This is the last issue of the Chronicle for the 1998-99 academic
year. Publication will resume with the start of classes in the fall.
Frequent Flier Miles Donated
Joan Gould '76 of Scotia has made an unusual donation that folks in
Becker Hall hope will inspire other alumni who spend lots of time in the air.
She has donated some of her frequent flier miles so that Bill McCumber, a guidance
counselor at St. Mark's School in Dallas, Texas, can fly up to check out the campus
on July 12.
Lilia Tiemann, alumni admissions program coordinator, is making the arrangements.
Read MoreFond Farewell Set For Seniors
Daniel J. Kelmanovich and Edward Valochovic will be co-valedictorians at
Commencement on Sunday, June 13, at 10 a.m. in Library Plaza
About 620 students are to receive degrees with the Class of 1999. The College will
award 471 bachelor's degrees, 146 master's and two doctorates.
Raymond V. Gilmartin '63, chairman, president and CEO of Merck & Co, a leading
pharmaceutical company, will be honorary chancellor and deliver the main address. He is to
receive an honorary doctor of laws degree.
Gilmartin, a native of Sayville, N.Y., earned his B.S. in electrical engineering from
Union, where he was class president in his junior and senior years and was named
outstanding engineer in his class. He spent three years as development engineer wit
Eastman Kodak Co. before entering Harvard Business School, where he received his M.B.A. An
active participant in health industry affairs, he is chairman of the board of the
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of American and chairman of ValleyCare Corp., a
community-based hospital in New Jersey. He has been a trustee of Union College and served
on the board of associates of Harvard Business School.
Raquel Millman is to deliver the student address.
President Roger Hull will host a reception for seniors and their families on Saturday,
June 12, at 3:30 p.m. in the Nott Memorial.
The Baccalaureate Commemoration is Saturday, June 12, at 5 p.m. in Memorial Chapel.
Read MoreLet it Rain
Bring on the rain. This year, we're ready.
Commencement will be outside, in Library Plaza, rain or shine, and the Commencement
committee has done a few things to make sure everyone stays dry (or cool).
There will be limited seating in the Nott Memorial with closed-circuit television of
the ceremony. There also will be shade/rain seating under two large tents alongside the
Nott Memorial.
In case of rain, there will also be indoor seating in Memorial Chapel, Old Chapel,
Olin, and two rooms each in Social Sciences and Humanities. All rain locations will have
TV coverage of the Commencement.
And for those who choose not to take shelter from the rain?
Break out the ponchos. Guests will have access to clear plastic ones. Graduating
seniors get same, but with a distinctive Nott logo on the front.
Prof. Wineapple is NEH Fellow, Again
Brenda Wineapple, the Washington Irving Professor of Modern Literary and
Historical Studies, has received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship to
continue work on a biography she is writing on Nathaniel Hawthorne.
This is the second NEH Fellowship she has received. The first came in 1986-87 in
support of her first biography, Genêt: A Biography on Janet Flanner about the New
Yorker correspondent who chronicled 20th-century
Paris.
Among her awards, Wineapple also has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American
Council on Learned Societies Fellowship, a Hertog Fellowship from the Columbia University
Writing Program, a Ball Brothers Foundation Fellowship from Indiana University, and a
Donald C. Gallup Senior Fellowship from Yale University.
She also is author of Sister Brother Gertrude and Leo Stein (1997).
It has been a challenge, she says, to write about “someone canonical” like
Hawthorne, but adds that the project has given her “a certain kind of freedom.”
Enough is known about Hawthorne that she doesn't have to convince anyone of his
importance or put his life into context, she explains. And unlike Janet Flanner and
Gertrude and Leo Stein — subjects of her first two biographies — Hawthorne is
“more dead,” so there are no living contemporaries to interview.
Hawthorne descendants, however, have supplied a wealth of information, much of it
unseen, including a trunk-full of letters to and from the 19th-century author.