It All Adds Up

Back in the early 1980s, when Bryan Ware ’82 was a teaching assistant at Wichita State, he had no idea where life’s journey would take him.

In a 1983 feature in the WSU yearbook Parnassus, Ware speculated that he might stick around for a while, and thought he might get married someday. “Maybe I’ll find someone real rich and beautiful and get married,” he said at the time. “She has to be dumb though.”

Well, he didn’t end up staying in Wichita much longer, but he did get married. He met Ginger Wineinger through a mutual friend and says she “is brilliant, contrary to the Parnassus text. We’ve been together since 1983 and were married in the WSU Chapel in 1988.”

Ginger (Wineinger) Ware ’83 first came to WSU because it was convenient and a good value. “In retrospect I see that it was my first view of a wider world,” she says. “I went in as a freshman with a certain idea of what I wanted to study. Like many, I faltered and floundered a bit with that initial plan.”

After exploring medical technology, she switched to creative writing after a talk with an advisor. “It turned out to be a place where I could thrive,” she says. “I took some wonderful English classes: American lit with James Lee Burke, contemporary lit with Bill Nelson, Shakespeare with Don Wineke. I felt the power of theater for the first time listening to Don read in the Shakespeare class, and that’s something that’s stayed with me ever since.” 

In addition to her English classes, she fondly remembers the time she spent working at the Sunflower. “I made my best friends there and met my future husband in the newsroom,” she says. “I remember wonderful people, Marc Francoeur (’83), Kirk Roberts, Bryan Masters (’83), Lorraine Kee and Joel Ligon (’83). Journalism professor Les Anderson was a terrific whirlwind of exuberance in that gloomy basement. We published three times a week, and it really messed up my sleep cycle. But I learned a lot too. I got an award for Best Column Writing from the journalism department my second year.”

She also wrote fake articles for an April Fool’s edition. “It was so fun the next morning when the paper was out. I overheard a student reading something I’d written out loud to his friend and laughing at it. That was a real kick for me.”

Following her graduation from WSU, Ginger enrolled in graduate school at Columbia University, and Bryan decided to follow her.

“I left WSU in 1984 and moved to New York City,” he says. “I got a foot-and-a-half of hair cut off, shaved and started looking for a job. I answered an ad in the New York Times looking for math majors and wound up in an actuarial job, with no idea what an actuary did. But it came with a paycheck, which is what I needed. I’ve since passed 10 professional exams to become a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society, an eight-and-a-half year process, and spent 28 years in the profession.” As far as Ware knows, he is the only WSU graduate in the Casualty Actuarial Society.

Bryan wasn’t the only one to follow Ginger to New York City. So did her brother James Wineinger ’89, a psychology graduate. “They were very much a part of my story,” James says of his sister and brother-in-law. “I got a job at the Fountain House and was able to stay with Ginger and Bryan for a little while.”

He ended up living in New York for 15 years, acquiring a master’s degree from Hunter College along the way. James now lives in Tulsa, Okla., where he is executive director at Crossroads Clubhouse, a place for adults who have been diagnosed with a serious mental illness to come and feel appreciated and to work toward recovery and independence. “Crossroads is a smaller agency based on Fountain House,” says James.

Back when he was deciding where to attend college, there were several reasons James chose WSU. “WSU had a great psychology program and my folks (Jim ’68 and Sue ’92) had both gone there,” he says. “It seemed like a natural fit. It was a convenient and affordable choice all around.”

He appreciated the time he spent in class with faculty such as professor Robert Zettle and Paul Ackerman, who is now assistant department chair of psychology. “I remember having great instructors,” he says. “Psychology turned out to be a great choice.”

James gives his father much of the credit for where he is now. “He had been in counseling, similar to the kind of field I would be interested in,” James says. “My family was always around people who needed help. It’s neat to make a career out of it.”

Just as Wineinger’s career journey began in New York City and has now taken him elsewhere, Bryan and Ginger likewise moved from the Empire State, with Bryan’s career taking them and their children, Lila and Cameron, to Philadelphia, New Jersey, Chicago, Barbados and now Reno, Nev., where he is senior vice president and chief actuary at Employers Insurance Group.

