The following classes have added updates this week to their Class Notes pages. 1958 | 1961 | 1966 | 1977 | 1988. Class Notes

Dr. Curtis Jones, Bibb County School District Superintendent has been named National Superintendent of the Year by The School Superintendents Association (AASA) at their 2019 National Conference on Education in Los Angeles, CA. Click here to watch a video recap of the event.

A check was presented to Dr. Jones that will be given to either a student at the school from which he graduated, or at a school in his district. He was also presented with a blue blazer, traditionally given to the winner.

In 2018 He was named Superintendent of the Year for the state of Georgia. Regarding his December win, Jones said: "We got to this point because we were ready. I think people are trying to make it be the very best it can be. We're not where we need to be. We still have some mindsets to change, but we're getting there." He says seeing how the district has improved in three years was a victory in itself. "I didn't know I was going to win, but I felt like we had already won just because of the progress we had made."

Did you know that a digest of all the news posted on WPAOG’s website can be delivered directly to your email inbox? You can keep tabs on all the news about the Long Gray Line and Cadets by Signing up for Grad News and/or Signing up for West Point & Cadet News. We utilize Google FeedBurner so you will be directed to sign up and you will receive a confirmation email from them as well.

Mark Cravotta has been named Chief Revenue Officer at The Crypsis Group. Over a more than 30-year career that has taken him from U.S. Army officer to acclaimed technology industry sales executive, Cravotta has earned a reputation for success in building rapid, sustainable growth of privately-funded companies. His experience includes leading operations management, process design, product development, marketing and sales, and business development for a number of high-profile technology companies.

Prior to joining Crypsis, Cravotta served as Vice President North America Cyber Security Sales for CA Technologies, a leading provider of enterprise-class software solutions, where he led a team responsible for all revenue generation and growth for the commercial, federal, and channel segments of CA’s security business. Before joining CA, he spent two years with Dell/EMC’s Virtustream team, a provider of high-performance cloud software and managed services focused around SAP. While there, he rose to VP for Americas Sales while developing and managing a high-performance sales team that delivered triple digit year-over-year sales growth when the company was acquired twice in less than a year.

“As threats to networks and data continue to evolve and expand, the market for cyber security services is dynamic and the opportunities for further growth are enormous. I am thrilled to join the Crypsis team on its mission to create a more secure digital world,” said Cravotta. Read more.

The following classes have added updates this week to their Class Notes pages. 1957 | 1965 | 1968 | 1970 | 1972 | 1986| 1993 | 1996 | 2000 | 2010. Class Notes

Richard Pascoe has been appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer at Histogen, Inc., a regenerative medicine company focused on stimulating the body's stem cells to regenerate tissues and restore youthful function.

"Histogen has a compelling story, both in its platform technology and in its product opportunities, and we are on the cusp of developments that point to an exciting year ahead," said Pascoe. "I'm very pleased to join Histogen at this pivotal time, and I look forward to spreading its story to a broader audience as we look to drive value through focused clinical development and business development activities in 2019."

Mr. Pascoe brings a strong track record with over 25 years of experience building and leading organizations in transition. He served as CEO of Apricus Biosciences, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company focused in urology and rheumatology, where he led European regulatory approval efforts and the sale of the ex-US rights for its lead asset Vitaros in 2017 and more recently completing a successful merger with Seelos Therapeutics.

Mr. Pascoe is a member of the board of directors of two public life sciences companies; KemPharm, Inc., and Seelos Therapeutics. He also serves as a member of the board of directors of Biocom, California's leading life science advocacy organization, and the Johnny Mac Soldiers Fund, a charity for military veterans. Mr. Pascoe served as a Commissioned Officer with the U.S. Army 24th Infantry Division where he earned a Bronze Star Medal during Operation Desert Storm. Read more.

The annual West Point Association of Graduates (WPAOG) Distinguished Graduate Award (DGA) has been bestowed upon those West Point graduates whose character, distinguished service and stature draw wholesome comparison to the qualities for which West Point strives, in keeping with its motto: "Duty, Honor, Country." The awards will be presented in a ceremony at West Point on May 21, 2019. Read more about the recipients.

