Class Notes Archive 1931-2014
Class Notes are searchable back to our spring 2000 issue. You can browse the notes by decade (click on a decade to view its class notes):
Class notes from the 1990s
| 1997Amy (Lefkowitz) Matternand Jeremy Mattern ’98 welcomed daughter Jordan Emily in September. The family lives in Brea. Amy is a director at the Volunteer and Service Center at Fullerton State University, and Jeremy is a teacher and cross-country coach at Brea-Olinda High School. He led his boys’ team to a section title for the first time in the school’s history. His brother, Noel Mattern ’96, a cross-country coach at Granada High School, led his girls’ team to a section title as well.
(appeared in the Spring 2011 issue) • Tirza True Latimer, M.A., co-authored Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories (University of California Press, 2011), a companion book to an exhibition at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. Latimer is an associate professor for the California College of Arts Departments of Fine Arts and Visual and Critical Studies. She also wrote Women Together/Women Apart: Portraits of Lesbian Paris (Rutgers University Press, 2005).
(appeared in the Fall 2011 issue) • Michelle McCliman, J.D., founded the McCliman Law Firm, an intellectual property, employment and business law practice in Orange County.
(appeared in the Fall 2011 issue) • Patrick Len, a physical sciences faculty member at Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo, received a 2011 Peter and M’May Diffley Award for Faculty Excellence from the college’s Academic Senate. He teaches introductory astronomy and physics. His wife, Heather McElroy ’02, is a research assistant at Santa Cruz Biotechnology in Paso Robles.
(appeared in the Winter 2012 issue) • Loren Sperber recently opened Villa Florentina villaflorentina.net, a luxury event venue surrounded by a working Olive grove in Coloma. When not hosting weddings, retreats and other events, Sperber is a firefighter/paramedic for a local fire department and an adjunct professor with the Los Rios Community Colleges.
(appeared in the Spring 2012 issue) • The Rev. Neal Presa was elected in June to a two-year term as moderator of the 220th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in Pittsburgh. The position is the highest elected office in the 1.9-million member denomination. While serving as a pastor in Middlesex, N.J., Presa was appointed to join the New Brunswick Theological Seminary as an affiliate assistant professor for preaching and worship. He can be reached at ndpresa@gmail.com, via Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn at twitter.com/nealpresa, or at www.nealpresa.com.
(appeared in the Fall 2012 issue) • Matthew Lyon, of Walnut Creek, died unexpectedly in July while hiking on Sonora Pass. He was 42. He worked for Accenture for 16 years. He also served as bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' Walnut Creek second ward and was the father of four children.
(appeared in the Fall issue) • Rachele Baker published Eighteen Months To Live (available on Amazon), a collection of journal entries that her mother, Midge Rylander, wrote after being diagnosed with malignant pleural mesothelioma. Baker is a small animal veterinarian and writer living in Southern California.
(appeared in the Spring 2013 issue) • Lt. Col. Conrad Huygen, J.D., is an Air Force chief senior defense counsel stationed at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. He oversees a team of 36 judge advocates and 26 paralegals who provide trial defense services in the eastern U.S., Europe and Southwest Asia. His wife, Julie, is also an Air Force lieutenant colonel who recently returned from deployment at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan.
(appeared in the Spring 2013 issue) • Summer Smith recently joined the Redwood City office of law firm Ropers Majeski Kohn & Bentlet as a partner. She represents attorneys, accountants, architects, engineers and designers in professional liability matters.
(appeared in the Spring 2013 issue) • Zachary Schwartz, of Los Angeles, died in September 2012 from injuries sustained from a motorcycle accident. He was 37. After graduating from UC Davis, he earned an MBA from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.
(appeared in the Spring 2013 issue) • Joel Gardiner Canestrino, a Lodi onion crop breeding and research specialist, died in April. He was a seed geneticist with Hazera Seed Inc. and a rising star in his field.
(appeared in the Summer 2013 issue) • Rikki (Butler) Davenport graduated in May from The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina, with a master’s degree in educational leadership. She also holds an M.A. in education, curriculum and instruction from California State University, Sacramento. She works at the National Trust for Historic Preservation as the curator of education at Drayton Hall, a circa 1738 house museum and plantation in Charleston, S.C. She and her husband, Scott ’94, have a 7-year-old son, Caleb.
(appeared in the Fall 2013 issue) • Karin Enstam Jaffe, M.A., Ph.D. ’02, has been promoted to the rank of professor at Sonoma State University. She began her second term as chair of the anthropology department this fall. She joined the faculty there in 2002 and received tenure in 2008.
(appeared in the Fall 2013 issue) • Commercial litigation attorney Dana (Fowler) Tsubota joined the Oakland-based law firm of Wendel, Rosen, Black & Dean as a partner this spring.
(appeared in the Fall 2013 issue) • Rikki (Butler) Davenport graduated from The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina with a Master of Education in Educational Leadership. She also holds a Master of Arts in Education, Curriculum and Instruction. Davenport is the curator of education at Drayton Hall, a National Trust for Historic Preservation historic site. She and her husband, Scott ’94, have one child, Caleb, 7, and live in Charleston, S.C. (appeared in the Spring 2014 issue) • Kyle Pierce’s long-standing passions for biological sciences and art collided this year when he was selected to create a 43-foot mural for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. The mural leads visitors into a new 10,000 square-foot education center called Q?rius (pronounced “curious”), which opened in December. An illustrator and photographer, Pierce lives in San Francisco with his wife, Jennifer, and their sons, Henry, 8, and Auden, 6. (appeared in the Spring 2014 issue) • A debut collection of short stories by Halina Duraj, M.A. ’03, The Family Cannon, won Augury Books’ Editors’ Prize and was published this year. She is an assistant professor of English at the University of San Diego. (appeared in the Summer 2014 issue) • Tasha (Jablonski) Miller has released a trilogy of albums called FIRSTCOMESLOVE. She says she wrote, arranged, sang and produced the 32 songs on the three albums—The Boob Guy, Needs, Wilderness (in a 10lb gown)—over a period of three years as a way of coping after her husband, Scott Miller ’96, began treatment for cancer. “My husband is currently cleeeeean as a whistle,” she writes. The Millers live in Portland, Ore., with their three children, ages 7–11. Her websites are MrsTashaMiller and BathrobedHousewivesAssociation. (appeared in the Summer 2014 issue) • Melinda Nielsen-Sousa, Modesto, died March 7 at age 38. She was an English teacher, and member of National Ski Patrol. (appeared in the Summer 2014 issue) |