“Award/Recognition” Class Notes

Junius P. Fulton III (Col ’81 L/M) will receive the Harry L. Carrico Professionalism Award from the VSB Criminal Law Section on Feb. 14, 2020, at the Criminal Law Seminar in Williamsburg, Virginia. The Carrico Award was named for the former Supreme Court of Virginia chief justice who promoted the ideals of professionalism during his 42 years on the state’s highest court. Judge Fulton has served as a judge of the Norfolk Circuit Court for more than 23 years. Judge Fulton oversaw the development and implementation of both the Norfolk Drug Court and Reentry Court dockets. He claims the distinction of being the longest serving Drug Court judge in the Commonwealth, having presided over the Drug Court docket continuously from 1998 to 2018. He and his wife, Darnell Brown Fulton (Col ’81), live in Norfolk, Virginia.

Three UVA alumni who work for Brooks Pierce were recognized for their legal work. Jeff Oleynik (Law ’83 L/M) was named to Business North Carolina’s 2020 “Legal Elite” for his work in bankruptcy. Mark Davidson (Law ’83) and George House (Law ’72) were named to the journal’s hall of fame for business and environmental law, respectively.

Chara O’Neale (Col ’04), director of talent management and diversity and inclusion at Charlotte firm Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein, received an inaugural Diversity and Inclusion Award presented by North Carolina and South Carolina Lawyers Weekly. O’Neal was recognized as an attorney who is advancing diversity, inclusion and the dignity of all people in the Carolinas’ legal profession and the community.

Kenneth R. White (Nurs ’13), associate dean for strategic partnerships and innovation at UVA’s School of Nursing, was voted president-elect of the American Academy of Nursing. White, a palliative care nurse practitioner at UVA Health, will serve as the academy’s president-elect through fall 2021, then assume the two-year presidency in 2021. White, an endowed professor at both UVA’s School of Nursing and Medical Center, holds joint academic appointments in the School of Medicine, Darden School of Business and McIntire School of Commerce.

S. Rutherfoord “Ruddy” Rose (Col ’78 L/M) received the 2019 Distinguished Service Award from the American Academy of Clinical Toxicology, which is awarded for sustained contributions to the academy and the practice of clinical toxicology. Rose is professor of emergency medicine, chief of clinical toxicology, and director of the Virginia Poison Center at Virginia Commonwealth University.  

Stephen Smithson (Engr ’90, ’96 L/M) recently became a member of the governing council of the ABA Section of Environment, Energy and Resources. He also selected as a fellow of the American Bar Foundation. He works as general counsel for a group of environmental consultancies, where he finds that his UVA degrees in chemical and civil engineering are an immense benefit.

Christopher P. Crum (Col ’70, Med ’74 L/M) received the 2019 Society of Gynecologic Oncology Innovation Award, which acknowledges creative contributions to the prevention, diagnosis or treatment of gynecologic cancers. Dr. Crum is a professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School and senior pathologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

James T. “Jim” Currie (Grad ’69, ’75) was honored with the 2019 Robert Brutsche Award for his service to the Commissioned Officers Association of the U.S. Public Health Service. Currie has served as executive director of the association since April 2014.

Richard “Shark” Forsten (Com ’85, Law ’88) received the 2019 Delaware Volunteer of the Year Award from Gov. John Carney. He has served eight years as a member of the school board (including five as president), and served on the boards of Goodwill of Delaware, the Everett Theatre (including two years as president), Ronald McDonald House of Delaware, and two boards for the Delaware Ministry of Caring. Forsten previously served as president of the Delaware State Bar Association, serves on the Delaware Supreme Court Rules Committee, and is a past vice-chair of the Access to Justice Commission’s subcommittee on pro bono service. He is also the long-serving general counsel and parliamentarian for the Delaware Republican Party, and the co-chair of the Delaware General Assembly’s Administrative Law Task Force.  

Geoff McDonald (Col ’86), founder and principal of Richmond, Virginia, firm Geoff McDonald & Associates, received the 2019 Father Figure Award from The Relationship Foundation of Virginia, a regional non-profit organization dedicated to fostering and educating men on fatherhood. McDonald and his wife, Shannon, have seven children ranging in age from 12 to 23 years.

Brian Drummond (Col ’80 L/M) has been selected to Northern Virginia Magazine’s Top Lawyers edition for 2019 in the area of criminal law. He continues to serve on Virginia Bar Council. Drummond and his wife, Bebe, live in Falls Church.

Simon Bloom (Col ’93, Law ’97 L/M) was one of five attorneys from his firm, Bloom Parham, to be selected as 2019 Georgia Super Lawyers. Bloom was recognized in the business litigation category.

