Auburn Magazine Spring 2004

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17Auburn Magazine For Alumni & Friends of Auburn University

Jim Kennedy is selling space. It’s just before lunchtime on a dreary, unseasonably cold

spring day, but inside Atlanta’s Ralph J. Bunche Middle School, recently named one of the country’s 50 NASA Explorer educational partners, the mood is considerably brighter. Kennedy, director of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) since June 2003, and his traveling space road show have hit the place like a speeding hovercraft—an item, incidentally, they just happen to have brought with them. Rounding out the entourage are an astronaut and several other agency administrators.

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Kennedy and his traveling party were up before dawn for the fl ight to Atlanta, but if his enthusiasm is dimmed by

his daunting schedule, he doesn’t show it. None of the kids seems more excited about the hubbub than Kennedy himself, who makes a brief speech, notes KSC is named after a different

Kennedy, then sits back on the front row with a wide grin, “oohing” and “aahing” with the rest of the audience at several space-related fi lms and a demonstration on how to make a hovercraft of your very own. The show concludes

with a testimonial from another NASA administrator who just happens to be a Bunche alumnus himself, and, as the kids leave the room, you can see it in their eyes—they’re sold.

Later, on a tour of the facilities, Kennedy’s enthusiasm doesn’t wane. In the school’s new NASA Explorer Center, he pokes his head into a plastic bin festooned with duct tape and fi lled with fl oating plants—a hydroponics experiment, like on the International Space Sta-

tion—then beelines off into classrooms to visit with teachers and students. His minders keep glancing at their watches—they’re already way behind schedule—but Kennedy seems not to notice. He’s having too much fun. After lunch and an interview, his anxious PR chief leads him

reluctantly away for the fl ight back to Florida, but not without more handshakes and long goodbyes with teachers and administrators on the way out.

For this day, at least, the shadow of the Columbia tragedy and the budgetary and technical challenges NASA is wrestling with as it tries to return the shuttle to fl ight and defi ne its future mission as an agency seem far, far away. Today, space is good.

Jim Kennedy has come full circle. He grew up with NASA and KSC in his backyard, in nearby Cocoa Beach. But he wasn’t particu-larly inspired by the whole space scene.

“I wasn’t really a stellar student in high school,” he recalls. “I’m not sure exactly why, but I had always wanted to go to Auburn. But when I applied, I didn’t have the grades. That hurt like the devil, and maybe settled me down a little bit. So I went to the University of South

Florida for two years and became a co-op student working close to home at KSC. My dad was an engineer and I had always liked machinery, so going into mechanical engineering was kind of a given for me.”

When an opportunity arose to transfer to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Kennedy took it, fi guring it would give him another crack at attending Auburn. Even after his two years at USF, he was still a

self-described “middle-of-the-pack” student, married by now and juggling a co-op job with night work to save money for school. But on his second try, he was accepted. And so began

the transformation that set him on the path back home.

Kennedy will do

just about anything it takes to get others

to share his passion for space and

NASA.

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“When I got to Auburn in 1970, aca-demics were still not at the forefront of my radar screen,” Kennedy says. “But on my fi rst day, I had a strength of materials class with Professor Winford Swinson, and I was never the same. He inspired me like nothing else I had ever seen before…in that fi rst class on my very fi rst day.

“It was almost like an out-of-body experience,” he adds, smiling at the memory. “After one hour with this guy, I was a different person. I had two hours before my next class and I rushed home to study the material we had covered. If you had known the former Jim Kennedy, you would have known that was totally inconsistent with my usual behavior.”

Suddenly launched, Kennedy’s new-found enthusiasm for learning spread to his other classes. He became an out-standing student, despite working days in the mechanical engineering lab, serving as Swinson’s assistant on consulting jobs, and slinging hash nights and weekends at a greasy spoon called Omega Burger.

Kennedy also continued to co-op at Marshall, which was humming with activity due to the ongoing Apollo pro-gram, which had put the fi rst men on the moon in July 1969. In Huntsville, he had the priceless opportunity to work for men who were the very foundations of the nation’s space program—Wer-nher Von Braun and his Peenemunde group—Germans who brought their

research on V-1 and V-2 missiles to America after World War II and helped the U.S. reach for the moon.

After graduating in 1972, however, Kennedy’s career path took another direction. He spent the next fi ve years in the Air Force, but interviewed and was offered a job back at Marshall after his discharge in 1977. But the fi ve years that had passed had not been kind to the space program. The heady days of Apollo had come to an end ahead of schedule and the nation was in a post-Vietnam funk. Kennedy had already accepted the job when Marshall called to retract the offer—President Jimmy Carter had frozen NASA hiring until further notice. “We’ll stay in touch,” was all Marshall could promise.

Instead, Kennedy landed a job at Emerson Electric in Statesboro, Ga., where he had earned an MBA at Georgia Southern University while still in the Air Force. There, he hap-pily went to work as a design engineer with the company’s instrument division, “making fl ow meters and things like that.” Marshall called several months later, but Kennedy turned down the offer this time, feeling he hadn’t been on his new job long enough and owed loy-alty to Emerson.

Three years later, Marshall called again, this time offering a job in the new Shuttle Pro-duction Management Planning Offi ce. Apollo’s replacement as NASA’s sexiest project, the shuttle program was just shifting into high gear in 1980. Kennedy was still reluctant to leave Emerson, but a visit back to Marshall left him “blown away” and the chance to work on the new shuttle proved too tempting to pass up.

