claim.
i) Homer: Since we begin
our freshman seminar with
Homer, I shall do the same.
Who is the true hero of the
lliadJ Achilles, you may say?
Think again. I quote from
Book 21: “Achilles let Asteropaeus lie where he was on the
sand, with the dark water
flowing over him and the eels
and fishes busy nibbling and
gnawing the fat that was about
his kidneys.” Fish are the true
heroes of the Iliad, the subtle,
behind-the-scenes players.
They Uterally incorporate
the products of the absurd
activities of men at war.
3) Heraclitus famously said
that we can’t step into the same
river twice, which of course is
inspired by the deeper observa
tion from the fish’s perspective
that you can’t swim in the same
pond twice (especially after it
has been renovated).
{From the Bell Towers}
3) Plato: Who can forget
the comparison in the
Meno between the greatest
philosopher of antiquity,
Socrates, and the torpedo fish;
or the metaphor of fishing in
Plato’s Sophist: fishing as a
means of acquiring truth no
less. Elsewhere Plato would
have us look for the form or
eidos of the fish, which has
more reality than the fish we
think we see in front of us.
men?” In Job, some think that
the Leviathan is a crocodile,
but of course we now know that
it is in fact an enormous fish.
I leave it to the reader to inves
tigate the significance of the
fish that swallowed Jonah.
6) Shakespeare: Hamlet,
Act IV: “A man may fish with
the worm that hath eat of a
king, and eat of the fish that
hath fed of that worm.” This is
clearly a reference back to the
It’s all about the fish, says Santa Fe tutor Ewen Harrison.
4) Aristotle used fish as
prime examples of how to think
about motion. Is it a stretch of
logic to claim that his prime
mover is in fact the great
cosmic fish, whose tail
produces all other motions in
the cosmos? I think not.
5) The Bible is of course
replete with fish references, too
many to quote here: What does
Jesus mean when he tells Peter
and Andrew to “Follow me, and
I will make you fishers of
wisdom of Homer: consump
tion by fish as the means to
becoming one with nature.
7) We don’t like to provide
contextual information about
our program authors, but here
it is warranted. Immanuel Kant
was in fact a failed fisherman.
This failure to catch fish was
the origin of his argument that
we can’t know things in them
selves. Fish are the symbolic
precursors to the concept of
Noumena.
{The College- St. John’s College • Winter zoo^ }
8) It is not widely known that
Georg Hegel during one of his
more meditative moments was
sitting along a pond (much like
this one) watching fish, when
he fell in; at that moment
conceiving of the notion of the
unification of subject and
object, in this case becoming
one with the fish.
9) In the post-Darwinian
world, we see that we are all
descendants of fish about
390 million years ago (a group
of lobe-finned fishes known as
Rhipidistians or Osteolipimorphans that are the most likely
ancestors of all tetrapods), and
therefore these very individuals
that we see before us are our
distant cousins.
10) The Graduate Institute
has fish prominently located on
their promotional material.
A coincidence? I think not!
11) Geography: it is surely
no accident that the fish pond
occupies the physical center
of the Santa Fe campus. We
already appreciate the wisdom
of the founders of the New
Program. It is time that we also
appreciate the wisdom of the
first landscape architects of the
Santa Fe campus.
I hope it is now clear to you
that contemplating fish is the
forgotten eighth liberal art, in
need of restoration to its
former glory. I urge you all
therefore to read fewer books
and spend more time watching
and thinking about fish, as all
of the great thinkers have
done.
I offer you a summary of the
four undergraduate years at
St. John’s as seen from the
perspective of a fish contemplator:
Freshmen: There are no fish.
Sophomores: God created fish.
Juniors: You are better than
fish.
Seniors: You are fish.
�{From
Karate-Do
BY Olfver Lemke (SFzo)
In the gymnasium at St. John’s
GoUege (Santa Fe), there hangs a
plaque commemorating 20 years
of Karate-Dd. A Ddjd has existed
at the college since 1986, run by
tutor Jorge Aigla, M.D., 6th
Dan, Kyoshi, and is composed of
students, tutors, alumni, and
staff members.
A Ddjd, as Mr. Aigla says, is
not a spa group or a fitness
center, nor is it a club. The
Japanese word means “hall of
enlightenment.” In the true
study of Karate-Dd, students
must confront themselves,
learning to understand and
control their fears and anger.
Commitment is the primary
requirement. Yet Karate-Dd has
no prescribed result.
“It is not a means to
anything,” Mr. Aigla says. “I do
it because I must do it.” And
although some students come to
him expecting to get in shape or
to learn to fight, the ones who
stay are inevitably those who
come to value Karate-Dd as an
end in itself.
Mr. Aigla’s own story in some
ways exemplifies this principle.
As a teenager, he conceived a
keen interest in the martial arts;
his mother saved 200 pesos
the
Bell Towers}
(about $i6) to allow him to begin
to practice Tae Kwon Do at a
Dojo in Mexico City in 1970.
He earned a black belt in Tae
Kwon Do before proceeding to
its Japanese counterpart,
Karate-Do.
Mr. Aigla began practicing
Karate-Do in 1974, at the
San Francisco Karate-Dd Dojo
headed by Sensei Johnny Pereira
(and assisted by Sensei Greg
Barron). This, he says, was a
pivotal experience in his hfe.
“It’s very rare,” says Mr. Aigla,
“to come across a real Sensei.”
Most Karate instructors
resemble coaches or trainers,
competitive and motivated by
the prospect of gain and recogni
tion. A Sensei is something else
entirely. “If life brings you to
one,” Mr. Aigla says, “you drop
everything and follow him.”
Mr. Aigla found his Sensei in
Johnny Pereira, and studied with
him for many years until Sensei
Pereira’s untimely death in 1993.
Mr. Aigla has remained associ
ated with this style of Japanese
Karate-Do: Wa Do Ki Kai, now
headed by Sensei Ferol Arce in
Oakland, Cahfornia.
Some of us have seen adver
tisements offering a black belt in
one year, but this is misleading,
on par with the one-year degree
programs found at onhne
universities. When Mr. Aigla was
asked to teach Karate-Do at
St. John’s, he did what he felt
was necessary to counter this
shortcut mentality and accepted
the offer by then Student Activi
ties Director, Istvan Fehervary
in 1986. “I said, ‘only if I’m not
paid,”’ he recalls. While practice
sessions were a significant
commitment on top of his
academic duties, a lack of pay
came with a high degree of
autonomy.
“Since I don’t get remuner
ated, I have very high stan
dards,” Mr. Aigla says. “I require
that students always be there and
give a hundred percent spirit.”
Thus, there is no selling of belts.
The only true way to progress in
the Dojd-as in the study of
Karate-Dd itself-is to appreciate
the art for its own sake. “I am
simply passing on what I was
given: a Zen Way.”
For many years, students
practiced thrice-weekly (Basics,
Form/A'ara, Sparring) in the
Great Hall. Mr. Aigla himself
arrived early to move chairs and
tidy up, making sure that the
sessions would start on time.
In 2000, the college gymnasium
opened, and the Ddjd has met
there ever since. Mr. Aigla
comments that this is more
convenient, hut not necessarily
any better, than previous
arrangements. “Ifyouwantto
workout, you can
work out
anywhere,” he
says. The Ddjd
holds to a prin
ciple which seems
important in the
college as a whole:
where there is
interest, commit
ment and disci
pline, material
requirements are
small.
The resem
blance between
the Ddjd and the
college seems.
5
indeed, hardly accidental. The
Zen Way of Karate-Dd, fike the
teaching of the Program, is
deeply traditional and not
inclined to change. It attracts a
small but dedicated group of
students, and it is in a sense
inimical to the fast-moving and
result-oriented culture of
modern America. Membership
in the Ddjd has declined since
the eighties; students have more
obligations and fewer unfilled
hours. Many are uneasy about
the commitment the Ddjd
requires. But, as Mr. Aigla says, a
Ddjd is not strong in proportion
to the number of students it has,
but in proportion to its spirit.
Since 1986, Mr. Aigla has
awarded four black belts,
including one to his son,
Andres; three Second degree
blackbelts, one Third degree,
and one Fourth degree blackbelt
(to fellow tutor Bill Kerr). Other
tutors have been involved, and
the number of students has
varied between eight and 20.
Some have not stayed long;
others have continued for many
years, and several have come
hack years after graduating.
“If you want to hit people,”
says Mr. Aigla to prospective
students, “this is not the place
for you.” Karate-Dd is about
self-control and etiquette,
and in some ways about
communion. The word kumite,
commonly translated as
“sparring,” in fact means
something closer to “an
exchange in trust.” Students
spar as partners, not opponents.
“Kumite is nothing but
an intense conversation,”
Mr. Aigla says. “It is a way of
learning to acknowledge the
other as a human being.”
In light of this, it is no wonder
the Ddjd has flourished at
St. John’s, and it seems likely
that the past 20 years are only
the beginning.
The Santa Fe Ddjd celebrates ao years.
{The College. 5f. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 }
�6
The Man
Behind
THE Covers
Most compliments on
The College usually come with a
follow-up question: “Who does
those illustrations on the
covers?” That’s David Johnson,
a fond reader of great hooks
and an award-winning
illustrator who lives in New
Canaan, Connecticut. Johnson
began drawing in high school
and began selling his work at
age 19. His pen-and-ink draw
ings appeared regularly in the
New York Times Book Review,
which led the magazine’s
designer, Claude Skelton, to
suggest him for the magazine.
Do you have afavorite author
ofall you have drawn sofar?
I’m not sure I have a favorite,
hut I am a reader. My grandfa
ther was a publisher; he ran an
export trade magazine. He was
a Harvard man, so he had a
library with the classics. I
didn’t go to college and was
living at home-my father died
when I was young-so we went
to live with my grandfather and
that became our permanent
home. I read my way through
his library.
My grandfather had some
pretty obscure things like
Bulwer-Lytton’s The Last Days
ofPompeii. He had these really
nice sets of books and I opened
them up and realized they
hadn’t been cut yet. They were
apparently part of my grand
mother’s dowry. In hindsight, I
felt fortunate to be around so
many books.
I think people don’t read if
they can get away with it. I
know so many people who Idled
up their life with reading in
college and that’s the last they
ever read.
{From the Bell Towers}
How didyou become an artist?
I went to high school in New
Canaan and I had one of those
teachers that some people are
fortunate to have-the synergy
was great and he encouraged
me. I didn’t go to college, I was
supposed to go to Cooper
Union-hut the concept of New
York-I guess I was too young.
So I took a year off, and then I
started selling work.
My style is a palimpsest of a
lot of artists. I grew up looking
at cartoonists like those in
The New Yorker, a bunch of
English line artists, and George
Price, slNcw Yorker-type
cartoonist. I like the way that
by just using a line he made
volume. I’m lucky because I
discovered something that
interests me, and I’m lucky
because I get to do something
I love.
I started working for the
New York Times Book Review,
and it really changed my career
from being a not very good
conceptual artist to being an
illustrator. My work is very
dependent on the design, and it
can look really awful. I’ve done
a lot of “whatever comes over
the transom” as they used to
say, and it’s become more and
more portraits.
The [College} covers are the
highest quality work I do of the
black-and-white portrait style.
I know it will look good,
because the design is good.
How do you create these
portraits?
I use watercolor paper and an
old-fashioned drafting pencilit’s sort of like a sports car. I
can make sharp turns, and then
start and stop. I use little ball
point pens, called Uniballs,
while my fiancee uses an
expensive loo-pinpoint. I use
the cheap $1.95 pens. Then I
fill it in with markers, because
I’m really messy. A really scary
thing to me isn’t a chainsaw
massacre; it’s an open bottle of
ink on a drawing table.
Self-portrait
by
David Johnson
How do you do the researchfor
The College covers?
I’ve done much of my research
on the Internet, but I also use
the library. New Canaan is a
very literate community and we
all do fund-raising for the
library, which is very small.
We’re near Storrs, where the
University of Connecticut is,
and the town library there is
good. Sometimes I find two
conflicting pieces of reference.
In one way I love to try to guess
the way they looked. The illus
tration of Virgil is a good
example. I don’t like trying to
draw wigs-Adam Smith wore a
wig. I’m not really sure how
wigs are supposed to look.
Which author are you really
lookingforward to drawing?
I haven’t drawn Dickens yet.
Dickens is just fun, though a lot
of people only know him
through A Christmas Carol.
{The College- St. John’s College • Winter 2007 }
Our cat is named Pip. My sister
and I both like Dickens, and if
nothing else, we have lots of
good names for pets.
Well, we don’t read Dickens on
the Program.
What? How can that be?
lU/zrzZ are you reading now?
Thomas Mann, The Magic
Mountain.
We don’t read that on the
Program either right now.
Holy cow! I really like Mann,
especially his early books,
because I’m interested in my
own family and my own person
ality. I can trace my nose back
at least four generations.
�{Philanthropia}
The Fielding Challenge
A Generous Alumnus Raises the Stakes
Ronald H. Fielding (A70) gave
a promising start to “With a
Clear and Single Purpose”:
The Campaign for St. John’s
College with an unprece
dented gift of $10 million in
August aoo3. In January, he
decided to offer the college
another $2.5 million-provided
that alumni join him in
Ronald Fielding (A70), shown with Santa Fe seniors John
Carpenter
and
Melinda Miller-Klopfer, challenges alumni to
SUPPORT THE CAMPAIGN.
making the $125 million
capital campaign a success.
Fielding will match new and
increased alumni gifts, and
multi-year pledges dollar for
dollar up to $2.5 million.
The Campaign for St. John’s
College has raised more than
$100 million in gifts and
pledges. Fielding’s first gift
was directed to the college
endowment for continuing
support of financial aid. His
new gift has heen pledged
specihcally toward the
construction of a new dormi
tory complex in Santa Fe,
though alumni matching gifts
can he unrestricted or directed
to any goal of the campaign.
Through his challenge.
Fielding hopes to inspire
alumni to support the
campaign through the
Annual Fund.
“The dormitories are impor
tant for the Santa Fe campus,”
Fielding says, explaining one
motivation for his gift.
However, by issuing this
challenge, he is also seeking
to stimulate a burgeoning
“culture of giving” among
Johnnies from both campuses.
“To a great extent, this
capital campaign is about
positioning the college for the
future,” he says. “We can’t be
a strong institution without
the support of alumni.”
Sharon Bishop (class of
1965), chair of the board.
An Argos for Annapolis
Arcadia, a spirited Jack Russell mix, joined the Annapolis campus
community last summer. She spends much of her time in the
office of Assistant Dean Anita Kronsberg (A79), where she greets
visitors with enthusiasm and the hope of getting a treat. She’s also
been known to hang out on the Quad, watch croquet practice, and
chase a tennis ball through the corridors of Mellon Hall. Warren
Spector (A81), whose gift to the college made the construction of
Spector Hall, a new dormitory, possible, requested the college
consider a campus dog. Cadie-a rescue dog-got the job.
Student Services Director Taylor Waters (AGI96) is
Cadie’s
one of
many admirers.
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 }
hopes the challenge creates
“new levels of alumni giving.”
“Ron’s first gift was remark
able in itself,” Bishop says.
“His leadership has set a
standard that we hope others
will follow.”
Fielding’s gift, combined
with an anonymous pledge
from another donor, brings the
college much closer to adding
dormitory rooms to the
campus. At 30,000 square
feet, and with 60 beds, the new
dorm will mean the college can
house about 80 percent of
Santa Fe undergraduates on
campus. In addition to student
rooms and common rooms, the
dormitory complex will add
four new seminar rooms and
ten faculty offices, greatly
alleviating a space crunch on
campus.
Santa Fe President Michael
Peters said the progress on
dormitory fundraising,
combined with a $5 million gift
from Graduate Institute
alumnus Dr. Norman Levan for
the construction of a GI center,
has allowed the college to move
construction planning to the
front burner. “These gifts help
us achieve one of our most
important goals-strengthening
our campus as a cohesive
community of learners,”
Peters says.
�8
{From the Bell Towers}
News & Announcements
Green Johnnies Win
MTV Award
Students for a Sustainable
Future, a group formed last fall
in Annapolis by freshmen David
Bronstein, Jean Hogan, and
Malcolm CecU-Cockwell, is one
of five college groups-the only
one from a small coUege-to win
a national competition for a
$1,000 eco-challenge grant from
MTV; Music Television. MTV
sponsors Break the Addiction
Challenge, a nationwide
eco-competition that challenges
students to demonstrate environ
mental changes in their lives and
schools. MTV chose five school
groups that had received print or
broadcast attention and awarded
each a $i,ooo grant. Last fall.
Students for a Sustainable
Future created media buzz with
an article that appeared in the
local paper.
Besides getting the word out
through the media. Students
for a Sustainable Future seeks
to educate St. John’s students
about global warming, ways to
improve recycling on campus,
and reducing energy use. The
group’s overall goal is to develop
strategies to move St. John’s
towards getting too percent of
its energy from renewable
sources, such as the geothermal
system that heats and cools the
new dormitories. “Global
warming will directly affect our
future. We want to use the
campus as a model for a greater
society,” says Bronstein, who
as a high school student in
Maryland’s Montgomery County
lobbied the County Council to
pass a bill requiring more use of
clean energy, such as wind and
solar power.
Santa Fe
HONORED
Students
Fourteen St. John’s students,
along with one alumnus and one
staff member, set out in March
aoo6 to St. Bernard Parish in
Louisiana. They put in 2,248
hours of assistance with the
Emergency Communities,
providing food and supplies at
the Made with Love Cafe, and
joining the nonprofit Common
Ground Collective, gutting
homes and businesses in prepa
ration for renovation. Their trip
was one of hard labor and a labor
of love. The students strength
ened existing relationships and
built new ones; they heard
stories of loss and pain while
creating memories of laughter
and good will; and they learned
up front about the devastation of
mother-nature and bureaucracy.
Their philanthropic deed did not
go unnoticed. President Bush’s
Higher Education Community
Service Corporation recognized
the college, with distinction, on
the Honor Roll for Hurricane
Rehef Service.
New Staff
Gail Griffith joins St. John’s
College as director of communi
cations in Santa Fe. Griffith has a
bachelor’s degree from the
University of California,
Berkeley, and an advanced
degree from Georgetown
University. At Georgetown, she
ran executive training programs
for international leaders for the
university’s School of Foreign
Service. She later joined the
Vietnam Veterans of America
Foundation where, throughout
the 1990S, she worked on the
foundation’s campaign to ban
landmines. She is the author of
Will’s Choice, a memoir based on
her teenage son’s battle with
depression. She serves on the
board of directors of the
American Foundation for
Suicide Prevention and was this
year’s recipient of the Tipper
Gore “Remember the Children”
Award, from the National Mental
Health Association.
Ironman Tutor
On June 25 Santa Fe tutor
J. Walter Sterling Jr. (A93)
completed his first Ironman
triathlon: a 2.4-mile swim,
112.5-mile bike, and 26.2-mile
run, in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
He took on the grueling
enterprise not just to challenge
himself physically: “I ran for
Team Ironman, raising money
for local charities, and in
memory of several deceased
dear friends from the
community in which I used to
work: Project H.O.M.E.,
Philadelphia.
“Though I am a long-time
runner, this was only my
second triathlon,” says
Sterling. “I trained as well as
my schedule allowed (with
much help from friends and
many runs up Atalaya), and,
eventually, I was able to finish.
Up at 4:30 a.m., on the beach at
5:30, in the water at 7. After
roughly two hours of swim
ming, eight hours of biking,
and five hours of running later.
Santa Fe tutor J. Walter
Sterling Jr. (A93) rides for
A CAUSE.
{The College* St. John’s College ■ Winter 2001 }
I crossed the finish line at
10:17 P-m. The mid-day temper
ature had reached the mid-pos.
Quite a day!”
Sterling describes the
experience as “a wonderful
catharsis” for both body and
soul. “Physical training has
proven to be the one great
source of balance in my life as a
tutor, and Santa Fe is a glorious
place for it,” he says. “But it is
not just a counterweight. For
some of us, physical discipline
and duress of this sort is an
intrinsic part of liberal educa
tion, but that is a longer story.
In any case, it is probably one
of the best ways to cleanse ‘the
doors of perception.’ ”
Sterling is scheduled to
compete in his next Ironman
this April in Arizona. “I hope
to raise money for Project
H.O.M.E. in its effort to combat
homelessness,” he says. His goal
is to finish in 12 hours.
�{From the Bell Towers}
There’s No Place
Like Homer Club
While they are not the first ones
at St. John’s to explore the
musical qualities of Ancient
Greek, the Homer Club might
be the most technologically
savvy. These Johnnies, who
endeavor to build enough of a
vocabulary to sing passages of
Homer out loud, tape record
themselves and then listen to
the playback to critique their
tonal chanting. “We plan to
present a performance that
emphasizes the scansion, the
musical qualities of Homer,”
says Ben Hoffman, a junior
from Stanford, Connecticut.
“Mr. [Amirthinayagam] David
(A86), a former tutor came up
with the idea of exploring the
musical qualities of Homer. But
we want to become aware of the
whole experience of Homer’s
story.” Hoffman is joined once a
week by core members Bradley
Van Uden, a freshman from
Thousand Oaks, California;
Schuyler Sturm, a junior from
Lyndonville, Vermont; and
Alexandra Walling, a freshman
from Portsmouth, Rhode Island.
The Homer Club practices
two types of singing: chanting
and rhapsody. “With the
chanting you have the circle
dancing,” says Hoffman. “The
physical experience is a huge
part of the circle dancing. It’s
almost a conjuring. If you are in
the circle, you are being swept
away by the sounds of the
words. It’s so powerful you
don’t even need to know what
the story is saying. But with the
rhapsody there’s more drama,
you vary the timing, there are
subtler voice qualities, and you
need to have an audience.”
Hoffman says that rhapsody is
easier to perform than a dance
because it takes just one
person. “You vary the rhythm,
no one is dancing to it, so the
aesthetic value comes from the
dramatic aspects,” he says.
