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.

Speaker Louis V. Gerstner Jr. told the graduates that computers can never replace human creativity. »

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. »

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.

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