Jill Mitchell (Com ’03 L/M) received the American Accounting Association/J. Michael and Mary Anne Cook/Deloitte Foundation Prize in the two-year college category. Mitchell has taught at Northern Virginia Community College since 2008 and has been an adjunct at George Mason University since 2009. She is a past president of the Washington, D.C., chapter of the Accounting and Financial Women’s Alliance and is a former member of the Virginia Society of CPA’s Board of Directors. She is a certified internal auditor and began her career with Ernst & Young in Miami, Florida.

Jack Ray Gallagher (Educ ’68) has been appointed editor of Current Trends in Clinical and Medical Sciences. He also co-chaired the session on gynecological oncology at the PCS Fourth Global Obstetrics and Gynaecology 2019 Congress where he spoke about his real-world observational studies and artificial intelligence enhancements. His presentation at the European Society for Medical Oncologists Congress 2018 on adverse events of a PARP inhibitor, a new type of ovarian cancer treatment, was selected by OncLive for publication and distribution to oncologists around the world. He currently directs Clarity Pharma Research, a scientific research organization.

Melody Robertson Weigel (Col ’06) was elected as the 2019-20 staff senate president of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She also serves as the adviser for the OutLaw Legal Society at the university’s William H. Bowen School of Lawworks and works in the admissions office.

Michael D. Steger (Col ’89, Law ’93, Grad ’93 L/M) has been appointed co-chair of the American Bar Association’s Intellectual Property Litigation Committee. He was also recently named a fellow of the American Bar Foundation. Steger practices copyright, trademark and entertainment law in New York City.  

Jill Stein Tietjen (Engr ’76 L/M) was inducted into the Colorado Authors’ Hall of Fame in the 2019 inaugural class. Her latest book, Hollywood: Her Story, An Illustrated History of Women and the Movies, was released in 2019.  

Curry Pajcic (Col ’91 L/M) was named Trial Lawyer of the Year for Florida by the American Board of Trial Advocates. The award is given for an attorney’s cumulative body of work over the past year. Among Pajcic’s accomplishments in 2018, he was the lead attorney in a trial where his client was awarded a $4.3 million verdict in Duval County. Pajcic, who served as president of Jacksonville’s ABOTA chapter, also wrote multiple letters to the press defending attacks on the judiciary, including Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts. Defending the independence of the judiciary is another mission of ABOTA.

Dr. Raymond B. Dyer (Col ’74, Med ’77, Res ’81 L/M) was honored with the creation of an award in his name by the Department of Radiology at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, where he has been on the faculty for 36 years. The award is given annually to a resident who has made an outstanding contribution to radiology education.

Judy Coutts (Arch ’79) was presented with a Public Impact Award by Preservation Pennsylvania for her historic preservation work on 820 12th Street in Altoona, Pennsylvania. The project also earned a national award from the 2019 Chrysalis Awards for Remodeling Excellence.

George Shipp (Col ’79, Darden ’82 L/M) is senior managing director and lead portfolio manager, and Adam Bergman (Com ’96) is executive director and associate portfolio manager of Sterling Capital Management. The company’s equity income mutual fund ranked in the first percentile on total return among 442 funds in its Morningstar1 Large-Cap Value category for the 15-year period ending June 30, 2019.

Carin M. Smilk (Col ’89 L/M) won first place in the online feature news category in the Pennsylvania Press Club’s annual journalism competition. The winning article, “Grief Into Action,” is a story about grappling with in the aftermath of the Oct. 27, 2018, synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. She won second place for the same story by the affiliated National Federation of Press Women.

Myron Santos (Col ’01 L/M) has been nominated for a Primetime Emmy for his work on RuPaul’s Drag Race: All-Stars in the category of Outstanding Picture Editing for a Structured Reality or Competition Program. He is a member of the Motion Picture Editors Guild (IATSE Local 700) and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and he is on the board of the U.Va Entertainment Club of Los Angeles. He lives with his wife and their 4-year-old daughter in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Mt. Washington.

Bonnie Rosen (Educ ’93) will be inducted into the Jewish Sports Heritage Association as part of the organization’s class of 2020. Inducted into the U.S. Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 2010, Rosen is the head coach of the women’s lacrosse team at Temple University. 

Tom Sutton (Engr ’78 L/M) is a fellow of the American Nuclear Society

Alice Brown Taylor (Engr ’78) was admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States alongside 30 other graduates of Boston College Law School.

Andrew G. Lee (Col ’85, Med ’89 L/M) received the Sherilyn Gordon Memorial Award for Distinguished Leadership in Professionalism and the Houston Methodist Hospital Teaching Award from both from Houston Methodist Hospital in June 2019. He was also named a 2019 Health Care Hero by the Houston Business Journal. 

