Wabash FYI

Zach Canon ’16 – Alumni from the past seven decades, hailing from all over the United States gathered for Wabash’s tenth annual Big Bash Celebration that took place last weekend on the Wabash campus. Alumni as fresh as 2013 and as experienced as 1943 congregated for a time of festivities, story telling, and an opportunity to relive the glory (or shame) of the time-honored Wabash tradition, Chapel Sing.

Canon

Chapel sing, one of the most anticipated events of the weekend, brought plenty of laughs and reminiscing as each class had its chance to display their school spirit. Class after class took their position on the chapel’s front steps with lyric cheat sheets in hand. Their goal was simple — entertain the crowd and refrain from embarrassing themselves. Though many alumni failed at the latter, each class’ rendition of Old Wabash was nothing short of entertaining. From pre-prepared choreography to recruiting current students to help, the cherished school song, Old Wabash, echoed time and time again through the campus mall.

On Friday and Saturday afternoon, alumni supported one another by attending colloquiums presented by fellow alumni on a wide variety of topics. From Indiana Pacers’ play-by-play announcer Chris Denari ’83 to Buhdist Monk Jotipalo Bhikku ’88, Big 10 referee Steve Woods ’93 to David Weglarz ’03 and his journey of founding a small craft-distillery, Wabash Men and their family’s listened intently with the stories told. These alumni demonstrated well that learning does not end upon graduating – it only begins.

Though dark clouds hung and threatened all weekend, not even the weather could extinguish the bright-eyed alumni exploring and marveling the renovated campus and one another. They toured the Allen Athletic Center with amazement and the old academic buildings with fondness. Each took delight in the success of one another and never once was there a shortage of intelligent conversation.

Big Bash is but a brief reunion of a grand story. Each Wabash man has a unique story. Though many years separate some of these alums, they are all unified as Little Giants and they all live with the same two mottos engrained in their mentalities: “Wabash Always fights” and “DePauw to hell, we want the Bell!” One can be assured no alumnus needs a cheat sheet for those phrases.

Canon is a summer intern in the College’s Communication and Marketing Office.

Zach Canon ’16 – Wabash College’s prized possession over the last four years, The Monon Bell, sets proudly atop the Allen Center’s main entrance.

Canon ’16

As alumni made their way on campus for Big Bash many stopped to gaze at the Bell they once fought for as students. Tom Verachtert, a former football player and Chemistry major from the Class of 1963, recounted many of his Wabash memories: the traditions, his favorite clubs, most memorable moments, and more. For Verachtert, the sight of the Monon Bell was a bitter-sweet moment.

As we talked about Wabash’s current four-year reign over rival DePauw, he said the tables were once turned. Over his four years at Wabash, Verachtert never rung the Bell in victory – Wabash went 0 for 4 from 1960 to 1963. “At the end of the last Bell Game of my career,” Verachtert said, “I was moved to tears because I never won.”

We continued to talk about Wabash, about the once proud Little Giant debate team, hometowns, my plans after school, and such. We acknowledged the changes to the campus over the years, change in landscape, buildings and building names.

What doesn’t change at Wabash is the branded bitter-sweet memory of victories, defeats, and an undying love for the hallowed halls.

The Long Grove, Illinois native Verachtert offered a little advice as we wrapped up our conversation.  “Enjoy this school. This is a special place.”

Indeed it is, Mr. Verachtert, Indeed it is.

Zach Canon ’16, Brookhaven, MS., is a summer intern in the College Communications and Marketing Office.

Just in time for Big Bash, many of the public areas of campus received a facelift that included fresh paint, new seating, display cases, and tables.

A generous donation from an alum brought east coast interior designer Sarah Kennedy Dolce from shea dolce interiors to campus earlier in the year and again last week to unload and set the semi-trailer full of new furniture.

Dolce collaborated largely with First-Lady Chris White to identify spaces on campus that could benefit from new décor. All of the furniture came from Chaddock, in Morgantown, North Carolina, one of the few American made furniture companies remaining.

Among the buildings to receive new furniture the Fine Arts Center, Trippet Hall, Center Hall, Detchon, Lilly Library, Baxter Hall, and Caleb Mills House.

