Over the course of half a century, Town&Gown has featured thousands of individuals on its pages, from nationally famous leaders to hometown heroes to everyday folks.
We recently caught up with six individuals whose names were once well-known in Happy Valley but who have moved on to other cities and states: a Penn State president, two favorite band members, two women who grew up in the Town&Gown family, and a football star. Here are their stories.
Bryce Jordan: Into the Big Ten
As Penn State president from 1983 to 1990, Bryce Jordan laid the groundwork for joining the Big Ten and led the university’s first national private fundraising drive, a massive undertaking that raised nearly $400 million. Major achievements, but neither is at the top of his personal greatest accomplishments list. That distinction belongs to awakening the sleeping giant that was Penn State.
Jordan says he arrived on campus to find generally poor morale and a deeply rooted sense of complacency among faculty and staff that he knew had to change and change quickly.
“I believe I gave Penn State some sense of the fact that it was good and that it could be better,” he says. “I thought from the start that it was a Big Ten-type institution in terms of academic quality, in terms of its athletics, and every other way.”
He set about improving the institution’s national visibility by enlisting the aid of the deans and their faculties.
“We started off by having a major gathering of graduate faculty in which we talked about increasing the amount of research output and publication,” he recalls. “Research and academic quality … I pushed the heck out of those ideas.”
He wanted Penn State in the Big Ten primarily for what it would do for the university’s academic stature. He says he always knew and appreciated the fact that he had football head coach Joe Paterno’s full support and backing in that effort.
Upon leaving Penn State, Jordan and his wife at the time, Jonelle (who died in 1999), moved back to Austin, Texas, where he immediately plunged into an extremely busy retirement. Far-reaching academic and administrative experience had led him to undertake many consultancies and major planning studies of a number of university systems in the 1990s and early 2000s. Among these were the universities of North and South Carolina, Arizona State, Houston, Nebraska, Texas A&M, North Texas, and, in 2001, the University of Rijeka, Croatia. He additionally spent six years on the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics and, from 1993 to 2006, served as special advisor to the presiding federal judge in Knight v. Alabama, a landmark desegregation case concerning the distribution of $140 million in federal and state funds to historically black public universities in Alabama.
Jordan’s postretirement civic and volunteer activities in Austin have included service as chairman of the Austin Lyric Opera, the Fine Arts Advisory Council at the University of Texas at Austin, and the advisory council of the University of Texas Press.
In 2000, he remarried, tying the knot with Barbara Brueggebors, a former State College neighbor and long-time county editor of the Centre Daily Times. Initially having downsized to a smaller Austin home, the couple soon found themselves upsizing again to accommodate frequent visits from their blended family, including three children and six grandchildren. At 91, Jordan has slowed down some, but remains involved in his lifelong photography hobby and in a higher- education book project.
Steve & Sherry McCamley: On & Off the Stage
Both Steve McCamley and Sherry Smith were already making music — but separately — when they met in seventh grade. Sherry’s first gig was a bowling banquet, which paid $5 and a free game. Steve’s band, Bluesberry Jam, got paid 10 bucks, divided five ways, so his share was just $2.
During their senior year at State College Area High School, they launched what would become their best- known local band, Stevie & the Six-Packs, an oldies doo-wop harmony group complete with 1950s fashions and synchronized steps. From 1972 to 1981, they were regulars at popular nightspots such as the Shandygaff, The Brewery, and Elks Club as well as fraternity parties, the Hetzel Union Building, and early dance marathons at Penn State’s White Building.
“We pretty much sang every place there is in town,” Sherry says.
For about 10 years, fans gathered each July on Old Main lawn to watch Stevie & the Six-Packs close the Arts Festival.
Steve and Sherry, who married in 1977, both majored in music education at Penn State, and after graduation, Steve taught band and Sherry taught choir in State College schools. For a while, they had five different performing groups: Stevie & the Six-Packs, Sherry solo, Steve and Sherry as a duo, as a trio with a drummer, and in another band.
Steve recalls, “I thought it was a brilliant business strategy, but even though we had five bands that were available to people, the minute one was booked, the other ones weren’t available.”
They also created radio jingles for Wolf Furniture, Hi-Way Pizza, WRSC, and other local businesses.
Eventually, the couple moved to California, Cincinnati, New Jersey, and back to Cincinnati, following Steve’s corporate marketing career for Proctor & Gamble and big-name toy companies such as Mattel and Hasbro. Along the way, he earned an MBA from Penn State. Now he’s vice president of business and client development at Valen Strategy, an executive consulting firm in Cincinnati.
“He’s the one who always had the real job, and I’m the one who gets to play,” Sherry points out, although noting that Steve has usually played in bands along the way as a side job.
Sherry sings, acts, and recently began teaching drama and directing shows at Milford High School in Ohio. She partners with Cathy Springfield in Feisty Broads Productions to create theater that brings visibility and dignity to mental-health issues. In November, Sherry was back in State College to perform at the State Theatre with Springfield in She’s Crazy: Mental Health and Other Myths, an interactive cabaret performance the two wrote; Steve came along as roadie and soundman. Sherry still plays at Arts Festival occasionally and sits in with Tommy Wareham at the American Ale House when she’s in town.
