The strength and vigor of Union's eighty-three-year old Annual Fund lies in the involvement of more than 400 volunteers who extend the reach of the College and allow for more personal interaction with our graduates.
Our hats are off to all head agents, Terrace Council volunteers, associate agents, phonathon participants, and senior class gift committee members.
We'd like to recognize the following leadership volunteers who have joined our ranks:
1994 Blaine Langberg, Whitney Merrill, and Blaire Spritzer, co-head agents
1993 Julie Jamieson and Roxanne Schneider, co-head agents
1992 Jon Lennon, co-head agent
1986 Janice Thompson, co-head agent
1985 Tim Hesler and Suzanne Rice, co-head agents
1984 Carolyn Dulchinos, head agent
1983 David Smith, head agent
1982 Charles Freni and Ed Pletman, co-head agents
1979 Laura Connors, head agent
1976 Cindy Sipkin, Terrace Council regional vice chair
1975 Lance Jacobson, co-head agent
1971 Tom Davison, head agent
1970 Len Simon, Terrace Council regional chair
1969 John Bulova, Terrace Council regional vice chair
1967 John Temple, Terrace Council regional vice chair
1963 Cliff Mastrangelo, head agent
1958 Bob Howe, Terrace Council regional chair
1955 Vince Guerra, Terrace Council regional vice chair
1949 Sy Gluck and Pat McGivern, co-head agents
1942 Bill Birdsall and Ben Leland, co-head agents.
If you would like to help Union as an Annual Fund volunteer or just learn more about different ways to get involved, contact Deb Balliet, director of the AnnualFund. Her phone number is (518) 388-6174 and her e-mail address is ballietd @ alice.union.edu.
The College has received a $50,000 grant from the Starr Foundation to support engineering students studying on exchanges and terms abroad.
Because of the tight schedules of their engineering courses, few of Union's engineering students have been able to take advantage of the College's eighteen programs of study abroad. One important goal of the new engineering curriculum being developed is to give each student the opportunity and the means to take advantage of the study abroad programs. The Starr Foundation grant will help provide the means.
Other recent gifts, grants, and bequests include:
A gift of $25,000 from Gerald Barandes '54, Dr. Martin Barandes '59, Robert Barandes '69, and friends of the Barandes family to establish the Max and Helen Barandes Endowed Scholarship.
More than $2,540,000 was received in distributions from trusts and estates. These include distributions from the estates of Margaret MacGregor Dyson, David Post, Claudia Umansky, Donald Dennis '78, the Franklyn Millham '32 Trust, and the Madhu Gokhale '27 Trust.
Four individuals made gifts totaling $20,846 for life income arrangements. Gifts from J. Dawson Van Eps '28 and William Bachtel '70 were for the pooled life income funds. Gifts from Gary Price '45 and William Wheeler '36 were for the charitable gift annuity program.
For Sallie Hume '70, Union College and Memorial Chapel have long had special meaning. So it was natural that she make a $100,000 gift of stock for the restoration of Memorial Chapel.
“As a child, I used to roller-skate with my friend, Jessica Waldron, in front of the chapel steps,” she says. “It was the smoothest place around.”
A few years after childhood, she was one of the few people who looked forward to mandatory Sunday night chapel.
“It was a nice place to meet young gentlemen,” she recalls.
And a few years after that, her son, Bill, was married there.
Hume, one of the College's first women graduates, served on the Board of Trustees during the 1970s. Her parents met on campus during a performance at the Mohawk Drama Festival. Her mother was playing a lead role. Her father was in the audience.
Her gift for the Memorial Chapel restoration was made possible by stock she'd received from her late father, H. Loring Wirt, an engineer with General Electric for forty years.
For Edward Cammarota '37, the decision to apply his giving toward scholarships was easy. “When I was a student at Union, tuition and fees were $350 for a full year,” he recalls. 'Today, students still have to go to College, but it's so expensive.”
Cammarota, who earned a degree in civil engineering, has two brothers, Armand '38 and Alexander '41. During his career, he has been involved with a number of business, financial, and real estate concerns.
He recently made a $130,000 addition to the scholarship that bears his name.
“I like the idea of helping the College, and I like the idea of helping
the students,” he says, recalling meeting a number of “very good kids” who have benefited from his scholarship. “It never hurts to help someone.”
