In Memoriam:
John Gibson'51
Spend a little time with John Gibson’51, and you’ll wish you read more, knew more, and appreciated life more. Charismatic and sharp as a tack at 78, Gibson is living life to its fullest and never stops learning along the way.
| Jim Michaud/The Journal Inquirer |
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A Korean War veteran, former insurance company executive, and grandfather of five from Moodus, Conn., Gibson is one of the newest culinary instructors at Manchester (Conn.) Community College.
Known around the school as “The Breadman,” he has taught continuing education classes in pizza-making, quick breads, and artisan breads.
Anyone lucky enough to be in his classes is destined to learn much more than the basic fundamentals of making perfect bread. Practicing teamwork, having a passion for what you do, and learning from mistakes—but not obsessing over them—are among the other lessons he imparts.
When Gibson, a former Navy lieutenant, was in Japan during the Korean War, he came across a Zen-Buddhist passage he’s lived his life by ever since.
He calls it his credo: “The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him, he is always doing both.”
Gibson first became interested in baking bread as an MCC culinary student over the past three years. Then he took a professional bread-baking class at the pinnacle of bread-baking places in New England, the Baking Education Center at King Arthur Flour in Norwich, Vt.
“To be a good baker you need to be an artisan and you need to be a mathematician because there’s a lot of mathematics in baking,” he explains. “And you need to be a chemist because you need to understand the chemical reactions that take place in the mixture and in the oven, so I find it intellectually challenging.”
Although Gibson is entering a new phase of his life as an instructor at MCC, he’s actually been teaching in one way or another for the last 60 years, starting out as a teaching assistant for L. Taylor Merrill, chair of the history department, while at Beloit. After the Korean War, he began a career in the insurance industry, serving first as director of education for The Hartford, and then earning his doctorate in education from the University of Connecticut. When he retired from The Hartford as assistant vice president of personnel in 1995, he went on to teach at the Coast Guard Academy.
In recent years, his quest to keep learning led him to MCC, first as a student and now as an instructor. He says being around college students helps keep him young.
“It’s easier to stay young when you’re around young people, and there’s some absolutely wonderful kids in this school,” he says.
— Doreen Guarino
Reprinted with permission from the Manchester, Conn. Journal Inquirer
Howard Park'81
When he was 10, Howard Park’81 was poking around in his mother’s jewelry box when he came across an FDR campaign button.
| Lisa Helfert |
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Inspired by his discovery, he started collecting buttons and other political memorabilia. Forty years later, he owns more than 10,000 buttons representing presidents and candidates from George Washington to Barack Obama. And he still has the FDR pin that once belonged to his mother.
Park said he keeps collecting because it’s fun. It also reflects his interest in history and politics.
“I like buttons that tell stories. Often they reflect some sort of one-week story that everyone knew for a short time,” Park says. “I have a George McGovern button that says ‘come home and stop killing little babies.’” The button, made during McGovern’s unsuccessful 1972 presidential campaign against Richard Nixon, “captured the anti-war sentiment of the time,” he says.
Park is a member of the American Political Items Collectors organization and regularly attends shows and auctions with other collectors. He’s been involved in numerous campaigns during the last three decades and acquires memorabilia from those as well.
After graduating from Beloit with a degree in government, Park worked on his first campaign, Gary Hart’s 1984 presidential run. He served as campaign director for Wisconsin while attending law school in Madison, Wis.
In the late 1980s, Park moved to Washington, D.C., where he continued working on campaigns and was also a lobbyist until 2001. In 2004, he was part of the grassroots effort to elect Gen. Wesley Clark president.
In this year’s race, he’s communications director for Barack Obama’s campaign in D.C., an all-volunteer effort.
Park says that political buttons are often created by supporters, not the official campaign itself. Park treasures one button that he created in 1994.
“I had a friend working for Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who was running for lieutenant governor of Maryland,” he says. “She was with Kathleen’s mother, Mrs. Robert Kennedy, and they started talking about all the Kennedys that were running at the time. My friend said ‘vote for the Kennedy nearest you,’ and based on that, I designed a button.”
The buttons included all the Kennedys who were in a race: Edward, Joe, Patrick, Kathleen, and Mark Shriver—and all ended up winning. Most of the buttons were distributed at a Kennedy family picnic, which was no small event, Park says.
“You can tell a lot about politics from buttons. Until mid-September there were probably 10 times more Obama buttons than there were McCain,” Park explains. “That’s not necessarily because Obama was winning but because candidates outside the mainstream tend to have many more buttons. McGovern had flowers, rainbows, and little birds—images that are not corporate. The same was true with Reagan, and it’s the same with Obama. Win, lose, or draw in the election, Obama already has won the button race. It’s a great year for collectors.”
Park says he sells items occasionally, but not professionally. He recently sold one of two rare Bill Clinton buttons he owned for more than $700.
His most valuable item is a George Washington inaugural medal. “The first celluloid buttons were made in 1896,” he says. “Before that it was medals.”
But he doesn’t collect for the money. “Most buttons won’t be worth more than about $3 because they made so many of them,” he says, citing the easy-to-find “I like Ike” pins. “You aren’t going to get rich in buttons.”
— Erin Johansen’91
Helping Them Find Better Lives
Laura Martinez'92
Laura Martinez’92 may be small in physical stature, but she is having a big impact on the city where she lives. Her work as a community outreach advocate places her daily on the frontlines of the fight against domestic violence in Racine, Wis. She is employed by UNIDOS Against Domestic Violence, a resource for the Latino communities in Racine and nearby Kenosha.
| Jeff Woods |
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Martinez says the need for intervention is huge because immigrants living in violent situations often feel isolated, trapped, and desperate. The majority of her clients are women with young children who are referred by social workers, law enforcement agencies, day care providers, and community churches.
