A new faculty lecture series rolls out with the mission of fueling cerebral life on campus.

By Mary Jo Patterson

An intellectual feast, with food and drink and an occasional visiting star. That’s the concept guiding the creation of the Drew Faculty Seminar set to debut February 21.

Four deans and eight faculty members spent the fall designing the series, intended to draw in faculty and staff from the entire Drew community. “It will be a mix of scholarship offered by Drew faculty, outside speakers of some prominence and panel discussions,” says Robert Ready, interim dean of the Caspersen School of Graduate Studies, one of the planners. “The idea is to create a more vibrant intellectual culture in this university.”

The first seminar, “Behavior, Ethics and Computations in the Brain,” is scheduled next Tuesday at 4 p.m. in Mead Hall’s Founders Room. The panel includes Graham Cousens, assistant professor of psychology; Minjoon Kouh, assistant professor of physics and Elias Ortega-Aponte, assistant professor of Afro-Latina/o religions and cultural studies.

The new seminar is actually a reinvigorated version of a very old Drew institution, the Aquinas Seminar, which launched in the fall of 1970 and held its final meeting Oct. 3, 2011. For 41 years interested faculty and staff gathered regularly to hear lecturers that included British philosopher Owen Barfield and University of Pennsylvania sociologist Philip Reiff, a specialist on Freud.

During its first three years, the seminar examined the relationship between psychology and history, a topic requested by its early funder, the Aquinas Fund of New York. Later it took on all kinds of annual themes, chosen by a steering committee. They ranged from “Self and Identity” and “Events That Transform Thinking” to “Dimensions of Global Awareness,” following 9/11.

“It was always very exciting. I always felt as if I was on the cutting edge of all these different intellectual currents,” says trustee emerita Shirley Sugerman, a psychoanalyst and former Drew adjunct in religion who coordinated the Aquinas Seminar from its inception. But in recent years attendance declined, especially among new faculty members. “It was losing its luster. We needed new people, new energy.”

Photo by Bob Handleman

The pre-Halloween trick nature played on Drew and the rest of the East Coast brought with it dueling emotions: fear for our campus, as branches toppled under an unseasonable snowfall that weighed down the still-leafy trees, and love for all Drew’s forested beauty. When students returned after four days, the landscape looked a little leaner, but Drew’s spectacular autumnal glory held strong.

I’m reminded of what Olin Curtis, an early seminary professor, wrote on the marvels that surround us in The Building of Drew University, a book published in 1938 by Professor Charles Fremont Sitterly. “The first time I ever saw Drew Forest, Doctor Upham, my gracious host, suddenly said: ‘Do you want to see the finest thing we have here?’ Before we came to the library, the doctor stopped, backed away from the path, and, with a quick flourish of his entire arm, as if trying to sweep the whole campus into the spot in front of him, exclaimed heartily: ‘There it is! That beech! Is there anywhere on earth, any living thing more beautiful?’”

Familiarity breeds contempt, and we can take even the greatest gifts for granted. The October 29 storm renewed for all of us a sense of nature’s other and more beneficent side, the grace of the land we at Drew have inherited. Indeed, this issue of Drew Magazine is a visual hymn to the Forest.

But the truth is that had students returned just a day or two after the storm, they would have been saddened by the mounds of debris on campus and stunned by the degree of destruction.

After Drew lost power on Saturday afternoon, the food staff successfully came up with makeshift meals, even cooking outdoors on grills, until we could evacuate the campus. Families of students who lived nearby took in students who could not easily travel home to further destinations. (One New Jersey family took in nine students. Another housed 14!) Meanwhile, student life personnel led by Associate Dean Frank Merckx worked overtime to accommodate 40 students who could not get away and who were taken in by our very generous colleagues at the College of St. Elizabeth.

For what seemed an age, Executive Director of Facilities Mike Kopas and his staff went without sleep and the usual creature comforts to clean up the campus and make it ready for the rest of us. In fact, my only reluctance in writing about the quiet heroism of some is that I am perforce neglecting others, colleagues in every office from computing to the registrar to finance to the various schools. I don’t know of a single case where an individual did not shine.

And so the quirky, terrible storm and its aftermath reminded us finally of the one thing we love more than Drew’s natural beauty: its people, who are tantamount to its soul.

Treemageddon

The premature snowstorm blessedly left trees standing, but took down branches with a vengeance. For photos, visit drew.edu/treemageddon.

2011 Nobel winner Adam Riess attended Drew’s Governor’s School in 1987.

Professor James Supplee inspired a 2011 Nobel Prize winner to pursue physics.

By Renée Olson

It took just 11 years for Adam Riess to go from being a 17-year-old student at the New Jersey Governor’s School in the Sciences at Drew to coming up with calculations that have upended conventional thinking in astrophysics.

And then, it took just 13 more to win a Nobel Prize.

As a teen, what drew him to science was a teacher at Watchung Hills Regional High School in Warren, N.J. What led him to physics was attending the Governor’s School in the summer of 1987.

“I had a professor, Dr. Supplee, who I remember very well. He taught a course in special relativity that made my head spin,” says Riess, who holds degrees from MIT and Harvard and is now a professor at Johns Hopkins. “I left wanting to be a physicist.”

“Special relativity has all these crazy ideas about how objects move in space,” says Riess. “I remember arguing with him. I would say, ‘That’s how it looks, but not how it is.’”

