ALUMNI NEWS


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Where Were You in World War II?

A Message from the Executive Director of the Association of Emory Alumni

By Bob Carpenter

I am a Baby Boomer, and according to the Census Bureau, a certifiably average member of my generation. If the Boomer years are a pig moving slowly through a python, as the demographers would have us visualize it, then I am near the unfortunate pig's navel. The last time I saw the figures, my chronological age was about two months older than the average age of the postwar group--the group whose parents came of age during the Second World War.

My childhood was filled with the images of World War II. My friends and I watched "Combat" on television and cheered Steve McQueen as he outwitted scores of Germans in The Great Escape (still one of my favorite movies). But my main source of information about the "The Good War" was my father. He served as a naval officer in the South Pacific from 1939 until the war's end in 1945. On December 7, 1941, he was on shore leave at Pearl Harbor. His last ship, a minesweeper, was the first Allied Forces ship into Nagasaki harbor after the atomic bomb that ended the war was dropped.

No doubt many of you reading this can identify with my family when I tell you that we were regularly regaled with my father's stories of the war. As my sister and I reached adolescence (and began to appreciate irony) we called these "O. Daddy!" stories, with equal parts respect and exasperation at the frequency of the oft-told tales.

So it is on a most personal level that the events of World War II had an effect on me--it shaped my parents who in turn shaped me. But on a much wider level, the events of fifty years ago shaped modern history and made this twentieth century the American one.

As we will be increasingly reminded by our newspapers and televisions in the coming months, this summer will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the end of that world-changing war. We at the Association of Emory Alumni would like to share in that commemoration with the members of our Emory family whose lives were shaped by that era. To that end, we will be holding a World War II Commemoration and Reunion in conjunction with Alumni Weekend, September 14 to 17.

We plan for this commemorative weekend to be inclusive to all who lived through the "war years"--and those like me who lived through them second- or third-hand. We are inviting not only alumni who served in the armed forces but also the faculty, staff, and alumni who "served at home" here on campus. You could call our theme, "Where were you in World War II?"

Working with an advisory group of alumni, we've planned the basics of our program. With the assistance of the Special Collections Department of University Libraries, we will have exhibits on campus of photographs, letters, and other significant memorabilia of the time. Also in the works are academic panels for alumni and current students.

Of course, there will be plenty of opportunities to socialize and reminisce. We will have a number of small group reunions and, for Saturday night, a USO-style dance complete with the Emory Jazz Ensemble playing from the Big Band hit list.

On Sunday, we will conclude with a memorial service to honor all those who died in the conflict--whether they died on the battlefield, at home, or in the camps.

If you are interested in helping us with this commemoration, I would ask you to do two things. First, are there any stories, photographs, letters, or other items you would like to share with us? Is there a favorite Emory memory or personality that you can capture on paper? This is a wonderful opportunity for us to archive these memories, and we can promise you that they will be handled with care and respect. Please write to me directly at the Association of Emory Alumni, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia 30322.

Second, please mark your calendar and check your mailbox for more information on our Commemoration and Reunion. I look forward to seeing you in September.

Editor's note: Bob Carpenter was appointed executive director of the Association of Emory Alumni in February 1995. He has worked at Emory in alumni relations for more than five years.


FROM OUR ARCHIVES

Generation Gap

A fire changed the face of Emory Village in the late 1970s

The October 1948 issue of the Emory Alumnus contained an article that addressed how much Emory Village had changed in the previous two decades. "Something between a surprise and a shock awaits the alumnus who returns to Emory after twenty years," the article said. In contrast to the number of businesses that operated there in the late 1920s (a tea room, the branch office of a dry cleaning company, a gas station, and a drug store), the Emory Village of 1948 boasted "a dance studio, two restaurants, a dentist's office, a theater, a real estate office, two laundries, two grocery stores (one with Western Union office), two florist's shops, three service stations, a hardware store, beauty shop, three gift shops, radio service and watch repair, shoe repair and key making, 5-and-ten-cent store, lending library and taxi service."

Forty-seven years later, Emory Village looks considerably different than it did in the first picture, mostly because of a late 1970s fire that destroyed some of the businesses on Oxford Road, including the Emory Cinema. While stalwarts like the Emory Kroger (now painted an almost day-glo green), Jagger's, and Everybody's remain, the area has also undergone more recent changes, most notably as part of the caffeinated "Seattleization" of Atlanta. Like other parts of the city, Emory Village recently added two tony coffee shops to its ranks--Starbuck's and Caribou Coffee. To quote the 1948 article, "It's all familiar to the younger generation, but oldtimers need to search for landmarks."

Emory Village may be in for more changes in the near future. The University Senate recently formed the Emory Village Committee to look into how the area might be expanded and redeveloped.--J.D.T.

Click here to view Emory Village then and now.


