2006 Recipients
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2006 Recipients (click on the name to learn more about the recipient) Distinguished Alumni Award: Carlton E. Gamer, class of 1946 Pioneer Hall of Fame: Arthur J. Bonds, class of 1960 Pioneer Hall of Fame: John “Mac” Holzer, class of 1961 Pioneer Hall of Fame: Michael D. Wiant, class of 1967 Alumni Service: Su Eckert Dessa, class of 1975 Friend of U-High: Dr. Paul J. Baker Honored Posthumous Recognition: Adlai E. Stevenson I Posthumous Award: Ralph Eugene Meatyard, class of 1943 Distinguished Alumni Award: Carlton E. Gamer, class of 1946 Carlton Gamer’s music has been featured in concert halls throughout the United States, including such prestigious venues as New York’s Carnegie Recital Hall, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Among its presenters have been the International Society of Contemporary Music, the Society of Composers, the Current and Modern Consort, and the College Music Society. His works have been heard at the San Diego International Computer Music Conference, WNYC Festival of American Music, Grand Teton Music Festival, Southwestern Composers Conference, Colorado Contemporary Music Festival and Colorado College Summer Music Festival. Mr. Gamer’s music has been widely performed abroad as well, in Sydney, Guadalajara, Oxford, Salzburg, Rome, and Warsaw Mr. Gamer was born in Chicago, and then followed his teacher-father to Urbana and the University of Illinois. At the age of eight, he began to study piano and composition with Tanja and Hubert Kessler. He attended U-High in Normal from 1942 to 1946, when he graduated as valedictorian. He later acquired music degrees from Northwestern University and Boston University. In New York he founded a new-music group, The Seven, and was the music director for Ilka Suarez and Company. He joined the music faculty at Colorado College in 1954. For two years he served as accompanist for Hanya Holm in her summer dance workshops at the college. He retired from that position to study composition with the eminent composer Roger Sessions and to join the Princeton Seminars in Advanced Musical Studies. During leaves from Colorado College, Mr. Gamer enjoyed various fellowships and teaching positions elsewhere. He was an Asia Society Fellow at The University of California and in Kyoto, Japan in 1962-3, a Senior Fellow of the Council of Humanities at Princeton University in 1976, and a MacDowell Colony Fellow in the same year. He taught at Princeton University in 1974, 1976, and 1981, at the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies in 1979, and at The University of Michigan in 1982. He retired from full- time teaching in 1994. Mr. Gamer is a music theorist as well as a composer. He has published widely in that field in The Encyclopedia Britannica, The Journal of Music Theory, The Musical Quarterly, and Perspectives of New Music. An article on “Microtones and Projective Planes”, which he wrote with the mathematician Robin Wilson, was published in Music and Mathematics (Oxford University Press, 2003). His biographical record has been included in the 2006 edition of Who’s Who in America. Recordings of his works have been issued on Capstone, Crystal and MMC labels. Arkhe, performed by the Warsaw National Philharmonic, is available on MMC. Mr. Gamer’s musical talents and successes have brought him international recognition. For his outstanding contributions to his profession, he will join the select group of University High School Distinguished Alumni. Pioneer Hall of Fame: Arthur J. Bonds, class of 1960 Arthur James Bonds earned a Bachelor of Science in Education Degree from Illinois State University as a French major. Arthur spent two of his summers doing graduate work in French. One summer was at the University of Hawaii in Hilo and the other was at Université Catholique de l’Ouest, Angers, France. He then earned his Master of Education degree from the National College of Education in Evanston, Illinois. Arthur was a French Teacher at both Kankakee Eastridge HS and Wheaton North HS in Kankakee and Wheaton, respectively. He considers teaching his life calling. His goal was “to prepare people not just to earn a living but live a life, for it is truly the mind that makes the body rich.” While at Wheaton North, he was far from content with teaching from the standard materials. He: 1. Authored “Language Study in Our High Schools”, a booklet for parents 2. Co-authored “Avril Á Paris”, “French Enrollment Up”, and “Á Québec Au Québec” (three approximately 100 page books to help French teachers) 3. Authored a third level grammar packet (independent study packet), Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Co. New York Roles that Arthur has served include: 1. Founder and past sponsor of “L’Académie Française” (French Honor Society) at WNHS 2. Co-founder and past sponsor of “Le Cercle Française” (French Club) at WNHS 3. Chairman of Foreign Languages, ESL, Bilingual Department at WNHS 4. Member, WNHS Multi-Cultural Committee 