Alumni

Berryman Pledges $10 Million Legacy Gift


Berryman Pledges $10 Million Legacy Gift

Sue E. Berryman ’59 Yearbook photoPomona 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


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.

Former Sagehen Enshrined in College Tennis Hall of Fame

shelley keeler whelan

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.

A Legacy Carried Forward: Diane deFord ‘65

Diane Sue deFord headshot

Diane deFord ‘65

Benton Eichorn headshot

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.

A Sagehen in the Storm: Lew Phelps ’65

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.

Robert Towne ’56: Academy Award Winner (1934-2024)

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.

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.

Notice Board

By the Numbers
2024 Alumni Weekend and Reunions

The campus was abuzz for Alumni Weekend with one of the biggest crowds to return to campus in many years. From the weekend’s kickoff on Thursday to its close on Sunday, alumni and guests enjoyed milestone reunion celebrations along with a range of programs and activities for all: distinctive faculty and alumni award winner presentations, academic department receptions, dining on Marston Quad, alumni vintner wine tasting in Memorial Garden, fitness classes and pickleball, art, music and more!

1,515 Attendees with class years ranging from 1950 to 2021. Most attended events: Saturday All-Class Lunch (1,286); Party at the Wash (1,140); Friday All-Class Dinner (1,040); A Taste of Pomona Wine Tasting and Mocktails (994); Sunday Champagne Brunch (862); Return to the Coop Young Alumni Food Truck Fest (278).

1,515 Attendees with class years ranging from 1950 to 2021. Most attended events: Saturday All-Class Lunch (1,286); Party at the Wash (1,140); Friday All-Class Dinner (1,040); A Taste of Pomona Wine Tasting and Mocktails (994); Sunday Champagne Brunch (862); Return to the Coop Young Alumni Food Truck Fest (278).

Visit the Reunion Leaderboard at pomona.edu/reunion-leaderboard to see the number of attendees for each class and top 10 classes for Most Donors, Largest Class Gift, Highest Participation and Largest Reunion Recognition Total—or to contribute to your Reunion Class Gift. The Reunion Giving Campaign ends June 30.

See more Alumni Weekend photos at pomona.edu/alumni-weekend-photos.


Celebrating Our Distinguished Alumni Award Winners

We were fortunate to have all of our 2024 Distinguished Alumni Award winners on campus during Alumni Weekend this year to honor them in person for their remarkable impact beyond the Gates and dedicated service to the College. Read about this year’s awardees at pomona.edu/alumni-awards-2024.

Top from left: Blaisdell Alumni Award recipients Evelyn Nussenbaum ’84, Anson “Tuck” Hines ’69 and Mary Walshok ’64. Past Alumni Association Board President Frank Albinder ’80.Bottom from left: Alumni Association Board President Alfredo Romero ’91, alumni award recipients Julie Siebel ’84, Tom Doe ’71, Kelebogile “Kelly” Zvobgo ’14, Jon Siegel ’84 and Faculty Alumni Service Award winner Donna M. Di Grazia. Not pictured: Verne Naito ’77.

Top from left: Blaisdell Alumni Award recipients Evelyn Nussenbaum ’84, Anson “Tuck” Hines ’69 and Mary Walshok ’64. Past Alumni Association Board President Frank Albinder ’80.
Bottom from left: Alumni Association Board President Alfredo Romero ’91, alumni award recipients Julie Siebel ’84, Tom Doe ’71, Kelebogile “Kelly” Zvobgo ’14, Jon Siegel ’84 and Faculty Alumni Service Award winner Donna M. Di Grazia. Not pictured: Verne Naito ’77.

The Blaisdell Distinguished Alumni Award:

Anson “Tuck” Hines ’69, Evelyn Nussenbaum ’84 and Mary Walshok ’64

The Alumni Distinguished Service Award:

Thomas Doe ’71, Verne Naito ’77, Julie Siebel ’84 and Jonathan Siegel ’84

The Inspirational Young Alumni Award:

Kelebogile Zvobgo ’14

The Faculty Alumni Service Award:

Donna M. Di Grazia, David J. Baldwin Professor of Music


2023-24 Alumni Association Board

From left, front row: Linda Luisi ’81, Robi Ganguly ’00, Nina Zhou ’19, Tricia Sipowicz ’85, Te’auna Patterson ’18, Andrea Venezia ’91, Carol Kruse ’84, Julie Siebel ’84, Jim Sutton ’84. Back row: Toran Langford ’21, Andrew Brown ’77, Michael Bright ’10, Alfredo Romero ’91, Stuart Friedel ’08, Miguel Delgado ’20, Joshua Rodriguez ’13, Soren Austenfeld ’15. Not pictured: Aldair Arriola-Gomez ’17, Marcel Green ’90, Jeff Levere ’12, Lew Phelps ’65, Amy Van Buren Rhodes ’07.

