Emeriti Connection

Issue No. 28 - December 2023

View this email as a Webpage >

Who sculpted Frosty the Bearcat?   Who costumed Santa McLion?

What Is This?

Scroll to bottom

and explore UC's Past -

Part II

Inside Insights:

From Our President Sally Moomaw

As we wrap up fall semester, the Emeriti Association & Center continues to move ahead with many diverse activities for our members and ongoing support for the University. Our events are drawing new participants, which is important for the growth and stability of the organization. The Concert Orchestra reception at CCM, the Fall Picnic, and our recent Holiday Open House all welcomed participants who had not attended previous events. Our last Friday of the month brewery get-togethers continue to be popular with veteran and new Emeriti alike. It is fun to socialize regularly with university colleagues.

Also popular with emeriti is our Luncheon Speakers Series organized by Tim Sale. This fall sizeable audiences, both in person and online, listened to Carrie Harms, from the Cincinnati Recycling and Reuse Hub; Holocaust survivor and Physics Emeritus Henry Fenichel; and Engineering Emeritus Dan Durban speaking on his trip to Antarctica. Over 85 people heard Mayor Pureval speak. We continue to evaluate our offerings and make improvements.

An event that was not very popular was our morning coffee social. Apparently very few emeriti wanted to get up and drive to campus for coffee. This activity was replaced with leisurely neighborhood walks that begin and end at a local coffee house or café. Emeriti enjoyed both our Columbia Tusculum and Mt. Adams walks. Cincinnati has a wonderfully diverse array of neighborhoods, and more walks are planned for the spring.

Considerable planning continues behind the scenes for the Spring Arts Festival. The Reed Gallery at DAAP will host a display of artwork from emeriti and current faculty across all colleges and disciplines during the months of February and March. We received many exciting submissions for this event. Details about both the Gallery Show and our special Festival Day are highlighted in the newsletter.

We continue to welcome new emeriti each semester. Our newest members are listed in each edition of this newsletter.

And for the first time, we are able to list the many generous donors to the Emeriti Scholarship Fund. We recognize all who are helping achieve our goal of growing the endowment to create a $5000 student award. Thank you for your support!

Warm wishes to all as we continue through the holiday season.

Sally

Sally Moomaw

President, UC Emeriti Association

sally.moomaw@uc.edu

We welcome these colleagues to the community of Emeriti as ratified by the UC Board of Trustees on December 12, 2023:

News & Announcements

The Reframing Aging Initiative: Talking About Aging

The Reframing Aging Initiative (RAI) seeks to change American society’s deeply entrenched misperceptions about aging and older people by changing how we talk, and the terms we use, about aging. RAI Project Director Patricia D’Antonio says, “Aging is a universal, shared experience. But the way we talk about it can diminish and harm older people, even if we do not mean to.”  



The website for this initiative hosts three short videos that introduce its long-term goal and demonstrate some steps we can take to advance the reframing: (1) Frame of Mind: The Why and How of Reframing Aging, (2) Frame of Mind: Reframing Aging from Them to Us, and (3) Frame of Mind: Starting Strong, Avoiding Traps.  For example, one simple change can produce big results: using the more inclusive terms "we" and "us" in place of "they" and "them" helps all of us to remember that we are all aging.

Also available is a compact and colorful flyer/"Quick Start Guide" and a more comprehensive Guide to Telling a More Complete Story of Aging that shows you how to apply age-inclusive, bias-free language when crafting presentations, press releases, websites, and other communications:  Communications Guide

This initiative aims to change attitudes about aging by changing how we talk about aging, and thereby advance policies and programs that support all of us

at every age and stage of life. Those of us who read Becca Levy's Breaking the Age Code (an early Health & Wellness Book Club selection) will recall that changing how we talk about aging improves how we think about our own aging, which research has shown to support better health and longevity: a good reason to check out these materials.

Emeritus Wins Patent

in Breakthrough Chemotherapy Technology

“I would like to see cancer cured or at least tamed,” Clifford Larrabee proclaimed. This summer, with a patent secured for a ground-breaking cancer drug delivery system, Larrabee and his co-inventor have left their mark in the ongoing fight against the disease. In 2019, Dr. Larrabee, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at UC Clermont, submitted a patent with UC Clermont alum Dr. Mary Warmin for a new nanocarrier targeted drug delivery system – a more effective method of delivering chemotherapy drugs to cancer patients. 

 “A nanocarrier protects the drug from interactions that damage it until it reaches the tumor where it needs to work,” Larrabee said. “The nanocarriers also protect the chemo from enzymes in the bloodstream that try to kill it, which leads to fewer side effects.” Co-inventor Warmin, who served as a senior chemistry lab associate and adjunct instructor at the college while earning her PhD in chemistry from UC, says, “My hope is that our drug delivery system will someday improve quality of life and outcomes for patients.”  

Larrabee first wrote about the potential usage of nanocarriers to deliver drugs in his PhD dissertation in 1980. He started conducting nanocarrier research with students through UC’s Women in Science and Engineering program in the late 2000s. Larrabee officially retired in 2020 but has remained active in UC Clermont’s labs. For the son of two chemists — Larrabee’s father helped create the popular drugs tetracycline and doxycycline — the patent represents the culmination of a life’s work. 



