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SFSU welcomes new Alumni Hall of Fame members | ||||
June 3, 2005 |
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SFSU's Alumni Hall of Fame induction ceremony, the University's equivalent of Oscar night, recently honored some of the best and brightest graduates for their professional, cultural and civic achievements. This year's stars -- executive director of the San Francisco Food Bank Paul Ash, television writer/producer Glen Charles, CBS 5 "Evening Magazine" co-host Malou Nubla and U.S. Congressman Bill Thomas -- were inducted into the Hall of Fame at a reception held Friday, May 27, in the Seven Hills Conference Center on campus. They join an illustrious group of role models who serve as inspiration for future generations of students at SFSU. Interim Vice President for University Advancement Don Scoble introduced the evening's emcee, alumnus Ben Fong-Torres, former Rolling Stone editor, who was also the keynote speaker at Commencement the following day. President Robert A. Corrigan shared a little-known story about this year's Alumnus of the Year, Manny Mashouf, chairman of the board and founder of bebe stores inc., who spoke before the inductions began.
Laughter quickly turned to a standing ovation when Corrigan asked Mashouf and his wife, Neda, to join him at the lectern to announce, for the first time, that the Mashoufs had recently given SFSU the largest alumni gift in its history: $10 million, which will go toward a new performing and electronic media arts building on campus. When the audience was seated, Fong-Torres introduced the first inductee, Paul Ash of the San Francisco Food Bank, by asking the audience to consider the magnitude of Ash's accomplishments during his 16-year career as executive director of the hunger relief organization: "Last year he helped bring the equivalent of 50,000 meals to hungry San Franciscans -- I’m talking 50,000 meals each of those 365 days."
Inductee No. 2, television legend Glen Charles, the eight-time Emmy Award winning co-creator of "Cheers," shared what he learned while pursuing his master’s degree in English in the late 1960s: "I had an extraordinary literature professor who assigned us the most eclectic reading list, and he approached literary analysis in a way I hadn’t heard before. It was very unpredictable, exciting and free form." Charles pointed out that his education coincided with the war in Vietnam. Just two weeks after his graduation, before he went to work behind the scenes of classic television shows including "Taxi," "The Bob Newhart Show," "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "M*A*S*H," he entered basic training for the Army reserves. "I found myself in Fort Polk, La., in the middle of the summer. … You may find this hard to believe, but it wasn't easy to find someone who wanted to chat about the existential undertones in Camus over a cup of chamomile tea in the barracks."
"Without having come here and being able to see the diversity [at SFSU]," Thomas added that he would have most likely missed out on this valuable lesson. "It's an understanding that probably could not have been perfected had I remained in Orange County," he said, "because when you collect a bunch of pieces of broken white tile, the mosaic is not quite as colorful as the one I learned to build here." Previous Alumni Hall of Fame inductees include actor Danny Glover, Peter Casey, co-creator and producer of the hit sitcom "Frasier," former UCLA football coach Bob Toledo, Berkeley Symphony Orchestra conductor Kent Nagano, former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, and San Francisco poet laureate devorah major. The photographs of all inductees will hang on the Alumni Hall of Fame wall on the first floor of the J. Paul Leonard Library. To learn about more outstanding alumni, visit the SFSU Hot Shots Web site. -- Adrianne Bee
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1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94132 (415) 338-1111 |