To see photos of the furniture installation click here.

Jim Amidon — How nice it was last Thursday to attend a reception honoring a long-serving colleague at Wabash College and not have to say “goodbye” when it ended.

A huge swath of the Wabash community gathered to celebrate John Zimmerman and his 50 years of service to the College.

Dr. John Zimmerman has taught (and learned) at Wabash for 50 years. Photo by Steve Charles.

Hosted by the Chemistry Department, the event paid tribute to “Dr. Z” for a half-century of teaching, learning, and contributing to the life of the College. While specifically a chemist, Dr. Z’s influence can be felt all across Wabash — yes, from the labs of Hays Hall, sure, but also to the Glee Club, Theater, and sports teams.

You see, Dr. Z is almost never without his camera — or at least that’s been the case for the 30 years I’ve known him. He’s made it his life’s work to chronicle and document (on slides, film, chip, card, tape, and disc) the most important events that happen at Wabash.

I had very little time to spend at Thursday’s reception, but I wanted to thank Dr. Z for what he’s meant to me — and give him a hug and handshake to congratulate him on his career. He and I have “covered” a thousand Wabash events and more. The difference is that I get paid specifically to do that; Dr. Z does it because he loves the students, faculty, and staff of Wabash College.

He said to me Thursday, “If I had to give a talk about photography I might start it with, ‘There was a time when Jim Amidon and I were the only ones on campus who had decent cameras.’”

He was right, too. And time changes everything.

Some of my fondest memories of my years as the sports information director in the late 1980s and early 1990s are of early morning cross country races — standing next to Dr. Z as we snapped scores of photos. The same was true during football, basketball, and track seasons — if there was a sporting event happening at Wabash, Dr. Z was there to capture it.

Typically, he’d drop by my office a couple days after an event when his prints had arrived from Target to show me his “wow” photos. (Though you really know when Dr. Z likes one of his images because he always says, “Stunning!”)

For about three decades, he’s been the official photographer and videographer of the Glee Club and Theater Department. He’s traveled the world to capture the history of the Glee Club with images and video from the Sydney Opera House to the old castles in Scotland — and all points between.

Dr. Z with Professor Lon Porter and President Pat White. Photo by Tom Runge.

Last Thursday lots of memories came back to me as I gazed into the display cases in Hays Hall, where many of Dr. Z’s images and mementos were spread out. To show how this scientist has evolved and adapted to technological change, there was a slide dated 1959 that he had reproduced digitally (this week) using a scanner and desktop printer. Back in 1959, you sent film to a lab and you might get it back a week later! And if you used Kodachrome, you needed a slide projector to see the images!

Right next to that image was a large-format digital disc — the size of an old vinyl record album — made in 1995. Dr. Z and some chemists at the University of Wisconsin recorded lab demonstrations and “burned” them to the large videodisc — it was literally the beginning of “distance education” because that disc could go anywhere to provide virtual instruction.

Dr. Z has spent his entire life learning (though his title is professor). We chatted last week about the summer he spent in Greece to photograph Professor Leslie Day’s archeological dig in Crete.

We laughed as we recalled the afternoons we spent in my office darkroom prior to his departure, when I taught Dr. Z how to develop film and make prints — all of which he recorded on a video camera (in near-darkness). Weeks later, he created a makeshift darkroom in Crete and repeated the whole process so the archeologists would have a record of their finds.

There was fondness in his voice as we talked about the funny darkroom scene. It was then that it occurred to me that I had – in my 20s – served as a teacher to a man I have always regarded as one of the College’s finest-ever teachers.

As I left the reception, I overheard Dr. Z and others recounting old chem lab shenanigans and interesting characters — professors and students alike. And it was with a bounce in my step that I walked to my next meeting knowing that I didn’t have to say goodbye to this Wabash icon. He’ll begin his 51^st year of service to Wabash standing beside me this Sunday as together we photograph the 175^th Commencement Ceremony on the College Mall.

And be sure of one thing: Dr. Z’s images will be stunning!