For more about Professor Larrabee, read here.

Photo/Danny Kidd

Retiree Reflection

“Design Comes from Everywhere”:

An Interview with Craig Vogel 

Contributed by Jonathan Kamholtz

Craig Vogel’s world is wide in part because his education was wide. He started his BA at Marist College in Biology and then switched to Psychology. He got his Masters in Industrial Design at Pratt Institute because of his surprise and delight to discover that, as he says, “you could actually make a living doing that.” In talking to him, you will almost surely end up with a reading list that reflects the breadth of his own experiences with books, from the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead and Martin Buber to the classics of Russian novels to the many works that suggest that humans are born to design things. One favorite is Steven Johnson’s How We Got to Now (2014), which sees the advances of civilization in terms of our ability to invent concepts and artifacts that help us organize our world, including cleanliness, time, and glass—expanding our sense of what we might mean by “design.”

He taught at the Illinois Institute of Technology and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before settling in for a decade and a half at Carnegie Mellon and nearly two decades at UC’s College of Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning, from which he is now an Emeritus, having retired in June 2023. “Each school,” he explains, “added a dimension” to his understanding of what design is and what it could do. At Carnegie Mellon, he learned about “ways to bring a design perspective to business,” and at UC, he helped create the Live Well Collaborative to work closely with Procter and Gamble, whose multitude of services and products raised challenges that could be addressed by design at least as much as by lab science, economics, and cunning advertising. 

To Vogel, design is a discipline defined by the ways that it has been improved and enriched the more it encouraged people’s “functional literacy” in other disciplines—the need to know enough to be conversant in another collaborator’s fields. It was not that design absorbed or colonized areas of expertise, but that it could help potential collaborators see that “we are all designers.” To this end, Vogel saw his own contributions as being “the hybridizing person” who saw the range of connections that could be made. He has spoken about the “big bang of design,” where the tightness and inwardness created by specialization are surrendered. For example, Vogel explains, the familiar and highly successful Swiffer products basically consist of a bottle containing a chemical mixture—but good design turns it into an easier, multi-purpose way to clean. To a large degree, our lived experience is created and even defined by design; Vogel is intrigued, among many other things, by how near-sightedness essentially didn’t exist until glass was perfected and eyeglasses invented.

He argues that “design comes from everywhere” and from everyone. He encourages his students to see that design covers far more of our experience than what can be inked at a drafting table. He speaks, for example, of the brilliant and continuing success of Legos, which is due to applying some principles of design to the familiar world of building toys. In the past, he has cited Jungle Jim’s as a triumph of “vernacular design.” I said that I loved what I could buy there, but I always got lost. “A good store,” he explains, “wants you to get lost,” and succeeds in part by bringing the “experiences of an amusement park to the necessities of shopping.” 

If a field is going to take its place in the world, Vogel adds, it will also have responsibilities to that world. We are all coming to understand, for example, the fallacies of what has been called our throw-away culture; “‘away’ doesn’t exist.” Sometimes, he says, students see these things faster than their teachers. “The undergraduate mind isn’t naïve,” he notes, and they are particularly aware of the complexities of Artificial Intelligence. “Students are already at the edge of it,” Vogel says. It is marvelous that AI allows us to “make a project without actually making it”; on the other hand, Vogel calls AI “the nuclear bomb of information mismanagement.” His warning comes from his fundamental understanding of design: “Everything is good, bad, and stupid. The question is the percentages.”

Photo/Jonathan Kamholtz

“Retiree Reflection” features new Emeriti looking back over their work, reflecting on what they’ve accomplished, and what brought them to this point.

If you know of an Emerita/Emeritus who you think would make a good subject for a future profile or would like to be interviewed yourself, contact

Jonathan.Kamholtz@uc.edu

Undergraduate Mentoring

The Emeriti/Student Mentorship Award for Collaborative Projects

for 2024-2025

Is Accepting Proposals through February 23rd

Do you have a research or creative project in mind that an undergraduate could do with you in 2024-25?

If so, please identify a student partner and consider helping them apply for our Mentorship Award. This award provides funding for both you and the student partner.

Recent student projects have included (with the emeritus mentor indicated):

• Optimization of hospital bed usage in hospitals (Mike Magazine, COB)
• A study of urban growth patterns both nationally and locally, with an emphasis on how growth has deviated from past forecasts (Michael Romanos, DAAP)
• A study of the use of remote-controlled Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (drones) in construction projects (George Suckaraieh, CEAS)
• The history of Planned Parenthood and Vasectomy Services, Inc. in Southwestern Ohio (Carl Huether, A&S)
• The management of small unmanned aerial systems using a systems engineering perspective (Awatef Hamed, CEAS)

This award supports a valuable intergenerational experience for both student and mentor. Working on a topic with you could provide an original avenue for creative effort or form a capstone project for a rising senior. Share your ideas and expertise with an undergraduate! Partnering with a current faculty member mentor is permissible.

