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The Class of 2007
This summer, ten alumni begin three-year terms on CAA's Board of Directors
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William Beeson '56 grew up in Pasadena and came to Cal to play football under coach Pappy Waldorf, who he remembers walking up and down the line chomping on an unlit cigar, issuing words of encouragement to his players. Beeson majored in industrial engineering, studying postwar concepts of workflows and procedures, including a then-new idea--the case study--and says, "I loved being there." He met his wife Carol '58 at Cal and joined the Army after graduation, serving NATO as part of the 10th Mountain Division, a unit now serving in Afghanistan. Returning to southern California, Beeson worked in aerospace, ultimately coordinating the project plan for the first soft landing on the moon in 1967. Later, he and a friend started Fotomat, whose popular kiosks once allowed people to drop off their film and get prints back the next day. He became active again as an alumnus after being asked to help select scholarship winners about ten years ago--"a real upper," he calls it--and eventually served in various posts in his North San Diego County alumni club. He hopes to bring what he's learned to the board in order to help create "an energetic dynamic" to strengthen the club structure.
Andrea Campos '75 grew up in Pittsburg. Her Sicilian grandfather was one of the founders of Fisherman's Wharf, where the family had a fish market, and then a restaurant that is now a souvenir shop. The Cal Band is also a family tradition: following in the footsteps of her father, Del Lanzafame '41, her brother Chris '76 was drum major; her son Phil and two nephews are joining this fall. She considered majoring in Italian, but chose economics as a more practical alternative. Outside of class, "What didn't I do?" she laughs. She was a pom-pon girl, pledged with Kappa Alpha Theta, and served in the ASUC and at the Lair. During the 1976 bicentennial year, she was an intern in Washington, D.C. Some years later she worked at the Haas School of Business, eventually as its development director, and now serves in the same capacity for St. Mary's College. As president of the Contra Costa alumni club, she helped raise funds for scholarships, which she believes should continue to be an important focus for CAA, especially against the background of state cuts and rising tuitions.
Pam Chun '70 grew up in Hawaii and won full scholarships, first to the University of Hawaii, then to Berkeley, where she majored in English. Arriving during an era of protests, she preferred morning classes, when the smell of tear gas was weaker. She always wanted to write, perhaps children's books, but says, "If I wanted to stay on the mainland, I had to work." A job in sales and marketing at PacBell led to a run as a private consultant in high tech and biotech at a time when those industries were taking off. Looking for something lower key after her first child was born, she responded to a vice chancellor's appeal to help with fundraising in the Chinese community; he'd remembered her success as president of CAA's Chinese Chapter. During one fundraising trip to Hawaii, a senator there mentioned that her great-grandfather had founded Honolulu's Chinatown and owned the largest retail business on the islands. Her family had never spoken of him (he'd been involved in some scandals in the 1920s), and she was intrigued. The result was her book, The Money Dragon, which became a bestseller in Hawaii. Meanwhile, she has remained active in her alumni club, and says it's her time to serve.
Linda Dempsay '60 remembers sitting in the Alumni House lobby as a child while her father, former Cal football player and CAA employee Floyd Blower '36, attended the Association's meetings. She practically grew up on campus, she says, and knew the faculty, the athletic people, and the staff long before she attended the University herself as a physical education major. Active in Torch and Shield and the Prytanean Society, among other groups, Dempsay was also a formidable field hockey and volleyball player. She moved to Irvine in 1965 to help with the family paper-distribution business at a time when there were few streets in Orange County. Later, she was hired to teach at the new university there and, in the late '70s, became athletic director, the first woman to hold that position at a Division I school. In 1997, Dempsay was inducted into the UC Irvine Athletic Hall of Fame. A Lair camper since the 1950s, she never forgot her alma mater and believes it is now time to give back. "I want to come and learn," she says, noting that she brings useful experience of the challenges facing southern California clubs. "Besides," she laughs, "The board needs old people."
Jim French '69, Boalt '72 was born in the Bay Area--to a father who graduated from Cal in 1940 and a mother who attended a few years as a physical education major--but grew up around the lumber mills of northern California. After graduating from high school in Garberville, he says, he "arrived during the Vietnam riots, survived the Ronald Reagan riots, and graduated during the Cambodian riots." With his conservative background, he was mostly an observer, focused on his studies and the Cal Band, where he played trumpet and served as drum major. At Boalt Hall--"a wonderful school with very bright people"--he listened to vigorous classroom debates between radical antiwar protesters and Vietnam veterans but, because "we had the law professors as our common enemy, camaraderie prevailed." He's long worked for a small law firm focused on commercial banking and general business clients, and is now a managing partner. He feels strongly about working to expand the Association's size. "Members are key to everything--money, political influence, and extending the University experience to others," he says.