The musicality of the Greek
language derives from the fact
that the Greek accents are pitch
accents, tonal. Hoffman demon
strates by chanting a passage
from the Iliad. “One of the
prettiest passages in Homer is
9
the ‘catalog of ships’ when the
ships are sailing off to Troy,” he
says. “It’s probably not the most
dynamic from a plot stand
point.” Normally there would
be a circle of dancers moving
around the singer, with no other
sound or accompaniment.
“But there is the stomping of
the feet,” says Van Uden. “You
stomp hard so the pattern of
the dance comes through the
rhythm.”
Hoffman is preparing to
perform a rhapsody from the
first book of the Iliad, in which
Chryses asks Agamemnon to
accept ransom for his daughter.
“Schuyler and I plan to perform
this rhapsody for Gollegium as
one of our goals at the end of the
spring semester. Rhapsody is
usually performed by one
person-so it may be somewhat
inauthentic with two but, hey, it
will be fun,” he says.
—Patricia Dempsey
The Homer Club is
captivated
BY THE MUSIC OF AnCIENT GrEEK.
Shown
here
(l. to r.)
Alexandra Walling
are
and
Bradley Van Uden (both Aio),
AND Ben Hoffman (Ao8).
{Letters}
Grateful for
Brother Robert
I had the grace of having
Brother Robert as my tutor for
seminar my freshman year in
Annapolis (1987-88). Those
benignant eyes were consoling
during my first don rag. I
remember him having a group
of students over to his house for
dinner (great chef) to discuss
some aspects of the Iliad and
some psalms in Greek.
At present I am working in
the Vatican, heading up the
“Church and Sport” Section
within the Pontifical Council for
the Laity-a new office dedicated
to the Church’s pastoral care of
the world of sport. Everything
from the Gregorian chant with
the then Dean James Carey in
Santa Fe to the seminars on
Plato, Aristotle and Aquinas
(et alia) were a great start for my
future priestly vocation. (I was
ordained a to the priesthood in
the Congregation of the
Legionaries of Christ January 2,
2001. It may seem ironic that a
former Johnnie would be
involved in an office for sport,
but I can boast of playing inter
collegiate sports at St. John’s:
crew in Annapolis, soccer and
basketball against the College of
Santa Fe in Santa Fe!
Above all, I am indebted to
both Brother Smith and St.
John’s for helping me to find my
vocation in life. I continue the
pursuit of the great books as I
am working toward a doctorate
in dogmatic theology at the
Pontifical Ateneo Regina Apostolorum in Rome.
—The Rev. Kevin Lixey, LC (SF91)
Correction:
In the previous issue’s Alumni
Notes, alumna Janie (Bosworth)
Bingham was incorrectly listed
as Sallie Bingham. Also, Janie
graduated from the Santa Fe
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 }
Graduate Institute in 1994, not
1993-
The College welcomes letters on
issues of interest to readers.
Letters may be edited for clarity
and/or length. Those under
500 words have a better chance
of being printed in their
entirety.
Please address letters to:
The College magazine,
St. John’s College, Box 2800,
Annapolis, MD 21404.
Letters can also be sent via
e-mail to; rosemary.harty(^
sjca.edu.
�{Capital Campaign}
“WITH A CLEAR AND
SINGLE PURPOSE”
Endowing a Future, Supporting Students
wi Rosemary Harty
s a student, Sharon
involved in the Alumni Association and
Bishop (class of 1965)
later joined the college’s Board of Visitors
always worried about her
and Governors, she could see firsthand
St. John’s tuition bills.
the disparity between the college’s
But immersed in the
renowned academic program and the
Program, she and her
financial resources available to support it.
fellow students gave little thought
the times when we had to go to
“Theretowere
financial state of the college.the
“When
we a loan to make payroll,” she
bank for
were students, money was thought of as a
says. While the college is on firmer
necessary evil or filthy lucre,” she says.
financial ground than it has ever been
“We were above that.”
(with 15 straight years of balanced
After graduation. Bishop began a career
budgets), at the root of the problem is a
as a social worker and later helped estab
college endowment that is still inadequate
lish and build a successful consulting firm.
for the college’s needs.
Caliber Associates, Inc. When she became
A
{The College -St John’s College • Winter 2002 }
�{Capital Campaign}
“The endowment is an
essential foundation for
accomplishing our goals,”
says Bishop, now chair of
the Board of Visitors and
Governors. “Yes, we’re
much better off than
we used to be. But being
a more solid college
financially means every
thing to our future. One,
we can attract more
students, and two, higher
quality students. Three, we
can attract more support
from alumni, friends, and
foundations when we
demonstrate that this is a
good place in which to
invest their dollars. It’s a
question of confidence.”
Increasing the college’s
endowment is one of
three primary goals of
“With a Clear and Single
Purpose”: The Campaign
for St. John’s College. The
campaign goal of $125
million includes $46.5 million for endowment. Along
with tuition revenue, gifts to the annual fund, and state
and federal support, endowment constitutes an impor
tant source of revenue for the college. Drawing about
5 percent from the endowment each year provides
II percent of the college’s budget. A larger endowment
ITie college’s capital campaign
seeks to address priorities that
will sustain the Program and
strengthen the college.
Funding these priorities will
require $125 million. To date,
$101 million has been raised.
THE campaign FOR
STJOHN’S
College
“WITH A CLEAR &
SINGLE PURPOSE"
$33 million for
need-based aid.
iB
$34 million to incrcdsfe faculty
salaries to the median of peer
instilii tions; provide fatuity
development opportunities.
means more growth and
more revenue.
The
endowment-intended to
grow in perpetuity-is
more critical to the life of
the college than any
other goal of the capital
campaign.
“The endowment is
not just to cushion the
blows, to protect the
college in lean times,”
says Bishop. “It helps
relieve the pressure on
annual fundraising and
makes us less dependent
on tuition income. It
means we can do more to
support faculty, student
life, and every aspect of
the academic program.”
A Reversal
of
Fortunes
An inadequate endow
ment has hampered St.
John’s since its founding
in 1784. While Johns
Hopkins University is named for the millionaire who left
$7 million in his estate to endow the university and
hospital, and a Puritan clergyman named John Harvard
left half his estate to a college in Cambridge, no wealthy
philanthropist stepped forth to support St. John’s at its
beginning. Many prominent Annapolis citizens pledged
$3.5 million
to improve services Io students,
fund internship opportunities.
and provide grants so that
elementary and secondary
teachers can attend the
Graduate Institute.
$5 million for library collec
tions and laboratory equip
ment; improving Information
Technology infrastructure.
{The College -St. John’s College ■ Winter 200^ }
ELDING
S49.5 million for
building projects, including a
Santa Fe dormitory, a Graduate
Institute Center in Santa Fe,
and the addition to and renova
tion of Evans Science Labora
tory. The renovation of Mellon
Hall and the addition of two
new dormitories in Annapolis
are completed and fully funded.
�12
{GapitalCampaign}
''St. John s had no business surviving. But it did.
Bud Billups (HA03)
money to help found the college, hut the largest share in
its early years was to come from the coffers of the state of
Maryland, whose lawmakers chartered St. John’s and
Washington College to serve as the state’s institutions of
higher learning.
Unfortunately for St. John’s, the Maryland General
Assembly in 1805 withdrew funds promised to the
college. The college’s supporters were as vexed by the
Assembly’s decision as were faculty and students. In a
letter to the Rev. William Duke, Rev. Joseph G.J. Bend of
Baltimore wrote:
“I have read in the public prints that our sapient Senate
have passed the bill of our more sapient delegates for
depriving the colleges of the whole funds by the promise
of which their predecessors induced a great number of
persons to subscribe very handsomely to their establish
ment. The more I see of democracy the more I detest its
principles, if its votaries act upon them. The reign of the
Goths and Vandals was not more destructive than the
ascendancy of these men has been.”
Goths and Vandals aside. Bend captured the outrage
and dismay that followed in the wake of the General
Assembly’s decision. The bright promise of St. John’s
beginnings was dimmed by this reversal, and the college
would continue to experience periods of serious financial
struggles, interrupted by brief periods of prosperity and
stability, until quite recently.
The advent of the New Program in 1937 garnered the
college respect and admiration, along with international
attention in the media. But barely having survived bank
ruptcy, St. John’s had little opportunity to build an
endowment, especially during the lean war years. A
dogged fund-raiser. President Richard Weigle (HA49)
worked hard to attract gifts to the college. In his final
report to the college in 1980, he reported a $10 million
endowment for Annapolis and slightly over $2 million
in Santa Fe.
Even as recently as 10 years ago, the collegewide
endowment hovered at only $30 million-far below what
was needed to sustain the college. Bud Billups (HA03),
recently retired as Annapolis treasurer and now a
consultant to the college’s Management Committee,
studied the college’s financial history prior to joining
St. John’s in 1991. “St. John’s had no business surviving,”
he says with a smile. “But it did.”
One factor in the college’s survival was the support of
philanthropist Paul Mellon, a student at the college for a
year in 1940. Mellon made regular and substantial gifts to
the college that could have been directed to endowment
but instead went to cover deficits and to build Mellon
Hall. “He kept the doors open,” Billups says.
Another reason the endowment could not grow was the
college’s practice of drawing too much out of the fund.
In the years before Billups joined the Annapolis campus,
the college had been drawing up to 10 percent of its
endowment to balance the operating budget. That was a
practice that had to end, Billups says. The college’s board
endorsed a plan to reduce draw from endowment by
r percent each year over five years. (Today, the college’s
spending policy restricts draw from endowment to 4.5 to
5.5 percent of the endowment, according to a formula
that factors in the rate of return, as well as an educational
price factor.)
Reducing the draw meant several years of severe
budgets for the college. All available resources were
devoted to the academic program and financial aid, which
meant that improvements and repairs to buildings were
deferred, as was routine maintenance. In Annapolis,
eight positions (most vacant) were cut from the college
staff. Salaries for faculty and staff were frozen, and
sabbaticals were eliminated. Among the most difficult
decisions was going to one-tutor senior seminars for a
time.
“We started cutting, but we saw that we could still
operate. A lot of things we did, we did for one year, and
then we put them back. When the community could see
that these cuts weren’t permanent, it made it easier to
endure,” Billups says.
Managing the budget in Santa Fe during the leanest
years was similarly difficult, says Bryan Valentine, Santa
Fe treasurer. “For years we put together what we needed
and then began the gruesome task of cutting everything
{The College- St. John'’s College ■ Winter 2007 }
�{Capital Campaign}
13
but the bare bones,” he recalls.
member investment committee.
Building Meem Library was
Why Endowment Matters
“These are individuals who are
delayed while the college strug
leaders
in the investment
The chart below illustrates how St. John’s meas
gled to assemble financing for the
industry,” says Billups. “And
ures up compared to peer institutions. As of June
project.
30, 2005 (the most recent year for which audited
each one brings a different area
data is available), the St. John’s endowment
Positions to improve the quality
of expertise.” Gregory Curtis
stands at about $102 million, which means the
of life on campus-for example, a
(HSF02), a long-serving member
college has available a little more than $101,000
student activities coordinatorof
the college’s board and current
per student.
were created and then later cut.
• Grinnell
chair
of the board’s investment
$862,337
•
Tutors went beyond their
Pomona
committee, is chairman of Grey
$750,470
• Swarthmore
$724,850
teaching duties to run student
court & Co, which provides
• Bowdoin
$313,181
clubs or counsel students. “It may
financial advisory services to
• Haverford
$300,709
be one reason Search & Rescue
wealthy
families and select
• Reed
$258,292
was so successful,” Valentine
endowments.
• Oberlin
$208,039
• St. John’s
suggests. “For years, there was
In 1994, the investment
$101,599
little else for students to do.”
committee recommended shifting
Though a bit draconian, the
the bulk of the college’s assets to
cuts of the 1990S ushered in a new era for the college:
the Commonfund, a nonprofit investment management
sustained financial stability. The college went from deficit
firm that invests money in a common pool, improving the
budgets to small surpluses, which were directed to
college’s rate of return. “There was no way, with our
overdue capital projects. The college successfully
limited amount of money, to get good managers for the
completed the collegewide Campaign for a Fourth
college’s endowment,” says Billups. “The Commonfund,
Century in 1996, raising $35 million. “You could feel
with about $18 billion or so in investments, could help us
things turning around,” says Billups. “Projects that were
achieve the diversification we were looking for. And they
put off for years were finally completed and the campus
had a very good track record.”
started looking better. We had really turned a corner.”
The remainder of the endowment is invested in other
funds chosen by the college with support from the
Managing the Money
investment committee, which approaches the college’s
endowment in the same manner that a prudent individual
The college maintains three separate endowment funds,
manages
a retirement portfolio, Curtis says: seeking the
which totaled $102 million as of June 30, 2006, the end of
best
rate
of
return while minimizing risk. “You see in the
the last fiscal year. Each campus has its own endowment,
college’s portfolio very broad kinds of index holdings,
comprising gifts earmarked for a specific campus. A third
some hedge funds and private equity. The portfolio is now
was established because individual donors and founda
large
enough that we need to have exposure to more
tions wanted to make a gift to both campuses. Under the
cutting-edge
kinds of product. We can gain access and we
purview of the Management Committee, the college
have the expertise on the investment committee and the
develops budgets. The two campuses each have a separate
board to do it,” he says.
operating budget, drawing from their own endowments
As the St. John’s endowment continues to grow, the
and sharing the draw in the college fund. The college’s
college may engage an outside expert to advise the board
board reviews and approves the budgets.
and the college management committee. But it doesn’t
All three endowment funds are now invested according
take
an expert to point out how well the college would be
to a college-wide strategy under the guidance of a five{The College -St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 }
�{Capital Campaign}
14
''We re at thepoint where we re lookingfive years ahead.
Bronte Jones, Annapolis treasurer
served if it reaches its
capital campaign goal,
maintains conservative
spending, and grows
the endowment through
prudent investing. “Every
thing gets a lot better,”
Curtis says.
Looking
Future
Income from endowment
SUPPORTS THE INSTRUCTIONAL
PROGRAM AT St. John’s.
to the
The new treasurer in
Annapolis, Bronte Jones,
has a different perspective
on endowment. She joined
St. John’s last July from
Huston-Tillotson Univer
sity in Austin, Texas,
where she managed chron
ically limited resources.
With an endowment of
$io million, the university
is enduring the kind of
crises St. John’s managed
2,0 years ago, and it affects
every facet of their opera
tion.
“They would love to be
able to offer the kind of
financial aid St. John’s
can,” says Jones. “Without our endowment, that couldn’t
be done. And through the capital campaign, we are
protecting that capability.”
Although she has just recently joined the college, Jones
agrees with Billups’ assessment that the college is beyond
the days of living fiscal year to fiscal year. “We’re at the
point where we’re looking five years ahead and consid
ering the financial implications of our plan. We have a
wish list of things we want to do, such as creating
additional common rooms or refurbishing our existing
ones. Where St. John’s
used to be, those would be
luxuries.”
The college’s financial
policies today aim for
“financial stability over
the next 50 to 100 years,”
Jones says. “You can’t
ever relax. It’s a nice place
to be, but there are still
plenty of serious issues.”
Sharon Bishop attrib
utes the college’s financial
health in part to good
management, but also to
the extraordinary gifts the
college has received from
alumni, friends, and foun
dations. Bishop herself
has pledged $i million to
the campaign, directed to
the endowment in support
of financial aid.
As in her student days,
the cost of tuition remains
an ongoing concern for
Bishop. But as long as the
endowment is well-managed and continues to grow to
ensure access for all qualified students, she’ll support
tuition increases that keep the college on solid ground.
“I had more concerns about raising tuition in the past,
because I felt that we’re sending the wrong signal. Now I
know we have the right approach, as long as we support
students who don’t have the resources to pay tuition.”
{The College- St. John’s College - Winter 2001 }
�{Capital Campaign}
Every Dollar Tells a Story
BY Emily DeBusk (A06)
The college’s endowment fund comprises a host of individual
funds-many established to honor the memory or contributions
of a tutor, classmate, or long-serving staff member. Some
endow a special purpose, while others are unrestricted. All
funds are at work in the daily life of the college.
A Sacrifice
Remembered__________________________
After his graduation from St. John’s in 1965, James McClintock
was just settling into his first job as a teacher in Connecticut
when he was drafted into the Army. Two years later, he was in
Vietnam, serving with the Army’s 69th engineer battalion. As
the now infamous Tet Offensive seeped toward the borders of
South Vietnam, McClintock, along with only five other soldiers,
was given the impossible task of defending the perimeter of an
airfield at Can Tho. He was killed in action on January 31,1968,
at age 25. After his death classmates and friends began making
gifts to St. John’s in his name. With the additional aid of his
family, the fund became established as the James R. McClintock
Memorial Fund, used exclusively for the annual mathematics
prize in Annapolis. In correspondence with President Richard
Weigle, McClintock’s mother wrote, “St. John’s has had a
special meaning to us-and now more than ever-it represents
true America.”
Philosophy, Football,
and
Floorboards
According to the citation for his Alumni Association Award of
Merit, given in 1978,
Bryce Jacobsen (class of
1942) “consistently
demonstrated that
Socrates and softball,
philosophy and football,
and Ptolemy and tennis
are by no means incom
mensurate.” Jacobsen
came to St. John’s as a
tutor in 1958, and
although he was a
favorite mathematics
tutor, he is best remem
bered as a champion of
the college’s intramural
athletics program. The
class of 1986 set up an
endowment fund to be
Bryce Jacobsen, in his famous
used for one of the two
barber’s chair.
mathematics prizes
awarded at graduation,
which thereafter became known as the Bryce Jacobsen
Mathematics Prize. As a creative fund-raiser for the
endowment, members of the class of 1986 sold plaques made
from the maple wood that used to be the floorboards of Iglehart
Gym. Jacobsen retired in 1988 and died a decade later.
A Fitting Tribute________________________________
Twice a year students, faculty, and Annapolis community
members attend the Steiner lectures, which are known for their
diverse subjects and distinguished speakers. This lectureship
was specially designed to be as intellectually versatile as
alumnus Andrew Steiner (class of 1963), who was killed in a car
accident in 1991. In addition to being the president of NHP
Corporation for 20 years, Steiner was known to the St. John’s
community as a loyal and generous friend who was deeply
concerned with the welfare of the Program. Established by gifts
from the Advanta Corporation, Dennis and Gisela Alter, and
Steiner’s family and friends, the Andrew Steiner Visiting
Lecture Scholars Fund brings two visiting personalities from a
wide range of studies each year to spend time on campus with
students and faculty and to preside over one of St. John’s most
honored traditions-the Friday night lecture. Steiner’s widow,
Lenore, remains an active and invaluable friend of the college
by serving on the Board of Visitors and Governors.
Two
Maryland Institutions
In 1699, a Welsh immigrant named Thomas Linthicum
acquired part of a tobacco farm in what is now Crofton,
Maryland. The home built there by his grandson Thomas
Linthicum III, “Linthicum Walks,” is thought to have housed
George Washington on his journeys. Throughout the genera
tions, eight Linthicums have passed through St. John’s, from
Matthias (1844), to Cadwallader (187g) who went on to become
a famous mathematician, to William (1913) who was the last
Linthicum to graduate. In 1997, St. John’s received a $50,000
bequest from a magnanimous descendent, local attorney
Sweetser Linthicum, in addition to the generous gifts he made
throughout his life.
Celebrating a Courageous Precedent_____________
In 1952, Martin Dyer of Baltimore was the first AfricanAmerican to graduate from St. John’s College. St. John’s was
in turn the first college south of the Mason-Dixon Line to
voluntarily end the practice of segregation. Dyer later
congratulated the college for taking the important first step of
not only allowing, but recruiting, black students in a time when
segregation was still common. The Martin Dyer Book Fund was
founded in 1997 to enable students who could not otherwise
afford to buy Program books to do so. Dyer-who makes an
annual gift to the fund himself-continues to encourage his
classmates to give.
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 }
15
�{The Day Job}
THE DAY JOB
Ambitious Johnnies Pursue their Dreams
BY Rosemary Harty
Archer arrived in New York in August 2004 and has held a series
ometimes dreams change,
of day jobs that range from wretched to pleasant while she audi
get put on hold, or replaced
tioned for roles. “I’ve held a string of negligible jobs,” she says.
“The first tele-marketing job was for a company that helped sell
by new dreams. Sometimes
tickets for theater organizations, so I didn’t feel too bad about
they just grow more urgent.
that, though people were still pretty annoyed to be bothered.
Another was tele-marketing those vacation time-shares; that was a
The College talked with five
total disgrace.”
Johnnies who over the past
The stereotypical job for aspiring actresses is waitressing, but
didn
’t have enough experience to land a restaurant job. “I
year were trying to break into theArcher
fields
of
did some catering, but that was an appalling failure,” she says.
acting, opera singing, fiction writing
and
“Part of my problem is that I refuse to get a job that doesn’t allow
S
filmmaking.
Callbacks
and
Tele-marketing
Larissa Archer (SFot)
A few years ago, Larissa Archer auditioned for a top Broadway
agent. She performed one of her favorite pieces, from Strind
berg’s Miss Julie. When she finished her monologue. Archer knew
the agent was impressed.
“He said, T love your work, I love your style. But as tall as you
are, I don’t think I can get you work,’ ” she says.
Archer stands 6'2" in her stocking feet. Her height is one of the
things working against her in her aspirations to break into
acting.“It can get discouraging, but it’s just how it is,” Archer
says. “If someone doesn’t think they can make money off you,
they’re not going to take a gamble.”
me to skip out when I need to for an audition; I need jobs that just
give me that kind of freedom.”
Archer’s acting ambition developed in high school in San Fran
cisco. “I studied acting when I was home from college in Santa Fe,
and after I graduated I studied more. I was part of a theater
company called the Actor’s Theater. I performed, did some
dramaturgy, and even swept the stage.”
As a performance artist. Archer worked up a slam poetry
monologue that stole the show every night. She played the title
role in Sr. Mary Ignatius Explains It Allfor You.
On the same day Archer quit her theater job-‘T badly needed a
change,” she says-her mother, a jewelry designer, returned home
from a trunk show in New York. With a few phone calls to friends,
she had found Larissa a cheap room to rent in New York. Later,
since her mother visited the city so often, she bought a
“semi-affordable” condo in the Bronx to give her daughter a base.