If you have questions about this award, please contact Joanna Mitro.

Age-Friendly University

The Age-Friendly University Working Group has been working on a white paper that presents the rationale for UC becoming an Age-Friendly University and summarizes the evidence we found of current age-friendly practices at UC. This fall we accumulated additional examples of age-friendly practices and more support for this goal from around the University, including the both the Faculty and Staff Senates and the Alumni Association, and from external organizations such as the Council on Aging.

This document will be presented to the Provost just after the winter break, completing the first step in the application process to join the network of Age-Friendly Universities. The next step is to secure the Administration's endorsement. We hope to see this action early next year.

The above graphic illustrates some of the components of age-friendliness at UC. It was created by our student intern Satanay Bras, and was used in PowerPoint presentations.

Luncheon Speaker Series

In Case You Missed It

Our Luncheon Speaker Series for 2023-2024 kicked off in August.

August 24th: Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval gave us his perspective on “Asian-Americans in Politics.”

September 26th: Carrie Harms, Warehouse Director, Cincinnati Recycling and Reuse Hub, enlightened us on “Sustainability: The Role of the Cincinnati Recycling and Reuse Hub.”

October 26th: Henry Fenichel, Professor Emeritus of Physics, related his cautionary story of “Survival of the Holocaust During World War II.”

November 16th: Daniel Durbin, Professor Emeritus of Architectural Engineering, presented his adventure tale, “My Experiences in Antarctica.”

Coming Up: Spring Semester 2024

January 25th: Victoria Morgan, Artistic Director Emerita, Cincinnati Ballet 

“Keep It Moving"

I will discuss, in an interactive way, the value of physicality, not only from my personal point of view but from the studied-science perspective. Then we will get out of our chairs and move! The movement will be easy, fluid, with the intention to open up the spine, hips, shoulders and neck. There will be easy yoga stretches, some balancing, core building and singing along with songs mostly from the 60's and 70's. The point is to have fun and discover the value and pleasure of healthy physicality.

February 22nd: David Butler, Professor Emeritus, Biomedical Engineering, “Biomedical Engineering”

March 28th: Ming Tang, Professor, Director of Extended Reality Lab, “Medical Uses of Virtual Reality”

April 25th: Jun Bai, Asst Professor, Electrical Engineering & Computer Systems, “Artificial Intelligence”

We program August through April

(with a break in December).

Most lectures on Thursdays, noon to 1 pm.

Light luncheon provided at 11:30 am

in the Faculty Enrichment Center, Langsam Library

Zoom option for those who cannot attend in person.

Watch for announcements with more details as future events approach and plan to join us!

Do you have ideas for a speaker or a topic you'd like to hear?

Your ideas are welcome.

Contact Tim Sale, Luncheon Speakers Committee, chair.

Arts & Culture

[Committee: Sally Moomaw (chair), Terry Milligan, Craig Vogel,

Cynthia Lockhart, Mary Henderson-Stucky]

In Case You Missed It

Exploring Cincinnati Neighborhoods

A leisurely neighborhood walk that begins and ends at a local coffee house.

Mt. Adams

Thursday, December 7, 2023

Explorers Deborah DeGroot-Osswald, Ralph Katerberg, Sally Moomaw, Pam and Lee Person, Tim and Suzanne Sale, and Craig Vogel met at the charming and funky Bow Tie Cafe on St. Gregory Street where they launched their walk through several blocks of historic buildings and dramatic city views.

Watch your Emeriti emails as more neighborhood walks are planned.

Each one will be a unique and enriching adventure!

Coming Up

Emeriti Association's 2nd Annual

Spring Festival of Visual & Musical Arts

New and exciting activities are in the planning for our second Emeriti Spring Arts Festival, led by Cynthia Lockhart (DAAP Emerita). This year the Emeriti Association’s Festival will include a Faculty Art Exhibition, a display of artworks by current faculty and emeriti from all colleges and disciplines, in DAAP’s Reed Gallery. The Gallery display will run during the months of February and March, 2024. Calls for artist submissions were sent through the Faculty and Emeriti listservs and judged by representatives from DAAP and the Emeriti Association. In the planning stages are a Chamber Concert featuring current faculty and emeriti, with gallery artists available to discuss their works, and an Art Workshop.

The Emeriti Spring Arts Festival Showcase Reception is set for Saturday afternoon, March 2.  As last year, this special reception of music, art and hors d’oeuvres will include a Silent Auction with enticing items like donated artwork, special gift bags and valued sports memorabilia to benefit the Emeriti Scholarship Fund. 

Ideas? Questions? Want to be involved? Contact Sally.Moomaw@uc.edu.

The Arts & Culture Committee identifies local arts and cultural activities to recommend to emeriti, and sponsors interesting and stimulating artistic and cultural occasions that emeriti are invited to enjoy together to gain deeper appreciation.

The Arts & Culture Committee welcomes new members.

Contact Sally.Moomaw@uc.edu

LET'S GET SOCIAL!

