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Ferguson Elwyn Rood (MSJ56)

Ferguson Elwyn Rood, 95, formerly of Atlanta, Georgia, a distinguished pioneer in newspaper marketing and a beloved family man, passed away peacefully in Winchester, Virginia on February 24th, 2025 at Orchard Woods Healthcare Center at the Village at Orchard Ridge. Born on August 2, 1929, in Joliet, Illinois, Ferguson was the son of Owen and Euphemia (Ferguson) Rood. He was preceded in death by his parents, his brothers Owen and Frank Rood, and his wife, Nancy Haltom Rood.

Ferguson graduated from Lapier High School in 1947 and pursued higher education at Joliet Jr. College and Illinois Wesleyan College, earning a degree in Business. In 1952, he was drafted into the Army during the Korean War and served with the Army Signal Corps at Camp Gordon in Augusta, Georgia. After his military service, Ferguson attended Northwestern University in Chicago, where he earned a Master’s in Journalism in 1956 and met the love of his life, Nancy Haltom. The couple married in 1958 and were devoted to each other throughout their 58 years together.

Upon graduation, Ferguson began his career with the Atlanta Journal and Constitution in 1956, where he was instrumental in establishing the first Research and Marketing Department. His groundbreaking work in market research set new standards in the industry and was recognized in academic texts for advertising and marketing. Ferguson retired as the VP of Research and Marketing for Cox Newspaper, Inc. in 1988.

Throughout his career, Ferguson was actively involved in community and service organizations, including Toastmasters, Travel Aide Atlanta, The Newspaper Marketing and Research Association, Dekalb County PTA, and Oak Grove United Methodist Church.

Ferguson and Nancy were proud parents to three daughters: Cindy Robinson (David), Cathy Philips (Skip), and Carolyn Ferguson (James). He was a devoted grandfather to seven grandchildren: Emily Kauchak (Kevin), Will Heine, Stephen Philips, Christopher Philips, Erin Philips, Gavin Little, and Arden Little; as well as a cherished great-grandfather to Kingston and Harper Kauchak, and Camden and Beckham Heine.

Ferguson had a passion for travel, exploring all 50 states with Nancy in their beloved RVs. His sense of adventure and his joy in every place he visited were as remarkable as his renowned love for a good cigar and his quirky sense of humor.

The family extends their heartfelt thanks to the many caregivers who supported Ferguson in his later years; Inus Quincey, Blue Ridge Hospice, the staff at The Village at Orchard Ridge and the nurses and caregivers at Orchard Woods Healthcare Center for their tender loving care. Each caregiver was special and so appreciated.

Ferguson Elwyn Rood’s legacy of innovation, service, and love for his family will be remembered fondly by all who knew him. His life was a testament to dedication, curiosity, and a deep affection for those around him.

https://www.winchesterstar.com/obituaries/ferguson-elwyn-rood/article_45517de9-d73a-5fc2-a63c-4633d785bfe1.html

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Books

Poisoning the Well

Rachel Frazin (BSJ19)

This is the shocking true-life story of how PFAS—a set of toxic chemicals most people have never heard of—poisoned the entire country. Based on original, shoe-leather reporting in four highly contaminated towns and damning documents from the polluters’ own files, Poisoning the Well traces an ugly history of corporate greed and devastation of human lives.

Readers learn that PFAS, the ‘forever chemicals’ found in everyday products, from cooking pans to mascara, are coursing through the veins of 97% of Americans. They witness the pain of families who lost sisters and daughters, cousins and neighbors, after PFAS leached into their drinking water. The book details evidence that the makers of forever chemicals may have known for decades about the deadly risks of their products—because their own scientists have been documenting these dangers since the 1960s. And it details the failure of our government, time after time, to provide basic protections to its citizens.

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Books

Reading for Our Lives

Maya Payne Smart (MSJ05)

Today’s children face intense pressure to meet rising academic standards and prepare for future careers, but most fall dangerously short. Early struggles with language and literacy often snowball into lasting disadvantages. Millions of U.S. kids don’t learn to read well in elementary school, driving low adult literacy rates and threatening the nation’s economic productivity, public health, and social equity.

In “Reading for Our Lives: The Urgency of Early Literacy and the Action Plan to help Your Child,” journalist Maya Payne Smart shows that the literacy crisis starts at home. Too many parents expect schools to unlock their child’s reading potential, unaware that even the best classroom instruction (which most don’t get) can’t make up for weak early preparation or inconsistent support outside of school.