Christopher Grill has been named Veteran Employment and Training Specialist (VETS), a newly created position at Geisinger. The position will recruit, transition and retain veterans to the organization. Grill will develop veteran-specific outreach programs to recruit veterans and assist those who have significant barriers to employment. He joined Geisinger in 2017 as a lean change agent. In October 2017, he helped launch VetNet, an employee resource group dedicated to veteran issues. He was deployed to Iraq in 2011 in support of Operation New Dawn and multiple times to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Story.

David Beach has been named President and Chief Executive Officer of the Huey and Angelina Wilson Foundation. Beach was with Hancock Whitney Bank as a vice president in the trust department, serving clients throughout south Louisiana. Announcing the hiring, the foundation cited his investment and fiduciary experience, as well as his involvement in the Baton Rouge community through board service and leadership with several nonprofit organizations.

"The mission of the foundation is timeless, and with David’s leadership we know the future remains very promising for the thousands of beneficiaries that the foundation serves with its resources," said J.H. Campbell Jr., chair of the foundation's board of trustees. Read more.

One year before the formation of the Association of Graduates of the United States Military Academy in 1869, George Cullum, Class of 1833, published the first edition of his three-volume Biographical Register of the Officers of the United States Military Academy, a “record of West Point graduates’ services to the nation, so as to give world-renown to their Alma Mater.” Later, in 1871, Cullum became a member of AOG’s Executive Committee, which he chaired until his death in 1892. It was evident from the earliest days of AOG that Cullum’s legacy would be forever linked to championing the accomplishments of graduates for the glory of West Point. 

At its Annual Meetings beginning in 1884, the Association of Graduates discussed the need for a hall for the Association’s use for meetings and to house the many manuscripts, portraits, books and letters that had been given to the organization since its establishment. It was proposed to petition Congress for an appropriation to fund this hall, but the proposal was tabled for several years and debated again in 1887. At that time, AOG members felt that Congress would not be responsive to a funding request, and also felt that the AOG itself could not raise the funds required, and the matter was dropped. It seems that Cullum, however, privately determined to persevere with the project. Upon his death in February 1892, he bequeathed the considerable sum of $250,000 (worth more than $6.5 million in 2018) to the U.S. government for the purpose of erecting a memorial hall at West Point. Furthermore, Cullum wanted AOG to move forward with construction in a timely fashion, and explicitly stated in his will a wish for the memorial hall to be built “at farthest within five years after my death.” Read the entire article in West Point magazine.

When Texas A&M Professor Sam Brody had the chance to snag a “superstar” to join an academic team producing the first national study of urban flooding scope and consequences, he knew just who to ask: Gerry Galloway. “It’s not just his passion, it’s what he lives and breathes,” says Brody, who considers Galloway a mentor and a friend.

Galloway—at 83, with an engineering teaching position at the University of Maryland and consulting jobs in Florence, Italy and China—could have easily said no, but he couldn’t resist yet another chance to chip away at America’s water management problems. “Water is the fabric that holds society together, and we have to figure out how we collectively solve” problems in managing it, he says.

Galloway was a leader of the presidential task force studying the 1993 Mississippi River flood. The report from the 1993 task force, known as the “Galloway Report,” encouraged governments and citizens at all levels to take responsibility for floodplain management. Story.

Paul Darling is due to release in April Taliban Safari: One Day in the Surkhagan Valley. We aren't home yet, Major Paul Darling reminds his team at the end of a sixteen-hour day. "Two more miles and we are done. We have pissed off a lot of Taliban today, and they are going to want payback." Shortly, the major will find himself sitting on a concrete basketball court next to the bunker where the day started so long ago, talking by satellite phone to his wife on the other side of the world. When she asks, "What happened?" there is too much to say. But one day, he promises himself, he will put into words what it was like–one day in the life of a combat soldier in Afghanistan in 2009.

