News Associates: Debbie Kennison, Emily Richards
Contributing Writer: Mike Field
 

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After 30 years with the National Park Service, Dan Brown still loves the two things he joined up for: appreciative sightseers and gorgeous vistas. He and his colleagues often joke, he says, about "being paid in sunsets."

As superintendent of the Blue Ridge Parkway, Brown oversees the most often visited unit of the National Park system, which draws some 20 million visitors a year. The scenic 469-mile drive starts in North Carolina's Smoky Mountains and meanders its way through 29 counties, ending up at the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. The Parkway offers more than 280 overlooks and more than 350 miles of trails.

As superintendent, Brown oversees the many departments that keep the Blue Ridge Parkway beautiful and safe for visitors. He also spends much of his time with community leaders, members of congress, and grassroots environmental action groups. Because the Parkway is so long and narrow, land potentially unprotected--from cellular towers, strip mines, and residential development--is nearly always within sight. Thus, Brown must juggle environmental concerns with visitor satisfaction, community development ambitions with park quality control. It's really not so much a juggling act, he notes, as it is a matter of educating his various constituents on this fact: protecting the park is a mutually beneficial proposition.

"A study has shown that the Blue Ridge Parkway brings in $2.2 billion dollars annually to the surrounding area," Brown says. "When we are able to impress upon the nearby communities the value of the park, we show that what's good for the park is good for people and businesses outside the park."

What's good for the park is clean air. Unfortunately, that's a commodity in increasingly short supply.

"Twenty years ago," Brown says, "from certain scenic lookout points along the Parkway, visitors could regularly have a 60- to 80-mile visibility. Today that view often shrinks to six to 10 miles. It's very sad."

He's hopeful, however. "There are EPA regulations pending that will require older power companies to clean up their act, which will help," he notes. "It won't happen overnight, but with public support we'll see restoration of air quality, I have every reason to believe."

Brown's love for the outdoors began in boyhood, when he was growing up in Gettysburg. The green and rolling view from his bedroom window was the hallowed ground of the Gettysburg battlefield--fields and copses and hilltops where thousands of men fought to their deaths in one of the most pivotal moments in American history.

"There's no more moving experience," Brown says, "than to stand at the long Union line and envision the battle, and the huge price those men paid."

During summers off from classes at Johns Hopkins, Brown went home to work as a seasonal employee of the national military park, giving tours and Civil War lectures to visitors.

"I was impressed with the quality of the people who worked for the Park Service. It seemed like more than just a job to them; there's a real sense of pride in protecting special places in this country."

He was accepted to graduate school in history, but opted instead to accept a full-time ranger position at Gettysburg Park, where he worked until 1975. His next two decades with the Park Service included stops at the Blue Ridge Parkway; Fort Pulaski National Monument on the south side of Savannah, Georgia; Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park in Georgia; and Natchez Trace Parkway in Tupelo, Mississippi.

During these stints he was a jack-of-all-trades. "Park rangers are federal law enforcement officers. We'd conduct investigations of misdemeanors, do patrols, investigate accidents. And we'd also be tour guides, history teachers, environmentalists," he says. "As our programs have become more sophisticated, we've had to become more specialized."

What remains constant is the importance of this country's national parks. "The idea of a system of national parks is one of the truly great ideas to come out of this country," Brown says. "Since Yellowstone was established in 1872 as the world's first, the idea has spread all over the world. When [people] come here and see the vast forests and the wildlife, they leave with a special feeling for this place."
--Jason Warshof, A&S '01 (MA)

Vietnam, Korea: Remembering Those Who Served and Died

If we don't do this, then nobody's going to. That's what we felt," says Mike Haas, one of several members of the class of '67 who decided at their 30th reunion to organize a Vietnam and Korean War memorial at Johns Hopkins. The plaque, they agreed, should be placed beside existing WWI and WWII memorial plaques in the Gilman Hall lobby.

Haas published an announcement of their plan in the Johns Hopkins Magazine in 1997. "I got a lot of mail," he says.

Nevertheles, the list now compiled of Hopkins men who died in those wars is not long. Two in Korea, six in Vietnam. Lt. Colonel Roller, director of Military Science at Hopkins, suspects that there may have been more who lost their lives, but the information is hard to track down.

It's not just Vietnam-era contemporaries who look forward to the memorial's installment. Kevin Carroll, A&S '94, says, "I had the opportunity to serve in Bosnia. My ROTC classmates served in Haiti, Kuwait, Korea, and the Sinai. We all came back. The least we can do is remember those of earlier generations who served in more dangerous times and did not return."

