1997

Picture Perfect

The sun shone brightly on the Class of 1997

Seven-hundred-ninety-three undergraduates — including college basketball’s Player of the Year Tim Duncan — and 596 graduate and professional school students received Wake Forest degrees in glorious weather at Commencement May 19.

Louis V. Gerstner Jr., chairman and CEO of IBM and a former chief executive of RJR Nabisco, Inc., delivered the Commencement address and was one of six honorary degree recipients.

Also receiving honorary degrees were:

  • Jordan Jay Cohen, president of the Association of American Medical Colleges;
  • Petro Kulynych, founding director of Lowe’s Companies, Inc., and a Wake Forest life trustee;
  • Cora Bagley Marrett, sociologist and international authority on race relations;
  • Chloe Anthony “Toni” Morrison, Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist (pictured above);
  • Phyllis Trible, Baldwin Professor of Sacred Literature at Union Theological Seminary.

Read more about the honorary degree recipients »

Dr. Lula Leake on campus in 2001
Dr. Lula Leake on campus in 2001

Faculty retiring from the Reynolda Campus are:

  • Marion W. Benfield, University Distinguished Professor of Law;
  • John A. Carter, professor of English;
  • Philippe R. Falkenberg, professor of psychology;
  • Lula M. Leake, associate vice president for academic affairs;
  • Eva Marie Rodtwitt, lecturer in Romance languages.

Retiring from the Hawthorne campus are:

  • Stanley P. Bohrer, professor of radiologic sciences;
  • Richard W. Brunstetter, professor of psychiatry and behavioral medicine;
  • Marcus Gulley, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral medicine;
  • Howard D. Homesley, professor of obstetrics and gynecology;
  • Phillip M. Hutchins, professor of physiology and pharmacology;
  • Abdel-Mohsen Nomeir, professor of internal medicine;
  • John D. Tolmie, associate professor emeritus of anesthesia.

Published in Wake Forest Magazine.