Alumni Day 2017 - February 25

Nearly 40 classmates, along with spouses, friends, support committee members, and 12 undergraduate class scholarship holders attended Alumni Day activities, including morning lectures, luncheon and awards ceremony, Service of Remembrance, and our class dinner.

Class Dinner

The Class Dinner was held at the Present Day Club with Jim Merritt as the MC. The evening featured the new Locomotive Award (see below), T. R. Reid's address, a number of undergraduates who hold class-related scholarships, and several class widows who are members of the Support Committee.

Classmates at the dinner or spotted during the day include: Allison, Bliss, Bowers, Chen, Chidester, Eastwick, Edie, Goltz, Goroski, Hart, Holman, Lanny Jones, Kretzmann, Kinard, Littauer, Lutz, Maliszewski, McDonough, Merritt, Mill, Mount, Nahas, Parmentier, Plohn, Rawson, Reid, Harry Robinson, Sachs, Shafer, Sonnenberg, Thacher, Witte, and Von Kohorn. Additional class guests include: Annie McDonough '17 (John's daugher and the only class child currently on campus), TR's daughter Willa and her fiance, Pam Wetzel, Ruth Krosin, DJ McCabe, and Judy Moeckel (Bert Lee's sister).

The photos show Bud D'Avela with Nora Nazarian '17, the Unterman scholar, and Brandon Levy '20, the Nagorniak scholar.

    

Locomotive Award

Bill "Roller" Leahy writes: "As one Vice-President, focused upon participation, it appeared to me  that we should honor class members for their 'service' with the new Locomotive Award.  AlumniDay and Reunions are the two dates for class gatherings. I have established a small group of '66ers to assist in considering awardees at each of these events. The purpose of the award is to recognize distinguished service and/or character. Service which exemplifies the motto:'Princeton in the nation's Service and the service of humanity.' The award may be either for achievements based upon professional or avocational interests. Class officers will be mindful of both professional and geographical diversity. The committee will now focus upon a classmate to be awarded the Locomotive award at Reunions,2017." The award is to widen participation; in our class ...gathering together more class mates.

Jody Kretzmann was the first classmate selected for this new award, which was presented at Alumni Day,2017 prior to our class dinner.


L-R: Jody Kretzmann, T,R. Reid, Jim Merritt, Lanny Jones

Lanny Jones read the award citation which he authored and also presented the award which included an actual Lionel locomotive circa ?

A few words about Jody Kretzmann and why he is so deserving of the first '66 Locomotive Award.

To put it in a single sentence, in the course of his career Jody has changed the way scholars, policy makers, and activists think about neighborhoods and communities, not only in America but worldwide, especially urban and rural communities which are struggling economically and politically.

With his longtime colleague, John McKnight, Jody founded the Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) Institute at Northwestern University. Since 1980, the ABCD Institute has worked with community leaders around the world to conduct research, produce materials, and otherwise support local residents and their allies to build stronger and healthier communities.

Jody and John McKnight wrote a book called Building Communities from the Inside Out; A Path Toward Discovering and Mobilizing a Communities Assets that has become the indispensable guide for community builders. To date it has sold more than 120,000 copies and been translated into more than 50 languages.

Before defining the asset-based strategies, Jody gained valuable community organizing experience registering voters in the American South and 
Chicago’s West Side. These community organizing efforts led also to a range of electoral political work, including at the local level, with extensive policy contributions to the campaigns and administration of Harold Washington, Chicago’s first African American mayor; to the Illinois gubernatorial campaign of Dawn Clark Netsch; to the policy efforts of Barack Obama’s campaigns for President (2008, 2012).

Along with his civic, community, and political work, Jody has remained consistently committed to teaching. He founded and led, for some 20 years, a groundbreaking Urban Studies program for the Associated Colleges of the Midwest. Through this program hundreds of undergraduates spent a semester living and working in a Chicago neighborhood, experiencing, as Jody puts it, "the city as teacher”.

This program has been widely recognized as one of the earliest and most innovative "experience-based” experiments in higher education. One of Jody’s closest colleagues in the Urban Studies Program was John Fish, ’55, who went on to found with Jody’s assistance, Princeton Project 55, today known as Alumni Corps.

At Northwestern, Jody was twice selected to receive its "Teacher of the Year” award. He is married to (and often works with) Ingrid Christiansen, and together they have two children, Katie and Marcus.

I would be remiss if I did not say, with pride, that he introduced me to my wife, Sarah.

It is a great honor for our class and our classmates to present the First '66 Locomotive Award to Jody Kretzmann.

T. R. Reid, Class Alumni Day Speaker

TR has become one our nation’s best know reporters and authors. T.R. generously commented at length on the accomplishments of many ’66 Classmates before lightheartedly highlighting his five decades of world-wide reporting, authorship and public advocacy.  His newest book "A Fine Mess: A Global Quest for a Simpler, Fairer, and More Efficient Tax System” on taxation alternatives sparked lively debate and comment.