This is the story of that day. In crisp prose and sharp detail Darling offers a moment-by-moment account of a one-day mission to track down and kill Taliban insurgents in the Zabul Province of southeastern Afghanistan. A rare day-in-the-life narrative that is also a page-turner, his story captures the mundane realities of deployment—the waiting, the heat, the heavy gear, the 0345 wake-up—along with the high-octane experience of crossing foreign terrain where every turn, every decision might have life or death consequences. The living accommodations, reporting up the chain of command, the bureaucracy, and the almost insurmountable challenges of functioning effectively in two cultures—all become intimately real in Darling's telling as he balances the imperatives of his mission and the skills of his men against the ever-multiplying unknowns, the unpredictable and dangerous Afghan "allies," and the elusive enemy: the unseen IED and the possibility of fatal miscalculation. Available from the University Press of Kansas.

The following classes have added updates this week to their Class Notes pages. 1956 | 1958 | 1959 | 1965 | 1966 | 1968 | 1983. Class Notes

The West Point Association of Graduates (WPAOG) has named the 2019 recipients of the Distinguished Graduate Award. This annual award is bestowed upon those West Point graduates whose character, distinguished service and stature draw wholesome comparison to the qualities for which West Point strives, in keeping with its motto: “Duty, Honor, Country.”

The awards will be presented in a ceremony at West Point on May 21, 2019.

The 2019 Distinguished Graduate Award Recipients are:

David A. Bramlett ’64
Victor F. Garcia ’68
Robert L. VanAntwerp ’72
Walter L. Sharp ’74
Robert L. Caslen Jr. ’75

The following classes have added updates this week to their Class Notes pages. 1944 | 1954 | 1960 | 1970 | 1983 | 1989. Class Notes

U.S. Army Reserve Colonel Tina Boyd, chief of staff, 335th Signal Command (Theater) was promoted to Brigadier General during a ceremony at Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, January 13, 2019. Boyd, an alumna of Georgia Tech pinned on the one-star insignia during a promotion ceremony held at the university.

Photo by Captain David Gasperson

Dr. Don Greene has recently released the book: College Prep for Musicians: A Comprehensive Guide for Students, Parents, Teachers, and Counselors is a one-of-a-kind book that gives a complete picture of the process of applying to music schools. Each of the three authors brings a different perspective and background to the subject, from top conservatory admissions experience, to years of teaching and professional performing, to Olympic coaching and audition preparation.

College Prep for Musicians decodes the complex process of choosing schools, clarifies the vocabulary around the admission process, and shows students exactly how to prepare their best audition. Young musicians will be able to follow detailed plans to get organized and to communicate with music schools and conservatories. This book provides tools, teaches habits, and demonstrates skills that students can use for the rest of their careers. College Prep for Musicians will help young musicians achieve their dreams. Available at Amazon.

The following classes have added updates this week to their Class Notes pages. 1956 | 1959| 1962 | 1965 | 1970 | 1972 | 1973 | 1994 | 1995. Class Notes

Gene Bailey named 2019 Best Lawyers "Lawyer of the Year" for Construction Law in the Charleston-WV area. Only a single lawyer in each practice area and designated metropolitan area is honored as the "Lawyer of the Year," making this accolade particularly significant. These lawyers are selected based on particularly impressive voting averages received during the peer review assessments.

Receiving this designation reflects the high level of respect a lawyer has earned among other leading lawyers in the same communities and the same practice areas for their abilities, their professionalism, and their integrity.

Dr. Rick Wilkerson, a highly regarded orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine practitioner, will be traveling to Basra, Iraq on February 25th as a guest lecturer and teaching professor for nine days as part of Iraq's International Orthopedic Conference. In addition to his lecturing schedule, Dr. Wilkerson will be heavily involved in an on-going training program for Iraqi orthopedic residents.

