Golden Grad and Diamond Grad Reunion
Each year the WSU Alumni Association coordinates a very special event, which brings graduates back to the Pullman campus for their 50-year (Golden Grad) and 60-year (Diamond Grad) Reunions. The College of Sciences Office of Development hosts a luncheon to honor the Sciences majors among the returning alumni. The luncheon is a great time to get reacquainted with friends and share and compare stories of then and now.
This year, graduates from the Class of 1946 joined us for the Diamond Grad Reunion and grads from the Class of 1956 were here for the Golden Grad Reunion. A great time was had by all!
Meet the College of Sciences 2006 Diamond and Golden Grads
We were pleased to welcome our alumni from 50 and 60 years ago—our
Golden and Diamond Grads—back to campus on April 26. This
year the College of Sciences was fortunate to host four Diamond
Grads and twelve Golden Grads at our annual sciences reunion luncheon
where many memories were shared. In addition to those who made
the trip, several who could not attend sent biographical information,
and some attended the reunion, but were not available for the photo.
Their notes are also included below. We hope you enjoy their stories.
Diamond
grads, back row from the left: Charles Hough, Ramy Hough, Eve Hollingbery.
Front row: Marian Elberson, Betty Kuhl.
Diamond Grads: Class of 1946
Marian (Stouffer) Elberson and her husband Alden “Elby” both attended Washington State College. She majored in bacteriology and belonged to Alpha Chi Omega. He left to go to war and later finished engineering school at Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia where she taught biological sciences for a few years. After graduation, he joined Bethlehem Steel and his first job was as field engineer on the second Tacoma Narrows Bridge.
They lived for
a time in San Mateo where she taught sciences in a continuation
school. Later they returned to the Bethlehem Steel home office in
Pennsylvania. At retirement they moved to Seattle. In 1993 the pair
rode 300 miles with a tour group down the Danube through Germany
and Austria. They had three children and Marian now lives in Bellevue.
Elby passed away in 2003.
Eve (Allert)
Hollingbery majored in bacteriology and was also an Alpha
Chi Omega. Her father Cornelius Allert received an honorary Cougar
Father degree because all eight of his children attended WSC. During
the war, Eve worked as a medical technologist at Spokane hospitals.
When he returned from the war, Eve married Don Hollingbery, son
of legendary football coach Babe Hollingbery, who became a Yakima/Moses
Lake area architect; their five children all attended WSU as well.
Eve was named a WSU Mother of the Year.
She taught medical
terminology and English as a second language at Yakima Community
College and, in 1973, she earned a master's degree at Eastern State
College. Eve now lives in Yakima, enjoys weaving baskets and writing
poetry, and swims daily.
Ramy (Newland) Hough earned her WSC degree in chemistry and also became a member of Alpha Chi Omega. She remembers when Wilson Compton became president of the college and his famous brother Arthur, one of the developers of the atomic bomb, attended his inauguration.
Ramy and her
husband Charles farmed in Kentucky, restored three homes (one is
now on the National Register of Historic Places) and then moved
to Seattle, where he practiced law and she taught school. In
the summer of 1969, she taught the three-week Student Conservation
Association Boys’ Camp on Mount Rainier. The boys, 16
to 18 year-olds, did volunteer work and learned survival skills.
The high point was hearing a report on their transistor
radio of the first man to walk on the moon. Ramy and Charles
now live in Seattle.
Betty (Drake) Kuhl, a native of Selah, earned a bacteriology degree while living in McCroskey Hall. Her most vivid memory from her freshmen year was learning that Pearl Harbor had been bombed.
Betty met her husband, Bill Kuhl, a veterinary medicine student at WSC. After living a year in Seattle, they moved to Baker City, Oregon, where Bill established his practice. After raising four daughters, Betty opened a bookstore called Betty’s Books. After retiring and after Bill’s death, she wrote a book about his life, “Dr. Bill Kuhl, Family and Friends.” Betty still lives in Baker City.
Golden grads, back row from the left: Carol Kelly, Rod Faubion,
Phil O'Neill, William Scopf, Alan Neal, Tom Norris, Lila Kern,
Mel Kern. Front row: Miriam Faubion, Barbara O'Neill,
Jane Schopf, Shirley Melville, Emma Jean Neal, Pat Norris.
