Posts filed under ‘The Penn Stater magazine’
Photographic Memories
We love when readers tell us that one of the archival photos featured in the magazine has sparked a memory for them. And because some of these photos are perplexing (remember this one?), it’s even cooler when a reader can explain just what’s going on in the shot.
In our latest issue, we printed this photo (above) and invited readers to tell us what the shoeless gentlemen were up to. Milton Critchfield ’63, ’65g did exactly that. And he should know — he’s the one sitting on the table, removing his socks. Over the weekend, he sent us this letter (below):
Thanks for publishing the photo from 1964. I instantly recognized myself sitting on the table taking off my socks and Richard Twark ['67 PhD] sitting to my right on the sofa. Rich and I believe most or all of the others had just completed walking in the so-called “Atlantic Walk” of 50-mile duration. Penn State had been challenged by the University of St. Andrews in Scotland to compete with them on the walk. We began at 8 pm on Saturday night and had until 8 pm Sunday night to complete the 50 miles. The route started at the HUB and took us through Bellefonte, Pleasant Gap, Pine Grove Mills, and back to the HUB.
The photo is one of nine that was published in the Centre Daily Times on April 15, 1964. The spread is entitled “It was a Long, Long, Long, Hike.” I still have the original page from the Times. According to that article, there were 772 starters in the walk. I had the honor of being at the end of the entire column with a walkie talkie. My job was to help anyone who required assistance and to keep an eye out for stragglers. By 2 am, we were spread out over 20 miles and our communications system finally broke down. At that point, they gave me permission to compete at my own pace, so I began walking rapidly trying to make up for lost time. That was a mistake, as I developed a full set of blisters at 34 miles and finally dropped out at 42 miles. I had a lot of encouragement from friends to keep going, but the pain was too unbearable. The Atlantic Walk also occurred the following year in 1965. I entered the walk again and successfully completed it.
Rich Twark called me yesterday to see if I had seen the photo, and we had a great time catching up after nearly 50 years. Thanks again for publishing the photo and making our day.
Do you remember the Atlantic Walk? Has one of our Nostalgia Photos ever jogged your memory? We’d love to hear about it! Email us at pennstater@psu.edu or comment below.
Mary Murphy, associate editor
Watching Bill O’Brien
I’m doing double-duty of sorts on this Penn State Coaches Caravan bus trip, which left State College bright and early Monday morning and continues on tonight in Drexel Hill, Pa. I’m doing this, obviously—blogging and tweeting when the WiFi cooperates to share the scene as Bill O’Brien and the other coaches on the trip get out and meet Penn Staters. But I’m also mindful of the O’Brien profile I’m working on for the July/August issue of The Penn Stater.
In watching him at a handful of press conferences, interviewing him one-on-one in his office a few weeks back, spending a few days with him this week on the bus, and in at least one other unlikely interaction I’ll share at some point, I’ve gotten a pretty good picture of how Bill O’Brien comes across. He is blunt, but he also can be very funny. He’s heard enough of the same questions dozens of times over the past few months, and you can tell which ones he doesn’t mind answering, and which he’d probably rather not hear again. But as me made clear at lunch Monday in Philly, he sees the value in answering them all.
He met with reporters for 15 minutes before the lunchtime gathering at the Doubletree on Broad Street, then took most of the questions (Char Morett and Patrick Chambers joined him onstage) from alumni after lunch. Throughout, O’Brien was on message—and I don’t mean that as a bad thing. His is not the sort of job in which one can focus only on one thing, and certainly recruiting and keeping tabs on his current team keep him busy enough. But he is clearly and impressively focused right now on converting the masses of Penn Staters to his cause. He insisted, as he will again and again, that academics matter. That integrity and respect will be words associated with the program as long as he’s in charge of it. And while he made no promises, he certainly talked about winning football games.
Bill O’Brien has been making a great first impression for four months now, and he looks likely to keep that up for the next couple of weeks. The games will come in the fall and results will largely determine how he’s received; for now, he’s doing all he can to show Penn Staters, in his always blunt, occasionally funny way, that he’s one of us. “I’m no longer an outsider,” he said Monday, talking about the welcome he and his family have received in Happy Valley. “I feel like a Penn Stater now.”
Ryan Jones, senior editor
More Underwater Photos from Jeremy Cohen
Cohen snapped this photo of a porcupinefish off the Kona Coast in Hawaii.
Early last year, we featured some of Jeremy Cohen’s underwater photography in our Jan./Feb. 2011 issue. (Remember that funky-looking reef squid on the cover?)
