Alumni

Class Repoter

1928

Mary Parnelee, Bufallo, WY, free-lanced for the Denver Post until 1971, when she retired. Her husband, also an NU graduate, died in 1971. Their daughter, who did not study journalism, is editor of a technical magazine. Their son is a science teacher.

1929

Gerald Griffin retired in December 1972 as editor of the editorial page of the Baltimore Sun. He had held that post for eight years after 30 years in the Sun’s Washington bureau chief. He now lives in rural western Maryland.

1931

William McCleery has retired as a lecturer in playwriting at Princeton University. He remains a trustee of the Daily Princetonian, the student newspaper.

1932

Ruth S. Donahue has retired from the State Department in Washington, D.C. she was employed there for 25 years, heading a small staff that produced a classified document on economic policies worldwide.

Howard Paine is enjoying his retirement years in the fast-moving Washington, D. C. metropolitan area.

1937

Adrienne Birge, Omaha, is in her 10th year of retirement. Her children and grandchildren are her main interest. Their careers include a teacher, a lawyer, a real estate agent, several insurance executives, and artist, a banker and a crop of promising athletes. They are scattered from Alaska to Georgia, and the grandchildren and great-grandchildren range in age from 34 years to 6 months. “Life is very interesting, indeed!”

1938

June Marron and her husband Alfred celebrated their 50th anniversary in June 1990. They are both retired.

1939

Charline Nelson plans to retire this year from W.S. Desch Sons, York, where she has been secretary and office manager for the past 15 years.

Marjorie Nyrop, who attended UNL during the late 1930’s died February 27 in Los Angeles. She was 73. Nyrop’s journalism career began at the Elgin Review. She was a political reporter for the Lincoln Star from 1942 to 1945, then moved to California in 1946 to work for the Beverly Hills Citizen. She and two partners formed the Beverly Hills Press in 1952. She was editor of Western Family magazine in Los Angeles from 1954 to 1959, then established a public relations firm in 1960.

1945

Jean Hylton, York, is co-author of “Bright Party Ideas” by Party Seasons, Inc. She is a freelance writer who also writes twice-monthly feature called “Life Changes” for the York News Times.

1946

Margaret Dietz, Akron, OH, has been working part-time for the Ravenna (Ohio) Record Courier since her retirement as director of communications for Northeastern Ohio University’s college of Medicine in Rootstown, OH.

Frederick Simpson, Omaha, retired in January 1989, after 38 1/2 years at the Atlantic News-Telegraph in Atlantic, IA. He was owner for 32 of those years and publisher for 20 years. He moved to Omaha in June 1991. His son Ted is a 1979 UNL journalism graduate.

1951

Charles Gonzales is publisher of the Guthrie Center Times and the Lake Panorama Time, both in Iowa, and is a member of the Iowa Newspaper Associations Board.

1952

Ladd Duryea, Powder Springs, GA, is the vice president for human resources for the newly-renamed CONSTAR plastics, Inc., the leading producer of plastic beverage and food containers in North America. The company was known as Sewell Plastics, Inc., when he joined the company in 1985 but changed its name in January 1992.

1953

Ruth Raymond Thone, Lincoln, is author of a new book, Women and Aging, Celebrating Ourselves. Thone wrote the book to help women make necessary changes in their lives, but the book is also designed to help men and families understand aging wives, mothers and grandmothers. The book was published by the Harrington Park Press, Binghamton, NY.

1955

Marlin Bree, St. Paul, MN, was selected to be the chair of the 1992 MBA Awards, a national program to recognize and honor the best in nonfiction books. The awards are sponsored by the Midwest Independent Publishers Association. Bree is an author of seafaring books (In the Teeth of the Northeaster, Alone Against the Atlantic) and is publisher of Malor Press, Inc., St. Paul. He is a past president of the Minnesota Press Club.

1962

Larry Novicki is a member of the editorial page staff at the Omaha World-Herald.

1965

Winona Diamantopoulos, Ringwood, NJ, is vice president of operations for Credit Services of America. Her husband is an engineer with Union Carbide, and the couple has a daughter Carrie, a son Christopher and a grandson Alex.

