USD Magazine, Winter 1998

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1975 CLASS CHAIR Dennis Blair

CLASS CORRESPONDENT William Uberti 15660 Southwest 123rd Avenue Miami, FL 33177

19'7& CLASS CHAIRS Randy Klotz Maureen Phalen

UNDERGRADUATE ALUMNI Sharon (Schaaf) Jacques (M.S.N. '88) is a nurse practitioner with the South Bay Union School District in Imperial Beach, Calif. Sharon provides health services to 1,300 regu– lar and special education students. She writes: "I'm parenting my two teen daughters, happily married to Ken and counting my multitude of blessings." GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE ALUMNI Albert DeLeon (J.D.) is vice president, general counsel and secretary of the New York City branch office of Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken. He and his wife, Lauren, live in Brooklyn.... Peter Fagan (J.D.; LL.M. '88) is the commanding officer of the Naval Legal Service Office, Southwest, based in San Diego. He was counsel to the secretary of the Navy for six years in Washington, D .C.

JAR McMillan '81

THE POWER OF POETRY

J oan McMillan '81 started writing poetry when she was in college, but she isn't sure when she believed she was good enough to call herself a poet. She is sure, however, why she is a poet. "Poetry is at the center of my life," says the 38-ye~old mother of four, who lives in Felton, Calif., near Santa Cruz. "To bring a poem into existence is an astonish– ing process to me. It never gets old." McMillan brought her first poem into existence while she was a student at USO. Today she is the author of more than 70 published poems - including an upcoming contribution to Poetry magazine, one of the most prestigious poetry periodicals in the world - but McMillan remembers her first work as fondly as any of the others. "A friend of mine broke up with her boyfriend, and of course when you're in col– lege you think that it's the end of the world," she laughingly remembers. "I wrote a poem for her, telling her she was going to survive, and put it on the message board that hung on her door. She said it really helped her." Since that time, McMillan has pos– sessed an unswerving belief in the power of poetry. After leaving USO, she worked as a teacher's aide with severely disturbed stu– dents and found that writing was an effec– tive form of therapy. When she moved on to a job teaching poetry at schools in the Santa Cruz area, McMillan embraced the philosophy that everyone has a poet inside them.

"Part of my job was helping the stu– dents understand how to write, and intro– ducing images for them to write about," McMillan says. "But the crucial element was showing them that poetry was not so far removed from their lives as they thought." McMillan's poetry is tied intimately to her own life experiences. Her parents, her children, even her garden are inspirations for poems. Poetry also has been a key ally in McMillan's battle with lupus, a connective tissue disease that eventually forced her to leave teaching. "Poetry is my anchor,'' says McMillan, who is looking for a publisher for her recently completed book of poems grouped around themes such as childbirth, her family and her illness. "It keeps me together, and it helps me notice all the wonderful little details in our world." Those little details often make for the best poems. "Morning Glory,'' the submis– sion accepted by Poetry, is about a flower that unexpectedly bloomed in McMillan's garden one fall morning when she was very weak and sick from lupus.The poem is McMillan's tribute to the affirmation of life she felt through that one flower. It's the same affirmation she feels every time she writes a poem. "My love for poetry deepens with every poem I write,'' she says. "I feel like this is what I was born to do."

19'7'7 CLASS CHAIR Sam Dove

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Michael Aeling 48 Darlene Street St. Paul, MN 55119-4908

GRADUATE AND LAW SCHOOL ALUMNI Sharon Lawson (M.Ed.) and her husband, Jim, live in Corpus Christi, Texas. She writes: "I've changed from a couch potato to a sports enthu– siast. I love tennis and Tae Kwon Do."

19'7& [E] 20-Year Reunion Celebration Fall 1998

CLASS CHAIR Stephen L. Plourd

UNDERGRADUATE ALUMNI Jamas Kersay is a senior engineer at Northrop– Grumman in Pico Rivera, Calif. He is pursu– ing a master's degree in software engineering. ... Tony Lennon moved from Southern Califor– nia to Michigan in April to manage real estate

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