New York and beyond

21 May

Jim and I managed to miss the Midwestern snowstorm in early May by traveling to New Jersey, Connecticut, and New York, where we couldn’t have asked for nicer weather: It was warm, sunny, and bursting with spring color.

We also couldn’t have asked for nicer alumni. Everywhere we went, Iowa Staters went out of their way to make us feel at home in the Northeast.

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We flew into the Newark Liberty International Airport and rented a car. Our first two New Jersey alumni meetings were very near Philadelphia, so we stayed in Philly our first two nights and took advantage of all that city has to offer: historic architecture, parks and squares, and great food. We visited the Liberty Bell out of a sense of obligation but really preferred the Mural Arts Program (all over the city) and the creepy coolness of the Eastern State Penitentiary.

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We met our first alum on Day 2: Bing Howell. Bing (’03 MIS & international business) works for the New Jersey Department of Education in Camden, making a difference in one of the most challenging school districts in the country. I’ll tell you more about Bing (and some of the other alumni we met) in the coming weeks.

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Next we met Robi Polikar at Rowan University in Glassboro, N.J. Robi (MS ’95 electrical engr/biomedical engr; PhD ’00) was born in Istanbul and is currently a professor and department chair for the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. After meeting with Robi, I felt really proud to live in Ames – he said such nice things about his experience in Iowa and at Iowa State University.

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We left New Jersey behind us and headed next to the town of Poughquag, N.Y. Never heard of Poughquag? You can find it on the map near Poughkeepsie in the Mid-Hudson River Valley. Poughquag is home to Robert Antol (’78 mathematics), who has a crazy-cool space observatory built onto his home. Bob and his wife, Barb, not only let us play with his telescope but they also fed us New York-style pizza on their back patio. What a great day! (I love this photo Jim took of Bob and me in his observatory with the alien!)

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We set out for the state of Connecticut next, to meet with Ruth Fitzgerald (’71 history, MS ’74 urban & regional planning) in Hartford. Ruth is the founding principal of Fitzgerald & Halliday, a planning and environmental analysis firm that specializes in transportation and community planning projects. That’s Ruth above, working with her IT specialist, Howard Latimer.

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Just down the road in Wallingford, Conn., we met Ben Hahn (’98 electrical engineering), vice president of Sensor Switch. Ben took us on a fascinating tour of his firm, which manufactures occupancy sensors and network lighting control systems that provide energy savings. We probably embarrassed Ben with all the crazy things Jim had him do for photos (sorry, Ben!), but it was a really fun tour.

IMG_6351After our meeting with Ben, we spent the night in New Haven, home of Yale University. Jim and I both love to see other college campuses, so walking on Yale’s Old Campus and the New Haven Green was a real treat. We also ate some of the famous New Haven-style pizza.

The next day, we did what every red-blooded Iowan fears the most: We drove through New York City. Actually, not so much “through” as “around” the city, en route to the Newark airport to drop off our rental car. But still, we did drive in the Bronx and I was pretty nervous that we’d take a wrong turn and end up totally lost and have to pay for an extra day on our car and miss our connection with the car service that was scheduled to pick us up. I was worried for nothing, because we sailed through with only one teensie wrong turn, which the GPS fixed for us very quickly. We actually turned in our rental car almost an hour early.

The car service (which, I cannot stress enough, is such a better option than a taxi) picked us up and delivered us directly to our inn in Brooklyn that we had booked for the next few nights. From then on, we relied on public transportation and the kindness of ISU alumni to get us around the city. Oh, and lots of walking.

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I almost feel like this was “Part II” of this trip, because when we got into Brooklyn, everything changed. And not just because we were without a car. There’s just such a different vibe in the city. Brooklyn was a great (and considerably less expensive) place to stay – and it was easy to jump into the subway and get to Manhattan in less than 20 minutes. We were lucky to be in New York when we were: The trees were all in bloom, the weather was beautiful, and New Yorkers were just grooving on it everywhere we went.

