As members of St. Augustine band The Wobbly Toms, Andy Calvert, Zach Lively and Richard Steinmeyer have been entertaining locals for years with their unique blend of folk, punk and rock.

The three men, all Flagler alumni, and all English majors, have been firm friends since their post-grad days.  In fact, they spent much of their free time at Flagler at WFCF and playing in bands — a preview of things to come.

Calvert, in fact, was WFCF’s very first music director.

“Radio stations don’t come in a box,” said Dan McCook, the station manager since its inception in 1993.  “I wasn’t well-versed in alternative [rock].  So, here we needed a music director, and we got Andy.  And he did an outstanding job.”

The Wobbly Toms’ local pedigree is deep.  The trio of Calvert (on bass), Steinmeyer (banjo) and Lively (guitar) were previously members of two of St. Augustine’s popular local bands of the early 1990s.

Lively and Steinmeyer were original members of a band called The Fruitless Lust Sox; Steinmeyer left, and formed the Misunderstood, which eventually Calvert joined until they broke up in 1994.

After graduation, the trio split.  Lively moved to Seattle and Steinmeyer to Kentucky.  Calvert stayed in St. Augustine and got married.

“In late 2002, I headed back to town and found refuge in the Calvert’s attic,” Lively said.  “A few months later, Richard found a new home in the same attic.”

Calvert, ‘95, Lively,’94, and Steinmeyer, ‘94, spent their time brewing beer and playing music.  An incident involving a friend and two bottles of strong mead would later play a role in the naming of the band.

“After a couple months of just jamming, we got to a point where we wanted to play a gig,” Lively said. “So we booked Christmas Eve, 2003 at Backstreets. Not having a name, we remembered our inebriated friend – and thus The Wobbly Toms now had a name.”

The band has now grown to seven members and made a name for itself as one of St. Augustine’s premier local groups, in a city with a burgeoning music scene.

It’s an unusual, but good, jumble of styles that has become the Wobbly Tom’s signature sound.  Lively refers to it as “Appalachian Gypsy punk.”  Steinmeyer, on the other hand, said despite the group’s many various influences, they don’t fit into any specific genre of music.

They’ve covered songs as varied as Gogol Bordello’s “Start Wearing Purple” and the Cure’s “Lullaby.” They’ve played traditional Irish songs like “Whiskey in the Jar,” and they’ve got a solid core of originals, the best of which reflect either their nearly two-decade-long friendship or the city of St. Augustine itself.

“There’s nowhere in the world that you’d rather be,” one goes.  “We’ll toast your return to the city by the sea.”

“The band is part of our life,” Steinmeyer said. “The band keeps me sane.  I have a job because I have to make money … but this is what I do.”

“We’ve done a 180,” he said. “When I first got here there was a fight almost every day … I’ve had people threaten to shoot me. I’ve had kids take a swing at me.”

Fights are rare now. The 2007 Flagler graduate said the club currently has the highest rate of teen participation in the area, and the kids often see him as “one of their own.” Those changes might not have been possible, Black said, if he wasn’t good at basketball.

“In the beginning, that was my way of getting respect,” he said. “I was just really lucky that I was good at it.

“The frustrating thing was them not listening to me … the older kids wait to see who you are and if you’re real. It took them a little while to see that I was going to stick around … That’s how I knew I had to be here – because I knew I could change the atmosphere.”

Black started working at the Boys & Girls Club in 2005, when he was studying sports management and business administration at Flagler. In just a few years, he advanced from a part-time job as sports director to a career in the local club’s highest position: unit director.

The Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Florida have honored Black for his commitment to the non-profit organization, and he’s recently been named a “Most Valued Professional” and chairman of the regional chapter of the group’s professional association. Black oversees a variety of activities at the club, including sports, leadership training, community service and teen discussion groups that address issues like drugs and puberty.

“Prevention works,” Black said, adding that the Department of Justice has provided grants to the Boys & Girls Club because their programs help high-risk youth stay away from crime and gang violence. “I love what we can do with kids, and I see the impact every day.”

Because administrative tasks sometimes keep him behind a desk, he puts in extra time to make sure he interacts with the 50 to 80 children who come in for afterschool programs each day; he attends school plays, sports games and special weekend events.

The St. Augustine club keeps receiving good news. The program is preparing to move into a new facility on West King Street that will have about 15 times more space, and 17-year-old Renita Greene recently won the Youth of the Year Award from the Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Florida. Black and his wife, Shelli, have mentored the young woman for several years, and in 2008 the Department of Children and Families placed Greene and her 13-year-old sister, Erica, in the Blacks’ home.

