Selected alumni profiles.
Paul Watelet ’34Norman S. Namerow ’52James Rawlings ’71Steven E. Reinert ’75, M.S. ‘78Norma Forgue-Dauer ’76Brian Whiting ’91Angela C. Murock ’97Class Acts Profiles
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Paul Watelet ’34
Paul Watelet is arguably URI’s oldest and most active alum. He is a loyal volunteer, generous donor, and huge Ram sports fan. Last October he spent his 94th birthday at a home football game. In fact, he “hasn’t missed a homecoming game since graduating in 1934.” In winter, he follows basketball games either in person or on television.
When Watelet attended URI in the 1930s, the school, then Rhode Island State College, was a very different place. He was an engineering major at a primarily agricultural school, one in a group of 10 who pledged local fraternity Delta Alpha (since gone from campus), and there were only 120 students in his graduating class. Since he’d always loved sports, Watelet went out for tennis, but he’s sorry to say, didn’t make the cut. He is quick to point out, however, that until just a few years ago he played twice a week in the Barrington, R.I., Seniors’ League and was “pretty darn good.”
After graduation Watelet went to work at BIF Industries in Warwick, R.I., as a mechanical engineer. By the 1940s he had risen to chief inspector of equipment that was being manufactured for the war effort. Because of his expertise, the government granted him six deferments from fighting in WWII. He remained at BIF until he retired in 1976.
URI holds a big place in Watelet’s heart. As a young man, he never considered attending any other college. As a sports fan, Watelet has followed Ram teams to play-offs and tournaments all around the country. He has enjoyed Alumni Association sponsored tours to Europe, and he’s been a member of the URI Foundation’s Beautification Committee that commissioned the granite sign marking the Upper College Road entrance to the Kingston Campus.
Next time you are in the library, ask to see the scrapbook Watelet painstakingly compiled. It’s full of old pictures and articles about URI as he first knew it.
—Karin Waldman Welt ’86
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Norman S. Namerow ’52
A 50th class reunion in 2002 was just the prescription that Dr. Norman S. Namerow needed to reconnect with URI after a half century in California. During that time he earned both M.S. and M.D. degrees; joined the faculty at UCLA; raised a family; and, as a neurologist and brain researcher, helped thousands of patients.
“I honestly wasn’t expecting too much of the reunion after being out of touch for so long,” Dr. Namerow recalled in a telephone interview. “But it was just as if I never left; I was able to re-establish friendships with people I haven’t seen in 50 years.”
As he worked towards his B.S. in physics at URI, Dr. Namerow vividly recalls “trudging through fields of knee deep snow from my rooming house on Fortin Road as I went to morning classes.” He joined AEPi fraternity, where he made his closest college friendships.
A URI professor helped Dr. Namerow get an internship at the U.S. Navy’s Underwater Sound Laboratory in New London, Conn., which led to a fellowship from the Hughes Aircraft Company and an M.S. in physics from UCLA. While continuing to work at the Hughes Aircraft Radar Laboratory, Dr. Namerow refocused his career by earning an M.D. at UCLA. As a professor of neurology at UCLA, he pioneered the use of computers to study brain activity in patients with multiple sclerosis.
Dr. Namerow was medical director of a 58-bed rehabilitation center that now bears his name. He also instituted a chronic pain service to help patients cope with pain without an over-reliance on medication. “We use a behavioral and cognitive approach to pain management. We also detoxify patients from their opioid drugs, provide psychological counseling and physical restoration, and introduce new medications that are not opioids or narcotics.”
Although Dr. Namerow has followed a varied career, he attributes his education at URI as the basis for all that he has achieved in his professional life.
—David Gregorio ’80
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James Rawlings ’71
Whether he’s helping to open a pediatric dentistry center, developing a database to improve service for uninsured people, or putting together programs to prevent asthma or AIDS, James E. Rawlings ’71 is on the cutting edge of the search for ways to provide health care for uninsured Americans.
“I like to promote programs around prevention involving the private and public sector,” said Rawlings, executive director of community health at Yale New Haven Hospital. “We’re trying to develop successful models that meet the needs of the local population and that can also be duplicated in other communities nationwide.”
