Notes from the Class of 1969

In March CU Regent Linda Shoemaker (Jour) was the keynote speaker at the CU Women Succeeding Symposium at CU Colorado Springs. She has spent more than 20 years advocating for public education in Colorado and has worked as a journalist and attorney. Linda is president of the Brett Family Foundation, which invests in organizations working for social justice and advocates for disadvantaged teens. She and husband Steve Brett live in Boulder. The couple has three children and five grandchildren.

Mildred Taylor (MJour) is the author of nine books. Her first, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, which won the Newbery Medal in 1977, recently celebrated its 40th anniversary with the release of a special edition. At CU Mildred helped create a black studies program and taught in it for two years. She lives in Boulder.

Las Vegas resident Stephen Grogan (Engl) donated 32 boxes of documents relating to his career in journalism, politics and casino gaming to the special collections and archives of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In his current role as president of Navegante Game Technologies, he assists game developers and inventors. At CU, he was awarded the Shubert Fellowship in Playwriting and was founding editor of the campus alternative newspaper CU Perspective.  

Tom Baur (MAstroPhys) received the 2018 Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE) G.G. Stokes Award for his “lifetime of leadership in polarization optical components.” Prior to founding Meadowlark Optics in 1979, Tom was a scientist for 13 years at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.

Gary E. Smith (Edu; MPubAd’71) and Diane Yokel Smith (MEdu’86) didn’t slow down after retirement. Gary published his second mystery novel, Two Miles High and Six Feet Under, written under the pen name G. Eldon Smith. Diane, after a career of teaching ESL at the university level, became a volunteer tutor in Littleton Public Schools. She also serves as Gary’s chief editor and first reader. The couple reside in Centennial, Colo. 

Ted Hine (Fin) discovered and digitized a long-forgotten reel-to-reel tape recording of his band’s three-hour performance at the Buff Room on The Hill in July 1967 and distributed copies to all the surviving band members. The band, “Other Side Of Time,” formed in fall 1966 and was active through the following summer. Other band members included Dick Coburn (PolSci’67; MA’76), Mike Collins (ChemEngr’70; MS’71; PhD’77), Doug Hays (Edu’71), Jim Fuchs (Psych’75), Scott Mascitelli (A&S ex’69) and Lonnie Brummit (Mus ex’70). The band started playing fraternity and sorority parties, and by early 1967 were reg-ulars at the Buff Room, Tulagi and the Honey Bucket. By spring, they had a record on the local Top 40 charts.

For some 30 years, John Horst (Class; MLatin’71; PhDClass’87), a 1986 finalist for Colorado Teacher of the Year and known as Dr. J to his students, enjoyed sharing the beauty of Latin. He focused on identifying the Latin roots in English words and taught the students how to catch “literary fish” to feed themselves for a lifetime. He enhanced his classes with references to Latin’s influence on the Romance languages, French and Spanish, and featured cultural enrichments from Greek and Roman literature and history. For five years, he offered “Greek and Roman Comedy,” which focused mostly on the Greek side to challenge students’ critical thinking skills and their abilities to develop creative, nonviolent, mythical solutions to serious problems in society. Retired since 2003, he spends time on adventures with his wife, Jean, reading, working on various projects, singing karaoke and taking his husky, Kita, for walks.

Founder of Meadowlark Optics, Tom Baur (MAstroPhys) and the international Society for Optics and Photonics, known as SPIE, created the first endowed faculty chair at JILA, a joint institute for CU Boulder and the National Institute of Standards & Technology. The Baur-SPIE Endowed Chair in Optics and Photonics will be funded by gifts of $1.5 million from Tom and Jeanne Baur, $500,000 from SPIE and $500,000 from CU. Tom lives in Ault, Colorado. 

After getting his master’s in English from UC Davis, Tom Chase (Engl) spent 40 years teaching at a community college in Corvallis, Oregon — though music has been his most treasured hobby. Tom writes that his love for music helped him adjust to the COVID-19 pandemic as he played with his band over Zoom and made recordings while in quarantine. He and his bandmates even made an album titled Pandemic Blues. When it is safe to travel, Tom and his wife plan to take a trip to Colorado so he can show her campus and the Rockies.

