Recipients of the 2009 Alumni Awards Announced at Reunion Weekend
The recipients of the 2009 Alumni Awards were announced at the Alumni Luncheon and Awards Ceremony during Reunion Weekend. The following awards were presented (Click on the links or scroll down for full biographical details on each honoree):
Barb Pelander Hanniford ’69
Blue Citation
Barb Hanniford’s volunteer support for Allegheny has been extensive and varied. As president of the Alumni Council, she encouraged the council, and the wider alumni population, to be actively engaged in helping the College to provide the best possible education and experience for students.
“Barb provided great vision, direction and focus [in leading the reorganization of Alumni Council structure],” says Linda Palmiero ’66, “and invested so much thoughtfulness and caring. She brings much energy and knowledge to any task she undertakes. She has a comprehensive understanding of higher education in general and Allegheny College in particular. She conveys trust and cares deeply about the College.”
As vice chair and chair of the Reunions Committee, she worked to evaluate and improve Reunion Weekend. She also helped restructure the Alumni Council’s new member orientation program, and she served on the Torchbearers Task Force and the Nomination and Awards Committee. As part of the Volunteer Marketing Task Force, she worked to make it easier for alumni to volunteer for Allegheny. As a regional “campaign ambassador,” she helped host the 2003 Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Cleveland campaign events and was a featured speaker.
In addition to her Alumni Council work, Barb served on the client committee for the Tippie Alumni Center, participating in conversations about location, design and function. She co-chaired an effort with Gary Mitchell ’60 to solicit past and present council members for a gift for the Alumni Center, which resulted in the flag pole that now stands at the west side of the building. She also served as an Alumni Advisor, providing career advice, general support and guidance to students.
This year, Barb is part of her 40th Reunion Committee and is an online mentor on GatorLocator. She wrote “Gator Greetings” cards to prospective students and met with Allegheny’s strategic planning consultant to provide insight about Allegheny from an involved alumna’s perspective. Barb and her husband Glenn ’68 also provide loyal and consistent financial support to the College.
“Barb is among Allegheny’s most enthusiastic supporters and volunteers,” says Phil Foxman ’90, who nominated her for a Blue Citation. “She is generous with her time, energy and resources.” And John Kutz ’83 writes, “Barb is a loyal, passionate and dedicated alumna who has served Allegheny with pride and enthusiasm. She is a perfect candidate to receive a Blue Citation.”
Jim “Dutch” Linaberger '59
Blue Citation
Jim “Dutch” Linaberger has chaired every class reunion for the Class of ’59 with enthusiasm and thoroughness. From his arrival on campus as a student through co-chairing his 50th reunion with Sally Stewart St. Clair ’59, Dutch has given generously of his time, talent and treasure.
As a student, he was a well respected campus leader and good friend to many. He was president of his senior class, head of Brooks Dining Hall, a student counselor and an enthusiastic member of the Four Fijis quartet. Following graduation, he has held many volunteer positions for the College. He was president of the Alumni Association during the 1970s and served as a trustee of the College from 1980 to 1988. He reached out to Phi Gamma Delta brothers, helping to effect the transfer of Fiji property to the College for a beautiful new admissions and welcome center.
He and his wife, Sandra Kenyon Linaberger ’62, are also generous financial supporters of Allegheny. She says that he firmly believes in providing for today’s students what was available to him. A member of the Timothy Alden Council for years, Dutch has served on the Timothy Alden Council Executive Committee. He endowed a scholarship in his late wife’s name (Elsa Held Linaberger ’60), and he is a member of the President’s Society.
Dutch’s wife, Sandi; two daughters, Anne ’84 and Betsy ’91; and stepdaughter, Nicole Smith Manning ’93, are among many who nominated him for this award. Sandi writes, “I have never seen anyone work harder for a reunion than this man.” Family legend has it that after one very busy reunion, on the ride home, he turned to his late wife, Elsa, and asked, “Did I have a good time?”