From left, front row: Linda Luisi ’81, Robi Ganguly ’00, Nina Zhou ’19, Tricia Sipowicz ’85, Te’auna Patterson ’18, Andrea Venezia ’91, Carol Kruse ’84, Julie Siebel ’84, Jim Sutton ’84. Back row: Toran Langford ’21, Andrew Brown ’77, Michael Bright ’10, Alfredo Romero ’91, Stuart Friedel ’08, Miguel Delgado ’20, Joshua Rodriguez ’13, Soren Austenfeld ’15. Not pictured: Aldair Arriola-Gomez ’17, Marcel Green ’90, Jeff Levere ’12, Lew Phelps ’65, Amy Van Buren Rhodes ’07.


I’m Honored. Thank You!
A farewell message from the Alumni Association Board President

Dear Sagehens,

Alfredo Romero ’91

Alfredo Romero ’91

Alumni Weekend 2024 was a wonderful celebration and showcase of the Sagehen spirit, displaying the diversity of thought and broad engagement that make us who we are. I’m grateful for every alum I had the opportunity to meet or reconnect with in person, especially as my term as Alumni Association Board President is ending on June 30. A big thank you to the hardworking Alumni Association Board, additional alumni volunteers, our dedicated Alumni and Family Engagement team and the Advancement team overall, who made it possible to welcome an exceptional number of Sagehens back to campus.

And hey, I’m already excited for next year’s! If you weren’t able to join us this time, I truly encourage you to join us for Alumni Weekend 2025.

It’s been an incredible ride and an honor to serve our community on the Alumni Board these past seven years, particularly these last two as president. What a privilege to serve alongside Sagehens from a wide span of class years, geographies, backgrounds, careers and life experiences—all with the best interests of Pomona College in mind and at heart. I am deeply proud of the board’s accomplishments during my years in building engagement and reconnection within our community, including the resurgence of regional alumni chapters, our involvement in planning and boots-on-the-ground support of Alumni Weekends and, one of the best parts for me, supporting our students (and future alumni!) through career development programs and other opportunities.

Andrea Venezia ’91

And so, it’s time for me to say farewell, but I plan to continue serving our community. Please consider volunteering for the Alumni Board; it is an enriching experience. I leave you in great hands with incoming Alumni Board President Andrea Venezia ’91,
current board members and our new members, who begin serving July 1.

Yours in Sagehen service, always,

Alfredo

Alfredo Romero ’91
President, Alumni Association Board
pomona.edu/alumni-board


Photos from Alumni Weekend

More photos from Alumni Weekend are available at flickr.com/photos/pomona-college.

Monika Moore ’03 Is New Director of Alumni and Family Engagement

Monika Moore '03

Monika Moore ’03

Monika Moore ’03 returned to her alma mater in March as the director of alumni and family engagement. She is an integral member of the senior team with the Office of Advancement, responsible for developing and implementing strategic oversight of Pomona College’s growing alumni and family engagement program.

Moore and her team will further strengthen Pomona’s expansive portfolio of activities and programs that engage the College’s global network of alumni, parents, families and volunteers. Working in close partnership with faculty, staff, and alumni and family leaders—including the Pomona College Alumni Association Board, Alumni Association Past Presidents Council and Family Leadership Council—Moore will lead efforts to re-envision events and programming, celebrate Pomona’s well-steeped traditions and create plentiful opportunities for engagement locally, regionally and globally. For more information, learn more at Monika Moore.

I am thrilled to be returning to my alma mater and reconnecting with the alumni I’ve met over the years and getting to know the many alumni and families that are a part of this incredible community.”

—Monika Moore ’03

A Friendship, a Year Studying in Mexico and a New Way of Seeing the World

It wasn’t until after I retired in 2008 that I realized my entire career—first as a specialist on U.S.-Latin American relations, then as a theorist on global implications of the information revolution—sprang from two casual remarks by my great friend Henry Bastien ’63.

The first was in the summer of ’61, when he said, “Let’s go to Mexico for our junior year.”

If he’d not suggested studying at Mexico City College, I never would have become a Latin American specialist. I changed my major every semester my freshman and sophomore years. First it was English (gonna write a Great American Novel). Then psychology (gonna learn how minds work). Next art (gonna be an architect). And then, government (I forget why). Going to Mexico ended that uncertainty.

