While funding incredible research, that money comes with restrictions and cannot be used for the university’s operating costs. For instance, there are 49 buildings in need of maintenance on campus, totaling $300 million in repairs, but the campus only has $4 million budgeted to spend on the upkeep annually.

Get involved and give back to CU — alumni support has never been more important — at www.cufund.org.

Jeremy Foin/University of California, Davis

While excavating a 1,000-year-old seaside house in Alaska’s Seward Peninsula, researchers led by CU-Boulder made a startling discovery.

Buried under three feet of dirt was a prehistoric bronze artifact made from a cast, the first of its kind found in the state. The object appears to be older than the house by several hundred years.

Because ancient bronze metallurgy was unknown in Alaska, the belt-buckle-like object may be the product of long-distance trade across the Bering Strait from Korea, China, Manchuria or Siberia around 1,500 years ago. Researchers speculate it may have been used as part of a harness or horse ornament in East Asia and as a clasp for clothing or part of a shaman’s regalia in Alaska.

“It was possibly valuable enough that people hung onto it for generations, passing it down through families,” says Owen Mason, a fellow at CU’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.

Funded by the National Science Foundation, the researchers are studying human response to climate change from A.D. 800 to 1400,
a critical period of cultural change in the western Arctic.

To watch a video about the discovery, visit www.colorado.edu/news/multimedia/ancient-alaskan-artifact.

(WhoooDoo Mysteries/Treble Heart Books, 2010, 453 pages) ISBN: 1936127067

Buy here

In this tale of Southwestern suspense, Dr. Michael Ganson makes a daring decision to save one life at the risk of sacrificing another. He is thrown into a medical malpractice nightmare with strings being pulled by powerful people who have an agenda to take him down.

While mounting his defense and fighting his own demons, Ganson finds work as a doctor on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation, a land of fallen warriors and a still-proud heritage that has problems of its own with the outside world. The disappearance of an Anglo boy and his link to Bronco Dazen, a once-revered medicine man, has made national news. Did Dazen, a man marginalized by his own people. feel compelled to commit murder?

Seeming opposites — Dr. Ganson, a man of traditional medical science, and Bronco Dazen, a medicine man with a history of using snakes and lightning to treat his patients — both appear to have blood on their hands.

The journey to discover their guilt or innocence takes the reader deep into the heart and soul of the Apache people in this contemporary tale of passion, mystery and redemption in the American Southwest.

Michael Palmer, 16-time New York Times Best-Selling Author has written:

“Manifest West is exciting, intriguing and keenly written. A terrific read. Dr. Kenneth D. Jackson has penned a winner — an original, tense journey into medicine as it is . . . and was.”

Robert Dugoni, New York Times Best-Selling Author wrote:

“Manifest West is a gripping story of loss, sacrifice and redemption. The characters are deftly drawn and the scenarios frighteningly believable. A sensational debut.”

Jeff Diener (EPOBio’92) photographed this hiker exploring “The Wave,” a stunning rock formation on the border of Utah and Arizona. Large sand dunes covered this area 190 million years ago. Over time, the dunes were compacted into sandstone hills and erosion exposed the fins and ribbons of spectacular layering visible today. As a natural world and adventure photographer, Jeff explores and captures beautiful areas across the western U.S. More of his work, along with fine art prints, are available at www.jacksonholegallery.com.

This distinctive Tuscan-influenced cupola on Libby Hall is highlighted by heavy snow on the Flatirons. Casey A. Cass

Tori Peglar (MJour’00)

Every family has its histrionic stories that shape the next generation. In my family’s tales, there are nuns who fled the church chasing romantic love, traveling folk singers, hippies who defied their parents by living in caves in Jerome, Ariz., and grandfathers who invited priests over to bless the bowl of holy water in the hallway.

But an overwhelming number of my stories are shaped by absence. And the main culprit is always cancer. As the No. 2 killer in the U.S., cancer impacts many families, making professor Tin Tin Su’s development of a drug screening process to treat cancer extraordinarily relevant [pages 36-39].

Su’s research can’t undo the past. My uncle Tom dropped Agent Orange in Vietnam only to die at home of melanoma when he was 34, leaving behind three children. My grandfather died three months later. Grief from losing his eldest son filled his heart until one day it got too heavy and stopped. Several years later, cancer killed my 62-year-old grandma before wiping out my uncle Dann when he was 47, a beaming father of two little boys.

