When Marie Krafft Kelleher ’35 attended Fredericksburg Teachers College, now the University of Mary Washington, students had to learn how to swim before they could graduate. That wasn’t a problem for Kelleher, who grew up in Alexandria, Va., spending lazy Sundays at nearby beaches and summer afternoons at the city pool. With nearly a century behind her − her 100th birthday is Dec. 21 − Kelleher is a record-setting swimmer who claimed two national titles this spring. She rises before dawn several mornings a week to squeeze in some laps before heading to work as board chairwoman and corporate secretary of the company she started with her late husband, Mike Kelleher. When she was in college, the Lee Hall pool, immaculately modern when it was built in 1927 with its fancy filtration system and tile-lined walls, became a harbor for Kelleher. But when she climbed into the passenger seat of her father’s car in 1931 to first see the campus, she wasn’t sure where she was headed. The … [Read more...]
Chemist Creates Films’ Ambiance
When James Bond needs the latest in high-tech gadgetry, he turns to Q. And when the cinematographer for the latest Bond film needs technical advice, he turns to Beverly Wood ’78. Wood, executive vice president of technical services and client relations for Deluxe Entertainment’s digital arm, EFILM, was on her way from Los Angeles to London recently to help director of photography Roger Deakins put the finishing touches on Skyfall, the 23rd and latest Bond film. It’s hard for Wood, 56, to describe the behind-the-scenes magic she and her colleagues specialize in. But you can see it for yourself in the moodiness of Seven, the old Western-style patina of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and the deep blacks and crisp look of The Man Who Wasn’t There, just a few of the thousands of films she and her team at Deluxe have worked on. The Man Who Wasn’t There − shot in color but transferred to black-and-white reels by Wood’s crew − earned Deakins a best film … [Read more...]
Problem Solver Tackles Network Security
In 1977, Stephen Northcutt ’81 left his job as a U.S. Navy helicopter search-and-rescue crewman and headed to Mary Washington to study geology. Today, he is a leading expert in cyber security. The career path wasn’t obvious, but Northcutt excels at seeing − and seizing − opportunities that others don’t. He spent the last 12 years as CEO of the SANS Institute, a cooperative research and education organization he helped launch in 1989. SANS − an acronym for “systems administration, networking, and security” − offers information-security training and certification. If a professional receives SANS Institute’s rigid Global Information Assurance Certification, it means he has high-level skills in one of more than 20 branches of security and development. Today, Northcutt’s focus is developing the SANS Technology Institute, a Maryland-based cyber security graduate school that offers master-of-science degrees in information-security engineering and management. “In my previous … [Read more...]
Activist Occupied With Social Justice
In September 2011, Philip Arnone ’08 went to a protest in lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park. An experienced activist, he had seen nascent protest movements before – and he had seen most of them fall apart. Unimpressed, he didn’t think the one in the Financial District would last. “We had a few arrests that day, not much,” he said of what would become the Occupy Wall Street movement. “It was kind of anticlimactic.” A week later, protesters still held the park. That’s when impatient police officers swooped in to make arrests, and things got rough. “I’ve seen police violence before, but it had never been on the level that it was that day,” Arnone said. He fled, then found himself organizing others who had escaped. He led a march to police headquarters to demand that those who were arrested be released; then he joined the other protesters as they returned to the Zuccotti Park. “After I’d done that, I was hooked,” he said. “And things just escalated from there.” As protests … [Read more...]