Riess is credited with being the first to discover “dark energy,” a force that makes up as much as 70 percent of the universe and is causing the cosmos to expand at an accelerating rate. The findings may help researchers understand what’s ultimately in store for the universe.

Thrilled that his former student won a Nobel, James Supplee, physics department chair, has vivid memories of the budding scientists in the program, where he taught for a decade. “After class, eight or 10 students would follow me to the cafeteria, asking questions,” says Supplee. “They couldn’t stop. They were so curious, the most energetic students.”

Riess, who remembers living at Drew in “a dorm back near the woods,” shares Supplee’s recollection of ardent, post-class conversations in the Commons. Says Riess, “I would have been in that group.”

In November, Weiss finished eighth in junior men’s foil at USAF’s North American Cup in Austin, Texas. Photo by Bill Cardoni.

By Christopher Hann

Why the foil, instead of the épée or saber?
It was actually the one I started with. When I began in instructional league, that was the one the instructor put in my hand. As time went on, I really grew to love this weapon more than the other two.

Why?
The game is different in foil. It has this thing called right of way, which is all about finding energy between your opponent and yourself and figuring when it’s appropriate to attack. I think it’s more challenging than the other two weapons. The target area is just the torso, the side and the back.

You were 57 and 5 last season, one of the best individual records in Drew fencing history. Do you still find yourself explaining your sport to your classmates?
Oh, yeah, absolutely. It’s an acquired taste for a lot of people. They’re interested by it, but it’s difficult to understand. I find it difficult to verbalize what goes on in a bout.

What’s the secret to being a great foil fencer?
Wow, that’s a really tough question. I think it comes down to smart fencing. Fencing is often referred to as physical chess, and it really is.

At the European Maccabi Games in Vienna last summer, you received an individual gold medal, a team gold, an individual silver and a team bronze. Do you prepare any differently for fencing in an international competition?
I think I treat every competition as if it was the highest level possible. Only because I know that’s when my best fencing is going to come out.

You finished 19th nationally last spring. How much better can you get in the next three seasons?
I want to go until I can’t go any farther, and I think I’m miles away from that.

Aksit has applied for a Fulbright, which she’d use to study tuberculosis in Turkey.

With a national grant, an undergrad is helping pinpoint what keeps cholera bacteria alive and kicking.

By Mary Jo Patterson

Senior Selime Aksit was always fascinated by science, but two years ago she realized her real passion was science on a molecular level. She asked chemistry professor Jane Liu if she could volunteer in her lab. “I said I was interested in learning how to do research and asked if she’d mind if I did things for her,” recalls Aksit. “She started me with really basic stuff, like how to grow bacteria.”

Aksit eventually joined a lab team of Drew undergraduates studying how a particular RNA molecule affects the cell function of Vibrio cholerae, the bacterium that causes cholera. Last spring she was awarded an Undergraduate Research Fellowship from the American Society of Microbiology, funding 10 weeks of further research with Liu. Aksit’s experiments last summer tested the team’s hypothesis that the RNA acted as a switch for a gene that produces a protein allowing the bacterium to take up a certain sugar and survive. “Right now, we’re in the very baby steps of discovery, but the molecular mechanisms we reveal might help some company—maybe 10 years from now—make therapies or cures,” says Aksit, who in June will present her findings at the society’s annual meeting in San Francisco.

Cholera, an ancient killer, remains a threat in developing countries. Outbreaks occur when water and food supplies become contaminated in areas with poor sanitation, as in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake. If untreated, the disease can lead to death, and existing vaccines have limited effectiveness.

Aksit, a first-generation Turkish-American with a major in biochemistry and microbiology and a minor in studio art, plans to pursue a dual M.D.-Ph.D. degree. What sets her apart from other students, according to her mentor, are her lab skills and her drive. “She has an incredible level of energy,” says Liu. “You get the sense there is absolutely nothing she can’t do, nothing she can’t figure out.”

Drew’s associate webmaster Justin Jackson C’05 drops to help Chris Palmer C’03 summit Tough Mudder’s obstacle #13. Photo by Bill Cardoni

A British Special Forces training spinoff, Tough Mudder pits one’s inner beast against a 12-mile-long series of obstacles, from plunging into a frigid river to crashing headlong through dangling live wires. At least eight alumni, including those pictured here, plus Abby Calhoun, Eric Ramirez, Boris Khovitch, Zachary Merves and Michael Perez (all C’09), competed in small teams at last November’s Tri-State competition in Englishtown, N.J. Proceeds benefited the nonprofit Wounded Warrior Project.—Renée Olson

After his son was murdered, Walt Everett did what few would. He reached out to the man who killed him.

By Christopher Hann. Photos by Bill Cardoni

Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pa. September 2011.

The first-year seminar is titled “Timeless Questions, Difficult Times: Making Meaning of Uncertainty,” and you might have to search the darkest corners of the planet to find a guest speaker more qualified to hold forth on that topic than the Rev. Walter Everett C’56, T’60.

A retired Methodist minister, Everett is something of an authority on timeless questions and difficult times, and he’s spent years trying to make meaning of uncertainty. He’s come to Bucknell, where he sits at the head of a small classroom crammed with 15 students and two instructors, to weave his extraordinary tale one more time, a retelling that will leave some of those in his young audience questioning their very core. For he’s also come with some questions of his own.

“How many of you are in favor of the death penalty?” Everett begins.