“His energy and work energized his class,” agrees Sally Barrett Hanley ’92, “and we have great reunion attendance from the Class of ’59 because of his special efforts.” In fact, Dutch spent so much time working on the reunion that the staff joked that he should have his own office in the Alumni Center. He made it a personal goal to contact every member of the class to encourage their attendance and support for the class gift.
Sandi writes that “I am Allegheny” reflects Jim’s devotion and commitment to his alma mater. “He is Mr. Allegheny,” agrees Phil Ness of Allegheny’s Development & Alumni Affairs Office.
Gladys Haddad '52
Gold Citation
An historian and regionalist, Gladys Haddad is a professor of American studies at Case Western Reserve University. Her scholarship centers on Ohio’s Western Reserve, a distinctive region of northeastern Ohio. She is founder and director of the Western Reserve Studies Symposium, an annual online forum, and its successor, Regionally Speaking, a virtual symposium broadcast series. Both explore the history and culture and address contemporary issues of the Western Reserve. Gladys is also professor emerita of American Studies at Lake Erie College, where she was the academic dean and executive assistant to the president (1963-1989).
Gladys has published on the history, literature and art of the Western Reserve. She is the author with Harry Lupold of Ohio’s Western Reserve: A Regional Reader; with David Anderson of Anthology of Western Reserve Literature; and of Laukhuff’s Book Store: Cleveland’s Literary and Artistic Landmark: An Epilogue. She recently completed a biography, Flora Stone Mather: Daughter of Cleveland’s Euclid Avenue and Ohio’s Western Reserve, which received the 2008 Ohio Genealogical Society William H. and Benjamin Harrison Award for an Ohio-related family history.
A writer and producer of video documentaries, she completed a trilogy on the Mathers, a notable Western Reserve family. She also is the project archivist, researcher and author of the Case Web site, “Selected Philanthropic Families of Case Western Reserve University.”
Peggy Seib Culbertson ’52, who nominated Gladys for a Gold Citation, says she reflects honor upon Allegheny not only through her career achievements, but also through her personal characteristics. Fred McEwan ’51 notes her “sterling personal qualities…as an honest, hard-working and personable individual, with lofty ambitions (well realized) and a fine lack of hubris.” And “b.j.” (Coulston) Richardson ’52 writes that Gladys “possesses a real curiosity about the past, the energy to experience and savor the present, and an enthusiastic hope for the future.”
Carol Reardon '74
Gold Citation
Carol Reardon is “a wonderful example of the unusual combinations fostered through an education at Allegheny,” writes Julianne Weibel Foltz, who nominated Carol for the Gold Citation. A professor of military history at Penn State University, Carol was a biology major at Allegheny, but participating in battlefield tours with history professor Jay Luvaas ’49 sparked her interest in history.
She earned a master’s degree in history from the University of South Carolina and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Kentucky. She teaches undergraduate courses at Penn State on military history, the Vietnam War, and the Civil War era as well as introductory survey courses, and she leads Penn State’s annual battlefield study tour program. In 2007, she was one of four Penn State professors awarded the George W. Atherton Award for Excellence in Teaching.
She has been a scholar-in-residence at the George and Anne Richards Civil War Era Center, a visiting professor of history at the United States Military Academy, and an adjunct faculty member at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College and the U.S. Army Military History Institute. She leads professional military education activities for the armed forces, specializing in “staff rides” to Civil War battlefields, open-air classrooms where military personnel discuss essential elements of the art of war such as leadership, logistics and decision-making in historical context.
She has published five books and more than 30 articles, chapters or speeches; written more than 40 signed book reviews; and published or presented more than 25 professional papers. Based on the critical success of her Vietnam naval aviation book, Launch the Intruders: A Naval Attack Squadron in the Vietnam War, 1972, she was appointed to a 2007-2010 term on the Secretary of the Navy’s Advisory Subcommittee on Naval History. She also is serving a second term as president of the Society of Military History.
