1930s

Necia Bennett Huntley (’35 Hist.) and her late husband, Elmer Huntley (x’37 Lib. Arts), Olympia, were recognized as Laureates of Washington State University for the scholarship they established at WSU. Elmer was a longtime legislator from eastern Washington.

Richard O. Moss (’36 Arch. Engr.), 92, and his wife of 65 years, Karrie, live in Spokane’s Rockwood Manor. She is a retired elementary schoolteacher. He worked for the Army Corps of Engineers in Anchorage, Alaska, for nine years, and then in Seattle before joining the Atomic Energy Commission in Las Vegas. He helped set up the underground nuclear test sites at Jackass Flats, Nevada, and later at a remote island in Alaska.

1940s

George Clinton Fullmer ’44 is retired. He is editor of a monthly newsletter for a 300-member retirement home in Los Gatos, California, and continues to write monthly musical parodies to introduce the speaker at the 375-member Sons in Retirement brunch in Palo Alto.

Jean Lancaster (’47 Educ.), retired educator in Longview, spent a week on Easter Island.

1950s

Ed Bator (’50 Phys. Educ.), Moses Lake, has been inducted into the Washington Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame. As baseball coach at Moses Lake High School, 1953-68 and 1972-79, he compiled a 289-207-2 record.

Charles E. Millard (’53 Gen. St.), Yakima, was selected to the Washington State High School Track & Field Coaches Hall of Fame in January 2003. His son, Gary Millard (’87 Gen. St.), was voted Track & Field Coach of the Year for winning the 3A Girls state track championship at Eastmont High School in East Wenatchee.

Joanne Layman Hespelt (’59 Educ.) has traveled to New Zealand and 11,570 miles across the U.S. and Canada with her husband since retiring from the Moscow, Idaho, school district.

1960s

Connie Millard Niva (’62 Bact.) was honored as the Everett Area Chamber of Commerce’s 2003 Citizen of the Year. She is a former member of the Everett City Council and served on the Washington State Transportation Commission for 10 years. She is a WSU regent.

Meredith G. Cunningham (’64 Engl.), Mukilteo, spends six months a year in a small Mexican village, but doesn’t leave the Northwest until after the Cougar football season.

Gordon L. Douglas (’65 Zool.) completed his term as president of the 7,500-member American Academy of Periodontology at the 89th annual meeting of the AAP in San Francisco September 2003. He maintains a full-time private periodontal practice in Sacramento and Folsom, and is a part-time educator and clinical researcher.

Former provost at University of Iowa Jon Whitmore (’67 Speech, ’68 M.A. Speech) became the 14th president of Texas Tech University in September 2003. He served as chair of the Division of Theater at West Virginia University, 1979-83, and as assistant to the president, 1983-84. He was dean of the faculty of arts and letters at the State University of New York, Buffalo, 1985, and dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin, 1990.

Melinda Daugherty Beasley (’68 Political Sci.) is an associate broker at Beasley Realty in Pullman.

Robert Ivie (’68 M.A. Speech, ’73 Ph.D. Speech) is a professor in communication and culture at Indiana University. His specialty is war rhetoric. In November 2003 he was invited to the United Nations’ two-day conference on terrorism. There he, UN officials, CEOs, and university scholars explored options beyond coercion.

Donald “Joe” MacLean (’68 Phys. Educ., ’74 M.A.T. Phys. Educ.) is director of the Recreational Sports Department and oversees the intramural sports program at Texas Tech University.

Sports agent Joe Urban (x’69 Bus. Mgmt.) heads the baseball division of Octagon Worldwide, a sports management and marketing company in Manhattan.

1970s

Gerald R. Girod (’70 Ed.D.) has retired as dean of education at Western Oregon University in Monmouth.

John Amos (’72 Agri.) and his wife, Cynthia, live in Mission Viejo, California. He is western regional sales manager for The Mentholatum Co. Their daughter, Janel Amos (’00 Educ., ’00 Teaching Cert.), married Ben Kincheloe (’99 Educ., ’99 Teaching Cert.) August 16, 2003, in Yakima.

Wayne Hamasaki (’72 Educ.) is an elementary school principal in the Issaquah School District.

Alvin De Jong (’72 Ph.D.), professor of biological sciences at California Polytechnic State University, San Louis Obispo, was one of three professors to receive the university’s highest teaching honor for 2002-03. His scientific papers have been published in the journals Condor and Physiology and Behavior.

Linda D. Zerba (’72 Math.), Athena, Oregon, taught high-school and middle-school math for 26 years. For the past five years, she’s been a regional math consultant for McDougal Littell.

Mary A. Fukuyama (’73 M.S. Educ., ’81 Ph.D. Educ.), clinical professor at the University of Florida, Gainesville, has been elected a 2004 fellow of the American Psychological Association. Fellows must demonstrate the national impact of their work, such as numerous research-based publications, leadership roles within psychology, or community service in their clinical practice. She joined the UF faculty in 1982.