But maybe the future holds a different story. Two weeks ago, a biopsy of mine came back abnormal but not cancerous. I was relieved, which gives you an idea of how low the bar is in our family. My hope is one day Su’s work will revolutionize our health care and, perhaps, transform our own family narratives in ways we never imagined possible.

MARCH 2012

Coloradan aims to connect, inform and engage readers in the life of the University of Colorado Boulder through regular communication with alumni, faculty and staff members and friends of the university. It is published four times per year in March, June, September and December by the CU-Boulder Alumni Association. Permission to reprint articles and illustrations may be obtained from the editor.

EDITORIAL OFFICES

Koenig Alumni Center, University of Colorado, Boulder CO 80309-0459; phone 303-492-3712 or 800-492-7743; fax 303-492-6799; e-mail tori.peglar@colorado.edu

ADDRESS CHANGES

To change your address or remove your name from our mailing list, write or call the Alumni Association at the address and numbers above or e-mail processing@cufund.org. Please include your alumni ID number, which is on your mailing label.

ON THE WEB

Visit www.coloradanmagazine.org to read the magazine and latest web exclusives.

PUBLISHER

Deborah Fowlkes

EDITOR

Tori Peglar (MJour’00)

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Marc Killinger

STUDENT ASSISTANT

Christie Sounart (Jour ex’12)

CONTRIBUTORS

Glenn Asakawa (Jour’86), Michelle Starika Asakawa (Jour, Mktg’87), Gary Baines (Jour’83), Patrick Campbell (EnvDes’11), Casey A. Cass, Peter Caughey, Dave Curtin (Jour’78), Paul Danish (Hist’65), Clay Evans, Marty Coffin Evans (Engl’64), Andi Fabri (Art, Comm’00), Bronson Hilliard (Hist’86), Clay Latimer, Jennie Lay (MJour’05), Lisa Marshall (Jour, PolSci’94), Kathy McClurg, Ken McConnellogue (Jour’90), Doug McPherson, Malinda Miller-Huey (Engl’92, MJour’98), David Plati (Jour’82), Linda Poncin, Jim Scott (EPOBio’73),Greg Swenson (MJour’98), Doug Wray

DESIGNERS

Elizabeth C. Johnston and Marissa Price of Lizzardbrand Inc., www.lizzardbrand.com

Your turn Coloradan invites you to share your thoughts, story suggestions and news by contacting us.

Coloradan advisory board

Dave Curtin (Jour’78)
Jefferson Dodge (MJour’02)
Quynh Nguyen Forss (Jour’95)
Frank Gappa (Jour’59)
Malinda Miller-Huey (Engl’92, MJour’98)
Nico Toutenhoofd (Art’91)
Jan Whitt (journalism professor)

Please recycle with magazines.

Neal Beidleman (MechEngr’81)

Professional kudos I ordinarily don’t have time for much extracurricular reading, so I’m always grateful for the ease and visual pleasure with which one can page through an issue of the Coloradan and learn a host of interesting things. This last issue, though, was a stunner.

I started reading with great interest the article on reaching out to Latino teens [“What every politician should know” pages 38-41], which I may use in one of my service-learning classes where my students often see those challenges and experience the joy of connecting that can make all the difference in finishing high school and going to college.

The profundity of sociopolitical impact revolving around that article was then sweetly complemented with the article, “Parent Power” [pages 36-37] . . . And that remarkable Neal Beidleman (MechEngr’81) [“When Everest speaks,” pages 6-11] — whoa. His quiet heroism and the sense of “being there” were tremendously moving.

I feel as though I’m starting the new year with a much better empathetic range and even more appreciation for the remarkable place that CU is and all the dear souls who have made up its past as well as present. You are one heck of a great editor! Terrific photos, too. And I thought you should know what people are thinking behind your back.

Cathy Comstock (MCompLit’75, PhD’81)
Associate Director, CU-Boulder SEEDS (Social Entrepreneurship, Equitable Development and Sustainability) Academic Program

Take one capsule

Kudos on the alumni magazine — once again it’s a winner! “Take one capsule and wait 100 years” may be the best headline I’ve ever read.

Linda Besen (Engl’71, MJour’72)
University Communications

When Everest speaks

Excellent article. Captures Neal Beidelman’s (MechEngr’81) return to Everest just as surely as Jon Krakauer summarized the original event with his article in Outside magazine in 1996. Please congratulate Lisa Marshall (Jour, PolSci’94) for an outstanding piece of work.

