Letters to the Editor Fall 2024

Credit where due
It was a nice surprise to see the Baileys Trail project highlighted in Ohio Today (“Power of Place,” spring 2024). Success for a regional project must have participation from government, nonprofit agencies and communities. A large collaboration such as this can never be attributed to one or two people, and it’s hard to credit everyone involved. That said, I wanted to mention other Bobcats who provided valuable work to this incredible project.

None of this would have happened without Dawn McCarthy, PHD ’09, the recreation team leader at Wayne National Forest who worked internally to move from a master plan to trails on the ground, propelling the project in ways nobody else on the team would have been able to do.

Any project will rarely move forward without funding. State Rep. Jay Edwards, BS ’16, listened and understood the goal to add a new economic stream to the region. He secured $2 million in the state Capital Budget to get infrastructure built. Without that injection, we might not be talking about the success of this project.

Ohio University alumni permeate society and workplaces on so many levels. Over the course of your career, you will work and connect with people who have ties to the University and Southeast Ohio. These ties are a common bond, a shared experience and a perspective that, for us, gave an insight to tackle challenges in this region. Collaboration between different agencies is difficult but imperative to accomplish large things.

Your college experience can be the bridge between siloed agencies, and having the right Bobcats in the right places can contribute to success. Those foundational partnerships do not last forever, but hopefully the work started will have lasting effects.
—Peter Kotses, AB ’92

From cover to reader
The latest issue of Ohio Today brought back some wonderful memories of my past and its association with Ohio University. Almost 70 years ago (October 1956), I was fortunate enough to be the cover subject of The Ohio Alumnus magazine. I was a junior in high school and was selected to attend the OU High School Science camp.

My attendance at the camp made me a lifelong Bobcat. In 1958, I started my freshman year at OU. During my four years of study, I was, among many subjects, the senior manager of the football team (1960 MAC champions). I also took ROTC and graduated with a second lieutenant’s bars. In 1984, I retired from the Army as a lieutenant colonel.

Over the many years since I graduated, my memories of and fondness for my education and Ohio University have never wavered. Go Bobcats!
—Alfred Frankel, BSED ’62

Music to her ears
As a 1970 graduate, one of my most memorable experiences at OU (just prior to the shutdown due to Kent State) was the 1970 Simon & Garfunkel concert in Mem Aud.

You could hear a pin drop. The musicianship was incredible and a strong reminder that life at that time in American history wasn’t just about war and trauma. It was the transcendent power of music that has left me considering, all these years later, that I was so lucky to be a part of the generation whose music has stood the test of time, and then some. Thanks for the fun trip down memory lane (“Rock On, Athens,” spring 2024).
—Jane Fieberts, BSJ ’70

Dishing on the dishes
My late husband, Jerry Carmean, BSED ’65, BSEE ’84, worked on the Radar Hill project that mapped the moon in the early 1960s (“The Many Roles of Radar Hill,” spring 2024). While serving as faculty in the telecommunication building and pursuing an electrical engineering degree in the ’80s, he bought two of the antenna dishes that had sat on the hill to use in a project.

He and my father, David D. Higgins, took the two antenna dishes apart and set them up in our yard here on Calico Ridge in Logan. He put together a computer to catch signals from space—no personal computers were available unless you made your own—and got a machine that tracked the incoming signals onto paper. After months of listening, he had signals that could have been sunspots. He got an A for the project, and we had two huge dishes in our yard.

Around 1983, the Canadian Observatory Corp. bought our two dishes, and Jerry got the University to sell the last two dishes from Radar Hill to them. The Canadians set them up in British Columbia.
—Pat (Higgins) Carmean, BSED ’69

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Feature photo by Eli Burris, BSJ ’16