{The College ■ St John's College • Winter 2007 }
�{The Day Job}
Commuting to Manhattan by subway can be tiresome, “but not
having a roommate is great.”
Archer made a practice of signing up for Equity Principle
Auditions. “You get up at 6 a.m. to stand in line at the Equity
Center, sign up at 8 and around 10 a.m. they tell you whether
you’re going to be seen. I’ve been seen by Second Stage and Yale
Repertory, and I’ve done off-off-Broadway auditions. I’ve done
more audition in theaters that are less likely to cast me, but I
figured I’d aim high.”
This fall. Archer took her dreams a step further by moving to
London to enroll in a master’s degree program in classical acting
at the Central School of Speech and Drama. She played Hamlet for
her first-term assessment. Cast in two shows, she had to turn the
roles down because of her class schedule.
Archer is glad she went to St. John’s before pursuing drama
training-it will help keep her on the right path to virtue and excel
lence in a field that can challenge such notions. Imagine if Marlon
Brando had studied Aristotle? she wonders. “I’m glad that I’ll
always have something worthwhile to occupy my mind,” she says.
17
Larissa Archer (SFoi) poses by Central Park’s Delacorte
Theater. She hopes a master’s degree will help her career.
Opera and the Office
Aaron Silverman (Agd)
By night, you’re Papageno, Balthasar, or a peasant in the chorus.
By day, you’re an administrator, answering e-mails and scheduling
appointments. That was Aaron Silverman’s life for three years in
New York City, as he tried to break into the opera scene.
Silverman balanced auditions, performances, and singing lessons
with his office job, never losing sight of his passion for the opera.
Those who aren’t drawn to perform may not grasp the lure of it
all: the stage, the audience-the applause. But opera is satisfying
on a deeper level, says Silverman. “It really is fantastic to be up
there and singing over an orchestra, being able to connect with
people who were writing 300 years ago. It really is exciting to be
able to bring their art to life,” he says.
{The C o l l e g e . St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 }
�i8
{TheDayJob}
Silverman has always loved
to sing; in high school he took
part in musical theater with
roles in plays such as Guys
and Dolls. During his sopho
more year, spent in Santa Fe,
he took voice lessons with
Mary Neidorf, the widow of
former Santa Fe dean Boh
Neidorf (HA83). As his voice
matured, he developed a
strong hass baritone, and at
the college he studied the
St. Matthew Passion and Don
Giovanni.
“I wrote my junior essay on
Don Giovanni and my senior
essay on Otello. I did have a
little trouble defending it.
One tutor asked about the role
of God and the role of good
and evil as Verdi saw it. I
wanted to show that Verdi did
have religious ideas in mind,
but one of the tutors on the
committee said, ‘it’s just an
opera. How can it mean
anything more than that?’” At
commencement, Silverman
was vindicated when his paper won an essay prize.
After graduation, Silverman won a full scholarship to study at
Catholic University’s Rome School of Music. The program was
demanding, including two years of French, German, Italian, and
classes in music theory and performance. He also had the oppor
tunity to sing, with the school’s chorus, for the pope.
Most opera singers choose music conservatories for their
undergraduate degree, but Silverman believes his liberal arts
studies will be advantageous in the long run. “I feel like St. John’s
was the ideal education for an opera singer,” he says. “Being able
to analyze a text, having the background in literature and
philosophy, you can see how these composers were working.”
At this stage in his career, Silverman still considers himself a
semi-professional opera singer. He auditions all the time, even for
small parts or a slot in the chorus. “You make the best of the jobs
you get and try to turn them into jobs for the future,” he says.
Among the highlights so far: he played Jose Castro, a bit part
in Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West for City Opera. Friends and
family from all over came to see him during the six-week run of
the opera.
Aaron Silverman (A96)
PRACTICES
and
AUDITIONS,
WAITING FOR HIS BREAK IN
OPERA.
Like many in the arts in
New York, Silverman took
temporary jobs while he
auditioned and performed.
One job led to a permanent
position as assistant to the
chair of psychiatry at Cornell
University’s Weill Medical
College. Affordable housing
was elusive; he moved seven
times.
Recently, Silverman’s life
changed dramatically. He and
his girlfriend are having a
baby, so he’s moving back to
the D.C. area, where he’ll
find a day job conducive to
supporting a family. He’s
planning to audition with the
Baltimore Opera and perhaps
some smaller companies. A
recent audition with the
opera at Wolftrap went
poorly when Silverman tried
to audition even though he was sick. “I would have loved that
job,” he says.
Silverman is realistic, but not discouraged. “I don’t think I’m
going to be doing opera as a primary thing for at least two years.
But I’m going to keep practicing.”
Shopping Scripts
and
Teaching English
Benjamin Friedman (SFg§)
After the civilized courtesy of St. John’s seminars, Benjamin
Friedman was ill-prepared for film school at the University of
Southern California. Lecture classes, cutthroat competition,
and savage criticism from professors were something of a shock
to him.
After graduation, Friedman took a video production class at the
College of Santa Fe and liked it so much he decided to apply to
use. He had been warned about the competitive nature of the
business, but it didn’t seem too bad-until the students started
scrambling for funding. “There are only so many films that they
allow to be made, and you start submitting scripts and past work
{The College - St John’s College ■ Winter 2007 }
�{The Day Job}
19
''Temping can bepretty
depressing although I was at
apoint that I was so relieved
to have a steady income.
to try to show the faculty that
films. While completing his MFA,
you’re the right person to get the
he worked on others’ films,
resources,” he says. “After the first
recording sound, managing equip
year, people start feeling a little
ment or handling other technical
pinched.”
matters. He’s made two short films
Benjamin Friedman {SF95)
Friedman had to get used to blunt
with autobiographical elements:
criticism. A particularly bad
Aimless told the story of a young
moment came when he pitched a film idea about a crazy man who
man who graduates from college without any idea of what to do
cages a woman like a bird. Where he saw metaphors of free will
next. Hopeless picks up the same story, with a “lonely, neurotic
and human destiny, his professor saw a bondage film. Another
man” who meets a “lonely neurotic woman” and then keeps
idea, for a film about a man who discovers another woman was
blowing his chance at love. “It’s a talky romantic comedy-far
given his dead wife’s heart, was similarly shot down. “I though it
from Woody Allen, but I like it.” The main character, he says, “is
was touching and upbeat,” recalls Friedman. “I showed the script
a schmucky Jewish guy, just like me.”
to three faculty members, and one actually said that it disgusted
With his screenwriting partner, Camille Landau, Friedman
him. Those USC guys-they don’t mince words.”
recently finished a full-length script of one of his shorter films.
Nevertheless, Friedman still enjoyed his studies, putting his
“Our script has attracted the interest of an independent produc
creativity to work in writing scripts and turning them into short
tion company,” he says. “Everything is extremely preliminary at
the moment, but it’s exciting to be talking to people.”
Friedman has pursued a number of day jobs including
teaching and temping. He helped out in the script depart
ment for a television special and did filing at an art gallery.
“Temping can be pretty depressing, although I was at a
point that I was so relieved to have a steady income,”
he recalls. “Rather than working harder or getting more
day jobs, I made my living expenses more and
more slender.”
Fortunately for Friedman, a more interesting day job
came along. He began teaching English as a second
language to adults. “This is a day job I like very much,”
he says. “The students are wonderful, they’re highly
motivated, they’re very gracious and grateful, and there’s
that feeling you get of doing something to contribute
to society.”
Friedman has applied to law school and may pursue a
career in public interest law. “I hope to continue writing
scripts, but in the short term I don’t expect filmmaking to
be a major part of my life. I’ve had great experiences
working in entertainment. It’s exciting, it’s full of
surprises, and you meet a lot of interesting people,” he says.
Though if a Johnnie asked him for advice, Friedman
isn’t sure he’d recommend film school. “Better, perhaps,
to start working in the business as a gofer or production
assistant, learn the ropes and work your way up,” he says.
Benjamin Friedman (SF95)
teaches
ESL while
shopping
SCRIPTS TO PRODUCERS AND CONTEMPLATING LAW SCHOOL.
{The College-
St. John’s College • Winter 2oot }
�20
{TheDayJob}
Arthur Allen (Ao6) pursues
Shakespeare and
Curious George
ACTING GIGS AND TEACHES SPANISH.
Arthur Allen (Ao6)
Arthur Allen had just auditioned
for an anti-littering commercial. “I
was supposed to glare at somebody
who was throwing a cigarette on the
ground. In the next take, I was the
one throwing the cigarette. It was
kind of fun.”
It was a bit basic for Allen, but it
could mean a paying gig-some
thing that would help him pay the
rent and buy food while he
performed without pay as Duke
Orsino in Twelfth Night for a new
fringe theatre company in Seattle.
Since he returned to the Seattle
area last fall, Allen has been lucky
to have many auditions and several
paid acting jobs in his hometown.
In late January, he was gearing up
for his last performance as Curious
George for a repertory company
called “Book-It,” which adapts
works of literature for the stage.
The traveling company performs at schools in the Seattle area, and
Allen was looking forward to performing at his old high school,
where he first got the acting bug. “To be on the other end this time
is exciting,” he says. After his gig as a monkey ended, Allen was to
take on the role of a villain in a production based on Isabel
Allende’s House ofSpirits. “I go from playing a lovable monkey to
molesting a woman and chopping off her fingers,” he says.
Allen knew he didn’t want to study acting as an undergraduate.
“I felt I would gain more in terms of my art by understanding the
human condition,” he explains. “I asked myself, what was the
point of knowing how to tell a story if I didn’t have a story to tell?
There was never a doubt in my mind that St. John’s was the place
for me.”
After graduation, Allen moved back home and lived briefly with
his parents in Mukilteo, about an hour outside Seattle. When
commuting interfered with auditions and performances, he found
a room with family friends in Seattle. To support himself, Allen
tutors and teaches Spanish to kindergartners, first-graders, and
second-graders in a parochial school.
Allen worked briefly in the men’s department of Nordstrom,
selling neckties and other accessories. He gave it up shortly after
having to turn down an audition
for the part of a terrorist on the
hit TV show 24. The script was
intriguing. “I had to smash some
one’s face against a desk while my
superior interrogated him,” he
says. But Allen couldn’t find
someone to cover his shift at the
department store and was too
conscientious to call in sick. “I
guess it’s St. John’s-all those read
ings in ethics,” he says.
He has an agent who calls him
often for auditions; everything from
modeling gigs, which can pay $150
an hour, to commercials and televi
sion shows. “It’s very important to
detach yourself from the outcome.
Actors encounter rejection all the
time, so you can’t get discouraged.
Most of the time, they’re not
looking at what you can do as an
actor. They’re out for a particular
look. For now. I’m pretty content.”
Allen doesn’t see himself heading for LA or New York to look for
the big break. “It’s more satisfying to be part of the arts culture
here,” he says.
Recently Allen has combined great books, acting, and entrepreneurism by launching his own one-man theater company,
specializing in bringing great books to life. He called it Voices
Verbatim, and only uses works written or translated before 1930,
“to avoid paying royalties,” he adds. More is available on his Web
site: VoicesVerbatim.com.
Writing
and
Waitressing
Sally Benson (SFog)
One of the things that’s sustained Sally Benson (SF03) is enjoying
the journey, not focusing too much on the destination-though
she sometimes wishes the journey came with better pay and health
insurance. Benson studied dance briefly in college, but aban
doned that path and found herself in Washington, working for the
National Endowment for the Humanities in an administrative
support position. A rejected St. John’s grant application, with a
Program Statement attached, made it to her desk one day for
{The College- St. John’s College ■ W^inter 2001 }
�ai
{The Day Job}
recycling. She pitched the application,
Critique sessions in which she read her
hut kept the statement and eventually
work aloud gave her the incentive to
visited the Santa Fe campus. “I sat it on
write seriously and the courage to find
a discussion of Aristotle’s Metaphysics,
her voice. “Writing short stories is
Sally Benson {SF03)
and it was the most wonderful thing,”
hard-you’re really got to hook the
she says.
reader and have a strong plot, so I’m
After graduation, Benson stayed in
working on that. Now I’m wondering
Santa Fe for as long as she could afford to, ultimately deciding to
about flash fiction or prose writing and I’m curious about writing
poetry.”
move to New York. She hoped to find a good job to support herself
while pursuing an interest in writing. “I’ve always had a love for
The workshop leader, a literary magazine editor, was blunt in
language,” she says. “I had taken fiction writing classes before I
his critiques, though not unkind. “I didn’t take it personally. He
went to St. John’s, and I found that some of my papers at St. John’s
was treating us as if we’re published writers.” Benson is ready to
pushed the envelope in terms of creative writing. In junior year,
start sending her fiction pieces out to literary journals, but she’s a
one of my essays was a dialogue with David Hume. I had him come
little wary of rejection. “I understand if you get a note back
over to tea, arguing with him about the idea that we don’t have
with the rejection, that’s a really great thing. It must be pretty
personal identity.”
discouraging when it’s a form letter,” she says.
Studying poetry in language tutorial was also a joy. “Words to
By the end of last spring, Benson’s enchantment with New York
had worn off. She took a
me are like brush strokes on
summer job working at a
paper. How we refine our
vineyard in Southern Mary
words, our phrases, our para
land to clear her head. Finan
graphs, it’s fascinating to me
cial realities-rent, car insur
what you can do with language.
ance, food-often intrude on
I definitely know that writing is
her vision of a writer’s life.
important to me.”
“It’s important to make room
But there was the small
to imagine doing something
matter of supporting herself in
different than just struggling
one of the costliest cities in the
to pay my rent,” she says.
world. And while plenty of
Last summer, Benson
administrative jobs were avail
headed back to Santa Fe,
able, Benson knew she
where she landed part-time
couldn’t sit behind a desk
work at the Meem Library
again. Instead she talked
while pondering her next
herself onto the wait staff of a
move. Should she pursue the
high-end French restaurant.
practical realm-perhaps law
“It was really a professional
school? Or follow her
French kitchen. It was six days
passion? “I miss writing very
a week, all day long.” Though
much these days,” she says.
she was making $40,000 a
“But at least here in the
year, it was overall a tough job.
library, I can enjoy more
It did give her great material
reading.”
for three short stories, called
“Small Bites,” which examine
fife at a restaurant.
Soon after hitting the city,
Benson began taking classes at
the Gotham Writer’s Work
shop. She took part in several
Sally Benson (SF03) had to
FLEE EXPENSIVE NeW YoRK,
classes, including some all-day
BUT SHE LEFT WITH GOOD
sessions with other writers.
'' Words to me are like brush
strokes on paper.
STORY IDEAS.
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 3001 }
�2,2,
{Race
and
Human Nature}
UNDERSTANDING THE
“OTHER”
A Graduate PreceptorialExplores
Race and lliitnan Nature
wi Rosemary Harty
hat does it mean to
be the “other”? Why
do human beings
make distinctions
based on skin color
or supposed racial
heritage? Is racism a
type of ignorance
that can be remedied
with education and integration? What are its sources in the
human soul?
Joan Silver (MA76), director of the Graduate Institute,
has been thinking about the first question for much of her
adult life. The other questions evolved from the readings
Silver chose for the preceptorial she offered last spring, on
Race and Human Nature.
“The distinction between ‘black’ and ‘white’ is deeply
embedded in American society and carries the additional
weight of the history of slavery,” explains Silver. “We often
act as if we can avoid issues of race, but in fact they are with
us every day as is the general human tendency to make
some group into the ‘other.’ ”
When she began planning her preceptorial. Silver says,
the topic of race and racism had been “brewing” in her
psyche for some time. In the undergraduate program, she
had led students in discussions of stories such as Faulkner’s
“The Bear” and O’Conner’s “The Artificial Nigger,” rich,
complex stories that look at the difficult question of racial
distinction, slavery, and at what underlies these matters in
the human soul. Tutor George Russell helped her plan the
course by making some suggestions based on a course in
African-American literature that he had taught at a private
secondary school many years ago. Over the 16 weeks of the
preceptorial, students read and discussed works including
the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Richard
Wright’s Black Boy, Huckleberry Finn, Supreme Court
cases, and poetry by Langston Hughes.
Silver knew her own experiences and attitudes
influenced her desire to work on these texts. She grew up in
a predominantly white community in California in the
1950S and early 1960s with little exposure to AfricanAmericans, but acutely aware of the importance of the first
efforts to bring about integration. Minority students and
faculty were also an important element of the community
at a college she attended as an undergraduate. State
University of New York College at Old Westbury, started
as an “experimental school” in 1968. Contact with these
individuals-and with their differing relationships to their
racial heritage-had an enduring impact on her thinking
about race.
It was also at Old Westbury that she learned of St. John’s,
where she came to do the undergraduate program
and ended up as a tutor. Silver later joined the Santa Fe
faculty in 1989. When she returned to the Annapolis
campus in 1997, she and her partner, April Gifford, settled
in Cheverly, Maryland, an integrated community within
{The College - John’s College ■ Winter 2007 }
�{Race and Human Nature}
the predominantly AfricanAmerican Prince George’s
County outside of D.C.
Their new community
offered their children an
opportunity to grow up in a
setting rich with diversity.
Yet Silver was startled hy
her reaction to their first
weeks in Cheverly. “It was
very interesting to me to he
a minority in the grocery
store,” Silver says. “I think
for anyone to he in a
minority anywhere, one
feels certain things-that
feeling of being ‘other.’ I
love living in this community-it’s so sane to live in
such a setting.”
That experience of being
“other” was valuable. It
helped to foster in her a desire to lead a sustained look at
issues she had touched on in these seminar readings with
undergraduates.
Many more graduate students than could be accommo
dated listed the preceptorial as one of their choices. Those
who got in-Wesley Scott Brown (AGI07) among themconsidered themselves fortunate to be sitting at the table
with students of different races and different backgroundsall equally enthusiastic about the readings and drawn to the
topic. “There were readings in that class that I’ll go hack to
for the rest of my life,” says Brown.
Brown grew up in the South and has a compelling
interest in race relations. He hopes to work for a nonprofit
community development group, preferably in an inner
city such as Washington, D.C. “Growing up in Georgia,
you still feel the vestiges of what the institution of slavery
did to that region. I think that experience, combined
with my Christian beliefs, developed in me an under-
as
GI Director Joan Silver found
PERSISTING QUESTIONS ABOUT
HUMAN NATURE IN WORKS THAT
EXAMINE RACE AND
DISCRIMINATION.
standing of race relations
and a desire to work toward
reconciliation and equality,”
he says.
No passage in the readings
was more thought-provoking
for Brown than this section
from Frederick Douglass’
autobiography,
where
Douglass stands watching
the ships on the Chesapeake
Bay and yearns for freedom:
“ ‘You are loosed from your
moorings, and are free; I am
fast in my chains, and am a
slave! You move merrily
before the gentle gale, and I
sadly before the bloody whip! You are freedom’s swiftwined angels, that fly round the world; I am confined in
bands of iron! O that I were free! ’ ”
“Perhaps it’s because this is happening on Maryland’s
Eastern Shore, not too far from Annapolis, that made it so
moving to me,” Brown says. “I thought it was such a
compelling example of the human desire for freedom,
about the brutality of slavery.”
Douglass’ narrative should be required reading for high
school students. Brown says. “It forces the reader into the
shoes of the one being oppressed. That’s what’s so powerful
about all the books we read in the course. Any time you can
put yourself in the shoes of another, that’s a way to empha
size the equality of all mankind,” he says.
A high school teacher in Severna Park, Maryland, Kelly
Nash (AGI07) teaches a diverse group of students and knew
the literature and autobiographies in the preceptorial
could inspire insights she could share with her own
{The College - John’s College ■ Winter 2001 }
�2,4
{Race
and
Human Nature}
Dream Variation
by Langston Hughes
To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun.
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently.
Dark like meThat is my dream!
students. “It looked like an interesting way
On the first day of class. Silver asked
to look at a modern problem,” she says.
students why they had chosen this precepto
Just as Silver had an eye-opening experi
rial.
“I looked around the table and said,
To fling my arms wide
ence in the grocery store near her home,
‘
isn
’
t
it obvious’?” Sawyer says, laughing.
In the face of the sun.
Nash experienced what it was like to be a
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
She wanted to dispel the kind of tension
Till the quick day is done.
minority when she was a Peace Corps
that can arise when white people talk about
Rest at pale evening...
volunteer overseas. Particularly in China,
race and racism in a group that includes
A tall, slim tree...
where she taught in a small farming village,
African-Americans.
Night coming tenderly
she felt like an outsider as a Caucasian
“We had really good conversations,
Black like me.
and as an American. She stood out
really open conversations,” says Sawyer,
among others and sometimes felt hostility
who said hearing the perspective of
because of it.
students from the South opened new
The readings were thought-provoking, and at times,
avenues of thought for her as well.
difficult-but they’re important for Americans to read about
At St. John’s, she was part of a campus that is predomi
and understand racism, both historically and in a modern
nantly white. But because of the nature of the Program and
context. “The narrative by Frederick Douglass really
the respect of her classmates and tutors, she never felt that
stands out,” Nash recalls. “It was so honest. You could see
race mattered: “I was having a discussion with another
the point where he broke, he had put up with so much. He’s
African-American student in the GI program, and I asked
being whipped and he reaches this point where he’s not
her what she thought about it-she said she felt ‘colorless’ at
going to be whipped any more. You see how arbitrary, how
St. John’s, that the books and ideas mattered. And I had to
cruel, the treatment of slaves was.”
agree I felt the same way.”
Stepheca Sawyer (AGI06) had read all the works in the
In her preceptorial paper on Richard Wright’s autobiog
preceptorial with the exception of Flannery O’Conner’s
raphy, Black Boy, Sawyer considered how human beings
“The Artificial Nigger.” Yet talking about them around a
wear “masks of pride” that camouflage their fear. “A
table with students of different races and different
common thread in our discussion was the fear of the
backgrounds was new to Sawyer, as she had earned under
unknown. We may be saying one thing in public, but we
graduate and graduate degrees at historically black
believe something else. A lot of things we shouldn’t do are
colleges. She is currently a professor of business leadership
done in the name of pride.
and the business retention coordinator at Morgan State
“Every week, I would ask, “what are people afraid of?’
