In the Spirit of Carleton

Ayaki Ito '90 - of Geneva, Switzerland, a magna cum laude political science graduate, earned an M.A. in international human rights at Columbia University in 1992. Since then, he has been a protection officer for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Ito has served in Rwanda and Myanmar (formerly Burma) and, from 1996 to 1999, he coordinated protection-related activities in western Bosnia-Herzegovina. In December 1999 he was assigned to UNHCR headquarters in Switzerland, where he and his wife, Graziella Pellegri, had their first child in June.

Exceptional Service

Duane W. Brenna '35 -of Inver Grove Heights , Minn., has served as the Class of 1935's president for 65 years. He has organized 13 class reunions and has kept his class informed through regular newsletters. A varsity football and baseball player at Carleton, Brenna is a loyal 'C' Club member. A World War II veteran, Brenna spent his professional career in federal service; he and his wife, Jane, have seven children.

John C. (Jack) Parsons Jr. '50 - of Minneapolis founded the Twin Cities Carleton Club's Early Bird breakfast series, has served as chair of that club, and is an ongoing steering committee member. Parsons served on his class's 50th -reunion committee and is a member of the newly formed Carleton Clubs Advisory Group. An Annual Fund donor for more than 45 years, Parsons also has been an Annual Fund phonathon coordinator. He is a charter member of the College's Joseph Lee Heywood Society for donors who have provided for Carleton in their will. He was an assistant class agent from 1990 to 1996. From 1991 to 1994, Parsons was director of the Carleton Alumni Board. At Carleton, he was cofounder of KARL and the station's first business manager. He and his wife, Joan, have three children, including John C. Parsons III '79.

William C. Craine '70 - of Sherburne, N.Y., was an Alumni Annual Fund (AAF) class agent from 1985 to 1989; by 1989 he joined the AAF board as the 1970s decade director, and in 1990 he served as a director for major prospects. From 1993 to 1996, Craine led the AAF as its board chairman. From 1995 to 1999, he was a 25th reunion trustee on the Carleton Board of Trustees. Throughout the 1990s, Craine was part of the Assuring Excellence campaign steering committee, and in 1997 he became co-chair of the Rec Center fund-raising committee. During 1994-9 he served on the 1970 25th reunion gift committee; he also helped with his class's 30th reunion this year. Form 1994-1997 he was an AAF leadership gift solicitor. He and his wife, Marge, have three children, including Katie Craine '00.

Distinguished Achievement

John C. Rouman '50 - of Durham, H.H., has been a classics professor at the University of New Hampshire since 1965. He earned an M.A. in Greek at Columbia University in 1951 and was a Fulbright Scholar in Byzantine Greek at the University of Kiel, West Germany, from 1956 to 1957 before completing his Ph.D. in classics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1965. Rouman has received numerous awards for his teaching and scholarship, including the John C. Rouman Classical Lectureship Series at the University of Hew Hampshire, which was endowed in 1997.

Norman D. (Skip) Sperber '50 - of San Diego, Calif., devised the first civilian dental identification system in the United States. he currently serves as chief forensic dentist for California's Missing/Unidentified Persons Dental System. he has investigated more than 2,000 identification cases and has testified in almost 200 body identifications cases nationwide. Sperber, who earned a D.D.S. degree at New York University in 1954, also maintains a private practice, is a member of the San Diego Metropolitan Homicide Task Force, and a reserve police officer. In 1998 he received the American Academy of the Sciences Distinguished Fellow Award. He and his wife, Janet, have two children.

Marian R. (Peterson) Neutra '60 - of Sherborn, Mass., is a leading researcher in defining mucosal immunity in order to better understand and prevent HIV infection. Since 1994 she has served on the AIDs Research Advisory Committee of the National Institute of Health, and has been its chair since 1997. Neutra is a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, director of the Gastrointestinal Cell Biology Research Laboratory at the Children's Hospital of Boston, and director of the Harvard Digestive Diseases Center. After two years of undergraduate work at Carleton, she completed her B.A. in zoology at the University of Michigan and earned a Ph.D. in cell biology/histology at McGill University in 1966. Neutra has received many awards and career honors. She has three sons.

Neal P. Miller '65 - of Cambridge, Mass., is vice president of Fidelity Investment and portfolio manager of its $2.4 billion New Millennium fund. He is consistently recognized as a top fund manager by his peers; he was named Fidelity's top stock picker in July 1999 and ranked fourth in the nation among mutual fund managers by Barron's magazine in 1998. An economics major at Carleton, Miller earned an M.B.A. at the University of Michigan. He has recruited Carleton students for Fidelity, served on the Class of 1965's 25th reunion gift committee, and served as an Alumni Annual Fund assistant class agent for several years. He and his wife, Lynne, have one son.

Jimmy J. Kolker '70 - of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in November 1999 as the U.S. ambassador to that West African republic. Kolker is a distinguished career foreign service officer who has held a series of increasingly important political reporting and management assignments in U.S. embassies in Denmark, Botswana, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique. A magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa government and international relations major, Kolker earned a master's degree at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. In 1982 he received the State Department's Superior Honor Award and, in 1986 and 1997, its Meritorious Honor Award. He and his wife, Britt-Marie Forslund, have two daughters.

Kirbyjon H. Caldwell '75 - of Sugar Land, Texas, is pastor of Houston's Windsor Village United Methodist Church, widely considered on the the most vital congregations in the United Methodist Church. Caldwell built the congregation from 25 members in 1982 to more than 11,000 today. Before earning his M.Div. degree in 1981 at Southern Methodist University's Perkins School of Theology, Caldwell had pursued a finance career after earning an M.B.A. at the Wharton School of Business in 1977. Caldwell's book, The Gospel of Good Success: A Road Map to Spiritual, Emotional, and Financial Wholeness, was published in 1999 by Simon & Schuster. Texas Monthly recently named him one of the 20 most influential Texans. Carleton granted him an honorary degree in 1999. He and his wife, Suzette, have two children.

Pamela A. Mohr '80 - of Ada, Ohio, in 1992 founded the Alliance for Children's Rights in Los Angeles - the only public interest law office in Los Angeles County devoted solely to children - and served as its first executive director. It has since been used as a model for other organizations around the country. Mohr was a cum laude history major who received a J.D. degree from the UCLA School of Law. Mohr was associate director of the Juvenile Court Improvement Project for the American Bar Association's Center on Children and the Law in 1995-96. She is currently interim director of law clinics and a visiting assistant professor of law at Ohio Northern University. She served on the Carleton Alumni Board from 1994 to 1998 and has received many awards and honors for her advocacy work and initiatives.