1966
Paul Pittman, of Florence, S.C., was awarded the 2019 Jacobs Bowl, the highest award for volunteer service to the U.S. Tennis Association’s Southern Section.
1970
Edward J. Hamilton Jr. has been elected to serve on the national board of directors for the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve, a program of the U.S. Department of Defense. He served in the U.S. Army Reserve JAG Corps, retiring as a colonel.
1976
John Braddy of Dillon, S.C., just completed his term as chairman of the McLeod Health Board of Trustees. He continues to serve on the board as well as in a consulting role with Braddy Insurance of Dillon. Braddy was instrumental in the revitalization of downtown Dillon and the restoration of the Dillon County Theatre and the Dillon County Courthouse. He is also past president of the Dillon County Chamber of Commerce.
1979
The Post & Courier newspaper recently profiled Gary Keisler of Mount Pleasant, S.C. He’s a self-employed salesman. Business was slow because of the COVID-19 pandemic, so Keisler made time for fly-fishing almost every day, even if it was just five minutes in a neighborhood lake. He told the newspaper, “If I wasn’t doing that, I would be going crazy right now.”
1985
The South Carolina General Assembly elected Tim Madden to an at-large seat as a judge in the state’s family court system.
Bert Parker recently was inducted into the Argentarius Society, recognizing his 25 years of service as a diagnostic and interventional radiologist at Tuomey Hospital. He serves as Prisma Health Tuomey chief of staff and has been actively involved in the day-to-day strategic planning during the COVID-19 crisis.
1987
Michelle Womick Anderson, senior vice president of the Anderson Wolf Godsey Group, has been named to Forbes magazine’s “America’s Top Women Wealth Advisors” 2020 list. She is located in Charlotte, N.C.
1988
COVID-19 forced Hartsville High School’s baseball season to end suddenly with coach Tony Gainey on the verge of winning his 200th game. He reflected on the season’s ending and his first spring break in 19 years with a sense of humor during an interview with the Florence Morning News: “My yard looks terrible, and my wife tells me if I spent as much time working on my yard as I do on our baseball field, it wouldn’t look as bad as it does.”
1989
The South Carolina General Assembly elected Ernie Jarrett, of Kingstree, S.C., to a seat on the 3rd Judicial Circuit’s family court.
1990
Paula Blackwell Bulman was named Midsouth commercial operations leader for USI’s Charlotte, N.C., office. USI is an insurance broker and consulting firm.
Mike Dennis of Orangeburg, S.C., was elected to the board of directors for the Courage Center, a nonprofit that provides coaching, treatment and other services for people battling substance addiction.
1991
The South Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church appointed the Rev. A. Melton Arant Jr. coordinator of clergy services.
1992
Stuart Thomas is continuing his career with Mettler Toledo, but in a new role in a new country. Starting in February 2020, he became the country manager for Australia. After living for 10 years in the Columbus, Ohio, area, he and his wife, Kay, have relocated to Melbourne.
1995
Jule Eldridge has joined Raymond James & Associates as a senior vice president for investments.
1996
Becky McLeod Connelly of Mount Pleasant, S.C., founded Non Disclosure Apparel, which provides new bra technology.
Josh Crotzer is the field editor for South Carolina Living magazine. He and his family are relocating to the Columbia, S.C., area.
1997
Matt McCoy joined Eastdil Secured’s Charlotte, N.C., office. He is responsible for growing the commercial real estate firm’s credit, corporate advisory and net lease businesses in the Southeast and Southwest.
1999
Brent Williams was named senior director of marketing and sales for United Community Bank. He previously served as the bank’s director of community banking sales and service.
2000
Erika and Brian Clark welcomed Lawton John Clark on April 13, 2019. Lawton joins three older siblings. The family lives in Columbia, S.C.
2003
FordHarrison promoted Kristin Starnes Gray to partner. Gray focuses her practice on helping employers navigate human resources-related issues and litigation.
2004
Joseph Walker III of Columbia, S.C., owns multiple Marco’s Pizza locations. He partnered with University of South Carolina football coach Will Muschamp and his wife for the “Feed Our Heroes” campaign to provide meals to health care employees in Lexington, Richland and Sumter counties.
2005
André Caldwell was elected shareholder in the office of Ogletree Deakins in Oklahoma City, Okla.
South Carolina Lawyers Weekly awarded Janet Rhodes its Leadership in Law Award. The award recognizes attorneys who have achieved professional success while making significant contributions to society. She practices employment law in South Carolina and federal courts.
2006
Sarah Smith Gucwa and her husband, Jason Gucwa, welcomed a son, Jackson Thomas Gucwa, on March 8, 2020. The family lives in Franklin, Tenn.
2007
Bess Snyder Fortune and her husband, Russell Fortune, welcomed daughter Emmeline Isobel Fortune on Dec. 5, 2019. Emmeline joins siblings Mary Carol, Elias and Dottie.
2008
Ashley Glasgow Langley and Michael Dennis Langley welcomed daughter Sterling Mae Langley on Jan. 2, 2020. Sterling has an older sister, Annabelle.