University in Baltimore.
Whether you want to admit it in front of everyone in class or
Sawyer had planned to attend divinity school but chose to
not, we are afraid of things. I know we dealt with that ques
attend the Graduate Institute because she wanted to better
tion in every single book. What are we still afraid of in our
understand the foundations of Western thought. Initially,
society today? I don’t know if we can answer that but I guess
she wasn’t a big talker in class. But by the time she took
that goes with the St. John’s way-you don’t focus on the
Silver’s preceptorial, she had found her voice. “This time, I
answer, you just think about it. And maybe, you get closer to
approached these texts more from the human nature side,
the truth.”
instead of the political view. Because I was looking at them
Perhaps the hardest thing for her was reading and
with a St. John’s eye, I saw things I had never seen in them
hearing the racial slurs, particularly the word “nigger,”
before,” she says.
found in many of the readings. “The first 20 times it came
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter zooi }
�{RaceandHumanNature}
25
''We may be saying one thing in public, but we believe something else.
A lot ofthings we shouldn i do are done in the name ofpride.
Stepheca Sawyer (AGI06)
up, it almost felt like somebody was jabbing me,” she says.
“It’s a painful word, aword full of hate, and I had to kind of
numb myself to it. Some of my classmates came up after
ward and apologized when they had to read a passage.”
Another African-American participant in the class was
Crystal Watkins, who until recently was the admissions
counselor for diversity at St. John’s. Watkins grew up in
Annapolis and attended the Key School, where she recently
returned as alumni director. She attended the University of
Virginia and the University of Maryland, where she was
active in groups for African-Americans. Although she
audited the class to learn more about the St. John’s
Program for her job, Watkins sat at the table and took part
in the discussions.
Talking about race comes easily to Watkins, she says.
Often problems fester when
views go unsaid. “Race and
ethnicity and culture had
been such a part of my world
for the previous six years, I
want to hear what other
people have to say about it. If
tension enters the room, I
want to work through that
and come out the other
side,” she says.
Watkins had read many of
the works in African-Amer
ican studies classes, where
they were always discussed
within the context of
history, politics, or soci
ology.
Reading
and
discussing O’Conner’s “The
Artificial Nigger” was a
particularly memorable part
of the class for her. Focusing
just on the characters and
the action in the story-
instead on the social context of racism in the Southallowed her to reflect on what the story said about
humanity.
“It was a short story, but so very powerful, with inter
esting characters in just about every paragraph. We found
deeper meanings talking about it together-black vs. white,
city vs. country, the differences between the generations.”
Several participants in the class, including Watkins, were
intrigued by one question a student raised. “He asked
whether that people may be happier being in the wrong
than finding out the truth,” Watkins says. “They want their
truth, their justice. They would rather live with their own
constructed truth than with what is morally right. I think
the class did settle on something like that-something a
little disturbing.”
Leah Lavin, who gradu
ates from the GI this spring,
was also intrigued by what
the question raised about
human nature. “The ques
tion was, ‘isn’t it interesting
that we humans are more
afraid of being proven
wrong than continuing to
live out the wrong that we
do?’ We were talking about
Faulkner’s
Go Down,
Moses.''''
Lavin grew up in Signal
Mountain, Tennessee, where
the schools, and perhaps the
community, were “quietly
segregated and maybe even
quietly racist.” She was
amazed that most of her
friends chose to attend the
In class and in her paper,
Stepheca Sawyer (AGI06)
EXPLORED THE FEAR FACTOR,
{The College* St. John’s College • Winter 2001 }
�a6
{RaceandHumanNature}
Cotton Ball, held for debutantes
of “Confederate descent.” “I
thought that was so obvious that
it was ridiculous,” she says.
In every class of the precepto
rial, Lavin felt she was delving
into the kind of issues and :
discussion that drew her to 5
St. John’s in the first place.
“The books in this class were
important, but the mix of students was so strong that we
really looked forward to hearing one another talk-this
class had almost a friendship sort of atmosphere to it,” she
says. “We talked about fear. We talked about this tendency
we have to define the ‘other.’ There’s pain in some of these
readings, especially the Faulkner and Frederick Douglass.
You feel you have to approach it with care.”
Courtney Lawrence, who completed the graduate
program last December, wrote in an e-mail that one
reason she took the class was curiosity about “how a
predominately white campus with a predominately white
staff would tackle the issue of race as it relates to human
interactions.”
“Actually, I thought the scope [of the class] was a little
narrow to gain a great deal of insight into human nature-at
least not any more than I’d struggled with before,” she
wrote. “The course and readings alone spoke volumes.
Though as the only race we focused on was the black
American race, I wonder how the course would have played
out had we tackled the treatment of Native Americans,
Asian Americans, or Hispanic Americans. All of these
groups shape the culture in which we live, yet most courses
dealing with race exclude the minorities of minorities.
I worry sometimes that as white people we think if we talk
openly about the pains blacks have endured, we can erase
some of that pain or some of the hate that still exists.”
For Silver, reading and discussing O’Conner’s “The
Artificial Nigger” always raises the most interesting ideas.
There’s an analogy to he found in trying to see beyond an
Teacher Kelly Nash (AGI07)
EXPERIENCED DISCRIMINATION
WORKING OVERSEAS.
offensive title to seeing beyond
the ignorance and petty-mindedness of the protagonist, a
weak and frightened man. In
the story, Mr. Head and his
grandson. Nelson, take the
train to the big city so that Mr. Head can show him what a
dangerous and unsavory place the city is, Mr. Head
believes, in part because of the blacks who live there. Some
saw Mr. Head as incapable of redemption and believed the
story showed how a legacy of hatred and fear is passed down
through generations.
“There was a fair amount of disagreement on that story,
about whether Mr. Head’s transformation is real, or
whether there was any hope for poor Nelson,” Silver
recalls.
Silver confesses she argued her point rather forcefully.
She believes Mr. Head gives us a chance to see a little bit of
the human condition, a small piece of redemption.
Through encountering a plaster statue of a black man, one
depicting human suffering and degradation, Mr. Head may
experience a revelation of sorts. He certainly knows the
depths of his own sin and weakness; perhaps that. Silver
suggests, is a start.
“The story presents to us something that’s very hard to
accept,” she explains. “It’s really interesting that what the
main character has kept hidden is sinfulness and pride.
What I saw in that story is that you need to give yourself
permission to be flawed-what’s key is understanding that
the ‘other’ can be a part of one’s self.”
Silver says the preceptorial confirmed for her that the
works chosen for the class were “great books” in everyway
St. John’s defines them. “You don’t ever really get to the
end. They will keep revealing things as you keep working
with them.
{The College- St. John's College ■ Winter zoo? }
�{W.E.B. Du Bois}
a?
W.E.B. DuBois Comes to St. Johns
Many dignitaries visited St. John’s in the 1950s: Dwight Eisen
hower came to dedicate Mellon Hall and Eleanor Roosevelt
dehvered a lecture. But the visit W.E.B. Du Bois made to the
college in April 195a is remarkable in that an author who would
one day be read on the Program came to the college to lecture to
its students.
The invitation came from Martin Dyer (class of 1952), the first
African-American student admitted to the college. Recruited by a
group of St. John’s students. Dyer had attended the segregated
Dunbar High School in Baltimore. His loth-grade history teacher
was Yolande Du Bois Wilhams, Du Bois’ only child. Dyer greatly
admired Du Bois: “In my view, Du Bois was in every way the equal
of the famous and not-so-famous people who came to the college to
deliver lectures in those days, and I resolved sometime in my junior
year to do all that I could to get him to the college,” says Dyer.
In January 1952, Dyer wrote Du Bois’ daughter to ask if she
thought her father would accept a lecture invitation. Williams
wrote back to say she thought her father would be pleased. “We’ve
been hearing about your fine program there,” she added, “and you
know Dunbar is proud of you.”
That same month, Du Bois wrote a short response to Dyer’s
inquiry: “If requested by the authorities of St. John’s College,
I think I can arrange to come for one Sunday evening lecture some
time during the spring.”
Dyer next approached President Richard Weigle (HA49) with
his request, concerned that Weigle would object to Du Bois’ left
leaning politics. But Weigle issued the invitation, dated February
14,1952. In his letter, he wrote that St. John’s had a custom of
inviting “outstanding men and women to speak to students, faculty
and interested members of the community on some contemporary
topic of a political, economic or sociological nature.” More
informal than Friday lectures, these
talks were held in the King William
Room on Sunday evenings. “The topic
could be one of your own choosing,
although we would prefer to have you
deal with the general racial problem in
the United States,” he wrote. St. John’s,
Weigle continued, “is one of a relatively
small number of southern colleges to
have opened its doors to Negro
students. The community here is there
fore conscious of this great national
issue and feels rather strongly on it.”
Dyer was assigned to meet Du Bois at
the train station in Annapolis and
escort him to campus. “Du Bois and I
walked the relatively short distance
from the station to [the college guest
house]. I accompanied Du Bois to
Weigle’s office and did not see him
again until lecture time that evening,”
Dyer recalls.
The lecture was well attended by
students and faculty. Dyer says.
“Although he did take time to
congratulate the college on the fine example it set in admitting me
to the college, Du Bois was true to form in condemning the treat
ment of blacks in the United States during the preceding three
centuries,” he says. “Probably correctly, he saw little significant
progress in civil rights gains even after World War II when the
country demanded no lesser sacrifice from black soldiers than it
did from white. Having been so intimately involved in the fight to
improve the pfight of American blacks, Du Bois seemed genuinely
depressed by how little progress had been made. He, of course, had
no way of knowing what dramatic changes would begin just two
years later with Brown v. Board ofEducation and reach a boiling
point in the early 1960s.”
After the lecture, Du Bois joined students at the home of
Priscilla Bender-Shore (class of 1955) and Mel Shore (class of 1954),
students who lived in the converted barracks installed on back
campus to house married students and their families. Mel Shore
died in 2006; PrisciUa has vivid memories of Du Bois. She recalls
that Jacob Klein, then dean, objected to the visiting lecturer’s
politics. Klein was a Jewish refugee from Eastern Europe; Du Bois
an active supporter of the communist party. “There was a funda
mental difference in ideology,” she says.
Yet the Shores felt strongly about hosting a post-lecture question
period. “We could see that he wasn’t going to be honored and we
thought he was a really important person,” Bender-Shore recalls.
“He was famous even then for his ideas and his works and activities
in the black community.”
The Shores’ house was filled with students who were eager to
question Du Bois about civil rights and politics. Bender-Shore
remembers little of the lecture topic or the discussion at her home,
but Du Bois left a lasting impression. “He was a small man, very
firm and confident, genteel,” says Bender-Shore. “We felt very
honored to have him among us.”
The morning after the lecture. Dyer
walked Du Bois back to the train station
alone. “There was no fanfare that I can
recall,” he says.
The contact between St. John’s and
one of its future seminar authors,
though unceremonious, was indicative
of the important changes in store for
the college. Six more African-American
students enrolled in St. John’s just a
few years after Dyer. The Program at
St. John’s later included works by
Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, and the
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
{The College- St. Jo hn’s College ■ Winter 2007 }
W.E.B. Du Bois
St. John’s
congratulated
on opening its doors to
STUDENTS OF ALL RACES, BUT REMAINED
DISCOURAGED ABOUT CIVIL RIGHTS WHEN
HE SPOKE ON CAMPUS IN I952.
�2,8
{The Tutors}
Chaninah Maschler
A LIFE
BY Chaninah Maschler (HA98)
INTERVIEW BY Robin Weiss (SFGI86)
was born in Berlin, Germany, two years before
I hid together, at the house of our former cleaning lady. But
Hitler became Chancellor. The Nazi epoch
soon we had to split up. After staying with many different
profoundly affected my family’s life. My mother,
families (some communist, some Gatholic, some Calvinist;
having been a teacher (especially of “classical
some rich, some poor) I landed in Utrecht, with the family
gymnastics”) at some rather la-di-da finishing
Mook. Mr. Mook was an upholsterer and paper hanger;
schools for German upper- class young women, was
Mrs. Mook had been a maid; when I arrived she was mothering
prepared to take Hitler’s anti-Jewish rage seriously.
seven children, ranging in age from to less than one year. I was
She left Germany for the Netherlands in the midthe oldest, being it at this time. I was very fond of the Mook
1930S and there became a leader of a hachsharah (a
children, except for the eldest, a girl, who felt displaced by me
school preparing Jewish youth to be farmers in what was then
and, not unnaturally, gave me a hard time. She and 1 had to
Palestine). My parents had settledin Palestine two or three years
share a bed. During the roughly three years that 1 spent with the
after the conclusion of World War I (long before my birth).
Mook family the children thought of me as a non-Jewish orphan
My brother was born there. They had joined Martin Buber and
girl from Rotterdam. (Everyone knew that Rotterdam had been
Judah
Magnes
in hoping
a bi-national
and expressed
bombed to bits by the Luftwaffe).
Hitler
’s Blitzkrieg
was for
totally
effective state
in conquering
the
this
hope when
they chose
a European,
and Hebrew
About half a year after liberation my mother returned from
Netherlands:
Between
May 1940
and May Arabic,
1945 Germany
ruled
name-Peter
Achmedits
Yehuda-for
myracial
brother.
Owing,
part, to
Bergen-Belsen, where my brother had died. By Dutch standards,
there
and enforced
Nuremberg
laws
with in
gradually
my brother
’s suffering
severely
from
asthma,
my parents
neither of them looked particularly Jewish, so they had been
increasing
strictness.
I believe
it was
in 1942
that Jewish
young
returned
1925.kidnapped
Not long from
after the
my streets
birth my
working in the underground associated with the Quakers. But
men weretoforGermany
the firstintime
of
parents wereand
divorced.
owing to the treachery of a woman double agent, both of them,
Aunsterdam
sent to “labor camps” such as Mauthausen.
separately, were turned in and sent to a concentration camp.
News of the death in Mauthausen of one of my brother’s friends
My mother and I went back to Amsterdam. There I enrolled at
convinced us to go into hiding. At first my mother, brother, and
a classical gymnasium. I had not attended school for three years
and was so ignorant as to be quoted in the school newspaper for
my laughably uninformed remarks. The return to school was a
source of great joy to me. I did not want to go to America. But I
went, after just a year and a half of gymnasium. That meant that
I’d learned a little French, Latin, and the Greek alphabet.
I
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 }
�{TheTutors}
“ .. Where ebe couldIhaveflourbhed as Ihave at St. Johns?''
Chaninah Maschler (HA98)
Chaninah Maschler (HA98), tutor emerita
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 }
2,9
�30
{TheTutors}
After a stint at two New York
high schools, I enrolled at
Queens College, one of the four
free colleges in New York City.
Paul Klapper had been presi
dent of Queens College and the
program of studies instituted
under him was first rate, as were
many of the faculty, especially
the music, mathematics, and
chemistry departments. But
under a new president, John J.
Theobald, McCarthy machina
tions took hold. Many members
of the faculty, unwilling to sign
the required loyalty oath, left
for teaching positions in
California. When the City
College of New York (CCNY)
opened its doors to women, I
transferred to City College and
switched majors from chem
istry to philosophy. The teacher
I most admired at the time was
Felix Cohen. He had a law office
in D.C. but also taught philos
ophy of law-meeting with the rich kids at Yale law school one
day a week, and with the poor kids at CCNY on another day.
Unlike his famous father, Morris Raphael, Felix was very gentle
in class. Together with his father he brought out a book of read
ings in jurisprudence and legal philosophy, which is still in
print. To this day I find its preface’s use of Deuteronomy 30:11
profoundly moving.
After finishing college in New York I moved to New Haven to
do graduate work in philosophy at Yale, where I had been given
a fellowship. Curiously, I was oblivious of the fact that in a
group of, say, 25 grad students, only four were women and that
women faculty at the University were limited to “native inform
ants,” that is, female speakers of such languages as Chinese or
languages spoken on the Indian subcontinent.
I arrived at Yale too untutored to use the university’s riches
wisely. There were no advisors. My fellow graduate students in
philosophy were vastly better educated than I and much more
sophisticated and worldly. I profited from associating with the
linguist-historian of philosophy, Rulon S. Wells, and from the
friendships I formed. Also, of course, from the wonderful
Chaninah on her way to school,
1939, Amsterdam.
library and the free time I was
granted. But I did not, otherwise,
use my years well there. Today,
when Johnnies come to talk to
me about doing graduate work in
philosophy, I always urge themmake sure there is something
else you become semi-expert at,
where you can make progress,
where you find out what it is like
to have a skill. Philosophy is no
such enterprise.
My first experience of teaching
came at Bryn Mawr College,
where I was given an assistant
ship and sometimes filled in for
absent faculty. Next, Penn State
University hired me. I remember
being frightened as I traversed a
meadow and encountered young
men of horrific, formidable
build and registered that any one
or more of these immensities
might, the next day, turn up in my Introduction to Philosophy
or my Logic classes. Only later did I learn that these young men
were wearing shoulder pads. They were on the football team.
In 196a Henry Maschler (HA98) and I were married. My alma
mater, CCNY, hired me to teach evening logic classes. I enor
mously enjoyed these. Old and young, men and women, black
and yellow. . .everyone was there. We worked our way through
an elementary symbolic logic text. Also, we analyzed arguments
in Platonic dialogues, and Sherlock Holmes’ reasoning as he
dealt with this or that case. Next, Barnard College invited me to
teach history of philosophy. I did not much enjoy my classes at
Barnard. My experience there confirmed what I had felt at Bryn
Mawr, that I much preferred classes in which both men and
women participated. It seemed to me that Barnard women were
too anxious to please.
John Kennedy’s assassination shook me. I interrupted
teaching. While waiting for the birth of our twin girls, I served
at the Hunt’s Point Library in the Bronx. There, for the first
time, I had a female African-American boss. Even at the time I
was aware that this was an important experience for me.
{The College. 5t. John’s College ■ IVinterzooi >
�{TheTutors}
The willingness to start over
and be^in at the beginning
is goodfor all ofus—no one is
shutout. ”
31
While at Yale I made the acquain
fact that mathematics and labora
tance of Eva Brann. After receiving
tory classes are part of the required
her degree from Yale she taught at
liberal arts curriculum. I am deeply
Stanford hut left its classics depart
grateful to the college for requiring
Chaninah Maschler (HA98)
ment after just a year to join the
of me that I learn some of the
St. John’s faculty. Her letters showed
elements of ancient and post
that she was profoundly happy there. When I visited her in
Galilean astronomy; that I learn enough to appreciate how
Annapolis to attend a Friday night lecture I’d bring a suitcase
mathematics and the physical sciences grew up in tandem. And
full of bagels. The bread situation in Annapolis was dreary in
there I understood in freshman lab about there not having been
those days. Like so many other repeat-visitors at the college, I
a Moses who brought us the chemical periodic table. St. John’s
experienced the wonderful hospitality of Dean Jacob Klein and
is also quite singular in so accustoming us to the absence of
his wife. I found out that Mrs. Klein had briefly attended one of
jargon that when unexplained technical or pseudo-technical
the boarding schools in Germany where my mother had taught
vocabulary is used it has a slightly comical effect. The willing
(though not during the years when my mother was there). Later,
ness to start over and begin at the beginning is good for all of
when I had come to join the Annapolis faculty and my mother
us-no one is shut out, if they are willing to concentrate; and the
came for a visit, I introduced the two women to each other.
more competent are obliged to check on whether they
At the time, when I came visiting, I felt the St. John’s faculty
adequately understand and whether it is true.
was too self-absorbed, too smug. I had reservations. On the
In some respects it seems to me that the college has changed
other hand, the students were strikingly courteous, friendly,
for the better over the years of my association with it. For
and helpful to strangers; eager to share thoughts.
example, whereas in former years the career counseling office
When our twin girls were about five it was suggested to me
was hardly spoken of, work is today recognized to be central to a
that I apply for a summer teaching position at the then recently
good life. Even mentioning money has become legitimate ever
established St. John’s Graduate Institute in Santa Fe. I took the
since then President Bill Dyal toasted the seniors at the senior
children with me. Their memories of the beautiful Santa Fe
dinner in Spanish, wishing them Love and Money. It is probably
landscape are vivid to this day. Having participated in the
also a good thing that more faculty today have spouses and
writing of a book about the Joseph story in Genesis, I selected
children, and that there are more women tutors.
Genesis and the opening chapters of Exodus as texts for my first
In the years since my retirement I have spent time reading
19th-century authors-William James, George Eliot, Darwin,
St. John’s preceptorial.
Dewey. Previously I had been on a more intimate footing only
That first appointment at the Graduate Institute led to my
becoming a faculty member of the Queens College Liberal Arts
with Charles Peirce. It now seems to me a little odd that a
school so profoundly American as St. John’s should exclude the
Institute, a mini-St. John’s program within the confines of a
standard undergraduate education. I taught there for some
pragmatist tradition. It is true that St. John’s does well by
years and have exceedingly happy memories of the students in
students and faculty and the nation in demanding that all
my classes at Queens. But when the city of New York was on the
acquaint themselves with some of the Supreme Court cases,
verge of bankruptcy, I (along with many other non-tenured
with Lincoln’s speeches, with the Constitution and the
Federalist Papers. But why favor continental philosophy to the
faculty of the city university) was fired. As it happens, my
exclusion of American authors that are studied and valued all
husband too lost his job at that time, so I applied for a full-time
teaching position at St. John’s and was accepted.
over the rest of the world?
Given the fact that undergraduate philosophy classes across
I do not want to end on such a chiding note. Given my
the nation tend to be taught by way of discussion rather than
intellectual and pedagogic ways, where else could I have
flourished as I have at St. John’s? I am hugely in the college’s
lecture, there is a sense in which my manner of teaching has
never been very different from what goes on at St. John’s. But at
debt.
other schools the students’ other classes take the form of
lectures, and that made a difference also for the classes I was in.
