Pomona College Fundraising Hits Historic Highs

Pomona College alumni, families and friends gave a record $57.1 million in gifts and pledges this past fiscal year to help provide students with a transformative liberal arts education. In addition to breaking records in total fundraising and alumni giving participation, volunteer engagement also soared, making us a standout among peer institutions. Thank you for helping us make history, Sagehens!

Pomona Alumni Out and About

From coast to coast, Pomona’s Regional Alumni Chapters continue to build Sagehen connections. This summer and fall, activities included a music performance, a baseball game, a visit to an art center, the Blue Angels, a Sagehen’s book launch and a hangout with coffee and donuts. Visit our website to connect with a chapter in your area!

Sagehens, We Need Your Nominations!

Help Students Explore Life Beyond College

Nominate yourself or a fellow alum for Return to Pomona, a new program that gives exceptional alumni the chance to share their experience, knowledge and talents with students and faculty. Whether serving as a guest lecturer, teaching a course or forging relationships with students and faculty, we’re seeking to cultivate stronger bonds with alumni who can enrich the student experience through unique and challenging opportunities. Visit our site to submit a nomination and read about our first Return to Pomona alum Mikey Dickerson ’01, the first administrator of the U.S. Digital Service.

Fall Greetings!

A Message from the Alumni Association Board President

Dear Sagehens,

I hope your fall is going well. The Alumni Association Board is off to a busy start and enjoyed our October retreat on campus. The chance to meet and discuss board initiatives in person is always helpful and productive, and we particularly enjoyed our time with students. One area of focus for us this year is the value of a liberal arts education—a critical issue to support at this moment.

As we get going, we are deeply focused on ways to build alumni connections through our three main committees. The Engagement Committee will focus on events, like career panels and Alumni Weekend. Our Regional Chapters Committee will help support the fantastic work of our alumni chapters. And the Development Committee will focus on community connection and fundraising. We are also excited about opportunities to welcome our seniors into the alumni community.

I am thrilled to lead and support these dedicated Sagehen volunteers—and to help our alumni community connect with Pomona and each other. I encourage you to find ways to meet up with Sagehens, as well—a regional chapter event or an impromptu dinner with a classmate who’s in town. And please join us for Alumni Weekend 2025. The board will be there, and we’d love to see you!

Chirp!
Andrea

Andrea Venezia ’91
President, Alumni Association Board
pomona.edu/alumni-board

Read about the Alumni Association Board and get to know Board President Andrea Venezia in her recent interview.

Glicks Pledge $2.47M to Expand College Access for Middle-Income Students

Samuel D. Glick ’04 and Emily S. G. Glick ’04 have pledged $2,474,474.47 to support financial aid and other crucial resources for future students from middle-income families. Their renewed support is among the highlights of a banner year for Pomona fundraising, which saw record levels of alumni contributions and participation, outpacing peers and surpassing many of the College’s historical benchmarks. Sam and Emily are longtime supporters of the College; Sam is the outgoing chair of the Board of Trustees, and together they have taken on leadership roles to help advance Pomona’s strategic vision.

“We are deeply grateful for Sam and Emily’s generosity in establishing the President’s Fund for Middle-Class Access,” says President G. Gabrielle Starr. “Their support will provide more than scholarships; it will provide access and opportunity to pursue life-changing work and invaluable academic experiences for students who often don’t consider Pomona.”

The Glicks’ gift will support amplified outreach with middle-income students–many of whom never consider applying to Pomona due to cost. It also will help provide more robust financial support for middle-income students who are admitted. For those who enroll, the fund will support targeted programs and resources for career development and academic enrichment. The Glicks hope that, with such resources in place, more students from middle-income families will see a Pomona education as their reality.

“Doing something to help make Pomona available to more people, we hope, in a small way, makes the world a better place,” says Sam.

Read the full story at pomona.edu/news/2024/08/28-sam-04-and-emily-04-glick-pledge-247m-expand-college-access-students-middle-income-families

Berryman Pledges $10 Million Legacy Gift

Pomona College alumna Sue E. Berryman ’59 has pledged $10 million to establish six endowed funds for the areas of humanities, music, scholarships and faculty innovation. Berryman comes from an engaged Sagehen family that includes her late mother, father and aunt.

Berryman earned a doctorate in political economy from Johns Hopkins University before pursuing a range of roles at Harvard Business School, RAND Corporation, Columbia University and the World Bank. As director of Columbia’s Institute on Education and the Economy, she testified before state governors and Senate committees on the economy and education policy. She also traveled the globe with the World Bank to help countries address structural problems in their education systems.

In honor of her mother, the Frances Bowers Berryman ’30 Fund for Humanities Study will help fund programming in “common reads” books, visits to arts and cultural institutions, and alternative spring break experiences. Two new music-minded funds pay tribute to her father: the John Jordan Berryman ’28, which will support Glee Club performances and travel, along with instrument acquisition and maintenance for the Music Department.