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Our first meeting in New York City was with Rachel (Hollrah) Beardsley (’02 Spanish/political science) and her husband, Peter. The couple lives in lower Manhattan and can tell you lots of stories about surviving the effects of Hurricane Sandy. Rachel and Peter met as students at Brooklyn Law School and both are practicing attorneys. To say they were good sports about the photo shoot is putting it mildly; we had Rachel change clothes three times! She went running for us in Central Park; they took us sailing on Long Island Sound; she posed with the Statue of Liberty – and also with her cat. Most grueling photo shoot ever!

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The next morning, alumnus Trent Preszler  (’98 interdisciplinary studies) picked us up in his Chevy Volt and – after grabbing lattes and egg sandwiches and taking a quick peek at his Brooklyn apartment – took us with him on his 80-mile commute out to the north fork of Long Island. What a fascinating drive – from the city to the countryside to the New England-styled towns and wineries. Trent is CEO of Bedell Cellars winery and vineyards in Cutchogue – located in the prettiest setting you can imagine. Jim photographed Trent out in the vineyards and in the sophisticated tasting room, above.

Bedell Cellars wine had already made quite a name for itself through awards for its wines and its tasting room, but the winery’s most recent claim to fame happened just this year when its 2009 Merlot was chosen to be served at President Obama’s inauguration luncheon. Trent gave us a wonderful tour of not only the winery and vineyard but of the North Fork itself.

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The next morning we met Maureen Hurd Hause (’94 music) in Midtown Manhattan. Maureen is actually a New Jersey alum who teaches clarinet at Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts, but she often plays as a professional musician at Carnegie Hall, so our idea was to meet her there. The fact that the lower fourth of Carnegie Hall was covered in scaffolding didn’t deter Jim from photographing Maureen on the street corner in front of the building. We drew quite a crowd! Maureen was belting out Gershwin tunes, Jim was lying on the ground, and more than a few people photographed the goings-on with their iPhones.

And then our New York adventure came to an end, but not before having a picnic in Central Park.

Next up: North and South Dakota!

Getting things done on a national level

15 May

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Karen Keninger (M.S. ’92 English) has had an interest in library services for the blind since she was 7 years old. Diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease, as a child, Karen embraced the services that allowed her to read and learn through braille, talking books, and other devices.

As a high school student, she once received an entire truckload of braille books after sending a letter to her local librarian requesting that she “send me everything you have on Russia” for a social studies report.

“I’ve always known the services I’ve received were excellent,” she says. “I would call the library up and they would get it for me.”

Karen served as director of the Iowa Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped from 2000 through 2008, and for the next four years she served as director for the Iowa Department for the Blind in Des Moines, overseeing library, vocational rehabilitation, and independent-living services for the state.

In 2012 she was named director of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) in Washington, D.C., a program of the Library of Congress. Moving alone to an apartment in the D.C. metro area was “daunting” after living in a spacious home in rural Newton, Iowa.

“I’m an Iowan through and through,” Karen says. “But the position just looked intriguing. I thought I could get things done at a national level.”

The NLS provides free services to approximately 500,000 blind, handicapped, and sight-impaired patrons across the United States through about 100 network libraries. In addition to the braille and audio book programs, the NLS has also begun a digital download service for books and magazines.

At her office on Taylor Street on the northwest side of Washington, D.C., Karen uses a braille writer (“old fashioned, but still the best way to put braille on paper”); a small, computer-like refreshable braille machine (“expensive, but lovely”); and a digital talking book machine (with large, easy-to-use buttons). On her desk are photos of her six children and 11 grandchildren. By her side is Jimi, the yellow lab/golden retriever service dog she got just before leaving Iowa.

She says she’ll stay in D.C. until she retires and then hopes to move back home to Iowa. But, she says, her goal is “not to leave here without doing all the things you would do in Washington, D.C., as a tourist.”