Rawlings, who leads “a couple of hundred” staff members at Yale New Haven in public-private collaborative efforts, is grateful for “the solid background in pharmacy and science” he gained at URI, where he earned a B.S. in pharmacy. He also has a Master’s in Public Health from Yale.
“I’ve always been interested in health,” said Rawlings, who was the only African-American/Native American student in his class at the College of Pharmacy. Rawlings commented that he is especially grateful to Pharmacy Dean Heber Youngken for his help and encouragement.
“I came out of an urban school and from a financially challenged family,” he said. “Dean Youngken saw my potential. After I started at school, he helped me financially get through some difficult times.” Rawlings thought so much of Youngken that he named his oldest son James Youngken Rawlings.
“When I think about my days at URI, I have to give him a lot of credit,” said Rawlings. He visited Youngken a few years ago and filled in his old mentor on his accomplishments at Yale New Haven, his service on several national boards such as the National Health Committee of the NAACP and the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America, and the time he had spent with President Bill Clinton.
Rawlings, who in turn has mentored many young minority students through the NAACP’s National Health Committee, said: “Dr. Youngken saw the potential in me, and I think my minor accomplishments are a testimony to his vision.”
—David Gregorio ’80
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Steven E. Reinert ’75, M.S. ‘78
When Steve Reinert completed his B.S. in zoology and M.S. in wildlife biology, he didn’t expect to end up crunching numbers about medications for congestive heart failure or bandages for burn victims. But as an information systems and research support manager at Lifespan, the corporation that operates many of Rhode Island’s largest hospitals, that is what he does.
After graduate school, Reinert worked for URI wetlands/wildlife biologist Frank C. Golet studying the ecology of salt marsh birds in Barrington, Warren, and Tiverton. He left full-time ornithology to work in research at Rhode Island Hospital in 1983, but in his spare time Reinert still ventures into New England’s wetlands as an ornithologist specializing in coastal water birds.
In the early ‘80s Reinert studied how red-winged blackbirds hatch and rear young in a regularly flooded salt marsh in Barrington. He views the results of this study, to be published this year by the Cooper Ornithological Society, as his “most serious ornithological contribution.” Reinert has also co-authored The Birds of Allens Pond (Lloyd Center for Environmental Studies, 2001) and The Birds of the Kickemuit River (Rhode Island Natural History Survey, 2001).
In 1996, Reinert visited the Block Island Bird Banding Station where he saw shelf after shelf of three-ring binders with data on migratory landbirds, dating back to 1967. In all, there were eighty thousand records. It took seven years, but Reinert wrote a computer program to enable volunteers, and later a trained ornithologist, to enter the information into a computerized data bank. The first paper analyzing the data (written by Reinert and station managers Elise Lapham and Kim Gaffett) was published as a chapter in The Ecology of Block Island (Rhode Island Natural History Survey, 2002).
Reinert plans to compare data from the banding station with data collected at the Audubon Society of Rhode Island’s annual Block Island Birding Weekend. “I’m really pumped up about it,” he says. Reinert doesn’t usually use words like “pumped up,” but everything changes when he talks about birds.
—Beth Schwartzapfel
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Norma Forgue-Dauer ’76
For Norma Forgue-Dauer, bread isn’t just the staff of life—it is her life. Norma and her German-born husband, Dieter, own the German Bread Haus located in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Housed in a charming gingerbread-shaped house, the business offers customers hundreds of loaves of bread each day.
So how does a fine arts graduate and former actress who grew up in Pawtucket, R.I., become a purveyor of organic breads? “One day a girlfriend brought along some bread from this bakery. It was so good I just about did a back flip,” Dauer recalled. “I went to the bakery the next day to buy my own loaf and saw a small Help Wanted sign on the counter.”
The owner, a quiet German man, interviewed Dauer. “He asked me if I could sell things. And since I had experience selling everything from cars to theater subscriptions, I said ‘yes.’” Three months later, they were married.
