The publishing information that accompanied last issue’s Book Talk with author Ronald Fleming ’63 was incorrect. Here is the correct information:
The Adventures of a Narrative Gardener:
Creating a Landscape of Memory
By Robert Lee Fleming
GILES | 168 pages | $39.95
Our lives are mostly continuity. Days blur into a seamless river of time, broken only by a handful of true discontinuities that stand like dams against the flow of years, shunting our lives onto new and radically different courses.
Some of these are matters of fate and circumstance. Winning the lottery, getting a dream job, getting fired, losing a loved one. This year we’ve all been shaken by one of the most disruptive of all—a pandemic.
Other disruptions take the form of cultural milestones—rites of passage in the course of a modern life. Starting school, leaving home, graduating, getting a job, getting married, having a baby. These transitions seem almost sacramental. They transform our lives, but they also make us feel part of something bigger than ourselves. We look forward to them with equal parts anticipation and fear because they promise both possibility and uncertainty. They also remind us that the clock is ticking inexorably on our lives.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because I now find myself on the brink of another of life’s sacramental passages—the one called retirement. By the time you read this, I will be at home, readjusting to a new life. And though I do feel some trepidation and wistfulness, I’m also excited about the prospect of focusing all my time and energy on my own writing and art, not to mention catching up on a lot of reading and, once this pandemic is done, having more freedom to travel.
I’ve gotten plenty of advice from friends who’ve walked this path before me, mostly about not repeating their mistakes. There are plenty of mistakes to be made, and I’m sure I’ll invent a few of my own. The best advice I’ve gotten, though, came from Professor Emeritus Richard Fass, who took my elbow one day and said with a wink: “Just remember: It’s a process.”
Which, I suppose, makes it like every other great milestone in life.
But I have to say that leaving this job is a bigger transition than most. I’m now in my 23rd year at Pomona—the longest I’ve ever worked or lived anywhere. This issue of Pomona College Magazine is the 65th I’ve had the privilege of designing and overseeing as either managing editor or executive editor. That number, I was surprised to discover, accounts for more than a third of the total since the very first PCM rolled off a press back in October 1963.
To that, I can only add: Thank you for putting up with me for so long.
When you retire, there are lots of sentimental “lasts’ to get through. This is one of them—the last one of these little essays I’ll ever write. Over the years, I’ve penned lots of them, usually about my take on something relevant to the magazine’s theme. In many of them, I’ve shared personal recollections and reflections from my own life—from childhood memories to the trials of parenthood to, in this case, saying goodbye to a career that I’ve mostly loved. I’ve done this, at the risk of oversharing, because I’ve always believed the universal is in the individual. I hope some of what I’ve written about my own life has resonated with yours.
Twenty-three years ago, in the very first of these little missives, I promised you a magazine that would respect your intelligence, and I noted that PCM’s mission should be to “inform, entertain and sometimes disturb. Like an old friend, it should be reliable, but it should frequently surprise you. It should make you think. In the Pomona tradition, it should challenge you.”
That charge is one that I now leave, with a high degree of confidence, for PCM’s next editor.
Professor Bill Wirtz leading an animal-trapping
expedition with students at Marine Corp Base Camp Pendleton near San Diego. —Photo by Helen Wirtz
We would like to recognize the legacy of Emeritus Professor William “Bill” Wirtz, who recently passed away in Norco, California, at 83 years old. Bill provided invaluable experience-based learning to generations of Pomona College students that brought the natural world into focus for all and inspired many of us to continue on in biology and ecology careers.
Many of us fondly remember Bill’s ecology course that included overnight trips to the Granite Mountains (to study desert ecosystems) and the Pitt Ranch (oak woodland/grasslands) and day trips to the San Gabriel Mountains (chaparral and coastal sage scrub communities). Bill was in his element with students in the field. He had a seemingly infinite knowledge of the natural history of mammals, birds, reptiles and plants and how they all fit together in an ecological community. Bill’s infectious enthusiasm and passion for biology made us eager to learn more. His vertebrate biology course featured infamous exams that required students to identify the bones of elephants, seals, snakes and birds and discuss their evolution across taxonomic groups.