Alumni who died in Vietnam:
Fred Abramson, SAIS '66
Charles E. Aronhalt Jr., A&S '64
Christopher Bell, A&S '67
Jay Kaufman, A&S '69
Peter L. Tripp, A&S '67
John W. Wallace, A&S '67

If you know of any alumni not mentioned here, please contact LTC Roller at 410-516-7838 or at charles.roller@us.army.mil. To make a gift to the University in memory of a Korean or Vietnam War veteran, please contact the executive director of Annual Giving, Regional Giving, and Alumni Programs, Fritz Schroeder, at 410-516-0363 or at fschroed@jhu.edu.

Shelf Life

Bushmanders & Bullwinkles, How Politicians Manipulate Electronic Maps and Census Data to Win Elections by Mark Monmonier, A&S '62, University of Chicago Press (2001)

"Although librarians and booksellers might shelve this book with works on political science," writes Monmonier in his preface, "I approached the project as a study in the history of cartography--an examination of how legislators, redistricting officials, and constitutional lawyers use maps as both tools and weapons." His scholarly, illustrated book goes on to offer a scathing indictment of the creative "remapping" that's been done in recent decades. --Emily Richards

White Swan, Black Swan by Adrienne Sharp, A&S '82 (MA), Random House (2001)

In her debut book, Sharp tells 12 stories set in the backstage world of professional ballet, complete with insider detail about costumes, make-up, and long hours of practice. Sharp crafts touching characters whose lives often move in pantomime to the great balletic romances they enact on stage. Some of her stories imagine inner lives of real-life greats from ballet, including Suzanne Farrell and George Balanchine. --ER

In the competition for top high school students, Johns Hopkins University now has an ace in the hole: the Woodrow Wilson Research program. Notes Paula

Ferris Einaudi, associate dean for development in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, "Harvard might just say to these kids, 'You're accepted. Come on down,' but Hopkins is able to say, 'You're accepted. Plus, here's $10,000 and a faculty advisor to help you with the research project you have in mind. Participate in your own education. Discover new knowledge. Get published before you're 20.'"

Established in 1999, the Woodrow Wilson Undergraduate Research Fellowship program annually awards up to $10,000 each--over three or four years--to approximately 30 incoming freshmen and returning sophomores. It was made possible through the generosity of University trustee J. Barclay Knapp, who endowed the deanship for the School of Arts and Sciences,

which in turn funded the program's start-up. The program is a perfect example of how gifts to the University translate directly to unique educational opportunities for the most deserving students.

This year's crop of precocious researchers includes Maha Zehra Jafri, who plans to produce a documentary on the American gun culture. Vincent Christopher Luca proposes an investigation of the manmade mysteries of Peru. Michael Boucher will study the educational structure of a Baltimore City high school, where fewer than 10 percent of students go on to college. Lena A. Moffitt will use her fellowship money to travel to the Kenyan Taita-Rukinga Wildlife Conservancy, to study elephant preservation efforts. Jessica Jinhee Lee will study the molecular effects of the ras protein expression on the development of tumor growth.

When he was a high school senior, sophomore Terry Dean saw Hopkins' invitation to apply for a Woodrow Wilson fellowship. "But I didn't want to appear naíve, writing something like 'I want to cure such-and-such disease,' so I didn't apply for the fellowship," he says. In his freshman year, he took a course called Sleep, Dreams, and Altered States of Consciousness taught by Richard Allen, assistant professor of neurology in the School of Medicine. "I approached Dr. Allen after class to tell him about my interests, and from that, I started working for him on his restless-legs-syndrome sleep studies at Bayview."

With real research experience under his belt, Dean was emboldened to propose a project of his own: the effects of sleep deprivation on the mood and cognitive function of college students. He says, of his sleep-deprived peers, "It's like someone said, 'Sleep, social life, work--pick two.'" We can only hope that, in conducting the research project he designed with the help of Allen, Dean will be able to do all three. --ER

Stand nose to nose with a polar bear (separated only by a window pane). Cruise the Caribbean in a luxury yacht, stopping to explore gardens and wild plant life with the Knapp Dean of Arts and Sciences, Richard McCarty, one of the world's leading experts on plant life, as your companion. Travel down the Mississippi, from Memphis to New Orleans, or explore the vineyards of Burgundy with Orest Ranum, professor of French history.

"Hopkins alumni will have more to choose from than ever," says Marguerite Ingalls Jones, A&S '74, SPSBE '88 (MAS), director of the Johns Hopkins Travel Program, a service provided by Alumni Relations to all Hopkins alumni, friends, and parents.