1967

J. Steve Davis, executive vice president and general manger of the J. Walter Thompson (JWT) Chicago office, has been named to the JWT worldwide board of directors. Davis joined JWT/Chicago in November 1990 form Altschiller Reitzfeld Davis / Trachy-Locke/ New York where he was president. Prior to that, he was with Benton & Bowles, where he started in the advertising business in 1972 following four years in the U.S. Airforce. He and his wife Courtney have three sons, Scott, Robby and Cullen.

Dorothy “Peg” Jones has been at the Omaha World-Herald since 1968 as a copy editor. She is also a graduate student in social work at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

1968

William Ready is vice president of Evans/Kraft, a Seattle advertising agency.

1969

Roger Mulder, Austin, Texas, is director of special projects, Environmental Policy Division, in the Office of the Governor.

1970

Mark Gordon is a columnist for the Daily Racing Form at the Fairgrounds in New Orleans and Louisiana Downs in Bossier City, LA.

Janet Rodekohr, Athens, GA, is senior news editor with the University of Georgia Extension Service. She survived a major downsizing in which her department was cut in half.

Kathleen Kaufman owns and operates an art gallery and frame shop in Nebraska City. Her husband Brad, a UNL engineering graduate, is head of maitenance for the OPPD Power Plant at Nebraska City. The Kaufmans have three children, ages 16, 13, and 11.

1972

Charles Brogan is program director for KRVN, Lexington. He earned an MBA from the University of Nebraska at Kearney n August 1991.

Nance Kirk, Lincoln, is director of communications for the Nebraska Motor Carriers Association. She is active in the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC).

1974

Philip Witt is prime anchor at 5, 6, and 10 p.m. for WDAFTV4 in Kansas City. He and his wife Kim have three children: laurel, 12; Blair, 10; and Andrew, 8.

Patti Yaussi is a realtor and sells residential real estate for the Bill Kimball Company in Lincoln.

1976

Gary Goranson, Lincoln, has been supervising editor of publications for the National Strength and Conditioning Association since 1981. The association publishes six educational journals in sports science and athletic conditioning.

David Madsen, Sioux City, IA, and his wife have a new daughter, Christine, born October 12, 1991.

1977

Becky French, Omaha, is vice president of marketing at Hamilton telecommunications in Aurora/Omaha.

Teresa Willson Grasserode, Antioch, CA, is married and the mother of three children, the most recent born in June 1991. She does volunteer public relations work and teaches a journalism class at her children’s parochial school and works as a stringer for the local newspaper.

Kim Shepard, Chicago, founded Shepard communications, a public relations firm in 1991 after serving as vice president at Hill, Knowlton, Ogilvy & Mather PR. Her clients include Kraft General Foods, American Airlines, ToolWatch and Seyforth, Shaw, Fairweather & Geralson, one of the nation’s largest law firms

1979

Mark Getzfred, dputy managing editor of the Waterbury (Conn.) Republican-American, won the Scripps-Howard community Sevice Award for coverage of the mayor and five allies that led to convictions on 18 counts of conspiracy, bribe-taking, bank fraud and tax evasion. In their commentdation, the judge said, “This is an excellent example of a smaller newspaper unraveling complex financial dealings that victimized small depositors and tainted the city’s highest public officials…”

Liz Austin Getzfred (JD, ’82) is practicing law in Waterbury, CT.

Dal R. (Gerkings) Grooms, Des Moines, was recently promoted to director of broadcast services for the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation in Des Moines. She oversees radio programming production, video production and satellite delivery of farm marketing information.

Constance Reddicliffe, Brooklyn, retired from the New York Times in 1990 to stay at home with the triplets, born December 4, 1990, to her and her husband Steven. The children’s names are Rebecca, Anna and James.

1980

Susan Hendee, Denverm worked as a landman for the Anschutz oil and gas corporation from 1981 to 1987 to 1989, graduating in December 1989. She was admitted to the Colorado bar in May 1990 and is presently in-house counsel for Horizon Gold Corporation.

