Category: Alumni

K Paths Crossed (and Shared) Down Under

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Kalamazoo College Alumni Holly Gillis '09 and Jeff Palmer '76
Holly Gillis ’09 and Jeff Palmer ’76

Kalamazoo College alumni never know where their paths might cross.

In early March, Jeff Palmer ’76 and his wife, Susan Andress, were about midway through a month-long trip to Tasmania and New Zealand when they stopped to hike to the Franz Joseph Glacier on New Zealand’s “South Island.”

“It was a beautiful place on a beautiful day and we were taking our time on the roughly four-mile round trip trail,” said Jeff, who recently retired as associate director of communication in K’s Office of College Communication.

“Surrounded by green-sloped mountains, waterfalls, and a glacier bluer than we imagined it would be,” Jeff said “we expected the cast and crew from Lord of the Rings to step out of the mist at any moment.”

Instead, a flash of orange and a familiar logo in the hand of a young man darting past on the trail caught his attention.

“Hey!” Jeff called out. “Where’d you get that K College water bottle!”

The young man stopped quickly and spun around. The young woman running with him did, too.

“I gave it to him!” she said with a big smile. “Do you know K?”

Holly Gillis ’09 and her husband, Ethan Basset, were toward the end of a ten-day vacation, rushing to see the Glacier before moving on to their next stop. Both are medical doctors working in Houston and soon moving to Ohio.

Holly and Jeff talked a little about their K-Plans (“Mine doesn’t take long to tell,” said Jeff) and some of the K professors and staff they both know on campus. They also agreed to follow up via email once they were back home. [See Jeff’s brief write up below about Holly’s post K career thus far.]

They compared a few New Zealand travel notes and agreed they were “glad to see one of nature’s wonders before climate change and science denial causes it to melt away,” said Jeff.

Susan and Ethan took photos while their alumni spouses marveled at the odds of having an impromptu Hornet gathering in a mountain valley half a world away from K’s “Fair Arcadian Hill.”

“What an incredibly small world,” Holly said. “Light attracts light.”

With a little help from a K water bottle.

*****
Holly Gillis ’09 is a Madison, Wis., native who majored in chemistry at K. She also sang the national anthem for a range of Hornet home athletics events, wrote restaurant reviews for the Index, sang soprano in the Premium Orange a capella group, served as a co-director of Frelon dance troupe, was the American Chemistry Society Student Affiliate Chair; and volunteered in the children’s ward at Kalamazoo’s Bronson Hospital. She also traveled to Perth, Australia, for her  study abroad, during which she volunteered at the Western Australian AIDS Council, working on a needle exchange program and youth risk reduction programs.

After K, Holly earned a medical degree from Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine in Western Pennsylvania and completed her residency in pediatrics at the University of Minnesota Masonic Children’s Hospital.

She and Ethan were married in July 2016 and have been living in Houston this past year “learning and working” at Texas Children’s Hospital, she said. He is completing his pediatric otolaryngology fellowship, while she works in the emergency department and serves as assistant professor of pediatrics.

Next up for the couple is a move to Columbus, Ohio, “learning and working” at The OSU Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

Ethan will join the pediatric ear-nose-throat clinical and academic faculty, while Holly starts a fellowship in pediatric critical care. She intends to focus on the disparate access to quality health care that low income children with complex medical needs have within a pediatric hospital system compared to those with middle and high incomes.

“K study abroad shaped the way I think about medical practice and empathy for low and very low income women and children,” Holly said. “The service component to my study abroad program–a health screening project in a low-income suburb of Perth with primarily aboriginal women and children–helped expose the bubble that is so convenient for many of the economically stable K students to live in, including myself.”

Study abroad also fueled Holly’s interest in travel, particularly to the lands Down Under. She traveled to Sydney, Australia, during the summer after her first year of medical school to work in a lab related to research she conducted for her K Senior Independent Project, or SIP. (Professor of Chemistry Laura Furge served as Holly’s on-campus SIP faculty mentor for the reading of her thesis.)  A recent vacation to New Zealand with Ethan was a respite from work and studies before they finish their assignments in Houston and pack for the move to Ohio.

She looks forward to being a little closer to her Wisconsin and Kalamazoo College homes, and hopes to cross paths with K alumni.

