Reunions & Events

Fellowship, Fun & Food: A Weekend Recipe for Success
——By Matthew Power ’11

Dan Huntley '03 keeps the journalism troops fed. Photo by Phillip Dattilo

After a day of lectures and discussions, more than 180 Fellows and spouses got fancied up and made their way to the Michigan League’s grand ballroom.

During dinner, each table was instructed to confer and select its best Knight-Wallace story. While some recollections may not have been fit to be reprinted in a family newspaper (the bar had been open for hours, after all), an array of past fellows stood and shared their stories.

There were common threads, mainly involving international incidents. The Mystery of Mikhail Gorbachev’s Missing Microphone was related by Jonathan Martin ’09. Wayne Drehs ’11 recalled a visit in Moscow to the Russian baths, where Knight-Wallace Director Charles Eisendrath demonstrated the traditional technique of venik: beating his Fellows with a bundle of birch twigs. There is purportedly photographic evidence to support this version of events.

Fara Warner ’06 told of being thrown from a horse on the Argentina trip and breaking her arm. A classmate took her to the hospital and explained the situation to the doctors in perfect Spanish.

Some Fellows’ memories, while perhaps less exotic, left a deep impression. For Brad Schrade ’08, an investigative reporter at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, his moment came at a bowling alley late one night, singing “Friends in Low Places” at the top of his lungs. “We forged these incredible friendships,” recalled Schrade. “And all of us left feeling better about ourselves as journalists and human beings.”

When the stories ended, an eightpiece band struck up, with Fellows old and new hitting the dance floor. The talented Eisendrath cut a rug late into the evening, and was spotted dancing with two women at once.

While the band played on, preparations were already being made for the next day’s festivities. Dan “The Pigman” Huntley ’03, working with Zingerman’s Roadhouse chef Alex Young, was prepping for an extraordinary barbecue. By 10:30 Saturday night, a pig raised on Young’s nearby farm was beginning its long, slowcooked journey towards deliciousness.

The barbecue commenced the following day on the lawn behind Wallace House, with bell-clear early autumn weather. The menu featured lamb, chicken and pork, cooked under the direction of Huntley; 2011 Fellows Chris Sherman, Justin Pope and Ted Mellnik were conscripted as “Meat Serfs.”

Under a fragrant cloud of hickory smoke, Huntley held forth on his Fellowship year. He entered the Fellowship as a reporter for the Charlotte Observer. “I was just a middle-aged journalist writing about politics, but this Fellowship gave me the confidence to follow my dreams,” said Huntley. “I thought everyone would laugh if I did a barbecue book.”

But that’s exactly what he did, writing “Extreme Barbecue,” a travelogue and cookbook of regional barbecue traditions, with ’03 classmate Lisa Lednicer. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but Charles and the Fellowship prepared me for a life outside of daily journalism,” said Huntley.

Eisendrath introduced him to the legendary New York Times reporter and food writer R.W. “Johnny” Apple Jr., setting Huntley on a new course. “People are hungry for the stories behind food. Newspapers about beat that out of me,” he said.

When Huntley was laid off from the Charlotte Observer in 2009 after 27 years, he didn’t miss a beat. He has teamed up with the former New York Times Magazine food critic Molly O’Neill for a nationwide series of community feasts to support local farmers and markets, called “One Big Table Across the Country.”

The Fellows and their families stayed at the barbecue throughout the afternoon. There were a host of renewed friendships and many new connections made, but there wasn’t much food left over at all.