Dennis Lyon, Arlington, TX, has been a director at KXAS-TV, the NBC affiliate for Dallas/Fort Worth for eight years. The news, sports and public affairs programs he directs and helps produce have won several state and national awards. KXAS is committed to being the first HDTV station in the country.

1981

Susan Bron Carraher, Lincoln, does free-lance writing for several Lincoln non-profit agencies and institutions. She and her husband Jim have two sons, ages 4 and 1, and are expecting a third child in October. She is working on a master’s degree in English.

Cheryl Kisling Crouch, Aurora, CO, is director of development for the University of Colorado Cancer Centre. Her husband Don is head of remote operations at KWGN-TV, and they have two children: Sara 10, and Katie 8.

Dawn Dittman, Austin, TX, recently in Chicago where she is manager of marketing communications for Illinois Masonic Medical Center, a 530-bed hospital not far from Wrigley Field. She earned a master’s of management degree from the Kellogg graduate School of Management at Northwestern University in 1989. She is an avid volleyball player and enjoys skiing and golf.

Evelyn (Evie) Heim-Grubb, Houston, received an MBA degree in 1988 from the University of St. Thomas and is currently an accountant supervisor with Campbell-Mithun-Esty Advertising’s Houston office. Her husband a civil trial attorney, and they have a son William.

Lori McGinnis, Waukesha, WI, is state editor of UPI in Milwaukee. She took that job after a year as assistant PR director of Carroll College in Waukesha.

Desiree Rohling, Arlington Heights, IL, is employed by Dean Witter Financial Services as commercial services product manager of Sears Payment Systems, a subsidiary of Dean Witter.

1982

Peter Ausenhus, Minneapolis, is enrolled in the graduate journalism program at the University of Minnesota after having worked five years as a writer and magazine editor.

Melinda Morgan, Lincoln, was recently promoted to director of corporate communications for Ameritas Life Insurance Corporation.

John Wickstrom, Jr., Chicago, is in charge of film distribution for the IMAX theatre films produced by the Museum of Science and Industry. He earned an MBA in finance from the university of Missouri in Kansas City in 1991.

1983

William Barnard, Henderson, NV, was married in February 1991. He is a claims supervisor for State Farm Insurance in Las Vegas. His wife Becky is program advisor for Student Union activities at UNLV.

Kathleen Gadeken, Lincoln, freelances for a business called E.GADS Custom Cards. She designs brochures, newsletters and greeting cards.

Keith Grtoelueshen (M.A. ’87) is a newscast producer at WTVD, channel 11, in Durham, NC.

Deborah Killars is the city hall reporter for the Sacramento Bee. She is the mother of two children, ages 12, and 7.

Kristine Salfeld Malkoski, Cinncinnati, was recently promoted to associate advertising manager at Procter and Gamble. She also has a new daughter, Kaelyn Kristine, her first child.

1984

Peggy Johansen, Arlington, VA, works in the Washington office of Senator Bob Kerrey. She was also a volunteer with his presidential primary campaign.

Lynell Morgan, Grant, NE, works part-time for the Grant Tribune-Sentinel and part-time as a clerk for the US Postal Service.

Dianna Sieffert, Lincoln, is a communications specialist with NMPP Energy, which provides electricity, natural gas and energy services to more than 125 member communities nationwide.

1985

Beth French, Highland Park, IL, is an employee benefits attorney at Schiff, Hardin and Waite in Chicago. She and her husband Shawn have a 16-month-old daughter Mollie and are expecting their second child in October.

Susan Lapp, Omaha, is advertising director of the N.P. Dodge Real Estate Co. Her husband William is manager of economic research at ConAgra.

Katherine Malashock, Omaha, is a scriptwriter for Sitel Corporation, Insurance Division. She has been with Sitel since October 1989.

