
Member News
(items posted in order of receipt with most recent news
first)
Bill Reese (T-8) has finally
retired after 18 years in Munich with Radio Free Europe, and 15 years with
Picker's Supply Music in Fredericksburg, and is devoting his time to
playing Bouzouki and Pibgorn with the Welsh-American Band, Moch Pryderi.
Their website:
http://www.mochpryderi.com
Robert Finn (T-15)
On May 12,
2011, for the first time, AFOT joined with The American Turkish Society in
New York for a program: "Going Back Home: The Turks in Central Asia"
presented by Prof. Robert Finn. The lecture, which was preceded by a
reception honoring Prof. Finn, highlighted the cultural and economic ties
between Turkey and the Turkic-speaking people of Central Asia. Amb. Finn had
been a Peace Corps volunteer and a Fulbright grantee in Turkey and served
there three times as a Foreign Service Officer. Later he was
Ambassador to Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Chargé d'Affaires in Azerbaijan.
Priscilla Murray (T-15) and
husband Curtis Runnels (Professor of Archaeology at Boston University) and a
team of Greek and American archaeologists have found, for the first time on
Crete, artifacts attributable to the Early Paleolithic period. The artifact
assemblage consists of hand axes, scrapers, cleavers, and other stone tools
dated by their geological context to at least 130,000 years old. They
resemble African Acheulean artifacts and suggest that hominins, early
ancestors of modern humans, reached Europe from Africa by sea via the Greek
islands. Until this discovery, scholars thought that Homo sapiens were the
only ones capable of seafaring (beginning about 16,000 years ago) and that
earlier hominin migrations were, therefore, by land through the Near East.
(reported Feb. 2010)

Priscilla is holding a
quartz cleaver
Jack Boatright (T-9)
joined Peace Corps again! He and his wife, Ina, became Peace
Corps volunteers in Morocco beginning Sept. 6th, 2009. They are both
be working in Small Enterprise Development.
Chet Dowell (T-8)
is a wildlife photographer: His works to be found at
www.jubiar.com/chetdowell/about/
He has some really nice photographs for sale.
John Clark (T-4)
has been involved in various education projects in
Kyrgyzstan. He helped
the American
University in Central Asia get going in 1995-2000. After that he worked as
Dean of Students at KIMEP in Almaty (2000-01) then was advisor to the
Minister of Education in Kyrgyzstan (2001-2). Then he
was back at KIMEP as a professor (2003-7) & now is working as part of a
project to establish a university level program in Tokmok, a small town 60 km.
east of Bishkek. So far they have two programs (Business & English) and are
planning to open three more. There are about 50 freshmen in it's first year
of operation and they hope to grow. John is teaching history and English and doing
a lot of administrative cooking and bottlewashing.
[Feb 2009]
Robert P Finn (T-15),
who was Ambassador to Tajikistan and Afghanistan, is
now teaching international relations and Turkish literature at Princeton
University. His translation of Nazli Eray's Orpheus was published by
the University of Texas Press.
Jordan Scepanski (T-4) has joined the Board of the
Bridge to Turkiye Fund (June 1,
2007), which supports children's education in rural Turkey.
Sarah Parker (T-4) has been appointed by Governor Mike Easley to become
the chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. For more
information about Justice Parker, see
http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/390061.html
Dale Dapkins (T-16) had his first one man museum show of paintings at
the Key West Museum of Art and History. His paintings can be viewed at
http://web.mac.com/asnewman.
Todd Boressoff
(T-10) Report on his return trip to Turkey 2005.
Gordon Taylor (T-8)
has a new book out:
Fever and Thirst: Dr. Grant and the
Christian Tribes of Kurdistan.
Elaine Jones (T-8) awarded The American
Lawyer's Lifetime Achievement Awards. That
story and more on Elaine Jones.
Douglas Huff (T-16), playwright and
professor of philosophy at Gustavus Adolphus College, had his play,
Emil’s Enemies (based on the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer) produced
off-Broadway by Theatre M in 2001. Future productions scheduled for the
play include Santa Fe, NM, and Bangalore, India in 2003.
(Posted 11/02)
Ambassador Faruk Loğoğlu, Turkey’s Ambassador to the US, was an
instructor at some of our Peace Corps training sites in the 1960s.
Submit your news to share with
other Arkadaslar members.