St. Leger “Monty” Joynes (Col ’63) is the librettist of an oratorio, The Awakening of Humanity, that had its world premiere in Toulouse, France on June 2, 2019. The U.S. premiere with symphony orchestra and chorus is being planned for the 2020-21 concert season in Minneapolis with Joynes and composer Edmund Barton Bullock in attendance.

Joynes continues to publish poetry and prose from his home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. His five novels in The Booker Series are considered pioneer works in the genre of visionary fiction. Joynes credits UVA Professor George Garrett as his literary mentor.

Tommy Holcomb (Col ’66 L/M) has won the American Advertising Association’s Silver Medal Award for his work in the creation and production of advertising-related music. His award-winning music has aired in markets nationwide, and he is currently the music producer for the Miss Virginia Pageant.

Casey King (Engr ’89), a physics professor at Horry-Georgetown Technical Collegesince 1997, was nominated for the 2019 A. Wade Martin Innovator of the Year and was named 2019  Professor of the Year at HGTC. He has also organized the Addiction and Recovery Lecture Series since creating the event in 2008.

Thomas H. Cook Jr. (Com ’81 L/M) has been elected as a fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel. He is head of the tax practice group of Wyrick Robbins Yates & Ponton in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Allison Powell (Arch ’07), an associate with Quinn Evans Architects, was recognized with a 2019 Green Leader Volunteer Award from the U.S. Green Building Council Virginia. Powell was honored for her extensive volunteer efforts for the state organization, including serving as chair of the council’s Green Schools committee for the past four years. The Green Schools committee oversees the organization’s Connect the Dots program, which challenges K–12 schools across the Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia regions to develop and implement the most creative, effective, no- or low-cost sustainable practices for their schools.

Justin Humphreys (Col ’01) published a book, The Dr. Phibes Companion: The Morbidly Romantic History of the Classic Vincent Price Horror Film Series, which recently won the Rondo Hatton Memorial Award for Book of the Year. 

Jennifer Rodgers was recognized as 2018-2019 Teacher of the Year for Loudoun County, Virginia. Jennifer is a social science and global studies teacher at Dominion High School in Sterling, Virginia.  

Holly Hodder Eger’s (Grad ’84) book, Split Rock: A Martha’s Vineyard Novel, won the 2019 International Book Award for Best Women’s Fiction. The book also received the Independent Publisher’s IPPY Silver Medal Award for Best Adult Fiction E-Book and was a finalist for the National Indie Excellence Awards for both Best Women’s Fiction and Best Regional Fiction, Northeast.

Linsey Davis (Col ’99), with Joseph Bottum and illustrator Lucy Fleming, will receive a Christopher Award for their book, The World is Awake: A Celebration of Everyday Blessings. The book is a lyrical, rhyming story for young children intended to make them feel safe and joyful.

Sarah Harris Wallman (Col ’00 L/M) was awarded the Juniper Prize for Short Fiction by UMass Press. Her collection “Senseless Women|” will debut in Spring 2020.  

Carl K. “Trey” Dowdey III (Col ’95), an attorney with Swift, Currie, McGhee & Hiers, was selected to take over command of the U.S. Army Reserve’s 10th Legal Operations Detachment, which falls under the U.S. Army Reserve Legal Command out of Gaithersburg, Maryland. Dowdey’s appointment will take effect on June 22, 2019, and will make him one of just 23 Legal Operations Detachment commanders nationwide. In addition to this announcement, Dowdey will also be promoted to the rank of colonel in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps.

Mike Lynn (Col ’72 L/M) of the law firm Lynn Pinker Cox and Hurst has been recognized as a distinguished alumni of SMU Dedman School of Law in private practice for 2019. He has also been recognized as one of the “Top 100 Trial Lawyers in America” from 2015-2018 by Benchmark Litigation. Mr. Lynn has been named one of the “Top 500 Lawyers in the US” by Lawdragon in 2015 and is consistently ranked in Chambers and Partners as a Band One commercial trial lawyer.

Mr. Lynn obtained a $146 million jury verdict for Mesa Petroleum (an entity controlled by T. Boone Pickens), making it the third consecutive year the firm has obtained one of the largest jury verdicts in the United States. In 2014, Mr. Lynn lead a team that recovered a jury verdict of over $935 million.

Lynn Pinker Cox & Hurst was named a Top 10 Litigation Boutique in the nation by  Benchmark Litigation  for two years and to the 2019 Best Law Firms list by Best Lawyers. The firm is also one of five litigation firms in Texas ranked Band One by Chambers and Partners. Lynn Pinker Cox & Hurst continues to be recognized by leading publications as one of the top litigation firms nationwide.