Johns Hopkins Gazette: July 21, 1997

You Were Our
Sunshine, Our Only
Sunshine

The July 16 going-away bash for the university's senior vice president for administration was a typical Gene Sunshine gathering. Serious business laced with lots of humor and good-natured ribbing. Even the oppressive heat could not wilt the spirits of the couple of hundred administrators, faculty and staff who piled into the Hutzler Reading Room on the Homewood campus to bid farewell to the man who has carried the financial ball for the university for the past 10 years.

Many of Gene's colleagues were given large hanging name tags to wear around their necks, which identified them by Gene's nicknames for them. Among the bozos and bubbas (Gene's loving sobriquets, of course) in attendance were Baby Cakes (Vice President and Secretary Ross Jones), Kahuna (Vice President and General Counsel Estelle Fishbein), Knappster (Provost Steven Knapp), Snowball (Treasurer William Snow, who presented Sunshine with an exquisite watercolor of the Homewood campus), Lite Beer (Johns Hopkins Medicine's CEO Edward Miller), Burger King (Vice Provost Paula Burger). Even President William R. Brody proudly wore his nickname--Brodeman. Yet, conspicuously missing was a hanging sign for the guest of honor. Seems most folks just call Gene...well, Gene. Not, say, Sunshine Boy, or Sunny, or Here-Comes-the-Sun, or Sunshine-on-our-shoulder, or Sun-o-gram, or Sunspot, or Sunscreen, or ...Perhaps his colleagues at Northwestern will pick up the thread.

But as he fades into the sunset, all that's left to say is, All the best to you, Gene... it's been Sun-sational.


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