TEXT AND PHOTO BY JEFF PALMER ’76

Foreign Study at K Sparks Alumna’s Passion for Travel

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Foreign Study Petting Tigers
“Foreign study at K cultivates confidence and an open mind,” said Jennifer Zeoli, a Kalamazoo College graduate who studied abroad during her junior year in Strasbourg, France. Today, her foreign study continues in places such as Thailand.

Jennifer Zeoli’s foreign study has never stopped. Fortunately, she has a great job for travel and the perfect avocation (photography) to freeze and savor its moments.

After the psychology major (Kalamazoo College Class of 1996) graduated, she returned home (Clinton Township, Mich.) and took a temporary job through Kelly Services. She was assigned a two-week gig at Tweddle, a publishing company that quite likely produced the owner’s manual in your car. Well, for Zeoli, “temporary” turned to 20 years that, through work or play, have included 45 countries and 300 cities.

Quotidian and un-sexy as automobile owner manuals may seem, there are cars all over the world, making manuals a very cosmopolitan product. As Tweddle’s account manager for Ford Europe and Ford Asia Pacific, Zeoli has worked in many countries, including a three-and-a-half year posting in Turin, Italy. Last December she was in Melbourne, Australia, and February found her in India. Whenever she’s on the road, she takes every opportunity to wander and see the sights.

“I like my job,” said Zeoli. “Evolving technologies make it interesting. I also love traveling for the company and on my own.”

Foreign study began in France

Travel means diving into different languages and cultures and meeting different people, with many of whom she continues to correspond.

“Foreign study at K cultivates confidence and an open mind,” said Zeoli, who studied abroad during her junior year in Strasbourg, France. “K helped prepare me for work in other countries.”

Work abroad has provided other, less material, value. “Travel allows you to see how other people live, which can deepen your awareness and appreciation of your own home.” (For all her travels, Zeoli still calls home the town where she grew up.) “When I was in Cambodia, I saw long lines of people with sick children waiting to see a doctor. In Tanzania I saw kids wearing shoes made from motorcycle tires. Travel has changed my perspective on what’s important in life.”

Foreign Study Florence Cathedral
Jennifer Zeoli travels to places such as Florence, Italy, today after foreign study at K took her to Strasbourg, France.

Her wanderings extend beyond work. She’s seen (and photographed) wonders: the star-filled night sky outside her Bedouin tent in the Sahara desert, the muted gray beauty of beach ice in Iceland (see back cover), the grace and presence (both overwhelming and tenuous) of the animals—lions, elephants, giraffes and wildebeests— she saw during a safari in the Serengeti.

Zeoli has a knack of aligning the places she visits with her own life’s moments, like timing her 40th birthday celebration on Easter Island. One year in Europe, she celebrated Halloween by going to Transylvania and visiting the castle of Vlad the Impaler.

“He’s considered a hero because he helped defend Romania against the Ottoman Empire,” said Zeoli. “His brutality helped inspire the 1897 gothic horror novel, Dracula, by Irish author Bram Stoker.”

In addition to her business travel, Zeoli has joined group tours and traveled alone. In 2012, she soloed in Jordan and Turkey and never had any problems. “I always show respect for people and don’t take any unnecessary chances. I’ve been OK and expect that will continue.”

Foreign Study Ice Beach in Iceland
Jennifer Zeoli travels to places such as Iceland today after foreign study at K took her to Strasbourg, France.

In true liberal arts fashion, Zeoli preps for her trips by studying the history of a place. Before she saw the cathedral in Florence she studied how construction commenced in 1294 without a plan for building the dome. Builders put up the walls, and the town held a contest that sought ideas on how to build the dome.

“Once you know a few things about a place, you gain another layer of appreciation for it,” said Zeoli.

She definitely appreciates Tuscany and hopes to one day own a villa there. “My love of Tuscany grew when I worked in Italy. I spoke broken Italian but managed pretty well with my 50 Italian co-workers. They became my teachers and were patient and kind to me.”

Zeoli studied French at K to go along with her foreign study and relied on it when she spoke Italian.

“If I didn’t know a word in Italian, I’d use the French word and add a vowel at the end. You’d be surprised how often it worked,” she said. The company also gave her a week-long language class in Florence.“I did pretty well,” she said, “but the teacher did comment that I spoke Italian with a French accent.”