Deborah Morrison is media director for Robert Day Communications, Los Angeles. She worked for KETV in Omaha for two years after graduation, then for Complete Video in Omaha and Design Productions and Twin Star Productions in Phoenix. She moved to Los Angeles in June 1989 as media director for Len Scholl and company advertising. She also was media director/account executive for Linnell and Associates Advertising in L.A. before joining Robert Day In April 1990.

Victoria Rugha, Shawnee Mission, KS, is a corporate finance attorney practicing with Shook, Hardy and Bacon in Kansas City.

1986

Holly Ashmore is the new community specialist in the department of Multi-Cultural Affairs department at UNL. She assumed her duties on February 10.

Jim Ballard is assistant coordinator of news and information for UNL’s Office of University Information.

Jill Grenseman, Lincoln, is a claims specialist with State Farm Insurance.

Lisa Henkel is an attorney with Fitzgeral, Schorr, Barmettler and Brannen in Omaha.

Andrea Hoy is staff photographer for the New London Day (Conn.) newspaper and is working as a freelance photographer to promote her work.

Gail Johnston is an account executive with Culver and Associates in Omaha. Her major account is Nebraska Furniture Mart. Her husband Joel is a vocal music teacher at Gretna high School. He taught a choreography class at UNL during the summer. The Johnstons have a 9-month-old son, Evan Robert and “two very tolerant cats.”

Sandra Heng Myers is a reporter for WSYX-TV, the ABC affiliate in Columbus, OH.

David Nuckolls, winter Garden, FL, is production manager of resort Entertainment and is responsible for all the audio-visuals and shows that take place outside the Disney parks.

Jean Smith, Sherman, TX, worked in public relations at a private college, now stays home with her baby.

Michelle Walenz, Lincoln, is senior producer at Bates and Associates Communication Specialists. She recently returned to Lincoln from Washington, D.C., where she was assistant press secretary for the Kerrey for President campaign.

1988

Lise Olsen, Virginia Beach, VA, has recently moved from education reporter to city hall reporter in Virginia Beach.

Theresa Smith, Omaha, is married and has her own graphic design business, D.P.I. Designs. She says, “My business is going great, and I ‘m busier than I ever imagined.

Phil Richmond received the first place award for spot news in the 1992 Associated press competition for a story he did when he was a reporter for the Star-Herald in Scottsbluff. Richmond is now serving as deputy director of public affairs for Nebraska Governor Ben Nelson, a position he took in August 1992.

1989

Todd Christenson, NewYork, is the regional manager for Metro Creative Graphics, Inc., New York City. He writes: “great sales job, perfect girlfriend, life’s good.”

Andrew Dobson, Los Angeles, is a financial planner for the Dobson family and treasurer of Dobson Productions. In August 1991, he traveled to Russia to promote the NBC show “Santa Barbara.” It has been aired there since January 1992 and is now seen in about 55 countries, including China.

Kevin Kuhlman, Orlando, is a supervisor with audiovisual department of the Walt Disney company. He is engaged to be married in the fall of 1993.

Neil Michaud is a news reporter/producer for KOTI-TV in Klamath Falls, OR. He previously spent a year and a half at the TV station in Hastings.

Brent Reimers, Chicago, is an account executive for Chicago magazine in the spring of 1991 and handles accounts such as University of Chicago Hospitals, Anheuser Busch and Amana.

1991

Kurt Baumgarten is completeing a computer science major at UNL.

Courtney McCashland, Dallas, has left Tracy-Locke/Pharr Public Relations to become public relations director of the Greater Dallas Alzheimer’s Association. Her husband Patrick attends school in Dallas.

Gregg Sutton joined Swanson Russell Associates, a marketing communications firm in Lincoln, in April. Sutton had worked as a free-lance graphic designer since 1988. he also served as art director for the Image Group in Lincoln. A Lincoln native, he was the student liaison board member of the Advertising Federation of Lincoln from 1988 to 1990 and is a current member of the federation.

Robin Uecker, Norfolk, is continuing her physical therapy after suffering a stroke due to her heart transplant in August 1991. She is planning an October wedding after which time she will live in Lincoln and look for a job.

John Well, Rye, NY, recently accepted a position at Corinthian Communications in New York City.