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Fall 2016

The Epidemic

“This program saved my life,” he says as he enters the room. Kris, 37, is in the Spokane Regional Health District methadone clinic where he has come for treatment of heroin addiction since 2008. The intense, dark-haired man speaks openly, earnestly, as if he has nothing left to lose.

Kris says his journey into addiction began, “Quite simply, by a doctor.” Struggling with pain from a minor car accident in 1999, he was prescribed increasingly stronger doses of hydrocodone and OxyContin over a nine-year period. The FBI eventually raided the unethical physician and closed his practice, leaving patients like Kris stranded and facing withdrawal when … » More …

Fall 2016

The 11th President

Kirk and Noel Schulz packed up their 25-foot, silver Airstream trailer in early June, and hit the road from Manhattan, Kansas. Kirk H. Schulz had just concluded seven successful years as president of Kansas State University. The journey to Washington State University—where he will take the reins as president, and Noel will join the engineering faculty—provided a time to reflect on careers of serving higher education, especially at land-grant universities like WSU.

They hung a Cougar flag on the Airstream when they camped at Rocky Mountain National Park and elsewhere along the way, getting ready to join the WSU community. However, this wasn’t the first … » More …

Fall 2016

Spirit of ’25

When the United States formally became a nation in 1787, everyone involved, from George Washington down, knew there was a piece missing. The nation might be bound together by a Constitution, but it actually remained a conglomeration of states, religions, ethnicities, regions and cultures. The lack of national unity was a serious threat, as the Civil War would demonstrate.

But how do you create national feeling? As twentieth-century philosopher Allen Bloom put it: “How do you get from individuals to a people, that is, from persons who care only for their particular good to a community of citizens who subordinate their good to the common … » More …

Fall 2016

Staying a jump ahead

Long before he was elected to the New Zealand Parliament, served as immigration minister, and held other national cabinet positions, Tuariki “John” Delamere ’74 was a long jumper with an attention-grabbing technique.

Delamere, a fixture on Washington State’s track team in the early 1970s, didn’t invent The Flip. But he so excelled at the leaping mid-air forward somersault it sometimes seemed as if he had.

His style was so gravity-defyingly smooth that when Sports Illustrated wanted to learn more about The Flip, and the debate that would eventually lead to the technique’s prohibition, the magazine sent a crew to the 1974 … » More …

Fall 2016

We Gotta Get Out of this Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War

Doug Bradley ’74 and Craig Werner

University of Massachusetts Press: 2015

Music is embodied, a word that means it grabs you by the guts until you do something: dance, weep, make love … something. Music is visceral in another way, too: We connect the dots of our personal histories based on the tunes we were listening to at the time.

For a veteran, that might be more than she … » More …

Fall 2016

Pardon My French: How a Grumpy American Fell in Love with France

Allen Johnson ’85 PhD

Yucca Publishing: 2015

Funny, sexy, smart. If I only had three words in which to tell you about the pleasures of Allen Johnson’s Pardon My French, those’d be the ones.

Johnson spent a year in France with his wife, Nita, and Pardon My French relates their adventures in short vignettes arranged thematically.

One of the themes is that the French are not like us: They have their own special … » More …

Fall 2016

Dave Hagelganz

Dave Hagelganz, Saxophone; Dru Heller, drums; Scott Steed, bass; Brian Ward, piano

WSU Recordings: 2014

Tenor saxophonist Dave Hagelganz leads a quartet of highly compatible musicians in this overdue self-titled debut album, joined by fellow professors Brian Ward (Washington State University) and Scott Steed (Eastern Washington University, Whitworth University), as well as young lion Dru Heller from Spokane. On the surface, this album appears as a humble offering to today’s jazz scene. What can … » More …

Fall 2016

Victoria Tung ’96

Some traveled for three days through the humid air of Vietnam to get to the clinic offered by Victoria Tung ’96 and her colleagues.

“We were in one of the poorest regions of Vietnam,” Tung says. Over the course of a week, the all-volunteer Venture to Heal team offered two clinics, treating nearly 1,300 people. “We had a 67-year-old man who had never before seen a health care provider.”

“I have always been interested in global health issues and in serving people in underprivileged areas,” Tung says. That passion led her to her first jobs after graduating from WSU with a nutrition degree, working as … » More …

Fall 2016

Bob Olds ’64, DVM ’67

If you want to get to know Bob Olds ’64, DVM ’67, just ask Lizzy. Sure, Lizzy is a dog and can’t speak, but her story speaks volumes.

Found beaten on the streets of Tijuana, Lizzy’s jaw was so badly damaged she couldn’t close her mouth, and could neither eat nor drink. Rescued by members of a Los Angeles-based nonprofit, The Forgotten Dog, Lizzy got a complicated, pro bono surgery that repaired the damage to her jaw. The surgeon? Bob Olds. Lizzy is now a happy, normal dog.

Olds always wanted to be a vet. Kids love animals, he says, and he never had any … » More …

Fall 2016

Class notes

To read more class notes or post your own, visit the online class notes site, MyStory

1960s

Verne D. Campbell (’61 Music) recently published his book, Encore Horns: Giving Wind Instruments a New Life for Young Musicians, which chronicles his efforts to acquire, refurbish, and donate used flutes, clarinets, trumpets, trombones, and other wind instruments to middle schools for the use of beginning band students.

Virginia (Franklin) Campbell (’61 Music) was elected president of the National League of American Pen Women, Inc. Comprised of professional writers, artists, and musicians, this is the oldest women’s arts organization in the United States, founded in 1897.

… » More …