Blooms on the magnolia tree between Hovey Cottage and Kane House given in October 2008 “in loving memory of Susan Veatch Cantrell” by her friends Cynthia Sommer, Mary Kummings, Diane Tapia Quinn, Sandra Ramsey Fanning, and Susan Shearer Rickett.

Steve Charles—Last week I stopped by Class Notes Editor Karen Handley’s office to let her know that the magnolia tree planted in honor of Susan Cantrell by her friends was blooming. She smiled, but I could tell something was wrong. Which didn’t make a lot of sense to me. We had just finished proofing Karen’s section in this issue of the magazine, classes were winding down, evening events were almost over, music was throbbing from a couple fraternity houses, and spring was finally here. I was feeling pretty good.

But Karen had just proofread the In Memory section of Wabash Magazine. It was an unusually long section this time, and we’d lost a number of alumni Karen had worked with or written about during her 30 years at Wabash.

“Maybe it’s just part of getting older,” she said. “But I know these guys.”

Part of Karen’s job is gathering and editing the obituaries for each issue, often resolving conflicting information from multiple sources, searching the Internet for a fact or story that somehow defines the person to make these short pieces more than just a “death notice.” It’s a thankless task and usually anonymous, unless we get a fact wrong. That’s about the only time she hears about it.

Many college magazines avoid the problem altogether. They simply list the name of the “deceased,” the class year, and date of death. But for Karen—who in our Class Notes insists on listing not only the names of babies born to our alumni families, but the baby’s weight and length and brothers and sisters (“That matters to the parents,” she insists.)—a name, class year, and date of death isn’t enough. Not in a community where fewer than 200 men graduate every year, where so many faculty and staff teachers spend most of their careers. And often, Karen really does know these guys, at least by name from a Class Note, or—as she noted when we lost long-time Class Agent Dutch Friese ’48—from receiving their Class Agent letters.

It was a beautiful day outside, but nothing I could say could shake Karen’s lingering sense of loss, and I realized that, in varying degrees, she goes through this every time we publish. I’m the fortunate one in the process—I take Karen’s obits and go online to add to them or to find remembrances or ask others to write about their friends or write about them myself and I often hear back from grateful family members. At the minimum I have the satisfaction of getting to learn more about the person than I knew before; I am often amazed by the alumni I meet in the loving words of others.

But none of that happens without Karen’s conscientious and faithful hard work. Hers is the historical record. And there’s power in those names and details she gathers. Our production schedule makes it inevitable that most of our remembrances are published four to six months—or even a year—after the person’s death. It’s a time when everyone has gone back to work, back to their daily lives, and a most difficult time for close family members who feel like the person they so loved is being forgotten. I like to think that when a spouse or child of our alumnus opens that issue of the magazine and reads that name, they know their loved one is not forgotten, not by his alma mater. Karen makes sure of that. She knows these guys.

And every issue of Wabash Magazine is bound and placed in the College archives, so that years, decades, perhaps even centuries from now, someone will open those bound volumes searching for a name and, thanks to Karen, they will find it.

I wish I’d been able to cheer her up last week, but I left more grateful than ever for her work. And I thought you should know that when we lose someone here, the name is carried with great care, even a measure of grief, by a woman determined that the person you love will not be forgotten.

The names and remembrances that Karen gathers are like that flower on the magnolia tree that our colleague Susan Cantrell’s friends planted for her; its bloom reminding us of our friend is too brief. But it comes back, year after year. As long as the tree lives on, we will always be reminded of Susan. As long as Wabash lives on, so will our memories of those in the Wabash community that we’ve lost, and you can thank Karen Handley for that.

Dan Simmons ’70 listens to a student writer during last week’s Wabash Writer’s Workshop.

Steve Charles—“You just witnessed the single most amazing moment of my life.”

I’ve worked at Wabash almost two decades, seen many young lives transformed, but I’d never heard those words here until Lucas Zromkoski ’15 said them to me during last week’s Wabash Writer’s Workshop.

