Shayla Roland ’10 found herself in the basement of the Wyoming home of Judy and Dennis Shepard, sorting through thousands of letters. The notes − sent in an outpouring of support after the 1998 murder in Laramie of the Shepards’ gay son, Matthew − had remained largely untouched since. When Roland was studying to be a stage manager at the University of Mary Washington, she couldn’t have imagined doing work like this to support a major stage production of The Laramie Project, which explores the aftermath of the Wyoming hate crime. After graduation, Roland took parttime work at historic Ford’s Theatre. Last February, the Washington, D.C., theater − famous as the location of the 1865 assassination of Abraham Lincoln − made Roland its full-time special programming manager. What shows offstage is just as important as onstage at Ford’s, which aspires to honor the legacy of Lincoln by exploring the American experience through theater and education. Roland’s job is to help develop … [Read more...]
Curiosity Becomes Filmmaker
When people ask Emre Izat ’99 what he does as an executive producer, he replies: “I’m curious for a living.” To satisfy that trait, Izat has filmed on six continents, explored uncharted limestone gorges in Mozambique, and shouldered crocodiles Down Under as a documentary filmmaker. University of Mary Washington nurtured Izat’s inquisitive nature. After high school in Alexandria, Va., he selected Mary Washington because it allowed him to build his own curriculum and pursue the dramatic arts without sacrificing his love of literature and physics. And UMW’s black box theater appealed to him because he could get onstage right away. In fact, Izat said, he “kind of lived in the theater” at Mary Washington − there’s a police brief in The Bullet archives to prove it. One night, he was rehearsing on the Klein Theatre main stage while directing a show in the black box theater. A professor had asked him to speak to a drama class the next morning, so when Izat found himself still working … [Read more...]
Attorney Takes Swimming’s Triple Crown
Courtney Moates Paulk ’92 was a few hours into her marathon swim across Southern California’s Catalina Channel when she noticed a large shadow tracking her. A curious sea lion observed the endurance swimmer for a bit, then nibbled on one of her toes before Paulk sent him packing with a gentle but firm kick. She had about six more hours to go in her solo journey across the 20-mile channel − the final leg in her quest to earn the Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming − and even the most gregarious sea creature wasn’t going to stop her. “I’m in their world. You just have to be all right with that,” said Paulk, a Richmond attorney, of run-ins with wildlife during open-water swims. “I think you have to prepare your head for it for months. ‘OK, I’m going to jump in the Pacific Ocean at midnight where there are sharks and whales and sea lions and jellyfish and cold water. . . . In a lot of ways, I equate it to taking out the trash: You just have to do it.” Paulk finished the … [Read more...]
Memphis Museum Perfect Fit for Fashion Historian
New to Memphis in 1999, Karen Kilgore Ralston ’69 felt uprooted. She and husband Jim had lived for 30 years in Cincinnati, where he worked as a corporate general counsel. But when Jim’s company changed hands, the couple relocated for his new job. To shake off her gloom, Ralston checked out the Woodruff-Fontaine House, a preserved Victorian mansion and museum in the city’s historic Millionaires’ Row. A self-taught historian of vintage and Victorian clothing, with a library of books on the subject and her own extensive collection of garments at home, Ralston wandered the three-floor house museum with pleasure. Then she spotted the ribbon. It was all wrong − a modern anachronism on an old blouse. “I opened my mouth and said, ‘Ooh, that ribbon is not correct,’ ” she recalled with a laugh. She soon started volunteering at the museum. There, she fixed that little ribbon– and took a big step toward banishing her discontent. Today Ralston is Woodruff-Fontaine’s volunteer … [Read more...]