Golden Grads: Class of 1956
After earning her undergraduate degree in bacteriology, Marilyn (Johnson) Capener entered a post-graduate training course in Public Health Microbiology at the California Department of Health Services Laboratory. She passed all the exams and became a Certified Public Health Microbiologist. Marilyn eventually became director of the Berkeley City Health Laboratory, and later advanced to section chief at the California State Microbial Diseases Laboratory.
Marilyn married Gene Capener, who was employed by the Matson Navigation Company.
Marilyn retired
in 2003 and lives in Orinda, Calif. She continues to be active in
her community by participating on a social justice committee that
provides shelter care to homeless people.
Rosemary (Long) Demich and her husband Ron earned their ways through college by working at Stadium Commons. Ron was a Navy pilot during the war. He had a WSC business degree and became an accountant and later joined his family's hardware business in Yelm, where she also worked. Ron died in 2002.
Rosemary raised
six children, including a son with learning disabilities who is
now out on his own. She spent many an hour supporting her children
in the concession stands at basketball and football games as part
of the booster club. She now enjoys water aerobics and visiting
friends and family.
Miriam (Griffths) Faubion was a nursing student who lived in Regents Hill Hall. Once when returning from vacation, she became lost and got back to the dorm past curfew. Her punishment was three nights washing floors, unable to go out or even to the library. Her first and last offense!
Miriam worked
28 years as a nurse in the labor and delivery wards at Northwest
Hospital in Seattle. She and her husband Roderick, who worked as
a geological engineer with Burlington Northern Railroad, had four
children and have celebrated more than 50 years of marriage. She
enjoys gardening, cooking and traveling the world. The Faubions
live in Bothell.
Nursing graduate, Carol (Albrecht) Kelly worked for over 20 years at the Veteran's Hospital in Vancouver, Wash. The assignment she found most rewarding was in the Hospice Ward.
She and her late
husband, Clifford, had two children. Their son David attended WSU
earning a degree in agriculture in 1981 and his daughter, Ashley,has
enrolled for this fall.
Lila (Hugill) Kern, also a nursing graduate, lived in Regents Hill Hall, West House and Finch Hall in Spokane. She married WSC 1955 graduate Albert Jenisch. They had five children. After his death, Lila worked for three orthopedic surgeons in order to support her family.
In 1985 she married
Mel Kern, a high school music teacher. The Kerns live in Vancouver
and Lila has enjoyed learning to play the flute in recent years.
Shirley (Baldwin) Melville earned her WSC degree in bacteriology while living in Wilmer Hall. She married James Melville, who earned a bachelor's in chemistry in 1956 and a doctorate in 1971 at age 40. After she graduated, Shirley worked in the St. Lukes' Hospital Laboratory in Spokane. When her husband was discharged from the Air Force they went back to the family farm in Lamont, Wash. After James got his advanced degree, they lived in Tracy, Calif., where he worked at the wastewater treatment lab for five years. They later returned to the Lamont farm, where Shirley still lives.
Shirley enjoyed
teaching. After she took her first course in bacteriology, BACT
101, she was hired to run the beginning lab for the next year. “I
was able to teach that lab while it was still fresh in my mind.”
She also taught new hires to run the lab in Tracy.
After earning
a bacteriology degree at WSC, Emma (Barrett) Neal
went on to Ohio State University for a master's degree. Afterwards
she worked for Pfizer in vaccine development in Terre Haute, Indiana,
for four years. She met her husband Alan Neal there. The
Neals had two children and Emma opted not to return to work. She
was very active in her church and with music, in sports, and volunteering
with the Girl Scouts. She especially enjoyed working
with youth. A special adventure took the Neals on a
300-mile canoe trip on the Wabash River in Indiana.
H. Thomas Norris and his wife Patricia (Henry) Norris were both science students at WSC in the class of 1956. Tom went on to the University of Southern California Medical School and graduated in 1959. His residency training was interrupted by the Berlin Wall crisis and he spent two years in the Medical Corps at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research involved in human cholera research.
After his residency in Boston, he joined the Department of Pathology at the University of Washington, was granted tenure and advanced to a full professor. In 1983, he was recruited to become chair of the pathology department in the East Carolina University School of Medicine in Greenville, North Carolina, and chief of pathology in their teaching hospital.
Since retiring in 1997, Tom has served as president of the East Carolina Musical Arts Education Foundation, which raised $1.5 million to acquire a pipe organ, which is now located in the St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Greenville. In 2004, Tom received a WSU alumni Achievement Award.
Pat Norris transferred to WSC from Stanford. She earned a bacteriology degree and joined Pi Beta Phi. She worked as a medical technologist in California and Boston until their children were born. She is a photographer and does her own darkroom work.