A Winning Seasons

Emory Woman's Club cookbook delights thousands

Since its release in December 1993, Emory Seasons: Entertaining Atlanta Style has delighted some five thousand food lovers with its 368 recipes submitted by Emory faculty, staff, students, and friends. Published by the Emory University Woman's Club, the volume includes an array of dishes ranging from Southern pecan pie to Middle Eastern baba ghannouj.

This entry was a favorite of Adelle Dickey, former librarian at Oxford College. Her husband, William J. Dickey, was an associate professor of mathematics at Oxford from 1942 to 1960.

Cranberry Apple Conserve

3 cups chopped apple
1 cup sugar
2 cups uncooked whole cranberries
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine, melted
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup quick oats
1/2 cup chopped nuts

Heat oven to 300 degrees. Combine apple, sugar, and cranberries. Pour into 13x9x2-inch baking pan. Combine remaining ingredients and spread over fruit mixture. Bake one hour.

This may be served warm or cold as a side dish accompanying poultry, pork, or ham. It may also be served warm with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream for dessert.

To order, send a check to Emory Seasons, Houston Mill House, 859 Houston Mill Road, Atlanta, Georgia 30329. Or call the Emory Bookstore at (404) 727-2665 or fax to (404) 727-0066. The bookstore accepts Visa and MasterCard. Books are $21.95 each. Add postage and handling at $3.00 each and $1.00 each for gift wrap (optional). Georgia residents add 5 percent sales tax at $1.10 each. Make checks payable to Emory Seasons.

Proceeds fund charitable projects serving the Emory community, including a graduate research scholarship, the Memorial Library Fund, and the Children's Medical Services Christmas Gift Project.


Science Nonfiction

Since his book Wrinkles in Time, co-authored with cosmologist George Smoot, was published last year (see "Ex Libris," Emory Magazine, Autumn 1994), Keay Davidson '73Ox-'75C has moved rapidly to the forefront of science journalism. Wrinkles in Time, now available in paperback, received widespread critical acclaim for its explorations of cosmology and the origins of the universe. Astronomy writer Patrick Moore stated in the London Daily Telegraph that the book may well become "a classic."

Davidson, who writes for the San Francisco Examiner, recently received the Science-in-Society Journalism Award from the National Association of Science Writers for his series on nuclear weapons research in national laboratories. Published in the spring of 1994, those articles triggered protests in Washington, D.C., and led Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary to postpone indefinitely her decision to build a billion-dollar, weapons-related research and development project at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, just east of San Francisco.

Davidson writes for other well-known publications, including National Geographic, Mother Jones, Earth, and the British magazine New Scientist. In March 1994, he began a weekly science segment on "Fog City Radio," which airs on KQED in San Francisco.--A.O.A.


Self-Supporting

 Dardi McGinley '90C majored in art history at Emory College, but it was a minor in dance that launched her career. After earning her Emory degree, she entered the graduate program in dance at Ohio State University, where she received her master of arts degree in 1992. Currently, she teaches dance technique and dance history at Columbia College in Chicago and performs with Mordine and Company Dance Theatre, Columbia's company-in-residence.

McGinley also serves as Mordine and Company's outreach coordinator, organizing educational programs for youth and bringing dancers from the company into Chicago area schools. In addition to teaching movement classes for senior citizens at St. Joseph's Hospital, she recently produced a critically acclaimed concert of her own choreography.

"She is one of the few dancers . . . who is totally supporting herself in the field . . . ," says Sally Radell, Emory's director of dance. "That is pretty amazing these days." --A.O.A.


Gone to the Dogs

When Maury Margol '91MBA was studying at Emory, he took a class titled Life Works. Part of the course entailed "personality testing," and the results suggested he was well suited to be a designer. "So I decided to look around and see what I could design," Margol says.

Lacking a degree in interior design or architecture, he fell back on a knowledge of leather work he had gotten from his brother. After dabbling with designing hand-painted men's and women's belts, Margol acted on a colleague's suggestion that he try and design dog collars. "I did, and the reception was amazing," he says.

Currently, Margol's company, Double M Leather, distributes his custom canine neckwear only in Atlanta, but he is looking to expand nationally. He says part of the appeal of his collars, which have a rugged western/southwestern look and sell for about twenty dollars, has to do with their target market. "When I looked into the dog collar market, everything [was being] made for the little tiny dogs, what I call the fu fu market," he says. "I wanted to make something for the Labrador retrievers, the golden retrievers, and the German shepherds. I looked at it as taking . . . western belts and scaling them down into a collar. The target market is the man or woman who drives a Ford Explorer and has a golden retriever. And my peace symbol design might appeal to a person who is into the Grateful Dead or who might be a baby boomer."

Even though his company is producing just dog collars and matching leashes now, Margol says he wants to eventually expand his product line to include other leather goods, including belts and purses.--J.D.T.


For more profiles of Emory alumni, read In Brief.

Return to Spring 1995 contents page.