In Memoriam:
Slow Food and Drink for Body and Soul
Peter Kircher'75
| Photo courtesy News Register/Tom Ballard |
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In a society where people often stop only long enough to grab sandwiches from fast-food restaurants, it’s refreshing to meet someone who wants to slow things down. Not that there’s anything slow-paced about Peter Kircher’s life. Kircher’75 and his wife, Celia, work long hours as owners of the popular Golden Valley Brewery & Pub in McMinnville, Ore. It’s their approach to producing handcrafted food and beverages from local sources that takes time.
The Golden Valley restaurant features dishes that use fresh, local ingredients: meat and produce from nearby farms, wine from Willamette Valley vineyards, and seafood from the Oregon coast. Their Golden Valley Brewery produces hand-crafted beers.
The Kirchers themselves produce all-natural beef and organic vegetables for the restaurant at their Angus Springs Ranch. Their free-range Angus cattle are raised on spring-fed pastures and spent grain from the brewery, which is naturally high in protein and fiber.
The restaurant and the brewery, with its brewpub bar salvaged from an old Portland hotel, are located in a restored 1920s warehouse in downtown McMinnville. This unique setting, like the careful preparation of food in their restaurant, reflects the Kirchers’ dedication to the kind of traditions often found in older cultures, or even in America a generation ago.
Kircher’s passion for fresh ingredients and traditional cooking began when he watched Julia Child on television as a kid. At Beloit, where Kircher says he was “encouraged to be diverse and adventurous in life and education,” he used Child’s cookbooks while running the faculty house’s food service with Professor of English Bink Noll.
Kircher was instrumental in starting an organic gardening program at Beloit, digging up half his yard to plant a garden that supplied pizza ingredients for Zambini’s Pizza, a restaurant he helped open on campus.
Even Kircher’s work-study term at a kids’ camp honed his cooking skills. When the chef quit during the first week, Kircher took over the kitchen, preparing three daily meals for 100 people. As Kircher notes, though, “We used the Navy cookbook for that, not Julia Child’s books.”
After graduation, Kircher went to work for the best chefs he could find. This led him to Texas, Colorado, California, and Wales, where he met Celia. Later, while working as a fisherman in Alaska, Kircher continued cooking, preparing food for fellow crew members.
The Kirchers and their three sons moved to Oregon after more than a decade in Alaska. They bought 65 acres, started a vineyard, and opened the Golden Valley Brewery & Pub in 1993.
Since moving to Oregon, the Kirchers have done a great deal of community service work. “Being part of the community is a huge asset, both from a business and a personal standpoint,” Kircher notes. The couple hosts fundraisers for non-profits at their restaurant and an annual Christmas celebration for local Habitat for Humanity volunteers. Kircher also serves on the board of Kids on the Block, an after-school enrichment program and is a member of the McMinnville Downtown Association, for which he served as president for three years.
Peter Kircher’s work as a restaurateur and community leader is geared toward achieving what he describes as “the inner satisfactions that can be found in a carefully prepared meal shared with family and friends.” Now that’s something worth slowing down for.
— Anemone Beaulier
Photo courtesy The Janesville Gazette |
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Beth Bartelt Oswald’95
Medieval reenactments, toga parties, and mud-brick building contests may have little in common, but for Beth Bartelt Oswald’95 they are all tools of the trade. As the only seventh grade social studies teacher at J.C. McKenna Middle School in Evansville, Wis., she often incorporates such activities into lessons. Her enthusiasm and creative approach to teaching have won Oswald the affection of her students, along with the 2008 Wisconsin State Teacher of the Year honors.
As a state Teacher of the Year, she’ll have opportunities to meet President Bush, confer with top educators, and attend Space Camp. Her new role also offers a platform to talk about her favorite subject—helping children by reaching them early.
“Middle school students are special,” Oswald explains. “They need to develop life skills, social skills, time-management skills … things that will help them be successful with their peers and as adults.”
That perspective shapes her curriculum, which focuses on early Western civilization. “Content is important, but I also want students to be able to work with others and to be comfortable speaking, thinking, and sharing in class.”