2011
Craig Mitchell Calhoun married Lindsey Lambrakos on Feb. 22, 2020, at First Baptist Church of Charleston, S.C.
Lisle Traywick was named to the South Carolina Supreme Court Pro Bono Hall of Fame. It recognizes attorneys who have provided 50 or more hours of pro bono legal service in a calendar year. Traywick practices with Robinson Gray, a Columbia-based firm.
2013
Michelle Stinson was named assistant director of undergraduate admissions at American University in Washington, D.C.
Joseph Benjamin McMillin and his wife, Caroline, welcomed a son, Joseph Asher McMillin, on Feb. 28, 2020.
2014
Alexandra Kachulis and Ryan Hurst were married Aug. 31, 2019, at St. Nektarios Greek Orthodox Church in Charlotte, N.C. Kachulis is a nurse practitioner, and Hurst is completing a doctorate in nursing practice in anesthesia. The couple lives in Raleigh, N.C.
2015
Dr. Sarah Grace Keaveny Engel, a resident in the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Pediatric Residency Program, was selected for an exchange program that will take her to Catholic University in Santiago, Chile, in 2021.
The South Carolina Association of Student Councils named Brian Mekler its Middle Level Advisor of the Year. Mekler is a social studies teacher at Northwest Middle School in Travelers Rest, S.C. Four years ago, as a first-year teacher, Mekler assumed the role of student council advisor with a team of two students and an account with $14 in it. Over time he grew the program to a robust membership of more than 40 council members who have built a culture of school spirit and pride through leadership. He was also a finalist for the Warren E. Shull Advisor of the Year Award.
2017
Matt Howell, a Ph.D. candidate in chemistry at the University of Connecticut, is the recipient of a prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. The fellowship will begin in the fall and continue through spring 2023. Given the growing crisis of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, Howell, in collaboration with his advisor, will examine the relationships between peptides, metal ions and antibiotics. They are searching for combinations that demonstrate synergistic killing of these bacteria.
Kevin Joseph Szostak married Abigail Rae Butler on Jan. 11, 2020, in Summerville, S.C. Szostak is director of investor services for the Greater Summerville/Dorchester County Chamber of Commerce.
Allen Wilkerson was promoted to vice president with Colliers International. He works in the company’s Columbia, S.C., market and specializes in corporate consulting, leasing and acquisitions.
2018
David Lewitt and Natalya Khan were married on March 6 in Islamabad, Pakistan.
2019
Limestone College in Gaffney, S.C., named Devin Watson the defensive backs coach for its football team. He also is working toward an MBA from Shorter University.
FACULTY
Dr. Matt Cathey, associate professor of mathematics, was awarded a master of science degree from Texas A&M University in December. He majored in statistics with emphases in biostatistics and applied statistics.
Dr. William DeMars, professor of government and international affairs, has been awarded a Visiting International Professor Fellowship by the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) Research School in Bochum, Germany, to collaborate with his co-author, Dr. Dennis Dijkzeul, on researching international NGOs with RUB doctoral dissertation students and colleagues. This VIP fellowship provides a grant of € 5,000 to fund three visits to RUB over two years. The first visit was during the first week of March.
Dr. John Farrenkopf, professor of government and international affairs, was the featured speaker at a Richmond, Va., dinner held at the Commonwealth Club on Feb. 27, 2020. The evening was titled “An Evening on Oswald Spengler.” During the event, he was presented with a resolution from the Virginia state legislature, which recognized him as “the world’s leading English-speaking scholar on the life and works of Oswald Spengler.”
Dr. Alysa M. Handelsman, assistant professor of sociology and anthropology, has a new publication, “Ethnography as Decolonial Pedagogy in Ecuador: Youth-Led Research and Learning” in Engaging the African Diaspora in K-12 Education.
Dr. Jeremy Morris, assistant professor of biology, co-authored “Musculoskeletal mass and shape are correlated with competitive ability in male house mice (Mus musculus),” which appeared in the Journal of Experimental Biology (February 2020).
Dr. Anne B. Rodrick, professor of history, had a paper, titled “The Circulation of Knowledge-Based Culture: The Journal of the Society of Arts, 1852- 1870,” accepted for the 2020 conference of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals. The conference has been postponed until fall 2021.
George W. Singleton, the John C. Cobb Professor of Humanities/English, has published the following recently: “What a Dime Costs,” short story, Story magazine, #7, spring 2020; “I Know About Child-Proofing,” novella, storySouth, April 2020; “Figure Out the Boundaries,” short story, Arts and Letters, #40, spring 2020; “Dispensers,” short story, Epoch, Vol 69:1, summer 2020; and “Down to the Graveyard,” nonfiction, Oxford American SC Music issue, November 2019.
Patrick M. Stanton, associate professor of finance, has a new publication in the International Journal of Economics and Management Engineering, “Cultural Effects on the Performance of Non-Profit and For-Profit Microfinance Institutions,” co-authored by William R. McCumber.