Centrepiece Online | Spring 2011

Alumni Aces

Each year the Alumni Association presents Distinguished Alumni awards for outstanding service to Centre, professional accomplishments, and/or civic accomplishments. The Young Alumnus/a Award honors alumni who have graduated within the last 15 years. In 2010, four honorees aced the entrance exam.

Distinguished Alumnus David Steere ’53

Born in: Akron, Ohio
Now lives in: Anchorage, Ky.
Occupation: Marriage and family therapist, professor emeritus of pastoral care and counseling at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary (Louisville Seminary)
Education: Chemistry major; B.D. Louisville Seminary; Th.D., Union Theological Seminary in New York
Family: Wife, Margaret; children, Elizabeth, Tevis, and Andrew; sister, Carolyn Steere Clayton ’62

Today the idea that effective ministry is inextricably linked with counseling is mainstream. In the 1950s, however, when David Steere ’53 attended seminary, it was not.

He says that the interdisciplinary approach that has guided his career stems from a profound early failure.

As a young seminary student he was assigned a small parish with more than its share of pain: parishioners with serious emotional disorders, several alcoholics, a divorce that involved a shooting, a suicide.

“During the two years that I spent there as a student I missed it all,” he admits. “I did not see any of it coming. And I decided that what I had been preparing for in the ministry, if it had anything to do with caring for people, it had to do something about avoiding disasters like that.

“Pastors are the front-line people in mental health, the first people the public turns to,” he says. “They are the triage center for referral and treatment.”

Now a nationally recognized leader in pastoral care and counseling, Steere has written four books on the subject, one of which is currently being prepared for republication in Spanish. He founded the acclaimed marriage and family therapy program at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, where he taught for more than three decades. And although he retired from teaching in 1996, he maintains a private clinical practice with his wife, Margaret, and their son Tevis.

As a high school student, Steere moved from South Carolina to Danville when his father, Dwight Steere, joined the Centre music faculty. An athlete who wanted to play football and basketball, he recalls that at the time he “thought the world had come to an end.” He became interested in chemistry and math mostly because his high school coaches taught them.

At Centre he thrived in his studies as well as in athletics; after four years of varsity football and four years as No. 1 on the tennis team, he planned on a graduate degree in chemistry. Ultimately, however, he decided that he needed a career working with people, not pipettes. And much as he has loved teaching, he says that the most important thing to him has been his clinical practice.

“Working with people through crisis as individuals, couples, and families naturally follows from the ideas of religion,” he says. “And I think practice and teaching go together, particularly in such a field. We need to do what we’re teaching, be involved in it, continue it, in order to stay sharp in it.”

Distinguished Alumnus William P. Malone ’60

Hometown: Allen, Ky., near Prestonsburg
Now lives in: Louisville
Occupation: C.P.A. and founding partner of Deming Malone Livesay & Ostroff; Thoroughbred syndicator
Education: Business administration/accounting major

Bill Malone ’60 has always loved numbers. As a child he tracked stats on about every sport possible. When it came time to find a career, the choice to him was obvious.

As he likes to tell, one day when he was a Centre senior, he and some other accounting majors visited Yeager Ford & Warren, at the time the largest accounting firm in Kentucky. On passing him in the hall, Jake Yeager ’23 said to Malone, “You’re going to join the firm when you graduate, aren’t you?”

“I was planning on it,” replied Malone.

“Well just call me and let me know when you want to start,” said Yeager, and continued on his way.

“It’s the only interview I ever had in my life,” Malone says.

Although Jake Yeager died the week before Malone actually started at the firm, both the accounting profession and the Yeager culture proved rewarding.

“They did things the way I felt people and clients needed to be treated, with personal touch and personal attention,” he says.

Personal relationships have always been important to Malone. As the accounting world became more profit-driven in the 1970s, and Yeager Ford & Warren became part of the national firm Coopers & Lybrand, Malone decided he needed a change as well.

“In 1975, three of my associates and I left a nice, secure position in one of the Big Eight accounting firms and decided to start our own firm,” he says. “People laughed at us and said we’d never make it. But between 1975, when we started with four partners and one secretary, to 2005, which was 30 years later at about the time I began to semiretire, we became the biggest firm in Kentucky. I felt that was a pretty significant accomplishment.”

Another accomplishment is the series of racehorse syndicates he has put together. His special spin: Many small investors who are in it mostly for the thrill.

“We might have $75,000 in a syndicate, and it might be made up of 50 people,” he says.

He got the idea after buying a cheap claimer horse and deciding that it might be fun to involve his many friends in the sport of kings. Their biggest success to date is a filly—She Says It Best—who made it to the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies at Belmont in 2005.

“I can’t tell you that it’s profitable,” he says. “I can tell you that when you go down in the owners’ paddock on a big day at Churchill Downs and you’re right next to [trainers Wayne] Lucas and [Bob] Baffert, nobody knows that you’ve only got $500 invested. You can strut and brag, and if your horse wins it’s an exhilarating feeling because you’re running against the best there is. If you beat them, it’s pretty gratifying.”