Born in Scotland, Garry Parton '86 grew up in Saratoga. At Cal, he majored in chemistry, but apparently art was always in his heart. After working in the pharmaceutical industry in New Jersey, he moved to investment banking covering that industry, then had what he calls an "early midlife crisis." He left Wall Street and joined Paul Epstein, the founder of Lawyers for the Arts, in a company that creates project ideas for arts clients such as Balanchine heir Susan Farrell. Parton has long been involved in building alumni chapters, first in Atlanta and now in the New York area, where there are about a thousand members. "We have very active, forward-thinking alums," he says, and believes some of the distant chapters' experiences should be better integrated into the board's work. From New York, he says he "cringes" at decis ions the State of California is making: "They don't seem to understand the role this University's had in the history of the state." He hopes to help CAA do its part to turn the tide toward greater public support.
Jason Sherr '92 says his San Diego high school had few minorities, so Berkeley, which he chose because it was such a "great institution," was definitely a change. His Cal years coincided with local tragedies--the 1989 earthquake, the hostage crisis at Henry's, and then the Oakland Hills fire--but he insists his overall experience was good. An athlete and sports enthusiast, he attended as many football games as possible and continues to do so now. He remembers 1991 as particularly great for the Golden Bears. "And now we're back!" he enthuses. Currently an investment banker with Smith Barney, he arrived there through the unlikely route of majoring in architecture, where he learned organizational skills and how to meet project deadlines and defend his designs. Active in Kappa Delta Rho fraternity and other campus organizations, he continued his involvement after graduation through the Young Alumni Council and as president of the Orange County alumni club. He's been a part of CAA's strategic planning committee and says, "Job One is completing that." He'd also like to devote attention to improving the volunteer database.
Melissa Holmes Snyder '75 was born and raised in San Francisco and has been going to the Big Game since she was 12. Early on, she says, it was memories of ritual and pageantry, but once she arrived as a student, "I was awed by the breadth and impact of the University." An art major, she earned a master's degree in landscape architecture at Harvard, then taught the history of landscape architecture and design at UC Irvine, which "brought in art and everything I'd done." While teaching, she also took a position with the Irvine Company, which was creating master plans for whole new cities in Orange County. Later, with her own firm, she planned Hercules, the largest conversion in the state of what was once a contaminated site. Outside of work, she and her husband Tim '70 are regulars at the Lair, and she stays in touch with friends from Tri Delta sorority, "a phenomenal group of women who are making their degrees mean something." She's devoted to CAA's scholarship programs and to reaching out to new students who then give back later themselves, what she calls: "that 'circle of life' thing."
Charlotte Sproul '71, M.A. '74, met her husband, the grandson of Chancellor Robert Gordon Sproul, on a blind date to see Albert King at the Fillmore in San Francisco in 1969. The younger Sproul convinced her to transfer to Cal from UCSB, where she'd gone after leaving West Virginia, one of the many states where her father, a Kaiser engineer, had moved the family. On campus, she says her husband Robert '69 always reminded people he was related to "the man, not the building"--a man she says it was an honor to know. At Cal, she was a French major, a field she chose after spending a year in France. Her travels served her well. As a professional travel consultant, she arranges custom-designed trips to Europe, Hawaii, and Mexico. A few years ago, she hosted a Bear Trek to Switzerland, and hopes to assist that CAA program as a board member. Sproul believes it's a particularly fun and challenging time to join the board because the Association and the University are working to better coordinate their programs, as she believes they should.
Julie Tran '00 was born in Kansas, one stop on the trail of her parents' immigration from Vietnam. Her father had been a doctor for the South Vietnamese army, and the family fled the country on a fishing boat during the last days of the war. It took seven more years to get her sister out; she also has a younger brother, now at Cal. Raised in Downey, Tran became active in Republican politics in high school and worked as an intern for a GOP congressional candidate. She was lured by Berkeley's strong political environment and, as a student, joined conservative causes opposing abortion and affirmative action. "But Cal changed me," she says. "It opened my eyes about social issues like the environment and giving the underrepresented a better chance. Now I'm a Democrat." Her extensive list of campus activities included the Vietnam Student Association and Prytanean. Tran joined a management program at SBC after graduation that allows her to move rapidly among its divisions. "I've had five jobs in four years," she says. "I love it." At CAA, she'll focus on increasing scholarships and hopes to put her political connections to use on behalf of Cal in Sacramento.
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September 2004
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