Douglas “Scott” Knight (’73 Political Sci., ’76 Teaching Cert.) was selected as 2003 Coach of the Year by the American Baseball Coaches Association, Region VII, which covers seven western states. Selection was based on his success as longtime baseball coach at Stanwood High School, where he continues to teach, and his involvement with the Washington State High School Baseball Coaches Association. He was inducted into the Washington State Baseball Hall of Fame in 1993. He coached high-school baseball for 33 years.

Mark Murphy (’74 Police Sci., ’74 Political Sci.) has joined the Yellowstone County Attorney’s Office in Billings, Montana, as new chief deputy county attorney for criminal cases.

Clifford Webster (’74 Political Sci.) has been elected president of the State Capital Global Law Firm Group, an international network of capital-based law firms. He is a principal at Carney Badley Spellman, a Seattle law firm, and heads the government affairs practice group.

Tom Norwalk (’75 Lib. Arts, ’76 Comm.) has been promoted to president and chief operating officer of Seattle Hospitality Group. The company has ownership and investment interests in Sheraton Seattle Hotel & Towers and the Pacific Plaza Hotel, Seattle, and the Monterey Marriott in California.

Joy Beggs Rapp (’75 Educ., ’91 Ed.D.), superintendent of the Lewiston, Idaho, school district, received the Idaho Superintendent of the Year Award at the American Association of School Administrators conference in New Orleans in February 2003.

Rob Ramer (’76 Civil Engr.) is district purchasing manager for Community Colleges of Spokane.

As a landscape architect for the Umpqua, Oregon, National Forest, Christina Schroeder Lilienthal (’76 Land. Arch.) is coordinator for the Rogue-Umpqua Scenic Byway, the 172-mile loop from Highway 138 in Roseburg past Diamond Lake to Highway 230, and on through the Rogue River National Forest and Gold Hill.

Terry W. Van Ellen (’76 Phys. Educ., ’77 Teaching Cert.), Kemah, Texas, was named one of three national finalists for the 2003 Social Services Medal sponsored by the Partnership for Public Services in Washington, D.C. An operations specialist at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development since 1998, he was instrumental in the construction of Public Inc., a nonprofit school of entrepreneurship for impoverished children in Galveston. He also facilitated the building of the first new housing development there for more than 20 years. His technical assistance helped lead to the construction of 40 new privately owned homes in a location where a dilapidated housing project once stood.

Tracy Barry (’77 Comm.) has completed 20 years as a weeknight news anchor for KGW-TV in Portland. She’s seen the station’s news philosophy change⁠—initially emphasizing news coverage by helicopter, then moving into tabloid territory⁠—before settling on what she describes as “an emphasis on responsible reporting.” She and her husband, Larry Blackmar, have adopted two daughters from China.

Ginny Boyle (’77 Educ., ’89 M.Ed.) is now vice president for operations at the WSU Foundation, after spending nine years as assistant director of alumni relations at WSU.

Jenise L. Wolff Falk (’78 Educ., Teaching Cert.) is a vice principal in the Pleasanton, California, school district.

Sue Lani Wicht Madsen (’78 Arch.) and her husband, Craig, have a family ranching business near Edwall called Healing Hooves. They raise goats and sheep and provide natural vegetation management services to landowners across the state. In a private architecture practice, she works extensively with public hospital and rural health-care facilities in eastern Washington, as well as with a variety of community-focused projects, including the post-flood restoration of the Ferry County Fairgrounds.

Don Lynch (’79 Finance), Los Angeles, is author of Ghosts of the Abyss. The book describes the expedition filmmaker James Cameron conducted in August and September 2001, when he returned to the wreck of the Titanic to explore the ship’s interior.

After retiring from the Army in 1997, Roger P. Schatzel (’79 Forest & Range Mgmt.) worked in telecommunications for three years. In 2000 he obtained a residential contractor’s license and started his own company, Top Dog Contracting, specializing in custom home construction in Tampa, Florida.

Walter P. Weisenburger (’79 M.S. Psych, ’84 Ph.D. Psych.) recently climbed 18,000-foot Mt. Elbrus in Russia. He serves on the editorial board of the journal Neurotoxicology and Teratology. He is a senior research investigator for Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, which is working to develop better methods for assessing the potential of compounds to affect function in the unborn.

1980s

Ken McElvain (’80 Compt. Sci., ’80 Math.) is cofounder and CEO of Synplicity, Inc., a leading supplier of software design and verification of semiconductors in Sunnyvale, California. The company has more than 260 employees in 20 facilities worldwide.

In March 2003, Herb Berg (’81 Educ.) was appointed superintendent of Kershaw County School District in Camden, South Carolina.

