Lives of Leadership

Leadership, says Centre president John Roush, is "an act of service." By that definition, the four alumni recognized at Homecoming 2000 are most definitely leaders.

One, for example, founded a school in Africa, still going strong some 30 years later. Another established a facility in Louisville in 1999 that helps recovering addicts get back to independent living. Though the four chose to make their marks in very different fields, they all share a willingness to serve others.

Since 1963, Centre College has presented the Distinguished Alumnus Awards to honor outstanding contributions to community, profession, and alma mater. The Young Alumnus Award recognizes professional achievement, civic accomplishments, and/or service to Centre among alumni who have graduated in the last 15 years.

These are the stories of the Homecoming 2000 honorees.

A Totally Involved Life by Frances Cundiff Johnson ’46
Security Detail by David Ray ’59
Some Work, Some Don’t by Don Blackburn ’69
Directions that Intrigue by Kevin Taylor ’85

A Totally Involved Life
In 1964, Frances Cundiff Johnson ’46 left her comfortable home in Oxford, Ohio, and went to live in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), with her late husband, Doug, and their three sons, then aged 7, 10, and 12. Both teachers at the time, they felt called to become missionaries, as well.

"We never looked back," she says of her 30 years in Africa. "It was a good decision."

For most of that time, Johnson lived in the bush, where she and her husband built the Dewure Secondary School, literally from the bricks up.

"We were granted a site to develop a high school," she recalls. "We went to barren land, about fifty acres of land with absolutely nothing but thorn trees on it. We had to burn the brick for the school buildings."

In the beginning, they had to haul all the water for bathing and washing from the river by oxen. Drinking water came from a well three miles away. A garden and local butcher fed them the year round, but staples required a three-hour journey each way. At night they used kerosene lamps.

It was hard work, but their school prospered. They opened that first year with thirty-five pioneer students and three buildings. More buildings and more students followed, until today, she notes, the enrollment has reached 700 high school students, half of whom are boarders.

English was the official language of the country when they arrived, so Johnson, a chemistry major at Centre, and her husband, an agriculture teacher, were able to communicate with their students and parishioners.
"I home-schooled my own children, taught in the school, taught the women, taught on Sunday," says Johnson. "It was a totally involved life." Among her favorite memories are the Sundays when the Johnsons would gather up two or three students and a basket lunch for the middle of that long day, and, like 19th-century circuit riders, make their rounds.

"Most of those ‘preaching points’ were just under a tree," she says. "That’s where people lived, anyway. They didn’t stay inside their round huts. They were outside, under a tree, talking and visiting."

When Zimbabwe became engulfed in civil war during the 1980s, life in the bush became unsafe. Although the Johnsons continued to be involved with the school, they moved to the district town, 75 miles away. Frances ran a print shop that produced hymnals and Sunday school supplies in four languages; she continued there even after the death of her husband in 1989.

What does she miss most about Africa? She thinks for a bit. "The slow pace of life," she finally replies. "If you don’t get it done today, you get it done tomorrow. When dark comes, your day is over. And even when we lived in that little district town, there wasn’t a lot of rushing around. People didn’t have meetings at night. It was just a much slower way of life."

Johnson has returned twice to Africa since retiring in 1993, and says she still sometimes wonders what she’s doing in Campbellsville, Ky., where she now lives.

"When I was back two years ago, I greeted women in church who were at that first church service in December of 1965," she recalls. "They were a little older and a little stiffer, but they were there. It was really very nice to see the same people after all those years and to know that we had made a difference in lives by being there."

Security Detail
When President Nixon took his long, lonely flight back to California after resigning the presidency, David Ray ’59 was there.

He was with Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin when they hammered out the Camp David peace accords and with Henry Kissinger as the secretary of state traveled the globe arranging world peace.

He managed security for four presidential inaugurations, as well as the first summit between President Reagan and Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev.
During 31 years in the Secret Service, Ray enjoyed front-row tickets to many of history’s headlines. Since retiring from the service in 1996, he’s kept his hand in the arena as a consultant and writer on security issues.

So it was only natural that when the headlines came to Centre in the form of a vice presidential debate . . . David Ray would again be in the center of the action.

"Having worked a number of political conventions and inaugurations, I knew how important it was to look at the whole picture," says Ray of his contribution. "With Danville and Centre both being pretty small, you don’t have an infrastructure. You have to build it."

Ray’s motto is "training and preparation," and he notes that a lot of the debate’s success came down to "getting Centre prepared for it."

He adds, "Everybody really pitched in, from the different phone carriers who took off their corporate hats to make sure we had enough cell-phone access to the student who helped three state police officers with a computer problem."
What does he like best about his work? There’s the travel of course; he’s been to almost every state and more than 50 foreign countries. The variety of more than a dozen different assignments, from financial investigations (the Secret Service is a branch of the Treasury Department), to White House detail, to running the Secret Service’s Kentucky office. The glamour and excitement of high-profile protectees. But when pressed, Ray admits a fondness for a "good investigation."

"I like something really tough that I can pull apart," he says.

As a young boy growing up in Louisville, Ray never dreamed that he would some day be rubbing elbows with world leaders. He wound up at Centre on the suggestion of his high school coach, and although it was a struggle at first, he eventually made the dean’s list. A few years later, conversations with a couple of friends who had joined the Secret Service—Jimmy Johnson ’56 and Frank Yeager ’57—convinced Ray that it was the career for him.