[Committee: George Babcock, Howard Jackson, Terry Milligan, Sally Moomaw, and Joan Murdock, chair]

The Social Activities Committee

sponsors ongoing events for socializing and enjoying each other’s company.

P.O.E.T.S. Club Enjoys Cincinnati's Brew Pubs

Phooey On Everything! Tomorrow's Saturday!

Final Friday of each month at 5 pm

Feel free to bring guests ...

Newly-named Emeriti ... First Round on Us!

We hope to see you then!

In Case You Missed It

On October 27, the POETS had a hauntingly good time at Norwood’s Listermann Brewing Company, a neighborhood brewery and home brew supply store with a taproom featuring beer, wine, cider, and mead.

The holiday schedule had the brew club meeting on Friday, December 8, at Karrikin Spirits Company in the Whiskey Hollow area of the Little Miami River valley in Fairfax and Mariemont. The Company resurrected the old distillery and produces handcrafted spirits, sparkling spirits, non-alcoholic sodas, and beer. (Karrikins are the compounds in the smoke of a forest fire that trigger the regeneration of the forest.)

Pictured at the industrial-hip locale: George Babcock, Terry Milligan, Don Bogen, Pam and Lee Person

Coming Up Next

Brewpub TBA

Friday, January 26, 2024 at 5 pm



Recommendations? Contact George.Babcock@uc.edu

 2nd Annual

Emeriti Holiday Open House

Wednesday, December 13

Another grand celebration was enjoyed at CCM's Baur Room with a Festive Buffet, Holiday Music & Champagne!

Helene Ault, Sally Moomaw,

Terry Milligan

Jennifer & Bernard Pearce

Barbara Martin

Juris & Pat Mezinskis, Joanna Mitro

Lee & Pam Person

Alex Merck Jazz Trio

Howard Jackson, Bruce Ault,

Don Bogen

Bob Conyne, Geof Yager,

Joan Murdock

Margaret Hanson, Roger Collins, Patricia Hill-Collins

Health & Wellness Committee

MAKING THE MOST OF RETIREMENT

The Health & Wellness Committee recommends the upcoming webinar “Reimagining Retirement,” a three-part virtual program exploring the social, psychological, and emotional aspects of transitioning to, and living in, retirement. This learning series is sponsored by the Association of Retirement Organizations in Higher Education (AROHE) and Fidelity Investments.

The series is geared toward faculty and staff in higher education who are contemplating retirement or who are already retired, and is designed to help attendees to clarify their goals and understand the changes that occur during life’s next chapter. Here is a short video preview (with closed captions) of the first session.

There is no charge to attend and everyone is welcome to register to view these programs. NOTE: Though you may view on your own, we will sponsor a group gathering in the Faculty Enrichment Center for current and prospective retirees to watch and process each of these three presentations together. With the additional discussion period, we expect that each meeting will run approximately two hours. To register to attend any of the three on-campus meetings, contact Maria Ortiz (ortizmi@ucmail.uc.edu). To view on your own, register below.

All sessions are Tuesdays at 1 pm EST (noon CST, 11 am MST, 10 am PST).



Hosted by AROHE (Association of Retirement Organizations in Higher Education) and Fidelity Investments.®

Health & Wellness

BOOK CLUB

The Health & Wellness committee Book Club reads non-fiction and fiction books that cover a broad range of topics that support our physical, emotional and intellectual well-being. We engage in thought-provoking discussion about each book and share and reflect about our own life experiences. Discussions are always enlightening and enjoyable.

Contact: Andrea.Wall@uc.edu

Our next Book Club selection is

From the Columbia Magazine review:

Erlick narrates her book from alternating perspectives — some of her deftly drawn characters have long strings and some short — which gives her the space to explore the new kinds of personal decisions that people must make. When do you tell your parents that they will outlive you? How does dating work when your partner will die long before you will? Can a short-stringer decide in good conscience to have children?

But Erlick’s book really shines when she tackles the bigger picture, imagining the complicated societal issues that might arise in such a scenario. Long-stringed political candidates pressure their opponents to reveal their strings as they would their taxes. The military decrees that no short-stringers will be deployed, rendering combat units essentially immortal. Mass shootings become even more commonplace, with an uptick in angry people realizing that they have nothing to lose.

Please join us virtually for a spirited discussion regarding this book on Tuesday, January 30, 2024 at 7:00 - 9:00 pm

Health & Wellness

HEARING SCREENING FOR EMERITI

Many of us may be concerned about our hearing. The UC Speech and Hearing Clinic is working with our Health & Wellness committee in providing a wonderful service for emeriti that includes free screening and diagnostics, as well as discounts for other services. The graphic below gives more information.

The Health & Wellness Committee

Invites You to Join Them

Do you choose activities that support staying healthy as you age? Explore new research, programs, and practices designed to promote successful living past retirement? Do you like to find and share information (books and news stories) that can improve lives of your older friends, colleagues and family members?

Then the Health & Wellness Committee is your cup of tea. The Committee is seeking new members.

Our Health & Wellness Committee plans and schedules many events designed to promote the well-being of emeriti, including the Walks for Fitness, the Book Club, and presentations like last fall's discussion of Senior Living Options and last summer's Pickleball demonstration.