Smart breaks down the latest research to show parents how to do their part to build essential literacy skills. She busts the myth that bedtime stories are parents’ greatest contribution to kids’ reading development. She advocates instead for weaving a range of simple, fun, free literacy habits and activities into everyday family life—and shows you how to do it.

With optimism and evidence, “Reading for Our Lives” delivers a clear call to action and a path forward for families, schools, and communities to beat the literacy crisis together

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Books

Justice Batted Last

Don Zminda (BSJ70) “Justice Batted Last: Ernie Banks, Minnie Miñoso, and the Unheralded Players Who Integrated Chicago’s Major League Teams” tells the story of the Black players who integrated the Chicago White Sox and Cubs in the1940s and ’50s. Zminda also highlights Chicago’s pivotal role, both positive and negative, in the battle to break baseball’s color barrier. In the 19th century superstar player-manager Cap Anson of the Chicago White Stockings, precursors to the Cubs, was instrumental in driving Black players out of organized baseball. Despite pressure from activists and writers, the leagues remained all-white during the long tenure of baseball’s first commissioner, Chicago-based Kenesaw Mountain Landis. And while publicly stating that they were open to giving Black players a chance during the 1940s, the White Sox and Cubs turned away the chance to sign future superstars like Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays.

 Along with detailed coverage of the challenges and racism faced by future Baseball Hall of Famers Banks and Miñoso, Zminda takes a deep look into the careers and lives of other Black players signed by the Chicago teams during this time. Their vivid experiences are an important part of baseball history, as well as the story of race relations in America.

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Books

Gentleman Jack and Rough Rufus: The Rise of Black American Wrestling

Ian Douglass (MSJ2006)

“Gentleman Jack and Rough Rufus: The Rise of Black American Wrestling” is a biography by Ian Douglass (MSJ ’06) about two Black professional wrestling pioneers that doubles as a socio-historical account of the development of an identifiable Black pro wrestling style between 1930 and 1960. Douglass covers the unforgettable rises and tragic downfalls of Jack Claybourne and Rufus Jones in microscopic detail, and in a way that enables readers to clearly identify the historical importance of both figures within the broader context of the professional wrestling landscape. Moreover, readers will be able to plainly see how the influence of the two athletes continues to be evident nearly 100 years after both wrestlers made their in-ring debuts.

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Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools That Built The Civil Rights Movement

Elaine Weiss (MSJ74)

The gripping story of four social justice activists whose audacious plan to restore voting rights to Black Americans in the Jim Crow south laid the grassroots foundation for the Civil Rights Movement. They developed the Citizenship Schools project, starting with a single secret classroom hidden in the back of a South Carolina rural grocery store. By the time the Voting Rights Act was signed into law in 1965, over 900 citizenship schools had been established in eleven southern states, quietly preparing tens of thousands of Black citizens to read and write, demand their rights—and vote.
Spell Freedom plunges readers into the heart of the burgeoning movement, offering a visceral and intimate story of ordinary citizens confronting injustice with courage and creativity, attempting to repair American democracy with their own hands.

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1950s Legacies

Mary Krabbe Kerr (BSJ54)

Mary K. Kerr of Ferrisburgh, Vermont, passed away quietly in her sleep on March 3, 2025, in her home on Lake Champlain that she fondly referred to as “the most beautiful place in the world.” She was one day shy of her 92nd birthday. Her family was with her.

Born Mary Sonja Krabbe in Bellingham, Washington, to Johan and Winifred Gamble Krabbe, Mary spent her youth moving about the west coast with her family. She attended Sequoia High School in California and Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois where she graduated from the Medill in 1954. She also studied at the University of Copenhagen.

She first met her devoted husband, Joseph Minott Kerr, while skiing at Sugar Bowl in Soda Springs, California and continued their relationship at Northwestern, and were married on April 2, 1955, at Aftermath, the Kerr family summer home in Wainscott, New York. Joe preceded her in death in 2008.

While living in New Jersey, Mary and Joe fell in love with Vermont, invested in the then-burgeoning ski industry, and eventually built a “ski home” in South Fayston in 1962. They moved there full-time in 1965, where they raised their three sons. In addition to loving the mountains and skiing, Mary and Joe loved the water and sailing. In 1981 they bought a home on the shores of Lake Champlain near Basin Harbor, where they moved permanently in 1997.

For most of Mary’s life, she had a love affair with the Green Mountains and Lake Champlain. Her enthusiasm for the beauty of the natural world was truly evident in the plethora of gardens, flowers, birds, squirrels, and even chipmunks, she encouraged to grow around her home on the Lake. Inspired by the variety of birds she watched every day; she worked with the Vermont Bald Eagle Restoration Initiative to help return the American Bald Eagle to Lake Champlain.