Although he enjoys writing about security issues for such industry journals as Security Solutions and Pizza Today (yes, sometimes the pizza "dough" is counterfeit), Ray says he has no plans for a book about his Secret Service adventures.

"I feel lucky to have done the things I’ve done, but I’m not a kiss-and-tell guy," he says. "There has got to be a level of respect between the agents and those they protect. You lose that if they are scared they may read about their actions one day."

(For more about David Ray ’59, see the spring 1996 Centrepiece.)

Some Work, Some Don’t
Some people know from the time they enter college exactly how their lives will unfold. They stick to the plan and never deviate, perhaps for fear of failing.
Not Don Blackburn ’69. He enjoys variety too much.

His life, he says, is the one "of someone who tries a lot of things. Some work, some don’t."

For a few years, he practiced law, but gave it up when the cases began to look the same. Next came a foray into the world of restaurants, with admittedly mixed success. One project, a brewery/eatery, filed for bankruptcy last year. On the other hand, O’Malley’s Corner, an entertainment complex in downtown Louisville, is still going strong, as is Joe’s Place, a Louisville chain of two with a catchy "older than dirt" slogan. He bought the original Joe’s, established in 1937, about 15 years ago.

More recently he’s turned his entrepreneurial skills toward a completely different sort of venture, this one aimed at helping people recover from substance abuse. With his wife, Jeanne, and aided by many dedicated volunteers, he launched Beacon House in 1999. The residential facility is a "stepping stone," he says, a place for those who have completed a primary treatment program but need a little more help before continuing life on their own.

"Beacon House would never have come to fruition without the help of devoted old friends and the amazing new friends we have met in this endeavor," he says. Several members of the board are Centre alumni, he adds.

His next step for Beacon House is developing "a reasonable endowment," says Blackburn, who intends to work the Centre connection to do so. A fundraiser planned for this fall will feature "the beloved Max Cavnes," retired Centre history professor and dean of men, as speaker and possible roastee.

Not surprisingly for a man who once told a reporter that his hobby was "seeing every movie ever made," Blackburn admits to some "latent performance desires." Like a director, he enjoys pulling the pieces together to make a dream real, whether it be a community service or an entrepreneurial venture.

"My children, when younger, would ask me what I did for a living," he says. "I always told them, ‘I don’t really know, but it sure takes a lot of time.’

"Whatever I’m involved in has to have some creative side to it, some people equation, and it helps if entertainment has an angle in there somewhere. I love the successful production."

Blackburn says that the main thing he learned at Centre was "to keep on learning," a challenge he continues to embrace.

"I fully expect to be doing something completely different occupation-wise in the years to come," he says. "There are still a lot of things to try!"

(For more about Don Blackburn ’69, see the fall 1999 Centrepiece.)

Directions that Intrigue
Working on Wall Street was the last thing Kevin Taylor ’85 envisioned when he graduated from Centre.

"I had no concrete career plans," he says. "I just kept moving in directions that intrigued me."

Today he helps manage a $16-billion municipal bond portfolio for one of the largest insurance companies in the world. His office looks out on the Brooklyn Bridge. Best of all, he’s found a profession he loves.

"I have long been interested in government, politics, and economics," he says. "My work wraps all three together. I feel like I am in a field that was tailor-made for me."

As a vice president in the municipal fixed-income department at American International Group, Inc., Taylor follows legislative activity, tax structures, economic developments, and public policy issues in a variety of states. Changes in school funding, for example, might affect the credit-worthiness of a school district, its local government, or even the state. He is the credit analyst on a team of five that interprets such information and determines whether AIG should buy or sell certain bonds.

A government and economics major at Centre, he earned an M.P.A. at Indiana University. After eight years analyzing municipal bonds at Standard & Poor’s, followed by a stint on the trading desk at Prudential Securities, he joined his current company in October.

Although Taylor studied economics, he emphasizes that it is by no means the only option for a career on Wall Street. Consider molecular biology, he says. Such a major would provide "an excellent foundation" for work as a pharmaceutical industry analyst, an investment banker specializing in research capital formation, or an environmental management consultant.

His suggestion for others who might want to enter the financial arena is simple: "Be creative and remain flexible." It’s advice that extends to one’s personal life as well. "If I focused only on municipal bonds and Wall Street, I would be cheating myself. My circle of friends would be too narrow," he says. "New York offers so much, but it can be a very lonely place, too." So here’s a second Taylor tip: Get involved.

"Whatever interests you choose to pursue can be found here," he says. "They can lead you into some very exciting, unexpected paths."

Taylor, himself, is active with the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, where he is now an elder. His church work has taken him to India (which he wrote about in the summer 1998 Centrepiece), and he plans a trip to Kenya in the fall. He enjoys skiing, fishing, sailing "whenever possible," and improving his French. He has also worked with admissions and annual fund efforts for Centre, served on the Alumni Board of Directors, and helped organize activities for students in Centre’s James Graham Brown Leadership Program when they visit the city.

Although originally from Franklin, Ind., Taylor has lived in New York City since finishing school in 1989. As a tour guide, he combines a native’s knowledge with the newcomer’s wonder at all the city has to offer. "There is never a lack of activities: art, music, sports," he says. "Sometimes it is fun to take the subway to some part of town that is new to me and just start walking around exploring old neighborhood Greek bakeries. . .family-owned Italian pasta shops. . .Argentine restaurants with great home cooking."

So here’s a third bit of advice: If you’re planning a move to New York City, have a word with Kevin Taylor. He is always pleased to help survive and thrive—as he has—in his adopted hometown.