The Committee also addresses the needs of pre-retirees, presenting a 30-minute talk on “Psychosocial Aspects of Retirement” integrated with the University’s Human Resources/AAUP workshops for faculty considering retirement. Psychosocial aspects of retirement are an often overlooked, but important, domain.

We want to do even more. Interested in getting involved? Contact Committee chair Bob Conyne.

The Service Committee:

Calling for New Members

The Service Committee aims to encourage volunteer activity among emeriti by providing information about volunteer opportunities and by discovering and highlighting the exemplary volunteer activities that emeriti are doing in the community. The committee seeks to establish partnerships with non-profit community organizations and UC groups to create service activities for emeriti.

New chairperson Jennifer Pearce is leading this committee and is recruiting new members to help. Are you engaged in community service? Do you have ideas about service projects we might promote? Please contact Jennifer.Pearce@uc.edu.



Living Downtown (Part II)

More observations from those who have taken the plunge

In our last issue we featured emeriti who have moved into the “central business district” downtown. In this issue we hear from Karen Hughes and John Bryan who now live in the “Over-the-Rhine” neighborhood.

We asked:

• Why choose to live downtown?
• What factors influenced your choice of downtown location?
• What do you like best about living downtown?
• Are there disadvantages to living downtown (that you perhaps did not anticipate)?
• Do you have safety (or other) concerns?

Karen Hughes: Over-the-Rhine

My husband Brad and I moved from Riverside Drive (technically Downtown but rather remote) to OTR in 2012. It was a bit of a leap, as there was very little that had been built or renovated outside of 3 blocks of Vine Street and our little enclave of new homes just north of the not-yet-completed Washington Park. We decided to move there when we realized we were constantly getting in our car to drive to Downtown and OTR and were drawn by the ability to walk to restaurants, symphony, ballet, museums, and shops. It has been amazing to see all the changes OTR has gone through since we moved here, as it has become more and more walkable, allowing us to get to everything we need without getting in a car. The Streetcar has been a much-used addition, connecting Downtown and OTR, and the addition of a Kroger downtown has made life even better. We walk, ride the Streetcar, or bike to nearly everything.

It is hard to imagine living somewhere that is not this accessible as we “age in place.”

Note: Karen Hughes is Associate Professor Emerita of Design, DAAP.

John Bryan: Over-the-Rhine

My wife, Terry Peters, and I lived in Clifton for years before moving in late 2012 to Amherst, Massachusetts, where I took a job at UMass. After retiring—and after weathering the pandemic—we decided to return to Cincinnati where we still had many friends. Rather quickly, we settled on looking for a place in the greater downtown area because we wanted: no yard to take care of; easy, walkable access to restaurants, grocers, and entertainment venues; quick access to medical services; decent public transport; attractive public parks (where we don’t have to tend the gardens!); a good mix of “market-rate and affordable housing”; quick access to the airport; and a demographically diverse, politically progressive population.

We ended up buying a house in 2022 in Over the Rhine, just north of Liberty and south of Findlay Market—an area that met everything on our wish list. The immediate neighborhood is still rough around the edges with a couple of small-time drug dealers, some panhandlers, and too much litter blowing down the street. We have heard gunshots on two or three occasions, but haven’t witnessed any serious crime and we don’t hesitate to walk around our neighborhood, evenings included. Our windows often rattle as other residents ride down the street with their car/motorcycle/bicycle stereos showing off their bass beats.



It is a sharp contrast to exurban Amherst. And we love it. We walk everywhere, stroll with neighbors down to Washington Park to listen to Monday jazz, ride the free streetcar several times a week, buy most of our groceries at Findlay or at the downtown Kroger, walk to Music Hall and TQL Stadium, eat at the great range of restaurants downtown and in OTR. We rarely get in a car.

I’ve also made an important mental adjustment—which, admittedly, may not have been possible before retiring: When I go out each week to pick up litter in the street, when the music from some car stereo drowns out the music I’m playing inside, when the smell of the Alabama Fish Camp fills the air, I smile. We chose to become part of this neighborhood and what might have annoyed me in Clifton is just part of the streetscape in OTR. It is part of what makes this a vital downtown, worthy of investment of our money and time.



Note: John Bryan is Associate Professor Emeritus, A&S English. The reference to Amherst above refers to John’s post-retirement stint working at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. We’re glad to have him back in Cincinnati!

Chapter 1

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a professional baseball player, but my mother told me girls could not do that. She also told me I should be a lawyer, although girls didn’t do that either then.

When I eventually applied to the University of Cincinnati College of Law, I was almost 30. I had hesitated about going because I thought I was too old. But then I realized I knew a lot of eighty-year-old lawyers still practicing.

I really enjoyed law school. After I graduated, I married Judge Gilbert Bettman and went into private practice as a plaintiff’s trial lawyer in personal injury cases. But as I got older, I grew weary of trials, and when my husband retired, I decided to run for the First District Court of Appeals and won. Heck, I started off with name recognition (my husband had been a judge for 35 years). I later learned that I was the first woman ever elected to that court in its over 100 years of existence. My experiences as the first woman on that court will have to await my tell-all memoir. Now, women make up the majority of judges on that court.