Michael S. Rapaport '59 likes the idea of supporting Schaffer library. So he made a gift of $50,000 toward the renovation and expansion of the building.
Though he says he felt the Nott Memorial may have “served its purpose as a library” while he was a student at Union, he acknowledges that “times have changed” and today's library has become more of a central fixture in the learning process.
Rapaport earned a bachelor's degree from Union in Social Studies and a law degree and M.B.A. from Columbia University. A partner in his family's New York City law firm, he specializes in probate, real property, and estate taxation law.
Rapaport says he has directed his gifts to the College to be used in projects for which other funds are unavailable. His gift to the library also will be used to secure other matching funds.
Sophomore Kevin Makarowski became the first Union male swimmer to win a national championship when he captured the 200-meter individual medley at the NCAA Division III championships.
Makarowski's time of 1:52.77 broke the College record set by teammate Scott Bowden last year. His effort helped Union to a fourth-place finish, with 234.5 points-the best finish ever for a Union team.
Coach Susan Bassett took six swimmers to the NCAA meet, and all earned All-American honors by finishing in the top eight.
Freshman Mark Anderson was second in the 100-meter breaststroke with a time of 57.7 and sophomore Mike Humphreys placed third in the 100meter backstroke with a time of 51.2.
Makarowski was fifth in the 400 intermediate medley (4:04.75), Anderson was sixth in the 200 breaststroke (2:06.70), and Humphreys was seventh in the 200 backstroke (1:53.68).
The 200- and 400-meter relay teams, composed of Humphreys, Anderson, Makarowski, and Bowden, each finished second, with times of 1:34.65 and 3:28.20. The 800-meter freestyle relay team of Humphreys, Makarowski, junior Chris Riley, and freshman Mike Derbyshire placed fourth (6:53.35) and
the 200 freestyle team of Bowden, Derbyshire, Makarowski, and Humphreys was sixth (1:24.70).
The national success came shortly after Union won its first state title. Bowden won the 200 intermediate medley, the 200 freestyle, the 100 freestyle, and was a member of all five first place relay teams. He was named “Swimmer of the Meet” Diver Brian Field, a freshman, won both the
one-meter and three-meter championships and was named “Diver of the Meet.”
The women's swimming team also had an excellent year, finishing second in the New York State Meet. Junior Jenn Allaire won both the 200 and 400 intermediate medleys for the third year in a row and also was first in the 100 individual medley, second in the 100 backstroke, and third in the 200 backstroke.
Freshman Megan McCarthy set a meet record in winning the 200 breaststroke (2:24.52). She also won the 100 breaststroke, was second in the 100 and 200 individual medleys, and finished eighth in the 100 butterfly.
At the women's national meet, Union placed nineteenth in a field of seventy-four teams. McCarthy finished seventh in the 200 breaststroke to win All-American honors, and four
other women-Allaire, sophomore Jackie Crane, freshman Sarah Spaulding, and freshman Melissa Pomerleau-earned honorable mention All-American status by finishing ninth through sixteenth. All four relay teams also finished among the top sixteen.
Union's women have a record of 63-10 in the eight seasons Bassett has been head coach, and the men are 42-20 in the seven years she
has coached them. Nineteen women and seven men have become All-Americans, and Julie Benker '93 won the national championship in the 100 backstroke.
Rich Pulver
Several other individuals earned recognition for outstanding efforts:
Rich Pulver, a senior, finished second in the shotput at the NCAA Division III championships with a throw of 54 feet, one inch. Undefeated during the indoor season, Pulver set a Union record with a throw of 54 feet, four inches and nearly matched that when he won the New York State championship.
The Women's Basketball Coaches Association named senior guard Andrea Pagnozzi as its 1995 winner of the Charles T. Stoner Law Scholarship award. Pagnozzi will use the award, presented to a senior woman basketball player who plans to pursue a career in law, at Dickinson School of Law next fall.
Andrea Pagnozzi
Pagnozzi is Union's second leading career scorer, with 1,312 points, and has a 3.85 grade point average. She has been on the Dean's List for four years.
Julie Anderson, a senior, was selected to the New York State Women's Collegiate Athletic Association's first team in tennis. A biology major and a four-year Dean's List student, Anderson had a career singles record of 35-16. The team was 31-12 during her career here and finished sixth in the state tournament in each of the past two seasons.