Tom and Pat enjoy
world travel and split their year between Greenville and Hayden
Lake, Idaho. Pat enjoys their trips abroad and their drives across
the United States.
Barbara (Watkins) O'Neill is a nursing graduate who lived at Regents Hill Hall. She remembers enjoying ice skating on the flooded and frozen baseball field near the field house.
She married Phillip O'Neill, a class of 53 business major who worked as a purchasing agent for Boeing for 34 years.
Barbara advanced as a professional nursing educator. She specialized in obstetrics/gynecology her entire career. She began teaching obstetrical nursing at Tacoma School of Nursing and decided to complete a Master's of Nursing at the University of Washington. Her last teaching position was at Shoreline Community College; she retired in 1994.
A high point in her career was serving as national president of the Nurses Association of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in 1982.
Barbara continues
community involvement by volunteering with the WSU Pierce County
Extension office and at her church as a sewing teacher. The O'Neills
live in Kent.
Thomas
Proteau was a pre-dentistry student. He followed
his WSC experience with dental school at University of Washington.
He served in the Navy five years and was in private practice
for 30. His wife is Katie (Monroe) Proteau, a 58
liberal arts major. They live in Bremerton and love to travel.
Tom is a dedicated member of the Lion's Club and for
two years served as chairman of the board for the Northwest Lion's
Club Eye Bank.
Jane (Shen) and J. William Schopf were guests at the Sciences luncheon. Jane earned a WSC horticulture degree. She had come from China in 1951 and continued her post WSC schooling at Michigan State University to earn a Ph.D. She completed a postdoc at Argonne National Lab studying space biology.
She became an associate program director at the National Science Foundation and in 1978 participated in a botanical delegation to China. She served as assistant vice-chancellor for research at UCLA and has traveled the world on various field trips, sabbaticals and to attend conferences.
Jane has recently germinated the oldest seed that has successfully sprouted a 1300 year old lotus seed. Her current research is on healthy aging and cellular repair that could be useful to all organisms including humans.
William graduated from Oberlin College and HarvardUniversity and taught geology at UCLA. He is noted for organizing the Precambrian Paleobiology Research Group and the Center for the Study of Evolution and Origin of Life.
The
following folks are members of the class of 1956 and submitted alumni
biographies, although they were unable to attend the reunion.
John Rumely, attended Oberlin College, but his progress was interrupted by the Army for two years. He graduated in 1948. After a summer collecting and identifying algae at Woods Hole, Mass., he entered graduate school at Washington State College, graduating with a Ph.D. in botany in 1956.
That year he started
working in plant ecology at Montana State College in Bozeman, Mont.,
switching to plant taxonomy in 1972. He offically retired in 1988,
but has continued to work in plant taxonomy. I send best wishes
to all former acquaintances, said John.
Donald
Steiger earned a geology degree and lived in the Alpha
Gamma Rho house. He married Bettie (Alexander) Steiger, 56, Liberal
Arts. Donald is a retired Army colonel. He spent the first 28 years
of his career as a military intelligence officer, serving in Germany,
Korea, and Vietnam. He also served as an attach to Pakistan, had
duty in the Pentagon, and commanded a battalion in San Antonio,
Texas, before retiring as director of attach training for the Department
of Defense in 1986. He attended the National War College in 1982.
Don co-founded a business building houses in the D.C. area before
moving to California in 1991. He has maintained his residency in
Colfax, Wash., where he owns and manages a wheat farm near Diamond.
A WSU President's Associate, Don serves on the WSU Foundation's
Gift Acceptance and Management Committee.
Bob C. Swanbeck, a zoology major, joined Sigma Alpha Epsilon. He explains, I am only Class of 1956 by accident! I attended WSC 1947 to 50 and then got into medical school. When I was a General Practitioner resident at Tulare County General Hospital, I wrote to WSC about my B.S. degree. Dr. (Herbert) Eastlick wrote that if I would take a four- hour course by correspondence I would get my degree. I took Contemporary International Politics, got an A and my B.S. with Honors. The diploma came in the mail, two years after my M.D.!
Bob's WSC memories
include hitting a grand slam home run to win the softball championship
for SAE in 1950 and taking his medical college entrance exam on
a Saturday when WSC was playing USC in the WSC stadium lots of noise!
He has particularly enjoyed attending a barbershop quartet competition
in Boston, and traveling all over the world.