Some of us were lucky enough to work for Bill as teaching assistants in the laboratory or as research assistants in the field. These experiences did two things simultaneously. First, Bill taught us how to “do” science, which formed our foundation in biological theories and methods. Second, his guidance inspired us to ask our own questions about nature and humanity’s relationship with it. Bill’s kind and patient mentorship motivated many of us to pursue careers as academics and practitioners, passing on his legacy to new generations.
Bill formed deep friendships with many students that lasted a lifetime. He sometimes referred to us as his academic “kids.” When we checked in with stories from our professional lives, we could feel his pride in our accomplishments. We also knew we could turn to Bill anytime for mentorship and advice.
Bill was a treasured friend and an engaged community member, dedicating his time to a number of endeavors, including fire rescue, the Audubon Society and animal welfare through the Humane Society. His endless passion for biology continues to live on in the work of his students. Bill will be sorely missed and fondly remembered.
—Tania Abdul ‘95, director of Breathe, United for Racial and Environmental Justice
Joel Brown ’80, distinguished professor emeritus, biological sciences, University of Illinois – Chicago
Susan Burr ’91, vice president, AECOS Inc.
Scott Fujimoto ’94, public health medical officer, California Department of Public Health
Julie Hagelin ’92, senior research scientist, Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska, Fairbanks
Greta Hardin ’94, forest lands manager
Brian Hudgens ’92, vice president and senior research ecologist, Institute for Wildlife Studies
Glennis Julian ’92, research technician, Butterfly Genetics Lab, University of Cambridge
Roger Lai ’94, senior product manager, 8×8 Inc.
Brad Lamphere ’93, assistant professor of biological sciences, University of Mary Washington
Audrey Mayer ’94, professor of ecology and environmental policy, Michigan Technological University
Jen Perga ’91, teacher (environmental science), Northwestern Regional High School
Terry Sicular ’76, professor
Gillian Thackray ’92, Thermo Fisher Scientific, chief counsel for IP
John Withey ’91, director & faculty, Master of Environmental Studies Program, Evergreen State College
Clint S. Wright ‘91, emeritus scientist, U.S. Forest Service
One of my paying jobs during my first year, 1952–53, was serving as Ved Mehta’s reader in biology, a course in which I was also a student. Three nights a week, I sat with him and read the text and tried to explain the diagrams. The diagrams were difficult for us, as Ved was blind. One Sunday night, the devil was in me, and I suggested that instead of reading biology, we walk into town for a coffee at the only place open on a Sunday night, the Sugar Bowl. We did so, and for that night biology took the hindmost.
Perhaps 20 years later, I was leaving a club on W. 43rd St. in New York after lunch just as Ved was leaving his club next door. To my astonishment, when I spoke to him he recognized my voice as the biology reader. We talked for a few minutes, and then went our ways.
At our 50th reunion in 2006, discovering that we were going to cross campus to another event, Ved suggested we walk together, and I remembered his preference for subtle guidance by a touch to his elbows.
It became clear that he retained a strong mental map of the campus as it was, for he paused, concerned, before a place at which a building in our time now no longer existed (Harwood Hall, a World War II wood dungeon, for example) and had no idea of what lay beyond 6th Street.
During our stroll, I decided to unburden myself of the guilt I had sometimes felt for taking Ved away from his studies on that Sunday night. He said, with great sincerity, “Oh no, Doug, I will always remember it. It was the first time anyone had suggested that they wanted to do something with me.”
For the record, I must have been an excellent teacher, for Ved always scored above me on biology exams.
—Douglas K. Candland ’56
Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.
This crossword puzzle was designed by Joel Fagliano ’14, the digital puzzle editor of The New York Times and assistant to the print crossword editor, Will Shortz. The solution is available here.
For those who have joined the adult coloring craze—or who want to give it a try—here’s another familiar image from the Pomona College campus. Send us a scan of your work (pcm@pomona.edu) to show off in a future issue.
This rendering of last issue’s coloring challenge was submitted by Boston architect Harriet Chu ’76.
William Wirtz, emeritus professor of zoology and biology, died at home on Dec. 24, 2020, after a long illness. He was 83.