Foreign study creates a devoted traveler

Zeoli’s position provides four weeks of vacation which (no surprise) she devotes to travel.

“I use the wallpaper on my computer for the next place I will visit,” she said. Next on her agenda is Hawaii.

“One of the items on my bucket list is to ride in a helicopter over the big island,” said Zeoli. “It will make for fantastic photos, and I can’t wait!”

Her photography has morphed from avocation to art. Zeoli is quite accomplished at recording the beautiful and intriguing places she has visited. She uses a Canon 70D camera, which has full manual settings. It’s definitely not your point-and-shoot style camera, and it produces fabulous effects.

She takes her camera with her everywhere and loves to photograph landscapes, cityscapes, animals and flowers — or anything she finds interesting or unique. She is intent on capturing the moment.

“When you stand in front of the pyramids you’re a part of them,” she said. “When I am home and look at the photos on my wall, I think about how they represent different moments of my life.”

Of those 45 countries and 300 cities, what’s her favorite?  “Florence. I love its history, its connection to cultural giants like Dante, Machievelli, Michangelo and DaVinci, its compactness and, of course, its fabulous food.

“I don’t usually go back to a lot of places, but I go back to Florence as often as I can,” adds Zeoli. “It’s a great picture-taking place, too.”

She posts her photos on Facebook to share moments with family and friends. Lately, she is selling her photos.

“I went to the Ann Arbor Art Fair one year and noticed all the amazing photos for sale,” she said. “I decided to sell my photos, too.”

She features her photographs through Fine Art America, which provides an online marketplace and fulfillment service as well as marketing services for artists and photographers.

Someday, she’d like to pursue the art market for her photography and write a coffee table book featuring her travels and photography.

Zeoli encourages others to travel but knows it’s not for everyone. “Some people don’t like the inconveniences, or they may be fearful of the foods they might have to  eat. Others, like me, want to experience everything they can. If it’s your passion, you have to go for it…like the old proverb, ‘Leap before you look.’ ”

— Story by Olga Bonfiglio for Lux Esto, the magazine of Kalamazoo College

 

An Opportunity to Express Gratitude

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Gratitude Grateful for K
Students take advantage of “Grateful for K Day” to share their gratitude in handwritten thank-you notes to K donors

Kalamazoo College invites students, faculty, staff, alumni and others to celebrate “Grateful for K Day” on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.

Sponsored by the Kalamazoo College Fund, and formerly called “Tuition Freedom Day,” the April 5 event educates students about the important role philanthropy plays in sustaining and enhancing Kalamazoo College and (hopefully) inspires them to express their gratitude for the alumni, parents, faculty, staff and friends who generously support the College each year.

On Grateful for K Day students write hundreds of thank-you notes to express appreciation for the generosity shown through philanthropic support of Kalamazoo College. More than 98 percent of K students receive scholarships and/or some form of financial aid. This day acknowledges K donors and helps to educate students on the impact philanthropy has on their education and K experience.

What can you do on Wednesday to honor generosity and express gratitude? If you’re a student, please visit the Hicks Center from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. to write a thank-you note or two to our donors. After you’ve written your notes, grab a cookie and hot chocolate!

If your a donor, please share your “Why I Give” and “Why I am Grateful” stories on our website or Facebook page, where you can also learn more about Grateful for K Day.

Thanks for helping to put the K in thanKs!

Eyewitness to History

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Presidential Debate Between Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford
Then-U.S. President Gerald Ford (right) and challenger Gov. Jimmy Carter debate in 1976.

Gail Raiman ’73 was interviewed for and appears in the documentary “Feeling Good About America: the 1976 Presidential Election.” The documentary, produced by the Center of Politics at the University of Virginia, has been airing across the country since October.

The election of 1976 was momentous in several ways. It was the first national election after the Watergate scandal. It was the national election occurring on the occasion of the country’s bicentennial celebration. Watergate had consumed the Nixon presidency (he resigned in August  1974), resulting in Gerald R. Ford becoming president. Ford had become vice president in October 1973 by congressional confirmation in the wake of Vice President Spiro Agnew’s corruption scandal and resignation.

