'80 Members Take Part in PAW's "Lives Lived and Lost" Issue

The February 3 issue of the Princeton Alumni Weekly features members of the Class of 1980 throughout, especially in its cover theme on "Lives Lived and Lost: 2015."

The section opens with a two-page photograph of Nancy Sullivan, an anthopologist who lived in Papua New Guinea for 24 years and died on July 16,  The article about her says,

She used those years to become an advocate for the country’s indigenous people and their culture as well as a beloved mother figure to more than a dozen children from the jungle.

An essay about E. Alden Dunham '53, who served at Princeton's director of admissions starting in 1962, quotes his daughter, Ellen Dunham-Jones, who recalls her father sometimes was called to Nassau Hall to explain his admissions decisions. Following Princeton, he continued to work to expand opportunities in higher education. Dunham-Jones said,

“He wanted to make sure that my siblings and I didn’t grow up as Princeton kids, with the expectation that everybody is ... well-educated and has all these opportunities,” Dunham-Jones says. “[He made sure] we had a chance to meet and learn to love people who had a lousy education and limited opportunities, but were wonderful and smart people. He always wanted us to be aware of that.” 

Marc Fisher, senior editor of the Washington Post, wrote an essay about his Post colleague Don Oberdorfer '52, describing him as "a phenomemon that today is very much in danger of fading away entirely: a journalist who was an expert in his own right." Fisher wrote,

Oberdorfer spent the bulk of his career at The Washington Post, where he covered the White House, the State Department, and foreign policy, and served as the paper’s Tokyo bureau chief. Rare is the reporter whose notebooks are worth saving, let alone becoming part of Princeton’s Mudd Manuscript Library, where 17 boxes of Oberdorfer’s notes chronicle his time as what legendaryPost editor Ben Bradlee called “a foreign-affairs expert who could and did peg even with the very best foreign-affairs experts.”

Beyond the memorials, '80 members contributed in other ways to the issue. Scott Willenbrock contributed a letter to the editor identifying people in a 1976 photo with basketball coach Pate Carril, and a short article about February 20 Alumni Day notes that Gen. Mark Milley will be receiving the Woodrow Wilson Award.