"In addition to our regular offerings--such as alumni colleges in France and Italy, a tour of Egypt--we've included some truly extraordinary adventures in the 2002 itinerary."

Three of the trips in particular, Jones says, represent a real departure from past alumni trips: Polar Bear Watch, Gardens of the Caribbean, and a Volunteer Program in Romania.

The Romanian trip, which is tax-deductible, puts travelers to work, for two to three weeks, in either a Romanian children's hospital or school. Those who choose to work in the hospital will spend their time comforting and playing with children and babies, many of whom are orphans suffering mostly from a deficit of human touch. In the school, alumni volunteers will teach English. ("No teaching experience required," the travel brochure assures.)

Alumni travel prices range from around $1,500 for a week in Florence, Italy, to around $6,000 for the Caribbean tour aboard a tall ship (See ad, page 63.)

Another first for the program: on November 4 at the Hopkins Club on the Homewood Campus, the Alumni Relations Office will host a travel preview and reunion "f�te," at which alumni and friends can visit with faculty and travel company reps to learn more about the upcoming trips and reunite with travel companions.

Paul Greengard, A&S '71
Living the Nobel Dream

Nearly a year has passed, but it still hasn't quite sunk in. The call came, as it always does for Americans living on the East Coast, very early in the morning--at 5:15 a.m. to be precise. "I remember hearing my daughter answer the phone," says Paul Greengard, "but I had been asleep."

The caller asking for Greengard identified himself as the secretary of the Nobel Prize Committee in Stockholm. Was it really necessary to wake him? Greengard's daughter wanted to know.

"That's when I picked up the phone," says Greengard with a laugh. He learned he had won the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his pioneering discoveries of how dopamine and other transmitters in the brain exert their effects in the nerve cells. He would share the prize with Swedish researcher Arvid Carlsson and Eric Kandel of Columbia University.

Greengard heads the Laboratory of Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience at Rockefeller University, where he is the Vincent Astor Professor and director of the Zachary and Elizabeth M. Fisher Center for Research on Alzheimer's Disease. He is the 27th individual affiliated with Johns Hopkins to receive the prize, a lineage that dates back to Woodrow Wilson, who received a Ph.D. in history from Hopkins in 1886 and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919. Thirteen of the 27 have won the prize in medicine.

Two months after receiving the call, Greengard and his wife were on an airplane heading for Stockholm. "The whole event has a sort of dreamlike quality in my memory," he says of the December 10, 2000, awards ceremony.

"There were nine days of endless functions. It was really quite an extraordinary event." A member of the Swedish foreign service was waiting at the Stockholm airport to escort them unimpeded through customs. A chauffeured limousine was provided for the duration of their stay.

On the evening of the awards ceremony they attended a dinner for 1,800 people. At one point Greengard was asked to escort Princess Madeleine, youngest child of the Swedish royal family, who at age 18 was making her debut in society. "She was the focus of attention in the Swedish press," he recalls. "It was a constant barrage of photographs." Another evening, they were guests of the royal family at an intimate dinner party for 120--all seated at one long table.

"My wife tends to be a vegetarian," Greengard says of their dinner at the palace, "and so she asked the man serving her what was on the plate. He said, 'Excuse me, my English is not so good, but you are eating Bambi.'"

In addition to all the dinners and functions, Greengard remembers endless interviews with the Swedish press, which transformed into endless requests for interviews from the American press when he returned. He has also been asked to speak by scores of professional organizations and other groups, some of them entirely unrelated to his field of expertise.

Despite all the excitement, Greengard views the award as an acknowledgment rather than the culmination of his work. "I think this is a wonderful step along the way, but I'm not planning on retiring any time soon," he says. "In that regard, it hasn't had a dramatic effect on my work." His lab's discoveries at Rockefeller have provided a conceptual framework for understanding how the nervous system functions at the molecular level. Yet Greengard admits it is a field that still faces a great number of unanswered questions and offers enormous research potential.

"We are looking at a lot of pathways that cells use to communicate with each other," he says of his research. It may be--in fact, it's very likely--that in the realm of brain physiology there are going to be many spectacular advances in the future. Whether there will be a single, all-governing principle discovered is a more difficult question. I don't think so, but you never can tell." --Mike Field

Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, Peabody '80 (MA)
An Eloquent Composer with "Something to Say"

Audiences and critics listening to the music of Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez for the first time have commented that its distinctive and complex rhythms seem to root the composer's works in a musical oeuvre outside the standard classical repertoire. Some have suggested that the folklore and peasant dances of his native Mexico form the basis of his compositions.