Silence.

“How many of you are opposed?”

A few.

“How many are not sure?”

All the rest.

Over the past quarter-century, Everett has emerged as one of the leading voices—and perhaps the least likely—in the national movement to abolish the death penalty. He is 77 years old, with a snow-white beard, neatly trimmed, and a soft but steady voice. His impromptu classroom survey might have affirmed the abolition movement’s long odds, but in recent years several states have in fact repealed capital punishment, New Jersey among them. To date 17 states do not permit executions (most recently, Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber announced last November that he would not approve any more executions during his term). Everett is convinced that nine or 10 more states will soon join them—enough, he hopes, to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court, which reinstated capital punishment in 1976, to ban it once and for all.

Everett’s son Scott, shortly before his murder a quarter-century ago.

Everett has been active in a number of abolition groups, and he sits on the board of Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights (he remains friends with former board member Robert Meeropol, son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, accused spies who were executed in 1953, their case still an iconic emblem of the Cold War). So strong has been Everett’s influence in the movement that each year the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty bestows the Walter Everett Humanitarian Award. He tells the Bucknell students that he opposes the death penalty on multiple grounds: its application (it is inequitably and sometimes mistakenly imposed); its price (capital cases cost far more to prosecute than non-capital cases); and its misperceived benefit (it does not provide solace to the families of murder victims).

“Walter was the first family member of a murder victim who would publicly speak out against the death penalty,” says Renny Cushing, the executive director of Murder Victims’ Families and a former New Hampshire state representative. “You can’t tell somebody you need to forgive the killer. Walt simply explains his journey, and that models it. And he does it with the humility that’s Walter. He’s one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever met in my life.”

At Bucknell, Everett tells the students that he still remembers the indifferent response he got from his Drew classmates the day, more than a half-century ago, that he spoke out against capital punishment during a public speaking course taught by Ralph Johnson. “The rest of the class kind of looked around and said, ‘Huh? What’s the big deal?’” he says. Then, Everett’s position was rooted in his faith. Today, it’s more personal, the result of unforeseen events and his uncommon response to them. Taking stock of the course of his life during this period, he calls it “my journey.”

Walt Everett’s journey begins at 8 o’clock  in the morning on July 26, 1987, in Petersburg, Va. As the minister of a church in Hartford, Conn., Everett was traveling with members of his congregation to Charlotte, N.C., where they were to build homes with Habitat for Humanity. They’d spent the night in Petersburg, and Everett had just sat down to breakfast at the hotel when he got word to call home. An emergency, he was told.

Four hundred miles away, Everett’s younger son, Wayne, picked up the phone and delivered the news: “Dad, Scott was murdered last night.” Earlier that morning, in an apartment building in Bridgeport, Conn., Everett’s elder son, Scott, 24, had been shot, point-blank, by a 27-year-old drug dealer named Mike Carlucci.

Scott Everett had been born on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, the child of an alcoholic mother and absentee father. He was removed from his home before he was six months old, Walt Everett says, when child welfare officials accused his mother of trying to sell him for a case of beer. Everett and his first wife, Isabel, learned about Scott from Everett’s brother, Arthur, a minister who was working with Native Americans in White River, S.D. Within days they were on a flight to Pierre, the state capital. When they returned home to Connecticut, they brought Scott with them. He was 22 months old.

As a teenager Scott struggled in school, dropped out at 16 and began drinking heavily. But in time he turned his life around, joining AA, getting sober and finding steady work. At 22, Scott moved into his own place in the apartment building in Bridgeport. On a Saturday night in July 1987, Scott went out with friends, arriving home after midnight to find that his apartment had been burglarized. After his friends settled him down, he walked them outside to their car, leaving his keys in his apartment. But when he returned, he found the outside door of the building locked. He knocked, hoping someone would let him in. Around the same time, another tenant was screaming that her apartment had just been burglarized.

In the apartment across the hall, Mike Carlucci heard the commotion. By his own admission, Carlucci was stoned on cocaine and had not slept in at least a week. That night he’d been out drinking with a cousin and a friend.

They planned to drive down to New York City, where the bars stayed open until 5 a.m., and had returned to Carlucci’s apartment to change clothes and restock his stash of drugs. When Carlucci opened the door of his apartment and saw the woman screaming, he went back inside to grab his .38-caliber handgun. Armed, he walked down the hall and heard someone pounding on the door at the end of the hallway. When he opened it, he did not recognize Scott Everett, did not know that Scott was a tenant in the same building. Wielding his gun, he told Scott to leave. Then, for reasons that even Carlucci cannot explain, he raised the gun to Scott’s neck. For a fleeting moment, he considered the consequences of what he was about to do. If I pull the trigger, Carlucci reasoned to himself, this guy is going to die, and I’m going to prison for the rest of my life. And then he pulled the trigger.

Any death of a young person creates unspeakable trauma for the family, Everett tells the Bucknell students. A violent death, he says, “increases the trauma exponentially.”

And so it was that for the next 11 months Everett saw his life spiral downward, seemingly out of his control. He felt despair, rage, depression. His marriage, already on shaky ground, cracked under the strain. Everett prayed to God, beseeching him to show him a way out of the darkness. But Everett discerned no response. He attended a support group meeting with other family members of murder victims—the only people, he figured, who could possibly understand the anguish that consumed him. One night he heard a woman in the group say that anyone who committed murder “should be taken out and shot immediately.” Then he learned that the woman’s son had been killed 14 years earlier. He wondered if that’s what his life would be like for the next 14 years.