International bent

26 Apr

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Michelle DeFayette speaks fluent Portuguese and dabbles in French and Italian. She once danced in a Carnival parade in Rio de Janeiro, and she loves to dance the samba. She was the Brazilian team liaison for Women’s World Cup soccer tournaments in Washington, D.C., and she has worked for the Peace Corps and USAID.

But sometimes she’s happy just to sit on her front porch.

Michelle (’87 political science) lives in Silver Spring, Md. (just north of Washington, D.C.) in a cozy house built in the 1930s with her partner, Shannon England, to whom she’s been married for nine years. They live in a neighborhood of older homes where all her neighbors know each other. Michelle says she loves the diversity of her town.

“I love the international aspect of this place,” she says. “You can sit here and watch the world walk by.”

Michelle’s passions are twofold: international understanding and soccer. Her international experience started when she was in an exchange student in France during high school. She moved to Italy for six months after college and then lived in Brazil for nearly two years, where she fell in love with the language, the people, and the music.

“When I moved back here, I had an international bent,” she explains. She worked as a training specialist for the Peace Corps and for Youth for Understanding International Exchange. She served as the training unit manager for the USAID Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, training teams to respond to disasters in Sudan and following earthquakes, droughts, and the South Asian tsunami. She’s currently the project manager for USAID’s flagship training program and holds a master’s in international communication from the American University.

Michelle’s second love – soccer – began when she was 8 years old. She played high school soccer in Damascus, Md., and helped start the women’s soccer club at Iowa State, competing at tournaments throughout the Midwest. She continues to play competitively (and for fun), on both indoor and outdoor teams.

“The beauty of soccer is that you only need a ball and a couple of people,” she says. “You don’t really even need shoes.”

Jim and I spent a laughter-filled day with Michelle in March, going from her home to downtown Silver Spring to a nearby soccer field for her portrait, in which she insisted she was “trying to look heroic.”

Despite the cold wind and rather ridiculous circumstances, Michelle never stopped laughing – or talking about how much she loves soccer.

“I’m kind of addicted to the joy of motion,” she said. “Playing well is like moving to music, but in this case it’s moving to the rhythm of all the players on the field, the flow and tempo of the game. It’s joyous when everything is working and the synapses are firing correctly!”

And, she added, her Brazilian friends would definitely want her to point out that the jersey she’s wearing is from the Rio de Janeiro club Flamengo – and it’s the coolest jersey in her closet.

Engineering a family balance

22 Apr

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Sandy Blank Carosella’s description of Lancaster County, Pa., was just too good to pass up.

“There is a wonderful mix of the arts scene, agriculture, education, and history here,” she wrote in response to our request for story ideas in Pennsylvania. “When you are in Pennsylvania, enjoy. Have a whoopie pie, feel the history, and watch out for horses and buggies!”

She had me at whoopie pie: those smooshy, black and white creations that look like oversized Oreo cookies.

Sandy (’88 industrial engineering) has settled with her family (husband Jim and children Kate, 16, and Joe, 7) in Lancaster after living in Tennessee, Missouri, California, Kentucky, and Ohio. They’ve been in Pennsylvania for eight years, and Sandy vows that they’ve finished moving.

She started her career as an engineer (for Quaker Oats and other companies), but when Kate was 18 months old, Sandy decided to quit working full time. She went back to school and earned a master’s in education from Xavier University, thinking that teaching would be a good fit for her family’s schedule.

“I wanted a schedule similar to my daughter’s,” she said. But teaching was actually more intense than her old job (“I was constantly improvising,” she says), and when her second child was born, she quit.

Now, she says, she’s “content to be a mom, room mom, playground monitor, and substitute teacher.” She just finished a long-term substitute position at her daughter’s school.

Sandy likes the history of Lancaster, with its Central Market (the oldest in the country), museums, arts culture, proximity to larger cities, and “calm setting” of the rolling Pennsylvania Dutch farm country.

And, yes, the whoopie pies, a plate of which greeted us on the kitchen table when we visited Sandy in March. Ah, the joys of travel!

