Alumni

Fall 2011

Rhonda Kromm ’86, ’05

Rhonda Kromm wouldn’t let car problems keep her from going to college. Since her old vehicle wouldn’t make the drive from Moses Lake, she hitchhiked to Spokane and hiked up the hill to Spokane Community College to enroll. Then she hiked back down the hill to find another ride home.

She wouldn’t let money hold her back, either. With an AA degree completed, Kromm took a year off from school to save up. Then she moved to Colfax, spent mornings taking classes at WSU’s Pullman campus and afternoons coaching at Jennings Elementary. She finished her degree in education in 1986 and that summer moved with … » More …

Fall 2011

Randall Johnson’s Cougar logo turns 75—What this place needs

When Randall Johnson was a student at Washington State College, he would occasionally stop and visit Butch. This was the 1930s, when Butch was a real cougar and lived in a cage near Martin Stadium.

“He could care less,” wrote Johnson ’38 in a short reminiscence, “but it was a great opportunity for an artist to make a close up study of a great subject.”

Johnson, who was born and raised in Whitman County, came to Washington State College to study fine arts. His teachers included Worth Griffin and Clyfford Still. He paid his way through college producing “window displays, signs, showcards, and illustrations … » More …

Fall 2011

A Leonard legacy

Elmer O. Leonard started as a student at Washington State College in 1915. When the call came in 1918, he headed to Europe and the Great War as a soldier. Like a number of other young men, he was killed in combat and never returned to Pullman and the college.

His nephew and namesake Elmer F. Leonard was born a year later. He followed in his uncle’s footsteps to Pullman, enrolling at WSC in 1939, joining the Army and serving in World War II from 1942 to 1946, and eventually graduating from WSC in 1949.

Ever since the first two Elmer Leonards, WSU has … » More …

Fall 2011

Darnell Sue ’02—A girl and her power

This thing called Girl Power is at work well before the scheduled hour of 6 p.m. A peek into Bellevue’s Pure Barre gym one evening in May offers a view of more than a half dozen women in dresses and high heels setting up tables, filling swag bags, and arranging food and cocktails for a crowd. In the middle of the whirl is Darnell Sue ’02 in a dress of black and hot pink, her signature colors, her hair twisted into a chignon, a notepad under her arm.

This is the set up for Girl Power Hour, a “stylish networking event” held the third Thursday … » More …

Fall 2011

Letters in the Fall 2011 issue

Moral capital

I, too, enjoyed Jennifer Sherman’s interesting and authoritative piece on Golden Valley in the spring edition. I winced a bit, however, at the “in large part due to the 1992 spotted owl ruling” but, because her story seemed directed toward effects of economic collapse, not causes, I did not write. Then came the summer issue with Gordon Pilcher’s leap from “in large part” to apparently placing all blame for employment loss on owl protection.

The issue was not that simple. As a reporter for The Oregonian in Washington, D.C., from 1989 to 1993 I had a close-up view at what we dubbed … » More …

Fall 2011

Seeing the trees

At the south end of Whidbey Island, off a tree-lined road, Linda Kast ’75 pulls her station wagon up to a gate and jumps out. She opens her hatchback and extracts a thick folder containing maps, a history, and an inventory of her small wooded acreage.

As she leafs through it she explains that she bought this 11-acre forest nine years ago in memory of land her family used to own and regularly visit on Whidbey when she was a child growing up in Seattle.

At the time she bought the property, Kast signed up for a forest stewardship class with Washington State University. … » More …

Summer 2011

The Lady Who Kept Things

There was once a small, plump, good-natured lady who lived in a great old house with a cantankerous husband named Harold. She was about the best mate a man could have and he was about the worst mate anything could have.

The lady, whose name was Emma, had a peculiar habit, however, and that was that she never threw anything away. Her closets bulged with heaps of clothes and stacks of magazines and balls of string and boxes of buttons— in short, just about anything that had ever entered into the life of Emma was still there someplace, boxed or bundled up in the great … » More …

Gallery: Cougs and their dogs

A gallery of WSU alumni, faculty, staff, and family
with their dogs.

Photos by Robert Hubner

Summer 2011

Don’t be a stranger—use Coug connections to break into a new community

In 2006, when David Cox ’05 moved 1,200 miles from Pullman to Phoenix, he didn’t have many ties to the community. Hungry for new friends, he emailed the Washington State University Alumni Association and learned that Lisa Steele-Haberly ’99 in Tucson could help him track down local alumni. It turned out that she was head of the area’s chapter of the alumni association. Cox immediately offered to help organize outings. “We just started coordinating,” he says. “She would plan alumni events in Tucson, and I would organize things in Phoenix.” He helped pull together networking events, game viewing parties, and Northwest wine tastings at local … » More …

Summer 2011

Kristine (McClary) Vannoy ’87—The⁠ facts⁠ of⁠ fudge

“I’m easy to spot. I’m six-foot-two,” says Kristine (McClary) Vannoy, as we plan our meeting at an upscale grocery in Seattle. But when she appears, it’s not her height that’s eye-catching, or even her long red hair. It’s the packages of freshly-made fudge that fill her hands.

Vannoy (’87 Comm.) is the founder, owner, and main employee of Fat Cat Fudge, a company that makes three different varieties of fudge sold in 20 grocery stores in the Puget Sound area.

“It’s a fresh fudge,” she says. “It’s not meant to sit on a shelf for six months in a candy … » More …