“I was ignoring mail. I was not paying attention to people,” Everett tells the students. “My thoughts were elsewhere.”

Eleven months and two weeks after the murder of his son, Everett sat in a courtroom in Bridgeport for Carlucci’s sentencing. Everett had never before set eyes on his son’s killer, who arrived at the courthouse three hours late, having indulged in one last cocaine binge before prison. The judge asked Everett if he wished to make a statement. Everett rose and spoke for 10 minutes, though he doesn’t remember a word of what he said. Then the judge asked Carlucci if he would like to speak. Carlucci stood. Everett tells the Bucknell students that he remembers every word Carlucci uttered.

“I’m sorry I killed Scott Everett. I wish I could bring him back. Obviously, I can’t. These must sound like empty words to the Everetts. I don’t know what else to say. I’m sorry.”

That simple expression of remorse would change the course of Everett’s life. “It was,” he tells the students, “as though at that moment God said, ‘I’ve been asking you to wait. This is what I’ve been asking you to wait for.’”

Scott with his younger siblings, Wayne and Janna.

Two weeks later, at 8 o’clock in the morning on July 26, 1988, exactly one year to the minute after he learned of his son’s murder, Walt Everett sat down to write a letter to Mike Carlucci. Over the course of three pages, Everett recounted the suffering that Scott’s death had inflicted on his family. “The pain,” Everett wrote, “is almost unbearable at times.”

Yet he also thanked Carlucci for the apology he had delivered at his sentencing. And then Everett went further. “I know also that I will not be able to move on with my life unless I can accept your apology,” he wrote. “And so, although words seem so trivial in some ways (yet they are all that we have now), I do accept your apology, and, as hard as these words are to write, I add: I forgive you.”

The Bucknell students sit rapt. The room is pin-drop quiet. Everett pauses a moment, then continues.

His decision to forgive Carlucci, he says, was not meant to ease the guilt that weighed on the soul of his son’s killer. It was more selfish than that. He says he offered forgiveness to save his own life. “You need to feel good enough about yourself in order to forgive,” he says. When he stuck the letter in the mail, he says, “I felt the burden start to lift.”

A few days later, inside Enfield Correc­tional Institution, Mike Carlucci looked at the return address on the letter that had just arrived, and he cursed. “What the hell is he doing writing to me?” he asked his drug counselor. Carlucci threw the envelope on the counselor’s desk and stormed into the mess hall. After dinner, he returned to see the envelope still there, unopened. The counselor suggested he read the letter. Carlucci refused. Finally he asked the counselor to read it and tell him if there was anything in the letter that he ought to see. The counselor did.

“Mike,” she said afterward, “I really think you ought to read this.”

Two weeks after Everett mailed his letter, he received a one-page response from his son’s killer.

“Dear Sir:

“Mr. Everett I hope this letter finds you in good health, and makes you feel as good as your letter made me feel.”

Carlucci went on to thank Everett, telling him that the letter gave him peace of mind and allowed him to sleep easier at night. In closing, Carlucci wrote:

“Again, let me say how truly sorry I am to you and your family! I hope I will hear from you soon.

“Sincerely, Michael Carlucci.”

Thereafter ensued an exchange of letters between the minister and the murderer, and then one day several months on Everett received a letter asking if he might visit Carlucci in prison. After much soul-searching and with great trepidation, Everett tells the Bucknell students, he agreed. Their first meeting, on Dec. 6, 1988, lasted about an hour and 15 minutes. As Everett prepared to leave, the two men went to shake hands. Somehow that didn’t feel right. They embraced instead.

Two years passed. They continued to correspond. Everett continued to visit Carlucci in prison. By and by Everett came to view Carlucci as a changed man, transformed from the drug-addled street thug that he’d once been. Everett interpreted this transformation as the work of God. The two men found themselves growing close. When Carlucci’s father died while he was in prison, Carlucci received a furlough to attend the funeral. Everett loaned him a suit and, at Carlucci’s request, preached the sermon.

Carlucci (left) and Everett, here at Carlucci’s home near Bridgeport, Conn., still talk regularly.

Because prosecutors had reduced the criminal charge against Carlucci from first-degree manslaughter to second-degree manslaughter as part of a plea bargain, he’d been sentenced to a term of just 10 years in prison, with the sentence to be suspended after five years. Everett had found it inconceivable that anyone who took another’s life—utterly without provocation—could receive so tepid a punishment. Yet toward the end of 1990, Carlucci told Everett he was thinking about asking the state parole board to grant him an early release from prison. And then he asked Everett if he would testify on his behalf. Everett did not hesitate to say that he would.

On June 1, 1991, Carlucci was released from prison—largely, he believes, on the strength of Everett’s testimony. He had served just 35 months for killing Scott Everett.

Walt Everett’s journey, it would seem, should end here. It does not, of course, not with his life now inextricably linked with the man who killed his son. Maybe, in some indefinable way, they needed each other.

In fact, Everett tells the Bucknell students, he and Carlucci developed a most unlikely fellowship. They began to make public appearances together—in churches, schools, prisons—Everett to advocate for the abolition of the death penalty, Carlucci to testify to the power of redemption. Carlucci met a woman, Sandie, at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. When they were married a few years later, Everett officiated at their wedding. By then, word of the uncommon bond be­tween Everett and Carlucci had spread to the news media. Everett jokes that at Carlucci’s wedding there were more television cameras than guests. A few years later, when Sandie died of a drug overdose, Carlucci arranged for her funeral, with Everett presiding.

