Magazine

Homecoming 2004 Citations

The following citations were read at the 2004 Homecoming Chapel, October 2, 2004:

DAVID ORR

David Orr, On behalf of the National Association of Wabash Men, I am proud to present you with the Frank W. Misch Award for Alumni Service. Always important, this year it seems to have even more significance because thousands of Wabash men have served their College during the final months of the Campaign for Leadership. In this historic effort for Wabash, your service was exemplary.

You served as vice-chair of the Campaign Executive Committee and Chair of the Major Gifts Committee. You spent many hours huddled with members of the Advancement staff, planning and refining strategy. You traveled the country to meet with fellow alums. You worked the phones. You played a major role in attaining the tremendous $136.1 million in Campaign gifts. And in a way, it was standard operating procedure for you.

You were a student leader at Wabash and you have been ever since—in a long career in Indiana Bell, AT&T, and Ameritech communications, and now, at Casa Filipe Flores. You have given unceasingly to Wabash in every way. You were president of this alumni association from 1989 to 1991; you have been a trustee since 1993; you chaired the Annual Fund drive in 1978; and, if you will allow me to disclose one heretofore closely guarded piece of information: only one year after graduation, you set out on the path of righteousness. You gave Wabash a gift of $15 — no small piece of change in June of 1958.

We are thankful you have never stopped caring for Wabash. Yours is an example of generosity we hold up as an ideal to students year after year, alumni service most worthy of the Frank A. Misch Award. David Orr, you are Some Little Giant!
 
 
  
HERMAN G. HAFFNER

When the people at Wabash College talk about sending its graduates out into the world to be caring and thinking citizens, they are always thankful when some of the graduates do not go out any farther than the Montgomery County Line. That was true in 1977 when Herman Haffner was graduated, and it remains true today, 27 years later. The enthusiasm and skill you brought to such college interests as the debate team, Speakers Bureau, theater productions, Sigma Chi fraternity, and student government are the same you bring to bear on activities in Crawfordsville. The local citizenry wins because they now have the benefit of all that informed energy and your maturity.

When you first graduated, you didn’t go far at all. In fact, you only walked across Wabash Avenue to the Admissions Office and worked there for three years as an Admissions Counselor before moving across town to Crawford Industries. That prepared you for a career at NOR-COTE Chemical Company, which went from start-up status to international ink merchant in your first years there, and to which you have now returned after several years as a principal/trainer at Sales Mark sales development company.

For several years you have been chairman of Crawfordsville’s Human Rights Commission and a creator of the City’s annual Diversity Day celebration. You have been active in Rotary and Junior Achievement. You and your wife Kitty have focused the attention of local school authorities on children with special needs, to the benefit of the entire community. You and Kitty seem to be everywhere good work needs to be done, definitely including the Wabash campus.

You are a class agent who was instrumental in organizing the most recent Class of ’77 reunion. You are a fund-raiser for the Sigma Chi house, an Admissions volunteer, and an enthusiastic presence at Wabash events.

Herman G. Haffner, you did not need to go far from your alma mater to go a long way toward making it a better college and your chosen community a richer place. The National Association of Wabash Men is proud to present you with the Frederick J. Urbaska Civic Service Award in honor of all the good you do for your and Wabash’s home town. Herm, you are Some Little Giant!

    
JAMES R. WOOD ’61

James R. Wood, Wabash Class of 1961, to say that you have a business career that makes your alma mater proud is an understatement. In the best liberal arts tradition, and to the best of our knowledge, you have never held any job that had anything remotely to do with either your major in zoology or your botany minor. Instead, you made a unique path to success with your own mental prowess and agility. Your career is a distinguished example of our philosophy that a well-educated man can pursue with success almost any work he chooses.

After graduation you taught and coached basketball at a private school in Connecticut for several years. Then, fortunately for Wabash, you returned as public affairs and admissions director from the mid-‘60s to the mid-70s, a difficult period for college administrators, who had to work around the social upheaval of the time. During those years, you showed the stuff you are made of with myriad charitable works, church and college projects.

In 1974 you took a job with Indiana National Bank and began a career that took you to the top rungs of the financial ladder: Templeton International Investments; SunBank Capital Management; STI Corporation; and the Citizens & Southern National Bank in Norcross, Georgia.

You know another strategy worth emulating: Never let your work, however important, keep you from enjoying life’s pleasures. There you are now, living in Florida next to one of the great golf courses, Keene’s Point, and who enjoys almost family status at home with you and your wife but Janice Moodie, the fantastic young Scottish women’s golfer. Retirement cannot be dull with an international champion around! And at your previous address, there was occasional confusion when guests were directed to "Woods" (as in Tiger) instead of "Wood" (as in Jim Wood). However, if you want something with a bit more punch, what about your other sport? You have been one of the timers at the Indianapolis 500 Motor Speedway for years.

 Jim Wood, for carving out a model liberal arts career and embellishing it with the pleasures of public service and recreation, the National Association of Wabash men is proud to present you with the Clarence A. Jackson Career Service Award. You are Some Little Giant.