Mary was an avid writer and photographer and capitalized on her training as a journalist. She served as the editor of two publications, Window of Vermont, a bi-monthly newspaper devoted primarily to the ski industry, and The Valley Reporter, the weekly newspaper for the Mad River Valley in Central Vermont. Mary had taught journalism as an adjunct professor at Saint Michael’s College in Burlington Vermont. She was also a prolific writer on skiing and the ski industry.

Mary wrote two books, The Tapestry of My Life, an unpublished autobiographical work that she gave to her sons. The second was what she called her “Life’s Work,” A Mountain Love Affair: The Story of Mad River Glen. It was a compendium of photographs and stories of the iconic ski area’s history.

Mary loved to ski. From the moment the mountains had enough snow until it was completely gone, you could find Mary and Joe schussing one of the 140 ski areas around the World where they adventured during their lifetime together. She loved organizing ski trips all over the World for the New York Amateur Ski Club of which she and Joe were lifelong members.

Above all was Mary’s passion for traveling and seeing the world, having been to five of the seven world continents. She loved to capture her travels in pictures, and her home is filled with carefully annotated albums documenting her exploits on the road. Even after Joe passed in 2008, Mary continued to travel the world, traveling extensively in the Middle East and Southwest Asia.

Her most passionate project grew out of her senior thesis on women and leadership at Northwestern and her travels to Afghanistan, where she sought to help young women become strong and independent. She worked with the School of Leadership Afghanistan (SOLA), a boarding school for Afghan girls that operated in Kabul from 2016 until 2021, and since the return of the Taliban, now operates out of Rwanda. She made several trips to that war-torn country to mentor the girls as well as teach them writing and journalism.

Mary is survived by her three sons, Minott Kerr, Geoffrey Kerr (Dan Flanagan), and Gibson (Diane Lawliss) Kerr; five grandchildren, Kirstin (Seamus) Kerr O’Connor, Alyssa (Matthew) Kerr Pyrak, Maxer Kerr, Gavin Kerr, and Peter Kerr; and one great granddaughter, Rory Kerr O’Connor. Her surviving Minnesota nieces, Lois Meekins Croonquist, Lisa Meekins Meyer, and Heidi Meekins were very dear to her.

Though a devoted wife, she was fiercely independent, and she left this life exactly as she said she would to anyone who knew her well: “out of her house feet first, going up through the trees.” Her outgoing personality and strong belief systems will be remembered by many.

https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/obituaries/pbur1110733

 

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1960s Featured Legacies Legacies

Emerson Moran (BSJ65)

Emerson D. Moran, Jr., age 81, passed away peacefully on Sunday, February 9, 2025. Emerson was born on November 21, 1943, in Brooklyn, NY to the late Emerson Daniel and Carolyn Mae (Wilder) Moran.

Emerson attended Palmetto High School in southern Florida where he excelled in English and Writing. The founding editor of the Palmetto Panther Newspaper, he was named the Miami-Dade County’s 1960 Top High School Journalist by Miami Herald. Emerson earned his bachelor’s degree at Medill. While in college, Emerson was a summer intern at the press office of NASA in Washington, D.C. kicking off an extensive career in journalism and communications.

Emerson was an investigative news reporter for the Gannett Newspapers, headquartered in Rochester, NY specializing in governmental misadministration, public corruption and organized crime. He won the 1970 NYS Associated Press award for public service for a series he wrote on corruption. He joined the NYS Organized Crime Task Force in 1971 as the Communications Chief and Criminal Intelligence Analyst. While doing this work, Emerson worked on many issues most notably investigating the Attica Prison Riots in 1971. The expertise gained here led Emerson to another communications position with the Philadelphia Special Investigations Commission. Here, he directed internal/external communications regarding the police department’s attack on the anarchist group MOVE. Emerson’s career didn’t slow. He moved into a position as the Chief Speechwriter and Deputy Director of Communications under Gov. Robert Casey in Pennsylvania.

Using his experience as a recovering alcoholic and member of Alcoholics Anonymous, he was assigned by Gov. Casey to create the state’s first coordinated initiative to address alcohol, drug and HIV/AIDS threats to the public’s health (PENNFREE)-the forerunner of the current state Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs. Emerson served as the Senior Policy Advisor for these initiatives.