Everett tells the students that since his release from prison Carlucci has stayed sober and worked steadily as a supervisor for a trucking company. “Mike is doing a great job for that company,” Everett says. “He’s also doing a great job for his life. The important thing for me is not only that Mike is a new person, I’m a new person.”

Only 10 minutes remain in the class, time for a few questions. One student asks Everett how he feels about telling the story of his journey over and over. “Healing is a lifelong process,” he replies. “This is part of that process.”

Another student asks whether Everett had any doubts about Carlucci when he was freed from prison. Did he fear that Carlucci might return to a life of drugs and crime? Everett tells them about the day he and Carlucci appeared together on The Today Show, to be interviewed by Matt Lauer.

Toward the end of the segment, Lauer asked Everett if he could ever look at Carlucci and not think about what he had done to his son. Everett tells the students that he’d never been asked that question before, and he’s sure his answer was God-given.

“I can never forget what happened to Scott,” he said. “It has forever changed my life. But when I look at Mike, I don’t see the person who harmed Scott. I see somebody who’s been changed by God, and I celebrate that.”

Then Lauer looked at Carlucci and asked him what he’d learned from Everett. “Unconditional love,” Carlucci said.

End of interview.

The bell rings. A half-dozen students approach Everett, thank him for coming, shake his hand. Some, on their way out, reach for the anti-death penalty brochures that Everett brought with him. Everett leaves the building with instructor Deirdre O’Connor, who says the students will discuss the issues that he raised at a later class. Not until then could Everett know whether the timeless questions he’s posed really struck a chord with the students, whether he’d helped them to make meaning of uncertainty.

A few days later a neuroscience major from Bexley, Ohio, named Bridget O’Donnell wrote about Everett’s appearance in her course journal. O’Donnell grew up in a politically conservative home. Both her parents supported capital punishment. As a member of her high school political club, she took part in debates about the death penalty, arguing strongly in favor. Just two years earlier, as a high school junior, she’d written a research paper defending her position. “Today, however,” she wrote in the journal, “I questioned myself.”

O’Donnell says she left the class wondering whether her support for the death penalty was something she really believed in—“or something I learned to believe in.” And although she has a hard time articulating her change of heart, she is certain that a change has taken place. “I am not pro-death penalty anymore,” she says.

In Walt Everett’s long journey, another small step.

Christine Meconi scored nine goals and assisted on seven others to lead the Rangers.

Women’s Soccer

Christine Meconi C’12 became the Rangers’ first Landmark Conference Offensive Player of the Year after a stellar senior season. She led the Landmark with 25 points and collected her third-straight All-Conference honor. She finishes her career ranked in Drew’s top 10 in points, goals and assists.

Men’s Cross Country

Steven Monteleone C’12 entered his name into the Drew record books after he turned in the fastest time ever by a Ranger runner at NCAA Regionals in November. He finished 41st out of a field of nearly 300 8K runners with a time of 26:28.

Cross country rookie Jennifer Van Wingerden became the third Drew runner to take first place in an overall race.

Women’s Cross Country

Jennifer Van Wingerden C’13 broke the Drew 6K record this fall at the Paul Short Run hosted by Lehigh University. Earlier in the year, in a field of 80 runners, she won the Misericordia Cougar Classic with a 6K time of 24:08.

Field Hockey (12–9)

For the first time since entering the Landmark Conference in 2007, the Ranger squad made it to the conference championship game. The Rangers eventually fell to ninth-ranked Catholic, 5–1.

[This is an expanded version of the interview that appeared in the printed Winter 2012 issue of Drew Magazine.]

University in the Forest author Cunningham (left), 96, and Rosenberg, 95, play a mean game of Scrabble. Photo by Lynne DeLade C’12.

JC: I lived in a private house on Maple Avenue. Drew had an arrangement with people whereby they would exchange a room for a student to rake the leaves and take the ashes out and do all kinds of household chores. I was lucky enough to get in with a family that gave me breakfast, sometimes the only meal I had all day. Then we’d eat at your uncle’s restaurant a couple times a week. What was his name?

HR: Isadore Rosenberg. Izzy. My uncle owned the Lackawanna Restaurant on Main Street, and I ate there every day.

JC: I ate there once a week.

HR: Twice a week, John. John used to come Tuesdays and Fridays. He would order, for 15 cents, soup and rolls and butter. My uncle had a brother who was a waiter. Couldn’t read or write, but could remember the orders of eight or 10 people. When he saw that John had finished his lunch, he would give him seconds.

JC: Your uncle was a big help to me, getting me through college. Drew was filled with students like ourselves. It was mostly a poor man’s college. We were very lucky because of all those oak trees in the fall, dozens of us raked leaves.

HR: For how much, John?

JC: Thirty-five cents an hour. Just think, for 10 hours you could get $3.50.

HR: You also wrote for The Daily Record. You got, what, a penny a line?

JC: Yeah, I was responsible for eastern Morris County. One morning I was awakened at about 5; the police called. There was a murder, and so I had to cover that. I arrived at my 7:50 a.m. class not in good shape.

HR: John and I were in the same history class together, weren’t we?