PETER A. PACTOR ’65
 
Loyalty manifests itself in many ways. At Wabash College, one important way for an alumnus to express his loyalty is helping us find qualified prospective students. Few are in a position to do that more easily than teachers because they have a direct impact on students. Peter Pactor, Class of ’65, and Latin teacher at Nolan Catholic High School, you have raised recruiting into a virtual art form. Right now seven Wabash students are here from Fort Worth, Texas, because you first told them about Wabash, then followed through with information and answers. In the best Texas tradition, Peter, you have created a pipeline to move a valuable commodity out of the state, only this time, you bring bright students, not oil, right to the Wabash campus. It is precisely where we want them.

For the Class of 2008 that recently arrived on campus, you referred 34 prospective students to the Admissions Office. Last year you referred 30 students; the year before, 13. Sending names isn’t enough for you: at your own expense, you host recruiting events for Nolan High students. You schedule their Indiana visits, and often accompany them to campus. Back in Fort Worth, you host parties for them before they depart for Crawfordsville, and you host get-togethers for your fellow alums in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to discuss recruiting.

Peter, you have a lifelong connection to young people through your teaching. Your knowledge of what they want and need from the world vis-à-vis what the world needs from them drives you to recruit for Wabash as energetically as you do. In a Class Agent’s letter to the men of ’65 a couple of years ago, you explained: "The schools that most of these young men are attending are just ordinary houses of education. Many of them will continue to go to ordinary colleges and universities, but the Wabash experience is beyond ordinary – enriching our lives in many ways that we may not even realize until later in life."

Your own dedication to the College; your service; your ability to identify needs facing Wabash and the world; and your skill in bringing them together for the greater good of both: all these certainly qualify you as this year’s Alumni Admissions Fellow.

The National Association of Wabash Men, salutes you for your recruiting work, and thanks you putting loyalty into action. Peter Pactor, you are some Little Giant! 

GREG SHAHEEN      

Greg Shaheen, Wabash College respects the graduate of a large university who appreciates the fine education a small college can provide. We admire a man involved in Division I athletics who recognizes that Division III athletes play for sheer love of the game and Division III alumni love their team’s spirit even more than its victories. Actually, a man with that refined perspective should be a Wabash man. Today, after years of happy association, we welcome you to the Wabash family.

You first came to Wabash as a high school senior to participate in OLAB, the intense summer session that gives high school students the opportunity to explore, understand, and respect the business world. You returned in your college years as an OLAB counselor who went beyond official duty to care for and encourage your charges. You and our faculty have developed an excellent means of teaching business principles and practices to teenagers, and you have taught them, by example, that profit and humanity are not mutually exclusive.

For more than a decade you have been the Game Master at OLAB. You design the competition among teams to demonstrate the complexities of the business world and the challenges to success.
 
Although you hold a business degree from Indiana University, you might be mistaken for a liberal arts graduate who has worked in such disparate areas as sheet metal, computer works, and broadcasting, and then leadership positions in your family business, Long Electric.

You directed the NCAA move to Indianapolis. You served as managing director of the Division I Men’s Basketball Championship. Now you are Vice President, overseer of the Division I tournament, and liaison with broadcasters. In other words, you have more "old-friends-who-just-need-a-couple-of-seats" than any other guy in America every March when the Final Four rolls around. And still, every summer, you find time to return to OLAB.
 
The National Association of Wabash Men is proud to award you Honorary Alumnus status, our highest honor. Greg Shaheen, you are Some Little Giant!

JEAN WILLIAMS

Jean Williams, today we are making official what has been fact for 55 years: your membership in the Wabash College family. You and your husband, Eliot, renowned and beloved biology professor, arrived and walked directly into the heart of Wabash College and remained, Eliot until his death, and you up to this happy day and far beyond.

You made Wabash a place people wanted to be. Your gracious entertaining is legendary among faculty and students. If it was a Wabash party, you were there. In fact, you were the party: sparkling, witty, and interesting. If students were hungry, you fed them, most noticeably the day you made pancakes to celebrate young Tom Cole’s acceptance to grad school at CalTech several years before he returned to teach beside your husband and others in that remarkable department.

If students’ dates needed a place to spend the night, you set up the best bed and breakfast in town, and scores of them remember your kindness. You and Eliot chaperoned all the dances, a job that once led you to make a Chapel talk – in this case, a sort of Chapel scolding – about their attitude toward chaperones.

You wrote articles for The Bachelor, and for Wabash Notes, beautifully descriptive articles about your world travels. We are pleased you made it home from your recent Madagascar trip in time to receive this award.

You are a friend to your peers and an inspiration to younger faculty. When we speak of the Wabash community, we are speaking of you. A graduate of the University of Illinois you may be, but Wabash is your college home, and you have enriched it with your grace.

The National Association of Wabash Men is proud to bestow upon you the highest honor that is ours to give: Honorary Alumna. Jean Williams, you are Some Little Giant!