Appointed: As president and chief executive officer at Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, Robert Holland, Jr. '62, an experienced business consultant with a demonstrated commitment to social causes. The Associated Press said Holland “has spent his career working directly for struggling companies that he helped turn around or for consultants who performed the same tasks.” A Boston Globe profile said, “Holland's many supporters say he possesses the strategic thinking of a management consultant, the hands-on savvy of an entrepreneur, and the conscience of a social activist.”
Appointed: As assistant dean of students, Edgar Letriz '91, most recently assistant dean of admissions at the College of William and Mary. Letriz earned his bachelor's degree in modern languages and has a master's degree in French literature from the University of Wisconsin. He will work closely with student groups whose primary function is cultural awareness and with the College's Terms Abroad program.
Died: Codman Hislop '31, research professor of American civilization and author of the biography Eliphalet Nott, died February 26 at his home in Captiva Island, Fla. He was eighty-nine.
A native of Brooklyn, Professor Hislop earned his bachelor's degree in liberal arts and received an honorary doctor of letters degree from Union in 1972. He held a master's in American literature from Columbia University and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.
As an undergraduate, he was a member of Sigma Phi fraternity, Concordiensis, Garnet, the English
Club, Mountebanks, the choir, Pi Delta Epsilon, and Sigma Phi Society. He was a winner of the Bailey Prize.
In addition to his biography on Nott, which the College plans to publish this year in an abridged form, he wrote The Mohawk and Albany: Dutch, English and American. His writings appeared in a number of scholarly journals, and he had several Union distinctions-in
1932, he discovered the original Ramee plans for the College in an attic in the geology laboratory; in 1942, he was the first Union professor to enter active service in World War II, eventually becoming a major in the Army Air Force; in 1945 he served as the College's Sesquicentennial Poet; and in 1968 he discovered a number of letters written by George Washington which became known as the “W. Wright Hawkes Collection of Revolutionary War Documents.”
His interests included New England and New York State history, American social history, American literature, and English literature. He was active in the Schenectady Civic Theater, playing
roles in a number of productions, and was a founder of the Friends of Union College Library.
Survivors include a stepdaughter, Margaret Hanson, of Atworth, N.H. His wife, Gertrude, died in 1970.
A memorial was held in Florida in April.
Elma Hicks Martin
Died: Elma Hicks Martin, the wife of former President Harold C. Martin, died February 26 at St. Joseph's West Mesa Hospital in Albuquerque, N.M., after a brief illness. She was eighty-five.
Mrs. Martin graduated from Virginia State University and had a master's degree in English from the University of Michigan. She had been a teacher at Webster Springs (W.Va.) High School, Orange County Community College in Middletown, N.Y., and the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. She also was a tutor of English.
She was co-editor of a family magazine and published articles in West Virginia School Journal and Massachusetts Teacher.
She was a president of the St. George's Episcopal Church's Board of Women in Schenectady; a member of the Schenectady Public Library's
Friends of the library, for which she did a number of book reviews; and a board member of the Schenectady League of Women Voters, Freedom Forum, and
the Community Welfare Council.
In addition to her husband of fifty-five years, survivors include two sons, Thomas, of Jamaica Plains, Mass., and Joel, of Portland, Maine; two daughters, Ann Martin, of Albuquerque, and Rebecca Evarts, of Arlington, Mass.; and ten grandchildren.
Contributions may be made to the Board of Women, St. George's Episcopal Church, Schenectady.
George Stibitz '27G
Died: George R. Stibitz '27G, whose mathematical calculations and tinkering at the kitchen table led him to invent the first digital computer in 1940, died January 31 at his home in Hanover, N.H. He was ninety.
He earned his master's degree in physics at Union in 1927 and soon
joined the Bell Telephone Laboratories as a research mathematician.
In 1937, he combined some dry cell batteries with metal strips from a tobacco can, flashlight bulbs, and two telephone relays to create what he called a binary adder. The next year, he and a partner created the complex number calculator, a digital computer capable of solving problems faster than 100 people with desk calculators, and in 1940 he became the first person to establish a computer network when he instructed the complex number calculator in New York City to perform computations from a Teletype machine in Hanover.
He held more than thirty patents for inventions ranging from computer systems to a stereophonic organ. In 1983 he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