Russ Wheelhouse (’81 Comm.) opened Blue Moon Antiques in Pullman in 1985, and later managed the Square One Antique Mall for a decade. In 2001, he purchased Deluxe Used Goods, an antique and resale shop in Uniontown.

Charles H. Bombardier (’84 M.S. Psych., ’87 Ph.D. Psych.), an associate professor of rehabilitation medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine, was elected a 2004 fellow of the American Psychological Association.

Tom Feist (’84 Elect. Engr.) is vice president of marketing for AccellChip, Milpitas, California, one of the leading providers of high-level design tools and models for acceleration and implementation of DSP algorithms in silicon.

Curt Roberts (’84 Hotel & Rest. Adm.) is district manager for GMAC in Bonney Lake, where he lives with his wife, Janelle. He increased the operation from one branch and five employees to five branches and 30 employees in western Washington.

Shirley Skidmore (’84 Comm., ’89 M.A. Comm., ’02 Engl.) is director of communications for the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction in Olympia.

Author of two critically acclaimed memoirs, In the Wilderness (finalist for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize) and Hungry for the World, Kim Barnes (’85 M.A. Engl.) has published her first novel, Finding Caruso (Putnam, March 2003).

Irene Gonzales (’85 Educ.) is executive director of teaching and learning services for the Spokane Public Schools.

After three years as publisher of the Walla Walla-Union Bulletin, Michael Shepard (’85 Comm.) was named publisher of the Yakima Herald-Republic in September 2003. He began his newspaper career in 1985 as a reporter with the Moscow-Pullman Daily News before becoming vice president of Sound Publishing, Inc., where he helped manage the company’s 16 newspapers and 250 employees in the Puget Sound area.

While on professional leave from the Pullman School District in 2002-03, Kristi Rennebohm Franz (’89 M.Ed.) was a visiting practitioner at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. Now she is a lead teacher for the International Education and Resource Network.

Michelle Zahrly (’89 Comm.), communications manager for the Washington Arts Commission in Olympia, returned to the Pullman campus in September 2003 for the dedication of Palouse Columns, six white-toned, 24-foot vertical columns created by Seattle artist Robert Maki.

1990s

Cindi Nowlin Carlisle (’91 M.Ed.) is a counselor at Chief Joseph Middle School in Richland, and an adjunct faculty member in the counselor preparation program at WSU Tri-Cities.

Marine Corps Reserves major Terrance R. Thomas III (’91 Intl. Bus.) completed a five-month deployment to Kuwait. During “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” teams from Thomas’s unit controlled close air support missions throughout the Ramallah Oil Fields and the city of Basrah.

George Bombel (’92 M.Ed.) provides psychotherapy and clinical social services for the Seattle Counseling Service and maintains an independent practice.

Valerie Morgan Akerson (’93 Educ.), an associate professor of education at Indiana University, received the IU Trustees’ Teaching Award in March 2003.

Chad Pearson (’93 Hotel & Rest. Adm.) is sales manager for the Marina del Rey Marriott. He married Jennifer Kubota in November 2003. They reside in Redondo Beach, California.

Kerri Richard Wegner (’94 M.Ed.), assistant professor of education at Eastern Oregon University in LaGrande, has developed a program to prepare teachers to teach the growing number of Latino students in the area.

Bill Druffel (’95 Animal Sci.) and Katie Evermann Druffel (’96 Sociology), Seattle, welcomed their first child, Henry Joseph, November 3, 2003. Bill is an attorney in the King County prosecuting attorney’s office.

Jeanne H. Yamamura (’95 Ph.D. Bus. Adm.), associate professor of accounting at the University of Nevada, Reno, received a research fellowship for spring 2003 from the Economic Research Center of the School of Economics at Nagoya University in Japan.

Stephen Rice (’96 Crim. Just.) received the National Award for Heroism, the highest honor awarded by the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association. He was cited for evacuating American citizens and other foreign nationals trapped in Palestinian territories in March and April 2002. He also received a Meritorious Honor for reestablishing the U.S. diplomatic presence in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2002. He is a security officer assigned to the U.S. embassy in Berlin.

Susan Green Clayton (’98 Educ.) teaches freshman and sophomore language arts at Seattle’s Nathan Hale High School.

Janet Collar (’99 Nursing, ’02 Master’s in Nursing), Spokane, has joined Heart Clinics Northwest. She previously was a clinical instructor at the Intercollegiate Center for Nursing Education/WSU Spokane, and worked in an acute cardiac-care unit.

2000s

Marlene Uilani Navor (’00 Comm.) joined Kansas State University in August 2003 as an assistant sports information director for the women’s basketball and tennis programs.

Todd Benzell (’02 Crop Sci.) is assistant superintendent at the Overlake Golf and Country Club in Bellevue.

Jeff Jaeger (’02 Comm.) joined KVBC-TV in Las Vegas after leaving KNDU-TV in the Tri-Cities.