Wirtz was born in New Jersey on Aug. 16, 1937. He attended Rutgers University, where he studied ecology under one of the nation’s foremost experts, graduating in 1959. At Cornell University, he did his postdoctoral research on the habits of the Polynesian rat in the leeward Hawaiian Islands. He received his Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology in 1968. He joined Pomona College the same year in September, teaching until his retirement in 2003.
As a child, Wirtz enjoyed wandering the woods and taking a boat to the nearby salt marsh to study the wildlife. “I was the kid who brought home mice and snakes. And I never stopped,” he told the Pomona College Magazine in 2003 interview.
At Pomona, Wirtz was responsible for establishing, maintaining and upgrading Pomona’s animal care facility and program. He was also known for his two 10-foot snakes, a reticulated python and a boa, which on at least two occasions over the years had escaped the classroom. (Both snakes were found shortly after their escapes, and eventually were both rehomed to wildlife centers).
Professor of Biology and Neuroscience Rachel Levin remembers Wirtz as an institution within Pomona’s Biology Department. “He was totally at home in the wilderness and he was a skilled and passionate naturalist,” she says. “He had a way of engaging students and turning them on to natural world … He took many generations of Pomona students on unforgettable adventures to Pitt Ranch and the Granite Mountains.”
One of those students, Audrey Mayer ’94, now a professor of ecology and environmental policy at Michigan Technological University, credits Wirtz for launching her career. “I knew I liked biology, but I had no idea what to do after in terms of a career. He’s the one who encouraged me to get a Ph.D., which was not on my radar at all. I have a book coming out in March on the gnatcatcher—that was a book that started with him.”
Julie Hagelin ’92, now a senior research scientist for the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, says Wirtz was the first person who made her realize she could do field biology. She learned the step-by-step process of handling small mammals on her first day working as his student assistant—a skill she took with her to graduate school. “It was like he opened a door to a secret world of biology: in the bushes and brush, with these little animals that are only active at night.”
Retired doctor Sharon Booth ’78 shares the same feeling. “Wirtz’s ecology 101 course awakened my eyes to the natural world and the joy of learning about its complexities.” Booth went on to work for Wirtz, spending at least one summer in the chaparral trapping rodents for population surveys.
Joel Brown ’80, now an emeritus professor of biological sciences at the University of Illinois Chicago, was also one of Wirtz’s early protégés. “I’d always loved ecology, had always loved nature, but had no idea that extending one’s love for nature could be a career.”
“Bill was a nonstop documentary and encyclopedia who taught us all these techniques, and can you believe it, we were being paid!” Brown became a student worker for Wirtz and learned how to trap small animals, put radio collars on raccoons and coyotes, band red-tailed hawks and noose lizards. “It was completely transformative. I went home and told my folks I finally knew what I wanted to do. I want to be an ecologist. And so, from that day forward, Bill offered me amazing opportunities.”
“He was an outdoors guy, a classic mud-and-boots ecologist,” says Brown. “Bill Wirtz was one of the foundational mentors in my life; without him, all the other sequences of my life would not have happened.”
Wirtz was a longtime member of the Mt. Baldy Volunteer Fire Department and lived in the mountains with his wife, Helen, for many years. In the 1980s, he studied habits of coyotes who scavenged in the foothills of Claremont and Glendora, even adopting a rescued coyote. He did extensive work on the distribution of rodent populations in the San Dimas Experimental Forest and studied the nesting habits of the endangered California gnatcatcher that lives in endangered coastal sage scrub. These were just some of his many field research interests over the decades.
After retiring from Pomona in 2003, Wirtz and his wife became involved in equine rescue, including rescuing horses during fires, and served on the board of the Inland Valley Humane Society for some time. He also became more involved in one of his favorite hobbies: Civil War reenactments.
Wirtz leaves behind a large legacy of Pomona ecologists and biologists. “There’s a lot of us around who got that start in our careers working for him,” says Mayer.
Wirtz is survived by his wife, Helen, and a son, William.