JC: Yes.

HR: Taylor Jones’ class. Fine professor. There were six or seven of us in the class. Very small class.

JC: He was a good professor. Probably the best. Now that I’ve already said it, I think McClintock was the best. I eventually majored in psych because of Jim McClintock. If you ask enough of us, I think you’ll find that Jim McClintock was both very well liked and very well disliked.

HR: He lived to be 100. He was brilliant.

JC: And he was disliked because he took no nonsense. If you were in McClintock’s class, you were expected to produce. Herman, your major was economics, right?

HR: I majored in a professor. It happened that he chose economics. He was the best professor alive. Professor Norman Milligan Guy. We had a very good faculty.

JC: Real giants, those days.

HR: Yes. The college wasn’t very old. The seminary was prominent in those days. Dominant, I would say. We were secondary. We didn’t have much to do with the seminary.

JC: Women came during the war. They came because without coming, the college would have closed. At one point, I believe, it was down to one male in World War II. My book University in the Forest tells why women came, and how they proved themselves and stayed. Although being at an all-male college had its benefits. You could go around looking sloppy. And since most of us didn’t have any money, we had no alternative but to look sloppy.

HR: I commuted from Morristown. Took the bus to school, cost me 10 cents. To save the 10 cents, we hitchhiked back home, Joe Taylor [C’37] and I. Joe Tamovitz, in those days.  There were maybe 25 in my class, something like that. You recall how many were in yours?

JC: Thirty-one. While it was a select college, it was very easy to get into, and very easy to get out of, too, because we had what were called comps at the end of the sophomore year. A lot of fellows bade farewell via the comps, the comprehensive exam.

HR: I recall, too, that since it was a Methodist school, we had to go to chapel in Brothers College twice a week, compulsory. But then it was stopped. I was almost converted to Christianity.

JC: No one ever attempted to make me a Methodist.

HR: No, there was no attempt, but it was so warm and cozy and comfortable, I was almost converted.

JC: I know that the Jews and Catholics outnumbered the Methodists by far. When you threw in the Presbyterians, the Methodists weren’t very numerous. Let’s see if we can agree on something. Who was the best mind you ever met at Drew?

HR: Professor Norman Milligan Guy.

JC: No, a student.

HR: Ralph Porzio [C’38].

JC: Porzio.

HR: No question about it. He became editor-in-chief of The Acorn. He was on the debate team.

JC: He went to Harvard, didn’t he?

HR: Yeah. I took him there in my little car, John

JC: Would you call him the brightest mind you ever met? He was for me.

HR: I would say so.

JC: He was a kid who was orphaned in the fourth grade. Both parents died and he literally worked his way through grammar school, high school, college and graduate school. I never heard of anyone else who did that. He became a very prominent Morristown lawyer. He also became the first graduate of Drew who became a trustee of Drew. He left five scholarships at Drew.

HR: I thought he would be a senator, and I would be his chief of staff. That was my dream. He wasn’t at all politically minded, though. He lost his health striving for an education.

JC: You and I both played baseball. In fact, this is Mr. Shortstop [nods to Rosenberg], and I was Mr. Second Baseman. Herm, I thought I had shortstop sewn up until I saw your arm, then I figured, “I’m going to be lucky to play second base.” I wish I’d saved my letters from Doc Young, our coach. That would have made me a much more conceited individual. He found something to praise, no matter what. Such as, “You made a great stop with your head on that ball.” Do you remember the weekly letter you got from him?

HR: Sure.

JC: Always upbeat, always on plays.

HR: Doc loved baseball. He said baseball was a religion with him at one time. He told me that he’d been going to baseball games, both sandlot and big league, for 25 years. He’d never gone to a ballgame that he hadn’t learned a new fact, or had an old fact struck home with new force. The man has a personality that just attracted you. Short, pudgy fellow. Had a paunch. One of the most eloquent men I’ve known. You wanted to be with him, and you wanted to please him. There was a clique of athletes who would be allowed to go to his office on the second floor of Brothers College. It was just a joy to be there.

JC: But we never got any preferences. That is, there was only one rule about athletics: pass or don’t play.

HR: Arlo Ayres Brown [Drew’s president] used to come watch our ballgames. He was rather religious. I remember one of the athletes was cussing away in his presence. He said, “Well, well.”

JC: But Dean Frank Lankard was more of an influence on us.

HR: Yes, yes.

JC: I was ill for about three days. There was a knock on my bedroom door in the house I boarded in, and there was Dean Lankard. It’s something that’s lasted with me all my life, quite obviously, because I’m stating it here now. That’s the kind of place Drew was, though. It was a very intimate place. We knew our professors intimately. Would you say you’re proud of your Drew education?

HR: You bet I am.

JC: I am too. Drew gave me curiosity, I believe, as much as anything.

HR: Drew opened the world for me. I had no awareness of it until I came here. I feel that John is the most prestigious graduate that we’ve ever had. I think I embarrass him when I call him the quintessential Drew graduate. He’s the best product that Drew has turned out, for my money.

JC: Thank you, Herman.

HR: You bet.

JC: I want you to emphasize the point that he is one class ahead of me. When we go down as the two oldest guys at Drew, Herm, you’ll have to be first. You were C’37, I was C’38.

HR: I’m a year younger.

JC: Aren’t you proud of that?

HR: I don’t know. Probably.