One of the things I have always greatly valued at St. John’s is the
{The College -Sf. John's College ■ Winter 2oot }
�{Homecoming}
SIX JOHNNIES,
SIX DECADES
BY Emily DeBusk (Ao6) and Rosemary Harty
ome remember Jacob Klein, Barbara Leonard and the Liberty
Tree; others knew Christopher Nelson and Tom May. Some saw
wars end, some saw wars begin. Many have raised families and
some have sent their own children to St. John’s.
Visiting with six alumni who returned in October for Home
coming-one from each decade-yielded a rich trove of memories and
glimpses of lives lived after St. John’s.
Among
the
Veterans
John Wallace (Class ofig4g)
Then: John Wallace entered St. John’s
during World War II, saw veterans on the
GI Bill invade the campus at the war’s end,
knew Barr and Buchanan, and loved the
parties and general rowdiness that marked
campus life during his years.
“I know the folks at the church nearby
used to complain about the noise. They’d
be going to church, and we’d be going to
bed. The girls at the Naval Academy dances
would come over here after their dates had
to go in for the night. We wore coats and
ties to every meal and lecture. I’m pretty
sure the food was good,” he recalls.
There were about 30 students in
Wallace’s class. Many had won state schol
arships to attend St. John’s, as he did.
“Four years free-you can’t beat that with a
stick,” he says, grinning. He saw many
students drop out. “Some decided they
wanted to go elsewhere. Some couldn’t
get through don rags. And some just
stuck it out,” he says.
A historic change came to the campus
during Wallace’s time. The college
admitted its first African-American
student, Martin Dyer (class of rg5a).
Wallace still feels proud about the campus
community’s response. “He fit in fine, he
was accepted, and it all happened with
absolutely no objection,” he said.
Now: Wallace’s career as a civil engineer
grew out of his first job after graduation:
working on construction of the Bay Bridge.
For Wallace’s first few days, the foreman
training Wallace led him on perilous walks
over narrow beams hundreds of feet above
the Chesapeake Bay. “Every day, he’d ask,
‘you coming back tomorrow?’ After three
days, he stopped asking.”
When the bridge was completed, Wallace
went to work on building the Garden State
Parkway, then helped build a bridge over the
Ohio Turnpike. He took night classes to
earn his master’s degree in engineering at
Johns Hopkins University. And in 1985, he
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 }
became partner of an engineering firm,
Wallace, Montgomery and Associates, in
Towson, Md. Today, he’s semi-retired, and
he and his wife, Pamela, have three children.
Money and Women
George Wend (Class oftg^t)
Then: Times were simpler when George
Wend was a student in the early r95os.
Between classes Wend fenced, designed
boats, and worked in the wood shop. Semi
nars lingered late into the night, and dance
parties into the early mornings. Two issues
complicated the scene: money and women.
Money was tight and the Naval Academy
wanted to take over the campus: “The college
was small enough that we would have meet
ings about it in the Great Hall. Jacob Klein,
who had just retired, was called in.” Wend
distinctly remembers Klein’s calming, avun
cular manner. After one collegewide
meeting, he simply said, “Gentlemen, get a
good night’s sleep.”
In 1951, the college admitted women. The
change was “anticipated with mixed feel
ings,” says Wend. “Jacob Klein was highly in
favor of the idea. In the rgsi variety show, I
remember, someone made a joke, ‘You don’t
have to go to Europe to study a broad.’ But I
remember someone stopping me on Main
Street to ask what I thought about women
coming to St. John’s. I said ‘I don’t see why
not.’ They definitely brought something new
to the college.”
�{Homecoming}
33
Now: Wend enjoyed a long career in physics
and engineering at the Westinghouse Elec
tric Corporation. He is now retired and lives
in Pennsylvania. “I moved to this particular
community for the small liberal arts college
in my town. I can take classes there and keep
up my learning,” he says. Wend was pleased
to reunite with six other classmates for their
55th homecoming.
All Dressed Up
Vicki Davis Cone (A68)
Then: The jean-clad students of today might
look askance at having to dress up for
dinner, seminar, and lecture, but Vicki
Davis Cone treasured the tradition. “We
would wear skirts or dresses and stockings
or heels, and the men wore jackets and
ties,” she says. “I think most people were
perfectly content to dress up.” There was
one time when a male student donned
jacket and tie and nothing else, she notes.
Men and women lived in separate dorms,
with the opportunity to visit each other in
common rooms informally dubbed “sin
bins.” “Women were locked in at midnight,
but the men were free all night,” she says.
During Cone’s time, the college began
allowing men and women to visit in each
others’ dorms during visiting hours.
Cone enjoyed the way dinners were
served family-style in the dining hall by
white-jacketed student waiters. She met her
husband. Bill (A67), in the dining hall. “He
was the most handsome waiter,” Cone says.
Simon Kaplan, Richard Scofield, Jacob
Klein, and John Kieffer dominated the
intellectual life on campus. “They seemed
so wise and knowledgeable, sophisticated
and cultured,” says Cone.
The mood of the campus changed as the
Vietnam War intensified, but the campus
itself seemed removed from the war, at least
in Cone’s memory: “Most of the students
took that time to get away from the world
and figure out who they were, reading the
books and getting lost in the ideas.”
Now: Cone started working in the library
soon after graduation and her marriage.
She spent most of her library career at St.
John’s. Cone worked as a cataloguer for
many years until she took a decade’s hiatus
to raise the couple’s two children. She
Henry Robert (class
of
1941), Jack Ladd Carr (class
of
1950)
and
Christopher Nelson
at a
REDEDICATION CEREMONY FOR THE CAMPUS CANNON. Mr. RobERT FUNDED THE RESTORATION AND
PROPER INSTALLATION OF THE igTH-CENTURY CANNON, DREDGED FROM THE BALTIMORE HARBOR.
returned to the college in 1980 and worked
for two decades, earning her Master of
Library Science degree at the University of
Maryland.
In aooo. Cone joined Anne Arundel
Community college, where she is informa
tion resources management librarian. She
was recently promoted to tenured associate
professor.
A War
Ends
Paula DavidoffiArii)
Then: Single-sex dorms were still the norm
when Paula Davidoff entered the college in
197a. “Although boyfriends and girlfriends
slept in each others’ rooms,” she notes wrly.
“The difference was you just had to be
careful about it.”
The Vietnam War ended during
Davidoff’s years at the college. She vividly
remembers the impact it had on campus. “I
remember coming out of a seminar and
hearing that Johnson had just said it was
over. If the bell in McDowell Hall wasn’t
ringing, in my memory it seems that it
was.”
Davidoff also remembers an easy
mingling of students and tutors. “I got to be
friends in a tutor-student way with Robert
Bart, and he was an extraordinary person.
Students and tutors had get-togethers at the
Little Campus, and in tutors’ homes, and
{The College ■ Si. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 }
the conversation was real St. John’s. There
was gossip, there was laughing-even if we
weren’t talking about books or ideas from
seminars, the ideas in our readings carried
over into fife. Robert had this wonderful
way of making you feel smart even when you
were doing just the dumbest things.”
For two wonderful years, Davidoff
enjoyed the best digs on campus: with three
other girls, she lived in the Reverdy
Johnson house. “We used to have cocktail
parties on the lawn for the tutors in the
spring,” she recalls.
Now: Davidoff met her husband, Bernie
(A69), when he returned to campus to study
with Leon Kass, then a tutor. She married
Bernie a week before she graduated and
settled in New Jersey. There she studied
classics for a while, then turned her atten
tion to raising five children, now ages 17 to
29. Two (Ada and Esther, both seniors) are
current Johnnies; Sam graduated in 1999;
and Davidoff’s youngest is a prospie.
For the past 15 years, Davidoff has been a
professional storyteller, a career that
evolved from her years as a teacher. “I’m
hired to come to a school for a residency,
and what I’m teaching is literacy skills,
often to very young children: listening,
speaking, writing, teaching kids to think
about story beyond the surface. I tell myths
and folktales. They’re the foundation for all
�{Homecoming}
34
the other literature we have; they’re the
dreams of a community or a civilization.”
A Different
Downtown
Stephanie Rico (A86)
Then: Students who enjoy dance and yoga
classes in the dance studio of Iglehart can
thank the lobbying efforts of Stephanie Rico.
“The gym has really improved,” she says. “I
started the first aerobics class in 1985, and we
had to meet backstage [of FSK Auditorium]
because there was no room in the gym.”
Rico and her family returned to Annapolis
for her aoth reunion in October. There are
some obvious changes, such as the two new
dorms on College Creek, but Rico was most
struck by the “vast changes” in downtown
Annapolis. “I lived on Fleet Street which
was, back then, pretty run down. Now every
thing has been built up and gentrified. On
campus it was even more remarkable to see
what was pretty much the same. We saw
students talking on the quad, selling Reality
t-shirts. They could have been us.”
Now: Rico holds a PhD in Curriculum
Studies and Teacher Education from Stan
ford University. She splits her time between
a San Diego high school, where she teaches
science, and co-directing the California
Science Project, a professional development
network for science teachers. “My driving
interest in education started at St. John’s,”
she says. “The way we learned was so
different from the way I had to learn in high
school. So a lot of my work is dealing with
restrictions, but there is a lot of school
reform going on. I’m pretty unusual in that I
teach all three sciences: physics, chemistry,
and biology. I didn’t even like science before
I went to St. John’s. The fact that I’m a
science teacher is directly due to St. John’s.”
Waiting for the
Hall Phone
this new industry, so I just jumped right in,
without having to go to graduate school. And
I know a lot of my classmates have gone into
Web design as well.” Although he wasn’t on
campus when the college had to cut down the
Liberty Tree, Sirkin says the “front campus
just doesn’t look the same to me without it.”
Cell Phones and
Hurricanes
Craig Sirkin (Agg)
Lizzie Jump (Aoi)
Then: Craig Sirkin witnessed several mile
stones. “I went to the last lecture delivered by
Mortimer Adler,” he recalls. “The audito
rium was packed, because he was such a
celebrity here. I also remember that when I
was a sophomore, the school really pushed to
cut down on underage drinking. That’s when
ID checking became strict.”
St. John’s also saw enrollment rise. “By the
end of my freshman year, the school was
running out of housing and the administra
tion was encouraging people to move off
campus,” he recalls. The college was also
stepping gingerly into cyberspace; during
Sirkin’s senior year, the computer lab was
wired for the Internet. “It was a big deal
because when I was a student, we didn’t even
have phones in the rooms, which meant that
if you had someone on your floor who was a
talker, you could never use the hall phone.”
Now: Sirkin enjoys a career that reflects the
information revolution that hit the campus
during his college years. He now sells hard
ware for a telecommunications company in
Denver. “I got out of school and there was
Then: “I remember, when I was a senior,
being shocked to see so many lower
classmen with cell phones,” recalls Lizzie
Jump. “We were closet cell phone users,
but these kids were just using them on the
quad. It was like a cell phone revolution.”
Now, not a semester goes by without the
occasional renegade phone call interrupting
a seminar.
“Campus was pretty much walloped by
Hurricane Floyd in ’99, especially the
Liberty Tree. I lived in 201 Pinkney and I
was one of about eight who had to be
temporarily evicted because the Liberty
Tree was so close to our rooms. For a while I
had to live in the prospie room in Campbell.
I was pretty mad about that, since lower
classmen were getting singles. Then they
had to take the Liberty Tree down; that was
very sad.”
Despite these changes. Jump reckons that
two things will never change about
St. John’s: the Program, and the general
spirit of mischief that inspires bizarre
pranks and campus-wide jokes. “I think it
was my junior year when some people stole
the seal from the bricks on the Quad steps.
They hid it in the trunk of a car, and for
about a month the administration kept
getting postcards from the seal from all over
the world.”
Now: After graduation. Jump spent two
years in Americorps, followed by some time
as an adoptions counselor for the ASPCA.
She currently works as a receptionist for a
social services organization. “It’s seriously
like the movie Ojfice Spaced she says. “I
think I’m going to ask for a red stapler for
Christmas.
Saturday’s
banquet featured an
Oktoberfest
{The College -5f. John’s College . Winter soo^ }
theme.
�{Homecoming}
35
A Family Affair
Homecoming in Annapolis this
year included a spate of family
friendly activities: a story-teller
regaled children with the tale of
Rumpelstiltskin; a carnival on
the lawn gave kids a chance to
play games and win prizes; and
pony rides and face-painting kept
the young ones entertained while
classmates caught up with each
other. Adults enjoyed seminars in
the mornings and a banquet with
an Oktoberfest theme in the
evening. (It was the best of times,
it was the wurst of times.) There’s
no telling whether the beer or the
kids’ activities brought alumni
home, but another new record for
attendance was set: 320 alumni
attended Homecoming, bringing
no family members or guests
with them. The children’s activi
ties were a big draw, says
Stephanie Rico (A86). “We had a
great seminar with all of us
smashed together around one
table-it was awesome,” she says.
“But Homecoming was definitely
more kid-friendly this year; it just
gives more people more freedom
to enjoy Homecoming.”
Clockwise, from top
left:
Sandy Israel (A85),
with
Katie
AND Jake. Everett Wilson (class of 1956) received the
Alumni Association’s Award of Merit. Shown with Everett,
(second
from left) are his son
DAUGHTER Elsie. Johnnie kids
Anton, wife Mia, and
enjoy picnic games.
students perform for homecoming.
1986. Don Hitt (AGI06) raises his
GRADUATES EVERYWHERE.
{The Colleges:, John’s College ■ Winter 2007}
Members
Current
of the class of
glass on behalf of
GI
�36
Plato’s Republic
Translation, glossary, and introductory
essay by Joe Sachs. (Afterword “Imita
tion,” by John White, class of 1964,
Focus Publishing Company, 2006
BY Gabriel Pihas {A92), tutor
Sometimes the original cannot be heard
until a new translator comes along to
liberate us from a habitual dependence on
older translations. If we are not always
reading in the original, it feels to us as if
the author had to wait for the translator’s
response in order to fully voice its appeal.
The Republic is a case in point: most of us
have become habituated to the fine 1968
translation by Alan Bloom, which, despite
its many virtues, may have blocked up our
ears to certain elements in the dialogue.
Joe Sachs’ new translation of the Republic
helps make it young and beautiful.
Together with the translation come two
pieces worth reading to anyone interested
in the Republic. Mr. Sach’s introduction is
written to be readable for first-time
readers, but is full with insights into the
text. John White has provided the after
word, “Imitation,” a developed version of
a truly excellent piece that appeared in
the 1989-90 St. John’s Review double
issue on the Republic (Vol. XXXIX,
Nos. I and a).
For those familiar with Mr. Sachs’
series of translations of Aristotle, his
translation of Plato’s Republic, may come
as a surprise. His translations of Aristotle
are so helpful exactly insofar as they are
distant from ordinary speech, and un
Platonic in style. Phrases like “being-atwork-staying-itself’ or the somewhat
menacing sounding “thinghood,” could
never be taken straightforwardly in a
Platonic dialogue. What is surprising in
the new translation of the Republic is not
that Mr. Sachs avoided such language, for
how could he not? Rather, it is that his
translation of the Republic so convinc
ingly brings the real conversation of the
original to life, without even a trace of the
Aristotle translator we may have thought
we had come to know.
Although dialectic takes place in
conversation, it aims at a pure vision of
what is that is beyond speech. A conversa
tion about a vision that goes beyond it,
and that cannot be put into words, is
neither a tragic loss of that vision, nor
{Bibliofile}
does it perfectly recollect it. Exactly
because it is neither the one nor the
other, it is quite similar to the translation
of a Platonic dialogue. An ordinary
conversation is difficult to translate
because it takes place in a community,
and hence an adequate translation would
have to include an account of the inter
locutors themselves. In order to include
this, one would have to capture the
nuances of their interactions, and so,
presumably, a literal translation would
not be an adequate one. But a Platonic
dialogue, because it aims beyond words, is
at the same time extremely translatable
for someone attentive to who the speakers
are and to where the conversation points.
A good translator can at least point us in
that direction by putting the reader inside
the talk Socrates had with good-natured
Glaucon and Adeimantus, wolfish Thrasymachus, Polemarchus and his hypocrite
father Cephalus. Mr. Sachs has done an
outstanding job of this. Where Mr. Bloom
was sometimes old-fashioned in his
language, this new translation tries to be
much more conversational. Also, where
Bloom never varies the translation of a
term at the expense of the feel of a
passage, Sachs will take liberties with a
word for the sake of the passage. The
result is an extremely readable Republic,
which is at the same time, very accurate.
Once one reads it, it comes as a surprise
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 }
''[Sachs] genuinely
encourages the reader
to mull over multiple
interpretations, and he
gives the reader an even
picture ofboth sides in
the various debates. He
alwayspushes the
reader to decidefor him
or herself by asking the
dialogue (and not the
commentator)for the
last word. ”
that we have had to wait such a long time
for a translation like this.
Of course, there will be disagreement
about the translations that will largely be
based around the commentaries of the
translators. Those who see the Republic as
mainly a work of political theory will find
Bloom’s interpretive essay and notes
more helpful, while those who are
interested in the dramatic character of
the dialogue will prefer Mr. Sachs’
introduction and notes. But there is
something more important than either set
of preoccupations. I have learned from
both translations, but I would wish to
point out that the humility with which
Mr. Sachs makes his claims in his
commentary is not just a question of
politeness. He genuinely encourages
the reader to mull over multiple interpre
tations, and he gives the reader an even
picture of both sides in the various
debates. He always pushes the reader to
decide for him or herself, by asking the
dialogue (and not the commentator) for
the last word. Leaving the reader open
is more important for a translator of
Plato than any set of preoccupations,
since it lets the dialogues be just that,
dialogues. Jfr
�{Bibliofile}
Too
The
Much for Our Own Good:
Consumeritis Epidemic________
Harrison Sheppard (Class of 1961)
and Alex Aris
Aristotle and Alexander Press, 3006
BY Eva Brann (HA57), tutor
affluence and its by-prod
ucts, on the roots of Amer
ican materialism, on the
social, political, and
economic costs of, and
finally the cure for,
consumeritis.
The book ends with a set
of graphs and tables. All
the graphs go dramatically
up or down: up for
spending, personal and
public; down for savings
and voter participation.
A final table displays
remedies, among which
self-awareness is number
one (surely a Johnnie-mark: “Know
Thyself’ is what we try for). There follow
policy proposals that should raise debate,
such as a consumption tax. Indeed, the
whole book should cause reflection. I’ll
give an example of my own: “Nothing in
excess,” said the Temple at Delphi, and we
should surely let Harrison Sheppard’s
alarm at our excesses infect us. Yet here’s a
question: Suppose we were morally and
legally inhibited in our buying from and
selling to one another-what other things
might we then be doing to each other? It is
a real question for me: Can people being
able to get so freely what they want be such
a bad thing?
Harrison Sheppard and I were freshman
together in seminar, back in 1957, he as
student, I as tutor. St. John’s is mentioned
at the beginning and the end of the book,
and is silently there all the time. For a
semi-explicit thesis is that we should be
less addicted to buyable stuff and more
involved in reading great books-and
watching good movies.
This is a readable, spirited, double-track
work. On one track it is in the tradition of a
type of popular “how-to” book, the “howto-save-our-souls” track. What we need to
save ourselves from is a social ill,
“consumeritis,” a termed coined on the
model of “conjunctivitis” and the like.
I’ll say a little in a moment of how the
diagnostic signs of the illness are framed
and what remedies are proposed here.
The other track puts good movies,
particularly some golden oldies of the
thirties through fifties, in the service of
remembering a more non-acquisitive
ethos. To me that sweeter descant to a book
dealing with a psychic corruption rings
true; these movies overlooked much we
Essential History: Jacques
now deplore, but there was a good-heartedDerrida and the Development
ness-call it innocence-and, within the
OF Deconstruction_______________
framework of their times, a social rightby Joshua Kates (A80)
mindedness about them that still makes
Northwestern U. Press, 3005
them somehow salubrious.
On the main track, we run across a lot of
interesting and disconcerting information
BY Thomas Scally, tutor
about the “consumer
At St. John’s College, our
epidemic,” which is
inquiry is driven by
defined as buying in excess
Joshua Kates
thoughts, ideas, and ques
of the satisfaction of our
tions that are immortal
needs. The introduction
and transcend particular
contains seven bold-face
times and places. Our
paragraphs that collect
conversation becomes
these unwanted intruders
i
Jacques Derrida
deep rather than decora
on consciousness, the
I
and the Development
tive because we read our
come-ons, imperatives,
f
of Deconstruction
texts in a manner that
and promises of adver
frees them from mere
tising, from “You Could
temporal and historical
Instantly Win” (ifyou’re
determinations. However
the one in three million) to
noble and rewarding this
“Bankruptcy Sale!” (ifyou
maybe, we have, at
don’t mind feeling slightly
present, a curricular
like a vulture). There
problem that cannot be
follow chapters on
1
Essential
& History
{The College- St. John ’5 College • Winter 200’^ }
37
resolved entirely apart
fiom such determinations.
A crass statement of this
problem might be put thus:
How do the great books in
that lump of time called the
last half of the 30th
century converse with the
books we have found to be
speaking to each other
across the preceding
centuries? In his Essential
History., Josh Kates shows
us important ways in which
such a clumsy question
can be rethought and
reformulated.
Although I could rehearse the praises
this work has received from professional
philosophers and theorists, what I would
like to highlight instead is the way it can
enhance our understanding of what we do
in our reading of texts at St. John’s. Let me
start on the inside and work out. In chapter
7 of Speech and Phenomena Jacques
Derrida writes: “Going through the First
Investigation (Husserl’s), we must try to
ascertain how far these concepts respect
the relations between signs in general.. .and
presence in general. When we say through
Husserl’s text, we mean a reading that can
be neither simple commentary nor simple
interpretation.”
Kates’ book shows us how Derrida goes
through Husserl’s text by itself going
through Derrida’s text. By “going
through” both Kates and Derrida mean
that what they each come to think is inex
pressible and unthinkable without such a
passage.
