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Spring 2024

Alumni

Summer 2011

Bill ’69 and Felicia ’73 Gaskins—All in stride

Bill Gaskins says he knows exactly when Felicia Cornwall fell in love with him. On a snowy day in 1963, the two were walking arm-in-arm along WSU’s Hello Walk.

Felicia, a sophomore from Tacoma, was taking mincing steps through the icy slush when Bill, a freshman from Spokane, told her she needed to be more bold.

“Look Felicia, you need to stride like this,” he said, stepping forward with the athletic gait of a running back, which he was. At that exact moment his feet flew out from under him and he landed on his backside.

Bill is laughing, filling the room with his … » More …

Summer 2011

Arun Raha ’91—The good, the bad, and the budget

When Arun Raha ’91 started work as the state of Washington’s chief economist three years ago, his new staffers welcomed him with a gift: an official Magic 8 Ball.

“I said ‘OK, great! Now I have a forecasting tool,’” he recalls.

If only it were that easy.

At 51, Raha is the E.F. Hutton of state government: When he talks, people listen. He speaks at more than 100 events a year, from universities to small-town chambers of commerce. His quarterly revenue forecasts are broadcast live on TV.

That’s because the forecast, once approved by a bipartisan council that Raha reports to, frames the state … » More …

Summer 2011

The Perfect Hunt

Nearing total exhaustion from my janitorial labors, I plopped my 19-year-old bones down in the cushy leather office chair of Dr. Seymour Slick, Dean of Science. Had I been of a thoughtful nature, I might at that moment have reflected that the way of life I so desperately clung to no longer existed for me. I was now a student and a janitor at a university. That other life was gone. Vanished. Evaporated. Had being in denial existed back then, I would have been a classic case. I simply couldn’t believe that my former life had slipped away like a thief in the night, taking … » More …

Summer 2011

From Burma to the Blazers

Richard Cho ’89 was born in Burma (Myanmar), an impoverished Asian country on the United Nations’ list of least-developed nations. When he was just three, his family moved to the United States, saving and economizing for a better life.

Four decades later, Cho has landed his dream job as a general manager in the National Basketball Association. Today, the first Asian American to become a GM leads the Portland Trail Blazers, the only remaining NBA team in the Pacific Northwest. Now he hires players, offering salaries in the millions.

“When I was growing up, when we emigrated here, my family was … » More …

Summer 2011

Letters in the Summer 2011 issue

 

Moral capital

Kudos to Jennifer Sherman for her good article summarizing her research and book about real-life experiences in Golden Valley. It describes the price of economic disaster in a rural atmosphere in a revealing and provocative way.

Moreover, we were struck by the completely unnecessary cause of this disaster in the first place. It seems that the collapse of the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest was “due in large part” to placing the protection of the spotted owl over the welfare and economic well being of the entire human population of not only Golden Valley, but also other communities in the logging … » More …

Summer 2011

Somewhere in France

The latest posting on our Coordinates website is from Margrit von Braun ’89 PhD, who writes from Nigeria. Margrit and her husband, Ian von Lindern, founded TerraGraphics, an environmental engineering company, in the 1980s. They have since developed an expertise in remediation of sites contaminated with heavy metals and are currently working to clean up lead contamination resulting from gold mining in Nigeria’s Zamfara State.

Over 400 children have died from the contamination. With no other income as lucrative as gold mining, the residents of Zamfara brought ore into family compounds, where women, many of whom are not allowed to leave … » More …

Summer 2011

A plan for Washington

In 1972, as Scott Carson was preparing to graduate from Washington State University, a counselor told him he was still six credits shy of his degree. The Vietnam veteran was astonished. “He said I had to complete these physical education credits.”

Carson had already attended several semesters of community college, was married, had served his country, and had only budgeted for two years in Pullman to finish his business degree. That a handful of phys. ed. credits stood in the way of his degree seemed absurd.

But the counselor was unwavering. Carson took it to the department head, who insisted that it was a … » More …

Summer 2011

The Things We Do for Our Dogs—and what they do for us

In 1974 between 15 and 18 million dogs and cats were killed in animal control centers. To address what he perceived as “wide-spread irresponsible animal ownership,” Leo Bustad ’49 DVM created the People-Pet Partnership and promoted research into the human-animal bond. Although it is impossible to assess the total impact of his work, the number of animals killed today is down to four million. And the pet-people bond manifests itself in ways beyond his comprehension.

» More ...

Video: Nicole Braux Taflinger narrates a slideshow of her photos from Occupied France in WWII

Nicole Braux Taflinger was only 13 when the Germans invaded France in 1940. She has published a memoir of her time growing up in Nancy, Lorraine, called Season of Suffering: Coming of Age in Occupied France, published by Washington State University Press in 2010. In it she recalls the severe shortages, collaboration, disappearances, and despair and hope of a teenage girl. After Nancy was liberated, Nicole met a dashing young American airman named Ancel Taflinger, General Patton’s personal pilot. They married and eventually settled in Pullman, Washington. 

In this narrated slideshow, Nicole talks about some of her photos and her youth.

 

 

Read … » More …