JC: That doesn’t make you very young.—Renée Olson

Edgar Gonzalez C’12 is WMNJ's music director. Photo by Shelley Kusnetz.

Plugged-in WMNJ staffers recommend 12 must-listen songs for 2012.

Find out what the alt-music cognoscenti on campus will be listening to this year with this custom Drew Magazine mixtape by DJs John Dabrowski, Edgar Gonzalez, Hanna Jrad, Shara Katz, Nick Klein and Amy Wheeler.

“Audio, Video, Disco”
Justice: French disco has never sounded cooler; Justice returns after their mega hit “D.A.N.C.E,” with this new track, where classic rock meets the dance floor.

“What the Water Gave Me”
Florence + the Machine: British musician Florence Welch, whose ethereal and emotionally mesmerizing debut album enthralled audiences, expands her sound with this emotionally intense single.

“Lonely Boy”
The Black Keys: The first single off El Camino, the new album by the three-time Grammy-winning duo known for their raw, authentic blues-rock sound.

“Always on the Run”
Yuksek: Yuksek is French DJ Pierre-Alexander Busson, whose electro-pop music sounds like MGMT and Justice.

“Spiderwebs”
Azad Right: An Iranian-American rapper, Right produces beautiful, introspective songs that are upbeat and relatable.

“Bonfire”
Childish Gambino: In “Bonfire,” Donald Glover, acclaimed for his hilarious role on NBC’s Community, carves out a hip-hop niche with explosive verses, compact beats and a sense of humor.

“Video Games”
Lana Del Ray: Heretofore unknown Brooklyn jazz singer Del Ray has ignited a media frenzy with this elegant, confessional track.

“Truth”
Alexander Ebert: The lead singer of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes whistles and croons so effortlessly in this solo piece that you might forget all your problems

“No Diggity”
Chet Faker: An electro artist from Melbourne, Australia, Faker is rapidly gaining recognition for his cover of this R&B classic.

“Country Roads”
Pretty Lights: An epic electro remix of the classic John Denver song.

“Twist”
Oh Land: Oh Land is a Danish pop goddess who stands to make  a name for herself this year with her hypnotic voice and euphoric music.

“Cameo Lover”
Kimbra: A singer/songwriter from New Zealand, Kimbra is rumored to be releasing her indie-pop album Vows in the United Statesin 2012.

Click on the illustration below to view the panorama version, then click on an animal, tree or plant to find out more about species that surround us on the main campus, and in the Forest Preserve and Arboretum. For students and faculty and for area high schools, the grounds serve as a treasured outdoor laboratory for research on forest ecology, pond ecosystems and wildlife.

About the Artist

A native of Bologna, Italy, Roberto Osti has taught at Drew as an adjunct instructor in the Caspersen School of Graduate Studies since 2002. In addition to teaching courses such as “Introduction to Medical and Scientific Illustration” and “The Botany of Healing,” he is a fine artist whose work has appeared in numerous publications, including Natural History and Scientific American.

Upload Your Own!

Help Drew create an archival gallery of campus nature photography by uploading your own photos.

Name *

Email *

Drew Affiliation Student Faculty Staff Alumni Friend

Location of the Photo

Caption/Details

Upload Your Photo *

Uploading Files. Please Wait.

Christine Hepburn (left) with Professor of Biology Sara Webb. Photo by Peter Murphy

A pair of determined women turn over a new leaf for what is now called Hepburn Woods.

By Mary Jo Patterson

The forest preserve was dying, and it hurt just to look at it.

Native trees had stopped reproducing. Mayapple, trillium, foamflower and other wildflowers had vanished. Thick ropes of wisteria and oriental bittersweet strangled trees. The only things flourishing were destructive plant invaders—Norway maples, garlic mustard and Japanese stilt grass—and deer, whose constant browsing killed any hope of regeneration.

Chris Hepburn, former resident of a house that bordered on the woods, funded the restoration's deer fencing. Photo by Peter Murphy

The sight pained Sara Webb, professor of biology and director of the Drew Forest Preserve—the 45-acre area at the southwest corner of campus—who uses the woods to teach forest ecology and conduct research. “I often thought about how to rescue it,” she says. It also pained Christine Hepburn, an environmental activist who lived on the edge of the preserve with her husband and son. “I loved those woods,” Hepburn says. “I raised my baby there. To me, they were not Drew’s woods. They were ours.”

A chance encounter between the two women grew into a shared resolve to rescue the preserve. Today, thanks to a $155,000 gift from Hepburn, plus donated labor and materials from the New Jersey Audubon Society and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, restoration of 30 acres is underway. Hepburn’s donation financed construction of a 10-foot-high deer fence around part of the woods and the adjoining Zuck Arboretum. Last April, volunteers planted 1,300 baby trees and shrubs.

Six weeks later Hepburn walked into the cleared portion of the preserve, renamed the Hepburn Woods. Tiny tree and shrub seedlings—grown by inmates at Bayside State Prison in South Jersey—dotted the ground. “I was in tears, just to think, oaks will grow here again,” says Hepburn, who moved from Madison to Manhattan in 2009. “It’s going to be so rich in birds. It’s exciting.”

The project has a long backstory. Hepburn’s chapter starts in 1994, when she and husband Ken Martin, a pharmaceutical executive, moved to Madison. “I’m a woods person,” says Hepburn, who grew up in Bucks County, Pa. “We couldn’t find woods in Madison initially, so I dragged my husband off to Mendham Township. He couldn’t stand it out there. One day he came home from a bike ride and said, ‘Chris, I saw the perfect house for sale. It’s in Madison, and it’s got woods.’”