Black said his professors at Flagler helped him prepare for his current roles in a variety of ways, but classes like “Sport Ethics” and “Sociology & Sport” were among his favorites.

“It makes sense that that’s what I liked,” he said. “[In my position,] you’re dealing with real issues that will test your ethics and morals.”

By learning about various socioeconomic backgrounds and how they apply to sports, Black said, he saw how coaches have to take different approaches when handling “a team out in the projects, versus out on the beach.”

Ultimately, Black said, truly caring about the children he meets has been the key to helping them.

“Kids learn from the adults in their lives, what they see and what they’re surrounded by,” he said. “They need somewhere to go to develop self worth and that sense of belonging … This is not so much as a job as it is a calling.”

Four years ago, when Jeremy Dean finished his documentary “Dare Not Walk Alone,” the 2002 Flagler alumnus had incurred $30,000 in debt. He spent countless hours securing interviews with reluctant subjects. And he wasn’t sure whether the film — which examines both St. Augustine’s role in the 1960s Civil Rights struggle and the Oldest City’s more modern inequalities — would ever find a receptive audience.

But in 2008, after numerous film festival awards, theatrical screenings and a DVD deal with Wal-Mart, “Dare Not Walk Alone” received its highest honor yet: an NAACP Image Award nomination in the category of Outstanding Documentary. Dean’s film was in good company – fellow nominees included the critically acclaimed Hurricane Katrina movie, “Trouble The Water,” along with documentaries produced by HBO, ESPN and CNN.

“We were really the only independent film [in the category],” Dean said. “But to be compared with other productions of that caliber was very rewarding. We didn’t win, but the nomination opened a lot of doors and gave us a stamp of approval from the African-American community, which was very helpful.”

Dean attended the 40th Annual NAACP Image Awards on Feb. 13 in Los Angeles, with Executive Producer Stephen Cobb. He came away from the experience in awe. “It was a pretty big moment for anyone dealing with issues of race and class,” Dean said. “All the biggest names were there: Beyonce, Jennifer Hudson, Stevie Wonder, Muhammad Ali, Russell Simmons. Once the major stars showed up, it was like being a spectator at a big performance.”

Dean said his biggest personal highlight was meeting the cast from HBO series “The Wire.” He acknowledges the benefit of making industry connections at such a major event. “Not to say that ‘Dare Not Walk Alone’ is going to get picked up by Fox or anything,” Dean laughed, “but it’s always good to meet people for future projects.”

Those projects include combining fine art and film, finishing a screenplay and developing a documentary about surfing in the inner city “favelas” – or shanty towns – of Brazil. Dean was also chosen to serve on the screening panel for the 2nd Annual New York Surf Film Festival.

After spending seven years of his life on “Dare Not Walk Alone,” Dean still remains involved, speaking on college campuses and at other engagements. . Cable channels Sundance and IFC recently passed on the film, but it’s still under consideration by HBO. “Our next big hope is for a television deal,” Dean said.

Laughing, he added, “I didn’t know this, but distributing an independent film takes almost as long as making it.”

For spring 2009 graduate Ryan MacManus, the past four years has had its lows – like being diagnosed with the debilitating Crohn’s disease that nearly ended his cross country running career.

But there have been far more highs, like battling back to top running form and being named 2008 Independent Runner of the Year. He even landed an internship with the FBI in what he hopes will eventually lead to a career as a criminal profiler.

Those accomplishments seemed out of reach in the spring of 2006 while MacManus was running on Flagler’s cross country team. He was experiencing constant fatigue, stomach aches and head aches, and finished last in a race in Gainesville – far from ordinary for an extraordinary runner.

He was eventually diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, a severe inflammatory bowel disease that leads to an obstruction of the intestine and the formation of scar tissue. “I went from running 10 to 15 miles a day and loving it, to being told that walking up the stairs could put my heart into arrest,” he said.

MacManus was forced to cease strenuous activity for three months. “It certainly put things into perspective,” he said. “It gave me a new appreciation for being healthy and watching what I put into my body, because every decision can make a difference. And most importantly, running became more fun than ever.”

The results of MacManus’ newly found dedication were never clearer than during the 2008 season when he led the Flagler team to a 17th-place finish in the NCAA Division II South Regional.