Oswald encourages them to consider the past by relating it to their own experiences. In one exercise, she asks students to illustrate a “one-minute personal history” with an artifact brought from home. “When they present their artifacts, I ask ‘Why is that object important to you?’ Doing so leads to discussion about history, archaeology, and material culture.”
Beloit College serves as a resource for Oswald, who borrows teaching materials from the Logan Museum of Anthropology. Her students often tour the museum, and in 2005 they collaborated with Beloit undergraduates on developing an exhibition about ancient civilizations.
In late 2006, Oswald was nominated by her principal for a prestigious fellowship from the Herb Kohl Educational Foundation. The application process was daunting. “I had to write extensive essays about my philosophy of teaching and community service involvement,” she recalls. “I lost track of the hours spent working on the application.”
After earning one of the 86 Kohl fellowships awarded in 2007, Oswald was automatically placed in the running for Teacher of the Year honors. Four teachers are selected annually, one each representing special services, elementary, middle, and high school programs statewide. Having secured the middle school title, she was named the Wisconsin State Teacher of the Year after acing an intensive interview.
Elizabeth Burmaster, Wisconsin’s state superintendent of public instruction, presented the award. She commended Oswald’s “ability to put a spark into the learning environment” and her commitment to helping children learn.
Oswald is now a candidate for National Teacher of the Year honors, which will be conferred in Washington, D.C., in April. But she has little time to dwell on that since she’s busy either teaching or stumping for educational initiatives in professional and political circles.
Last December, she addressed the Wisconsin State Senate Committee on Education. In a short presentation, she endorsed legislation that would require employers to allow parents leave-time so that they can participate in school conferences and activities. Oswald asserted that the measure would “go a long way toward making it easier for parents who wish they could attend to do so.”
Such advocacy comes easily to Oswald, who thrives on building relationships with students, parents, colleagues, and community members. Her Teacher of the Year credential has opened up a whole new network of contacts, and she looks forward to making her tenure a productive one.
“I am thrilled to be collaborating with teachers from around the country and all over the world,” she says. “I know that I will learn additional teaching strategies and acquire new lesson ideas that will enhance my students’ educational experience.”
— N. Marie Dries’92
YouTube and the Next U.S. President
Ben Smith’97
| Amy Palmer |
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Ben Smith’97 and his colleagues at YouTube thought it would be tough to convince 2008 presidential candidates to use a video sharing Web site as part of their campaigns. But it turned out to be an easy sell.
In early 2007, Smith was tapped to approach the campaigns of New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and Arizona Sen. John McCain, convincing them both to sign on. Those “endorsements” of YouTube—and the posting of a few independent and controversial candidate-related videos that grabbed voter attention last year—have turned the site into a major player in the 2008 presidential race.
The three-year-old company’s most central role in the race is through its You Choose’08 platform, which includes videotaped speeches posted by the campaigns, voter questions and responses—often in the form of videos—campaign ads, and news clips. Smith and a colleague designed the platform’s prototype.
Eventually, every major and several minor candidates agreed to participate.
“The candidates took this and ran,” Smith says.
The Internet has made it possible for people with similar interests to find each other and form niche “communities” like never before, Smith says. He likened this feeling of community to what he found as a student at Beloit College.
A political science major and legal studies minor, Smith also took several theatre classes and acted in plays at Beloit. Smith says Amy Sarno, associate professor of theatre arts, and Beloit’s theatre department challenged him and allowed him to discover who and what he wanted to be.
“I realized life is exactly what I make of it,” he says. “I left Beloit knowing how to think for myself and figure things out.”
With this outlook, Smith and a friend founded a small video production company in Singapore and starred in their own productions, including in commercials for HBO Asia. He parlayed that experience into a video-related job at giant search engine Google, Inc. five years ago. When Google acquired YouTube in 2006, he moved into a position there.
In addition to the You Choose candidate forum, YouTube also began partnering with CNN on candidate debates in 2007. The format, which Smith also had a hand in, has candidates responding directly to videotaped questions submitted by voters via YouTube.
Smith believes the role of video in the debates and the campaign has led to more honesty. “This medium gives candidates and the electorate the opportunity to speak directly to each other,” he says.
