Amherst Magazine: Fall 2014

Fall 2014 magazine cover: Theodore Resengarten ’66 standing in field
FEATURES
Tracy Jarrett ’11 standing on a path in an urban park

Stories of Life
By Tracy Jarrett ’11
Julie Keith Jarrett ’81 died from AIDS in 1994. To imagine the person her mother might have become, a young reporter traveled from East Harlem to Cape Town to Chicago.

Theodore Rosengarten ’66 standing in wooded area


A Smash Hit. Again.
By Stephen Hoffius
Forty years ago Theodore Rosengarten ’66 wrote an oral history of an Alabama tenant farmer. This summer it became a best-seller for the second time.

Winthrop Smith Jr. ’71 with Vermont fall as backdrop

The Populists of Wall Street
Interview by Cullen Murphy ’74
Winthrop H. Smith Jr. ’71 gives an inside perspective on Merrill Lynch, from its start as a one-man shop in 1914 to its inauspicious end in 2008.

DEPARTMENTS

Voices

College Row
Making the case for talking about religion, Bob Woodward on Obama and getting to the truth, Parties have a new home in an old steam plant, Being a female professor at Amherst in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, and more

Sports
Soccer: When no one else was watching the game, Professor Frank Westhoff was there. He still is.

The Big Bicture
Afternoon light on the quad

Point of View
The Upshot’s Aaron E. Carroll ’94 on how medicine is like an LJST course at Amherst.

Beyond Campus
Education: Why few black men teach in U.S. schools
Adoption: A single rabbi’s path to motherhood
Health: A researcher’s discovery could help solve the obesity puzzle
Homelessness: Housing 105,580 people, and quickly
Sales: Tom Shepard ’40 on selling VapoRub

Amherst Creates
Fiction: Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands, by Chris Bohjalian ’82
Nonfiction: Slavery and freedom at the racetrack; the Nazi occupation of Paris
Memoir: Jim Rooney ’60’s musical odyssey
Theater: Actor Wendy Rich Stetson ’91

Amherst Made
Three ’40s alumni popularized the coffee mug, ending the long reign of the cup and saucer

Now and Then

 

1985 aerobics class

Warriors: Three years after Jane Fonda popularized aerobics with her first home exercise video, students donned leg warmers, tights and short shorts for a workout. It’s probably been a while since those ’80s alumni have taken aerobics. More likely, they’ve joined running clubs and yoga studios. At a morning yoga series held during orientation this year, new students practiced their warrior poses in Keefe Campus Center.  

2014 yoga class in Keefe Campus Center


Old photo from Amherst College archives; new photo by Rob Mattson