- Irmarie (Scheuneman) Jones ’45 (photo: Peter MacDonald/Greenfield Recorder)
Just Plain Irmarie
While newspapers everywhere are cutting corners, Greenfield’s Recorder printed a 12-page supplement to honor Irmarie (Scheuneman) Jones ’45 to celebrate her 40 years of reporting. Jones, 85, still writes her “Just Plain Neighbors” column twice a week. The paper lauded her for community service, boundless energy, and unbridled enthusiasm. “I know many of us elderly are doing great things,” she says. “There aren’t thousands of us, but we’re the most ardent alumni.” Jones, called “Ducky” in her college days, has many UMass Amherst alumni in her family, including her late husband Wallace Jones ’50, a GI Bill student; four of her seven children (Margaret ’75, Robert ’78, Neil ’81, and Peter ’94); and son-in-law Bruce Cummings ’73.
At Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream in Laurel, Maryland, engineer Juan Lopez ’96 helps ensure that one of the world’s largest ice cream plants runs as smooth as a pint of Häagen-Dazs crème brulée. Lopez, who came to Dreyer’s from PepsiCo, works in continuous improvement and is preoccupied with launching TPM (total production management) and implementing DMAIC (define, measure, analyze, improve, control) at the plant. As a delicious break from engineering acronyms, he gets to sample the company’s 100-plus products, which include Edy’s fruit bars and Nestlé branded ice-cream. The plant turns out Eskimo Pies, Skinny Cows, Drumsticks, Dibs, and scads of other frozen treats, including his new favorite—Häagen-Dazs five mint ice cream.
Russell Houser ’94, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division Band, now deployed to Afghanistan, sums up his work like this: “Preparing for war and preparing for art simultaneously is intense and interesting. This was not what I imagined when I picked up a French horn 30 years ago, but I really love the soldiers and the job we do. ” Houser says the 42-member band’s mission is to reach out to soldiers in Operation Enduring Freedom. “The challenge that my men and ladies in the band face is to help the soldiers decompress as much as possible; some of the soldiers we serve are only 19 years old.” The group is in high demand for events ranging from road races to formal ceremonies to opening for a visiting rock band. To play for the international coalition in Afghanistan, the Army band has added more than 30 national anthems to its already wide repertoire. Although Afghanistan’s desert climate and resort-like mountain scenery remind Houser of El Paso (a past posting), similarities end there. “The Taliban are alive and well and very unfriendly to the U.S. Anytime we go outside the wire, we put ourselves in harm’s way,” he says. “But these are the risks we have to take to provide support for our soldiers.”
Like Barack Obama, Billy Kenoi ’93 is a native Hawaiian who ran against an older, more experienced candidate for office last November. And, like Obama, Kenoi triumphed. “Seeing the newspaper with the headlines ‘Obama Wins; Kenoi Wins’, gave me goose bumps,” he says.
Kenoi, elected at 39, is the youngest-ever mayor of the ‘Big Island’ of Hawaii, which has 150,000 inhabitants spread over 4,000 square miles. He’s made a commitment to take the government to the people. He visits both sides of the island weekly and periodically brings his cabinet out to Hawaii’s rural towns. “Hawaii is a big place, but a close community,” he says. “I believe that by speaking honestly with people, we can get the job done. You have to keep things simple. Some people think politics is chess, but it’s checkers.”
The economic downturn hit Hawaii hard, and Kenoi’s proudest accomplishment in office so far has been balancing the island’s $386 million budget without furloughs, layoffs, or cuts to social services. One of his main goals as mayor is to expand the island’s public transportation. “We want to get cars off the roads,” he says. “We’re bringing in Hawaii’s first double-decker bus. Our free bus service was actually inspired by the UMass Amherst transit system.”
Kenoi calls coming to UMass Amherst in 1990 “one of the best decisions I ever made.” On campus he met his wife, Takako Culhane, a student volleyball player from Japan, and his mentor, political science professor John Brigham. Brigham recommended Kenoi for an internship with U.S. Senator Daniel K. Inouye, which put him on the path to law school, work as a trial attorney, and then politics.
“I keep Professor Brigham’s letter to this day,” Kenoi says. “When I have a challenge as mayor, I’ll reread it and tell myself, ‘I can do this.’”
Perhaps you’ve spotted them high in the campus trees—arboriculture students learning climbing skills. Marcy Gladdys ’06S, ’08 was one of these students, and now makes her living climbing trees in the Boston area. Clients are sometimes skeptical about a 5’5”, 125-pound arborist, but Gladdys has more than proven her abilities. For the second summer in a row, she represented New England in the International Society of Arboriculture’s annual tree climbing competition, where arborists vie in a speed climb, work climb, aerial rescue, and other events. Last year she was two seconds shy of the world record in the rope climbing competition.
Before she became a professional tree climber, Gladdys was a rock climber, and long before that, she’d clamber up just about anything. “My parents always say I was a little monkey growing up.”