We got lots of feedback on the photos, and readers loved Cohen’s up-close-and-personal look at creatures we don’t often see.
Now there’s another opportunity to check out Cohen’s work. A photo exhibit, called “Eyes to Sea: Underwater Photography by Jeremy Cohen,” opened this week in the EMS Museum and Art Gallery in the Deike building.
Cohen, associate vice president and senior associate dean for undergraduate education at Penn State, is an avid scuba diver who’s photographed marine life all over the world, including Fiji, Indonesia, and Hawaii. Cohen’s goal with the exhibit: to make people more aware of the human impact on aquatic ecosystems.
Cohen’s photos will be on display through fall 2012.
Mary Murphy, associate editor
Bill O’Brien Hits the Road
The arrival of our May/June issue means we’re well into work on our July/August edition. Among the features we’re working on is a profile of Bill O’Brien, who just wrapped up his first spring practice. I’m in the midst of reporting that one, a task that so far has included a 6:30 a.m. interview with O’Brien in his office; anyone who knows me knows the scheduled time must’ve been his idea.
Busy as he’s been, O’Brien has found time to do plenty of interviews. He’s spoken repeatedly since his hiring about the importance to reaching out to Penn State alumni and fans, and making himself available to reporters is only part of that plan. Starting next week, he’ll take his show on the road.
On Monday, O’Brien will lead the Penn State Coaches Caravan on a nine-day, 18-city tour throughout Pennsylvania and surrounding states. I’m fortunate to have a spot on the bus for the first leg of the caravan, which starts next week with a Monday lunch gathering in Philadelphia and includes stops in Drexel Hill, Pa., Baltimore, Washington D.C., Richmond, Va., and Harrisburg. And that’s just the first three days; the next two weeks will include stops in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Ohio, and elsewhere in Pennsylvania.
I’ll be blogging from early stops on the caravan, which will feature O’Brien at every stop and appearances from additional Penn State coaches. If you’re not already signed up for one of the stops, you can register and find more information here. A few are at capacity, but tickets are still available for most of the events.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
On Its Way: Our May/June Issue
President Rodney Erickson on the cover of our latest issue.
Describing something as “normal” isn’t always a good thing.
But on the heels of two special, emotional issues — the Jan./Feb. coverage of the Sandusky scandal and the March/April tribute to Joe Paterno — our staff will tell you that the latest Penn Stater is a welcome return to business as usual.
Though that’s not to say the May/June 2012 issue, which is already hitting mailboxes, is boring: There’s an in-depth Q&A with new Penn State president Rodney Erickson, who talks candidly about the challenges he’s faced since November; a feature about a breakthrough in leukemia research, discovered by two Penn State scientists; and a fun collection of concert memories submitted by our readers.
Plus, you’ll find all the regular stories you may have missed these past few months.
Let us know when you receive your copy. And as always, let us know what you think.
Mary Murphy, associate editor
Three Questions for the Board of Trustees Candidates
How on earth do you differentiate among 86 candidates for the three open alumni seats on the Board of Trustees? I had been asking myself that question for a while—even before I knew the final number of people on the ballot. It seemed like every time I picked up a newspaper, someone else was declaring his or her candidacy. I lost count of how many.
By the time the final number—a record, by far—was determined, I thought I had a good handle on what the candidates thought about the trustees’ handling of the Sandusky scandal. The media coverage—understandably—focused on it. And when the official position statements (which you can find here), were released, most of them dealt primarily with the scandal and its aftermath, too.
That wasn’t enough for me. As a journalist, a Penn State alum, and a Penn State employee, I had more questions. Penn State has other large issues it must confront in the coming years—particularly the annual fight for state appropriation dollars and the steady rise of tuition. I think it’s important for the Board of Trustees candidates to address those issues, too. We brainstormed for a bit at the office, and we crafted three questions we thought could add to the discussion.
Sure, we’d love to hear all of the trustees—not just the ones currently running for the board—address these wider issues. But alumni can vote only for the nine alumni seats on the board, and only three are up every year. We decided to focus where we could shed the most light—the candidates in the most prominent trustees election in Penn State’s history.
So we emailed the three questions to the 86 candidates. We weren’t sure what to expect, but a week later, 72 of them had responded. That’s 83.7 percent. In the research world, they call that a “robust” response. We’re thrilled.
We are presenting the responses to you exactly as the candidates wrote them; click here to read them, either by candidate or by question. If responses exceeded the 250-word limit, we trimmed them, and if something was particularly unclear, we contacted the author to clarify. Otherwise, their responses are unvarnished and unedited.