The Blaisdell Award is one of the most prestigious awards given to Pomona alumni, recognizing high achievement in their professions or their community. We are thrilled to congratulate this year’s Blaisdell Distinguished Alumni Award Winners: Cathy Corison ’75, James Strombotne ’56, Martina Vandenberg ’90 and Nathan Wang ’79.
Cathy Corison ’75 was the first woman winemaker-proprietor in the Napa Valley, where she continues to produce handcrafted wines without compromise. Her grapes are sourced from some of the finest vineyards in the Napa Valley, all located on classic benchland between Rutherford and St. Helena. Corison’s vineyards are certified Napa Green. She has farmed organically for more than 25 years, with sustainability as a core value. She founded Corison Winery in 1987, guided by her belief that winemaking and wine appreciation are a timeless, creative celebration of life.
James Strombotne ’56 is a painter whose work has been featured in more than 100 one-man shows, with 14 retrospectives: four in New York City, 22 in Los Angeles, and others in San Francisco, Washington D.C., Santa Barbara, Newport Beach and Santa Fe, New Mexico, among other venues. His work has also been included in most major group shows in America and can be found in the permanent collections of museums across the United States. He is a professor emeritus at UC Riverside following his retirement in 2005 after 40 years of teaching.
Martina Vandenberg ’90 is the founder and president of The Human Trafficking Legal Center, which she established in 2012 with support from the Open Society Foundations Fellowship Program. For more than two decades, she has worked to fight human trafficking, forced labor and violence against women and establish that rape is a war crime. Vandenberg has trained more than 4,000 pro bono attorneys nationwide to handle human trafficking matters. She has testified before multiple House and Senate Committees, gave the keynote address at the first NATO ambassadorial-level conference on human trafficking in Brussels and currently co-chairs the D.C. Human Trafficking Task Force’s Forced Labor Subcommittee.
Nathan Wang ’79 is one of the most successful composers in Hollywood and Asian cinema. Prolific and versatile, he has written music for Jackie Chan movies, Steven Spielberg documentaries and Disney, DreamWorks, Warner Bros. and Sony Pictures Studios’ films. His compositions have been performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Shanghai Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Opera and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He received a Singapore Grammy for Best Arrangement of a Song and an Emmy for the award-winning film Reefer Madness. Wang is an associate professor of film scoring at Beijing University.
Learn more about these extraordinary alumni.
Our annual 4-7 Day celebrates and honors Sagehens for their local and global contributions. Although we can’t celebrate together in person, all are invited to join us online for a special day of recognizing and discovering the extraordinary impact alumni make, bearing their added riches around the world! Visit pomona.edu/sagehen-impact to register and learn more.
4-7 Day also provides a unique opportunity to showcase the collective impact of the Pomona alumni community by supporting the growth and learning of our current students. Make a gift of $4.47, $47.47 or $447.47 to the Annual Fund today at pomona.edu/give.
Looking for other COVID friendly ideas on how to celebrate 4-7 Day? The Alumni Association Board has a few—or perhaps 47—ideas for you! Check out 47 Things to Do: COVID-19 Edition.
There is a brighter future ahead, and the campus is happily ready and waiting for the return of students, faculty and staff to resume Pomona campus life in person. It won’t be long now!
We also want to pause and chirp a big THANKS to you, our alumni and families, for your support these past 12 months. The Sagehen community came together like never before to help students, faculty and staff navigate the uncharted course of remote learning and more during the global pandemic.
The incredible, ongoing generosity of alumni and families this past year ensured that students and faculty had the technology needed to successfully connect and engage in distance teaching and learning; helped expand urgently needed financial aid resources for students; supported virtual research and experiential learning opportunities in summer 2020 through the Remote Alternative Independent Summer Experience (RAISE) program; and provided support to our local community through Pomona’s PAYS program. And there is more.
This spring, we will be sharing further details about your #SagehenImpact and the many ways your gifts have done so much to promote resilience and provide opportunity and genuine care for students and the campus community. Thank you for your dedication and support! Chirp!
The Pomona College Reunion Celebration will take place on Friday, April 30, and Saturday, May 1, on the virtual Pomona College campus. We are looking forward to having this year’s online reunion classes join us for two days of activities and prizes, unique presentations, Blaisdell and Distinguished Service Alumni Award winner tributes and more.