When I was an appellate judge, Hamilton County was bright red and I was a Democrat. When re-election rolled around, I was defeated by an incumbent judge with a very popular Republican name. I knew then it was time for Chapter 2, which is when I became a law professor at UC.

Chapter 2

In 1999 then College of Law Dean Joe Tomain hired me as a “law professor of practice,” a non-tenure-track position. I was not an academic and was viewed with suspicion at first, but things settled down quickly and in many ways this second chapter was my favorite career. I taught torts, which was a required subject for first-year students, advanced torts, ethics, and the judicial externship program. Later, I started a judge-in-residence program, in which judges would visit for a week, teach classes and give an all-school lecture. My entire career at the law school was a wonderful combination of academia and real-world lawyering. But as I passed my 70th year, I began to feel tired. I’d been working most of my life. In 2016 I won the University of Cincinnati Distinguished Teaching Professor award, and heedful of one of my late husband’s favorite aphorisms – always leave at the crest of the wave – I retired that year.

Chapter 3

Thus began Chapter 3. Much of my third chapter is basking in the glory of my former students. Mayor Aftab Pureval always cheerfully takes my calls. He still calls me Professor. I count at least five former students who are now judges, most of them talked into running by me.

Honestly, in this final chapter, I’m still very drawn to the law and motivated to make lives better for the underserved. When Aftab was still Clerk of Courts, he asked me to set up a Help Center at the Courthouse to give free limited legal advice to people representing themselves in small civil cases such as small claims court, evictions, and debt collections. I did get it set up. It started out as a stepchild in a slow-to-change courthouse, but is now the go-to place, bustling every day. I regularly volunteer there.



I also volunteer in Juvenile Court, not giving legal advice, but talking with the parents of the kids in trouble, explaining the process to them, and getting them to talk to me about themselves. That has been fascinating and has kept me very grounded in the hardscrabble lives so many live. I’ve also recently completed training to become a mediator. That’s something totally new for this final chapter. I’ve never had a nickname, but one of the juvenile court judges gave me my first one, and it’s a keeper—she calls me Mother Justice.

What else fills my days? I adore chamber music and go to many chamber concerts. UC’s Ariel String Quartet is a particular favorite. I served on the Linton Chamber Music Board for many years. I’m a regular at the symphony, the Playhouse, and the Ensemble Theatre. I take OLLI classes, mostly on musical topics. I belong to a book club. I love word games. I’m an avid Scrabble player. And most of all, I still love baseball. But I no longer feel the need to play it.

If anyone would like to be in touch with Marianna, she can be reached at mbettman@fuse.net.

Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UC



The OLLI Connection

Contributed by Cate O'Hara,

OLLI Director

Never Stop Teaching—

But Always Stop Grading and Testing!

The University of Cincinnati’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) is accepting proposals to teach or present in our Spring Term (April 22-June 14). Proposals are due January 19.

This volunteer opportunity lets you share your knowledge (or your hobbies or other passions) with a classroom of adult students who absolutely want to be there, learn more, and share their own experiences and knowledge. 

And you never, ever have to grade a paper or give a test!

Find out more about teaching for OLLI at www.uc.edu/about/continuing-ed/olli/teach. Or contact OLLI Director Cate O’Hara at cate.ohara@uc.edu or 513-556-9174.

While you’re checking out OLLI, take a look at our Winter Term classes that begin January 22: www.uc.edu/about/continuing-ed/olli.

Whatever your retirement learning goals may be, OLLI may have just the class to start your journey.

Dr. Grace Chao Auyang, 83, passed away on July 5, 2023. Born in Kweilin City, China, on July 4, 1940, Dr. Auyang was a graduate of Taiwan University. She continued her studies in the United States, completing her Masters and PhD degrees at Temple University. She conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania. It was there in Philadelphia that she met her late husband, Dr. King Auyang, who passed away just prior to their 40th anniversary. Together, they moved to Ohio where Grace accepted a faculty position at the University of Cincinnati’s Blue Ash campus.

Dr. Auyang rose in the ranks to full professor and served as Chair of the Department of Behavioral Sciences, retiring as Professor Emerita. She taught courses relating to sociology, psychology, criminology, cultural studies and diversity, and women’s studies. She consistently won student-voted awards for her dedication to education. Her teaching and research contributed to her love of travel and took her all over the world to six continents. 

After retirement, Grace moved to Columbus, Ohio, where she remained very active at the local YMCA and enjoyed gardening, reading, and grandparenting.  Though endlessly giving and kind to the core, she was a strong, determined force of nature throughout her life and modeled a virtuous, faith-filled, and family-focused existence. Grace is survived by two sisters and a brother who reside in Taiwan, her son, Dr. Edward Auyang and wife, Pari, and their sons Alexander and Andrew, and her daughter, Dr. Elizabeth Auyang and her sons William and Alex.