The house, set on 1.6 acres off Glenwild Road, had belonged to Florence and Robert Zuck, former botany professors at Drew. (When they retired in 1980, Drew named the Zuck Arboretum in their honor.) “I met Mrs. Zuck, and walked through her gardens with her. I barely knew a rose from a marigold, but I told her I loved nature and the woods,” Hepburn says.

Webb joined the Drew faculty in 1986. “From day one I have wanted to protect this forest,” she says. One year, with students, she erected a small deer exclosure as a demonstration project. After two years baby trees sprouted inside, although neither shrubs nor ferns nor wildflowers reappeared. Another experiment involved removing Norway maples. The trees, introduced from Europe during the 1700s, destroy woodland by pushing out native plant species. Hepburn was home when the clearing started. “Suddenly there were chainsaws in my woods. I was hysterical, crying.” She called the university, which sent Webb over. As time passed, a friendship developed. Hepburn, meanwhile, complained to Drew about the state of the woods. “They’d throw up their hands. They’d say, ‘We’re a university, not a conservancy,’” she says.

In 2008 Hepburn suggested Webb contact the New Jersey Audubon Society, which—through a partnership with the federal fish and wildlife agency—had helped her restore wildlife habitat on land she owned in Hardwick, N.J. Both partners were eager to help restore the preserve, but on one condition. “Without a deer control fence, there was no point in planting anything,” says Audubon land steward John Parke.

“That’s when Chris came to the rescue,” says Webb. “She has really been an angel. The forest is going to take some time. But she’s left a great environmental legacy.”

Read more about campus nature in “Four Seasons at Drew.”

Tree Census

While the oak is near and dear to Drew’s identity, other trees are actually far more prevalent on campus. Here are the dominant species in order of abundance.

• American beech
• Sugar maple (native)
• Norway maple (invasive)
• The oaks: black, white, red and pin

An unexpected gift brings photos back to Drew eight decades later.

By Mary Jo Patterson

The item was billed “Drew University photo album, Madison, N.J., 1926” and offered for sale by a man in Gill, Mass. Adam Kaplan C’94, who trolled regularly on eBay, snapped it up for $31 and added it to his collection of Drew memorabilia. Kaplan didn’t know the provenance of the scrapbook, and had no connection to the people on its pages. But “they were very cool photographs,” he says. Last summer, though, Kaplan decided to gift the album to Drew. Matthew R. Beland G’01,’02,’08, University Archives assistant, dug into old records to remove the shroud of mystery: The photographs were most likely taken at the Theo School’s 1926 Summer Session, directed by professor Edwin Lewis. Summer sessions began in 1914 and served seminary students as well as “city, town and country pastors” wishing to further their theological education. A 1926 bulletin reported that students would travel to New York City “to study successful church institutions.” One of the more unusual courses was “Agricultural Problems,” designed to give rural pastors insight into farmers’ troubles in order to become better ministers.

Drew Theological School 1926 Summer Session: A Gallery

If you can identify anyone in these photos, please email Drew Magazine.

The first time I ever saw Drew Forest, Doctor Upham, my gracious host, suddenly said: “Do you want to see the finest thing we have here?” Not waiting for an answer, he started in the direction of Cornell Library. This direction vaguely led me to expect to see a rare book, or an old manuscript, or a historic portrait.  But, before we came to the library, the doctor stopped, backed away from the path, and, with a quick flourish of his right hand and entire arm, as if trying to sweep the whole campus into the spot in front of him, exclaimed heartily: “There it is! That beech! Is there anywhere on earth, any living thing more beautiful?”

Our last scene is that paradise of trees, ‘Drew Forest.’ The entire picture is beyond my courage; but here is a fragment: a group of white birches, and snow-besprinkled spruces standing over against eastern sky. It is a December morning, perhaps ten minutes before sunrise. From where I stand, I now and then catch, through the treetops to the northeast, kindling patches on the distant, low-lying hills. Squarely in the east are long, streaming pennants of color—none regular, none gorgeous—just dull red alternating with blues so dark that they barely escape being somber. The tops of the birches are the first to respond to the dawn, and very soon their plumes, drooping and gently swaying, shine like treads of silver filigree. But only for a few moments are the birches central in the scene, for the tops of the spruces now become aware of the rising sun. All their sharp points and variant angles are suddenly burnished, and over the dark green branches, powdered as with damp marble dust, there is a shimmer of gold beryl which seems to light up the erect dignity of the spruces with unmistakable gladness. You begin to appreciate those exultant words in Isaiah: ‘All the trees of the field shall clap their hands.’ For these transformed spruces appear to be ready to do any joyous thing!

I break away from the small group and look over the whole sweep of the Forest, and everywhere it is morning in the treetops.

—Professor Curtis

Professor of systematic theology, Drew Theological School, 1896–1914
From The Building of Drew University (1938) by Charles Fremont Sitterly

Update: In 2011, Hurricane Irene took down many trees on campus, including a giant on the edge of Tipple Pond, just south of the Rose Memorial Library. The current library sits near where its predecessor, the Cornell Library referenced by Professor Curtis, once stood. Is it possible that Irene took down the very tree Curtis mentions? Sadly, yes. It was a beech.