“My very fi rst assignment was to look at the logistics of going from a projected 60 shuttle fl ights a year to 100,” he says, shaking his head. “Early on, I remember my boss driving me past a long, three-story building they were planning on using to refurbish the solid rocket boosters (SRB)—the reusable rockets that drop off the shuttle after launch and parachute into the ocean. The thinking was all we would have to do was run them through something like a carwash, stack them, and send them back to KSC for the next launch.

“The shuttle hadn’t fl own then, and we were terribly naïve about all the complexities involved,” he adds. “As we’ve since found, preparing the shuttle for fl ight is a very complex, labor-intensive, and deliberate process.”

At Marshall, Kennedy’s NASA career took fl ight along with the shuttle program. He

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served in a succession of increasingly higher profi le jobs, including resources manager for the SRB and space shuttle main engines (SSME) programs, and SSME division chief. After a six-month detour when he left NASA for a position at Lockheed Huntsville, Kennedy returned to Marshall and was soon promoted to deputy SRB project manager.

“Money’s not that important to me,” Kennedy says of his short stint at Lock-heed, “but I let it talk to me the day Lock-heed offered that job. I went in to tell the Marshall director I was leaving and he was shocked. This was not long after the Challenger tragedy, and he was concerned I might be the leading edge of a whole de-parting group. At Lockheed, I was unhap-py from the start. I really missed the pas-sion for what we do that is part of NASA. But Marshall left the door open if I wanted to return, and I’m glad they did.”

Kennedy went on to work as project manager for the concept fl ight vehicle called Delta Clipper Experimental, then, shortly before its (unmanned) crash—“my timing was pretty good,” he chuckles—he became manager of another experimental vehicle, the X-34. A year later, he returned to Kennedy for the fi rst time since his co-op days as the Marshall representative to KSC, a job that provided

the opportunity to get to know and work with many of the key players at the Cape. Then, it was back to Marshall as SRB project manager, then director of science and engineering, and, fi nally, to deputy center director. It was in that role he went to welcome NASA Ad-ministrator Sean O’Keefe to Marshall in early 2002.

“It was the deputy director’s job to welcome VIPs when they visited the center,” Ken-nedy says, “so I was standing at the foot of the jetway and Sean walked off and said he had an idea he wanted to chat with me about. And the idea was, would I be willing to move to KSC as deputy director?

“Sean felt agency administrators were too linked to one center…he wanted to increase the mobility of upper level managers between the different NASA facilities.”

Kennedy returned to his NASA roots at KSC soon thereafter, and in June 2003 was named Center director, charged with overseeing all aspects of NASA’s pri-mary vehicle launch facility. In doing so, he became the third Auburn alumnus—along with Richard G. Smith ’51 and Forrest S. McCartney ’52—among only eight KSC directors to date. And he took the helm at one of the most critical junctures in the agency’s history, as NASA struggles to cope with returning the space shuttle to fl ight in the wake of the Columbia disaster, assess and improve its management culture, and respond to Presi-dent George W. Bush’s “Vision for Space Exploration,” which calls for completing the In-ternational Space Station, returning to the moon, and eventually putting men on Mars.

O’Keefe, for one, is confi dent Kennedy is up to the task. “Jim is the person we need at KSC,” he says. “As we work toward a return to safe fl ight, it’s reassuring to have an experi-enced and dedicated leader at the KSC helm. Jim is a distinguished engineer whose experi-ence and leadership abilities, coupled with our dedicated NASA and contractor work force at Kennedy, will safely return our space shuttles to fl ight.

“I’m confi dent that, under his guidance, the Center will meet and exceed the objectives facing us as we continue to move forward to execute the Vision for Space Exploration.”

Kennedy’s colleagues from Marshall couldn’t agree more. Associate Director Axel Roth ’59 can’t resist noting his friend is “a cheapskate…he always looks at the prices to decide what he wants for lunch. But I just love Jim. He’s never met a stranger and is truly a friend to everyone he meets. He is also a great representative of NASA and Auburn and he will bring a lot of new qualities to KSC as the director.”

“Jim is really one of the most people-oriented managers I’ve ever been around,” agrees former astronaut Jan Davis ’77, a shuttle veteran who now is director of safety and mission assurance at Marshall. “We’ve stayed in touch through the years, and he was very support-

Far left:Maintaining relationships is a big part of the work at KSC. Left: Ken-nedy, left, with NASA Administra-tor Sean O'Keefe.

Inspecting shuttle preparations at KSC.

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ive and a mentor for me during my time in Houston in the astronaut program. His people skills will go a long way toward helping him implement the recommendations of the Co-lumbia Accident Investigation Board [CAIB] and return the shuttle to fl ight. He really is the right person at the right time for that job.”

True to form, Kennedy has hit the ground running. Overseeing the complex ties be-tween NASA and the many private contractors providing most of the manpower for the center’s daily operations is a huge task. These companies provide much of the 12,000-strong KSC workforce for everything from prepping the shuttles for fl ight to launch oper-ations, and include such major aerospace players as Boeing, Lockheed, and United Space Alliance (USA). In addition, NASA shares its Cape Canaveral home and launch facilities with the Air Force, so minding relationships takes a big bite of the director’s time.

But in the wake of Columbia, new priorities have been added. Foremost among these is the painstaking, highly scrutinized preparation of NASA’s remaining shuttles—Atlantis, Discovery, and Endeavour—for a tentatively scheduled March 2005 return to fl ight. A mammoth job even in normal times, this task has been complicated by the extraordinary efforts NASA is making to ensure the shuttles are safe. This has included removing and inspecting all parts of each shuttle’s leading wing edges, the point where the impact of a relatively small piece of foam from the main fuel tank made a fatal puncture which re-sulted in Columbia’s destruction upon re-entry. It has also meant implementing numerous recommendations made by the CAIB, formed in the wake of the tragedy to investigate the accident’s causes and suggest improvements.