Distinguished Alumna Elizabeth Bateman Bond ’64

Hometown: Danville
Now lives in: Boone, N.C.
Occupation: History professor at Appalachian State University, now retired
Education: History major; M.A. history, North Carolina State University; Ed.D. education, University of North Carolina-Greensboro
Family: Husband, John Bond ’62; father, Robert Bateman ’34 (deceased)

There was never any question that Bettie Bateman Bond ’64 would attend Centre.

One of the “great regrets” of her father, Robert Bateman ’34, was that the Great Depression had prevented him from completing his degree at Centre. He even moved his family to Danville in 1951 just so they could grow up under the College’s beneficent aura.

And her great uncle Ben Cregor ’22 had been on The Team.

“I could probably say ‘Centre six, Harvard nothing’ before I could count to six,” she says.

At Centre, she joined the last class of women to live on the old Kentucky College for Women campus, if only for their first year—an experience she calls a “privilege”—and immersed herself in college life. When the time came for graduate school, she felt she was well prepared.

“Because of our superb undergraduate training at Centre—and the fact that Centre used the GRE as an exit exam—we were ready to jump into the deep end of the pool,” she says.

Her teaching career began with eighth-graders in Lexington while her future husband, John Bond ’62, finished military service in Korea. After graduate school, the two moved to Boone, N.C., where he joined the biology faculty at Appalachian State University. Two years later, she joined the A.S.U. history faculty.

Even in North Carolina, they found Centre connections.

“Centre may have helped us get our first appointment at Appalachian State University,” she suggests, since Jim Brakefield ’44 was the A.S.U. football coach. And the woman who rented them their first house did so only after she found out they were from Centre. “My dear,” she told them, “I was at The Game.”

Five minutes in Bond’s company makes it clear that she is a woman of boundless energy. During her 23 years teaching at A.S.U., she was a popular professor, marked by her enthusiasm, sense of fun, and willingness to take on new projects. In 1976, she won a Fulbright to spend a summer in India. For more than a decade she and her husband spent the summers teaching in Newport, R.I.; hers was a course on architectural history. In 1996, the year she officially retired from teaching, she chaired the university’s centennial celebration. Her many accomplishments did not go unnoticed. Among her honors are the Outstanding Service Award from the A.S.U. Alumni Association in 2005 for her work in particular with the university library, Boone Area Chamber of Commerce 2003 Volunteer of the Year, and Woman of the Year for 2000 from the Watauga County Council on the Status of Women.

“I enjoyed every minute of it,” she says.

Young Alumnus Brian Mefford ’95

Hometown: Frankfort, Ky.
Now lives in: Alvaton, Ky., near Bowling Green
Occupation: Chairman and CEO of Connected Nation
Education: Economics major; M.B.A., Thunderbird School of Global Management
Family: Wife, Allison Thomas Mefford ’94; children, Owen, Eli, and Clara

Brian Mefford ’95 has a calling. He wants to wire the world. Specifically, he wants to expand the access and use of high-speed internet in rural areas so as to enhance education and economic opportunities. Starting first with ConnectKentucky, and now as chairman and CEO of Connected Nation, he has helped the two nonprofit organizations succeed by developing an innovative mix of public and private partnerships.

“I love the work I get to do because it’s fun, it’s challenging, and it’s rewarding,” he says. “I started Connected Nation with the mission to enable technology to help people who have been overlooked or underserved to realize their best potential. We began with a handful of people working solely in Kentucky, and today our program footprint spans from Alaska to Puerto Rico—a presence in 30-plus states along with some work internationally.”

When he was young, Mefford thought he would follow his grandfather into farming. But his current career draws as much from the influence of his father, who worked for a telephone company developing partnerships to enhance area job growth.

“It was a novel approach then, and I liked the creativity and problem solving it required to be successful,” says Mefford.

His efforts have been noted by the British newsweekly The Economist and by the Wall Street Journal, among others. The prime minister of Malaysia has asked for his advice. And in January, Connected Nation was named one of the best places to work in Kentucky by a group that included the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce.

“It’s great fun to build something that brings together talented people to solve difficult challenges by applying technology in novel ways,” says Mefford.

One of his most satisfying experiences has been working with private-sector leaders, the U.S. Congress, and two presidential administrations to help develop and implement what turned out to be a significant piece of legislation supporting private-sector investment in the nation’s technology infrastructure to ensure that technology will be more widely accessible.

But at heart, Mefford is still a farm boy.

“For all my evangelism for technology, the thing that I love the most is to disconnect at our relatively low-tech farm/home in Warren County,” he says. “We moved back to Kentucky from the Washington, D.C., area to be able to raise our kids in rural Kentucky, and our favorite family activities tend to consist of the things we can do together in our woods and on our farm.”

—D.F.J.