I should have seen them coming. It was the second day of the three-day intensive workshop and Lucas had just spent more than an hour listening and taking notes while five of his peers and Dan Simmons ’70, the College’s most dedicated and successful professional writer, critiqued Lucas’s short story, “Shatter.” The students were honest, meticulous, tough, and helpful with both their praise and criticism.

Simmons was taking it down to the word.

“I’m going line by line here, but that’s what I do when I like a story,” he said before he offered specific suggestions and wondered aloud about word choices to improve the piece. Lucas listened intently, jotting an occasional note for his revision, determined to make the story better. When Dan finished, fellow student writer Nick Gray ’15 offered his own suggestions.

Then Dan looked at Lucas and said, “God, this is good. Congratulations.”

Lucas calmly nodded his head and joined the students walking out the door for coffee and snacks. A few seconds later, though, he returned to the table. This young man, who a day earlier admitted he’d wanted to be a fiction writer since he was a kid, turned to me with eyes as wide as Christmas morning and said it: “Mr. Charles, you just witnessed the most amazing moment of my life.”

It was that kind of week, that kind of workshop. And it started, of course, with another story.

At dinner before the sessions began, workshop co-organizer and Wabash English professor Eric Freeze had heard more about Dan’s career before he became the professional writer of science fiction classics, mystery, horror, fantasy, and mainstream novels. For 18 years Dan was an elementary school teacher, creator of the APEX program for gifted and talented students. But even back then, Eric learned, Dan would tell stories, beginning a tale at the start of the school year and spinning it daily in such a way that kids who were sick and supposed to be home showed up at class anyway so they wouldn’t miss anything.

So the next night at a public reading that kicked off the workshop, Eric referred to Dan’s penchant for in-class storytelling, concluding: “It’s an astonishing story, not only for how it reveals Simmons’s talents for narrative, but also for what it says about his abilities as a teacher. What it also taught me, what it continues to teach me, is that narrative has a transformative power. It locks us together in a dance—teacher-student, author-reader—and we are changed by that interaction. It is an ancient thing, this storytelling, which dates back to our ancestors, like fire. I’ve seen Dan bring that fire now to our students, and I hope over the next few days of the workshop, to continue to see it burn.”

Then Dan recalled how he wrote in his spare time for years, how he was about to give up when he “gave it one last shot,” attended one last writer’s workshop, and was ‘discovered’ by the writer Harlan Ellison, who told him, “You know you’re a writer when another writer tells you you’re a writer, and you, Simmons, are a writer.”

Then he shared why he was at Wabash that week, volunteering his time, despite the fact the proofs for his novel, The Abominable, were late and waiting on his desk back in Colorado.

“I’m looking for a few good men to be professional full-time writers,” he said, noting there are fewer than 500 such writers in the world. “The world needs writers, and we need a Wabash novelist for the 21st century. I believe that Wabash, the quintessential liberal arts college, is the perfect incubator for the 21st century novelist.”

He said the move from amateur to publishable professional writer was analogous to an electron moving from one orbit to another, a quantum leap very few have made.

Then he and the students went to work.

They shared favorite writers, discussed character and the free indirect style described in James Woods’ How Fiction Works, read passages from Hemingway, James, Flaubert, and others (with Simmons interjecting historical background from each like the rabid researcher he is). They broke down paragraphs by thought units, analyzed word choice and sentence cadence. Dan showed the proper format for submitting manuscripts, the mistakes editors look for to reject stories.

After the first critique circle (to gain admission to the workshop, each student had submitted a manuscript) I could tell something special was happening. Eric has been developing a community of writers since he arrived at Wabash five years ago, training them to be generous with both their praise and detailed criticism, to be thick-skinned enough to hear those things about their own writing, separating themselves from their work so they can get better at the craft.

Lucas Zromkoski talks with Dan Simmons during a critique circle at the Caleb Mills, as Nick Gray, left, listens.

“I’m thrilled when one of my students says they’ve been fiddling with a scene or a sentence until they felt like they were going blind,” Eric said when he received tenure last year. “Something clicks. When they start to feel that compunction, that drive to push themselves to get better, that’s when I know that they’ve become writers and no longer students looking for a grade.”

So the professor had his students ready. Simmons seemed pleasantly surprised.