With greetings to classmates and friends, Robert Hoge (Anth) writes that he now spends his time between his wife’s home outside Barcelona and his home in the Bronx. Both are now retired: she, as a university professor emerita and he, as a museum curator emeritus.

Jerold Zimmerman (Acct) is a professor emeritus at the University of Rochester Simon Business School, where he has taught since 1974. His new book, Relentless: The Forensics of Mobsters’ Business Practices, is slated for publication in 2021. 

Children’s author and Peace Corps alumna Mildred D.Taylor (MJour) is the winner of the 2021 Children’s Literature Legacy Award, which honors an author or illustrator whose books have made a significant and lasting contribution to literature for children. Mildred’s award-winning works include Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry , which won the 1977 Newbery Medal; The Friendship; The Road to Memphis; and The Land — all recipients of the Coretta Scott King Award. Mildred is also the recipient of the 2020 Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement.

This spring, the CU Boulder College of Music recognized Charlene Archibeque (DMus) as a distinguished alum. Charlene was the first woman to graduate from CU with a DMA. Now, she is regarded as one of the foremost choral conductors and teachers in the U.S., and her choirs have completed 16 concert tours around the world. She has conducted in Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center and Royal Albert Hall in London. 

Kathryn Clark Childers (Edu’69), one of the first five women to work as a special agent in the U.S. Secret Service, published her autobiography, Scared Fearless, in fall 2020. It details her life as a woman in the Secret Service including an inside look at Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and her children, whom Kathryn protected during her career. Scared Fearless, available on Amazon or at kathrynchilders.com, also looks at Kathryn’s life from childhood through adulthood and tells of the people she met along the way. Kathryn is a professional speaker, where she coaches audiences to adopt her mantra of “Do it scared!” in their own way.

The Eye of the Leopard, written by Brian Hayden (Anth’69), was published in February. The novel, written for young readers, draws upon Brian’s archeology and anthropology expertise to tell the story of Sev, a young boy living during the Upper Paleolithic Age. Throughout his career, Brian has researched on four continents, striving to understand hunting-and-gathering cultures. Brian is a professor emeritus of archaeology at Simon Fraser University and honorary research associate of the anthropology department at the University of British Columbia. He was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada in recognition of his articles, books and research. Brian resides on Cortes Island in British Columbia.

Max Ernst Riedlsperger (PhDHist’69) participated in the Spring 2022 Commencement ceremony alongside his two grandchildren Ben Lemiere (Econ’21) and Emily Lemiere (Comm’22). After defending his dissertation in August 1969, he missed his official graduation ceremony in June 1970 as he was already working as an assistant professor at Cal Poly. His grandson Ben’s in-person CU ceremony was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic last year, so the trio decided to attend together this spring. Max is retired and lives with his wife in San Luis Obispo, California.

Hugh M. Heckman (PolSci’69) served as a writer, editor and producer on the CBS Evening News for 37 years, working alongside the legendary Walter Cronkite. After leaving CBS, Heckman worked as a writer and editor for the PBS NewsHour. He lives in Forest Hills, New York.

Paul J. Murphy (PolSci’69; MA’71) is a former police officer, intelligence officer, professor and author of five nonfiction books: Naval Power in Soviet Policy (1978); Brezhnev: Soviet Politician (1982); The Soviet Air Forces (1984); The Wolves of Islam: Russia and the Faces of Chechen Terror (2004); and Allah’s Angels: Chechen Women in War (2010). He is working on a new book inspired by diaries written by a close in-law of Woodrow Wilson. Paul earned a PhD in government from the University of Queensland, Australia, in 1978.

After completing two degrees at CU, Joyce Earickson (Ital’69; MA’71) returned to her hometown of San Diego and earned a second bachelor’s degree in English at San Diego State University. While teaching high school English, she started the first high school Italian language program in San Diego County. Joyce is now working with special education children at the elementary level in North San Diego County and visits Italy every few years. She wrote, “I am so grateful for the Italian language that I learned in Boulder.