Such improvements don’t come cheap, and Congress is already balking at NASA’s request for an additional $866 million in 2005 to cover extra shuttle-related costs and implement the initial steps of the Vision. But Kennedy says it would be money well spent.

“Nothing will rebuild confi dence in the shuttles like success,” he argues. “We have to get back to fl ying. Literally thousands of people have sorted through the debris and data from Columbia’s last two missions to make sure we don’t miss anything which might have contributed to the problem.

“It’s a big job returning the shuttles to fl ight,” he adds, “but what’s important to me is we’re not schedule driven. That’s not just cheap management talk. I think our people would tell you they don’t feel obligated to say we’re ready to fl y before we really are.”

Another, more diffi cult part of the CAIB report to respond to is its conclusion that the NASA management culture itself contributed to the disaster.

“They had a recommendation that it was not just a hardware failure,” Kennedy ex-plains, “but a failure of the NASA culture to create an environment where someone could have spoken up and maybe solved the problem before it became a tragedy. That led to the hiring of a new contractor, Behavioral Science Technology [BST], whose specialty is help-ing large organizations assess culture and determine what ought to be preserved and what needs to be changed. We’re in the middle of that right now.”

In fact, BST has already noted NASA’s optimistic “can do” culture served to stifl e dis-sent and make individuals hesitant to point out potential problems. But the company also identifi ed that same spirit as one of the agency’s greatest assets.

“The most powerful fi rst impression was how much strength there is in NASA culture,” says BST head C. Patrick Smith. “It’s in the DNA of people who work at NASA—no task is too big, no task is too challenging. We can use that to actually fuel the change process.”

Fueling that change at KSC will also challenge Kennedy’s legendary people skills. And once the shuttle is fl ying again and the culture changes have been addressed, KSC and Kennedy will be at the forefront of NASA’s efforts toward meeting the objectives out-

lined in the Vision—the kind of ambitious, far-reaching national goals for space which haven’t been seen since the Apollo program.

Despite the considerable challenges, and the potential pitfalls, Kennedy can hardly wait.

“Space has recaptured America’s imagina-tion,” he asserts. “There have already been nine billion hits on the NASA website this year, most due to the Mars rovers. You can see it in the eyes of the kids we talked to today. I think we see it in the eyes of our employees.

“It’s high time we rallied around something like the human exploration of space,” he adds, warming to his subject. “Whether it’s explor-ing the continent from coast to coast or fi nd-ing our way to the moon and beyond, we are and have always been a nation of explorers and discoverers. That’s what we’re all about.

“And KSC will be in a win-win position because of that,” he concludes. “Whatever option we ultimately choose for travel to the moon and Mars is going to require launch vehicles and payloads. And that’s what we do. We process reusable and expendable launch vehicles and their payloads. All those things will be a big part of the future of space explo-ration.”

And so too, one suspects, will Jim Kennedy.

Like everyone at NASA, Kennedy vows the Columbia tragedy—and the astronauts who perished in it—will never be forgotten.

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TENyears, FORTYissues, TWO HUNDRED THIRTY-SIX letters (not including those carried over to the web

or in the special Jim Fyffe tribute or from

our many Tiger Troops), about 10,000

classnote and obituary entries, almost

2 million individual magazines rolling off presses

with destinations around the globe...

Those 10 years seem like both a blink of an eye

and forever. But here we are—our 10th anniver-

sary issue of Auburn Magazine. Come with us on

a look at then and now, including updates on some

of your (and our) favorite cover subjects.

—by Mary Ellen Hendrix ’84


50


Retired General CARL E. MUNDY, JR. ’57, Summer ’94, Com-mandant of the Marine Corps and member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1991 to 1995 and an active Marine for almost 40 years, didn’t abandon a heavy workload when he had the chance in 1995, instead be-coming president and CEO of the worldwide United Service Organiza-tions (USO) and chair of the Marine Corps University Foundation.

Mundy served the USO for four years and now claims to have slowed down some. He recently told Auburn Magazine, “I made a lifestyle

choice at age 65. At present, I continue to serve as chairman of the MCU Foundation and sit on three boards of directors, but am not otherwise actively involved.

“My wife and I continue our residence near Mount Vernon, Virginia, but spend four months of the summer in our native mountains of Western North Carolina. Our seven grandchildren pop in each year to help us enjoy the mountains.

DON LOGAN ’66, Spring ’94 cover, president and COO of Time Inc. when featured in Auburn Magazine, was quickly promoted to chair-man and CEO of Time Inc. later that year. He was appointed chairman of Time Warner’s Media & Communications Group in 2002, and over-sees America Online, Time Inc., Time Warner Cable, and the Time Warner Book Group. Logan had been lured to New York City from

Birmingham, where he had served as CEO of Southern Progress Corp. In 2001, Logan received the Henry Johnson Fisher Award, the magazine industry’s highest honor. He also has served as the found-ing chairman of Auburn Magazine’s Advisory Board.

“The bottom line is life is good with the Mundys—although I continue to wait for the call to come back to Auburn for the po-sition of assistant to Mary Ellen at Auburn Magazine.”

Generous kidding aside, Mundy has stayed in-volved in his beloved Auburn, assisting in raising funds for the Micheal Spann scholarship fund, cre-ated to honor AU grad Spann ’92, a CIA offi cer who became the fi rst U.S. combat casualty in Afghanistan when he was killed in 2001. Mundy also plans to be back on campus next year to dedicate a monument to the Marine War Dogs of WWII at Auburn’s Veteri-nary College.