“That was damned good,” he said after the first circle. “I think you’ve done this before!”

He told Stephen Batchelder ’15, the writer of that piece: “Reading this story made me realize I had to do this workshop, not because you needed my help, but because this story was bold. You have a powerful voice, and a lot of courage.

“There’s some fire in every story this group submitted for this workshop, and for you, that fire was this boldness.”

The story wasn’t finished; it has a long way and many revisions to go, as do all the pieces. But in their critiques Dan and the students had pointed ways forward, and Stephen seemed eager to rewrite.

It was the sort of interaction those at the College who know Dan have envisioned for years. Folks like Alison Kothe and Pat White knew that, regardless of his continued financial success (Dan’s book, The Terror, is in development for a series at AMC), the best gift the College’s greatest practitioner of the art and craft of writing could give was his time with our students.

That goes beyond teaching. When I returned to photograph the sessions after what was supposed to be a short break, I found Dan, the six students, and Eric at a round table in Detchon, laughing and sharing stories way past the allotted 15 minutes. A similar scene was repeated at lunches, with Dan’s wife, Karen, present, and at the final dinner on Saturday night.

Participant Ryan Horner captured one of the intangibles of such moments when he noted, “the workshop took an inaccessible alumnus celebrity and made him accessible to us. We spent three days learning from the best, and then in our free time held wide-ranging conversations that revealed the down-to-earth personalities of Dan and Karen.”

In one of the those conversations, students heard how Karen had encouraged her husband to keep writing, even when he was ready to quit, how she was his not only his best friend but most trusted reader. “Maybe some day you will be so fortunate to find that person,” he said.

Chet Turnbeaugh wrote: “Working with Dan has encouraged me to continue writing—not only the short story I submitted for the workshop, but, in general, to push towards new creative horizons that expand the possibilities of my imagination.

Christian Lopac wrote: “The things we learned showed me the challenges associated with writing, but the workshop also illustrated many of the things necessary to make the ‘quantum leap’ Dan spoke of.

Pictured with Professor Eric Freeze and Dan Simmons ’70 are students from the first Wabash Writers Workshop: Nick Gray, Lucas Zromkoski, Chet Turnbeaugh, Stephen Batchelder, Chistian Lopac, and Ryan Horner.

Eric summed it up: “In his Thursday night talk, Dan mentioned that improvement in writing usually happens in creative spurts, like an electron jumping a valence to a higher orbital plane. I saw this improvement firsthand during the workshop. By the end of the experience, Dan was saying that students were producing publishable work, probably the highest compliment that a writer can pay to a student. The workshop was so successful, with many of the students saying that this was the most intensive and helpful experience of their careers, that we anticipate continuing to offer these workshops in the future.”

And Dan wrote in an email after his return to Colorado, where he was working through the frustrating task of responding to copy edits to his novel The Abominable: “That frustration fades away when I think of how much fun the three days with the students were . . . and what great young men they are. I’m honored and humbled to have had the chance to work with them.”

What’s next? Dan has a couple of generous and once-in-a-lifetime ideas, and both he and Eric have imagined a weeklong workshop for a time when the College is not in session, addressing a frustration voiced by Zromkoski, who after the encouraging yet challenging critique of his story wanted to get to work on a revision immediately, but admitted he had a 20-page paper, Japanese homework, and a yearbook to finish in the next few days.

‘What if we had an entire week to focus only on our writing?” he wondered aloud.

Right now, though, I’m savoring what I witnessed last week. I’ve seen inspiring things during my time at Wabash. I was 20 feet from Kurt Casper when he grabbed Ryan Short’s tip to the end zone and won the Monon Bell with “The Catch.” I was here when the College cancelled afternoon classes and converged on Detchon Center for the first Celebration of Student Research, Scholarship, and Creative Work. For more than a decade, every time Bill Placher wrote a book, I got to be one of the first to interview him, a personal lesson in theology and faith from a master writer.

But I’m with Lucas on this one: In my life at Wabash, I just witnessed the single most amazing moment.

