From the Head Fellow: ’06: 20 Years Getting to Know You
By Charles R. Eisendrath ’75
Mike Wallace folds himself into Charles’ ’64 Morgan after a day of reunion celebrations.
The fabulous news about Reunion ’06 was how many showed up to celebrate full endowment of the core program for American Fellows. The merely terrific news were the rave reviews for Micki Maynard’s Hovey Lecture and Prof. Ralph Williams’ inspired melding of the Classical with the contemporary, and still further appreciation for alumni panels that reflected tomorrow’s light back on today’s Fellowship experience. Not to mention the KICK-ASS rock dance Saturday and a Sunday barbecue brunch—by Dan Huntley and Lisa Lednicer of ’03—that I have taken to calling “no morsel left behind.”
Yes, ye Michigan weather-doubters, even the sky cooperated.
In this issue, Steve Fennessy ’07 provides public highlights of the weekend. I have some insights from an inside perspective:
One hundred and thirty five Fellows and spouses came “home,” including nearly 20 percent of those from my watch. That meant a lot. In addition to the public events, Julia and I were privately celebrating my 20th year building the program, and our shared privilege in getting to know so many memorable people. “Memorable” here is no throwaway term. For the first time in both our lives, we actually remembered names. Scores of them. Effortlessly. This is the right place to repeat out loud what I think all the time: We love what we learn from Fellows each year, while that bunch thinks they are doing all the learning.
And now a bit of business for those who couldn’t be in Ann Arbor, and a reminder for those who were. The other side of reunions is recruiting. I hope you take seriously that the continued vibrancy of the program depends entirely on the quality of its participants. Equally serious is the responsibility of former Fellows for shepherding the best people toward Wallace House. Consider, as I must, the crisis in the business that scares many away from applying and the cutbacks in support for them when they do. Consider also the proliferation of fellowships and other mid-career training and the challenges to the core values of our profession.
Taking note, several years ago we began targeting alumni to hand-carry favorite colleagues through the application process, and it worked. In the class of ’05, nine of 12 Americans came to us that way; in ’06, seven. This is not to imply automatic acceptance or favored status for those recommended by someone we know. It decidedly does suggest that, unsurprisingly, KWF alumni know what our program looks for. Fortunately, they also understand when the program fails to accommodate someone they’ve brought to it.
If you’d like us to send brochures/applications to you, or directly to others, let us know. If you think something different should be stressed on our materials or the Web site, tell us that, too. It is also important to reassure you that we are not having trouble with the number of applicants, which remains steady at about 120. Simply put, we want to consider the maximum number of people like you because we know from experience that they are likely to appeal to the admissions committee, make the most of a Fellowship and go on to make American journalism the better for their experience at Michigan.
Patron saint Mike Wallace takes the role seriously. He makes key recruiting calls, gives seminars to the Fellows at Wallace House and hosts them individually in New York. This fall he worked overtime in the saint business. Between our Reunion in September and late November he had already fit in three pilgrimages to Ann Arbor, one of them a banner headline occasion for KWF, to wit:
Picture a perfect football Saturday with 111,000 gathered for the Michigan State game. Picture a televised stadium balcony appearance á la Evita Peron. The roar when Wallace spread his arms in the classic orator’s embrace of the multitude and yelled “BRING ON OHIO STATE!” was truly a thing of awe, if no particular shock. Of course, 111,000 people don’t roar on cue without a buildup. The audience prep couldn’t have been better because it included an audiovisual presentation that was part sales pitch, part family album.
Scoreboards two stories high at each end of the stadium showed pictures of Wallace House and scenes from this year’s program while the game announcer read a script by Karl Bates ’98, describing KWF and, in tones otherwise reserved for Wolverine touchdowns, ended with “Mike and the Knight-Wallace Fellowships are celebrating full endowment of the core program at $46 million dollars!”
For Julia and me, standing just behind Mike on the balcony, that’s what the roar was all about. It was quite a moment. Have a look at it on the website.