The candidates raise many important points, and they float some interesting solutions. It’s a lot to digest, we know. But we hope you’ll take some time to learn about the candidates before you vote, and we hope you’ll let us know what you think, too, in the comments below or on our Facebook page.
Lori Shontz, senior editor
P.S. This is just one of two initiatives that Alumni Association is doing to help alumni make an informed choice. There’s a Meet the Candidates event from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. on Saturday, April 21, before the Blue-White game, and we hope you’ll be able to attend that, too. You can find out more about the event here.
A Small-World Story
You will either find this tale to be very boring or very cool.
We’ve been getting a lot of calls about our new March-April issue, which is a commemorative issue about Joe Paterno. One such call I fielded today was from a reader in Richmond, Va., who had just gotten the new issue and who wanted to buy two more copies. I put him in touch with our Alumni Store and went back to whatever I had been doing.
A few hours later, he called me back, saying he wanted me to talk to his wife. She had lived in Somerset, Pa.—my hometown—for a number of years, he said, and she knew my family. Naturally I was happy to have him put her on the phone.
Her name is Jolinda Myers, and she knew her stuff: She told me that my brother (a professional photographer in Somerset) had done family portraits for her, and that her daughter had briefly taken a ballet class from my sister. She also knew that my best friend in childhood was Richard Critchfield.
Then she described the location of the house she had lived in—at the corner of Clover Hill Road and Felgar Road, just up the hill from my house. And I said, “You know, I have a childhood memory from that house. Or maybe it was the one next door….” So I told her the memory:
Richard and I had occasion to be at that house for some reason one summer day when we were maybe 9 or 10 years old—I don’t remember the reason, but Richard and I went everywhere on our bikes. I vaguely think I might have been helping him collect on his paper route that day. Someone at that house had a brand-new baby—a boy—and I remember thinking (more…)
Our Latest Issue: A Tribute to Joe Paterno
Usually, when it’s time to let readers know that the next issue of The Penn Stater is on its way to mailboxes, we try to walk a fine line — to give you a taste of the magazine’s content without giving too much away.
But in the case of our March/April issue, the face on the cover won’t surprise you one bit.
On Jan. 22, when Joe Paterno passed away, we knew immediately what direction this issue had to take. Putting together the magazine was about honoring a man who touched the lives of every Penn Stater. For one story, alumni and students recall the day they met the man himself. In one of three essays, Jay Paterno ’91 reflects on his father’s legacy. And throughout the issue, you’ll find plenty of photos — some of which you’ve probably never seen before.
Your magazine should arrive within the next few days. Let us know when you receive your copy and, as always, let us know what you think.
Mary Murphy, associate editor
Beverly McIver, Back in the Spotlight
It’s been a while since I met and interviewed Beverly McIver ’92g, the North Carolina-based artist and subject of the upcoming documentary Raising Renee. My profile of McIver ran in our Nov/Dec issue, timed (we thought) with the airing of Raising Renee on HBO late last year. But we never saw a firm date for the premier, and given the events of the past few months, I forgot to ever follow up.
The New York Times Style section offered an unexpected reminder Thursday with a profile of McIver, set at her Durham, N.C. home. It covers much of the same ground our story did—her path to artistic prominence, and the compelling family drama that inspired the documentary—but it offers something we didn’t: a firm date for Raising Renee. The doc is scheduled to air Wednesday, Feb. 22, on HBO. I’ve watched it a few times and highly recommend checking it out.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
Mourning Joe Paterno, From Afar
A writing room at Finca Vigía, Ernest Hemingway's home outside Havana.
I’ve been absent from the blog—and the magazine—for the better part of the last two weeks. I have an unusual excuse: I’ve been in Cuba.
It was, admittedly, an awkward time to go off on vacation, with Joe Paterno having just passed away and the magazine staff working in fifth gear to put together a tribute to him for our next issue.
But I had already postponed the trip once: I booked the trip months ago and was originally scheduled to go in early December, but the Sandusky scandal—and our need to scrap our Jan-Feb issue in favor of an issue devoted to the scandal—scuttled those plans and caused me to rebook for the end of January. Rescheduling the trip yet again wasn’t an option, for a variety of reasons, mostly having to do with the complicated nature of traveling to Cuba.
(Incidentally, I went there under a U.S.-approved “people-to-people cultural exchange,” which is making it possible for more and more U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba legally. Here’s a Washington Post story from last Friday about such exchanges.)
So I ended up watching from a distance, with only spotty Internet access, as the Penn State family mourned Paterno’s death. I wasn’t able to watch the memorial service at all—though I’m told that (more…)
Subscribe
