Plane Living
Toshikazu Tsukii '63 long ago decided he wanted to be an aviator, an engineer and an architect. He checked the first two off his list years ago, but has only recently tackled the third. A principal engineering fellow at Raytheon Missile Systems who holds a number of patents for transmitters and receivers, Tsukii has licenses as a commercial pilot and flight instructor. Now, after four years of persistence, he has completed his architectural masterpiece: a guesthouse constructed with the nose cone of a Boeing 737, the tail of a 727 and the cabin sections of two 707s. This guesthouse probably wouldn't fly in most American neighborhoods, but Tsukii's fellow residents at La Cholla Airpark in Oro Valley, Ariz., haven't complained.
No More No. 12
Sam Adkins '76 was the Seattle Seahawks' original 12th Man. A backup quarterback, he is the only Seahawks player to ever wear No. 12. The franchise retired the number in 1984, a year after his pro career ended, in order to honor the support of its vocal fan base, which often contributed to the success of the 11 players on the field. These days, Adkins runs a commercial construction company, Hawk Building, and does pregame and postgame radio work for KIRO 710-AM's coverage of Seahawks games. The starting quarterback on the Shocker football team for three years and a member of the Pizza Hut Shocker Sports Hall of Fame, he lives in Ferndale, Wash.
Hail Tekele
Tekele Cotton's monster posterizing dunk in a regular-season Wichita State game against Illinois State not only had ESPN play-by-play announcers resorting to, well, lumberjack talk — "... just absolutely bringin' the lumber off the baseline." — it's also been voted the champion in Hoops Manfesto's 2013-2014 College Dunk of the Year Tournament.
Cotton blistered his closest competitor, Arkansas' Michael Qualls, 60 percent to 40 percent in online voting to win the contest. Tournament voters watched video clips of competing dunks and voted for the best.
Shockers Got Talent
Shocker singers dominated the inaugural class of competitors in the WSU Alumni Association's Shockers Got Talent contest, which was a featured event in the February festivities of Homecoming 2014: Cirque du WSU.
Of the eight acts taking the CAC Theatre's stage to vie for $2,000 in prize money, six showcased singers. Winning the first-ever Shockers Got Talent was Roy Moye III, who sang Bruno Mars' "Treasure" — and took home the top prize of $1,000. The duo of Lynette Kithinji and Kim Mealiff placed second in the talent competition, and Justin Hall was awarded the third-place prize.
Golden IPPY
In the Garden of Stone by Susan Tekulve '92 has won a gold medal in the Independent Publisher Book Awards — known as the IPPYs — as the best novel published in the South by an independent press in 2014.
A first-time novelist, she is an associate professor of English at Converse College, Spartanburg, S.C. Her book is a multi-generational story of Sicilian immigrants who come to the coal mines of West Virginia in the early 20th century.
A Shocker of a Stork
Standout Shocker forward Carl Hall's pro career has taken flight with Japan's Hyogo Storks. Although the scenery around him has changed, the game clearly hasn't, since Hall '13 is still a force to be reckoned with. He joins Tadahiro Yanagawa, Noriaki Dohara, Ryota Nakanishi and William Knight as the starting five for the Storks. As a senior on the Shocker team that played its way to the 2013 Final Four, Hall averaged nearly 13 points a game and was the team's leading rebounder. In his new environs of Japan's Hyogo prefecture, the country's only district where the wild Oriental White Stork population remains, Hall has been averaging 20.3 points, 9.7 rebounds and 1.6 blocks a game for the club. This Shocker of a Stork resides on the central Japanese island of Honshu.
Book of Mormon Swing
From Hercules the Muse-ical to Hello Dolly, Daxton Bloomquist '10, has shared his talents with audiences around the country. A resident of New York City, the El Dorado, Kan., native made his Broadway debut in 2013.
Currently, he is a swing in the Tony Award-winning musical The Book of Mormon. His job is to cover for members of the ensemble if someone can't perform, so he has taken on multiple roles. Additionally, this actor on the rise spent five weeks performing the show in Chicago last year.
Limited Partnership
Karen Kerschen '76 and Cathy Schuster, a 1980 Indiana State grad, are part-owners of You Pop It, a small business that makes and sells a no-shake, no-stir, old-style, top-of-the-stove popcorn popper. The two business partners, who both live in Indiana, met some 20 years ago "doing school stuff when our kids were small," Kerschen says. "We've been friends ever since." That friendship was tested, though, on Feb. 5, when the Wichita State Shockers arrived in Terre Haute to play the ISU Sycamores — and Kerschen and Schuster went to the game together. WSU dispatched ISU to up its unbeaten count to 24-0, pleasing Kerschen greatly. "It might have been a bit quieter than usual on the ride home," she says. "But at least we were able to ride in the same car. Go, Shockers!"
