40s
Lucy Zartman Dobkins, Ex-'49, of Albuquerque, former homecoming queen, is author of a new book, Bad Back: Coping for Life, published by Pelican Publishing Company. Her children's novel, Daddy, There's a Hippo in the Grapes, was published in 1992.
50s
Dr. Raymond Igou Jr., '55, of Stoneham, Mass., wrote to Aggie Panorama and noted that "news from the '50s is getting more scarce all the time." We beg to prove him wrong. Calling all '50s grads: Send in your class notes!
Jack Darbyshire, '50, an Anthony, N.M.-based farm equipment manufacturer, received the Philip J. Leyendecker Agriculturist of Distinction Award from NMSU's College of Agriculture and Home Economics during the college's annual Awards Day ceremony April 21.
Evelyn Campbell Aldred, '52, retired from Texas A & M University, where she was head of the reserve department in the Sterling C. Evans Library. Aldred reports that she will travel and conduct research with her husband, William Hughes Aldred, who also has retired from Texas A & M.
Paul L. Milan, '56, retired from the Department of Health and Human Services Agency for Children and Families in Dallas. He had been employed there for 21 years. Milan now lives in Milan, N.M., and has taken a position with the Grants State Bank as vice-chairman of the board. He has been president of Community Bancshares, Inc., the holding company of Grants State Bank, since 1985.
James T. "Skip" Pritchard, '58, has been elected 1995-96 president of the New Mexico Beef Council. Pritchard is a partner and manager of Valley View Dairy in Mesquite, N.M. He is licensed to practice veterinary medicine in New Mexico, Texas, Colorado and California.
John D. Yarbrough, '58, has been elected vice-president of the New Mexico Beef Council, and represents the purebred segment of the beef industry. He is owner of Yarbrough Ranch near Hillsboro, N.M.
Warren A. Wolff, '58, '71, is teaching secondary mathematics and science at Eisenhower High School in Rialto, Calif., after completing careers with the U.S. Air Force (20 years) and Lockheed Aircraft Service Company (12 years). Wolff is the grandfather and court-appointed guardian of a sixth grader.
60s
Al Bustamante, '60, won a 1995 Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Award from the Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Conference, which honored the "the best and the brightest" at an Oct. 14 banquet in Houston. Bustamante is a manager at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque.
John M. Burns, '63, assumed the position of vice provost for academic affairs at Texas Tech University on Sept. 1. Burns also directs the Clark Scholars Program. He is director and co-director of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute campus program.
Calvin B. Parnell Jr., '64, a professor with the Department of Agricultural Engineering at Texas A & M University in College Station, has been elected a fellow of ASAE, a society for engineering in agricultural, food and biological systems. He was honored at the society's annual inter-national meeting in Chicago.
Larry G. Stolarczyk, '65, '70, of Raton, N.M., was named the 1995 Inventor of the Year by the New Mexico Entrepreneurs Association in October. Stolarczyk, who works at Raton Technology Research Inc., was selected because of 20 patents that have been issued with him as the sole or primary inventor.
Richard Melendez, '69, '83, has been named principal of Onate High School, the newest high school in Las Cruces with 1,700 students. Melendez has worked for the school district for 24 years, including five years at Lynn Middle School as a social studies teacher and head football and track coach.
70s
Mike Griffin, '70, of El Paso, is the new general manager of Zia Implement Co., a John Deere agricultural, lawn and grounds care equipment dealer for Dona Ana County and the surrounding area.
Beatriz Valadez Ferreira, '70, was inducted Sept. 16 into the New Mexico Women's Hall of Fame in Albuquerque. The New Mexico Commission on the Status of Women describes Ferreira, a Las Cruces attorney, as a woman who "stands as a shining example of sensitivity and of humanitarianism at its best."
Herb Hall, '72, who teaches drama, public speaking and English at Beverly Hills (Calif.) High School, is currently appearing as the principal of that school in the comedy film "Clueless." He doesn't play himself in the movie, but the Mr. Hall character is named after him, and the classroom scenes in the film were inspired by events that have taken place in his class.
Thomas A. Garcia, '73, vice president and chief executive officer of U.S. West Communications in New Mexico, has transferred to the company's headquarters in Denver. Garcia will become one of several vice presidents working in corporate public policy. He has worked for U.S. West and its predecessor, Mountain Bell, for 22 years.
John R. Gutierrez, '74, '77, associate professor of Spanish linguistics at Penn State University, was one of four recipients of the 1995 George W. Atherton Award for Excellence in Teaching. The university award is given annually to four professors. Gutierrez, the first foreign language professor to receive the award, has been at Penn State for the past eight years.
Michael Lilley, '75, a Las Cruces criminal defense attorney, received the Charles Driscoll Memorial Award from the New Mexico Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. Lilley, former president of the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association, was chosen by past award recipients largely for his work as the state association's legislative liaison.
Janet M. Crowe, '76, of El Paso recently placed in a national contest for children's literature. Crowe's story, "Tony's Tiny Dinosaur," won Ninth Prize out of almost 4,500 entries in the Children's Writer Early Reader Animal Story Contest. Crowe is a regular columnist for the Rio Grande Catholic newspaper.