But such musical detective work doesn't seem to impress Sanchez-Gutierrez, who carefully resists allowing his music to be easily pigeonholed. "I don't think it's Mexican folklore," he says with a laugh. "I think it's rock 'n roll and Bartok they're hearing."

Although Sanchez-Gutierrez has written for all media, including film, theater, and multimedia presentations, it is primarily chamber and symphonic compositions played by live musicians in front of live audiences that inspire him. "Chamber ensembles and orchestras don't change as much as media which is more technology-based," is how he describes the challenge of finding new directions in sound from old and well-established instruments. "That challenge excites me. I'm aesthetically interested in the energy they can create."

Sanchez-Gutierrez unleashes that energy by asking a high degree of technical proficiency from the musicians who perform his works. "My music tends to be virtuosic and challenging for the players," he says. "I find that creating works of great technical difficulty creates exciting and energetic performances."

Demanding, yes, but incomprehensible not at all. One of the hallmarks of Sanchez-Gutierrez's compositions is their inherent sense of logic and internal structure. "Some new music is so impenetrable that as a musician you're just trying your best to keep your place," says Kurt Rohde, a violist and 1986 Peabody graduate. "It's like an alien abduction. When it's over you wonder, what just happened?" Eight years ago, Rohde founded and now serves as artistic director of the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, a San Francisco-based group specializing in new music. They have previously performed two works by Sanchez-Gutierrez. "I find that Carlos's pieces are evocative and they unfold in a really imaginative way," Rohde says, "but they're also very direct. It's actually clear what he wants to do."

Left Coast Chamber Ensemble has commissioned a new work by Sanchez-Gutierrez, "De Kooning Movements II," to open its 2001-02 season. The composer is also at work on a composition for marimba and clarinet that marimbaist Makoto Nakura will feature in an October tour of Japan. In the meantime, Sanchez-Gutierrez has also acquired a new publisher in the Association for the Promotion of New Music, and has released the first CD of some of his chamber compositions, for which fellow composer Mario Lavista wrote the liner notes.

"In the last 10 years or so I've been lucky to have been commissioned to write music for projects that have interested me," Sanchez-Gutierrez says of his growing body of work. "I have never done anything in a medium in which I didn't feel I had something to say." --MF

JHUpdate, A New Way to Stay Connected

Chock full of headlines and links to interesting websites, the inaugural issue of JHUpdate, a Hopkins e-newsletter aimed at the University's alumni, debuted in August. Some 22,000 alums, who had registered their e-mail addresses with the University, received the first newsletter, and within hours, many had e-mailed back to say how happy they were to be plugged into the Hopkins scene. One alum even wrote to ask whether Hopkins offered any sort of Internet dating service. (The answer, alas, is no, but an Alumni Relations staff member points out, "Alumni events all over the country are a great place to meet fellow alumni.")

Published monthly, JHUpdate is produced jointly by the Office of Communications and Public Affairs, and the Office of Alumni Relations. It includes three sections: University News, What's Hot (links to websites around Hopkins), and Alumni News (information about Alumni Association-sponsored events and services).

To subscribe, send an e-mail to lyris@list.alumni.jhu.edu, with the word "subscribe" in the subject line.

School by the Pool: Post-War Summers at SAIS

As spring gave way to summer back in 1946, librarians at the School of International Studies in Washington, D.C., scrambled to pack up a third of the library's collection. They loaded boxes of books onto large trucks, then watched as the trucks roared away. Destination: Peterborough, New Hampshire.

During that summer--and the ensuing three summers--SAIS students, faculty, and staff relocated to the picturesque New England town for an intensive, eight-week summer session that became an idyllic hybrid: equal parts graduate school and summer camp.

Peterborough was a sleepy town of 2,500 people that burgeoned in the summer months as vacationing doctors, lawyers, and other professionals from Boston and New York migrated for the town's quaint charm and the nearby White Mountains. Artists and musicians also summered in Peterborough, the latter coming to study at the music institute of composer Edward MacDowell.

In 1946, SAIS was but three years old, and as yet unaffiliated with Johns Hopkins. For veterans coming into the School on the G.I. Bill, the emphasis was on acceleration. Students were eager to enter the new international workforce that the post-war era had created. The SAIS master's program was organized to be completed in a calendar year, making an intensive summer program a virtual necessity. Rather than force students to endure the hot, humid months in un-air-conditioned Washington, D.C., SAIS director Halford Hoskins opted to move the School to Peterborough, where he owned a summer home.

