LETTERS
To the Editor

The Fall issue’s UVM News article about Professor Joni Seager, “Looking at a Woman’s World,” and her sense of geography reminded me of my freshman year at UVM in 1930.

One of the required courses as an economics major was two semesters of economic and industrial geography. These were taught by a young lady professor whose teaching method compelled a fascination with a subject many of us simply “endured” in grade and high school. I have never lost that interest, which eventually led to my business involvement in international trade. So much of what I was exposed to in class fostered an understanding that made my experiences throughout the world especially meaningful.

After retirement, I served as a volunteer with International Executive Service Corps with assignments in Colombia and Ecuador. Were it not for the two Spanish courses at UVM my sophomore year, I don’t believe I could have functioned well in those settings. The insights needed to get along and communicate were fortified by the study of geography in my years at UVM.

I trust Professor Seager impresses her students with the lasting knowledge of geography that I still retain after seventy-one years.

Herbert J. Selib ’34
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts

With degrees from Yale, University of Virginia, and University of Vermont, as well as training from Washington University, I receive more than my share of alumni magazines. The letter from Beth Wheeler Hall ’74 [concerning UVM’s Alternative Summer Break Civil Rights trip] in the Winter 2003 edition of Vermont Quarterly is the best letter I have ever read on any subject in any of these illustrious publications.

Dr. Washington Winn MBA ’93
Burlington, Vermont

My thanks to Tom Brennan for his touching article on Kevin Roberson. Kevin was the best basketball player ever to wear a Vermont uniform and had every right to act like any high-profile athlete. He never did. For those of us who knew him, his legacy would be his genuine kindness, humility, and dignity.

Coming from the industrial Midwest, I found Vermont to be quite a cultural adjustment. Talking about sports with Kevin made me feel at home. He was a huge Buffalo Bills fan, and he let my Indianapolis-Colts-loving butt know it on a daily basis. We talked about Indiana basketball so much that he and Kenny White gave me the nickname “Indy,” a name I took great pride in for four years.

We eventually learned to leave sports out of our conversations and would just talk about life, as friends do. When news of Kevin’s death hit campus, I was sickened and remember the sadness that filled the streets. As I think back, the tears that poured out that night weren’t so much for Kevin’s pain, or for my own grief — they were for all of the people who would never get a chance to know him. It is very sad to think of the many lives Kevin never had a chance to touch.

Maybe we can best honor Kevin on this tenth anniversary of his passing by trying to treat those in our daily lives the way Kevin treated us.

Jefferson Hammond ’93
Aliso Viejo, California

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