By Steve Bowman
Editor, The Brentwood Spirit
bowmansj@sbcglobal.net

A radio personality, a U.S. marshal, a theologian, two law experts and a celebrity photographer were inducted into the Brentwood High School Hall of Fame last Friday.

The ceremony was part of the Brentwood Alumni Association’s annual Third Weekend in September alumni reunion. The induction was held in the school’s auditorium toward the conclusion of the BAA’s annual courtyard gathering.

The six 2014 hall of fame recipients are: Barry Short from the class of 1958, David Cain (1959), Nell Jessup Mier Newton (1962), Vicki Bothman Mack (1963), Don Slazinik (1968) and Trudy Thompson-Larkins (1984).

This is the fifth hall of fame class to be selected.

Selection process

The BAA’s website contains a form for recommending an individual to the hall of fame. Every other year the organization’s hall of fame committee goes through the forms and determines the most worthy candidates. The committee for 2014 was chaired by Phil Chandler (1964) and included David Pentland (1956), Judi Turner Peckham (1961), Sylvia Leezy Stoll (1964) and Linda Kaufman Zeeman (1965).

 

Barry Short, class of 1958, attorney

Short is an expert in white-collar criminal defense and a senior partner with the St. Louis law firm of Lewis Rice Fingersh. His career includes serving as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri. He successfully argued a case in the U.S. Supreme Court. He was an adjunct law professor at Washington University. Short earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from DePauw University and a law degree from Mizzou.

David William Cain, 1959, theologian

Cain recently retired after 44 years of teaching religion at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Va. A literary theologian, he specializes in the work of Søren Kierkegaard and Fyodor Dostoevsky, and in contemporary Christian theology, faith, literature and theodicy. He has taught seminars on Elie Wiesel and wrote an English-Danish book on Kierkegaard. At Princeton University he earned a bachelor’s degree in religion and a master’s degree and a doctorate in systematic theology. He was a Fulbright Scholar, studying religion-arts, at King’s College in London. He earned a bachelor of divinity degree from Yale University. He and his wife live in Spotsylvania, Virginia.

Nell Jessup Mier Newton, 1962, law school dean

Newton is the dean of the law school at the University of Notre Dame and a leading scholar of American Indian law. She earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of California Berkeley and a law degree at the University of California Hastings. She served as a professor and dean of the law schools at UC Hastings, the University of Connecticut and the University of Denver. Her research examines the intersection of American Indian law with federal constitutional and property law. She co-wrote a leading textbook on American Indian law.

Vicki Bothman Mack, 1963, photographer

Inspired by her journalism teacher at BHS and armed with a photojournalism degree from Mizzou, Mack headed to Los Angeles in 1967 to launch her career in photography. A year later she was covering the presidential primary race and was in the ballroom on the night Senator Robert Kennedy was shot. Since then, as a photojournalist and as a portrait photographer, she has aimed her lenses at countless famous people, including: Ronald and Nancy Reagan in the Oval Office, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Margaret Thatcher, Prince Andrew of Britain, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Morrison and the Doors, Bob Hope, Tom Selleck, the weddings of both Donnie and Marie Osmond, and astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Alan Shepard and John Glenn. Her work has been exhibited in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda and she has had several books published.

Don Slazinik, 1968, U.S. marshal

Slazinik graduated from the FBI National Academy and is a U.S. Marshal for the Southern District of Illinois. He’s one of only two marshals appointed to serve under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. He oversees district operations, fugitive apprehensions and court security for all federal courts in 38 counties. He was the police chief for the City of O’Fallon, Ill., for 16 years and, before that, the chief in Poplar Bluff, Mo., and Storm Lake, Iowa. H served in the U.S. Marine Corps until 1971. He earned a bachelor’s degree in education from Southeast Missouri State University and a master’s degree in law enforcement administration from Webster University. He lives in O’Fallon with his wife and two sons.

Trudy Thompson-Larkins, 1984, radio personality

With the on-air name of Olivia Fox, Thompson-Larkins co-hosted a nationally syndicated radio show in Washington D.C. for seven years. The Russ Parr Morning Show with Olivia Fox was broadcast in 800 cities. Then she became the first female to lead an urban morning show in Tampa, Fl. Now she lives in Maryland with her daughter, hosts her own weekly radio show and does voice-over work and voice acting. Also, she has written a book, to be published in 2015, about her four years on dialysis before receiving a kidney transplant. She earned a degree in radio/TV and journalism from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.