WWII nursing students

I especially enjoyed reading "Answering the Call" in the April magazine about the Uninversity of Cincinnati’s 25th General Hospital for the Army.

In 1944, I and about 70 other girls entered the College of Nursing and Health. Most of us were members of the Army’s Cadet Nurse Corps, the Army’s attempt to recruit nursing students for the war effort. Since almost all the RNs had left Cincinnati General Hospital, members of the class of 1947 were used to staff the wards. Also, some of the nurse faculty were gone, and we were taught anatomy and chemistry by medical college professors.

I was one of the first in my class to work night duty on the busy male surgical floor B1--an experience I will never forget. Needless to say, our class received a very intense education. About half of the entering students graduated in 1947. I have many special memories of those days and will always be glad I was there.
Glenice DeWees Anderson, Nur ‘49
Santa Rosa, Calif.

I was on campus during the '60s, and my picture is in the Letters to the Editor of your April issue ["1970 Revisited"]. I’m the lone guy with the granny glasses, white T-shirt, and looking to my right. My dad was Jed Small. Thanks for a great issue.

John Small Jr., A&S ‘71
Crystal Lake, Ill.

Editor's note: John "Jed" Small, Bus '40, was director of the Alumni Association from 1949-70, then assistant to UC presidents Warren Bennis, Henry Winkler and Joseph Steger. In 1946, he co-founded the Sigma Sigma Carnival. He died in 2007.

NCAA champs

Your article on UC’s Golden Age of basketball [December 2010] brought back wonderful memories. I especially appreciated being reminded of the individual contributions of each of the players, the Ed Jucker coaching style and the improbable nature of the 1961 victory. The bond the players formed is remarkable. I was amazed to learn that they still get together twice a year. Thanks for a really well-written article.
Jon Lippincott
Cincinnati

I enjoyed reading the article describing the 1961, '62 and '63 NCAA championship basketball teams. I recall that Tony Yates [Ed '63] was clearly fouled on his drive near the end of regulation in the 1963 game though no foul was called.

I note you indicate the only source of video coverage of those games is through the NCAA. I'm certain there was a limited edition pair of videos of the two games in 1961-62 offered by the university or through one of the bookstores -- in the early to mid-1980s, I believe. The quality wasn’t too good since, I think, they were made from TV kinescopes. I didn't have a VCR and couldn’t afford the videos. I seem to recall they sold out very quickly, and it seems likely some of them are around the Cincinnati area. I’d love to get a set of them and hope they haven't all wound up in landfills.

One personal note: I arrived on campus in the fall of 1961 and found my way to the Armory Fieldhouse to see many home games. Before the season started, however, I was on the steps outside the building and ran into the largest human being I’d ever seen, wearing the thickest eyeglasses I'd ever seen. It was the gentle giant Paul Hogue [Ed '62].

Thanks for the memories.
Tom O’Neill, Eng '66
Beaver, Pa.

Memories of Armstrong

We really enjoyed your issue on Neil Armstrong and the UC co-op grads working on NASA space exploration [October 2011]. It brought back memories of our family meeting Neil Armstrong [HonDoc '80] in Las Vegas in 2002. We attended a seminar and were among the 10 or so of the 5,000 attendees who got to meet him.

He is a very private individual, and it took over a year to convince him to attend the seminar, let alone meet and greet a lot of people. I wrote a personal note to him and mentioned that we were 1959 UC grads, that we were both Ohio natives and that I was an instrumentation engineer in helping to develop the "Back Pack" (Portable Life Support System) for the Apollo space suit that he wore.

This was in the old days of 1962-65 after our three years in the Air Force. Babe (Kathryn) Gallenstein [Ed '59] and I got married just before graduation in 1959, and I went into the service as an engineering officer working on the Titan I Intercontinental Ballistic Missile program.

When we met Armstrong, he said, "Oh, here's the Bearcats" and happily posed with us. He and the host of the event had a conversation on stage. When asked, "When you look up at the moon, what do you think of?" his droll, humorous, comment was "girls."
Jim Reger, Eng '59
Lakewood Ranch, Fla.

Editor's Note: Neil Armstrong died in August 2012. Read his obituary.

Team impresses 7-year-old

I took my daughter out of school early to catch the Bearcats vs. Butler baseball game in Indianapolis. I just wanted to say what a class act the whole team was; great character and values were on display. My little girl, Maggie, got to shake hands with some players and coach Brian Cleary. She even got to walk in the dugout and tell the players good luck. To a 7-year-old, that was a big deal.

That was the power of influence that a team had on a little person, a little person who will take that little prestigious moment and grow from it. Thanks to a great university, and thanks for making my family feel a part of a great team.
Jim Serger Jr., Univ '91
Carmel, Ind.

Fortress still not found

I really look forward to receiving my "UC Magazine." I appreciate the superior writing, excellent photography and the diversity of news and accomplishments covered.

I had to chuckle, however, at a phrase [describing the location of an archeological dig in Cyprus] in the "Ancient Fortress Found" article in the April issue:  "… which is situated on a plateau not far from the Mediterranean Sea." In fact, since Cyprus is an island surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea, all of Cyprus is not far from the Mediterranean Sea. The use of that phrase made me wonder if the article’s author had even looked at a map of the country.

I understand the importance of protecting this type of excavation by not revealing its exact location, but I was hoping for a bit more information about where the site was situated, such as a reference to its proximity to a major city. I am fortunate to have traveled to Cyprus and experienced its beauty firsthand.

For places not on a typical American's travel itinerary, however, it might be helpful, when publishing articles about UC's global reach, to include small maps of the areas referenced.

Aside from my nitpicking about Cypriot geography, I thank you for producing such a high-quality magazine.
Ellen Roberts, CCM '76
Wilmington, Del.

