Our Crossroads issue may have been delayed but it was worth the wait. We hope you love the singular cover portrait of longtime registrar Dave Detrow ’77, who retired this January after nearly 45 years at EMU.
Media specialist Rachel Holderman ’18 was the creative artist behind the conceptual design — she came up with both the pose (very cool glasses) and the inset of images from Dave’s youthful days.
HERE’S THE DIGITAL ISSUE.
We first approached Dave about being the focus of our feature article after learning of his retirement plans early in the fall. After the idea percolated for a while, Dave decided to move ahead. The signature at the top of the pages is in some ways his own stamp of approval; he was involved from beginning to end in his usual detail-oriented but always gracious way, compiling a list of important objects and information for us, fact-checking our text, enduring two different photo shoots, and generally putting up with a lot of attention.
We hope you enjoy this tribute as much as we enjoyed working with Dave on it.
Mileposts Tidbits
The bigger our Mileposts section gets, the more opportunities we have to leave things out. Here’s a couple of updates that didn’t make it into our issue, much to your editor’s chagrin (any mistake causes editorial chagrin, let me just admit that).
To contribute to Mileposts, make an address change, or submit a comment, go here.
ALUMNI CONNECTIONS
Back in September, we received an email from David King ’78, president of Malone University in Canton, Ohio.
Pictured with John Stahl-Wert ’81 and Milonica Stahl-Wert ’81, King captioned this photo “three EMC Social Work graduates meeting for the first time thanks to a mutual friend.” John and Molonica are the co-founders of the Center for Serving Leadership.
Dave King from Ohio also notes that he and the other Dave King, the current director of athletics, were both students at EMC at the same time. “We were assigned a shared mailbox so we could sort our own mail (we also share the same middle initial),”he noted with a happy face.
That would be an A, in case you’re curious.
CREATIVE WORKS
We love to hear about how news ends up in our inbox. This is a case of avid Crossroads fan Kirk Shisler ’81, our vice president for advancement, meeting ceramicist Herb Weaver ’79, of Singers Glen, Va., during EMU’s Homecoming and Family Weekend and asking him to please let us share the news of this interesting new work.
So he did. In his own words:
Herb Weaver ’79 completed an Artist Residency in Eastport, Maine, at the Tides Institute and Museum of Art. His proposal and subsequent acceptance was based on the concept of “the antithesis of a wall, a ceramic quilt created to foster community building.” Weaver recounted, “growing up in the Mennonite tradition allowed me the opportunity to see first-hand, from family and church members, the benefit of working together as a community of participants who gathered to build something of beauty.”
In this particular one-month residency, Weaver chose to utilize the medium of raku ceramics, an ancient Japanese firing tradition of somewhat immediate results, risk-taking, and a blend of unbelievable joy with occasional failure. Local residents, students, and tourists collaborated by designing individual tiles with personal items embedded and articulated. “The process of raku is the perfect metaphor representing life experiences,” Weaver concluded.
The completed artwork, titled “Impressions” now hangs in the Tides Museum.
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We love to hear from you! We’re interested in big life transitions, but we also just want to know how you’re doing and what you’re up to. If you wear your EMU t-shirt and someone stops you in a strange place, tell us. If you carry your EMU string bag into an Orioles spring training game in Sarasota and end up lined up behind an EMU board member, take a photo and tell us about it.
If you end up on a flight next to someone who thought about going to EMU but didn’t but their brother did, that also makes the cut.
We use a form because it’s the most expedient way to collect your story. There are real people behind that form and you will bring smiles to our faces for sure.
To nominate an alum for one of our annual awards, go here.
Beautiful ceramic piece, Herb, both in concept and collaborative execution!
I surely enjoy reading the Crossroads issues, and was especially impressed by the work of David Detrow in the latest issue.
In the Dedicating Suter West article on page 17, I noticed that the name of one of those early science professors who were involved in “shaping EMU’s outstanding science programs” was not mentioned. That person was my husband, physics professor Robert Lehman. How well I remember those days, and how involved our family became, especially with the installment of the new Planetarium. Robert entertained many local school groups who came on field trips to enjoy the planetarium show and other features of the the amazing new Suter Science Center.
My apologies for this omission. We will print a correction in the next Crossroads magazine and make sure his contributions are recognized.
-Lauren Jefferson, Crossroads editor