Carol & Nan Barash: Daughters of Town&Gown
Carol and Nan Barash grew up with Town&Gown. When their parents, Mimi and Sy Barash, founded the magazine in the basement of their State College home in 1966, Carol was 7 years old and Nan was just 4.
Carol remembers the early Town&Gown years as her mother fulfilling her dream. One “all hands on deck” weekend, she recalls. “I was the happiest girl because my parents let me help!”
After high school, Carol attended Yale University, earning her bachelor’s degree summa cum laude as a Scholar of the House. She earned a PhD from Princeton University with a full scholarship.
She taught at Princeton, University of Michigan, and Rutgers, where she also worked in early educational technology at the Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities. In the 2000s, she worked at the intersection of business, education, and community building, and, in 2010, she launched Story2. Since publishing Write Out Loud (McGraw-Hill) in 2013, her Moments Method® has been used by more than 20,000 students.
Story2 was selected for Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses and won a coveted spot in the Kaplan EdTech accelerator sponsored by TechStars in 2014, launching the online EssayBuilderTM to revolutionize writing through storytelling. In 2015, Story2 won the EDDIE Award for best college admissions essay Web site and was included in Forbes list of “10 EdTech Companies You Need To Know About.” New York Business Journal named Carol a Women of Influence for 2016.
“Town&Gown brought together State College and Penn State,” she explains, “I’m still building community through storytelling.”
She and her husband, Jed Kwartler, live in New Jersey and have three children.
Nan Barash was too young to remember much about the early days of Town&Gown, other than amusing herself by spinning in an office chair. After graduating from State High, she chased her dream of playing college softball to the University of Arizona, playing as a walk-on for one year and then earning her bachelor’s in marketing, with a minor in journalism.
She then signed up as a territory manager for American Hospital Supply, selling nursing products on the road in Kansas and Missouri — “in the middle of nowhere, with no family, in an industry I knew nothing about … but I knew I could sell.”
Eighteen months later, she moved back to Pennsylvania to take a sales job with WPHL TV in Philadelphia; her job-interview presentation was on urine bags, “because that was what I knew how to sell at the time.”
In 1987, she entered the family business by opening the Philadelphia office of The Barash Group with one client, Genuardi’s Supermarkets. Almost 30 years later, she continues as leader of The Barash Group, focusing on advertising, marketing, and promotional products.
“I think I was destined to be an owner,” she says, noting that she grew up at the owner’s table, thanks to her parents’ business. “The key to being an owner is seeing things from the other person’s perspective, whether an employee or a client.”
Nan and her husband, David Schwartz, live in Bryn Mawr and have two children.
Matt Suhey: Fullback, Investor, Friend
Football and Penn State were almost birthrights for Matt Suhey. He is the grandson of Bob Higgins, an All-American and the Nittany Lions head coach from 1930 to 1948, and the son of College Football Hall of Fame guard Steve
Suhey. His brothers, Paul and Larry, also played for Penn State.
“I was so fortunate to have grown up in State College,” Matt says. “My coaches gave me a lot of great guidance and character building” — not just his football coaches but also soccer, wrestling, track, and even Little League baseball.
After high school, he carried on the family tradition as a standout running back for the Nittany Lions from 1976 to 1979, rushing for 2,818 yards and 26 touchdowns. In 1980, the Chicago Bears drafted him in the second round, and he replaced injured fullback Roland Harper as lead blocker for running back Walter Payton. The future Hall of Famer shunned the rookie at first, but their on-the-field chemistry grew into an off-the-field friendship that lasted long after Suhey scored a touchdown in the Bears’ 1986 Super Bowl win.
In 1998, when Payton was diagnosed with inoperable liver disease, Suhey was the one who drove him to appointments at the Mayo Clinic.
After Payton’s death the following year, Suhey was executor of his friend’s estate, and he remains close to the Payton family. He recently met with Payton’s children to discuss a possible business enterprise that would bear their father’s name.
After retiring from the Bears in 1989, Suhey put his Penn State marketing degree to work, buying a membership at the Chicago Board of Trade and then becoming involved with Milesburg-based AquaPenn Spring Water Co. Although Danone Group bought AquaPenn in 1998, Suhey is still “heavily involved” in the water industry as well as other sectors, including heavy equipment (Manitowoc Cranes).
He and his wife, Donna (also a Penn State alum), still live in the Chicago area. Their oldest son, Joe, became the fourth generation of the family to play Penn State football — he was with the Lions from 2007 to 2011 — and he now lives in San Francisco. Daughter Allison is a neonatal nurse in Milwaukee, and youngest son Scotty is a senior at Indiana University.
The Suhey kids have spent plenty of time in State College during family visits over the years, and Matt himself still keeps in touch with grade-school friends.
“State College brings back very fond memories to me,” he says. “There are some wonderful people there, and I was the beneficiary of all those influences.”