Registration is free, so sign up today! For more information or to register, visit: pomona.edu/reunion-weekend
Join your classmates in supporting your Reunion Class Gift. Thank you!
Ved Parkash Mehta ’52, noted author, died Jan. 9, 2021, at age 86 from complications of Parkinson’s Disease. Blind from an early age, Mehta is best known for his autobiography, published in installments from 1972 to 2004. Born in India, he lived and worked mainly in the United States, writing for The New Yorker magazine for many years. Here are a few excerpts from the obituaries published around the world following his death:
“His book The Ledge Between the Streams describes his life as a blind child in the India of the 1940s, as he learned to read Braille and to ride a bicycle and a horse. Throughout his youth and his maturity as a writer, Mehta was determined to apprehend the world around him with maximal accuracy and to describe it as best he could. ‘I felt that blindness was a terrible impediment, and that if only I exerted myself, and did everything my big sisters and big brother did, I could somehow become exactly like them,’ he wrote.
“Mehta came to the United States when he was 15, and attended the Arkansas School for the Blind, in Little Rock. After studying at Pomona College and Oxford University, he began to flourish in his working life as a writer. He asked David Astor, the editor of The Observer, about writing a 14,000-word piece about his travels in India. ‘Something that long and boring,” Astor reportedly said, “only The New Yorker would publish.’”
Mehta joined the staff of the magazine when he was 26 and, for more than three decades, wrote a stream of pieces, many of them appearing in multipart series. He wrote about Oxford dons, theology, Indian politics and many other subjects.”
“So lush was Ved Mehta’s description of visual detail, so painterly his attention to colour, the American author Norman Mailer refused to believe he was blind. Waving his fist in front of Mehta’s face, the famously pugilistic Mailer said: “If you don’t come out and fight with me, you will show yourself to be a coward.”
Mailer’s incredulity, if not his confrontational manner, was understandable; it was indeed hard to understand how Mehta, without his sight, could write such descriptions as this one, from the first installment of Continents of Exile, his 12-volume memoir: “The fields become bright, first with the yellow of mustard flower outlined by the feathery green of sugarcane, and later with maturing stands of wheat, barley and tobacco.”
“… Mehta was widely considered the 20th-century writer most responsible for introducing American readers to India.
“Besides his multivolume memoir, published in book form between 1972 and 2004, his more than two dozen books included volumes of reportage on India, among them Walking the Indian Streets (1960), Portrait of India (1970) and Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles (1977), as well as explorations of philosophy, theology and linguistics.
“Daddyji was the first installment in what was to become a 12-volume series of autobiographical works, known collectively as ‘Continents of Exile.’
“‘Ved Mehta has established himself as one of the magazine’s most imposing figures,’ The New Yorker’s storied editor William Shawn, who hired him as a staff writer in 1961, told The New York Times in 1982. ‘He writes about serious matters without solemnity, about scholarly matters without pedantry, about abstruse matters without obscurity.’
“The recipient of a MacArthur Foundation ‘genius grant’ in 1982, Mr. Mehta was long praised by critics for his forthright, luminous prose—with its ‘informal elegance, diamond clarity and hypnotic power,’ as The Sunday Herald of Glasgow put it in a 2005 profile.”
“His most enduring work is surely the ‘Continents of Exile’ series, which was written between 1971 and 2005. It began with stories his father used to tell Mehta and his siblings when they were small. Later, the narrative began to gain its own momentum and eventually a distinct design and architecture emerged. Though he took his lead from Proust and Joyce, his approach was different. As in their epics, memory was fundamental but no less so were other sources, such as letters, diaries, personal papers and newspaper articles. The series culminated in The Red Letters, which begins in New York and describes a a disastrous dinner party, at which his father and mother met Shawn for the first time, and then backtracks to the 1930s when his father had an affair with a married woman.
“Periodically, Mehta—who never had a guide dog or used a stick—would ask himself, “How can anyone be expected to read so much about one life?” His answer was that ‘Continents of Exile’ is not the story of one life but of hundreds of lives, with characters coming and going in the manner of a roman fleuve. Thus the past is regained.”
