APOV

I am a lucky girl. With the minor exception of once wishing I looked like Julie Christie, I have never wanted to be anyone but me. The best part is that I know why I am this way: I was raised by my Granny Jo. In 1966, when my own… Read More

Looking back, I wonder whether we should have been in class that morning. It was just before lunch, and I had already missed a few that semester—classes, never lunch—as, unfortunately, my first midterm grades attested. From our residence in Dyer Hall, the path to food at Sarratt took me and… Read More

Mrs. Quarles was about the best teacher there was in East Tennessee—patient and demanding while teaching us how to take apart sentences and examine their symmetries, which I really did enjoy doing. She was a tough lady, but I knew she loved me, and she knew I loved her class. Read More

“I’d really like to go up into the Kirkland clock tower,” I said. It was last November, and I was having brunch with Charlie Taylor, a director of regional gifts in Vanderbilt’s Division of Development and Alumni Relations, in sunny southern California, where I live. Charlie makes periodic visits to… Read More

My Vanderbilt University education has been such a blessing to me for four decades that I’ve never really been able to put it into words. But I had lots of opportunities to reflect about it last October when my wife, Carla, and I attended my 40-year reunion. It was a… Read More

Glen Stewart (right) enjoys a pre-earthquake lunch with members of his mission group at the Olafson Hotel in downtown Port-au-Prince. We were going to be late for supper. That thought was uppermost in my mind as I prodded the members of my group to conclude their purchases in the One… Read More

Allison Oubre (left) and Andrea Alvord on campus in their Navy ROTC uniforms. It was their first photo taken together. Dear Allison, It’s been a few weeks since we last wrote, and now we really have no need for letters. You are the ever-present friend. I am here in Slidell,… Read More

Wirth “Welcome to Germany. Just three weeks until you’ll be in Bosnia,” I was told by my battalion’s personnel sergeant upon my 1993 arrival in Frankfurt. I never imagined then how my longing to experience the adventures of transformational Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) would lead me through the dense… Read More

Ellen Pearson, second from right, and her family hang themselves out to dry. “Gripes, kudos, inspired ideas for future stories? Put ’em here,” read the Vanderbilt Magazine voluntary subscription card I received in the mail last year. Having long fancied myself an enlightened environmentalist with a throbbing social consciousness, I… Read More

“You must be Catholic.” It’s the most common reaction I hear when someone finds out I’m the youngest of 12 children. (And they’re right—we’re Catholic, raised by the Sisters of Mercy.) The next most common reactions: “Your parents did know what causes pregnancy, didn’t they?” (I guess so—but, really, I… Read More

COURTESY OF MICHAEL WOODARD. When the Black Hawk helicopter I was flying landed at the American base near Al Qayyarah in early October 2005, ending my role in Operation Iraqi Freedom, it came as welcome relief from the maddening pace of the previous 12 months. Naively, I… Read More

Outfitters to Wookiees and Warlocks: Paul Bielaczyc, BS’02, MS’04 (standing), and his brother, Michael, only use their special powers for good, helping solve the age-old problem of what to wear to your next Renaissance festival or science fiction convention. The brothers create ogre masks, elf ears, faun pants, fangs,… Read More

We never know when one small incident will change lives. It was reading a National Geographic article one September afternoon during my sophomore year at Vanderbilt that changed mine. Reading the article “Twenty-First Century Slaves” in my dorm room that day, I was horrified and heartbroken to learn there… Read More