Anaconda, Montana native Dr. John T. McNay Jr. was a historian and fierce union activist who devoted his life to asking hard questions, searching for information, and fighting for justice. At the age of 66, he died in Cincinnati on October 27, 2023.  After a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Montana in 1980, Dr. McNay spent the next decade as a news reporter or editor at newspapers in Montana and Idaho. In 1997, he earned a PhD from Temple University in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations and secured a position at the University of Cincinnati’s Blue Ash College in 2000. He was posthumously granted emeritus rank by the UC Board of Trustees at their December meeting.

Professor Emeritus McNay was an exceptional teacher who brought history to life through stories about the rise and fall of empires, political espionage, and back-door diplomacy. Dr. McNay was known for his ability to see in students the “young scholars” they might not yet see in themselves. He nominated them for awards and celebrated their successes.

Dr. McNay was an expert in diplomatic history with a focus on the Cold War. He recognized that individuals matter, that who we are and what we believe inform our decision making. This understanding drove him to determine why historical figures did what they did. In 2016, the Norwegian Nobel Institute awarded Dr. McNay a Senior Research Fellowship to support work on his manuscript on presidential decisions for peace. In 2021, he won his college’s Exemplary Scholarship Award. 

Dr. McNay was an unyielding advocate for faculty rights, equity, shared governance, and academic freedom. He was active with the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), serving as president of both the local chapter and the Ohio Conference. Dr. McNay’s tireless participation as an outspoken opponent of the infamous Ohio union-busting legislation, Senate Bill 5, contributed to the defeat of that bill. He earned the AAUP’s national Sumberg Award for effective lobbying on issues of higher education. His service across the university, including as a faculty senator, was rewarded by his college’s Distinguished Service Award and the university’s Exemplary Service Award. 

John was generous in every aspect of his life, easy to laugh, quick to tell stories, fast to stand up for what was right, and committed to making the world better for those who came after him. Moreover, he was a highly effective advocate in taking those tough stances, always remaining affable and likeable as he did so.

When John needed a kidney transplant in 2018, his sister Lynn was his donor, and his sister Pam was there to help as he recovered. Until his final illness, the transplant made his last years happy ones. He was able to do work he loved, travel, meet frequently with his large circle of friends for beers and stories, tour the tri-state in his sportscar (the one with the Big Sky license plate), and read or watch football with his cat Riley by his side. 

A memorial reception with John’s sisters was held at his home college in early November. It featured a long table highlighting his numerous university, state, national, and international awards. The room was packed with people, with a long line waiting to get in, attesting to how highly John is respected by the university community. A further memorial will be held by the University Faculty Senate at their next meeting on January 11, 3:30 – 5:00 pm with a public tribute beginning at 4:30 pm.  A celebration of Dr. McNay’s life will also be held this summer in Anaconda, Montana.

Memorial donations may be made to The John McNay Memorial Young Scholars Fund, University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College, Attn: Andrew Baker, 9555 Plainfield Road, Blue Ash, OH 45236. Or donate at: foundation.uc.edu/give, enter “McNay” and select the fund (#8002744).

Read more ... Anaconda Leader

www.anacondaleader.com/content/john-t-mcnay-jr-june-26-1957-–-october-27-2023

Help us pay tribute to our deceased emeriti colleagues. If you know of any emeriti who have passed since our last issue, please send information to:  

Lynn.Davis@uc.edu

Emeriti Endowed Scholarship Fund

Supporting Gen-1

The twenty-one-member Board of the Emeriti Association has pledged to establish an endowed fund for the Emeriti Scholarship for underrepresented, first-generation undergraduate students at UC. 

We ask you to partner with us to grow the endowment principle to $125,000.  This will enable us to create a sustainable $5000 scholarship to be awarded yearly. We are making great progress: by early December, our gift total was $66,108.

Together we can help make their dreams come true …

Xiyanna Kellogg, third-year CCM and A&S student, easily rattles off all that UC's Gen-1 program (the nation’s first living-learning community for first-generation students) provides: life skills, service-learning experiences, academic support, career opportunities and even access to food and clothing help, if needed. Emeriti John Cuppoletti and Danuta Malinowska, who have established scholarships for 1st-gen students, recently made a commitment to the Gen-1 program in their estate plan. “This cadre of kids that we are trying to help have fewer resources,” Cuppoletti says. “When they have a little bit of support, they graduate at 76 percent, compared to the national average of 11 percent. Talk about a really good investment in humans.”

Read more ...

Details: Fund Name and Number

“University of Cincinnati Emeriti Association

Endowed Scholarship Fund” (S201318)

• Make a gift at: foundation.uc.edu/give

After the funds load, in the “Search Funds by Name” field,

Enter “Emeriti Scholarship”

• If you are 70 1⁄2, you may wish to transfer (not withdraw) directly to the UC Foundation all or part of your IRA's Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) to a Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD), naming this scholarship fund, and save on your taxes.  A QCD is also called an IRA Charitable Rollover. rmd/qcd/rollover

UC Foundation can work with you and your financial advisors to prepare necessary documents.    