Jim Amidon — When Wabash College senior Rashaan Stephens met with me about six weeks ago, he came with an idea to do a fund-raiser for the Montgomery County Free Clinic. So I sat down and talked with him about all the little details that would need to be planned in order for his event to be successful.

Most of the time when a fund-raising event involves a million little details, the students get overwhelmed. With the burdens of their classes, sports, and activities, the fund-raisers tend to be good, but often unrealized ideas.

I should have known Rashaan would see his idea through to a successful conclusion. See pictures from Saturday’s event here.

Rashaan is from Philadelphia and he’s proud of that fact — so proud that his idea to raise money for the Dr. Mary Ludwig Free Clinic was to sell authentic Philly cheesesteak sandwiches. He told me about the famous places in Philly where locals stand in line for hours to get a sandwich, and said he wanted to introduce his adopted hometown of Crawfordsville to what he called “the greatest sandwich in the world.”

You have to meet Rashaan to get a sense of his enthusiasm — for travel, life, studies, and Philly cheesesteaks. He’s like a human tornado who is always on the go. Our conversation about the fund-raiser was a blur. We talked about all those million little details in minutes, and when he left, he was literally undaunted.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll be in touch when I get everything in place.”

I didn’t hear from him for about 10 days so I thought the pressures of mid-semester probably got the best of him. I was wrong. He spent that time meeting with our food service partner, Bon Appetit, and lining up workers from the organization he leads on campus, the Muslim Students’ Association.

Everything came together perfectly on Saturday, including the season’s warmest day of the year so far. Under bright sunshine, Rashaan, Tyler Griffin, the MSA, and the Malcolm X Institute of Black Studies set up tables outside the Scarlet Inn and decorated the whole area with red balloons.

I arrived shortly before the event started, and Rashaan was busily running all over campus. He couldn’t even stop long enough for a photo. But I found Bill Doemel, who is executive director of the Free Clinic, and we talked about the significance of the fund-raiser.

The clinic will provide free healthcare to uninsured people of Montgomery County, and over the last five years, a dedicated group of volunteers have managed to raise $300,000 in funds to match a $900,000 grant from North Central Health Services. Located on Mill Street near Milligan Park, the clinic is set to open mid-summer.

Right now the volunteers and board members are raising operational funds. That’s what Rashaan and the MSA brothers wanted to support.

Selling five-dollar cheesesteak sandwiches may not seem significant, but think about the symbolism:

Rashaan Stephens is a senior from Philly on his way out of Crawfordsville, yet he wanted to leave a footprint

Rashaan Stephens is a Muslim. The Free Clinic is growing out of the long-standing Christian Nursing Service’s Well Baby Clinic and Adult Clinic.

The Muslim Students’ Association wanted to demonstrate the true tenets of Islam, and those students worked tremendously hard to show they care deeply about this community and all of the people who live here.

Local chef Adam Laskowski manned the flattop in the Scarlet Inn and made it look like he’d been slinging Philly cheesesteaks all his life.

Let’s talk about those sandwiches, too: Beef steak and fresh-baked rolls flown in from Philly. You got your choice of provolone or Cheese Whiz, peppers or onions, or both.

I had mine with provolone and could not believe how terrific the sandwich was. As I sat in the sunshine with my wife, Chris (a Free Clinic board member) and Bill Doemel, I had a sudden urge to get another sandwich. This time with Cheese Whiz, at which Bill grimaced.

I returned with the slightly sloppier, bright orange cheese-covered sandwich and had it polished off in about 90 seconds, which included allowing Chris to sample two bites. It was even better than the first sandwich.

By this point, a large crowd had gathered and the fund-raiser was up and running. Several fraternities provided funds to allow all members to eat there Saturday afternoon.

We left about an hour into the event. Rashaan was still running around like a crazy man making sure every detail was covered. I asked Tyler Griffin how many sandwiches he had sold in that first hour. He laughed (he always laughs) and said, “I have no idea — this many” and he showed me his cash box stuffed with money that will soon help support our neighbors in need.

Needless to say, I left feeling exceptionally proud of Rashaan, Tyler, Nick Gray, and all the students who pitched in to make the Cheesesteak Festival a rousing success.