Evan Stoner (Hanover 2019) was recently interviewed by The News & Tribune, Jeffersonville, Indiana's newspaper, about the Supreme Court's ruling on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibiting sex discrimination in the workplace also protects LGBTQ+ employees (read the article here). Evan was interviewed as a leader in Southern Indiana's LGBTQ+ community.
Evan founded Jeffersonville, Indiana Pride (now called Southern Indiana Pride) in 2016, and he served as the Pride Festival's director for three years. In 2019, Evan he was named president of Southern Indiana Pride's Board of Directors. As president, Evan pushed for a Fairness Ordinance in Jeffersonville in 2020. He also postponed the 2020 Southern Indiana Pride due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Shaw: Words of Wisdom from My Brother
By: Jim Shaw (Northwestern 1977)
When I was a freshman at Northwestern University in Chicago, I made one of the best decisions of my life. I pledged to join the fraternity of Phi Gamma Delta, otherwise known as FIJI. I loved the brotherhood of the fraternity.
One of the other guys who pledged the fraternity at the same time was a freshman from White Plains, NY, named Steven Corwin (Northwestern 1976) (pictured). He was friendly, outgoing, a little cocky, and brilliant. We went through initiation together, played poker together, and argued over which basketball team was better at the time: His beloved New York Knicks or my beloved Boston Celtics. Corwin was so smart that he earned his bachelor’s and medical degrees in just six years.
Several of my fraternity brothers are my best friends to this day. However, I lost touch with Corwin…until now. Not surprisingly, Dr. Corwin, a renowned cardiologist and internist, is now the president and CEO of the New York-Presbyterian Hospital System. It’s one of the top-ranked hospitals in the country, and in the epicenter of the overwhelming battle with the coronavirus, having treated 10,000 COVID-19 patients.
“It has been horrific,” Corwin said. “In 40 years of medicine, I have never seen anything like this. It’s been so startling and sudden, and the level of illness is profound."
Under Corwin’s extraordinary leadership, operating rooms and conference areas were turned into ICU areas, doctors were repurposed, desperately needed medical supplies were obtained from around the world, triage tents were set up outside emergency rooms, ventilators were created from anesthesia machines, and they split ventilators to treat two patients at a time. New York-Presbyterian also went the extra mile for employees, such as putting them in hotels, busing them to the hospitals, giving them free meals and parking, and paying out bonuses.
“The toughest part is knowing you’re putting a lot of people in harm’s way,” Corwin said. “It’s a deadly disease. It’s contagious. It’s humbling that they willingly did this to help people."
At New York-Presbyterian, about 2,000 patients have died from COVID-19, along with 14 employees. Also, a highly admired emergency room physician died by suicide. It has all taken an emotional toll...
Read the full story by Jim Shaw on Inforum.
To help fight the pandemic, Kelley Rea (Michigan 1966) (pictured) and his wife, Mary Jean, Jecklin, paid six Vietnamese refugees, who alterations boutique would have otherwise been shuttered, to sew 6,000 masks. Kelley added filters to the masks, and he personally delivered the masks to emergency care and essential service workers in Sarasota, Florida.