As the Ware family moved around, Ginger took advantage of the educational opportunities she came across. In addition to her bachelor’s degree in English from WSU and an MFA in fiction writing from Columbia, she earned an MA in theology in 2009. Then, while living in Chicago, she attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, from which she received a BFA in studio in 2011.

“I’ve focused on painting since then and now work primarily as an oil painter and printmaker,” she says. “Writing is still a component of my art practice, but it’s in the form of journaling and occasional poetry and very short prose.”

Educational variety has served Bryan well also. As a WSU student, he changed his major several times, something he says has ended up being beneficial to his career. “I really came to appreciate the discovery process, taking classes outside my expected comfort zone and finding that I really enjoyed some of them and didn’t like others,” he says. “This led to changing my major several times before settling on math. As my career has progressed, I’ve found that I’m pretty well balanced instead of just being a math geek, which has served me well.”

As a teaching assistant, he enjoyed helping students discover that math wasn’t so scary after all. “I found teaching to be one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done,” he says. “I was teaching primarily college algebra, which, among other things, was the one math class many majors required for graduation. Many of the students were terrified of the class. I loved working to explain the topics in ways that the phobic people could understand.”

Some of his students were surprised at how well they came to understand math after learning to look at the subject in a different way. “In cartoons, when someone figures something out, a light bulb goes on over his or her head,” he says. “In the classroom, the light bulb is in the person’s face. Seeing that light come on in the faces of the people in the class is a great experience.”

It’s been a few years since Bryan was a student at Wichita State, but he still enjoys an occasional return to the place where he made lasting friendships, met his wife, discovered how much he liked math and helped students get over their fear of algebra.

“Our daughter, Lila, is a third generation Shocker,” says Bryan, who was on campus in August to help her settle in for her sophomore year. “Three of her four grandparents have WSU degrees. Both of her parents, several aunts and uncles and a cousin all are Shocker alumni.”

Bryan’s mother Jane (Casper) Ware ’73, received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Missouri in Columbia before her husband, Joe, was transferred to Wichita for his job at JC Penney. “Here was a chance for me to get into a graduate program at WSU with the idea that I could renew my certificate,” Jane says. She did receive her teaching certificate from WSU, then began working on her master’s degree in educational administration and supervision while teaching in the Wichita school district.

“I taught social studies at Heights High School and Metro-Meridian Alternative High School.” She later became the principal at Metro. “I retired in 1989 and two years prior to that I was the director of secondary personnel downtown,” she says. Jane, who now lives in El Dorado, Kan., learned much from her “fine instructors” at WSU, and particularly remembers history professor John Born (1931-2011). “He took an interest in me, thought I had some promise,” she says.

Jane, who was once the only Caucasian teaching African American history in the state of Kansas, received certification to teach this subject because she had students who wanted to learn about it. “She was hired as a teacher at Metro High in Wichita when it first opened,” Bryan says. “The teachers and principal worked closely with the WSU education department’s professors to develop a curriculum and establish how the school would work in order to succeed.” 

Jane subsequently became Metro’s second principal, during a time when there were few female high school principals in the state. “Her certificate and degree from WSU really helped her to make a difference in the lives of many Wichita kids and made an improvement in the educational system of the city itself,” says Bryan.

These days, Jane enjoys reading, stays active in her church and cheers on the Shocker basketball team. She is also pleased that Lila is at WSU. “I’m delighted that my granddaughter is going to Wichita State. I hope she is as happy with her association with Wichita State as I am with mine. I made many good friends.”

Lila’s other family members are also pleased to see the tradition continue. “It was a good experience being at Wichita State,” says James. “It’s neat to still be kind of connected in that way.”
“It’s been fun to return to the campus so many years later,” adds Bryan. “We’re pleased with how the campus looks and all the improvements. It is a good mix of what we remember and new stuff.”

It all adds up: one university plus two families equals three generations (and counting) with unbreakable Shocker ties.