Tony Alan Lovitt, '77, a media relations consultant to USA Volleyball, has been selected by the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games to be the primary announcer in English and French for the 1996 Olympic volleyball competition. Lovitt is the president of TALENT, a San Diego-based media relations consulting firm.
Gordon A. Walhood Jr., '77, was appointed by Gov. Gary Johnson to the New Mexico State Board of Registration for Professional Engineers and Surveyors. Walhood is vice president of Bohannan-Huston Inc., a consulting engineering company with offices statewide.
Esteban C. Apodaca, '79, received an American Cultural Specialist Grant from the U.S. Information Agency-Arts America. Apodaca, an art instructor at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas, spent 17 days last summer in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, teaching classes and giving workshops in glaze chemistry at The National School of Fine Arts.
80s
Rhonda Faught Martinez, '80, a Deming, N.M., native, has been selected as the state's first female district engineer. Martinez, who has been with the state Highway and Transportation Department since 1988, will head department operations in District 1, headquartered in Deming.
Diane Brittle-Arnold, '80, of Albuquerque, has been named nurse manager for the neurology nursing unit at University Hospital. She joined the University Hospital's staff in 1993.
Sherry K. Kiesling, '85, recently joined the American Farm Bureau Federation as a writer-producer in the information and public relations division. She was press secretary to U.S. Rep. Joe Skeen, R-N.M., for eight years. Kiesling is past president of the Republican Communications Association.
David G. Voelz, '81, received the 1995 Engineering Excellence Award from the Optical Society of America for his work on the development of the first optical synthetic aperture space object imaging system. Voelz is a project engineer at the Air Force Phillips Lab in Albuquerque.
Laura Jane Flores, '85, has been named the dean of instruction at Phoenix College. She had been an assistant professor at Northern Arizona University.
Roman Aranda, '82, was named mayor of Mesilla, N.M., on Sept. 11 by the board of trustees following the former mayor's resignation. Aranda will serve until 1998.
Jed Fanning, '83, has been named president and managing officer of Norwest Bank Las Cruces. Fanning also has served as president of the Las Cruces Rotary Club and director of the Las Cruces Chamber of Commerce.
Steven W. Suggs, '83, former comptroller of Las Cruces Public Schools, is the new director of Advancement Services at NMSU's Office for University Advancement.
Nancy Peters Hastings, '87, was awarded a fellowship to the White River Writers' Workshop at Lyon College in Batesville, Ark., in June. Hastings' first collection of poems, A Quiet I Carry With Me, was published in 1994 by A Slow Tempo Press. She twice received the Leonard Randolph Small Press Award for Whole Notes, a magazine she edits.
90s
Dennis Mahlon Giever, '90, received a Ph.D. in criminology from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in May 1995. The title of his dissertation was "An Empirical Assessment of the Core Elements of Gottfredson and Hirschi's General Theory of Crime."
Kerry P. Riden, '93, recently graduated from the Border Patrol Training Academy in Glynco, Ga. She is assigned to duty in McAllen, Texas, as a Border Patrol agent.
Peter Wildman, '92, was nominated for the Rosenthal Outstanding Educator Award for 1995 at Casper College in Wyoming, where he is in his third year of teaching mathematics.
Barbara Rutledge Dillaway, '92, '94, of Mesquite, N.M., passed the Certified Public Accountant (CPA) examination, which was administered nationwide during May. Dillaway is employed as a staff accountant in the tax department of Rister, Dunbar, Broaddus & Company, CPAs in El Paso.
Jin Xu Wang, '93, has joined the G.E. Research and Development Center as a computer scientist. Prior to joining G.E., Wang was a consultant for A.M.R., the parent company of American Airlines in Dallas.
Shane Hackney, '94, founded ShaneCo Sports Instruction Enterprises. He has produced a 30-minute video for coaches and players entitled, "Techniques & Drills for Effective Deep Snapping." Hackney, a former deep snapper for the NMSU Aggies, is signed up with the Peace Corps in L'viv, Ukraine, where he plans to gain international business experience.
Tim Darden, '93, '95, has begun work as a Cooperative Extension Service specialist with NMSU's Range Improvement Task Force. He will conduct studies on how federal agricultural policies affect New Mexico farmers and ranchers.
Mary Anne Osborne, '94, director of continuous quality improvement at Columbia Home Health Services, Inc., was named Nurse of the Year by the New Mexico Nurses Association in District 14. She is the immediate past president of the district and is a past member of the board of directors at the state level.
Hong (Alice) Zhang, '93, has joined husband Li Jianziong in New York City where he is the United Nations correspondent for the Xinhua news agency. She is an accountant for Group III International, which imports and wholesales luggage to department stores.
Shelton Dodson, '95, has become a news co-anchor on weekends at 5:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. on KVIA, Channel 7/Cable 6 in El Paso. Dodson has anchored and reported for Newsview 22 in Las Cruces.
Robin C. Mack, '95, is the new Luna County home economist with NMSU's Cooperative Extension Service in Deming, N.M. She will lead extension education youth programs and 4-H and will recruit and train volunteer leaders for adult and youth groups.
Del Jimenez, '95, is working as an agricultural specialist for NMSU's Cooperative Extension Service. He will supervise special agricultural programs in the Kellogg Project, conduct seminars for livestock producers and help educate farmers.