“A lot of Latino women don’t have resources that the mainstream culture has,” she says. “There are language barriers and immigration issues, and many remain in abusive situations because they are afraid and don’t know there are people who want to help.”
Building trust with survivors of domestic violence is critical and it takes time. “When I first interview a victim, she will never tell me everything,” Martinez explains. “By the second visit, sometimes she will start displaying more. As we keep meeting, I learn more and more. I say, ‘We just want to assess your situation and see where you can go from here.’”
Martinez also helps clients find safe places to live and solicits donated furnishings, food, and household supplies. Since many Latinos do not have access to medical and psychological care, she seeks referrals to low-cost clinics. She frequently accompanies clients to court when they petition for protective orders and offers orientations on how to apply for special visas. “As victims, they can file for different immigration remedies,” she says.
More than anything, Martinez strives to help clients develop confidence and a sense of autonomy. “I try to give women the tools to do it themselves,” she says. “It takes a while, because they have been in abusive situations so long that they don’t think they have the power to do anything. When I see the women become empowered and independent, when they don’t call me anymore, then I know they are fine.”
Martinez has faced considerable challenges herself. Growing up in Nicaragua, she witnessed the horrors of war and survived a devastating earthquake. She arrived in Beloit in 1989, speaking little English but determined to succeed. She majored in international relations and received much-needed support from faculty mentors, including Roc Ordman, in the chemistry department, and Bob Hodge, of the history department.
Looking back, Martinez believes her years at Beloit College were transformative.
“My whole world changed,” she admits, recalling an anthropology class and friendships with other students as particularly influential. “I learned to accept people for who they are, not for the exterior of what they are. Beloit’s environment helped me so much to become the person I am now.”
Earlier this year, Martinez received the Lynn Copen Memorial Advocate of the Year Award from the Wisconsin Sheriffs & Deputy Sheriffs Association. She appreciates the recognition but says that her work is driven by a desire to help others and a sense that greater rewards come from small, seemingly ordinary achievements.
“I love what I do,” she says. “It is hard to listen to horrible stories every day, but I think, ‘this is my mission to help this person, to empower this person, so that she can move on and have a better life.’”
— N. Marie Dries’92
Editor’s Note: The day before this magazine went to press, we learned that UNIDOS Against Domestic Violence lost its funding and would close its doors. Laura Martinez’92 will join the Head Start organization based in Kenosha. She may be reached at martlola@hotmail.com.
In Memoriam:
Remembering John Wyatt
At Beloit College’s baccalaureate service at Eaton Chapel on May 11, 1991, the first day Linda and I were in Beloit, the speaker, John Wyatt, arrived late. Slightly disheveled, he dashed down the center aisle, leapt onto the stage, and gave an address we will never forget.
| Chuck Savage'76 |
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He said, “They will tell you college is not the real world. They will tell you the real world is where important things happen. What they call the real world is where you worry about your mortgage and car payments. College is where you think about truth, justice, and beauty; the life of the mind. I tell you that is the real world; that is where important things happen.” That day, John touched our lives for the first time, just as he had touched the lives of so many students.
One afternoon, a year or two later, my oldest son was sitting on the front steps of Chapin House (the President’s House) when John Wyatt walked by. John had never met Chris, but he stopped and said to him, “I know what you need.” Chris said, “What?” John said, “To learn Greek.” Chris said, “OK,” and weekly Greek lessons with John began, followed by reading the Russian classics with John and learning Russian with professor Olga Ogurtsova, arranged by John. This led, to make a long story short, to Chris moving to Moscow and becoming a translator for a Russian English-language news service. John changed Chris’ life.
John and Chantal were private people. You rarely found them at big parties or social gatherings. Many at Beloit had never met Chantal. But eating Sunday supper with Linda and me at the kitchen counter in Chapin House, they were the brightest, most vivacious, engaging companions imaginable.
Linda and I bought John and Chantal’s farm in Spring Valley, 20 miles from the College, where they had raised and home-schooled their three children. We bought the farm at auction, which two of the Wyatt children attended to support us. They didn’t want the hunters who were bidding against us to get the farm. Chantal gave us French curtain material she had been saving. We got to know John in a different way through the stories told at Sather’s filling station in nearby Orfordville about “that fellow with all the books in the back seat of his car.”
When I retired, instead of going back East, we stayed on at Spring Valley Farm, which we had come to love. John changed our lives, too.
John was a writer and a scholar, but above all, he was a teacher—a magnificent, inspiring teacher. He taught undergraduates at Beloit, graduate students at the University of Chicago, scholars at Taliesin, and dying AIDS victims in a Los Angeles clinic. With the support of Beloit’s eighth president, Roger Hull, he and Betty Tardola created a program to teach Latin—Latin!—to disadvantaged fifth graders. He believed nothing is more important than helping children flourish and grow in the lives of their minds.
John was not interested in, and not much good at, committee work and other administrative tasks. He was such an extraordinary and creative teacher, however, it seemed to me—although not to everyone—that this limitation should be forgiven. Great teaching, after all, is what a great liberal arts college is all about.
Linda and I miss John Wyatt although, truth be told, we sometimes are sure we see him rummaging through the library at Spring Valley Farm, looking for the volume of Chekhov plays he misplaced.
John Wyatt, one of Beloit’s most influential and beloved teachers, taught classics from 1970 to 1996. He died on June 27, 2008. Victor E. Ferrall, Jr. served as Beloit College’s ninth president from 1991 to 2000.
