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Spring 2024

WSM Fall 2008

Fall 2008

Why do good eggs go bad?

In 2004, researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York produced a line of mice with an intriguing mutation. The mice make a defective form of a protein called SMC1beta that binds to chromosomes during the crossing-over stage. Pat Hunt and Terry Hassold, on the lookout for anything that might be involved in damage to chromosomes in the eggs of older women, recognized a hot prospect.

SMC1beta is part of a complex, or cluster, of four proteins called cohesins. The complex holds the two strands of each chromosome together while they break and recombine with the strands of their partner chromosome. Hunt and … » More …

Fall 2008

ROD: A True Story

Rod Retherford ’84 triumphed as an undersized athlete, but his plucky comeback tale has always been told in spaces that were too small to fully contain it. There were plenty of headlines in 1980 after a bullet ripped through the football player’s shoulder and lodged permanently in his neck, nearly killing him. Media interest soared after Retherford mounted a miraculous comeback and terrorized opposing offenses. When he left Martin Stadium behind, the story surfaced now and then, including a segment in the Legends of the Palouse film series by Jeff McQuarrie ’98. That in turn spurred a Washington State … » More …

Fall 2008

Dave Edler – “A real tough kid”

During his years as a Cougar baseball player, Dave Edler got chewed out many times by Bobo Brayton for his wild and headstrong ways. Once, Brayton caught his young star using marijuana. Edler told the coach that his father didn’t mind.

“We’ll see,” Brayton said, and phoned Edler’s father in Yakima. That resulted in “the fastest trip a guy ever took to Pullman from Yakima,” Brayton recently recalled with a laugh.

Edler left WSU in 1978, a few credits short of graduation, when he was drafted by the Seattle Mariners. He says he learned lots of lessons from the legendary coach, among them that “the … » More …

Fall 2008

Cougar Crew Days – The old crew’s back in town

Eight graying heads lean forward in unison and then back as 16 oars slide into the water and propel the boat forward. A racing shell of 50-somethings streaks by the Wawawai Landing as a crowd of more than three dozen Washington State University’s men’s crew alumni gather around the boathouse on the shores of the Snake River.

It is Saturday, March 15, and regardless of a chill wind and choppy waters, former team members have come from as far as Brazil for the annual Cougar Crew Days, a weekend event allowing current and former oarsmen, coxswains, and coaches, along with family and friends, to gather … » More …

Fall 2008

BJ Duft – Of meals and missions

At age 24, BJ Duft found himself in Bill Marriott’s private jet face-to-face with the CEO of Marriott International. They were headed back to Washington D.C. from Penn State University where Duft ’86 had gone to do some on-campus recruiting for the company and Marriott had attended a ceremony in his honor. During the flight Marriott turned to Duft and asked if he could change anything at the international hotel company, what would it be? Duft was so nervous that he has no clue what answer he managed to stammer out. What he does remember is that Marriott took a Steno notepad from his shirt … » More …

Fall 2008

What lies beneath – Pullman and its water

Financial hardship, fires, and spring floods: In 1890 the community of Pullman was in desperate need of some good news. A hungry blaze had leveled the city’s newly rebuilt commercial district only three years after it first burned to the ground in 1887.

Then on May 24, 1890 word got out that a “gusher” had been struck. Fifty gallons of water per minute rushed up to the surface where contractors had been drilling a well for the Palace Hotel. They had accidentally discovered an artesian source, a well under pressure that once tapped was forcing water up. It was the turning point for an early … » More …

Fall 2008

Reconsidering the oyster

FOR AN OYSTER LOVER, speeding down the Willapa River in an open boat toward Willapa Bay and its oyster beds must be like approaching the Celestial City. Even if it is cold for May, and gray, and spitting rain, everyone in the boat is smiling beatifically.

Approximately 15 percent of the oysters consumed in the United States come from Willapa Bay, just north of the mouth of the Columbia River. Ten thousand acres of the bay are devoted to oyster farming. Coast Seafood, whose CFO Kay Cogan ’79 and operations manager Tim Morris are escorting me to oyster heaven, is the largest oyster producer in … » More …