At St. John’s, we may not readily formu
late our own work in this way, but a little
reflection will show that this “going
through” is what we have always tried to
do. Of many possible examples, an obvious
one is how our going through Newton and
Maxwell makes Einstein possible and
thinkable. So we have in a sense gone
through what makes the thought of the
second half of the 3oth century possible.
Kates’ reading of Derrida’s reading of
Husserl shows us how to make such going
through explicit and how to connect our
own reading with other powerful readings
of the same books. Kates’ Essential
History is, not only a remarkable scholarly
accomplishment, but also a significant
contribution to the maturing of intellec
tual life at St. John’s.
�{AlumniProfile}
3^
Good Design Starts With Good Questions
Architect David Schwarz (A’^2)
BY Rosemary Harty
n 1991, when Washington architect
David Schwarz (A7a) was competing
with larger, more established firms to
design the Ballpark in Arlington, the
stadium for the Texas Rangers, he
approached the project from a sound
business perspective. He analyzed the
revenue streams a baseball team relies onfrom ticket sales to broadcasting rights-and
ensured that his design maximized income
potential.
That was one winning approach, but
Schwarz went deeper in seeking a design
that would reflect the unarticulated visions
of those building the park: he asked Rangers
President Thomas Schieffer what color he
associated with the sport of baseball. “When
he answered ‘sepia,’ I knew that our building
needed to be nostalgic,” Schwarz says. “For
an architect, success is rooted in asking the
right question. It’s very rare that a direct
question will give you the information you
need and want. If I had asked him if he
thought of baseball as nostalgic, he would
have said no.”
Schwarz’s Washington-based firm had
The desire for a rigorous education led
already made its mark in Texas, with the
David Schwarz to St. John’s.
design of the Cook-Fort Worth Children’s
Medical Center, and Sundance, a mixed-use
project in Forth Worth. But landing the Ball
park in Arlington (later rechristened
says some of the fundamental principles
Ameriquest Field), a $165 million project,
instrumental in his success, such as the
was a triumph. Schwarz beat out 16 other
ability to formulate a penetrating question,
firms. His architects worked nights and
were developed at St. John’s College.
weekends on a proposed design for the
Schwarz as a child decided to pursue a
competition, on top of the firm’s existing
career in architecture. He enrolled in a
work. “I told everyone they’d have great job
program in St. Louis but quickly grew
security if we won and no job security if we
dissastified. “I got a 3.9 on a 4.0 scale
lost,” Schwarz said.
without going to half my classes or ever
But Schwarz did win, by proposing a
cracking a book. I decided if I truly wanted
design with arched arcades, red brick and
pink Texas granite, and a pedestrian-friendly to be educated, I would have to go some
where where I really had no choice, and
site plan that made the stadium seem more
that’s the nice thing about the Program at
hke an urban center than a suburban desti
St. John’s: you really do have no choice.”
nation surrounded by a vast parking lot.
Schwarz is frank in his assessment of
Today, Schwarz directs a 40-person firm in
St. John’s, to which he admits something of a
Washington, D.C., and Fort Worth that has
love-hate relationship. He did gain a valu
carved out an international reputation,
able education at the college, but was
winning scores of awards for its work.
He studied in one of the finest graduate
rankled by what he describes as the “holierthan-thou” attitude of some tutors. He
programs in the country, Yale University,
where Vincent Scully was one of his mentors. butted heads with President Richard Weigle
(HA49), whose support for LBJ during the
While he owes a great deal to Yale, Schwarz
I
{The College • St. John’s College ■ Winter 200^ }
Vietnam War infuriated some students,
Schwarz among them.
He also believes he was too much of an
independent thinker for some aspects of the
college, and he sometimes went out of his
way to make fun of the Program. He wrote a
sophomore paper he titled “The Unification
of the God Concept in Plato, Aristotle,
St. Anselm, and Aquinas” in which he main
tained that the concept was the same for all.
“It was obviously ludicrous, but my
reasoning was impeccable,” Schwarz recalls.
“My view was that you can use much of what
St. John’s does in ways that are heretical or
sophistic.”
When his proposed senior essay on the
Laocoon was rejected (“because art wasn’t
something you could talk about because
there was no truth in it,” he says he was
told), Schwarz was hvid. He wrote instead on
Jonathan Swift, borrowing his title from a
Nietzsche quote: “Behold the asses who are
bold and most beautiful.” “It was a very
articulate work making fun of St. John’s.
I don’t think the college quite knew what to
do with my senior thesis.”
In spite of his mixed views, Schwarz values
his education and recommends St. John’s to
anyone, as long as they plan to go to grad
uate school. “It is wonderful training for the
mind,” says Schwarz. “It gives you three
things, and only three things: it teaches how
to think, how to read, and how to speak.
If you’re lucky, it will also teach you how to
write, but you have no choice in those other
things-you have to learn to express yourself
in a clear manner.”
At St. John’s Schwarz developed an
approach to problem solving that could have
helped him in any career. “The tools I
learned at St. John’s are very applicable to
my architecture practice and very applicable
to what I do as a businessman,” he says.
“I think the other thing that St. John’s
teaches subliminally, but not intentionally, is
to recognize the biases of other individualsvery important to being an architect.”
Asking insightful questions helps him
design buildings that suit the owners’
needs-even when they can’t teU him what
they are. “For example, in designing a house
for a married couple, an obvious question is:
‘Do you like brushing your teeth with your
�{AlumniProfile}
spouse or not?’ It’s an extremely important
question because it tells you a lot about
their relationship. They’re perfectly happy
to answer that question, but they’re not
happy to answer all the things that question
imphes. Getting to a client’s personal truth
in architecture is trying to understand
people’s actual hopes and goals, aspirations
and desires. There are overarching princi
ples that form everyone’s views of them
selves and those are really what you have to
design to.”
Beyond designing beautiful houses that
contribute to marital harmony, an architect
has an opportunity to contribute to how
people live, making communities more
vibrant, and, ideally, conserving resources.
“If our society wants people to give up their
cars, for example, it needs to give people
places worth walking to and walking in,”
says Schwarz. That’s the principle behind
projects such as Frisco Square, north of
Dallas, which will be one of the largest
mixed-use developments in the country,
mixing retail/restaurant space, offices,
residences, and public offices, including a
library and city haU.
“Our view is that you don’t change the
world by trying to change human behavior,
you change the world by understanding
human behavior and causing human
behavior to work in a way that’s better for
the world,” says Schwarz. “The kinds of
communities we’re trying to create are
extraordinarily successful but they take
longer, they require more thought and
more work, and some developers just aren’t
going to do it.”
Schwarz is on the naional council of the
World Wildlife Fund, and he’s disturbed by
the way Americans use up resources such as
farmland without careful thought. That’s
one reason he’s eager to do redevelopment
projects. One of his firm’s current commis
sions is a major redevelopment project in
Houston, a mixed-used development near
the city’s center.
“We’re very interested in how you take
existing places and make them more viable
in a changing world. We want to create
places where people are comfortable, but the
goal is to force people to intermix in a way
39
that does’t seem forced. When [President]
George W. Bush was our client for the
Ballpark in Arlington, one of the things he
said that has really stuck with me is that
baseball is one of the few things that the
chairman of the board and the person on the
assembly line can talk about together. And
he’s right-in most of the work we do there is
something that works that way, a great
equalizer. It causes greater commonality.”
The diversity of the work his firm takes
on-from concert halls and hotels to
luxurious private homes and offices-is
driven in part by Schwarz’s personality.
He hates to be bored or trapped in a niche.
“One of the things that has probably been
most important to my practice came right
out of St. John’s, and that is the belief that an
educated man can think anything. The
philosophy of this firm is that a good
designer can design anything,” he says.
“We’re constantly looking at the things that
cause us to have new ideas and to think
differently, readjust our world view.”
When he won the commission for the
children’s hospital in Fort Worth in 1985,
Schwarz knew he wanted to design some
thing that would elevate the spirits of sick
children and their families, without
resorting to bright colors and cartoon
figures . The hospital’s most striking feature
is its majestic central atrium. “It gives
patients, we hope, a larger view than
spending their whole lives in the hospital,”
he says. “It really does function as the public
space of a small town.”
The hospital remains the project of which
he is most proud. “There isn’t a time when I
go to Fort Worth when someone doesn’t
come up and thank me,” he says. “It is an
extremely humane kind of place to have a
sick child and it’s very comforting to parents
to be there. It’s done a huge amount to
change the experience of tragedy in
parents’ lives.”
Keeping the firm small, while accepting
many commissions, means Schwarz has little
time to pursue his passions outside of work.
He enjoys gourmet cooking and loves to read
and listen to music. But everything is subject
to the demands on his time. “I have a very
hard time saying no to great opportunities,”
he admits. *
David Schwarz’s design for the Cook
Children’s Medical Center sought to
raise the spirits of sick children and
THEIR FAMILIES. A SEVEN-STORY CENTRAL
ATRIUM EMPLOYS A MIRRORED CURTAINWALL TO
EMPHASIZE SPACE AND LIGHT.
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 }
�{Alumni Notes}
1942
1948
1965
Ernest Heinmuller reports:
George R. Trim hi e, Jr.
Bart Lee Kaplan became a
“After TOO weeks of study I
have been ‘commissioned’ as a
St. Stephen’s minister for
St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in
Easton, Md.”
proudly announces the birth
of his third great-grandson,
Aiden Gabrieli Dodge, born
on August 26, aoo6.
grandfather for the first time
on December 8, 2007. Grand
daughter Kathryn Rose Jirousek
was born in Cleveland to
daughter Molly and son-in-law
Bill Jirousek.
1946
“I will retire from the remunera
tive practice of law at the end of
this year,” says Peter Weiss,
“and devote the rest of my
days to quixotic efforts to
abolish war, rid the world of
nuclear weapons, and get
social and economic rights
taken seriously.”
1956
Joe Wase describes himself as
“an attorney married to an
attorney. In my dotage, at the
age of 73,1 am struggling to
learn to play the guitar and
banjo.”
1959
1966
1969
In January 2007, Peggy Escher
(A) was awarded a PhD in
Comparative Literature from
New York University. In August,
she defended her dissertation on
“Configurations of Trickery in
Boccaccio’s Decameron,
Marguerite de Navarre’s
Heptameron, Masuccio’s II
Novellino, and Shakespeare’s
OiheUo".
Judy (Millspaugh) Anderson
(A) reports: “1 survived radia
tion, chemotherapy, and a
major surgical rearrangement
of my innards, and am doing
really well.”
Constance (Bell) Lindgreen
(A) marvels at the minds of her
classmates as she surfs the Web:
Patience (Pat) Schenck
“Mel Kline (A) e-mailed that
writes: “The class of 1959 is
he’d been in contact with
looking forward to our 50th in
Pheme Perkins (A) at one
2009. Please plan to attend.
point. . .got me thinking. . .Mel’s
Register online, and send your
a well-known Jewish scholar
e-mail address to Pat Schenck at
(www.chaver.com/), Pheme
pscenck@toadmail.com”
is a well-known Catholic
Biblical scholar (www.bc.edu/
schools/cas/theology/faculty/
pperkins/), and William
McKeachie (A) is The Very
Reverend, Dean of the Anglican
Cathedral of St. Luke and
St. Paul in Charleston
ee Fischler (SF68) writes: “Jean K. Fitzsimon
(A73) and I moved to Philadelphia after Jean was
(www.stlukeandstpaul.org/
appointed a federal judge. The investiture was very
content/view/16/35/). What
moving. Under the great seal of the United States,
can that mean? Was there some
in a WPA 1930s, all cherry-wood courtroom with
thing in the water? And of
30-foot ceilings, attorneys from all over the country
course we have our share of
lauded Jean’s accomplishments. Attending the event as representa
minds, including
famous legal
tives of the college were Barbara Gdyette (A73) and Jeff Bishop
Larry Silverman (A) and
(HA96). Other St. Johnnies appeared as well including Larry
Peggy Winter (A), and doubt
Feinberg (class of 1964), Harvey Goldstein (class of 1959),
less
many others. And a brain
Mary Bittner-Wiseman (class of 1958), Paul Heylman (A74) and
surgeon. Really. It’s amazing
Roger Greene (A73). Jean and I both are having trouble adjusting
what Google can find. Even
to having a permanent home after years on the corporate trail.
(maybe) Ethan Pavlo (A)
I, who was born and grew up in Philadelphia and vowed after I left
(
www.sinehead.com/
never to return, am reflecting on predestination and free will ‘in
alhyg.html). Internet vivat.”
wandering mazes lost’ about the peculiarities of my fate. I really
thought I had had my last Philly cheesesteak in 1970. And lemon
pie Tastykakes? Fuggeddabout it.”
Of Free Will and
Cheesesteaks
L
{The College - St. John’s College • Winter zoo'^ }
1971
Barbara Sherman Simpson
(A) is a veterinary behaviorist.
She is clinical associate
professor at the North Carolina
State University, College of
Veterinary Medicine, and
president-elect of the American
College of Veterinary Behavior
ists. She fives in Southern Pines,
N.C., with her 15-year-old
daughter Diana, three horses,
and one dog.
David Gleicher (SF), a
professor at Adelphi University,
recently published a book.
Rescue ofthe Third Class on
the Titanic.
1972
Kevin Snapp (SF) writes:
“My fife has been adrift
following an unexpected divorce
and the resulting loss of my job.
Although I still need a job, there
is fight in the darkness, coming,
appropriately (with a twist) from
the Gospel of John. After a
chance incident led me to revisit
the prologue, I discovered that
John’s narratives conceal an
esoteric, highly heterodox
�{Alumni Notes}
Seven Deadly Sins
1979
OANNE Charbonneau (SF72) sends news from Montana:
Carol Colatrella (A) was
“I’ve recently taken early retirement from academia and
awarded a Fulbright New
live happily in the Bitterroot Valley with my husband,
Century Scholars grant in
Richard Rice. I spent many years in English departments
fall 2005. In 2006 she and
(from Freshman English director to chair) but found my
her family enjoyed three months
niche in hberal studies and humanities programs. I coordi
in Denmark as part of her
nated the Arts and Humanities core curriculum program
for her Fulbright
for four years at James Madison University and recently finished research
a
two-volume study guide for Prentice-Hall’s new text Exploring
project on the university in the
Humanities. This past summer I spent five weeks in Cambridge,
age of globalization.
England, as a participant in the NEH summer program on the
Seven Deadly Sins. I’m going to try my hand at distance learning
Marilyn L. Schaefer (SFGI) is
while continuing research on Middle English romances.” 4"
enjoying her retirement from
teaching at the City University of
New York. She spends a lot of
account of who Jesus really was.
Her responsibilities include
time reading, enjoying the
It makes sense of a number of
overseeing the foundation’s
pleasures of New York and an
things in the other Gospels and
support for public radio and
occasional St. John’s alumni
is specifically corroborated by
independently-produced
event. “I love the St. John’s
similar clues in Luke. It is
documentary film and video,
magazine and read every word,”
strange that I should be the first
designing and implementing
she reports. “In the summers,
to see these things, which only
special initiatives, making
I sometimes go to France or to
require some Jewish back
grants in response to special
the University of Chicago’s
ground and careful reading to
opportunities, and imple
alumni program in Oxford. I’d
pick up, but apparently I am.
menting the foundation’s
love to hear from other alumni.”
I am grateful to tutor Bob
program of large institutional
Sacks (class of T954) who intro
grants.
duced me to the concept of
esoteric writing and techniques
of careful reading to uncover it.
Whether or not this account of
Professional adventurer Peter
Jesus is true, it puts John,
Herman Grubb (A) has been
first-century Christianity, and
R. Spencer Porter (SF) has
married 22 years to the lovely
the writing of the Gospels in an
embarked on a new endeavor. “I
Betsy Bowen, with two kids, ages
entirely new light. I have
have a 7-year-old daughter in the
12 and 15. “Our newest adven
considerable work ahead of me
second grade and am training to
ture
is the hrst-ever Galapagos
to put these findings in context
be a Jungian psychotherapist.”
Islands
sea kayaking trip with
and present them persuasively.
camping
on beaches. Read about
Does anyone know of a source
it
at
www.rowinternational.com
of funding for someone who
or see the January 8, 2006
neither has a doctorate nor is
feature
story in the New York
pursuing one?”
Times travel section. Our Idaho
log cabin resort is doing as well
After four years of teaching in a
as our whitewater rafting trips.”
Cincinnati public high school,
J
1980
41
give, as generously as they can,
to the Ralph Swentzell Memo
rial Fund. He touched so many
of our lives so deeply, it’s the
least we can do.”
1983
From Jack Armstrong (SF):
“Greetings from West Chester,
Pennsyltucky (as Bob used to
call it). All is well, kids growing,
nobody sick. Michael is a senior
now, and applying to college.
His primary concern is choosing
a school with a rowing team.
Emily is nine and very interested
in dragons and the electric
guitar. Carmen and I are doing
Othello and The Taming ofthe
Shrew in the spring at the
Shakespeare Festival, come see
if you can. Peace.”
Desiree Zamorano’s (SF)
short story “Mercy” was
recently published in the
Los Angeles Times Sunday
magazine. West.
1977
1978
1973
Last September, Elspeth
Revere (A) was promoted to
Vice President, General
Program, at the John D. and
Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation in Chicago.
Michael Berger (A) is now
teaching composition and
coordinating writing across the
curriculum at The Christ
College of Nursing and Health
Sciences in Cincinnati.
1982
C. Randal (Randy) Linder
(SF) writes: “I would like to
challenge all of my classmates to
{The College. 5f. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 }
1985
Norman Ewart (A) joined
Rosetta Resources Inc. as
associate general counsel.
Rosetta Resources is engaged in
the exploration and production
of natural gas. Norman also has
been: studying and making
sculptures at the Glassell School
for Art, attending his son
Thomas’ baseball games,
encouraging Thomas’ guitar
playing and artistic talents,
dancing, traveling the world,
and working out rvith his wife,
Charlotte, general counsel of
ICO Polymers Inc. Alumni
interested in the arts or life in
continued onp. 43
�4^
{AlumniProfile}
Conservative Contrarian
Steve Bohlin (SF8i)
BY Patricia Dempsey
able assets-landfills. I asked myself:
” hen faced with a
how many new landfills are going to
tough invest
open up?”
ment decision,
Bohlin made the choice to invest. His
Steve Bohlin
clients hated this decision, but it turned
(SF8i) heads for
out to be a shrewd one. “I think the
the Rio Grande
basis of my success is that I have not
and Rio Chama to go fly fishing.
been wrong very often,” he says. “You
“I study the water all around me and
cannot be too cocky, but you have to be
focus,” he says. “It’s like meditation.
decisive. Either way you are relying on
I empty the mind and think only of one
thing: Am I dumber or smarter than the
your own judgment. The rules are
constantly changing.”
fish?” Bohlin brings this single-minded
The insights gained at St. John’s help
focus back to the office where, as a port
folio manager and managing director
guide Bohlin today. “One of my epipha
for Thornburg Investment Management
nies at St. John’s came from the
opening question for a Leibniz reading.
in Santa Fe, he is responsible for
managing billions of dollars for institu
Tutor Paul Mannick asked ‘What’s at
tional clients.
stake?’ At first the question seemed as
A FLY FISHING investor: Steve Bohlin, with his wife,
inane as the reading about monads, but
“There are parallels between fly
Rachel O’Keefe (SF8i), and daughter Audrey.
fishing and the investment work that I
the point of the question is essential for
do, one of which is this ability to focus,”
all the works we read. There are truths
Bohlin explains. “With fly fishing you
in these books, but they may not jump
take a little piece of yarn and maybe a
out and bite you at first look. It is very
with less risk in the market whether the
steel rod and you act like a bug on a river.
important-in philosophy, in life-to deter
interest rates are up or down. “The
It takes enormous concentration, minding
mine what’s at stake.”
economy is on a knife’s edge: Is it strong, is
the line.”
Bohlin, who considered pursuing
it weak? Everything is overpriced so there is
mathematics or law after graduating from
As a portfolio manager, Bohlin regularly
very little value in the marketplace,” says
questions whether he is “dumber or
St. John’s, cultivated his business acumen as
Bohlin. “I do not know where the interest
smarter” than the prevailing economic
a matter of survival growing up outside
rates are going-no one does. Seventy
predictions. “There are no right answers in
Chicago. He worked a graveyard shift in a
percent of economists are wrong all the time
this business,” says Bohlin, who reads
factory that made decals for products like
with their predictions, so you look for a
hundreds of pages of economic data,
Buster Brown Shoes and Corning Ware.
strategy that works anyway.”
research, and legal documents every day as
He discovered St. John’s when he took his
Bohlin questions accepted assumptions
he manages portfolios for funds such as
sister Denise (SF81) to visit the college. “I
about the market and searches out less
Thornburg’s Limited Term Income Fund.
was hooked when I found St. John’s. Every
desirable companies that investors often
To safeguard his investment decisions,
bit of it-the readings, the discussions as
overlook. “I am a contrarian in the aspect
Bohlin, a self-professed “conservative
opposed to being lectured-seemed like the
that I like to find those companies that are
contrarian,” says he believes in the return of
best thing since sliced bread,” he says.
beaten up by the marketplace and find out
principal first, then a return on principal.
At St. John’s Bohlin met his wife, Rachel
why,” he says. “It might be a whim, there
He uses a philosophy for bond investments
O’Keefe (SF81); the couple now has a
might be a good reason as to why. The
called fixed-income laddering. Laddering,
daughter, Audrey, age 4.
market is not always right. The data is not
which allows Bohlin to build a portfolio of
One of Rohlin’s jobs after graduating
always right.” Bohlin allows three to five
bonds with staggered maturities, demands
from St. John’s was as a “paralegal of sorts”
years minimum to study a company to see if
the same careful observation and patience
for one of his tutors, Tom Simpson, who was
it shows signs that it will turn around and
as fly fishing. For example, Bohlin might
involved with a large anti-trust lawsuit. Two
grow. “In 1998 for example, waste manage
spread the maturities over a lo-year period,
months later, the lawsuit was settled and
ment companies were beaten down. This
with the average maturity being five years;
Bohlin, out of a job, gave Garrett Thornburg
one company had done a merger but they
when each bond matures he strategically
a call. Thornburg initially hired Bohlin to
had wreaked havoc with their accounting
reinvests the profits into bonds with higher
analyze private placement investments and
systems. They had $8 billion in debt.
yields. This conservative, cantilevered
reams of legal documents. “I enjoyed it and
However, they had $74 billion in irreplace
approach allows him to participate well and
it surprised me. I barely knew what a stock
W
{The Colleges:. John’s
College ■ Winter 2007 }
�{Alumni Notes}
continued
the Houston area would be
well- advised to contact Norman
or fellow alumnus Dimitri
Seletzky (A92), who is senior
counsel at Chevron. Contact
information:
norman.ewart @rosettaresources.com, 713-335-4041.
