On February 2, 1991, during the first Iraq war, Capt. R. Dale Storr (’83 Mech. Engr.) was captured by Iraqi soldiers after his A-10 Thunderbolt was shot down near Kuwait. The 29-year-old Air Force pilot from Spokane was a prisoner of war for 33 days, spending a portion of that time in Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison, while his friends and family believed he had died in the plane crash. He was regularly beaten and interrogated by the secret police, but used techniques taught to him at the survival school at Fairchild Air Force Base to get through it.
Now a lieutenant colonel in the Washington … » More …
Before there was Wisteria Lane, there was the French royal court at the Palais du Louvre in Paris. It was a place of forced marriages, lovers and infidelities, imprisonments and poisonings, sword fights and murders. And all that was just within the castle walls.
A little bit of that past is hidden in Washington State University’s archives, in a delicate book with a yellow leather cover. It is a firsthand account of life there with details of some of the greatest scandals and intrigues of French history.
The 378-year-old vellum-paged book holds the memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, also known as Queen Margot. She was … » More …
Amelia Veneziano, a junior at Washington State University, has a weakness when it comes time to do her homework. When she settles in to her Pullman apartment and turns on her computer, instead of researching a paper or e-mailing a professor, she keys into her personal reflections and posts them on her blog.
Veneziano, “a virgo and a journalism student at wonderful wazzu” according to her internet Web-log page, spends at least five minutes writing about her latest crush, her deeds for the day, the results of the “What are you looking for in a relationship?” quiz she got from a friend, and, of course, … » More …
You don’t always need an address to find the Friel House. Just follow the music.
A short walk from campus, a group of music-minded students have found a home on C Street. The house looks small from the curb, but its three stories shelter seven students, and still have room for a formal dining room, a large kitchen with a breakfast nook, a living room, and a library.
The house is named for the Friel family, and for 54 years was home to Washington State University basketball coach Jack Friel and his wife, Catherine.
Catherine Friel died in 2003. Last year, her family agreed to … » More …
As a teen, Sarah Hentges had Wonder Woman and Princess Leia as her pop culture role models. One flew an invisible plane, and the other lived in another galaxy. Neither offered much of an idea of how a young American woman should be.
As a Washington State University graduate student, Hentges is on the trail of other American teen icons like Natalie Wood’s Deanie, who suffers sexual repression in the 1961 Splendor in the Grass, and Lindsay Lohan’s 2004 Lola, who is striving to be the center of attention in Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. She has dedicated much of her post-graduate education to … » More …
Since 1869, Bellevue has morphed from pioneer settlement to Norman-Rockwell small town to burgeoning suburb of Seattle. Now, with the help of a handful of WSU-trained architects, it's high-stepping into its new role as one of Washington's most vital urban centers.
» More ...In late January students, friends, and faculty gathered on the Pullman campus for a memorial service and candlelight vigil for First Lieutenant Jaime (Krausse) Campbell, who died when the BlackHawk helicopter she was flying went down in northern Iraq January 7. The 25-year-old graduated from WSU in 2002 with a degree in apparel, merchandising, and textiles.
Campbell grew up in Ephrata and had been the Washington State Rodeo Queen. At WSU, she was a member of the Army ROTC program, where she developed an interest in flying. After finishing her degree, she chose to pursue a career in aviation with the National Guard. She and … » More …
One rainy afternoon this spring filmmaker Francine Strickwerda entered the El Diablo coffee shop in Seattle. She ordered a cubano latte and then sat at a table overlooking Queen Anne Avenue. She looked around the busy room. The scene brought back memories of a time, a few years before, when she was working on her first documentary, a film about breasts. “I wrote a lot of grants for Busting Out sitting in this coffee shop,” she said.
Five years in the making, the hour-long movie is, in her words, “a strange mix of pop, politics, and history, and economics, and health, all these things that … » More …