Rick has made annual trips to Iraq where among many things, he created a total knee replacement (TKA) program for Iraqi orthopedic residents. So far, this has led to more than 1,500 TKAs performed. He also sponsored eight Iraqi orthopedic surgeons in his private practice for postgraduate training. During their time in the U.S., these surgeons lived with Rick and his family. For this type of work involving significant improvements to the Iraqi orthopedic infrastructure for well over a decade, Rick was named an honorary professor of orthopedic surgery at the University of Basra in Iraq.

Patterned after the Iraqi resident sponsorship program, Rick recently created an orthopedic residency rotation for Haitian orthopedic residents to spend three months in their second or third year of four years training to do an orthopedic rotation with him and other American volunteer surgeons starting September 19th, 2019. In preparation for the rotations, he's busy travelling to Haiti to train hospital staff surgeons to be able to thoroughly prepare the residents for the U.S. rotations.

Haiti is also where Rick led an effort to create an orphanage from the rubble of the 2010 earthquake that totally devastated an already deeply impoverished nation. Today the orphanage is thriving and well on the way to becoming self-sustaining.

Congratulations to Colonel Spencer Clouatre and family on his promotion! COL Chris Cerniauskas '93 did his promotion. He is a longtime friend of the family. Also at the promotion was COL(R) Larry Horacek '70, who introduced COL Clouatre to West Point as an idea when he was a SGT in Louisiana National Guard. COL Horacek is also Caleb Clouatre's '20 50-year affiliate class. COL Clouatre graduated right in the middle as class of '95.

The following classes have added updates this week to their Class Notes pages. 1960 | 1977| 1986 | 1990. Class Notes

CathWorks announced that Paul Kapsner has been named as Global Vice President of Sales. His initial focus will be on accelerating the clinical and commercial organization in the United States. Paul joins CathWorks with 27 years of commercial sales and marketing leadership experience in market-leading medical device companies. That experience includes deep engagement in the coronary diagnostic market.

Jim Corbett, CathWorks CEO, said of Paul’s appointment, "I have worked with Paul previously and am confident in his ability to develop and lead our commercial sales and customer support organization. CathWorks FFRangio System represents a tremendous opportunity for interventional cardiologists, their hospitals, and patients to improve the quality of care and lower costs in the treatment of multi-vessel coronary artery disease. Paul understands how to develop a team to provide the clinical and technical support our customers need. We could not be more excited to have Paul on board." Read More

Campbell Soup Company named Mark Clouse CEO. Clouse has a reputation as a seasoned food industry operator. He was previously the CEO of Pinnacle Foods. Clouse began working in the food industry more than two decades ago. He had been chief growth officer at Oreo-maker Mondelez International Inc and previously worked in marketing at Kraft Heinz Co.

"Mark was the board's top choice due to his success leading organizations through significant transformations," Campbell said in a statement, adding that Third Point provided input into the CEO search process and supported Clouse's appointment. Read More

Because of you, 2018 was another incredible year supporting West Point, the Long Gray Line, and Margin of Excellence programs.

It takes all of us to make this possible, and we thank you for your generous participation and we look forward to serving you in 2019!

Celebrate with Us! * 1869 - 2019 *
2019 marks 150 Years since the founding of the West Point Association of Graduates.
Throughout 2019, WPAOG will be celebrating our 150th Anniversary through our publications, social media, and events including:

• Our website, WestPointAOG.org/WPAOG150th will be a communications hub for the celebration, containing a wealth of information on history and events
• "On this Day" facts for each day highlighting historic events and achievements of West Point graduates on our website and in social media
• Feature articles on WPAOG's history and WPAOG today in each issue of West Point magazine
• West Point Societies around the world will celebrate WPAOG's 150th during Founders Day events taking place February-April 2019
• George W. Cullum (1833), one of West Point's most notable graduates, will be seen everywhere in 2019! The spring issue of West Point magazine will include a "Flat Cullum" to incorporate in your photos and share with us
• A Virtual Toast on WPAOG's "Birthday," May 22, 2019, where graduates around the world will offer their best wishes with a virtual birthday toast

Plus much, much more! Visit WestPointAOG.org/WPAOG150th for details and to join the celebration as we prepare to Honor the Past and Prepare for the Future.