In the 1976 election, Ford — the Republican candidate — was pitted against the relatively unknown former one-term governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter. Carter ran as a Washington outsider, a popular position in the post-Watergate era, and won a narrow victory.

Gail’s connection to Ford began before the 1976 election, going back to her sophomore year in 1971. She used that opportunity to intern on Capitol Hill for then-Congressman Ford, who at the time served as House minority leader. Gail worked in his Washington office’s constituent-relations group and made quite an impression. The Ford team suggested she continue to work in the office while finishing her undergraduate degree at a college or university in Washington, D.C.

Instead, Gail returned to K, completed her degree (philosophy) in June 1973 and took a summer job in Ford’s Grand Rapids district office. Several times that summer Ford personally asked Gail to consider taking a permanent job in his office. She declined in favor of her plan to earn a doctorate and teach. That fall she started graduate school, but she wasn’t there long.

“I suddenly realized that I wanted to ‘make a difference,’ ” Gail said, “though I didn’t know what that meant. At the time I didn’t imagine it meant returning to work for Congressman Ford.”

Gerald Ford Campaign ButtonGail came home from grad school to Grand Rapids. “My  immediate future was a complete mystery to me,” she said. “Four days later history intervened with the resignation of Vice President Agnew. President Nixon then named Gerald Ford as vice president-designate, and several phone calls later, I was on my way to Washington to work on Ford’s confirmation hearings for the vice presidency.”

Ford asked Gail to join his vice presidential staff and she did. Eight months later, when Nixon resigned and Ford became president, Ford asked Gail to be a member of his White House staff. She worked in the West Wing throughout his term. “My White House portfolio included media relations, communications, politics and continuous crisis management — the perfect storm.”

In early 2016 Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics, inquired whether Gail would be interviewed for the documentary. His request made sense. “I’d had a front-row seat to the 1976 campaign while on the White House staff,” Gail explained. “I also worked as a member of the president’s staff at the 1976 Republican National Convention.”

That convention was memorable. It was the last Republican convention in which a candidate had not been chosen by the outset. Ford and former California Gov. Ronald Reagan were the front runners, with Reagan representing the conservative wing of the party. During maneuvering at the Convention, Mississippi swung from Reagan to Ford on the first ballot, pushing him just past the delegate threshold needed to win the nomination.

K Trustee Gail Raiman
K trustee Gail Raiman at the 2013 commencement

The documentary concludes that the election of 1976 was a needful tonic for the country. America felt good about Ford and Carter for good reason; they were the right people at the right time, helping us once again “feel good about America.”

That history comes alive, in part, through the film’s interviews, which include, among many others, Walter Mondale, Jack Ford, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Stuart K. Spencer and Gail Raiman ’73.

Gail’s inclusion in the film is not her only honor relative to her association with Ford. She also has been asked to serve as a judge for the 2016 Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency. With this annual award, Ford wanted to recognize and encourage thoughtful, insightful and enterprising work by journalists covering the presidency and national defense.

As in past years, two $5,000 prizes will be awarded, one for distinguished achievement in reporting on the presidency, and another on national defense during the 2016 calendar year. The awards will be presented in Washington, D.C., in June at the annual meeting of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation.

Arts Academy’s K Connections

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Kalamazoo College alumna Julie MehretuJulie Mehretu ’92 is one of 14 new members voted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Mehretu is among the most celebrated of contemporary painters in the world. She works from studios in New York City and Berlin. She has exhibited in several important group exhibitions including “Poetic Justice”, 8th Istanbul Biennial (2003); Whitney Biennial; São Paolo Biennial and Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (2004); the Biennale of Sydney and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2006); Prospect 1, New Orleans (2008); “Automatic Cities” MCA San Diego (2009); “From Picasso to Julie Mehretu,” British Museum, London (2010) and Document XIII, Kassel (2012). Solo exhibitions include Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; REDCAT, Los Angeles and Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo (2003); St Louis Art Museum (2005) and MUSAC, Léon, Spain (2006); “City Sitings,” Detroit Institute of Art and “Black City” Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark (2007); North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, (2008); “Grey Area,” Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (2009) and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010). In 2015 Mehretu was honored with the U.S. State Department’s National Medal of Arts.

