This month’s newsletter is available for download in PDF format.
Table of Contents
Events Calendar
- January 10-11 – Stanford Men’s Volleyball at George Mason University
- January 11 – Wreathes Across America Clean-Up
- January 13 – Baltimore Book Club Discussion
- January 15 – WDCSA & GSB New Year Social
- February 1 – WDCSA Lunar New Year Dim Sum
- February 9 – Washington, DC Book Club Discussion
Upcoming Events
Stanford Men’s Volleyball @ George Mason University
Friday and Saturday, January 10-11
George Mason University, Fairfax, Va
Join the local alumni community as we cheer on the Stanford Cardinal men’s volleyball team for these DMV away games. Stay tuned for information about tickets.
Wreathes Across America Clean-Up
Saturday, January 11, 8:30am
Arlington National Cemetery
Memorial Drive, Fort Myer, VA
Join WDSCA as we honor veterans at Arlington National Cemetery by collecting wreaths placed at their grave sites in December.
We encourage traveling by Metro (the system will open at 7:00) to meet us at the Pentagon Metro Station (Yellow Line) parking area at 8:30. Upon exiting the station, look for a Stanford banner as you approach the lot. If you drive, general public parking will be available at the Pentagon South Parking Lot (Lanes 1-18). At 8:45 we will walk for about 15 minutes to the bag check and entrance.
Note: Arlington National Cemetery now asks all visitors to show a picture ID, so be sure to bring yours. Also, remember to wear your Cardinal-colored gear and comfortable footwear.
RSVP by emailing your name, email and cell number to Risa Shimoda at risa@theshimodagroup.com.
WDCSA Lunar New Year Dim Sum
Saturday, February 1, 11am
Da Hong Pao
1409 14th St NW, Washington, DC
Join WDCSA in celebrating the Chinese Lunar New Year (2020 is the Year of the Rat) with dim sum!
Dim sum are small bite-sized portions of food served in small steamer baskets or on a small plate. Think of it as Chinese brunch. This is a common way to eat with friends and family, typically on a weekend morning.
Space is limited to the first 20 people. Please plan to bring $20 to cover the cost of food.
RSVP here: https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/events/details?event_id=31720.
WDCSA + GSB New Year Social
Wednesday, January 15, 7-10 pm
Mission Navy Yard
1221 Van St SE, Washington, DC 20003
WDCSA and the DC Chapter of the GSB invite you to celebrate the New Year and usher in 2020 with old and new friends at Mission Navy Yard in downtown DC. Share stories, ideas and networks!
Tickets are $26 for Stanford alumni and $30 for Stanford guests.
Price includes an appetizer buffet bar and one drink ticket. Register through the Stanford Alumni portal here: https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/events/details?event_id=31729.
For more information, contact Stephanie Tan (stephanie.tan@stanfordalumni.org).
Stanford In the News
- Stanford University released its 2020-21 financial aid stats:
Get Involved
Stanford OVAL
Training for the Regular Decision Interview Cycle
If you have not yet been trained as an interviewer (or if you’d like to refresh your knowledge), please consider completing a webinar workshop, or the self-paced online training module, so that you may
interview applicants during the Regular Decision (RD) cycle.
You can access the self-paced online training module or register for a training webinar on the Interview Training page located under your My Training tab on https://oval.stanford.edu/.
The webinar is scheduled for Wednesday, January 8th at 12:00 pm PST.
If you have question please direct them to cecil.talbott@stanfordalumni.org.
CAN Basketball
The CAN coed alumni basketball season starts the week of January 6th. Join us as we compete against alums from UCLA, Cal, Arizona, and others. Transportation can be provided. If you have a partner or non-alumni friend that may be interested in playing, please contact Gregory Billings ’88, at billings.g@gmail.com, for more information.
Scholarship Opportunity
ACS Scholars – Scholarships for Underrepresented Minorities. The application is open until March 1st. Click here for more information: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/funding-and-awards/scholarships/acsscholars.html.
WDCSA Member Spotlight: David Henry
David Henry, B.S. Industrial Engineering ’93, grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas. He first learned of Stanford from his high school English teacher, whose daughter was a few years older at Stanford and loved the Farm. Her experiences inspired David to visit campus; once he received an acceptance letter and an Air Force ROTC scholarship, his course was set.