Contact: Michael D. Zenz, Executive Director for Principal Giving,

513-558-4619, zenzmd@foundation.uc.edu

We Appreciate Our Donors!

The UC Foundation provides the following list of those who have made donations to the Emeriti Endowed Scholarship Fund as of December 7, 2023.  We express our heartfelt appreciation for your support. Please let us know if you have made a donation but don’t see your name here.  We will add you to our donor list in our next newsletter! (Contact emeriti@uc.edu)

Hannaford’s McMicken Hall (far left) and Van Wormer Hall (with original dome) in 1920

Samuel Hannaford, the renowned Cincinnati architect of Music Hall (the 1877 “Crown Jewel of the Queen City”), designed the first McMicken Hall in 1894. His grand building was demolished and replaced with Harry Hake’s Georgian version in 1949 and renamed Arts & Sciences Hall in 2018. [Hake was featured in our August issue.]

Bearcat Basketball began in the basement gym of McMicken Hall and continued there from 1900-1911, despite raining dust and plaster when a ball struck the low ceilings. During WWII, it was used as barracks for over 2000 soldier-students until 1944. After 50 years, it was deemed more expensive to renovate than replace. But many protested its demolition including one wheelchair-bound local resident who wrote poetic praise of its beauty as viewed from his window.

Samuel Hannaford’s story begins at the age of seventeen when he apprenticed to a local architect. In 1854, at age nineteen, he started his first architecture firm.

A tour of Europe developed an interest in Gothic and Romanesque styles and inspired projects like Old St. George Church (1874 Romanesque), the Cincinnati Observatory (1873 Italianate Greek Revival), and the University of Cincinnati’s McMicken College (1894 Neo-Georgian) and Van Wormer Library (1899 Neo-Classical Greek Revival). His most iconic building was Music Hall, completed in 1878, making Hannaford a renowned figure in the world of architecture.  The new City Hall, completed in 1893, enhanced Hannaford’s status as the best architect in the city and most prolific nationwide.

Cincinnati Observatory in Mt. Lookout (1873)

Music Hall (1877)

Van Wormer (1899)

Oldest building on campus

Patronage of the Powerful

Hannaford’s early association with William Procter (of Procter & Gamble) helped establish the young architect and support his bid for Music Hall. He also enjoyed the patronage of the Emery family and that of the city’s powerful “Boss” George Cox. With his approval, a stream of projects came Hannaford’s way, including City Hall, McMicken and Van Wormer Halls, and Cox’s stately 1895 home. The Cox mansion, “Parkview Manor” at 3400 Brookline Ave, is now the Clifton branch of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County.

City Hall (1893)

Cox mansion, Clifton branch of the Public Library (1895)

Old St. George (1874)

Hannaford’s own residence is still standing at 768 Derby Avenue on the corner of Winton Road. Hannaford continued teaching at the Ohio Mechanics Institute after he retired in 1904, and he died at age 76 in 1911. He is buried in Spring Grove Cemetery, where he designed the Norman chapel. He has no headstone because he wished for his buildings to be his legacy. That Cincinnati resembles a European city is due in part to Hannaford’s affinity for Old World architectural styles.

Hannaford designed more than 300 buildings between the 1850s and his death in 1911. The list of his work is so impressive, he has been called “The Man Who Built Cincinnati.” His firm under the leadership of his sons lasted until the 1960s.



Read more ...

Oh Varsity!/Rise-and-fall-of-the-original-McMicken-Hall

Cincinnati History/Hannaford-The man who built Cincinnati

Cincinnati Refined/Hannaford-photos

Friends of Music Hall/Hannaford-architect

Emeriti Association & Center

Tell Us How We Are Doing?

Send your thoughts and ideas ... help us make the Emeriti Connection newsletter better.

Be A Contributor!

Share your experience ... be interviewed by our team or write your own contribution.

Contact the Editorial & Communications Team: 

Joanna.Mitro@uc.edu

Join the Emeriti Association's Linkedin Group

Register to join using this link and search

"University of Cincinnati Emeriti Association" on LinkedIn.

Who We Are

President | Sally Moomaw | moomawsc@ucmail.uc.edu

Vice President| George Babcock | babcocgf@ucmail.uc.edu

Secretary | Kathryn Lorenz | lorenzkm@ucmail.uc.edu

Treasurer | Tim Sale | salejt@ucmail.uc.edu

Executive Director| Pamela Person | personp@ucmail.uc.edu

Editorial & Communications Team

Chair | Joanna Mitro | mitroj@ucmail.uc.edu

Editor | Lynn Davis | davislk@ucmail.uc.edu

Reviewer | Jonathan Kamholtz | kamholj@ucmail.uc.edu

Emeriti Connection is produced by the Office of the Executive Director

assisted by the

Editorial & Communications Team.

 Contact us at emeriti@uc.edu

The UC Emeriti Association & Center

is supported by the

Office of the Provost for Academic Affairs.

University of Cincinnati Emeriti Association & Center

2412 Carl H. Lindner Hall

P.O. Box 210066

Cincinnati, OH 45221-0066

Issue No. 28 - December 2023