The arts academy, an honorary society with a core membership of 250 writers, artists, composers and architects, was founded in 1898, with members since ranging from Henry James and William Dean Howells to Chuck Close and Stephen Sondheim. The new inductees will be formally welcomed at a ceremony at the New York-based academy in May, where academy member Joyce Carol Oates will deliver the keynote address. Previous speakers have included Helen Keller, Robert Frost and Robert Caro. The new group of inductees features Kalamazoo College connections through its Summer Common Reading program. Among the writers the academy honored this year are Junot Diaz, Ann Patchett and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. All visited K for the SCR program, which featured their novels, respectively, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Bel Canto, and Purple Hibiscus.

Love of Excellence

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Kalamazoo College alumnus Tom Kreilick
Tom Kreilick ’60 in June 2016, when he was honored with a Citation of Merit Award

At Kalamazoo College the bridge between love and excellence is often a planned gift. Within the past two weeks, K has received two such gifts—one that supports excellence in the faculty; the other excellence among students. In both cases the donor made careful plans for the gift some twenty years ago.

Thomas Kreilick ’60 made arrangements for a charitable remainder trust during the College’s campaign, Enlightened Leadership, which occurred in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Mr. Kreilick, a successful businessman who served in several top-level executive positions during his career, died in July of 2016. The trust he established will fund the Thomas K. Kreilick Chair in Economics, a testament to his commitment to the excellence of K faculty.

In 1997, the year her husband died, Virginia Harlow made plans for several charitable gift annuities that would, upon her death, enhance  a scholarship named for her husband–alumnus and emeritus board member (and board chair) I. Frank Harlow ’39, who served as a vice president and general counsel at Dow Chemical Company. Her intent was to honor his love of K by helping ensure that great students would enjoy and contribute to the excellence of the learning experience there. Virginia Harlow died recently, but her gift and its intent live through the I. Frank Harlow Scholarship.

“Planned gifts such as these are votes of confidence in the excellence of faculty and students at Kalamazoo College,” says Vice President of Advancement Al DeSimone. “Mr. Kreilick and Mrs. Harlow worked with K years ago to carefully plan these important contributions. The results will help sustain excellence at K in perpetuity.”

Persons interested in exploring planned gift options at Kalamazoo College should contact Matt Brosco, senior associate director of planned giving (Matthew.Brosco@kzoo.edu or 269.337.7288).

Alumna Spotlights K in Climate Conversation

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A 2015 Kalamazoo College alumna is helping colleges and universities find a variety of ideas for teaching students about environmentalism and climate leadership. As it turns out, her alma mater provides a good model for such ideas.

Bronte Payne has worked as a clean energy associate through Environment America in Boston since graduating from K with a degree in biology. The nonprofit organization works to bring people together to protect clean air, clean water and open spaces.

Bronte Payne Sparks Climate Conversation
Kalamazoo College alumna Bronte Payne, a clean energy associate at Environment America in Boston, will lead a climate conversation for higher-education administrators, faculty and sustainability directors at the Presidential Climate Leadership Summit in Tempe, Ariz.

Climate conversation upcoming

Payne will lead a panel discussion with higher-education representatives, including presidents, sustainability directors and faculty, this Tuesday at the Presidential Climate Leadership Summit in Tempe, Ariz. The climate conversation, she hopes, will encourage administrators to engage students in finding ways to commit their institutions to full renewable-energy use by 2050.

“It’s not so much a presentation as it is a panel to get administrators thinking outside the box,” Payne said. “We want them to see a commitment to renewable energy is an opportunity rather than something that ties their hands. We want to show opportunities for students to get involved.”

Her portion of the panel discussion will focus on how students helped K ensure the environmental “fitness” of its Fitness and Wellness Center, which opened in October after a September dedication. K’s Sustainability Advisory Committee – which included faculty, staff and students – suggested that the College hire two student LEED-equivalent auditors, training them in the design, energy and sustainability criteria that inform LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design).

LEED-certified buildings use less water and energy, and have less greenhouse gas emissions. Michelle Sugimoto ’17 and Ogden Wright ’16 were chosen from a dozen applicants and met with designers and builders every few weeks during construction. The actual cost of their training and stipends proved to be a small fraction of the cost of LEED certification. Of course the training and the integrity of these two physics and engineering majors ensured their rigorous conscientiousness as LEED-like certifiers. And the overall cost savings allowed the College to buy a 12-kilowatt solar panel array that offsets 5 percent of the new fitness center’s energy costs.