Part II: The remarkable Dwight Ink

18 Apr

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GovernmentExecutive.com calls Dwight Ink the “silent leader.” In a story posted on Jan. 13, 2010, William D. Eggers and John O’Leary write:

“History tends to adore the person at the helm, the president who calls the shots from the Oval Office. Overlooked are the bureaucrats who actually carry out the commands. Out of the limelight, Dwight Ink served seven consecutive presidents, from Dwight Eisenhower to Ronald Reagan. Now retired, this unassuming bureaucrat was often the one doing the heavy lifting. In a story that reads like the antithesis of Hurricane Katrina, Ink led a swift and efficient reconstruction effort [in Alaska]. The 1964 Alaskan Earthquake is largely forgotten today because of Ink’s leadership.”

This is Part II of our visit with Mr. Ink (’47 government) at his home in Leesburg, Va.

On the presidents:

  • I had a unique opportunity serving in leadership roles with seven different presidents.
  • I respected Eisenhower the most of any that I served. I respected Kennedy the least, but I found him the most exciting. But, gee, I had so much fun under all of them. Except Nixon’s second term.
  • I had the most impact under Nixon. His first term was the best we ever had under an operations standpoint, but that turned around in the ’72 election. It was the Jekyll and Hyde presidency.
  • I was the senior adviser to the Reagan transition team. I helped shut down the Anti-poverty Agency – I never expected that assignment. It was the hottest political issue [of the day]. Ted Kennedy led the opposition. [But together we worked to] persuade Congress to support the President to close it down and minimize difficulty for poor people.
  • [At a classified briefing on the nuclear arms race I found myself] alone with president [Dwight Eisenhower]. I was so stunned [I couldn’t remember anything]. We talked about football…ISU vs Kansas. He relaxed me. Briefing the president, for a career person, was quite a thrill.

On the Limited Nuclear Test Ban following WWII:

  • We saw horrible destruction from the bomb. [It was] indescribable fury. I was terribly concerned about stopping the nuclear arms race. They can absolutely destroy civilization. It was THE most important security issue of the day.

On the rebuilding of Alaska after the earthquake of 1964:

  • 55,000 square miles of surface rose or dropped at least five feet [in] Anchorage, Kodiak, Homer, Valdez…two thirds of Alaska where the population was. When we got up there we couldn’t find an engineer who thought we would rebuild enough in the first season to save the state. That would have been economic disaster. I really spent horrible nights trying to figure out what to do when everyone said it was impossible. We could not succeed using “normal” federal processes and procedures. We’d lose the state. They gave me all kinds of freedom to innovate. An Anchorage Times editorial headline called it “Government at its best.” The federal people were heroes in Alaska.

In October 2011, Government Executive magazine named Ink one of the 20 “All-time Greatest Feds.” Joining him on the list were Theodore Roosevelt and James Web, manager of the moon landing. Here’s his reaction:

  • It was nice for my ego. But I kept thinking of others who were better qualified. [My wife] Donna said, “Just enjoy it.”

Dwight and Donna moved to Leesburg, Va., 10 years ago. At age 90, his eyesight is failing, and he’s working to finish his memoirs. Here’s Dwight on retirement:

  • I retired with the federal government when Reagan left office. I semi-retired at age 70 but worked part time until three months ago. [He is president emeritus of the Institute of Public Administration.] When I hit 90 I decided to almost – but not quite totally – retire. My wife says at 90 I should slow down.

Part I: The remarkable Dwight Ink

15 Apr

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Dwight Ink (’47 government) is a man who gets things done. Described as “The Remarkable Dwight Ink” in the book If We Can Put a Man On the Moon: Getting Big Things Done in Government by William D. Eggers and John O’Leary, Ink held major leadership roles in the federal government for seven presidents: from Eisenhower to Reagan.