His time in the classroom at Flagler, where he was a psychology major with a criminology minor, also ended pretty spectacularly. MacManus spent the spring semester interning at the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Quantico, Va., in the Behavioral Sciences Unit. He worked with field agents gathering research on subjects like workplace violence, sexual offenders, child pornography and counterterrorism.

Shared interests and a chance contact with award-winning author John Bowe have led Diana Briggs, ‘07, down a promising editorial career path with a job working on his upcoming book.

“If someone had told me two months ago that I’d be in Hayes, Kan., I would not have believed them,” she said.

Small-town Kansas is exactly where Diana Briggs found herself this past spring. She spent most of February and March passing through towns in the American West, stopping in each long enough to gather love stories. That’s right, she’s talking to people about love.

Briggs was recruited by Bowe to interview people for his upcoming book, “Mine: Americans Talk About Love.” The book is due out in time for Valentine’s Day 2010.

Bowe is the co-editor of “Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs” and author of “Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy.” It might seem like a leap from slave labor to love, but it was Bowe’s book on that subject that brought him and Briggs together.

After seeing his appearance on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” Briggs Googled Bowe and found an interview with him. She e-mailed the interviewer, and a few days later, received an e-mail from Bowe himself. He became a mentor for Briggs, who at the time was working with the Ritz Carlton in an effort to get fair-trade products into the hotel.

“I got a hold of him to see what he was into,” Briggs recalled. “He wanted me to help him with this book he was starting.”

She flew to New York to meet up with Bowe, who promised to make it worth her time if she stuck with him. Next thing she knew, Briggs was on a plane to Colorado, set to return a month or so later. After the Rocky Mountain state, she followed roads to Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.

In each town she’d hit up coffee shops, post fliers about the book with her phone number, and wait.

“For the most part it’s a feeling,” Briggs said. “I’d strike up a conversation with someone, tell them what I’m doing, and it turns into the best interview — conversation, really.”

When she ran into trouble in Kansas, where no one seemed to be biting on the love-story line, she just walked into a thrift store and shouted, “Does anyone have any love stories?”

“When you’re yourself with someone, they’ll do anything for you,” Briggs said. “I still talk to a lot of people that I’ve interviewed. I can’t tear myself away to find out what’s happening next in their love lives.”

After a few short weeks at home in Venice, Fla., she was back out on the road again to New Orleans, Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee in a search for more love stories.

Audio Slideshow: Making Math Fun

It began simply enough: a collection of songs about math meant to help school kids learn their multiplication tables. But 2000 alumna Kat Vellos never expected the funky little album — with its hip-hop beats put to math-infused tunes and her own soulful voice — would end up in regular rotation on Sirius XM Satellite Radio.

Called “Musiplication,” the independent album released in 2008 weaves stories about canoeing pandas and superheroes with everyday multiplication.

And it has caught on. The music found a following of kids, parents and educators, and one of the songs — “5 on 5” — even topped Sirius XM’s Kids Place Live’s weekly countdown, sharing time with will.i.am’s track from the movie “Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa.”

“I just thought it was going to be a small thing and I could give it to the school where I was volunteering,” Vellos explained. “I had no idea that within three months of being released it would be on Sirius XM.”

How does a former graphic designer and spoken-word poet end up writing and recording a CD about, of all things, math?

It happened more by chance than anything — a result of trying to find a way to help kids better understand a subject Vellos herself has always struggled with. In 2005, she joined AmeriCorps, an organization that is part of the federal government’s Corporation for National and Community Service, which encourages service and volunteering. She moved to Seattle to help tutor elementary students in reading and, to her dismay, math.

“When I was a kid, and all the way through college, I struggled with math. It wasn’t my favorite at all,” she said. “That was my anxiety area as a kid.

“They just put me where I was needed most. I ended up finding, actually, that I was great at teaching math … I’m not a typical math brain, so I could explain it to kids in a way that they could understand.”

Vellos found that typical memorization of multiplication tables didn’t work for a lot of kids.

“A couple girls had a particularly hard time with it,” she recalled. “Yet, they knew the words to every Beyoncé song on the radio. I was like, ‘You know, there ought to be some way for them to learn their times tables through music.’ ”

When she couldn’t find any material or music about math that kids could relate to, she decided to make her own.

“Kids learn through so many different ways. They learn through stories and they learn through songs. … If you make it interesting, if you put in stories, if you put in imagination, if you put in creativity and music, it’s going to stick.”