Editor’s note: Episkopi-Bamboula is the archeological dig located on the prehistoric site of Bamboula, which is between the villages of Episkopi and Limassol on the southern coast of Cyprus. We meant to indicate that the Mediterranean is actually visible from the plateau.

Moved to tears

I was so moved by what John Bach wrote and the video ["Voices of Dadaab Theater Project"]. His way to tell this story brought me to tears. I thank him for his kindness and willingness to share the work of UC students and our friends in Africa with the UC community. It means a great deal to me. Sharing their voices with the world is important.
Michael Littig, CCM '05
New York, N.Y.

Sad for Wittenberg

Thank you for asking the opinion [in the readership survey] of a parent who enjoys the "UC Mag" so very much. Our oldest son and his wife are UC grads. Our youngest son is a UC grad, and our "son" from Africa also graduated from UC. We love UC and its amazing co-op program. Keep up the good work.

As a Wittenberg alum, I am sad that Witt does not do the same excellent job of communication that we find at UC.
Greg and Marcia Ward
Urbana, Ohio

Sander Hall lives on

I was on Sander Hall's 24th floor in 1981-82 as a graduate student. I think I was the only female student from Turkey in the whole university.

UC had thought a lot about diversity back then and offered scholarships to international students. But taking elevators to the 24th floor was not easy. I used to get standard elevator questions like: "What do you wear in your country? Do you eat hamburgers in Turkey?"

We also had nightly alarms and had to go down 24 floors in the middle of the night--sometimes quite annoying.

Once we had a real fire during the day. I was working in the next building at the Behavioral Science Lab in the Center for Policy Research when I saw the fire trucks around Sander. The fire department could barely reach a floor above the 10th floor. Afterward, there was massive media coverage with many graduate students from our floor on TV.

A decision like putting Sander Hall into the sand will never happen in my country. I am amazed that principles are taken so seriously at UC, as well as building and fire code laws in Ohio. It should be a case study to many architectural and law schools all over the world.
Suzan Onat-Bayazit, M (A&S) '83
Istanbul, Turkey

Note: Read more Sander Hall stories, watch implosion video and see photo gallery.

Foreign Service update

I am writing to tell you how much I enjoyed your April 2012 "UC Magazine." My husband and I are both Foreign Service officers with the U.S. Department of State stationed in Embassy Pretoria, South Africa. We are both '97 UC graduates--David Foster from Arts and Sciences and I from the College of Law where I was a fellow in the Urban Morgan Institute for Human Rights.

As career diplomats, it is really very exciting for us to see UC highlight its alumni’s interesting experiences around the world. While I recognize that this was a special issue, I would hope that you would continue to carry this theme in regular articles in your publication. Very well done, and thank you.
Kathryn Pongonis, JD '97
Pretoria, South Africa

Editor's note: Read more about alumni serving in the Peace Corps. And read about UC's special Peace Corps program out of DAAP.

Ludlow Hall ‘makeshift dorm’

In 2003, you ran a story about the memories of a freshman girl who was housed in Ludlow Hall [Patricia Crume Lloyd, DAAP '69]. She had some good stories to tell about the old hotel that brought back fond memories for me.

After reading the article, I went on a diligent search for memorabilia from my own freshman year in that makeshift dorm on the other side of Burnet Woods. At the time, I couldn't find these photos, but a few weeks ago they turned up in a box of old papers. I have scanned the few that show the dorm from the front and the group picture that our dorm adviser Bob Deddens [Eng '63, JD '67] organized for us.

As far as I know, my freshman class was the first to use the old hotel as a dorm, and I remember being pretty confused when I first got there about where I was and where the college was that I was supposed to be attending. I clearly remember the day my mother and stepfather dropped me off and got my luggage up to my room on the second floor. We said goodbye, and they left to go back to Pittsburgh. There I was--a clueless freshman who didn’t even know what questions to ask.

After exploring Burnet Woods and the little business district on Ludlow Avenue, I got my bus pass to campus and found the DAA building where I would spend most of my time. I had many long walks up Clifton Avenue to the DAA building and remember never quite getting used to all the ambulance sirens coming and going from Good Sam Hospital at all hours of the night.

We had a good group of freshmen there--my first real exposure to people from other places and cultures and all pretty good guys when I think back. I remember the Ping-Pong table in the basement and how I actually used the iron and ironing board to press my shirts to wear to class. That didn’t last very long once I discovered how casual college life was and how my mother's idea of what college kids were supposed to look like was a little behind the times.

It didn't take long to meet some commuting freshman students who had cars and would pick me up and take me to campus. So I never really made very good use of my bus pass. My meal-plan ticket was not very well used, either, since I seldom was able to make it to the other side of campus with all my DAA gear and still get to classes on time.

Breakfast became snack food that I could store in my room. I remember once being reprimanded for keeping a container of milk out on my windowsill to keep it cold in the winter. So much for my routine of cereal for breakfast.

I remember the barbershop a few doors down from the dorm, the IGA supermarket a little further down Ludlow on the other side of the street and some grand old mansions a few blocks out on Clifton. There are lots of memories to go through, but this is probably not the time. Hopefully some of the members of the 1965 freshman class will see this and get a few laughs.

For the group photo, handwritten announcement posters were put up around the dorm, and I must have thought they were worth saving. I am the guy in the black sweatshirt, just right of center behind the guy with the umbrella (mouth open, making a wisecrack of some kind, I'm sure). Our dorm adviser, Bob Deddens, has the bowtie and dustpan just left of me. I remember all these faces like it was yesterday, but can't come up with very many names. I do remember that we had some good times. This was more like a frat house than a dorm.
Craig Fitzpatrick, DAAP '70
Knightdale, N.C.

Editor's note: Are any readers willing to supply additional names of the men in the photo?