Ray Lombra, a colleague at Penn State, writes that Carol’s “professional and personal passion for educating not only our students, but our community, on the relevance of American history makes her an ideal candidate” for the Gold Citation.
Yvonne Reed Chappelle Seon '59
Gold Citation
Yvonne Seon, a pioneer in the field of black studies, reflects honor on Allegheny “by virtue of outstanding achievements,” writes Herb Niles ’59, who nominated her for a Gold Citation.
After graduating from Allegheny, Yvonne earned a master’s degree in American government and politics at American University as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. She then became the first American to work for the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where she advanced to the most prominent position available to a foreign citizen, managing a major dam construction project.
Upon her return to the U.S., she worked as a foreign affairs officer for the Department of State and was appointed secretary of the U.S. delegation to the 14th General Assembly of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in Paris. She was the first African-American and the second woman to hold this office in a major U.S. delegation.
During the 1970s, she began a career as an educator, serving as director of student life programs and teaching French at Wilberforce University. She completed—while helping to design—one of the earliest black studies Ph.D. programs in the country at Union Institute. She taught in the African-American studies departments at Howard University and the University of Maryland, College Park. Her doctoral work led to the articulation of a black education program at Wilberforce and to the realization of the Bolinga Black Cultural Resources Center at Wright State University.
She earned a master of divinity degree from Howard University Divinity School in 1981, and she was the first African-American woman to join the Unitarian Universalist parish ministry, founding and leading a congregation. She returned to academia in the 1990s and served as the distinguished visiting director of the Bolinga Black Cultural Resources Center after retiring from the faculty at Prince George’s Community College in Maryland.
Helping young people develop as independent and innovative thinkers ranks high among her ambitions. “We are in an era where conformity is expected, and there’s a great deal of suspicion of those who don’t conform,” she says. “Yet it is the non-conformists among us who push us beyond mediocrity to greatness.”
Linda Allison Palmiero '66
Alumni Medal
There are those who believe that at some point during the search for Allegheny’s 21st president, Linda Palmiero developed the technology for teleportation. How else to explain how you could get a phone call from her one minute, see her escorting a candidate to an interview five minutes later, see her five minutes after that with a candidate’s spouse on a campus tour, only to return to your computer to find an e-mail from Linda with an answer to a question you’d posed just a moment ago?
Linda’s work on the presidential search committee was nothing less than extraordinary. She organized a complex process, communicated with scores of persons, served as College liaison to the search firm, and did so with unfailing grace, patience, kindness and humor. And she agreed to the College’s request to help with the search on one condition: that she do so without compensation.
“Linda was a godsend,” presidential search committee chair Tom Slonaker says, “smoothly facilitating the introduction of candidates for consideration into the Allegheny community and always sensitive to the inclusiveness of our College’s community. She could sell Allegheny’s virtues to anyone.”
Linda’s service on the search committee was her Senior Project, if you will—the capstone experience that built on a multitude of challenging roles. In 1992 she “retired” as assistant dean of the College and registrar, only to come back to help in the admissions office. She returned again to serve as the interim director of alumni affairs.
Linda’s dedication to Allegheny seems limitless: in hosting regional alumni events, serving on reunion committees, presiding over Alumni Council, working with Kappa Alpha Theta, volunteering for admissions and career services, and mentoring students. Linda never says no to Allegheny, and in fact she often seeks out ways to help.
As a member of Alumni Council, Linda was active, engaged, innovative and hard-working. Along with her council colleagues, she believed strongly that alumni should help the College provide the best possible experience for our students. She also had a pivotal role in leading the initiative for 100 percent participation by council members in the Tradition & Transformation campaign.
“There is hardly anyone I can think of who has tirelessly touched every part of the College as Linda has: the College staff, the faculty, the students, and, for sure, the Meadville community,” says Tom Slonaker. “And she gets things done.”