The songs that ended up on “Musiplication” began as experiments in those tutoring sessions. Vellos said it was a natural fit, blending the world of spoken-word poetry that she loved so much with music and times tables. So she hatched the idea of taking the songs and turning them into a CD.

That’s where Jacksonville DJ and music producer Britt Traynham, better known as Batsauce, came in. The close friends had always talked about recording her poetry to his music.

It took about a year from beginning to end, and while she was thrilled with how it turned out, she never expected such a reception – or that after mailing a copy of it to an on-air personality at Sirius XM’s kids station, it would end up in regular rotation.

“It was really cool and unexpected,” she said. “All I did was put it out there.”

Now Vellos hears from parents and teachers all over the world. Her songs have been played on the radio in London, teachers have begun using the CD in classes, and she gets e-mail from as far away as Israel.

Where do the themes for her songs come from?

“Really, my mind is filled with cartoons,” she said with a laugh. “I had a lot of fun researching numbers when I sat down to do it. … I knew I wanted each number song to have its own personality or its own little story.”

In her songs, Vellos looked for ways to incorporate little stories about food, superheroes and animals around numbers and multiplication tables.

“I love language,” she said. “I love words. To me it’s kind of magical to be able to string together the syllables of the English language to create an experience for the person who hears it or reads it. It invigorates you and makes your mind come alive.”

From there, Vellos worked with Traynham to infuse hip-hop beats and an old school flavor. They give the album a unique and catchy sound that comes across as anything but kids’ music.

She said hears from a lot of parents who tell her not only is it helping their kids with math, but that the CD is also something they enjoy.

While she doesn’t foresee any new recordings in the near future, Vellos is now working on a “Musiplication” curriculum that she envisions as a learning workbook to go along with the CD.

Photo Galleries: Alumni Weekend

Alumni Awards
The Flagler College Alumni Office handed out its 2009 Alumni Awards at
Alumni Weekend this past May. Award recipients:

• Patricia Chesley Parrish, ‘85, Professional Achievement Award. The Professional Achievement Award is presented to alumni who have demonstrated significant accomplishments in their fields and have achieved national and/or regional recognition. Parish wrote a book on the prevention of child sexual abuse in schools. She also serves as a state representative for the Association of Independent Liberal Arts?Colleges for Teacher Education.

• Rebecca Heard West, ‘94, Flagler College Service Award. As an employee of the PGA TOUR Inc., a charitable organization, West has given back to many causes dear to her heart. In 2007, she took the reigns as co-captain of the Team PGA TOUR MS Bike Team, a group of volunteers dedicated to raising funds in support of the Northeast Florida chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. The Flagler College Service Award is presented to alumni who have rendered a high degree of service to Flagler College for more than 10 years. (For example, volunteering with the alumni office, coordinating alumni chapter activities, establishing an endowed scholarship, volunteering with campus clubs, organizations, athletics, etc.)

• John M. Krieger, ‘02, Flagler College Young Alumni Award. The Young Alumni Achievement Award is presented to alumni who are 32 years of age and younger and have demonstrated outstanding accomplishments since graduating.

Four new members inducted in Athletics Hall of Fame
Flagler College held its 2009 Athletics Hall of Fame induction ceremony at its sixth annual banquet on April 30. Paul Abbatinozzi, ’89 (baseball), Jennifer (Ciser) Aubin, ’87 (women’s tennis), Lewis H. “Bud” Beech, ’77 (men’s basketball) and Ronnie Nichols, ’97 (men’s basketball) were inducted.

Abbatinozzi was Flagler’s second player to be drafted by a Major League team — he was picked in the 32nd Round by the Chicago White Sox in 1988. He was a two-time honorable mention NAIA All-American, was a four-time All-District selection and earned District 25 Player of the Year honors in 1987. Today, the Malden, Mass., native is the principal of the brand new Creekside High School in St. Johns County, Fla.

Aubin had a distinguished career playing tennis at Flagler College. She was an NAIA All-American and helped lead the Saints to their first of five NAIA national titles in 1987. Aubin was ranked as high as No. 5 in 1987. She also received the prestigious President’s Award in 1987.

Beech played on the first men’s basketball teams at Flagler (1973-77). He is currently a five-time “Coach of the Year” in golf and a two-time “Coach of the Year” in basketball at Allen D. Nease High School in Ponte Vedra, Fla. His 2002 Panthers won the Class 3A State Championship.

