Cornell Alumni Magazine
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c1-c4CAMJA06 6/19/06 3:01 PM Page c1 July/August 2006 $6.00 alumni magazine HAILHAIL TOTO THE THE CHIEFCHIEF HeHe maymay havehave beenbeen aa fictionalfictional president,president, butbut JimmyJimmy Smits,Smits, MFAMFA ’82,’82, isis forfor realreal c1-c4CAMJA06 6/19/06 3:02 PM Page c2 001-001CAMMJ06toc 6/19/06 2:00 PM Page 1 Contents JULY / AUGUST 2006 VOLUME 109 NUMBER 1 2 Letter From Ithaca alumni magazine HRR’s curtain call 4 Correspondence Discriminating thoughts 8 From the Hill President’s day. Plus: Professor Python, new chief fundraiser, digital history, comic showdown, fatal fire, and the ghost bird vanishes again. 12 Sports Lax efforts 16 Authors Features Renaissance man 18 Wines of the Finger Lakes 36 Scientist and Mechanic 2002 Hunt Country Late Harvest KATRINA FIRLIK ’91 Vignoles Dr. Katrina Schreiber Firlik spent seven rigorous years training to 56 Classifieds & Cornellians be a neurosurgeon, among the most demanding of surgical disci- in Business plines. In this excerpt from her memoir, Another Day in the Frontal Lobe, the first female resident in the neurosurgery program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center explains why brains don’t 59 Alma Matters feel exactly like toothpaste, how to remove a nail from a human skull, and other insights from her journey to the center of the mind. 62 Class Notes 104 Legacies 42 El Presidente BRAD HERZOG ’90 108 Alumni Deaths When Jimmy Smits, MFA ’82, took on the 112 Cornelliana role of a president-to-be in the final seasons Saying uncle of the NBC drama “The West Wing,” it was 112 more than a historic—if symbolic—victory for a Latino candidate on the national stage. It was a very real expression of Smits’s own 20 Currents passion for mixing activism with artistry. THE BIG ONE | Mike Abrams hands over the canon SECURITY ALERT | Safety first with Karen Greenberg 48 A Cold Hit BASIC TRAINING | Helping mothers-to-be see the nurse DAVID DUDLEY ALL THE RIGHT In 1991, twenty-eight-year-old Patricia MOVES | An unusual 20 Scoville ’86 was murdered in the woods out- therapy makes a leap side of Stowe,Vermont. Five years later, with forward the perpetrator still free and every lead exhausted, David Scoville ’61 and his wife, BODIES MEET BYTES Ann Van Order Scoville ’61, urged state law- | Digital dance revolution makers to deploy a powerful—and contro- Plus | A wilderness cam- versial—new DNA technology to hunt down paign and a wunderkind the man who killed their daughter. goes to Germany Cornell Alumni Magazine (ISSN 1070-2733; USPS 006-902) is published six times a year, in January, March, May, July, September, and November, by the Cornell Alumni Federation, 401 East State Street, Suite 301, Ithaca, NY 14850. Subscriptions cost $30 a year. Periodical postage paid at Ithaca, NY, and additional mailing offices. POSTMAS- TER: Send address changes to Cornell Alumni Magazine, c/o Public Affairs Records, 130 East Seneca St., Suite 400, Ithaca, NY 14850-4353. JULY / AUGUST 2006 1 002-003CAMJA06lfi 6/19/06 2:14 PM Page 2 Letter From Ithaca The Character of Cornell THOUGHTS ON DEPARTING DAY HALL (AGAIN) ORNELL STANDS OUT AMONG UNIVERSITIES FOR May 27 that this project is too significant to abandon for fear of many reasons, including its commitment to democratic failure. That is a good message to new PhDs about to begin c access and opportunity, its combination of Ivy League and careers in research, and a good example of Cornell intellectual land-grant missions, and its remarkable academic breadth and courage at work. depth. It is indeed a place where any person can find instruction One final example: After Hurricane Katrina flooded New in (virtually) any study. But I am Orleans, thousands of students at struck by historian Carl Becker’s Tulane, Xavier, and the University conviction that Cornell’s ethos, its of New Orleans lost their belong- defining identity, is a passion for ings, their campus, and a chance intellectual freedom. to continue their education. Cor- You can’t measure passion, but nell stepped in to help. Experts you certainly can see and feel it in from the land-grant units traveled action. Anecdotes help, and Becker to Louisiana to join the relief tells them best: “There is the story effort. And Cornell offered admis- of the famous professor of history, sion—and free tuition—to any a passionate defender of majority student-evacuee who arrived in rule, who, foreseeing that he would Ithaca. With an outpouring of be outvoted in the faculty on the support from faculty, staff, Cornell question of the location of Risley students, and members of the Hall,declared with emotion that U PHOTO community, 200 hurricane victims he felt so strongly on the subject spent a semester in Ithaca. Cornell that he thought he ought to have Kicking