5. Chairman, District #200 Foreign Language Topic Committee (7 years) 6. Member, District #200 High School Curriculum Council 7. Member, Illinois Foreign Language Teachers Association 8. Member, Illinois Council of Teachers of French 9. Member, American Association of Teachers of French 10. Elected Member, Executive Council of AATF for Chicago and Northern Illinois 11. Supervisor of Student Teachers in Chicago-area from ISU, WIU, Wheaton College, and North Central College Additionally, Arthur has been extremely involved in Christian Education and Administration within the Baptist Church. He has held many positions within the church locally and has been asked to make presentations on the state, national and international basis. He has traveled to at least 15 countries. Congratulations to Arthur James Bonds on his 2006 induction into the University High School Pioneer Hall of Fame. Pioneer Hall of Fame: John “Mac” Holzer, class of 1961 After graduating from U-High, Mac Holzer began a career in technology innovation encompassing computer hardware, software, the Internet, and energy. Mac’s assignments spanned Boston; Manhattan; Bogotá and Cartagena, Colombia; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Aruba, Netherlands Antilles; Miami, and Houston. Mac studied on a 4-year Littman scholarship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and participated in MIT’s cooperative program with RCA’s David Sarnoff Research Laboratories in Princeton, NJ. He was elected to the engineering, electrical engineering, and science honoraries and received a BSEE degree in 1965. Mac was a Pillsbury Fellow at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago. He was elected to the business honorary and garnered an MBA in 1967. Mac met Brazil’s Vanessa Pitangui Lucena, U-High’s first AFS foreign exchange student, while in Normal on Christmas break in 1963. Three years of correspondence between the two kindled a long distance romance. Mac mounted a Pan Am Clipper to Brazil in 1966, and the pair became engaged. They wed in Boston the following year. Thus began a 38-year odyssey in 4 countries and Mac’s eventual fluency in Spanish and Portuguese. In 1967, Mac joined the Digital Equipment Corporation (later acquired by Hewlett Packard) that developed the first mini-computer, the predecessor to the personal computer. Predicated on the requirements of General Motors, he and four other engineers invented and patented the world’s first Programmable Logic Controller, which has become a staple of industrial automation worldwide with tens of billions of dollars in sales from the likes of GE and Honeywell that licensed the technology. Mac became the PLC’s first product line manager, directed the development of software to simulate and control industrial processes, and rolled out the product to the auto industry. Mac later joined Exxon and, during the 1970’s and 1980’s, negotiated crude oil offtake agreements with the Colombian and Venezuelan governments, optimized refinery operations in Colombia and Aruba, orchestrated a major refinery investment program with Exxon Research and Engineering, and developed pricing strategies in the international coal market for Colombia’s El Cerrejon mine, the world’s largest. In the 1990’s, Mac joined Exxon USA to develop a state-of-the-art relational database capable of managing the company’s hundreds of millions of dollars of property tax payments to thousands of municipalities nationwide. The strategy was to partner with a software company and create a general-purpose product for sale to other large companies. The approach freed Exxon of millions of dollars of software development and maintenance costs. In just two years, Mac and a small Houston company, Burr Wolff, developed generic property tax software based on input from tax professionals at Exxon, Sears, and AT&T. Since its 1998 debut, the software has dominated the Fortune 500 market, and BW has grown 25-fold. After retiring from Exxon in 1998, Mac joined Burr Wolff as Vice President and founded its property tax outsourcing division. He developed cutting edge computer applications to permit BW to file property tax returns and make tax payments for large companies such a Bank of America, Sears, Ryder, and others. Mac created “WebView,” providing clients with 24x7 access to property tax records and reports over the Internet. He recruited programmers, clerical staff and supervisors to handle the burgeoning growth of what became the largest property tax outsourcing operation in the USA. Since retirement in 2001, Mac has researched the current peaking of the world’s conventional oil production and future alternative energy resources and has become involved with the MIT Energy Research Council. Amongst all of these major successes, Mac lists his most satisfying success as his founding of an English language pre-school in Aruba. Mac resides in Houston. His two sons, Jason and Erich, are graduates of Stanford University and Dartmouth College, respectively; they are both living in Texas.