John R. Matis (Geol’67)
Loveland, Colo.

The article “When Everest Speaks” by Lisa Marshall was especially fascinating to me. The story of Neal Beidleman’s involvement in the tragic 1996 expedition to Everest was captivating, as well as informative.

I, too, have read Jon Krakauer’s best-selling book, Into Thin Air, which was somewhat controversial and only one of various versions of what happened during that fateful expedition. Interesting that Beidleman is a CU grad and returned to Everest in May to gain closure and fresh perspective.

Charles Wooten (MEdu’65)
Broomfield, Colo.

Who are our rivals?

One question that should be asked of CU athletic director Mike Bohn [“Q & A” December 2011 pages 48-49] is now that CU is a member of the PAC-12 and historic Big 12 (Big Eight, Big Seven) rivals in Lincoln, Norman, Manhattan, Stillwater and Lawrence are no longer coming to Boulder and vice versa, who are the Buffs’ traditional rivals in football and basketball (and all the other sports)? The Utes for Thanksgiving, really?

Francis Rexford Cooley (Hist’87)
Plainville, Conn.

[Editor’s note: New rivalries within the Pac-12 will develop with time. Ending the season at Utah was great, not just because of our win, but because it reignited the longstanding rivalry we had with Utah dating back to 1903. Every year for 55 years (with the exception of 1909), CU played Utah through 1958 and then again for two years in the early 1960s.]

Women at war

Having just read your article regarding the WAVEs [“WWII: Women at war” on pages 28-31], I am writing to thank you for the acknowledgement that we actually existed and worked the so-called “men’s jobs” in the World War II Navy. I was late getting into it, June 1943, but consider it one of the high spots of my life.

After my six weeks at Hunter College, I was at the University of Oklahoma for three months and then assigned to the Navy Training School, Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., as a yeoman third class. Before leaving training school in 1945, I was assigned to duty as the captain’s yeoman 2/c, a job I really enjoyed.

Doris Johnson (Y2c) USNR
Cincinnati, Ohio

I just finished reading Clay Evans article in the December 2011 Coloradan, “WWII: Women at War.” It is a well-deserved article but only hints at the many services women provided during the war.

When the war began, nurses from across the country were pressed into service, leaving many civilian organizations short of help — schools, hospitals, businesses. To fill the gap, the U.S Public Health Service in 1943 inaugurated the Cadet Nurse Corps under the Nurse Training Act of July 1, 1943. Some 179,000 young ladies, all high school graduates, responded.

The whole story of the cadet nurse corps is chronicled in the book Your Country Needs You: Cadet Nurses of
WWII written by Boulder resident Thelma M. Robinson (MNurs’71). She and her sister were both cadet nurses. The University of Colorado trained 139 nurses in the 1943-45 time frame.

John A. Sand (MBA’71)
Boulder

I recently read the December 2011 Coloradan article, “WWII: Women at War.” Mr. Evans mentioned the WACs, the WAVES and the SPARS but left out the Lady Marines.

My mother baked, cooked, inspected ammunition, etc., as all Lady Marines did to support the war effort. After raising four children, my mother became a Gold Star Mother when her Marine son was killed in combat near the DMZ (Vietnam). I hope the Lady Marines receive the recognition they deserve in future accounts of our national’s past.

Rick Toth (A&S’70)
Westminster, Colo.

I am old enough to remember it and have studied World War II in detail and find the article “WWII: Women at War” disappointing. Why? Where was the recognition of the 25,000 women who joined the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASPS)? Most of the women who joined the WASPs were part of an exceptional group: well-educated, physically fit, able to pass a flight physical and a curriculum of intense ground school and flight school.

With new planes coming off the assembly line every 30 minutes, it became obvious there weren’t enough male pilots. A call was made for female pilots to ferry new planes from U.S. factories to active military bases and their pilots. The WASP pilots were also asked to train and teach such noncombat subjects as radio, physics, Morse Code and aircraft recognition. They were also trained to teach male pilots air-to-air and air-to-ground gunnery.

Jerry Raveling (PE’54)
Devil Hills, N.C.

In the December 2011 edition of the Coloradan, Bohn said he thought “women’s lacrosse seems to be gaining a lot of momentum.”

The last sport to join the CU athletic department’s lineup was the women’s soccer team, which began varsity play in 1996.