The base of operations was Kendall Hall School, formerly a private boarding school for girls. The columned white building featured a large dining room, outdoor tennis courts, and a swimming pool shaded by towering trees. It was here that the 40 students enrolled in the program, both men and women, came for classes in international relations, as well as intensive language reviews in French, German, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Arabic. Nearby stables provided the site for SAIS's makeshift library.

Though the students worked hard, the atmosphere was informal. Professors and students struck up friendships, and classes were often held under shady elm trees. Those were also summers for romance--several couples met, fell in love, and married.

"It was a very informal, pleasant atmosphere and occasion," says Priscilla Mason, who worked at SAIS for 25 years and served as assistant to the director. "We were friends--all of us--and we had a good time." Students found time for scenic drives through the Monadnock region, weekends in the White Mountains, and jaunts to nearby Boston. And Mason fondly recalls picnics, tennis matches, and baseball games held to provide relaxation from the grueling study schedule.

A highlight of the summers in New Hampshire--for both the students and the citizens of Peterborough--were Sunday night lectures at the local Unitarian church. There the audience was treated to talks by some of the most influential government leaders of the day, including Congressman Richard Nixon.

Many nights, the students sat up late around a crackling campfire discussing Hiroshima, the United Nations, and the future of Europe. Despite intense conversations and demanding coursework, those summers in New Hampshire were a sort of reprieve, a time to reflect on where they'd been and where they were going. "We weren't a typical group of graduate students, because we'd just lived through the war," explains John Allen. "Even many of the girls had served, and we were all young and happy to have it behind us."

The bucolic summer sessions in Peterborough came to an end in 1950, when SAIS became affiliated with Johns Hopkins University. --Susan Muaddi Darraj

Focus: Student "Send-Off" Parties

Sometimes they're very dressy affairs, sometimes they're on a beach," explains Alumni Relations staff member Deborah Lazenby, of the summer "send-off" parties hosted by Hopkins alumni across the nation. "Sometimes they involve hotdogs and chips, other times crab cakes and hors d'ouevres served on a silver tray."

The flavor differs according to the host, but all the parties have a common goal: to bring together students from a particular region who will be new to Hopkins in the fall. In cities from Atlanta, Georgia, to Westchester, New York, local alumni host these events in their homes, at their clubs, or sometimes at a restaurant.

Quick Facts: Send-Off Party Sites

Atlanta, GA	Baltimore, MD
Boston, MA	Chestertown, MD
Chicago, IL	Denver, CO
Fairfield, CT	Dallas, TX
Houston, TX	Hollywood, FL
Long Island, NY	Los Angeles, CA
Excelsior, MN	Englishtown, NJ
Berkeley Hills, CA	Terrace Park, OH
Philadelphia, PA	Pittsburgh, PA
San Diego, CA	Seattle, WA
Washington, DC	Westchester, NY

Distinguished Alumnus Award

Recognizes personal, professional, or humanitarian achievement

Robert M. Evans, A&S '54, a pioneer in computer processing services and custom software systems, in 1968 incorporated DP/Associates, an early industry leader in providing computer services to businesses in Baltimore. He later established Middleton Press, Inc., a publisher of large-format coffee-table books featuring the photography of Middleton Evans.

 

Charlotte Ferencz, SPH '53, a pediatrician, has devoted her career to studying congenital heart disease in infants, focusing on both epidemiologic research and public health interventions. Her landmark Baltimore-Washington Infant Study provided extensive and authoritative findings on the disorder and its social consequences.

 

William H. B. Howard, A&S '59, a physician and surgeon, is founder and director of the internationally known Sports Medicine Center at Baltimore's Union Memorial Hospital, which was chosen as the Sports Medicine Center for the U.S. Olympic gymnastics team.

Heritage Award

Recognizes outstanding service to the Johns Hopkins University

Ann B. Greif, a Hopkins advocate for over 40 years, has been president of the Hospital Women's Board, a member of the Hospital Board of Trustees, and a founding member of the National Council for Johns Hopkins Medicine. She is now a Presidential Counselor.

 

James E. McClaine, Engr '63, is a charter member of the Society of Engineering Alumni, focusing on student relations and on providing summer work opportunities for students. He also has served on the Alumni Council and the Whiting School campaign committee.

Woodrow Wilson Award

Recognizes distinguished government service

Debra S. Knopman, Engr '87 (Ph.D.), is devoted to the science and politics of clean water. She has worked with the U.S. Senate on the Clean Water Act and with the Interior Department, the Progressive Policy Institute, and the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board.

 

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