Berryman also established two funds for her aunt: the Ellen Evelyn Bowers ’31 Scholarship Fund and Global Student Haven Outreach Fund, which will support scholarships for students with financial need and international students displaced by global crises and natural disasters. Lastly, the Sue Ellen Berryman ’59 Presidential Innovation Fund will support broader initiatives across Pomona’s educational mission, including interdisciplinary research.

Read full story at pomona.edu/news/2024/09/09-sue-berryman-59-pledges-10-million-legacy-gift-support-pomona-college

Draper Gives $1M for Football Turf

A $1 million challenge gift from Trustee Emeritus Ranney E. Draper ’60 has helped fund the new synthetic turf on Merritt Field, where Pomona-Pitzer football kicked off their season on September 7 with a 28-12 win against Carleton College.

Merritt’s $2.2 million transformation from grass to turf comes at a watershed moment for a program that has gone from a team with a single win to one competing in back-to-back Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC) championship games and winning the title in 2022.

Former team captain Draper has Pomona roots reaching back to his football-playing father Ranney C. Draper ’25 and uncle Edwin Draper ’25. It’s also where his father and mother, Virginia ’26, fell in love. Their legacy now spans the Draper Walk and Plaza, the Draper Center for Community Partnerships and the Center for Athletics, Recreation and Wellness.

Maintaining Merritt’s grass has been challenging amidst a California climate fluctuating from severe droughts to excessive rains. Until now the team only used Merritt for games, sharing practice time with other teams at the South Athletics Complex; artificial turf lets them use it year-round. Merritt will also be a hub for practices and games for the women’s lacrosse team, as well as intramural programs and P.E. classes.

“It truly matches our philosophy of health, wellness and fitness,” says football coach John Walsh. “This field [will] make an impact on a lot of people both in and out of football.”

Visit Stories of Impact at Pomona to read the full stories online.

Shelley Keeler Whelan ’92

While at Pomona, Whelan captured NCAA Division III doubles championships three straight years from 1990 to 1992. In 1992 she also won the Division III singles championship and willed the Sagehens to the Division III team title—the first in Pomona-Pitzer history.

Whelan, a multi-time NCAA All-American, was enshrined in the Pomona-Pitzer Hall of Fame in 2002 both individually and as part of the historic 1992 team.

“Shelley always focused on the team rather than herself,” former longtime Sagehens coach Lisa Beckett says. “Nearest and dearest to her is that team championship. Shelley continues to support Pomona in many ways, including offering a summer internship in her family investment office.”

Whelan and her sister manage a multigenerational family office that invests in businesses and real estate in the Pacific Northwest.

Diane deFord ‘65

deFord’s father Benton F. Eichorn

Diane deFord was only 4 months old when her father Benton F. Eichorn, a World War II pilot, was shot down over Vernio, Italy in June 1944; six of seven aboard their B-25 bomber perished, including Eichorn.

In the winter of 2013, the pilot’s “dog tag” (military ID) was found in the woods, setting deFord’s daughter Holly Mead on a quest over a period of months to learn more about her grandfather and his crew members—and ultimately connect with surviving family of the crew—by scouring the web and digging into declassified war reports and historical archives.

Mead first got the tip about her grandfather from a museum curator in Tuscany, Italy, who had been researching the crash but had only ever found assorted parts from the plane. The curator contacted Mead informing her that a hunter had come to the museum with a dog tag he found bearing the name of Eichorn—a tag, it was later learned, that had survived not just the plane crashing to the ground, but also four bombs that exploded upon impact. The tag’s discovery ultimately led to the Italian research team’s publication of a book about the B-25 bomber and its crew and mission. This led to a museum exhibition and permanent monument that was erected in 2014, with Mead and deFord flying into Tuscany as special guests.

Before passing away peacefully in March after a brief illness, deFord herself lived a rich and full life up and through her 80th birthday this January. A passionate educator, she worked as an elementary school teacher in multiple locations across five decades, from her Pomona graduation in 1965 to her retirement in 2015. She mostly taught second grade, and lived much of her life in Northern California, including Dillon Beach, Sonoma, Vacaville and Rohnert Park. Born in Pomona, deFord also taught in Claremont, Brea and Mission Viejo.

An avid traveler and nature-seeker, in her 20s she traversed Mexico in a Volkswagen bus, and hiked the whole south rim of the Grand Canyon in a day. Through her 60s and 70s she also would often head out alone on weekslong road trips to her favorite places, tent camping solo.

Mead described deFord as a “caring mother, loving grandmother, teacher and adventurer … someone who was dependable, kind, independent and always young at heart.”

She is survived by her daughter, her son Ryan deFord, three grandchildren and brother Steve Schoenig and sister Linda Howell.

Inspired by his days as editor of The Student Life at Pomona, Lew Phelps ’65 went on to a long career in journalism and public relations, first as a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal and later as a strategic public relations consultant for several organizations, including the Los Angeles-based crisis consulting firm Sitrick and Company.