Alumni Astronauts T.K. MATTINGLY ’58, HANK HARTSFIELD ’54, KATHRYN THORNTON ’74, JIM VOSS ’72, AND JAN DAVIS ’77, Winter 1995, are all retired from the active astronaut corps. Mattingly has been president of Mexmil Co. in Santa Ana, Calif., while Hartsfi eld—in addi-tion to serving on Auburn’s COSAM Advisory Council—has been vice presi-dent of aerospace engineering services at Raytheon in Houston. Thornton is assistant dean of graduate studies at the University of Virginia in Charlottes-ville. Voss is now busy teaching and fundraising as associate dean of external affairs at Auburn’s Sam Ginn College of Engineering. Davis, a faithful mem-ber of the Alumni Association Board of Directors, is director of Safety and Mission Assurance for NASA at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville.

TThe fi rst issue of Auburn Magazine debuted Spring 1994, replacing the 48-year-old Au-burn Alumnews tabloid, and sporting Time, Inc. leader Don Logan on its cover. In the Spring 1994 issue, new tuition rates of $2,100 per year in-state and $6,300 out-of-state were detailed. While enroll-ment took only deliberate, measured increases from 21,363 in the 1993-94 academic year to 23,152 in the current academic year, tuition continued its steady rise during the last decade. 2003-04 tuition is $4,618 per year in-state and $13,078 out-of-state.

The year 1994 witnessed several items of note, in-cluding: the Alumni Association announced the creation of a new Auburn Parents’ Asso-ciation, Human Sciences’ fi rst Quality of Life Awards were presented, AU won accredita-tion for another 10 years from the Southern Association for Schools and Colleges, the new $12.5 million R. Dennis Rouse Life Sciences Building and $10.5 million James E. Martin Aquatics Center were formally dedicated, and Auburn launched the $175 million Campaign Auburn: The Next Generation.

Also, in that fi rst Auburn Magazine, readers learned of the death of Auburn man Joseph B. Sarver, Jr. ’37, who led the Alumni Asso-ciation for 25 years and helped found the AU Foundation in 1960. 1994 also saw the deaths of Ham Wilson ’43 of Alabama Cattlemen’s fame, Architecture Dean Ray Parker ’69, sec-retary to four Auburn presidents Berta Dunn, aviator Robert Knapp ’17, longtime trustee Red Bamberg ’40, university Photo Services Manager Les King, former AU basketball coach Tommy Joe Eagles, and Kaye Lovvorn ’64, devoted editor of The Auburn Alumnews for 22 years.

The tradition of reader involvement in Auburn Magazine, and The Alumnews before it, has al-ways run strong. Not only have our readers welcomed us into their homes, but our fea-ture subjects have openly welcomed us into their offi ces—and homes and manufacturing plants and libraries and gardens and zoos and schools and onto their ships and airplanes. CEOs, actors, artists, military commanders, archivists, teachers, athletes, journalists, as-tronauts, researchers, horticulturists. Thank you to them all for sharing their time and won-derful stories with Auburn Magazine readers. We were able to catch up with a few of them to provide the curious among you an update on some of the past decade’s 40 cover subjects.

Logan

Mundy, left

Voss

Davis



The work of RAYMOND WAITES ’63, Spring 1996, still president and CEO of Raymond Waites Design, Inc. in New York City, can be seen just about anywhere these days—on wallpapers, tableware, linens, lamps, rugs, furniture, accessories—through more than 10,000 licensed products bearing the Waites name. The founder of the American Country movement in the ’80s, he has since pioneered the design world’s “vintage” age, refl ecting luxurious patterns and colors infl uenced by cultures around the world. In the past year, among his myriad other licensing ventures, he has introduced a “New American Country” collection of wallcoverings and debuted his vintage dinnerware, gifts, and linens as exclusive lines for Stein Mart stores.

A member of Auburn’s Liberal Arts Dean’s Advisory Council, Waites once offered this design advice: “The colors that speak to us travel through life with us. Find the colors you love and you’ll create harmo-nious rooms.” And, chances are, you’ll fi nd a Waites-designed product or two to fi ll those rooms.

NELDA K. LEE ’69, Spring 1995, dubbed “First Lady of the F-15” on the Auburn Magazine cover, was manager of fl ight test engineering for McDonnell Douglas’ F-15 Eagle program in 1995. In April, she celebrated her 35th year with Boeing/McDonnell Douglas, where she is a Level 2 manager of the Tactical Test & Evaluation group supporting the F-15, F/A-18, AV-8, and T-45 programs. A true lover of fl ight, Lee also was inducted this year into the Women in Aviation Pioneers Hall of Fame and honored in 2003 as one of 12 women featured in St. Louis’ celebration of the 100th Anniversary of Flight.

She led Whirly-Girls, Inc. as its international president in the late ’90s and continues to serve on the board of the St. Louis Auburn Club, for which she was president in 1997-98. Henry Holden featured Lee in his 2003 book American Women of Flight: Pilots and Pioneers; Lee has also been the subject of numerous magazine ar-ticles in the last decade.

Always ready with an infec-tious grin and helpful nature, Lee, in addition to being an avid golfer, speaks on avia-tion at schools, entertains at gatherings as a clown, and plays trumpet in the Women in Aviation Jazz Band.

BILL BARRICK ’68, Summer 1995, exec-utive vice president and director of gardens at Callaway Gardens in Pine Mountain, Ga., from 1980 to 1999, left Callaway to become director of Bellingrath Gardens

in Theodore, Ala., just south of Mobile. Southern Living readers have seen him most recently prominently featured in the April 2004 issue.