Soon as I returned for my senior year, I settled on international relations, with additional studies in Latin American history. I lucked out in having two terrific professors, Henry Cord Meyer and Michael Armacost, plus a fine visiting prof on Latin American history, Donald Bray. Then came Stanford University for an M.A. in Latin American studies, plus a Ph.D. in political science.

Next, on to RAND in 1972 as an analyst on U.S.-Latin American relations, mostly regarding Mexico, Cuba and Central America, plus aspects of international terrorism.

Henry reoriented my career a second time when I visited him at home in Mount Baldy Village around 1975. As I was leaving, he waved Alvin Toffler’s 1970 book Future Shock and urged me to read it. It forecast a world-changing information revolution. I suddenly wanted to work on its global implications for political and security matters.

It took me 10 years to re-educate myself and make the transition, but I finally came up with results: a paper predicting the rise of a new form of government—I called it cyberocracy—that would redefine technocracy and democracy. Accordingly, the information revolution would favor network forms of organization, making them more attractive than hierarchies as a way to get stuff done. We would live in a world of networks versus nations.

Soon after the publication of the paper in 1991, a new colleague walked into my office and declared, “David, I have a single word for you: cyberwar.” Thus began a collaboration in which we formulated new concepts for rethinking the entire future conflict spectrum with terms like cyberwar, netwar and swarming (coordinated, networked strikes from multiple directions).

Plus, I got to meet Toffler, who wrote a foreword for one of our volumes.

Late in the 1990s, we worked on broader implications for statecraft. The information age will mean that “whose story wins” becomes almost as decisive as “whose weaponry wins.” The importance of “soft power”—e.g., narrative strategy, cognitive warfare—will grow relative to the traditional importance of “hard power.” But how to express that? Hard-power strategists had their classic realpolitik concept; soft-power strategists had nothing comparable.

So we turned to a century-old scientific vision whereby Earth first evolved a geological layer, the geosphere, then eons later a biosphere full of plant and animal life, including people. In this vision first proposed in the 1920s, a third layer would emerge next: the noosphere (from the Greek root “noos” meaning “mind”)—a globe-circling “thinking circuit” that would interconnect all cultures, religions, ideologies and mentalities, thus enabling higher levels of global cooperation, but also conflict.

We saw it was already taking shape, with immense implications for strategy. So we came up with a comprehensive new soft-power concept: noopolitik as an alternative to realpolitik—and later added noopolitics as a contrast to geopolitics. All this is playing out now in the fights over Ukraine and Gaza, where both noopolitical and geopolitical maneuvering are vigorously in play.

Meanwhile, while wondering what forms of organization besides networks were important, I unearthed a new framework about past, present and future social evolution. Accordingly, societies have relied across the ages on four cardinal forms of organization: tribes, hierarchical institutions, markets and information-age networks—in that order. This framework proved immediately useful, not only to forecast cyberwar and netwar as modes of conflict, but also to herald new modes of collaboration and coordination for those such as activists in non-government organizations working on human rights, environmental and other social problems.

I wanted to finish this framework at RAND but opted to retire in 2008 and continue at home. Here’s one implication I’m still trying to write up: For 200 years, our society has had three major realms: civil society, government, the economy. In the decades ahead, a fourth—a “commons sector”?—will slowly materialize around the network form. It will become the new home for those interconnected challenges that the existing three sectors no longer handle very well, such as health, education, welfare, the environment. They will all move, and be moved, into this next realm, vastly strengthening and improving our society.

My classmate Henry Bastien and I remain great friends, with keen memories of Pomona’s value to our lives. And in keeping with Pomona College Magazine’s most recent issue, I’m sure Pomona’s emphasis on liberal arts educated me to have sufficient flexibility and adaptability to refocus my career. But I better be careful around Henry now—I’m not sure I could handle a third shift at this point in life.

A Dozen Final Fours

Melissa Barlow ’87

Melissa Barlow ’87

Melissa Barlow ’87 was selected to the officiating crew for the NCAA women’s basketball Final Four for the 12th time in her career this past season. She called the semifinal game between eventual national champion South Carolina and North Carolina State.

Barlow has officiated on the floor in 11 Final Four games and worked as the alternate at the scorer’s table one other time. She was the senior official of the 11-person Final Four crew for the most-watched women’s Final Four in history, with viewers drawn by Iowa star Caitlin Clark and South Carolina’s undefeated season.

Mindful of staying in sports officiating when she no longer wants to run up and down the court for the better part of an hour, Barlow has now trained as an NCAA football replay official who works from the booth. This football season, she’ll work in the role of communicator in the booth in the Big Ten Conference after wrapping up last season on the crew for the Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium in New York.