Kansas Cowboy
Orin Friesen ’69 is the newest cowboy in the Kansas Cowboy Hall of Fame in Dodge City, Kan.
A familiar face and voice to country and bluegrass music fans, Friesen manages the Prairie Rose Chuckwagon Supper, an Old West-themed dinner show in Benton, Kan., where he’s the bass player and bandleader for the show’s house band, the Prairie Rose Rangers.
Friesen’s cowboy fame extends to his work as a Wichita-area radio engineer and announcer and author of Goat Glands to Ranch Hands: The KFDI Story, which chronicles the evolution of the radio station he’s worked for since 1980.
BlueDiamondShocker
As the Toronto Blue Jays battled the Kansas City Royals for the American League pennant this October, Shocker and Blue Jay legend Joe Carter fs ’81, a longtime KC-area resident, told the Kansas City Star he was excited to see both the Blue Jays and the Royals find success this season.
As an outfielder for the Blue Jays, Carter entered the pro baseball history books with his walk-off homer during Game 6 of the 1993 World Series. It remains one of only two home runs to clinch a championship. Carter, who retired from playing pro ball in 1998, has again taken to the pro baseball diamond — this time as special assistant to the general manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks, Dave Stewart. Carter and Stewart played together on Toronto’s 1993 championship team.
Get Ready
Nope, it’s not just our imagination. Trumpeter Roger Kugler ’67 has toured with none other than The Temptations and Wayne Newton, performed with symphony orchestras in Oregon and Kansas, and helped nurture up-and-coming musicians from just about everywhere. Kugler’s performance chops, coupled with three decades of higher education teaching and administrative experience, has more than prepped him for the post he took up this past August: director of Park University’s International Center for Music in Parkville, Mo.
He’s prime for the challenge of getting a new generation of talented musicians ready for careers at the very highest level — danke schoën!
Shocker of Influence
California’s Silicon Valley, synonymous with innovation, is home to many of the world’s largest high-tech corporations, as well as thousands of tech startup companies. It is also home to Anjali (Thusoo) Kausar ’91/93, who has been recognized as one of Silicon Valley’s 100 most influential women of 2015 by the Silicon Valley Business Journal.
Although she has held the role of executive director for the Cupertino Chamber of Commerce for only a year and a half, she has earned praise for her know-how in developing effective governmental, political and community networks. In 2012, Kausar, a past Cupertino school district board president, founded SkoolCare, a nonprofit that provides dental care to children on school campuses in underserved areas.
Shocker Ninja Warrior
What do karate, gymnastics, pole vaulting and hurdling have in common? They’re the athletic endeavors of choice for Cassie Craig ’13.
This past summer, the former standout Shocker track and field student-athlete and MVC pole vault champion put her considerable athleticism to competitive use on the NBC TV show “American Ninja Warrior,” which requires participants to tackle a series of challenging obstacle courses.
Craig participated in a qualifying round filmed in Kansas City, and was later selected as a Wild Card participant for the show’s Season 7 finals in Las Vegas.
Hieroglyphs to QR Codes
The history of the written word is a long and varied one: from hieroglyphics to text messages, humans have developed some pretty ingenious ways to stay in touch. Mark Flickinger ’89 knows this as well as anyone. He spent two years conceptualizing, researching and painting four murals that now adorn the walls of Topeka (Kan.) High School’s Woodward Library. His murals depict different eras of communication, with the first paying homage to ancient scripts, including Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics, the second showing medieval scribes and the transition to the printing press, the third illustrating the written word through the ages of enlightenment, industry and progress, and the fourth depicting the digital age, complete with a working QR Code.
Gong Show Shocker
Back in the groovy days of 1977, Dan Lies ’74 enthusiastically represented his alma mater in an appearance during Wichita State Day on “The Gong Show,” an amateur talent contest broadcast by NBC and known for its absurdist humor. The show’s host Chuck Barris introduced Lies as “the pride of Wichita State,” while the Shocker fight song played in the opening segment. (You can still catch the show on YouTube, BTW.) Since then, Lies has enjoyed a work history as varied as contestants in “The Gong Show.” He has been vice president and general manager at Sony Pictures Entertainment subsidiary Automated Studio Lighting, a software consultant and an inventory manager at Paramount Pictures. Today, Lies is the ranch manager at Los Angeles-area Fieldstone Farm, which breeds, raises and trains Andalusian horses.
Enlightened Travels
Captivated by the night sky ever since she was a young child, Cheslea (Brown) Hodges ’79/80 was able to combine two of her greatest interests during a trip to Finland earlier this year.
Thanks to a $10,000 Lilly Endowment Teacher Creativity Fellowship grant, Hodges, a speech language pathologist in Indianapolis, was sent to observe the Nordic country’s highly rated education system by touring schools and meeting with teachers and students.
Her observations weren’t all classroom-bound: the pièce de résistance of her travels — seeing the Northern Lights.