David Kidd (A) is alive and
well and living in Baltimore.
You can visit him online at
www.kiddstudios.com or in
person “like the good old days.”
Sally Shaw (A) is working for
peace and clean, renewable
energy every day. “No nukes,”
she writes.
Silitch, UIAGM Mountain and
Ski Guide, 370 Chemin de la
Deviaz; 74400 Chamonix,
France, tel. +33 6 89 48 4118,
michael @high-alpine. com,
www.high-alpine.com.”
1987
Paul Anderson (A) finished his
PhD in Comparative Literary
Studies at Northwestern
University in June 3006. He
currently works as an academic
adviser in The College at the
University of Chicago.
Michael Silitch (SF) lives in
Chamonix, France, with his
wife, Nina (Dartmouth ’90),
and their two sons, Birken-3 in
January 3007, and Anders-2 in
February 3007. “I work as a
mountain and ski guide here.
My wife recently stopped
teaching with the arrival of
Anders. Chamonix is a great
place to come climb, hike, ski,
and cycle. Contact me: Michael
Dr. Kim Paefenroth (A) is
associate professor of Religious
Studies at Iona College in New
York: “My new book is Gospel of
the Living Dead: George
Romero’s Visions ofHell on
Earth (Baylor University Press,
3006), in which I show how
Romero’s zombie movies use
images from Dante’s Inferno,
as well as his own ruminations
on the excesses of modern
American culture, to create new
visions of evil and damnation.”
1989
Aaron Rosenbaum (A) writes:
1988
1986
43
John F. Gibson (SF) writes:
“Smita and I have a little girl:
Uma Patricia Lahiri Gibson,
born May 7, 3006. She’s
absolutely adorable. See
www.cns.gatetech.ed/gibson/
photos. I am a postdoctoral
fellow at the Center for
Nonlinear Science at Georgia
Tech, working on turbulence,
dynamical systems, and chaos.”
or bond was when I was at St. John’s, and I
didn’t know anything about mutual funds.
But I developed a confidence at St. John’s
that I can learn and research anything.” He
was especially influenced by tutor Bob
Neidorf. “He taught me that the St. John’s
experience is not about knowing things, but
about the pursuit of knowledge,” says
Bohlin. “Learning how to learn from every
experience has held me in good stead all my
adult life. I believe I finally ‘got’ that lesson
from him.”
Since he joined Thornburg Investment
Management in 1984, the company has
grown from five employees to 135. Bohlin is
also an equity holder in a second company.
“My daughter just started
kindergarten, my son turned
three, and my wife, Jessica, is
expecting our third in January.
My audio visual contracting
business is now three years old.
We just finished the second
THX-certified screening room in
a residence in the world (George
Lucas has the first) and won an
award for the best residential
system design for 3006 at our
industry’s big conference.
Any Johnnies looking for a job
in AV? Or just passing through
the Bay Area? E-mail me:
arosenbaum@al.net.”
1990
“Greetings and best wishes to
all former classmates, tutors,
and acquaintances from
Annapolis,” writes Andrew
Ghiz (A). “My wife, Christi,
and I have been in Houston
since September 3000. We are
happy to report that our son
Nicholas was born February 17,
3006.1 can be reached by e-mail
at ahghiz@yahoo.com.”
1991
Andrew M. Schwartz (A)
works in Philadelphia as a
member of a regional defense
litigation firm called Marshall,
Dennehey, Warner, Coleman,
and Goggin. In December he
was named a shareholder of the
firm by the president and CEO.
continued on p. 45
Thornburg Mortgage Corporation, a mort
gage real estate investment trust. When
judging his own performance over the
course of his career, Bohlin considers not
only a successful track record but also the
integrity he brings to his job. “There is a
deteriorating financial trend, particularly in
the area of trust, with all the corporate
scandals,” he says. “The confidence in
corporate America and in financial
managers has been rocked by these. I sign a
document, it says, ‘I am fiduciary for this
company’ so I cheer when I see corporate
wrongdoers brought down.”
In spite of recent financial management
scandals in corporate America, Bohlin is
{The C o l l e g e ■ St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 }
optimistic about the future. “Yes there has
been an erosion in financial confidence but
this is still the most viable capital market in
the world. But one cannot be too cocky.
Like the fish, the economic data keeps me
questioning.”
Bohlin has another reason to be opti
mistic: he is retiring. “I have been
approached by some not-for-profit boards
and will probably join one or two of them
and I will continue my work on the over
sight committee of the New Mexico State
Treasurer’s office.” Bohlin also plans to
spend more time with his family-and fly
fishing on the Rio Grande.
�44
{Alumni Profile}
Answering a Cali.
Martha Black Jordan (SFGI86)
BY Rosemary Harty
inging in the choir of
for part of the year, and Martha
Christ Church
enrolled in the Graduate Institute.
Anglican Episcopal in
Her first segment in the GI was
Mexico City helped
Philosophy and Theology, in which
nurture the Reverend
she studied the Bible and other
Martha Black Jordan’s
works and discussed her ideas
call to the priesthood. “It was
with others. “It was a heady
more of a process, over many years,
experience,” she recalls, and one
rather than something that came
she savored, “especially in the
on suddenly,” Martha (SFGI86)
seminar (led by Mr. Darkey and
says of her vocation. “Music is an
Mrs. Knight) when we almost
unmediated thing. Hearing, and
proved the existence of God.”
singing, those heautiful words
Martha has expressed her
every week, as a member of the
gratitude to St. John’s in several
choir, opens you up to God.”
ways: she has served as a member
Martha committed herself to a
of the college’s Board of Visitors
long but fulfilling journey when
and Governors since 2003. And in
she decided to pursue ordination in
July aoo6, she and her husband,
the Episcopal Church of Mexico.
Purdy, made a generous gift to the
She enrolled in a graduate pastoral
ongoing capital campaign to estab
theology program at St. Mary-oflish a tutorship in their name.
the-Woods College in Indiana,
Purdy’s encouragement and
traveling to the campus four times
support were instrumental in
a year for residencies lasting from
Martha’s decision to enroll in the
three to seven days. Between
GI, 35 years after graduating from
sessions, she studied, wrote
Sweet Briar College, and to later
papers, and corresponded with her
study for the priesthood. Both
professors by e-mail. In addition to
Jordans grew up in Mexico
her assigned courses, she read
(Martha was born there), and they
other works of theology and philos
met at a party one summer after
ophy to prepare for her canonical
college. “He thinks I can do
exams. Last winter in Mexico City,
anything,” Martha says of her
she sat through three days of
husband, who owns a Coca-Cola
rigorous examinations, and having
bottling franchise in Mexico.
passed them, was ordained to the
Reading great literature and
deaconate in the spring.
writing have been lifelong passions
On November i8, Martha was
for Martha. In Mexico City, she
ordained a priest at Christ Church, Martha Jordan (SFGI86) says all her past pursuits were
joined six other women to form a
ALWAYS LEADING HER TO SERVE HER CHURCH.
the same church in which she was
group called Tramontane,
baptized and where she married
“beyond the mountain,” which
her husband, Purdy. Family and
initially offered a forum for
friends from all parts attended the
sharing and critiquing each others’
“My granddaughter Cecilia, who is ii,
ceremony. When her bishop, the Most
personal writing. “We decided that we
Reverend Carlos Touche-Porter, Primate of was the crucifer at the head of the proces
wanted to do something to make Spanish
sion,” Martha says. “And the three grand
Mexico, finished reading the Prayer of
language poets better known in the United
sons were there, in various stages of
Consecration, the Rev. Martha Black
States,” she explained. The group trans
somnolence.”
Jordan became, at 74, the oldest woman
lated a collection of Mexican poetry with
St. John’s deserves much credit for
ordained to the priesthood in Latin
the poems printed in English and Spanish
fostering her natural spirit of inquiry and
America. “Eve either ruined my old age,”
entitled Ruido de Suenos (Noise of
she quips, “or I’ve begun what I was always preparing her for the disciplined and
Dreams). It was published in 1994 with
meant to do.”
lengthy study required for ordination,
great success. Martha is also the author of
Martha says. The Jordans live in Santa Fe
S
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter zoo^ }
�{Alumni Notes}
1992
Patricia Dougherty (A) offers
this “aoo6 Review in Haiku:”
One dress code, whose socks?
Grammy’s condo yields date
night
Dear dog departed
live in Watertown, Mass. Valerie
can he contacted at
vsd_str@yahoo.com.
Francie Roberts (A) is going
abroad to continue her graduate
studies: “I finished my MA and
45
all the coursework for my PhD in
Medieval Studies here at the
Catholic University of America
in D.C. and have now received a
fellowship to go the Catholic
University of Leuven (about la
kilometers from Brussels) where
Where Have You Been?
Aaron Garza (SF) just finished
a semester of law school at the
University of Utah.
Christopher Hadley, S.J. (A)
writes: “I am in Cambridge,
Mass., now, starting the MDiv
program at Weston Jesuit School
of Theology, I will be here and
maybe at Boston College soon,
for a few years. New England
Johnnies and anyone else too,
feel free to drop me a line,
chrishadleysj @yahoo. com ”
All 3975 MEMBERS OF THE BURGEONING AlUMNI OnLINE COMMUNITY
HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR YOU. NEARLY HALF THE COLLEGE’S ALUMNI HAVE
REGISTERED WITH THE SITE. DURING A MONTH’S TIME, THE SITE HAS
MORE THAN 8,000 LOG-INS FROM THE COLLEGE’S FAR-FLUNG ALUMNI.
1993
Valerie Duee-Strautmann
(SF) and her husband, Jake
Strautmann welcomed their
daughter Northanna Mildred
Strautmann on August 8. They
The NUMBERS GROW DAILY.
Job hunting? Check out the latest postings to the job bank.
Jobs from all over the
You
nation are listed.
can post your opening here too.
Hiring
a fellow Johnnie?
The site hosts 70 networking
GROUPS covering A vast RANGE OF PROFESSIONS. PoST TO YOUR OWN
GROUP OR EXPLORE ANOTHER IF YOU ARE CONSIDERING A CAREER CHANGE.
Find
a long-lost classmate or hook up with your local alumni
CHAPTER.
So PULL UP A CHAIR AND CATCH UP WITH YOUR CLASSMATES.
They’re waiting for you. Visit the
college Web site at
WWW.STJOHNSCOLLEGE.EDU; CLICK ON AlUMNI.
two books of bilingual poetry, Manos en
Agua/Hands in Water and Espacio entre
Palabras/Spaces Between Words.
A few years later, Martha turned her
attention to a seed planted back in her days
at St. John’s: her deep interest in serving
the church. “It all seemed so inevitable,”
she says. “Even from the beginning, almost
every choice I made, whether consciously
or not, was leading to this state of serenity
and fulfillment. And happiness! ”
As an unpaid member of the church
staff, Martha preaches at least once a
month, provides pastoral care and
counseling to members of the church
community, and officiates at services.
“There is one rector and two women
priests, so we take turns preaching and
conducting the services,” she said.
She conducts study groups on theolog
ical topics and is helping the church build
its membership by reaching out to the
community. “One of the things we’re
trying to do is make the Anglican Church
accessible to Spanish-speaking people who
have left the Roman Catholic Church for
one reason or another, or who are looking
for a church home. We’re not trying to
convert anyone, but we are accessible to
those who are looking for a community that
is a via media between Rome and GenevaCatholic and Protestant.”
Martha will continue with her studies;
she has two more courses to complete and
{The College -St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 }
I have been rather generously
funded as part of a project on
“Concepts and Concept
Formation from 1350-1350.”
1 leave in January and will be in
Belgium for four years, where 1
will earn my keep by writing a
dissertation on the development
of late medieval doctrines of
mental language. This means at
the end I will wind up with
“Leuven” on my diploma, rather
than “America.” It also means
there’s a space on my floor for
anyone who wants a place to
sleep in Belgium. My e-mail is
suavoluntade@yahoo,com and
I’ll post my new address on the
alumni website once I have one.
If you’re in Europe (and even
if not), feel free to send me a
note.”
1994
Marilyn Medlock Roper
(AGI) and her husband, Dan,
have moved into their newly
built house at Hilton Head, S.C.
After three moves in two years
while tearing down one house
and building another on the
same lot, they’re ready to stay
put for a while and hear from
friends in Annapolis and all over.
two major papers to write to fulfill the
requirements for her master’s degree in
theology from St. Mary’s. She juggles her
academic writing with preparing her
Sunday sermons, sometimes struggling
with deadlines and writer’s block. “I am
resigned to living in a state of terminal
Paper Anxiety-now Sermon Anxiety,” she
says, “always an assignment pending.” And
she adds, “In the end, if it is a good
sermon, or paper, God is present.”
�{Alumni Notes}
46
They can be reached by mail at
13 Marsh Wren Rd., Hilton Head
Island, SC aggaS, or by
telephone (843) 4ag-i6ag.
grandchildren across the
country and now the globe,
Janie and George are challenged
to keep up with them.
Janie (Bosworth) Bingham
(SFGI) is stepping down as
Chair of the Board of the Santa
Fe Conservation Trnst. She has
also served as the SFCT
Executive Director. Janie will
continue as an active member of
the SFCT board. Janie and her
husband, George (Kramer)
Bingham (SF66) spent several
weeks during the fall in Italy,
principally Rome, where Janie’s
daughter and family are
enjoying a well-earned sabbat
ical year. In early October,
George’s daughter Tanmaya
married her Aussie lawyer beau;
they are living in Canberra, with
plans to move to Melbourne.
With five children and eight
1995
In May 2006, Rosemary
Ingham (AGI) received the
United States Institute of Tech
nology award for Distinguished
Achievement in Costume
Design aoo6.
A move for Mike Layne (SF)
and family: “I finally moved the
family out of Alaska this past
November. I am the new grant
administrator for the San
Manuel Band of Mission Indians
in Highland, Calif. We are
moving into a home in
Redlands, which is about one
In the Aloha Spirit
mile from the University of
Redlands campus. I’m still
married (eight years as of June
2007). Audrey Rae will turn five
in February 2007, and Thaddeus
Jackson will be two in March
2007. My new e-mail is:
mlayne@sanmanuel-nsn.gov.
I miss Alaska, but the weather
down here is much warmer. And
we are now much closer to
family and friends. Tell Dan
Myers (SFg3) I said HOOT!
He was in Italy when I moved,
and I’m dying to know the
details of his trip.”
1996
Loreen (Lori) Keller (AGI)
is in her second semester of
teaching at McHenry County
College in Northwest Illinois.
She teaches Introduction to
Philosophy and owes all her
inspiration and motivation to
the great days she spent at
the GI.
loha! From MaryIrene Corrigan Ruffin (A04):
“The last two and a half years have been a total
Having defended her disserta
whirlwind! On January i, 2005,1 married Devin
tion in philosophy at Penn State
Corrigan (USNA 2003) and moved to Pensacola,
University, Kirsten Jacobson
Fla., to join him while he went through flight
(SF) is now an assistant
school. In March of 2005, we moved to Corpus
professor
Christi, Texas, and in the following August, Devin got winged
asof philosophy at the
University of Maine.
a Naval Aviator in Fixed-Wing
Aircraft. Last September, we
moved to Jacksonville, Fla.,
where he learned to fly the P-3
Orion. Recently, we have finally
settled into our first actual duty
station: Kaneohe, Hawaii!
Jacob Curtis (SF) and Dayna
There aren’t any words to
describe how beautiful the
Sims Curtis (SFg8) would like
islands are and how awesome it
to announce the birth of their
is to get a chance to live in
baby girl, Clio, born August 8.
Hawaii, but I do miss simple
“She is our precious muse! We
things like Maryland crabs, EST,
enjoy reading about what
and seasons. But, the experience
everyone is up to, so say more.”
is worth it, and there is still
much exploring to do! Through
all the moves, I have had the luxury of sampling a variety of jobs.
I’ve been a bartender, receptionist, an associate at a dog park, and
most recently, have found my niche as a Customer Service Repre
sentative for Marine Corps Community Services, which definitely
allows me to use all devices of sophistry I can muster.” 4"
A
1997
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 }
1999
Patrick B. Reed (AGI) and his
family are living in Bithus,
Germany, where his wife, Jana,
is serving with the Air Force.
They have enjoyed traveling and
teaching German to their oneyear-old year old, Lucy.
200^
Sarah Seitz (SF) is pursuing
her interest in green building.
She was recently at work on a
passive-solar design tire house
near Bancroft, Ontario (about
four hours from Toronto and
Ottawa by car). “The house will
be approximately 500 square
feet and I expect it will take at
least the next six weekends to
get it built and closed in. If
anyone is interested in learning
more about this building tech
nique and participating in the
construction, feel free to send
me a message.” Her contact
information can be found on the
alumni online directory.
After living and working in
Washington, D.C., and Boston,
Emma Wells (SF) has relocated
and is in her first year of law
school at the James E. Rogers
College of Law at the University
of Arizona in Tucson, Ariz.
“Law school has been a
completely new experience for
me and while I am used to
receiving large reading assign
ments, it was the first time I had
to take long and stressful final
exams. I would love to hear from
old friends, Johnnies in the
Tucson/Phoenix area and any
others who have any advice for
surviving law school sanely.
Please feel free to contact me at
ewells@email.arizona.edu”
�{Alumni Profile}
47
A Champion of Justice
on Ferrier (A73) credits
St. John’s for posing a
question that has formed
the shape of his entire life.
What isjustice? “I
rememher being blown
away by my seminar on the
Nicomachean Ethics. At St. John’s
we spent a lot of time talking about
justice, and now I work in a busi
ness where that’s what we peddle,
but you don’t hear people asking
what it is.. .1 was tainted into
thinking about the nature of
justice a lot.”
As a Circuit Court Referee in
Grand Rapids, Michigan, Ferrier
takes his passion from the theoret
Jon Ferrier (A73) was honored as “champion of the
ical to the practical as he strives to
underdog” by the Michigan Bar Association.
uphold justice as best he can. He
hears the family cases of the circuit
court, sorting through cases of
of people-rich, poor, smart, dumb-you
divorce, juvenile delinquency, and
hope that the judge has some standard of
domestic violence daily. As a referee, he
justice and doesn’t just cater to some. St.
hears and judges cases, but his decisions
John’s is where I began to understand that
are subject to the revision of a judge if an
justice is the never-ending pursuit of
appeal is made. “I’ve worked with all strata itself.”
J
2003
“I am very excited to have
advanced to candidacy this
December,” writes Natasha
Vermaak (SF), from California.
“Now to walk the path I have
defined.”
Robert Morris (A) is in
Afghanistan. “I am leading an
unmanned aerial vehicle
platoon that flies pilot-less
reconnaissance drones,” he
writes. “I am very excited about
going. I think being away will be
the worst part of the whole
deployment.”
After almost 30 years in the legal
profession, Ferrier’s conscientious
approach to his job has earned him
the recognition of the State Bar of
Michigan, which named him a
“Champion of Justice” in
September 2006. The “Champion
of Justice Award” is given to
practicing lawyers and judges with
exceptional integrity and compe
tence, whose extraordinary
professional accomplishment
benefits the community. “This
career-capping honor was a truly
humbling experience and at the
same time, the proudest moment
since I started practicing law”
Ferrier says. At the awards cere
mony, Ferrier traced his career
path back to his childhood fascina
tion with Raymond Burr’s portrayal
of Perry Mason on TV, as well as his
experience at St. John’s, where, he says,
“I got the equipment to turn myself into
the only thing I’ve ever wanted to be: a free
human being.”
—Emily DeBusk (Ao6)
In December, Greg Green (SF)
married Anne Deger, soon to be
a Johnnie herself. Greg is the
evening and weekend supervisor
at the Meem Library.
What’s Up?
3006
The College wants to hear from
you. Call us, write us, e-mail us.
Let your classmates know what
you’re doing. The next issue
3004
Rebekah Coleman and
Patrick Evans (both A) were
married on October 2r, 2006.
Rebekah is in the neuroscience
PhD program at George Mason
University.
3005
Charles Claunch (SFGI)
began the MA program in pohtics at the University of Dallas in
August 2006. “I’m happy to
discuss the program with anyone
interested in studying in the UD
pohtics department.” Classmates
can contact him at cclaunch@
alumni. stj ohnscollege. edu.
NIC Zakheim (A), soon to be
will be published in May; dead
Nic Strahl (as she is changing
her name), has taken the posi
tion of Circulation Coordinator
(a wonderful title that does not
actually describe what she does,
she tells The College} at
Scientijic American magazine in
New York, N.Y.
line for the alumni notes
(The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 }
section is March 15.
In Annapolis:
The College Magazine
St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800
Annapolis, MD 21404;
rosemary.harty@sjca.edu
In Santa Fe:
The College Magazine
St. John’s College
1160 Camino Cruz Blanca
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599;
alumni@sjcsf.edu
�48
{Tribute}
“An Abiding Presence”
Brother Robert Smith (HAgo)
BY Steve J. Werlin (A85)
Brother Robert liked to climb
trees.
This is probably not true about
the decades in which most of us
knew him. But he once told me
that, as a hoy, he had been fond
of climbing. Climbing anything,
really. He said that a favorite
place for him to read was on the
roof of his parents’ house, sitting
outside his bedroom window.
I can add this: As recently as the
mid-8os, when he was already
much closer to go than to ig he
hopped nimbly out the window
of a Paris hotel room to have a
rooftop picnic with a friend
and me.