back: Hunter Rawlings is eager to return acted immediately and instinc- two votes.” to Cornell’s classrooms. tively to assist those in need. As I return to full-time teach- If Carl Becker best captured ing at Cornell (for the second time), here are my own impressions the Cornell spirit in prose, Archie Ammons is our poet laureate. of the Cornell character in action. The last lines of Archie’s great poem Garbage describe the virtues For some years, I have invited students to my office to discuss of creative tension: anything on their minds. One undergraduate, Abby Krich ’04, the stopped by frequently to urge that Cornell develop wind and solar poem that goes dumb holds tears: the line, power as alternative energy sources. I grew impatient hearing the the fire line, where passion and control waver same utopian message from the same student semester after for the field, that is a line so difficult to semester, but she made her appeals with passionate integrity, sup- keep in the right degree, one side not raiding ported them with solid research, and presented them tirelessly the other: if I reap the peripheries will I and tenaciously to dozens of Cornell administrators and engi- get hardweed seed and dried roughage, roughage neers. Single-handedly, she persuaded us to fund and implement like teasel and cattail and brush above snow in two of her proposed initiatives. Abby Krich earned her master’s winter, pure design lifeless in a painted hold. degree in engineering last month—and the respect of many a Cornellian on campus. Carl Becker often said that the Cornell spirit was free, but also As many Americans know, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology a bit wild at times. So much the better: I have no doubt that “oth- has taken a lot of heat for announcing last year that at least one erwise thinking” individuals, with independent, irreverent casts ivory-billed woodpecker lived in the swamps of Arkansas—and of mind, will continue to keep Cornell on “the fire line, where then launching an expensive and thus far futile effort to locate the passion and control waver for the field.”I can’t wait to get back to bird. But lab director John Fitzpatrick is not embarrassed, apolo- Cornell’s classrooms. getic, or ready to give up. He welcomes critiques by fellow scien- — Hunter R. Rawlings III tists and said in his address to Cornell’s doctoral graduates on Hunter Rawlings completed his term as interim president on June 30. 2 CORNELL ALUMNI MAGAZINE 002-003CAMJA06lfi 6/19/06 2:14 PM Page 3 004-007CAMJA06corr 6/19/06 2:16 PM Page 4 Correspondence Minority Response IS CORNELL MAKING PROGRESS—OR PERPETUATING PREJUDICE? IF THERE IS ONE CONCLUSION TO BE heartening to hear of the success of the drawn from the article “Minority Report” Cornell Mosaic conference at CU, as (May/June 2006), it is that racial discrim- well as similar events in New York City ination at Cornell hasn’t ended. It simply and Philadelphia. has taken another form. As the article notes, “more than 36 The fact of the matter is that Cornell, percent of the Class of 2010 self-identify by its practices, is perpetuating racial dis- as minority.”This fact, alone, would sug- tinctions and, therefore, racial prejudices. gest that it is of great importance to con- Isn’t it time that we practice what we tinue, and enhance, the efforts to create preach? Does having separate housing for more interest in the future of Cornell African Americans expedite their being across the spectrum of ethnic, cultural, accepted into the social and economic and (although the term is scientifically structure as equals? Does having separate problematic) racial groupings. alumni organizations for African Ameri- I would suggest an intensification cans, Asian Americans, and others of efforts to provide more integrative improve relations among all graduates and programs during Reunion. Having bring us closer together? helped to coordinate three panels of this Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had a nature—with varying degrees of suc- dream. His dream was not just that cess—I realize that this kind of African Americans would no longer be endeavor is neither easy nor formulaic. automatically discriminated against However, based on the feedback from because of their color but that they, and all these events, it would seem that there is process. I have personally recommended the other human beings in this country, much to be gained, both by the University highly qualified minority students with would be considered Americans. His and by the Cornellians who choose to clear career goals and real working experi- dream was of a color-blind nation where attend. ence to Cornell, without any results. They all people are equal in every respect and David Burak ’67, MFA ’80 have found other universities that actually accepted everywhere.