In 2004, Antonie Boessenkool ’99 wrote a LuxEsto article (“Homeward Bound”) that appeared in the fall issue that year about Matt ’94 and Kelli ’95 (Johnson) Stapleton. Their daughter Isabelle (Issy), at that time 5 years old, had recently been diagnosed with autism. The Stapletons currently live in Elberta, Michigan. Matt serves as principal of Frankfort–Elberta High School and coaches football and basketball. Kelli runs a podcast business, but most of her time is devoted to helping Issy and raising her two other children, McEwen and Ainsley. Issy (12) has a form of autism that manifests in occasional violent outbursts directed at family members. For the past few years, Issy has been big enough to cause serious injury to her mom and others. The Stapletons have been trying to get treatment for Issy, but their insurance program covers little to none of the costs, which are significant. Recently, Issy got into an in-patient treatment program at the Great Lakes Center for Autism (Portage, Michigan). But the insurance company would only pay for 30 days of a treatment program that requires two to three months. The Elberta community news organ (the Alert) has published the Stapletons’ story and is raising funds in hopes that Issy can complete her in-patient treatment program. All are invited to contribute.
Category: Alumni
K Grad at Work on Basketball Musical
Ben Harpe ’09 is a cast member of “The Lockout: An NBA Musical,” written by Jason Gallagher and Ben Fort and to be produced by their company Six Hours Short. And Ben is also part of a the KickStarter project to record an album of the musical’s songs. You can see Ben (on left) belting out “I Believe,” a duet with superstar “Macon.” The play grabbed the attention of ESPN.com’s Henry Abbott, who wrote an article about it. “The Lockout” will be presented for the first time in a staged reading at Chicago’s Stage 773 on Friday August 31 and Saturday September 1.
Kalamazoo College alumna Jen Feuerstein ’93 talks about her chimps on NPR
Jen Feuerstein ’93 is sanctuary director of Save the Chimps, the world’s biggest sanctuary, based in Florida, for chimpanzees formerly used in research experiments or the entertainment industry, or as pets. Hear Jenn in a report on National Public Radio about a National Institutes of Health plan to retire nearly all of the more than 450 chimpanzees currently housed at U.S.-based research facilities to sanctuaries where they can live outdoors in groups to climb, run, and play as they would in the wild.
Charles Holmes, MD ’93 Leads Effort to Combat Infectious Disease in Zambia
Charles Holmes ’93 was completing his medical education when he lived and worked for three months in Malawi in 1999. The AIDS epidemic there, uncontrolled, was peaking. Desperately sick people lay three to a bed in the Lilongwe hospital where Holmes worked, and where the best medicine on hand could only alleviate their agony until they died.
“Deaths were an hourly occurrence,” he said later. “It was an important and formative experience for me to be a firsthand witness to that tragedy.”
It has shaped his work and interests ever since, he added.
This month, he packed his bags for Africa again, to lead the Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia, widely considered one of the most effective in-country programs to improve health care capacities in a resource-poor country.
Read more about this Kalamazoo College graduate’s work in Science Speaks: HIV and TB News, a project of the Center for Global Health Policy.
Kalamazoo College Well Represented in the Third Annual Kalamazoo New Play Festival
The thing’s the plays
In which we see the work of Ks!
“Ks” refers to the Kalamazoo College alumni, student, and occasional professor (and Summer Common Reading author) whose work is part of the Theatre Kalamazoo New Play Festival that will be held January 25 and 26 at the Epic Theatre in downtown Kalamazoo. Dana Robinson ’11 and Rebecca Staudenmaier ’11 are the authors of 10-minute plays that are part of the festival–Outdoors and The House of South, respectively. Outdoors will play at 4 PM on Saturday, January 26; The House of South is part of the 8 PM group of plays on the same day. Current senior Megan Rosenberg is directing the play Bringing Home the Bones by Bonnie Jo Campbell, who was the College’s Summer Common Reading author (Once Upon a River) in Fall 2012. Campbell also is an adjunct professor in the English department. Sponsoring theatres are Farmers Alley Theatre (Outdoors), Fancy Pants Theatre (The House of South), and Festival Playhouse of Kalamazoo College (Bringing Home the Bones). The Festival is free; no reservations are necessary. For more information please, and to learn the other plays featured in the Festival, please call any participating theatre or log on to the Theatre Kalamazoo website.
Stephanie (Harker) Schau ’90 Earns Teaching Award
Stephanie (Harker) Schau ’90 is the 2012 recipient of the John E. Oster Award, which recognizes teaching excellence in the Sturgis (Mich.) Public School system. Stephanie was a member of Phi Beta Kappa at K and was selected for the James Bird Balch Prize for Outstanding Senior Studying American History.
Henry David and K Alum Rob
I’ve been on a walk with Henry David Thoreau—not literally, of course, but a second reading (or multiple readings) of Walden can seem like an attentive wood-or-wetland perambulation with its author. I came across this: “At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable.” Wait, wait … that reminds me of another favorite author, science writer and scientist Rob Dunn ’97, who writes in a recent article (in which Rob’s grandfather makes an indelible impression): “So much for my New Year’s resolution, though maybe part of the problem is that we still know so little about so many fields that it is nearly impossible to make it to the end of a story without encountering the unknown.” His resolution was to answer the science questions that come up in everyday life. His “Year in Review” blog article (Scientific American) kicked off the resolution with 11 questions. But pretty soon the questions were multiplying, not answers. But that’s a good thing that comes in part from Rob’s long lineage of questioners who “went long” and went broad to go long (Rob’s other resolution is to write shorter articles, but I’m glad that’s unlikely to work, too). It’s no wonder Rob attended K.
K Alumna Arianna Schindle ’08 Is Still a Social Activist
Arianna Schindle ’08 is committed to improving peoples’ lives, whether in an impoverished Thai village or along Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. Read about this social justice crusader from Kalamazoo College in a profile by author, historian, and columnist John Hallwas in the McDonough County (Illinois) Voice.
The Physics of Immortality
The Goods are dead, but their good’s alive! Walter and William Good, both members of the Class of 1937, have been deceased from some time, but their legacy lives at the Kalamazoo Air Zoo. The Goods created the Guff, the first successful radio controlled aircraft, and a replica of the aircraft is now on permanent display at the Air Zoo. The aircraft was created with vacuum tube-based control units; it won first place in the 1939, 1940, and 1947 R/C Airplane Nationals. The original plane resides at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. The Good brothers graduated from K with bachelor’s degrees in physics, and they then went on to earn doctorates in the subject.
K Alumnus’ Documentary Film Nominated for an Oscar
A documentary film by David France ’81 titled “How to Survive a Plague,” about the early years of the AIDS epidemic, is one of five in the category to be nominated for an Oscar Award. Oscar nomination is not the only recognition France has received for his film. The Gothic Independent Film Awards and the Boston Society of Film Critics voted it the best documentary film of 2012. And the Independent Spirit Awards, which occur the day before the Oscars, has nominated “How to Survive a Plague” for Best Documentary. France’s film chronicles the tireless efforts of activists in the 1980s and early 1990s bring attention to the disease and mount a response appropriate to it–in terms of research, social policies, and human dignity compassion. An article on France and the film appeared recently in the New York Times.