Nobel in Gold — While speaking on the phone with her sister, Sarah Doudna, Jennifer Doudna ’85 holds up the gold medallion stamped with the profile of Alfred Nobel that represents the Nobel Prize. The photo was taken on Dec. 8, 2020,following a presentation ceremony in Berkeley, California, during which Doudna officially received her 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Normally, Nobel recipients receive their awards in Stockholm, from the hand of the king of Sweden, but due to the pandemic, all presentations were made locally. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, Pool)
COVID Clinic — One of the many changes at Pomona during the pandemic is the creation of an on-campus clinic in Rembrandt Hall focusing on COVID-19 issues. The clinic, managed by Hamilton Health Box, is staffed by two nurses—Stephanie Garcia-Barragan (left), who oversees the new health protocols for people on campus, and her assistant, Sarai Sanchez-Salas (right). (Photo by Jeff Hing)
At the Museum — Titled “In Our Care: Institutional History in Material Form,” this exhibition is one of the first on display at the new Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College. The exhibition was curated by Sam Chan ’22, Noor Tamari ’22 and Kali Tindell-Griffin ’22 as a summer research project under the supervision and partnership of museum director Victoria Sancho Lobis and Claire Nettleton, academic curator. Though the pandemic has made in-person visits to the museum impossible, the staff has been able to offer virtual tours of the show, which will remain in place until July. (Photo by Jeff Hing)
Nice Kitty — No, that’s not someone’s pet tabby hiding in the brush near Bridges Auditorium or scampering across the campus green. It’s a bobcat, another example of the local wildlife that has found its way onto the Pomona College campus during the College’s yearlong closure. The photos were taken by a local resident, 12-year-old David Lonardi, who spotted the bobcat while trying out his new camera near campus.
More than a year after Pomona—like so many colleges across the country—was forced to evacuate and close its campus in the face of the growing pandemic, there is finally a light at the end of the tunnel.
After a devastating fall and winter surge, COVID-19 case counts dropped dramatically in Los Angeles County through late February and early March, even as the pace of vaccination accelerated, generating a spirit of optimism in the College community.
County officials agreed in the early spring to first steps toward a limited re-opening of some campus facilities. It began, naturally enough, with outdoor spaces. For students living off campus in reach of Claremont, Pomona made plans to open outdoor facilities for recreational sports activities and physical conditioning. Haldeman Pool, the Pauley Tennis Complex and Strehle Track were set to open for current students, faculty and staff under a reservation system, President G. Gabrielle Starr announced in late February.
Colleges in Los Angeles County were not permitted to bring students back to campus during the spring, and so remote learning continued to be the only show in town. But looking forward, Starr said, Pomona is planning enthusiastically for the full return of students in the fall, with in-person instruction and on-campus living. “The campus is ready,” she said. “We are ready.”
With the county taking a highly restrictive approach to in-person higher education amid much of the pandemic, Pomona has taken the lead in advocating for college students with county officials to work for a responsible return to campus. “The young people who will build our future need to be given greater priority,” said Starr.
By early March, the county was sending positive signals for the return of students to campus for summer programs, and vaccination for higher education workers had begun. Student Health Services received its first small allotment of vaccines in this period, and Pomona faculty and staff were encouraged to seek their shots through the massive county vaccination effort as soon as possible.
As the College reached a turning point in one of the most sweeping crises in its history, Starr noted the need to stop and mourn for those who lost their lives in the pandemic. “For some of us, the shock of loss is something we are just beginning to feel, and even for those who have been grieving for months now, the pain is still too fresh. In many ways, we are just beginning to absorb what has happened.”
She noted how “so many of our students saw their lives turned upside down. They— and our entire extended Sagehen community—responded with perseverance, ingenuity and grace in the face of the direst world crisis of most of our lifetimes.”
Starr also said she looked forward to the time—not so far away now—when the entire Sagehen family could be back together on campus.
“We are moving full steam ahead for the return of in-person education and on-campus living in the fall,” said Starr, noting that safety protocols would need to be carefully followed. “We will push forward with our mission of providing the most compelling and complete liberal arts education in the world.”
Updates: pomona.edu/coronavirus