Nichols was a two-time All-Florida Sun Conference selection and earned honorable mention NAIA All-America honors in 1997. Despite only playing two seasons, he ranks second all-time in rebounds per game with an 8.8 average and is third in field goal percentage with a .571 mark. After Flagler, he went on to play professionally in Germany.

Caleb Cooper, a 2004 alumnus and former soccer player, has been working with an organization called Peace Passers that donates sports equipment to needy nations. Cooper wrote this piece about his trip last year to Central America to deliver soccer equipment.

This morning, I woke up to the sound of roosters crowing and dogs barking. A truck drove by full of fresh fruit with a man on the megaphone saying “Piña, aguacate, platano!” The offshore wind blew and I was cooled off momentarily. The morning felt especially good in Nicaragua because of the events that took place last night. I witnessed approximately 100 kids from San Juan Del Sur gather at the local community center, ‘Comunidad Connect,’ in great anticipation of the upcoming games.

After being honored in front the crowd and given a true futbol sala ball signed by all of the team coaches, a local dad leaned over to me and said, “Muchas Gracias.” Not two minutes later, I looked up to see the words “buena onda” painted on the brick wall facing the field. Then it struck me: What we’re doing is spreading a good vibe to the people we encounter … a true team effort.

Peace Passers is 501(c)(3) organization whose goal is to distribute soccer supplies around the world. To learn more, go to www.peacepassers.org.

McKenzie Lamborne, ’02, quickly found that life at a Nepalese orphanage requires some adjustments. She ate with her hands, stomped on her clothes to simulate the spin cycle of a washing machine and wore a surgical mask in the street to reduce the smell of garbage and sewage. She rode an elephant, watched demonstrations by Tibetan monks and waited through a transportation strike.

Lamborne said she considers these details just a small part of her experience at Ama Ghar, a children’s home on the outskirts of Kathmandu whose name translates to “Motherly Home.” She also did research for her graduate studies at American University – in peace and conflict resolution – while learning more about herself.

“What I used to consider necessities in life, I’ve realized are not as important as I once thought they were,” she said. “I’ve been able to see first-hand what I had previously only read about for my graduate classes.

“Children are the most resilient creatures on earth … Human rights, and specifically children’s rights, interest me because I am able to make a difference – even if it’s just one child at a time.”

Lamborne hopes to work as a child protection agent for UNICEF one day. She came to her current career goals from a background in business administration, where she worked for five years but felt a lack of fulfillment. She tried teaching and working as a nanny before pursuing her new line of work.

“I realized that working with underprivileged children would give me the satisfaction I was looking for,” she said.
Human trafficking is one of the main issues Lamborne hopes to address in the future.

“It’s one of the top three crimes in the world and is only gaining momentum,” she said. “I do not believe there is a universal solution … [but] issues regarding children in developing countries can be understood within the context of each individual culture.”

When she returns to the United States this year to finish her degree, Lamborne will miss the children she’s met at Ama Ghar. She said the value of her time there will continue to benefit her, both personally and professionally.

“Living with them and learning about their backgrounds, both first-hand and through the staff at Ama Ghar, has given me unique and great insight … The memory that will forever linger is being a part of this amazing family.”

Flagler alumnus Nicholas Serenati (’03) launched his career hoping to be a Hollywood director, but he’s found his niche in a variety of visual arts.

Serenati’s documentary, “Soul Survivor: An Evolution of Beauty,” was selected for the 2007 Director’s Chair Film Festival and won honors from the Accolade Competition. “Soul Survivor” documents his mother’s attempts to heal after enduring a horse-training accident and 12 hours of facial reconstruction surgery. Serenati said the documentary was a therapeutic process that started shortly after he started studying for his master of fine arts degree. Since then, he’s opened himself up to a variety of other mediums, from video installations to sculptures.

“I don’t define myself as a filmmaker per se, but as a visual artist,” Serenati said. “That was a huge eye-opening experience, to dive in and find so many other opportunities to express myself.”

His current projects include staging an interactive video art installation and creating “an environment people can walk through, they can see, they can touch and, in some cases, taste.”

Most of his work has been inspired by personal observations; one recent project featured an arrangement of mannequins, cables, lamps and televisions that reflected a struggle with technology. Serenati said he drew upon his experience at Lake City Academy, where, a couple years ago, he taught art to children with learning disabilities and behavioral problems.

Serenati recently started teaching directing, cinematography and post-production at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville, and he’ll begin studying for his doctorate in media psychology this fall.