In the Edwin Marty article, Barrick talked about how he

hesitated to make the move to Bellingrath, but emotional pull and obvious need won out. “Bell-ingrath was the fi rst public garden I visited as a student, so it obviously means a lot to me,” he said in the interview. “I was excited about what could happen here.”

BARBARA BAKER ’82, DVM, Fall 1995, has been president and CEO of Pittsburgh Zoo—now named Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium—since 1990, at the time becom-ing one of the youngest zoo directors in the U.S. at the age of 34. Baker, who spearhead-ed the privatization of the zoo in 1994, has shaped the 77-acre facility into one of only six major zoo and aquarium combinations in the U.S., with naturalistic exhibits home to thousands of animals.

In 1995, when gracing Auburn Magazine’s cover, Baker had just opened Kids Kingdom, the zoo’s popular children’s area. Since then, she has overseen an addition, Discovery Pavilion, within Kids Kingdom; an expansion of the education complex; and the opening in 2000 of the new $17.4 million, 45,000-square-foot aquarium. “Our staff is deeply committed...to improve the exhib-its and the lives of our resident animals every day,” she said.

Journalists CYNTHIA TUCKER ’76, Winter 1996; JIM STEWART ’69, Fall 1999; and ERIC LUDGOOD ’78, Winter 2003; are all still laboring away in the demanding world of media. Tucker has served as editorial page edi-

tor of The Atlanta Constitution since 1991 and this year was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Stewart, a national correspondent for CBS News since 1994, now covers the Justice Depart-ment, Supreme Court, and federal law enforcement. Like Tucker, Stew-art was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard and has been nominated for the Pulitzer. CNN International Vice President Ludgood has joined Tucker

and Stewart on the Auburn Magazine Advisory Board, becoming its newest member. Advisory Board Chair ED DICKINSON ’70, Fall 1997, who retired from his position as publisher of

Progressive Farmer, keeps the road from Lake Martin to Auburn busy between duties on the magazine’s board and as chair of the 4-H Foundation efforts led from campus.

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SLAMAR DURRETT ’63, Summer 1998, retired as president and CEO of Air Canada in 1999, after three years at the helm. “We live in a small ski village called Morin Heights 45 miles north of Montreal,” he told Auburn Magazine re-cently. Durrett enjoys retirement and serves on the board of Nav Canada, the Canadian air traf-fi c control system. “I ski in the winter and play some golf in the summer. We travel to the states about twice a year to visit family and friends, and I always tie in a trip so I can attend the Auburn-Alabama football game.”

JOE LEONARD ’67, Winter 2002, still leads AirTran Airways, now as chairman and CEO. AirTran, which already brags the youngest Boeing fl eet, will add 100 new Boeing 737s to its arsenal beginning this summer, according to Leonard. For the third time, Entrepreneur Magazine recog-nized AirTran Airways as a best low-fare airline in its 2002 business travel awards.

Auburn’s Aerospace Engineering Department presented him with their Outstanding Alumnus Award in March, when Leonard traveled to campus to visit and accept the honor.

DAVID ALSOBROOK ’68, Spring 1998, former director of the Bush Presiden-tial Library (and, before that, supervisory archivist with the Carter Library), was appointed director of the Clinton Presidential Materials Project in 2000 and was to be appointed director of the Clinton Library this spring before moving into the newly constructed library building in Little Rock in July. Formal dedication of the Clinton Presidential Library will be in November.

“I arrived in Little Rock for my new assignment in October 2000,” Alsobrook told Auburn Magazine. “At that time we had a total staff of four National Archives em-ployees, including myself. Our staff has grown to 24, and we expect to add about eight additional employees by November.

“Our staff coordinated the Arkansas end of the transfer of the Clinton records from the White House in 2000-2001. By the time we had completed this mission via eight C-5A military aircraft, we had taken custody of approximately 80 million pages of Presidential records, 79,000 museum artifacts, and 2.5 million photo-graphs (630 tons of material)—the largest collection of Presidential materials in U.S. history.”

Despite Alsobrook’s continuing fame in Presidential Library circles, he doesn’t forget his roots. He still publishes articles on Alabama history in the Alabama Re-view. In 1999 and 2002, he spoke to the Golden Eagles reunion classes. In 2001, he received the Award for Alumni Achievement in the Humanities from Auburn’s College of Liberal Arts.

“In future years when Auburn is playing football in Fayetteville, I want to extend an invitation to our fans to visit the Clinton Library en route to the game. We can have a big pre-game party here in Little Rock before driving up to Fayetteville.”

TIM COOK ’82, Winter 1999, has worked for Apple since 1998 and is executive vice president of worldwide sales and operations, overseeing the entire Apple supply chain, sales, and service in all markets. “Five years ago,” he said, “I was visited by Angela Lowry from Auburn Magazine at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, Cali-fornia. Much has changed since then. My hair is grayer. I need glasses to read. I’ve seen a boom, a bust, and the beginning (hopefully) of another boom.

“Some things did stay the same. I’m still an avid Auburn fan. I still feel that I’m one of the luckiest people in the world to be able to work with some of the most brilliant, creative people on the planet. And I still love cycling.

“I did learn some important life lessons over that fi ve years. The “valley” was full of people here to make a lot of money—fast—and then retire. After the dot com bust, they quickly fl amed out and left. I’ve never fi t that mold. Sure, I want to make some money too. But Auburn and my father taught me years ago to work hard and build something. Perhaps that’s why I’m still here. Perhaps most impor-tantly, I’ve come to realize that the joy really is in the journey. Maybe that realiza-tion is one of the good aspects of having a ‘little’ gray hair.