He also thinks it has led to more accountability on the part of the candidates. “Cameras are everywhere, all of the time. Anything anyone says or does can immediately go on YouTube and be seen by the world. If you earn or burn just one person’s trust, the whole world will now see that action,” he says. “The candidates are realizing each and every citizen can affect their candidacy.”
— Erin Johansen’91
In Memoriam:
Ken Hendricks, Civic and Business Leader, College Trustee
| Bob Rashid |
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| Ken Hendricks receives an honorary degree at Beloit’s 157th Commencement ceremony last May. |
Ken Hendricks, a giant in the world of entrepreneurship and a trustee for Beloit College, died Dec. 21, 2007, after an accident at his Afton, Wis., home. He was a down-to-earth and sensitive man who believed in people and applied his business acumen to improving the quality of life in the Beloit area through employment, opportunity, education, and urban development.
Last May at Commencement, Ken and Diane Hendricks received honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees from Beloit College in recognition of all they have done for the Beloit community.
Family came first for Ken Hendricks, and he felt people needed good jobs to be able to provide adequately for their families. He gave up on no one and judged people only by how hard they worked.
Born in Janesville in 1941, he was a roofer all of his life, dropping out of high school to work full-time for his father. He formed his own roofing company, which eventually became one of the largest commercial businesses of its kind in the nation.
In 1982, with vast experience in contracting and construction and a unique vision, he and his wife Diane created a national chain of roofing and siding distribution centers. American Builders & Contractors Supply Co., better known as ABC Supply, became the world’s largest distributor of roofing and siding materials.
Ken joined the Beloit College board of trustees in 1998 and played a key role in the College’s development over the past decade. He was particularly proud of his contributions to the renovation and restoration of Strong Stadium in 1999.
His death was a huge loss to the Beloit community. He died just days following the opening of the new Vision Beloit Center, which he had made possible to help focus the work of many groups as they planned Beloit’s future growth.
At a memorial service that drew thousands from throughout the country, Beloit College Public Affairs Director Ron Nief was asked to deliver a eulogy on behalf of the community. The following are excerpts from his comments:
“Ken inspired and empowered us—as people and as a community—to be all that we can be. He instilled in all of us a passion and dedication to do what was right. He encouraged us to give of ourselves. To remain loyal to principles and friends. To honor diversity and respect it in all segments of life. He made us stewards of this community and allowed us to see our potential.
“Ken was energized by other people’s frustrations and failures. Whether old trucks, or computers, or buildings or lives, Ken would get fired up with the potential and would find new hope and purpose for all of them. Beloit is not the only community he has resuscitated, but we are fortunate that he walked among us here. He had the same uncompromising love and belief in this city that he had in this nation. His concerns extended far beyond our economic well-being.
“Most of all, the passion that Ken and Diane felt for this community’s children, particularly the less fortunate among them, will be felt for generations. Together, they believed they had a responsibility for children, particularly those who had a challenge in education, by connecting them to career opportunities through hands-on experiences, giving every kid an even start.”
Ken’s survivors include his wife, Diane, seven children, and 15 grandchildren.
In Memoriam:
Ken Jones, Director of the College Physical Plant
Kenneth L. Jones, Beloit College’s longtime campus facilities director, died on Dec. 10, 2007, at his home in Janesville, Wis. He was 53.
As director of the Physical Plant, Jones capably managed the College housekeeping, grounds, and maintenance departments for the past 19 years. His responsibilities extended to every corner of Beloit’s 40-acre campus and its more than 50 buildings.
Jones served as the College’s liaison on campus construction and improvement projects with many external entities, such as the Landmarks Commission, the city of Beloit, and utility companies. He also provided staff support to the property committee of the Beloit College board of trustees. His work on the campus master plan task force helped shape and execute the long-term vision for campus grounds and facilities, including the current construction of the Center for the Sciences. He was the construction liaison for the center, the College’s largest building project to date, which will open this fall.
Prior to joining Beloit College in 1988, Jones managed facilities for Waukesha County in Waukesha, Wis., and served in the U.S. Marine Corps. He held an associate’s degree from Waukesha County Technical College.
Survivors include his wife, Ruth, a son, a daughter, and three grandchildren.