At Stanford, David was in Donner freshman year, Lambda Nu, and then Terra (fresh communal bread every night!) until graduation. His favorite memories on campus included being an Orientation Coordinator (’89) and being at many, many sports events – football, basketball, volleyball, soccer, gymnastics – as one of the student event coordinators for the Athletic Department.
After graduation and a 3-month backpacking trip around Europe, David embarked on a 25+ year career in the US Air Force. He was a communications, information systems, and cyber operations officer with 8 assignments in the US and 6 overseas. He worked in a variety of leadership, command and staff roles. His most recent role was Deputy Chief Information Security Officer for the Air Force. He transitioned out of uniform this fall and is now on a period of sabbatical before diving back in the world of cyber security and cyber operations.
David met his wife Sara (Stanford B.A., M.A. English ’97) during his first assignment to the Pentagon. They were married in 2011, just before they moved to Pearl Harbor – Hickam, Hawaii (a pretty good first Air Force assignment for Sara). After 5 years of Sara working remotely and flying back-and-forth to her job at PBS KIDS, they are now back living in northern Virginia with their boys Ben (7) and Alex (5).
David co-leads WDCSA’s chapter of the Stanford Military Service Network (SMSN) with Adriana Lopez.
The mission of the SMSN is to “bridge the civil-military divide,” so if you have a military connection, or would just like to meet some Stanford people in that community, please join us. Contact us at SMSN.WDC@gmail.com if you’d like to be on our list.
When asked to share advice, David went with the practical: “I’d urge people to practice good cyber hygiene. Accept auto updates from major (trusted) software vendors. Don’t use simple or compromised passwords, and avoid using the same password across different sites. (Check haveibeenpwned.com to see if your email /password has been compromised and shared on the dark web.) Do use a password manager (e.g. LastPass or 1Password) with a strong master password that you change periodically.
If you have suggestions for other alumni in the DMV area to profile in upcoming newsletters, please send them to Jasmaine McClain (jasmaine.mcclain@gmail.com) or Stephanie Tan (stephanie.tan@stanfordalumni.org).
WDCSA Book Club Corner
Washington DC Book Club Discussion
Sunday, February 9, 5-7:45 pm
Bethesda, Md
The book group will discuss The Seven Sisters: A Novel by Margaret Drabble.
The Seven Sisters presents readers with an idiosyncratic female heroine. Candida Wilton is a woman recently betrayed, rejected, and alienated from her three grown daughters. After her divorce, she moves from a beautiful Georgian house in Suffolk to a two-room walk-up flat in central London, learns to use a computer (“this modern laptop machine”), swims at the gym, visits a convicted prisoner, and buys her first lottery ticket.
This is a novel about starting over, late in life. Candida makes new friends—widowed, divorced, never married, women straddled between generations—when she takes an evening class on Virgil’s Aeneid. Soon Candida receives a surprise inheritance that allows her to take a trip, tracing the path of Aeneas from Carthage to Italy, along with an old school friend named Julia, three of her Virgil classmates Sally, Ana, and Cynthia, their former teacher Ida Jerrold, and a beautiful, Ethiopian-Italian bus driver named Valeria. Together they compose the eponymous Seven Sisters. (In Greek mythology, the Pleiades were seven sisters: Maia, Electra, Alcyone, Taygete, Asterope, Celaeno and Merope.)
The Seven Sisters argues for the beauty and relevance of myth and literature, even in the contemporary life of a middle-aged woman far away in time and sensibility from Aeneas and Dido. The women’s Aeneid expedition is the highlight of the book: magical, poetic, bright, expansive.
For more information, contact Suzanne Harris at szharris56@gmail.com.
Baltimore Book Club Discussion
Monday, January 13, 7:30 pm
The Hull Street Blues Cafe, 1122 Hull St, Baltimore, MD
Our January selection is What the Wind Knows by Amy Harmon, rated 4.7 out of 5 stars by over four thousand Amazon readers. This is a time travel love story set during the Irish War of Independence from Britain, 1919-1921, where a woman unwittingly traveled back in time to embody and extend the life of one of her ancestors.
The March selection is Mobituaries: Great Lives Worth Reliving by Mo Rocca.
Questions/RSVP: Helene Myers, Ph.D., P’14, at cedarhouse@comcast.net.