“I have no idea what the next fi ve years will bring for me. I do know, regardless, I will still love Auburn. I hope that these next fi ve years will bring Auburn to new heights and restore the unparalleled spirit and teamwork that has made all of us feel the way we do every time we hear that fi ght song. War Eagle!”

From the air and seas category:

BILL FRICKS ’66, Spring 1997, former president, CEO, and chairman of Newport News Shipbuilding—now Northrop Grumman Newport News—retired to Florida from the country’s only aircraft carrier builder in 2001, af-ter working at NNS since his graduation from Auburn. In 2003, he was elected to the board of General Dynamics.

Leonard

Alsobrook, second from left, greets Clinton in 2001 at library groundbreaking.

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Bar code technology pioneer HARRY KNOWLES ’51, Winter 2000, at age 75, still oversees Metrologic Instruments in New Jersey as chairman and CEO. The Knowles Sci-ence Teaching Foundation, established in 1999, continues to support top-level science and mathematics teaching. In fact, Knowles, who last year gave more than $15 million to educational purposes, feels that the Knowles Foundation will eventually develop into “one of the country’s most powerful instruments in the generation and reinforcement of quality science teachers.”

He also told Auburn Magazine that what he said in his fi rst interview for the Winter 2000 is-sue is as true now as before. He said then, “I don’t think there’s another person in the whole world as happy as I am.” And: “When I dream, I’m still at Auburn over half the time.”

Actress ASHLEY CROW ’82, Spring 2000, who has acted on sitcoms such as Everybody Loves Raymond, appeared in 2002 with Tom Cruise in Minority Report, and continues to fl ourish in always-competitive Hollywood. She appeared recently on other TV shows including: Dragnet last year, Strong Medicine in 2002, Dark Angel in 2001, and Party of Five in 2000.

Psychologist CAROLYN ZOE CROWDER ’69, Summer 2000, is in her seventh year counseling at Los Ranchitos Elementary in Tucson, Ariz., where she still hopes to get a mentoring

program for her schoolchildren off the ground. She continues to author books on parenting. In addition to her fi rst two books, bestseller Backtalk and Whining, a third book—Eating, Sleeping, and Getting Up—was published in 2002 by Random House.

“I am working on a new book,” Crowder said, “about the ever-increasing use of pyschotropic drugs with children and the better use of effective discipline in-stead....I have become interested recently in two areas of psychotherapy new to me: equine-assisted therapy for emotionally disabled children and attachment/bonding therapy for abused and neglected children. Both of these offer additional options instead of drug-ging kids which is, of course, easier.” She has been chosen as a conference presenter for the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology in New York City in October.

She continues to treasure her time at Auburn. “A group of six to eight alumni of my Auburn days have begun meeting twice a year. The re-connection with these women is so wonderful. There are no friends like old friends and we relive our Auburn experiences with glee.”

JACK MCALEER ’81, Winter 2001, continues as executive vice president of concept development at the Krispy Kreme Doughnuts headquarters in Winston-Salem, N.C. When you get to start every day with a hot glazed, why change

jobs? He also serves as vice chairman of the board of directors for the company, which now makes more than 7.5 million doughnuts a day in 370 stores in 44 states and Canada, Australia, Mexico, and the United Kingdom.

WNBA star RUTHIE BOLTON ’89, Summer 2002, at age 37, is the oldest player on the Sacramento Mon-archs, where she has played since the league started in 1997. Over those seven years, she’s averaged 11 points per game and, in 2003, she scored her 2000th career point. Prior to the beginning of the 2004 season in May, Bolton was only 16 games away from her 200th WNBA game and 376 min-utes from a landmark 5,000 minutes of career playing time.

Bolton, whose gameday routine in-cludes taping Bible verses onto her wrists and shoes, became a recording artist in January, when her single “Making A Way” was released. Bolton was chosen to sing the song, written by Alonzo Morris, when Morris heard her sing at church. “It’s one of those soul-searching songs about going through the troubles and trials of life and how God still makes a way,” Bolton said. She hoped to complete an album this spring before beginning her 2004 Monarchs season.

“Making a living playing basketball is like a dream come true,” she said in a recent WNBA.com interview. “Same for singers. It’s like making a living doing a hobby.”

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54


photography by Edward McCain

kathymunropp54-59.indd 54kathymunropp54-59.indd 54 5/12/04 1:39:19 PM5/12/04 1:39:19 PM


Kat

hy M

unro

’70 is

not the ty

pe of person who needs to live vicariously through others.

A woman of petite frame, but large stature, she serves as a principal in

San Diego-based BridgeWest LLC, a private equity investment company

with approximately $100 million in assets under management. Prior to

that, Munro held a series of executive positions during her 20-year banking

career in Seattle and Phoenix, eventually attaining the rank of chief

executive offi cer for Bank of America’s southwest region. In that position,


56


she was responsible for all commercial and retail operations, including $15 billion in deposits, and 450 branches and 10,000employees in four states.

Yet, to some degree, Munro’s latest business venture will en-able her to vicariously experience something previously unat-tainable to her—the exhilaration of joining a professional sports team. In February, Munro purchased partial ownership of the Phoenix Mercury, a Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) franchise.

A native of Bessemer, Munro earned her Auburn bachelor’s degree in education. When she attended Auburn in the late 1960s, women students were required to live in dorms, had a 9:15 p.m. curfew on weeknights, and were prohibited from wearing pants on campus. The idea of women’s team sports in universities was only in its infancy.

“I was in college before Title IX, and so they just didn’t have women’s basketball teams and women’s softball teams then,” said Munro. Title IX requires schools that receive federal funds to provide girls and women with equal opportunity to compete in sports. The legislation passed in 1972, just two years after Munro graduated.