As a child, he also liked a candy
bar named “Oh Henry! ” I had
beheved that the candy was
named for Henry Aaron, the
baseball player, who was featured
in its commercials when I was a
kid. Learning of Brother Robert’s
fondness for it, 50 years before,
cleared up my misconception.
I’ve known people who were
older than Brother Robert was,
and I’m sure some people,
though perhaps not many, are
active and capable into their 90s,
or even beyond. But it’s worth
thinking about how long Brother
Robert lived and, even more so,
about how long he worked.
Last year was something like
his 70th as a teacher, with only
graduate school and assorted
short adventures intervening.
In the late iggos, he visited my
home institution, Shimer
College. On the day of the visit,
one of my very senior colleagues
remarked in the course of a
meeting that the question we
were discussing seemed to come
up about every five years. Most
of us present were impressed by
that colleague’s long sense of
history. Later that evening, in a
seminar he led for us on one of
Plato’s dialogues. Brother
Robert said something about a
certain student attitude and
mentioned that it seemed to
come into vogue about every
ao years.
But it would not always have
been easy to tell that he had been
teaching for that long. Watching
him prepare for a seminar on the
Bible or the Summa Theologica,
books that he knew more-or-less
by heart, was a lesson. He would
spend hours doing his reading,
looking for all the world as
though he was studying those
pages for the very first time.
I think one piece of Brother
Robert’s greatness as a teacher
was how often he was able to find
so very many things new. It’s not
that he never developed clear
positions. Lots of us know aU too
well that he had very, very strong
opinions on a surprisingly wide
range of subjects: from Stalin to
Clinton, from William of
Ockham to the Talking Heads.
But he was able to find the
books he read with us continu
ally new because of the way he
understood the classes he was
reading them for. Brother
Robert knew that conversations,
whether in seminars or other
wise, are neither about books
nor about authors’ opinions.
They are about what we, and
especially about what our
students, think. He expressed
that clearly in one of the two
guiding principles for teachers
that he shared with me, “Start
where the students are.”
The enduring friendships he
developed over his many years of
teaching, friendships with the
widest variety of students, are
nothing if not a
testimony to one
simple fact: Brother
Robert, through his
know-how and his
character, through
the livehness of his
curiosity and the
generosity of his
heart, was able to
help us all think
seriously, deeply,
and openly about
ourselves and about
our world. And so
our conversations
with him could
become decisive
moments in our
lives.
I don’t miss
Brother Robert. I
don’t see how I
could. He is so very
much a part of me.
Brother Robert Smith (HAgo) will be
He’s with me in so
REMEMBERED FOR HIS DEEP FAITH, ECLECTIC
much of what I do:
INTERESTS, AND JOIE DE VIVRE.
from my teaching, to
my cooking, to my
you to get up on the table and
reading and writing. He’s with
dance upside-down, then you get
mewhen I chat with colleagues,
up on the table and dance
students, and friends. I don’t
upside-down.” The perhapsknow how I could ever feel him
never-realized image of Brother
as absent.
Robert dancing upside-down on
The first time I left Annapolis,
a seminar table is an emblem of
in the summer of ig85, he
his devotion to teaching that
embraced me with one arm, put
ought to endure.
his hand on my head, and said,
“May you be blessed in all you
Editor's note: Mr. Werlin's
do.” The gift of his abiding pres
remembrance was one ofmany
ence, for over ao years, has gone
shared at Brother Robert's
a long way towards making that
memorial service last November.
prayer come true.
A collection ofall the tributes
I’d like to close by passing
is available; contact the
along the other guiding prin
Communications office,
ciple that Brother Robert shared
Annapolis, for a copy:
with me. It’s not as rhetorically
reharty@sjca.edu; 443-716-4011.
sharp as the first, but it’s memo
rable. “If what it takes to make a
class work,” he told me, “is for
{ The College . St. John’s College • Winter 2002 }
�{Obituaries}
Ahmet Munir Ertegun,
Annapolis class of 1944
BY Jon Enriquez
Ahmet Munir Ertegun,
Annapolis class of 1944, died in
New York City on December 14,
2006. He was the founder and
chairman of Atlantic Records,
one of the most successful
record companies of the 30th
century.
Mr. Ertegun was born in
Istanbul in 1923. His father,
Mehmet Munir Ertegun, was a
diplomat and advisor to Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk, founder of
modern Turkey. During his
boyhood years in London and
Washington, D.C. Ahmet
Ertegun developed an interest in
jazz under the tutelage of his
older brother, Nesuhi, especially
after their father became ambas
sador to the United States in
1934. Mr. Ertegun also credited
his brother for ensuring his
study of Western thought,
including his studies at
St. John’s.
In 1947, Mr. Ertegun and a
partner. Herb Abramson,
founded Atlantic Records in New
York City, with financial backing
from Mr. Ertegun’s dentist.
Working with Abramson and
others, Mr. Ertegun built
Atlantic into a formidable record
company. Atlantic focused on
African-American music, a
genre largely ignored at the time
by the major record labels.
Atlantic developed a strong
jazz catalogue, but the label’s
principal strength lay in rhythm
and blues, especially after
Atlantic entered a partnership
with the Memphis-based label
Stax Records.
In 1967, Atlantic was acquired
by Warner-Seven Arts Commu
nications, although Mr. Ertegun
continued to oversee the label.
While Mr. Ertegun no longer
worked closely on every record,
his passion for music and his
business acumen ensured
Atlantic’s continued growth.
Atlantic’s most successful acts
included Ray Charles, Aretha
Franklin, Led Zeppelin, the
Rolling Stones, The Drifters,
John Coltrane, Charles Mingus,
Bobby Darin, Otis Redding, and
Roberta Flack.
Mr. Ertegun was widely
regarded as one of the best
executives in the record
industry. Observers cited his
passion for music, his commit
ment to paying royalties to
performers, his sophistication
and style, his love for philos
ophy, and his ability to move
easily among people of
different ethnicities, classes,
and aesthetics. He enjoyed
juxtaposing interesting people,
introducing Wilson Pickett to
Henry Kissinger, for example,
or Kid Rock to Eva Brann.
Mr. Ertegun was a co-founder
of the Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame, and was inducted into
the Hall in 1987. Mr. Ertegun
was also instrumental in
founding the Rhythm and
Blues Foundation, a charitable
organization to support
destitute artists.
Among his many honors are
an honorary doctorate from
Berklee College of Music,
the Trustees Award and the
President’s Merit Award from
the National Academy of
Recording Arts & Sciences,
and recognition as a “Living
Legend” by the Library of
Congress.
“One of the best decisions I
ever made in my life was to
apply to go to St. John’s
College, rather than a conven
tional university,” Mr. Ertegun
said in 2005. “St. John’s, then
and now, offers a true educa
tion in everything. It is meant
for the student who wishes to
be able to become a truly
educated person-one who has
been exposed to the various
types of thought since the
beginnings of the Western
civilization, and therefore will
begin to understand where one
stands at this time in the
history of the world. . . .[And]
It seems to have prepared me to
help create rock and roll out of
the African American legacy of
gospel and blues music.”
49
In 1991, he told the graduates
of Berklee College of Music
how his thought and life were
shaped by philosophy. “In the
dialogues of Plato,” he said,
“a main thesis was that a
human being’s greatest goal is
happiness. And that happiness
is many things. Its highest state
is when a person gains under
standing of truth, that is, the
discovery of knowledge. It is
also attained when one can
create an object of beauty that
is an imitation or interpreta
tion of nature-an object of fine
art, whether it be a painting, a
literary work, or fine piece of
music. The state of happiness is
also attained by leading a
morally and ethically good life.
That is by developing a set of
habits which makes you choose
right instead of wrong almost
automatically. That is what
makes you a good person, which
is even more important than
being a successful one.. .”
Enriquez is registrar in
Annapolis.
Also Noted
Irene Dortch (class of 1966),
August 12, 2006
Frances Hotelling (AGI77),
October 8, 2006
BrewerNewton (class of 1947),
January 5, 2007
John O’Donnell (class of 1935),
September 8, 2006
Edward Senseney (class of
1952), September 9, 2006
Thomas Sigman (class of 1957),
January 5, 2007
Horace Witman (class of 1934),
October 24, 2006
CarlYannuzzi (SFGI69),
April IO, 2006
Ahmet Ertegun (shown here
THE 1944 St. John’s
in
yearbook)
WAS A MAJOR INFLUENCE IN
American music. He served
on
THE college’s BOARD IN THE
I97OS AND RECEIVED THE AlUMNI
Association’s Award of Merit.
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 }
�50
{Alumni Association News}
From the Alumni
Association
President
More than Just
Memories
I feel very honored and excited to begin
serving as president of the Alumni
Association.
The Association has a solid history of
working in concert with the college to
enhance the opportunities for Johnnies
to stay connected with each other and
maintain a vibrant link with St. John’s as
an institution and with its program of
learning long after they leave the
campuses.
Over the years, the Association’s work
has included:
• Building strong regional chapters.
• Developing lively homecomings on
each campus.
• Supporting the production of alumni
directories, first printed and now
online.
• Helping seniors and recent graduates
network in the alumni community.
Today, we have 23 chapters across the
U.S. The Annapolis homecoming this year
and last had more attendees than the
undergraduate enrollment, the online
directory is approaching 50 percent
participation (sign up today if you haven’t
already!) and we host annual “senior
dinners.” In some chapters we have offered
recent graduate receptions to help new
alumni learn about career options and
build connections in the new cities and
towns to which they move.
The Alumni Association wants to keep
the experience we had of the college and
the Program available to alumni
throughout their lives, as more than just
memories of a time we spent in an “idyllic”
campus setting: as an accessible range of
programs and services. This year our plans
include:
• Increased on-campus alumni
programs. The college, with the
Association’s support, will begin
offering the “Piraeus” program of
alumni seminars in April 2007 and
January 2008 in Santa Fe, and in June
2007 in Annapolis’ new dormitories.
(Recall that Socrates went down to the
Piraeus at the beginning of the
Republic'].
• A stronger Santa Fe homecoming
program. While the Annapolis
homecoming historically has been
held during the school year, Santa Fe’s
homecoming has been in July. At that
time of year, the travel costs are at
their high-season peak and the
campus is empty of students.
These factors appear to have
diminished participation in Santa Fe’s
homecoming. To make the Santa Fe
event more vibrant and rewarding,
Santa Fe homecoming has been
moved to the fall.
• Continued growth ofchapter activities.
We continue to have interested alumni
stepping forward to start new chapters
where they live. Existing chapters are
organizing a broad array of activities,
ranging from formal seminars to
casual movie and beer nights. The
Association will continue to support
these expanded activities.
graduates, about 50 percent of our
alumni graduated in the last 20 years
due to the increase in class sizes on
both campuses.
In addition, the Alumni Association
continues its ongoing responsibilities in
support of the community: selecting nine
alumni trustees to serve on the Board of
Visitors and Governors; recognizing
outstanding contributions by our alumni to
the nation or community, their profession,
or to the college through Awards of Merit;
and welcoming as permanent members of
the community those beloved and long
standing friends, faculty, and staff of
St. John’s by making them Honorary
Alumni of the college.
We accomplish this by providing
directed funding for various alumni-related
programs organized by the college or our
Chapters, by providing volunteer efforts by
our members, and by advocating on behalf
of alumni and the college.
I look forward to serving the St. John’s
community by helping foster opportunities
for more alumni to connect more often and
more richly.
Jason Walsh (A85)
Alumni Association President
ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE
ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
All alumni have automatic membership in
the St. John’s College Alumni Association.
The Alumni Association is an independent
organization, with a Board of Directors
elected by and from the alumni body. The
board meets four times a year, twice on each
• Moreprograms directed to recent grad
uates. We have a new committee of
young alumni working to develop
activities and services of high interest
to the growing number of recent
To make the Santa Fe
event more vibrant and
rewarding, Santa Fe
homecoming has been
moved to thefall.
campus, to plan programs and coordinate the
affairs of the association. This newsletter
within The College magazine is sponsored by
the Alumni Association and communicates
association news and events of interest.
The Alumni Association's Mission:
Tofoster opportunitiesfor more alumni
to connect more often and more richly
President - Jason Walsh (A85)
Vice President - Steve Thomas (SF74)
Secretary - Joanne Murray (SFGI95)
Treasurer - Richard Cowles (A70)
Mailing address - Alumni Association,
St. John’s College, P.O Box 2800, Annapohs,
MD 21404, or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca,
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599.
{The College- St. John’s College • Winter 200'^ }
�{Alumni Association News}
Glenda Eoyang (SF76)
Mission
Accomplished
On the surface, two accomplishments of
Glenda Eoyang’s six years as president of the
Alumni Association seem paradoxical: the
association has strengthened its autonomy,
and the association has forged a more
productive working relationship with the
institutional body that is St. John’s College.
Rather than clashing, these two goals
benefit the association and the college
equally, Eoyang says: “The goal of my
presidency was to strengthen the partnership
between the Alumni Association and the
college. It was clear that alumni wanted to
support the college community and get us all
working together.”
This needed to be done without compro
mising the independence of the association.
As the only permanent members of the
college community, alumni are protective of
the Program. The danger is that can turn
into “conservative and close-minded views
about the college,” Eoyang acknowledges.
“Stability, consistency, and coherence over
time are important to alumni,” says Eoyang.
“We can do our best if we are aligned with
the college, yet independent.”
For example, one of the things alumni
want to do is assist Johnnies and new
graduates as they consider careers and
graduate schools. “While the college is
more focused on the Program instead of the
working world, alumni can provide the
CHAPTER CONTACTS
Call the alumni listed belowfor information
about chapter, reading group, or other alumni
activities in each area.
ALBUQUERQUE
Robert Morgan, SF76
505-^75-901^
rim2u@c0mcast.net
ANNAPOLIS
Beth Martin Gammon,
A94
410-332-1816
emartin@crs.org
AUSTIN
Joe Reynolds, SF69
512-280-5928
jpreynolds@
austin.rr.com
BALTIMORE
Deborah Cohen, A77
410-472-9158
deborahwcohen@
comcast.net
Alumni Association
MINN./ST. PAUL
Carol Freeman, AGI94
612-822-3216
Freem013@umn.edu
worked to bring the
and college closer
TOGETHER.
career networking and the advice that are
important to Johnnies when they graduate.
Great strides have been made, Eoyang
says, particularly with the onhne community.
Launched two years ago, the online directory
and networking site was created with support
and suggestions from the association. About
4,000 alumni are part of the community.
“It has great possibilities to keep alumni
connected with each other and the college,”
she says.
Building membership and keeping
alumni involved with the college remain the
association’s top priorities. Chapters have
grown, more alumni are taking part in
chapter activities, and more alumni are
participating in the Annual Fund-all
encouraging signs. Eoyang beheves alumni
become involved with St. John’s when the
time is right for them. Her involvement
started when Barbara Lauer, then on the
NEWYORKCITY
Daniel Van Doren, A81
914-949-6811
dvandoren@
optonline.net
NORTHERN CALIF.
BOSTON
Reynaldo Miranda, A99
Dianne Cowan, A91
415-333-4452
617-666-4381
aldo.miranda@
diannecowan@rcn.com reyn
gmail.com
CHICAGO
PHILADELPHIA
Rick Lightburn, SF76
Helen Zartarian, AGI86
847-922-3862
215-482-5697
rlightburn@gmail.com helenstevezartarian@
mac.com
DALLAS/FORT
WORTH
PHOENIX
Paula Fulks, SF76
Donna Kurgan, AGI96
817-654-2986
623-444-6642
puffjd@swbell.net
dakurgie@yahoo.com
DENVER/BOULDER
Tom Byrnes, SF74
720-344-6947
tbyr@pair.com
51
PITTSBURGH
Joanne Murray, A70
724-325-4151
Joanne.Murray@
basicisp.net
PORTLAND
Jennifer Rychlik, SF93
503-547-0241
jlr43@coho.net
SAN DIEGO
Stephanie Rico, A86
619-429-1565
srico@sandi.net
SALT LAKE CITY
Erin Hanlon, SF03
91^67-2194
erin_hanlon@juno.com
SANTA FE
Richard Cowles,
SFGI95
505-986-1814
rcowles2@comcast.net
SEATTLE
James Doherty, SFGI76
206-542-3441
jdoherty@mrsc.org
SOUTH FLORIDA
Peter Lamar, AGI95
305-666-9277
cplamar@yahoo.com
{The College- St. John’s College • Winter 2007 }
association board, encouraged her to start a
chapter in the Twin Cities. “I think for many
alumni, the college is important in their
lives, but they’re just busy. What brings them
back is friendships: personal relationships
with people who are currently engaged with
or at the college,” she says.
While she will continue serving the
college as a member of its Board of Visitors
and Governors, Eoyang says stepping down
from the association gives her more time to
devote to her business, the Human Systems
Dynamics Institute, which offers consulting,
training, and research. Eoyang applies
concepts and lessons from nonlinear
dynamics chaos theory and complexity
theory in building interventions for human
interaction. The goal is to help managers
and employees know how to deal with change
and conflict
“There are three large-scale issues,” she
explains, “sustainability, and not just of
ecological systems but of equity systems and
economic systems; conflict, everything from
individuals to youth gangs; and evaluationif you can’t predict, how do you evaluate
whether things are better or worse?”
Eoyang is also looking forward to more
free time to spend at home with her husband,
John, a psychologist. “He’s a Johnnie at
heart,” she says. “Our first argument was
over Pascal.”
SOUTHERN CALIF.
Elizabeth Eastman,
SFGI84
562-426-1934
e.eastman@verizon.net
TRIANGLE CIRCLE,
NORTH CAROLINA
Elizabeth (A92) &
Rick Ross (A82)
919-319-1881
Elizabeth@
activated.com
WASHINGTON, DC
Deborah Papier, A72
202-387-4520
dpapier@verizon.net
WESTERN NEW
ENGLAND
Peter Weis, SF84
413-367-2174
peter_weis@
nmhschool.org
Providing
OPPORTUNITIES
FOR MORE ALUMNI
TO CONNECT
MORE OFTEN AND
MORE RICHLY
�5a
{St. John’s Forever}
A Wandering Library
n the summer of 1969, Santa Fe’s
to another institution. Without a perma
library was located in what is now
nent home, the library collection of 15,000
the bookstore in Peterson Student
books, phonograph recordings, and tapes
Center while fundraising for a new
continued meandering about campus,
library was underway. In 1968 the
stopping in various rooms in Peterson, in
college came close to receiving
the basement of Weigle Hall, on the first
funding from the New Mexico State
floor of Calliope House in the lower dormi
Commission’s Higher Education Facilities
tories, and on the first level of the Fine
Act, but was unable to raise the necessary
Arts Building.
match of $622,000. This meant Richard
Not until November 1990, under the
Weigle (HA49), at the time president of
tenure of President John Agresto, did
both campuses, had to relinquish the funds
Meem Library open its doors. At that point
Z
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter 2007 }
the college’s collection (now with more
than 67,000 books) found a permanent
home. One of the aims of the college’s
capital campaign, “With a Clear and
Single Purpose,” is to increase library
acquisitions on both campuses. The
college hopes to add to the collections and
to restore and replace outdated, damaged,
and missing volumes.
—Alexis Brown
�{Alumni Events Calendar}
Alumni Calendar
Introducing Piraeus, a new program
Don Quixote
for St. John’s alumni. Join your fellow
Johnnies for a weekend of revisiting a
favorite Program work or read something
new. More details are online:
www.stjohnscollege.edu
led by Victoria Mora and
Peter Pesic
January 18-20, 2008
Santa Fe
Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas on the
Unity of the Intellect
led by James Carey
April 14-15, 2007
Santa Fe
The seminar will meet in the morning and
afternoon on both Friday and Saturday,
concluding with a final seminar and
brunch Sunday morning. Participants can
also look forward to the Friday night
lecture and dinner together on Saturday
evening. $250 per person, includes
seminars, receptions, and brunch.
Saturday night dinner courtesy of the
Alumoi Association.
This weekend program includes morning
and afternoon seminars on Saturday,
dinner together with Mr. Carey at a fine
restaurant in Santa Fe, morning seminar
on Sunday and a concluding brunch.
BAnnual CBBlnetMal
$200 per person, includes seminars,
Johnnies vs. the Naval Academy
Saturday lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, and
April 21, 2007
Sunday brunch. Dinner courtesy of the
Annapolis
Alumni Association.
Rain date: April 22, 2007
Homer’s Odyssey
led by Eva Brann (HA57) and David Carl
June 14-17, 2007
Annapolis
September 28-30
Participants may choose to stay on campus
in Gilliam Hall. Saturday afternoon is
reserved for exploring the metro area,
downtown Annapolis, or the Eastern
Shore, followed by a crab feast in the
Boathouse. $350 per person, includes
seminars, receptions, and brunch; an addi
tional $200 per person for three nights of
room and board. Saturday night dinner
courtesy of the Alumni Association.
{The College- St. John’s College • Winter 200"^ }
Dan Caldwell (A86),
Johnnie.
wife
Li,
and a future
�STJOHN’S COLLEGE
ANNAPOLIS ■ SANTA FE
Published by the
Communications Office
P.O. Box aSoo
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
address service requested
Periodicals
Postage Paid
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
<em>The College </em>(2001-2017)
Description
An account of the resource
The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni. It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, Md.
Santa Fe, NM
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
thecollege2001
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
52
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The College, Winter 2007
Description
An account of the resource
Volume 33, Issue 1 of The College Magazine. Published in Winter 2007.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
St. John's College
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Santa Fe, NM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2007-01
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
The College Vol. 33 Issue 1 Winter 2007
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Harty, Rosemary (editor)
Dempsey, Patricia (assistant editor)
DeBusk, Emily (assistant editor)
Behrens, Jennifer (art director)
Benson, Sally
Brann, Eva
Burlington, Elizabeth
Enriques, Jon
Lemke, Oliver
Pihas, Gabriel
Scally, Thomas
Johnson, David
The College
Deprecated: Directive 'allow_url_include' is deprecated in Unknown on line 0