Dorm days

Ed’s note: The following letters were received in response to our “Dorm life” photo gallery. Click here to view the pictures.

Wow.  James Dean poster, guitars and 70 square feet of good living space on second floor Brewster! I was CA then. Three other years spent in Allen House. I miss every second of it, too. Julie O., Janine F., and Sue K.—what would have happened had you not shown me the way back in 1987?!  Thanks Drs. Fair and Sullivan. Take me back TSC!  (TCNJ, I know.)

Eric B. Lieberman, Esq. ’91

That’s me for image 12 from 1985, sitting in my dorm room in Travers with Russ Traub ’87. It was a pleasant surprise to see that old photo!!

Jill Guenther  ’86

Tree mail

Ed’s note: The following letters were received in response to our March “Looking back” photo. Click here to view it.

The guy to the far right is my good friend, Phil Costello, and I can guarantee you the group is not trying to get someone out of the tree. They are trying to put people into the tree. Actually it’s probably a three-man team problem-solving exercise trying to get all three people up and over the limb and back down again. Phil and I 
graduated in 1968, and he founded Project U.S.E. around 1970. Project U.S.E. is an Outward Bound type program. 
Problem solving is an example of the exercises and events that Project U.S.E. uses to develop confidence and teamwork. Phil passed away several years ago, and he is sorely missed. It was great coming across this picture in the magazine.

Chuck Fest ’68

I believe that was RA selection or training. I think that is me in the background with the glasses and Afro. I was an RA in the Norsworthy Black Women’s Experimental Corridor (spring 1971) and Travers/Wolfe (1969–72).

Janet E. Allen ’72

Wow, how often do you open a magazine and see a picture of yourself? I am the girl with long blonde hair just to the left of the hanging guy. The girl with the short blonde hair who is holding the other climber’s feet is Iris Pollack Pavesi. We were participating in a group cooperation activity. (Remember—it was the seventies!). I remember some of the other faces but not the names.

Bette Gray Hance ’71

I think the girl on the far left is Deborah Brennan ’72. It looks like they are doing some kind of Project Adventure thing.

Marlene Huschke ’72

The woman second from the left is Paula Sullivan Morelli ’74.

Ellyn Geller ’65

At the extreme right is Jim “Flash” Gordon.  He later became Greeks editor for the 1974 Seal and responsible for the “MONoYoNY” Game of the “Union” on page 161. We had no idea what they were doing when the photo came across our desks 41 years ago and still have no idea what they were doing. I was a Greek thing.

Mark Richie ’75
(The writer was a staff member and editor of the Seal and Signal.)

Going streaking

Here’s a streak that was not mentioned [“Then and now: Lions’ sports streaks,” March 2012]: the 1981–82 field hockey team went 20-0, and continued that streak into the 1982–83 season, winning another 26 games before falling to Ithaca in overtime on penalty strokes. That’s a two-year streak of 46 wins!

Donna Aromando ’83

Adler is “the genuine article”

Rachel Adler is so idealistic in the 
article “Socially responsible research” [March 2012] that she sounds like fiction, or at most, hyperbole. She is not. She is the genuine article—a devoted scholar and caregiver who is beautiful both inside and out. I work with her, and I can testify to the fact she is one of the most outstanding citizens in this region and to work with her is a privilege. She is a treasure.

Dr. David Bresch
Saint Francis Medical Center

Another alum’s connection to the “crime of the century”

On or about the day the Lindberg baby was kidnapped (March 1, 1932), my grandfather, Walenty Pacia, a 42-year-old legal immigrant from Poland, and his 45-year-old neighbor and friend, Frank Wucinski, drove in my grandfather’s Nash from Ewing Township to the Hopewell Township area to uproot some young cedar trees, with the intent of planting them on their own properties. (Apparently this was a common occurrence back then.) Evidently, someone observed them and the Nash in the Hopewell vicinity that day and reported them to the police. On May 12, 1932, the day Charles Lindbergh Jr.’s body was discovered, detectives from the Jersey City Police Department and New Jersey State Police visited my grandfather and his friend to question them in connection with the kidnapping. Needless to say they had nothing to do with the crime other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But as a young child, I remember him telling me that he was once visited by two of the biggest men (detectives) he had ever seen. Although I didn’t understand why at that time, I do now.

Fast-forward 78 years: On January 2, 2010, at 12:30 a.m., my 90-year-old mother was asleep on the main floor of her 120-year-old row home in Trenton when a fire started next door. Flames engulfed her second floor and attic, and police had to break through the front bay window to rescue her. My mom instantly became homeless and lost most of her possessions, but a neighbor who lived one block away took her in that night and gave her shelter. That neighbor was Nancy Kucinski, granddaughter of Frank—my grandfather’s “partner in crime” 78 years earlier. Nancy had a copy of the police interrogations of her grandfather and mine. She kindly gave my family a photocopy, which I treasure to this day as part of my heritage.

Thomas Pacia ’71

Ed’s note: We put Thomas in touch with Mark Falzini ’91, the State Police archivist who oversees the Lindbergh kidnapping case evidence [“Case authority,” March 2012]. In April, Falzini gave Pacia and his family a tour of the archives and showed them the original statement signed by Pacia’s grandfather, Walenty. Pacia gave Falzini a photo of Walenty that was added to the archives.

iPad technology assisting students with intellectual disabilities

Every time I receive my copy of TCNJ Magazine, I look for articles concerning The Career and Community Studies (CCS) Program. This month’s article was so encouraging! First to see that the CCS Program is still going strong and that more ways are being sought to assist the students to succeed. I use an iPad with my student in his kindergarten class. What a great tool to foster independence, make quick adaptations or modifications to a lesson on the spot, and to increase attendance/participation in class. And as the study in the article mentioned, [iPads are] a great way to incorporate video-modeling and increase skills and independence. Keep up the excellent work TCNJ! Can’t wait to see what the students in CCS will be doing next!

Norma Barragan Pezza ’87

Looking for lost classmates

During my time as an exchange student (1951–52), I was encouraged by Charles Harp to follow his geology courses. I joined some freshmen groups and explored the Delaware Water Gap mica schist and garnet deposits. The New Jersey Palisades rocks were attractive, being close to the Hudson River. A member of our Trenton group had a camera. I was given photos of me with freshman Marica Spitz (Class of 1955, on the left) and another female student whose name I have forgotten. Please help me find them [so we can] compare our lives. Prof. Harp gave me a fossil of the oldest kind in the United States. I would like to find old friends.

Allan Cooper ’52
Wimborne Saint Giles, Dorset, England

Ed’s note: Readers, click on the image to view a larger version of the photo. Anyone who can identify the woman on the right can e-mail 
magazine@tcnj.edu.