Even so, Munro’s formative years centered around sports. She attended Catholic schools through ninth grade, where girls were required to participate in sport activities. There, Munro got an early taste for compe-tition through track and fi eld events, as well as on the basketball court. Her family, too, are sports enthusi-asts and fed Munro’s inherent passion.

“I’ve just been a sports nut from an early age,” said Munro. “My mother was always a huge sports fan, so I came by it honestly, I think.”

As such, Auburn was Munro’s fi rst, and only, col-lege of choice.

“In Alabama, picking your school is like picking your reli-gion. It’s serious business,” she quipped. “In fact, I went to a football game before I went to church; and I grew up Catholic, so that says a lot about the tradition of football in Alabama.”

Unbeknownst to her at the time, Munro’s college years would foreshadow her successful banking career and the general pas-sion she would apply to all things in her life to come. She dived into an active campus life, pledging Phi Mu sorority and join-ing Angel Flight, an auxiliary group for the Air Force ROTC. During summers, Munro worked to help pay her way through college. And throughout, she remained physically active, playing tennis, cycling, and participating in intramural sports.

Terry Weeks Ingwersen ’70, who fi rst met Munro when the two women pledged Phi Mu together their freshman year at Au-burn, remembers her friend’s athletic abilities.

“Somehow, our sorority ended up in an intramural softball championship game. We all dressed alike and we were kind of sis-sies, I guess you could say. But we had a big crowd there watching us, and we were excited. Then the opposing team came in and they had on steel cleats, and we knew we were in deep trouble,” Ingwersen mused. “But Kathy was what we would call ‘a player.’ She knew what she was doing out there. She certainly had one of the better batting averages on the team, and she could catch a ball, which many of us couldn’t.”

Working in the public sector proved to be less fulfi lling than Munro expected, and she decided to redirect her energies to the corporate world. She returned to school to earn her master of business administration degree from the University of Washing-

After graduation, Munro moved to Washington state, where her fi rst husband was stationed at the Ft. Lewis military base. She worked for a short time in administration at Pacifi c Lutheran University, since she was not certifi ed to teach in Washington, and then spent a few years working in the governor’s offi ce, where she specialized in developing long-range economic plans for the state.

Phoenix Mercury press conference

pg56correction.indd 56pg56correction.indd 56 5/6/04 8:37:22 AM5/6/04 8:37:22 AM


ton (UW) in 1979, adeptly juggling the demands of both gradu-ate school and motherhood. When her son, Christopher, was still a toddler, Munro accepted an entry level position at SeaFirst Bank in Seattle as a commercial loan offi cer.

Her career switch to banking was a surprise to Munro’s friends from Auburn, who had often teased her about her lack of fi nan-cial know-how, despite her solid grades in school.

“When we were in college, neither one of us could balance a checkbook,” laughed Ingwersen, who has remained close friends with Munro all these years. “We took a personal fi nance class together. It was really a great class, but we both struggled with it. I was so tickled and surprised when she got into banking after all that.”

Munro laughs about it herself and marvels at her seemingly accidental career path.

“I didn’t graduate from Auburn thinking I was going to go into the corporate world and have this great big career, because at the time not a lot of women graduated from college thinking that —at least in the South they didn’t,” she said. “But I hadn’t taken many fi nance and business classes at Auburn, and I wanted to try something different.”

Munro’s stellar career success was far from accidental, though. Her actions are deliberate and her commitment to fi nish what she starts is unwavering. As such, Munro excelled in the banking world, progressing through a series of positions with increasing responsibilities. In 1994, after SeaFirst was acquired by Bank of America, she was offered the opportunity to move to Phoenix to run the bank’s Arizona operations.

Because she started out in commercial banking, Munro was one of the few women in the business. As a result, Munro had to “break in” her clients to a certain degree, get them accustomed to working with a woman.

“My background at Auburn helped with that,” she said. “I kid about it a lot, but sports was such a central part of growing up in Alabama. So being able to understand sports and talk sports, I could put my male colleagues at ease right away. I not only fol-

lowed SEC football, but basketball, too. I was like one of the guys.”

A fulfi lling career was not the only positive change to come about as a result of Munro’s MBA education. She also met her second husband, Tom, at UW. The two began dating after grad-uate school and were married several years later. When the job offer in Phoenix presented itself, the timing just seemed right.

“It was a great opportunity for me,” said Munro. “I had a very supportive husband and a child who was going off to college, so we decided to make the move.”

When Munro arrived in Phoenix, her high-level position with Bank of America enabled her to become actively involved with a variety of business and community organizations, including Greater Phoenix Leadership, the University of Arizona School of Business, the Fresh Start Women’s Foundation, and United Way.

Phoenix Mercury owners

photography courtesy of Phoenix Mercury


58


Munro purchased a 25 percent ownership in the Mercury with Anne Mariucci, another prominent Phoenix-area businesswoman and community leader, and a longtime friend and colleague of Munro’s. The agreement marked an historic step for the seven-year-old basketball league— Munro and Mariucci are the fi rst outside investors to become partners with an NBA team in ownership of a WNBA team and the fi rst individual women to hold ownership interest in a WNBA team.

“Kathy truly believes community involvement is an impor-tant part of a corporation’s role in the marketplace,” stressed Jay Parry, who worked for Munro as director of marketing at Bank of America. “She takes it very seriously and brings others along with her when she gets involved. She would challenge us to think about our company in terms of resources. What resources can we bring to bear for a particular charity? Something that, perhaps, that charity could not get anywhere else.”