“I would like to show how this was an example of an amazing opportunity for students to get involved in environmental planning and how it might lead to more involvement after school,” Payne said.

Climate conversation at K was inspiring

When Payne first came to K from West Bloomfield, Mich., she planned on attending medical school one day. But plans soon changed.

“I remember talking in class about how the actual city of Kalamazoo was the site of the largest land-oil spill in the U.S.,” she said. “Learning about it was eye opening. The school itself and professors pushed me to think more creatively about what I could do, and how I could engage the community at large. I fell in love with environmental science courses.”

The discovery of her passion for environmentalism led to a Senior Individualized Project involving a Paul Clements congressional campaign, during which she learned about national environmental policy. Now, she can tell others about the exciting things done at K to address sustainability.

“A lot of the work we did at K is how I ended up working in environmentalism,” Payne said. “It’s exciting to talk about the role I have now with Environment America. I also love to tell the story about all the cool work students and administrators did because I love talking about K.”

K Alumnus Named to International Tennis Hall of Fame

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Kalamazoo College Alumnus Vic BradenRejuvenation might be a theme for this year’s tennis Australian Open. Venus and Serena Williams meet in the women’s singles championships match. And if Rafael Nadal (age 30) wins his semifinal match, he’ll face the 35-year-old (ancient by professional tennis standards) Roger Federer in the men’s championship.

There’s a K connection to this year’s Open as well. The late Vic Braden, Kalamazoo College class of 1951, is one of the 2017 recipients of the International Tennis Hall of Fame. That class was inducted during the Australian Open on January 23. Vic was a groundbreaking tennis instructor and sports scientists. Other members of the hall-of-fame class of 2017 include former world number-one ranked players Kim Clijsters and Andy Roddick, wheelchair tennis player Monique Kalkman-van den Bosch and journalist and historian Steve Flink.

A New “Lost” Adventure

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Kalamazoo College Alumna Laura Livingston-McNellisOne great outcome of the K-Plan is an aptitude for adventure–one that lasts a lifetime, with a concomitant fearlessness of failure. Take Laura Livingstone-McNelis, class of 1989. The English major, theatre arts minor, LandSea participant (who studied abroad in the United Kingdom) has taught in the public schools, owned and administered a bed & breakfast business and, for the past four years, served as the company manager for the College’s Department of Theatre Arts and Festival Playhouse Productions. Next month you can add to that résumé the title: Playwright.

Laura’s one-act play, “Lost in the Shuffle,” has been accepted by and will be performed during the Seventh Annual New Play Festival at the Epic Center in downtown Kalamazoo. Her play will stage on Saturday, February 4, at 2 p.m.

Laura cites three reasons for her adventure into playwrighting.

“I was intrigued by the New Play Festival’s call for plays and thought, ‘Why not try?'” she says. Actually, the genesis of “Lost” dates back several months before that call. As a member of the Lake Effect Writers Guild, Laura remembers a particular meeting the previous winter. “The assignment was to write something with a ‘bit of dialogue.’ I thought, ‘Here’s my chance,’ and began the first draft of ‘Lost’ in January 2016.” So the metamorphosis of “Here’s my chance!” to “Why not try?” constitutes one of three motives driving our nascent playwright.

The second had to do with the seminal event that inspired the play. Laura explains: “The play is about Alzheimer’s disease and its effect on the patient and the family, especially family caregivers. My stepfather eventually died of the disease. I recall during a visit to my mom and stepfather’s house finding in a desk a box with a harmonica. I was familiar with the harmonica because years earlier my kids had given it to my mom and inscribed on the box ‘Grandma.’ But when I saw the box that day the word ‘Grandma’ had been carefully crossed out, and in the painstaking handwriting of my stepfather was  written instead the word ‘harmonica.’

“Often you cannot see the devastation of Alzheimer’s until its late stages. Those early effects can be hidden. And yet already the disease had stolen from his mind–at least intermittently–the concept of possession. In his mind, the box did not contain a grandma; it contained a harmonica, so he fixed it.”