Here are just a few of the many positions in which he served:

  • Assistant general manager for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission
  • First assistant secretary for administration in the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
  • Assistant director for executive management in the Office of Management and Budget
  • Deputy administrator of the General Service Administration
  • Assistant administrator of the Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean
  • Director of the Community Services Administration under Ronald Reagan

Ink also:

  • Supervised the reconstruction of Alaska after the earthquake of 1964
  • Helped establish the Environmental Protection Agency
  • Managed oil conservation after the Arab Embargo
  • And was instrumental in the design of Civil Service reform, the first major overhaul of that federal system in 100 years, during the Carter Administration

As part of VISIONS Across America, Mr. Ink invited Jim Heemstra and me to visit him in his Leesburg, Va., home. I have to tell you, it was quite an honor to have the opportunity to hear, first hand, a few of Mr. Ink’s fascinating stories. This post is part one of two, based on those stories.

On growing up poor on a Madison County, Iowa, farm:

  • In grade school, I had to drop out when it got too cold to go barefoot. My family could not afford shoes.

On his education at Iowa State:

  • I didn’t have much preparation for college. I almost flunked out my first year, but the university took a chance on me.
  • Iowa State provided the environment and opportunity to go into [public service], the very best field I can possibly imagine. It’s a field you can go to the top as an average type of person.
  • I did a lot of organizing on the Iowa State campus before and after [World War II]. When the debate coach got drafted, the university appointed me “faculty adviser” to the debate teams. They even gave me an office in Beardshear. I organized a national debate in the football stadium. I got to know political leaders in Iowa. These were experiences that very few universities would allow a student to do. I owe so much, so much to Iowa State University.

[Note: Mr. Ink donated 68 boxes of personal papers to Iowa State’s library archives in 2012.]

On public service:

  • I was a combat engineer for three and half years in World War II. I had a lot of time to think. I came back thinking that public service would be a field of interest. I’d never get rich, but it would provide a decent living and provide shoes for my kids.
  • I did whatever was needed to do. My view of the career I chose was that I should focus on wherever I might be needed the most.
  • In what other field could you have so much interest and excitement as public service? I can’t think of one. And you help people. It’s very fulfilling.

Next up: Dwight Ink on the projects, the presidents, and, at age 90, retirement from public service.

An urban educator

11 Apr

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Of all the reasons Rohini Ramnath loves living in Washington, D.C. – the museums, the monuments, the food, the culture, her job – one thing stands out: the metro.

“I don’t drive a car,” she says. “I take the metro everywhere. It’s a great train and bus system. You can get anywhere in the city. I love taking the metro. It appeals to my Midwestern sensibilities.”

Rohini grew up in Clinton, Iowa. Both of her parents are Indian; her father grew up in India; her mother in Malaysia. She came to Iowa State as a George Washington Carver Scholar and took advantage of everything the university had to offer. As a triple major in political science, international studies, and Spanish, Rohini got involved in Government of the Student Body, the Committee on Lectures, the Honors Program, and in other groups across campus. She studied abroad in Spain and backpacked across Europe. She was named a Wallace E. Barron All-University Senior.

Following graduation in 2007, Rohini was selected as a Rotary Ambassadoral Scholar to Ghana, an experience she calls “life changing.” She received a master’s degree in international economics at the University of Ghana.

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Five years ago, she moved to Washington, D.C., as a member of the Teach for America corps.

“I fell in love with urban education,” she says. “I found my life path here.”

Rohini taught children at the Howard Road Academy and now works as a full-time data manager for CentroNia’s DC Bilingual Public Charter School. Her job involves working as an instructional coach with teachers and principals.

“I’m hyper-focused on what’s going to be best for student achievement,” she says.

Rohini recently bought a condo in the Georgia Avenue/Petworth neighborhood of D.C., which she describes as “the most grown-up thing I’ve ever done.” It’s one metro stop, or a 20-minute walk, away from her school.

“I look around this city, with the capitol and all the monuments,” she says, “and I’m still like, ‘I can’t believe I’m here.’”

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