Dauer’s husband had always dreamed of making the perfect loaf of bread. “Although he thought it would be too hard, I said ‘why not?’” It required serious time and financial investments, including the purchase of a mill to grind their own flour. But the effort paid off. “We believe we have the perfect bread—Organic Flour Power,” she said. “No processed flour, sugar, or added fat—only freshly ground certified whole grains.”
Dauer believes in “casting her bread upon the waters.” The Dauers regularly donate excess bread to food banks and other non-profit organizations. And, it isn’t just people who benefit: “When we slice our bread, all of these seeds fall off of it,” explained Dauer. “We sweep up about 15 lbs of seeds per day and donate them to the Native Village. Monkeys, birds, even bears, get to enjoy our seeds.”
She also devotes time to “breaducating” people, whether in person or through their Web site at www.Germanbreadhaus.com. “In a world of bad carbs, it’s up to us to tell people the truth about whole grains,” she says.
—Jennifer Sherwood ’89
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Brian Whiting ’91
Providence is sizzling and it’s Brian Whiting’s job to keep the heat on high. Named CEO of the Providence/Warwick Convention and Visitors Bureau in September 2004, he’s one URI graduate who holds a position of considerable influence in this city state.
So what’s a day in the life of Brian like? “I unify and lead people and groups with diverse backgrounds and interests toward realizing sustainable economic and social benefits from our hospitality/tourism industry. To do this, I must constantly have my finger on the pulse of the community and at the same time, I must remain on top of my organization’s daily operations and our interactions with our destination’s customers.”
Comparing Providence to the other cities he’s lived in—Newport, Boston, London, New York—Whiting finds that Rhode Island’s capital city has “a solid set of ‘destination assets.’” According to Whiting, vacationers seek unique experiences that will broaden their horizons, engage their senses, and touch them in some way. Providence, says Whiting, is uniquely suited to doing just that: “No other city in this country shares our unique history. Did you know that Providence’s entire downtown is listed on the National Register of Historic Places?”
Whiting feels that there is still much about the area that is undervalued, and he is sure that he can better capitalize on its uniqueness: “The challenge of taking a destination to new heights is truly captivating,” he states. “The hardest part of my job is probably taking my work everywhere I go. I spend a lot of time thinking about and discussing big picture issues. These are the kinds of things I think about while eating dinner or trying to fall asleep at night.
“My time at URI certainly taught me how to effectively interact and communicate with others,” Whiting continued. “That’s a skill that is critical in my current position and that has played a major role in my career.”
—Karin Waldman Welt ’86
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Angela C. Murock ’97
Angela Murock is an archeologist, anthropologist, and teacher. With a Ph.D. from Brown in old world archeology and a research focus on ancient cultural interactions, Murock has found the confluence of two related sciences.
“I majored in anthropology at URI,” said Murock. “That’s where I began investigating the commonalities between ancient peoples.” Murock’s studies led her to archeological digs in Egypt, Italy, and Israel.
“I came to my dissertation topic when I was studying in Germany. I wanted to study the early relations between the Etruscans and the Greeks in Italy. I had studied Greek archaeology at Brown and Etruscan archaeology in Germany, so it seemed natural to combine them. Geometric pottery is a Greek style that was then taken up by the Etruscans in the 8th century BC, thus Italian Geometric pottery.
“My archeology dissertation explores anthropological themes, such as how the pottery industry developed and changed based on different social needs, or how a product taken from one culture is used and adapted by another culture in different ways because of different priorities.”
Much of her doctoral research was done in German, a language she acquired during her undergraduate years at URI. “My background in German was the reason my graduate school advisor sent me to study in Germany in the first place. But I hadn’t studied German since URI, so it was a bit overwhelming to be sent there with my last German class five years in the past. But I got a lot of practice once there!”
Since finishing her dissertation last year, Murock has been teaching at Brown and at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. “The best advice I got on pursuing a career in archeology was from URI Anthropology Professor Jim Loy, who told me I’d need a doctorate,” said Murock. Her first “dig” was actually in Chaffee Hall sifting through graduate program catalogues. She was guided in her search by Anthropology Professor William Turnbaugh and Art Professor Mary Hollinshead.
—Karin Waldman Welt ’86