The hiddenness and drama of that discovery in the desk relates to the third reason Laura wrote her play. “Theatre is a community of inclusion, able to inspire empathy and be an agent for change,” she says. “Theatre brings light to issues hidden beneath our inattentiveness, and the effects of Alzheimer’s disease require more light,” she adds.

Her script development continues through the rehearsal process and in collaboration with the play’s director and actors. “I’ve done five rewrites during rehearsals,” says Laura, “and learned a great deal in the revisions.” In her play, Laura is writing movement as much as dialogue. For example, her staging of “shuffling” acquires multiple layers of meaning in this poignant work, as much poem as performance. Launching an adventure takes teamwork, and Laura is deeply grateful to the producers of the New Play Festival, Kevin Dodd and Steve Feffer, for providing the opportunity for playwrights like her to develop their work. Ed Menta has served as her mentor since her college days. “And my family and friends have enthusiastically encouraged my writing,” she adds.

“Lost” may be just the beginning of her writing career. “I have things to say,” she smiles, “and I’m no longer too intimidated to try.” She’s at work on a family book about the power of love. “It’s meant to be read by parents to children, and it focuses on the extraordinary relationship between my mom and my daughter.” The working title is “A Kiss Across the Miles.”

Who knows, though, its genre may morph to a play. As might her second work-in-progress, a memoir based on a nightly diary Laura has kept for 41 years (seriously!)…every night, with no more than a couple dozen exceptions, since she was NINE YEARS OLD.

“I don’t have a working title for the memoir,” says Laura. “It’s shaping into the arc of a young woman growing up with a set of expectations and then having to manage a life direction that diverges quite radically from those expectations.”

Add to this oeuvre a second version of “Lost.” February’s performance (version one) takes about 12 minutes. Laura will expand that to a one-act play of standard length (40 to 45 minutes). Who knows, maybe one day she’ll make it a full-length play.

In the meantime, Rave on, Laura. And thank you for the courage.

Soccer Boys, Dinosaur Men

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Jeff Wilson '91 in Niger
Jeff Wilson ’91 in Niger

When the Wilson boys were kids, it was soccer over sauropods. Neither brother, Jeff or Greg, was particularly interested in dinosaurs.

Interests evolve over time. Today Jeff (Kalamazoo College class of 1991) and Greg are paleontologists and professors at the University of Michigan and the University of Washington, respectively. Both men will be speakers at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum (KVM) 2017 summer of dinosaurs. An article on the two (“Brothers in Paleontology”) appears in the Winter 2017 issue of museON, the magazine of KVM. At K Jeff majored in biology and studied abroad in Madrid, Spain. He was an outstanding Hornet soccer player–a four year letter winner, named All American (second team) one year and NSCAA-All Mideast Team two years.

In graduate school both Jeff and Paul studied and worked with renowned paleontologist Paul Sereno (University of Chicago). Sereno will speak about the intersection of arts, history and science in paleontology at the KVM on June 3, 2017.

Jeff and Greg specialize in different areas of the field. Jeff studies the paleobiology of sauropod dinosaurs, the largest land animals every to have existed on earth. His brother focuses on the small early mammals who coexisted with the dinosaurs.

In 1999, LuxEsto published a story about Jeff, who at the time was a paleontology doctoral student at the University of Chicago. Prior to that article Jeff had joined Sereno on five dinosaur expeditions, two in the Tenere Desert of central Niger in West Africa. (See photo of Jeff on one of these expeditions) Jeff was part of the team that discovered a new species of dinosaur called Sucomimus tenerensis, a 34-foot “crocodile mimic.” Jeff’s dinosaur expeditions have taken him throughout the world. And soccer has played a role in some of these trips. Jeff calls it a “universal language” very useful in building relationships when people lack fluency in one another’s first languages.

The Wilson boys sort of flipped the more predominant chronology–not so much interested in dinosaurs as kids, but big-time interested as adults. Why do so many kids love dinosaurs? LuxEsto posed that question to Jeff in 1999. “They’re big; they’re extinct’ and they attain heights we could never attain,” he said at that time. “They are the superheroes of animal life.” And, perhaps most important, “They are the gateway to a mysterious and strange world that is lost to us.”