From Munro’s perspective, she was just pleased the city’s established community and business leaders allowed her the opportunity to step in and contribute. “Phoenix is the sort of community where, if you’re willing to roll your sleeves up, they’re willing to have your help. It’s a community that really appreciates that will-ingness to pitch in,” she said.

Mercury

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M

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photography courtesy of Phoenix Mercury

Jerry Colangelo, chairman, CEO, and managing general part-ner of the Phoenix Suns, was one of those prominent business leaders who welcomed Munro to the Valley in the 1990s.

“Her personality makes her very effective. When you can feel the enthusiasm coming from someone in the role that she served for the bank, that is exciting,” said Colangelo, who has been an icon in Phoenix since the late ’60s and is highly regarded as one of the city’s most active community leaders. “In my case, it was exciting to see new people coming to the community with that kind of enthusiasm. Kathy is always more than a participant; she leads.”

Munro and Colangelo quickly developed a strong professional relationship and lasting friendship—grounded in their similar business ethics, mutual commitment to the community, and shared passion for basketball. Colangelo was a customer of Mun-ro’s bank, and the bank was a sponsor of his team, the Phoenix Suns. When the Mercury came to town in 1997, Munro was fi rst in line to offer her support.

“Kathy was an early follower of the WNBA Mercury here in Phoenix. She was a great fan and loved the involvement,” Colan-gelo remembered. “She sat right on the court and, again, it was great to see her enthusiasm fl ow over into the arena.”

Parry also remembers when the Mercury fi rst came to Phoe-nix. The Suns organization approached the bank for sponsor-ship of the fl edgling team, and Munro immediately wanted on board.

“Often during meetings like that, based on our roles at the bank, Kathy was the good cop and I was the bad cop,” Parry recalled. “In this case, Kathy just looked at me and said, ‘This is so exciting. This is going to be big and we have to be involved in a really big way.’ And I reluctantly went along with her.”

Then opening night arrived, and the Mercury played their fi rst game at America West Arena to a full house.

“The place was jam-packed and really jumping, and every-one had a fabulous time. Then Kathy called me the next day and said, ‘I told you so.’ And I just had to laugh with her and say, ‘Yeah, you did.’ Her instincts were right, and the Mercury turned out to be a really great thing for Phoenix,” said Parry, who now serves as chief operating offi cer for the team.


59Auburn Magazine For Alumni & Friends of Auburn University 59Auburn Magazine For Alumni & Friends of Auburn Universityy

When fi rst established, the WNBA was a single-entity league, meaning the league owned every WNBA team, and NBA teams with WNBA counterparts ran the teams under operating agree-ments. In October 2002, the structure was changed to a tradi-tional sports model, with NBA teams taking over ownership of their WNBA teams.

The change also opened the door for outside ownership, and Munro was all too happy to bolt through that door when invited. Her unbridled enthusiasm for the Mercury, and for organized sports in general, stems from something more than the simple adrenaline rush, more than the excitement of watching a great game.

“It sounds a little bit corny, but I believe you learn to be com-petitive, you learn to win, through others,” she said. “The skills of teamwork, communication, collaboration—all the things that helped me be successful in my business career—I learned those by participating in sports on the playground in Catholic school.”

Still, there’s something to be said for that adrenaline rush.

“The level of competitiveness in the WNBA is improving every year,” said Munro, fl ashing a wide grin as the topic turned to the 2004 WNBA draft in April.

The Mercury won the first-round draft pick in this year’s draft lottery, and the management quickly set its sights on Diana Taurasi, whose college career included three straight NCAA titles as a member of the University of Connecticut women’s basketball team and back-to-back Naismith National Player of the Year awards.

The WNBA began its eighth season in May, and in-terest in the league has grown steadily. In 2003, more than 2 million fans attended WNBA games, mark-ing the fourth consecutive season that milestone was reached. While local interest in the Mercury has waned in recent years, Munro believes the addition of Taurasi will help reignite interest among fans. “You have to be pretty jaded not to get excited when you watch Diana Taurasi play basketball,” she enthused.

Munro’s pace quickened as she laid out her ideas for breathing new life in-to the team. The addition of Taurasi was just one of several key pieces to the plan. From a marketing standpoint, Munro and her new colleagues seek to strengthen the Mercury brand and rebuild the franchise from a grass-roots level. Commu-nity outreach will play a signifi cant role, as the team works to differen-

tiate itself from the many entertainment opportunities available in Phoenix, including four other major league sports teams.

All at once, Munro’s keen sense of business is unmistakable. True, her enthusiasm for the Mercury is somewhat visceral, but her vision for the team’s future is highly cerebral. That’s a power-ful combination.

Munro serves as a director on the boards of Pinnacle West Cap-ital Corporation, a holding company for Arizona Public Service and Pinnacle West Energy, and Capital Bancorp, a Michigan-based holding company with 32 community banks. She also is chair of Flow International, a Seattle manufacturer of industrial tools. Previous board activities include Tosco Corporation and Central Newspapers, Inc. Her involvement in community and trade association activities in Phoenix are simply too numerous to list.

There’s no doubt Munro’s new venture as the owner of a pro-fessional sports team makes perfect sense—it’s the ideal com-bination of her business expertise, competitive spirit, and deep passion for sports.

“That passion grew out of Auburn. It grew out of the roots of growing up in Alabama and watching Pat Sullivan win the Heisman Trophy and Sonny Smith coach the basketball team...,” Munro paused a moment to refl ect, slowing down to articulate the emotion.“ To have those roots

and that passion for sports… and to be able to combine it with your business

life, to be able to take some of your business success and apply it to something that you love… My goodness, this is just really great. Life is good.”


Auburn Magazine Spring 2004

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