Since retiring he and his wife Cathy have traveled extensively, occasionally with unintended consequences. On their second ocean cruise, their ship (the MV Viking Sky) suffered a catastrophic loss of all engine power during a violent storm off the coast of Norway. The ship began rolling very heavily, and Lew was thrown across his cabin space and headfirst into a wall, suffering a compound fracture of the first two vertebrae in his neck.  After three weeks at an intensive care unit in Bergen, Norway. Lew was flown home to the Los Angeles area, where his neck was fused by a renowned spinal surgeon at USC Medical Center.

Lew has since made a full recovery and resumed his travels with Cathy, with three additional cruises on Viking, including to Antarctica in January and February of 2024. In mid-June they set out on a seven-week, 10,000-mile automotive journey across the U.S., from their home in Pasadena to Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks, and then to Custer State Park and Badlands National Park in South Dakota and nearby Mount Rushmore. The trip continued with a family reunion in Chicago, and then toward Squam Lake in New Hampshire, where Lew and his twin brother Chuck (also ’65) and Dale (’66) have enjoyed annual family reunions for several decades.

En route, Lew and Cathy stayed overnight with Cheryl (’65) and Ward Heneveld (’64), who live on a farm property in northern Vermont. (Lew says that Cheryl and Ward hope to see other Sagehen visitors at their home—“they are great hosts and excellent cooks.”)

At Squam Lake, Lew and Chuck were joined by Grant Phelps Thompson (’63) and Sharon Reimers Thompson (’63). Grant is a second cousin of Lew and Chuck, and they have remained in close contact for most of the time since their graduations.

Up next? Undecided, although Scotland is on the agenda, as well as Alaska, the only U.S. state in which Lew has still never set foot.

For the last few years Lew has served on the Alumni Association Board. He also hosts a monthly virtual class reunion on Zoom. Anyone from the Class of ’65 who wishes to join can obtain the monthly zoom link by joining the Thor class listserv on the Pomona alumni page, or emailing Lew.

Academy Award-winning screenwriter, Robert Towne, poses during a 1981 Los Angeles, California, photo portrait session. Towne won the Academy Award for his “Chinatown” original screenplay.

Screenwriter Robert Towne ’56, who won an Academy Award for best original screenplay for the classic film Chinatown, died July 1, 2024. He was 89.

The 1974 movie starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway was nominated for 11 Oscars but won only one, for Towne’s script about corruption and murder set in 1930s Los Angeles amid the city’s longstanding water wars.

Towne earned three other Academy Award nominations during his career, for The Last Detail (1973), again starring Nicholson; Shampoo (1975), starring Warren Beatty; and Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984), though he disliked the Tarzan movie so much he asked to be listed in the credits by the name of his dog. The official listing of nominees still bears the pup’s name: P.H. Vazak.

Fifty years after it was made, Chinatown remains a standard on lists of greatest films and screenplays and often is studied in film schools. The script was influenced by black-and-white photographs meant to depict novelist Raymond Chandler’s 1930s L.A. and also by the chapter on water in Southern California Country: An Island on the Land by Carey McWilliams—coincidentally the grandfather of current Pomona College Professor of Politics Susan McWilliams Barndt.

Though Towne also went on to direct four movies, Personal Best (1982), Tequila Sunrise (1988), Without Limits (1998) and Ask the Dust (2006), he was better known in Hollywood for his work as “a script doctor,” with uncredited work on The Godfather, among many other films. Mario Puzo, who shared the Oscar for adapted screenplay for The Godfather with Francis Ford Coppola, thanked Towne in his acceptance speech for writing the garden scene between Marlon Brando and Al Pacino. Notably, Towne also is said to have received uncredited assistance on Chinatown from a Pomona College roommate, Edward M. Taylor ’56. Taylor, Pomona’s seventh Rhodes Scholar, died in 2013.

Born in Los Angeles and raised in nearby San Pedro and the Palos Verdes area, Towne was an English major at Pomona who also studied philosophy under Professor Fred Sontag. Sontag, whom he recalled in a 2010 Pomona Commencement speech as an important mentor, accepted a late paper that allowed him to graduate on time, Towne said.

His Pomona education, Towne said in accepting an honorary doctor of letters degree, “was the best possible training I could have had for my future profession,” though there were no screenwriting classes in the 1950s at Pomona, and possibly not anywhere else. “I don’t think it occurred to anyone it was something to teach,” he said.

“Pomona never taught me the so-called nuts and bolts of my profession, of how to write a screenplay—it gave me a way to view the world so I could write a screenplay,” Towne said.

He concluded his speech with advice that still may resonate with young graduates as they begin their careers.

“Don’t let an uncertain future blind you to the importance of your past. Trust your past,” he said. “Trust your education, even if what you want to do hasn’t been taught yet, or even invented.”

Survivors include his wife Luisa, daughters Kathleen and Chiara, and brother Roger, who co-wrote the adapted screenplay for the 1984 film The Natural.