Emerson joined the American Medical Association as the Vice President of Advocacy Communications, Chief Speechwriter and Director of Issues Management. In this role, he was responsible for leadership messages and issue advocacy, congressional relations, and all crisis communication. Emerson’s career continued to flourish as a freelance writer writing essays and speeches for clients such as the CEOs of Walt Disney World, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the American Hospital Association, and he also served as the on-site speaker prep at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

He was the recipient of the grand prize 2011 National Cicero/Vital Speeches of the Day Award for the Best Speech of the Year for his speech “Changing the Norms of Medicine and Health: The Power of Positive Deviance”. He was a Pulitzer nominee for Breaking News, a winner of the Associated Press Community Service award, and author of America’s Best Magazine Article of the Year.

Emerson was a consultant on the documentary “West Philly Is Burning” for PBS’s Frontline, and an assistant producer for NBC American Almanac report on racial and political unrest in U.S. Virgin Islands. Emerson loved educating young minds. One of his proudest moments was delivering a speech to Benjamin Hall middle schoolers where he spoke of his experience at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. Emerson uplifted the audience with his recollection of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech (https://www.youtube.com/live/g0WkMUWGrJ0 ).

Outside of his work, Ezzy was devoted to his family. He was the primary caretaker of his mother. When his beloved wife, Patricia, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, he became her primary caretaker until her passing in 2013. He was an active member of the Nativity Lutheran Church in Palm Beach where he served in many church activities and an alter server.

Emerson was a very involved member of AA for 40+ years playing a crucial role in shaping the lives of those he helped-as AA played a crucial role in who Emerson was as a person. Ezzy adored his Clifton Park (NY) family, loved Chicago, was a forever cheerleader of the Chicago Bears and Northwestern Wildcats and spent his life “moving words around”. He was a loving and proud father and grandfather, an amazing friend and confidante, and a humble follower of the Lord.

Emerson is predeceased by his parents, wife (Patricia) and his grandson, Ethan Moran. He is survived by his brother Michael (Lynn) and sister Patricia McPhail; children David (Elizabeth), Daniel, and Patrick (Buffy); grandchildren Devan, Emily, Jessika, Sarah, Mari, Grace, and Samuel; great grandchildren Sophia, Alina, Ella and Preston; and nieces and nephews.
The family invites friends and family to celebrate Emerson’s life and legacy on Saturday, June 7, 2025 at 10 a.m. at the Burnt Hills Baptist Church.
https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/name/emerson-moran-obituary?id=57559247

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Books

Ken Morrow

Allan Kreda (MSJ88)

All hockey players dream of hoisting the Stanley Cup and winning a gold medal for their home country. Ken Morrow was the first to accomplish both feats in the same year, playing for the United States in the “Miracle on Ice” in 1980 at Lake Placid, then following that up by lifting the Cup with the New York Islanders at the conclusion of his rookie season – three months to the day after receiving his gold medal in upstate New York. Morrow would go on to win three more consecutive titles with that Islanders dynasty and play his entire 10-season NHL career on Long Island as an elite, steadfast defenseman.

In a new memoir co-authored by longtime hockey writer Allan Kreda, Morrow gives hockey fans a front-row seat to one of the most remarkable stretches of dominance in NHL history. Inducted into the United States Hockey Hall of Fame in 1995, Morrow has been director of pro scouting for the Islanders since 1992 and shares more than 40 years of hockey lore in this fascinating chronicle of a legendary life in hockey.

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Green Gold

Monique Parsons (MSJ89)

The avocado is the quintessential symbol of aspirational living, a ubiquitous agricultural favorite, and the driver of an $18 billion global industry. How did this regional Latin American staple become a star of Super Bowl ads and a byword for wellness? Documenting more than a century of cross-cultural cooperation, cutting-edge science, and savvy marketing, Green Gold tells the remarkable story of the fruit’s rise to prominence as both a culinary and cultural juggernaut.

Anchored by the story of two exceptional trees that stood out among hundreds of rivals, Green Gold is a spirited and often surprising behind-the-scenes look at how dedicated avocado enthusiasts in Mexico and California developed an ideal fruit to sell to the world. Navigating the Depression, two world wars, Mexican revolutions, violent drug lords, drought, and disease, these pioneers were driven by the avocado’s potential to captivate the palates and hearts of consumers across the globe. Their efforts, inspired by the success of California citrus, launched today’s lucrative industry and helped the avocado win a place among such supermarket staples as oranges and bananas.

Set against the rise of Southern California as an economic and cultural powerhouse and featuring recipes (including vintage versions of guacamole and avocado toast), Green Gold is an entertaining and far-ranging exploration of the avocado’s journey to a central place in the American diet and global imagination.