Richard J. Alley

Small Business Spotlight for The Memphis Daily News

April 8, 2013

In 2007, Sean Faust and business partner Brad Ellis came together with Memphis music icon Doug Easley to create a company offering full-service audio and video recording and mixing services.

Both Faust and Easley had recording studios that burned in 2005 and New School Media is the Phoenix that has risen from those ashes.

“We had all the ingredients,” Easley said of their new project.

And indeed they do. Easley has recorded music heavyweights from Sonic Youth and Wilco to Jack White, Loretta Lynn and Jeff Buckley.

Faust earned degrees in theater and documentary film production from Syracuse University, has more than 15 years of experience and grew up running sound with his father, saying that his Saturday mornings were full of cables and amplifiers as opposed to cartoons.

Ellis is a writer and director with 10 feature films under his belt, including “Act One,” which claimed Best Narrative Feature, Hometown Award in the 2005 Indie Memphis Film Festival.

The studio is a 3,300-square-foot complex swathed in grass cloth walls, swag lamps, retro seating and original Lamar Sorrento artwork. To take a tour of the facility is to walk through a museum of vintage styles and scenery, ending in a top of the line, 5.1 audio mixing suite, something more akin to mission control at NASA with dim lighting punctuated by bright LEDs and computer monitors … (read more)

“Because I Said So” column for The Commercial Appeal

Feb. 28, 2013

Memories of baby held in phone, not in an album

The wall over the desk in my office at home is hung with snapshots of family and friends, inspiration for when I need a little push to write this column or anything else I might be working on.

The pictures have been culled from years of going through the photo albums of grandparents and parents. Many have been taken from place to place with moves over the years, tucked into books, shoeboxes and desk drawers.

Actual photo albums on my shelves, however, are few and far between. There are gaps in the years to be filled in by imagination. During a recent visit with my grandparents, my kids and I flipped through plastic-coated pages brittle with age, and took a trip into the distant past. Each leather-bound book was a time capsule filled with faded images from a camera, a contraption from the past that Jules Verne might as well have imagined.

These days most of us don’t carry cumbersome cameras that require a flashbulb, batteries and a roll of film. We have a phone. And that phone is, more than likely, equipped with an application that will make the snapshot you just took of your kid on a swing at the park look like it was taken in 1978. Or, if you prefer, 1928.

When I look at my own baby pictures, the washed-out tones and white, tell-tale borders help place the time firmly in the 1970s. The Instagram app does that for us now. Other than the electronic tablets in their hands, a picture of my kids last Christmas morning might just as easily have been taken four decades ago. It is a way for us to force nostalgia upon something witnessed only moments before.

Within our phones is where these photos will reside; a collection of ones and zeroes zipping through circuits and saved somewhere in a cloud. Something as precious as a baby book is quickly becoming an anachronism.

What seasoned parents know is that, with each child, the chances of putting together such a memento becomes slimmer and slimmer. When my oldest was born, I wasn’t snapping pictures with a telephone and texting them to family three states away. Had anyone suggested such a thing in 1998, I would have looked as confused as I was anyway standing there in the labor and delivery room at Baptist Hospital. Instead, I held up my 35mm Pentax and documented Calvin’s arrival into what now seems a low-fi, analog world. Those precious memories were entrusted to Walgreen’s and a day or two later I retrieved an envelope of glossy photos to tape into his book.

My 6-year-old, by contrast, pressured us for her book only last year. We were woefully short on actual, hard-copy photographs. What I did have was a phone full of her face. And some dinners I’d prepared. And quite a few of a recent show at the Hi-Tone, some plumbing that needed to be repaired and a particularly picturesque sunset.

What do we picture for the future? A set of hard drives arranged on the bookshelf by year? A lone smart phone hung on the wall above my desk? Document childhood well because it is fleeting and the memories captured will evaporate over time; gone, it seems, in an instagram.

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Annual “20 under 30″ issue highlighting 20-somethings making great strides in the city for The Memphis Flyer

Jan. 24, 2013

These young people have graduated from their teens with a sense of responsibility beyond their years, and it is driving them to do good, to leave Memphis a better place. Within their ranks, there are advanced college degrees and long hours spent learning and perfecting a craft. The members of this group can dribble a ball, carry a tune, cook a meal, tell a joke, take a picture, book a show, raise money, raise awareness, and raise us all up if we put ourselves in their capable, young hands.

Each is an ambassador for our city. They are giving their best to make themselves and their community a better place to live and to visit.

News of violence and scandal can make the future seem bleak, but we can rest easier knowing that these 20 men and women are a part of that future. Keep an eye on them and watch what they can do when they put their minds and hearts to it … (read more)

Flyer cover 2013

Law Talk profile for The Memphis Daily News

Dec. 20, 2012

With a Bachelor of Science in biomedical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and a new job in the Hematology-Oncology Department at the jewel of medical institutions, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Hemant Gupta’s life appeared to set with a promising career in medical research.

But then a funny thing happened on the way to the lab one day.

“While working at St. Jude, I met the patent attorney,” Gupta said. “He was speaking to a large group of researchers about what he does and I was really fascinated by what he described. You get to see so much different technology.”

Gupta’s plan was to finish his master’s degree while at St. Jude and work as a researcher, but that plan was altered and he instead entered the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law to become a patent attorney.

After graduating in 2005, Gupta went out on his own before eventually joining Butler, Snow, O’Mara, Stevens and Cannada PLLC in 2007 … (read more)

Centerpiece feature for The Memphis Daily News

Nov. 14, 2012

Crew Training International directs way missions are flown

In an unassuming building in Germantown is a company helping to shape the way combat pilots and ground crew work, and combat missions are flown the world over.

Inside that building, situated among aviation memorabilia and artifacts, is Alan Mullen, former Navy pilot assigned to the U.S.S. Nimitz and TOPGUN instructor, and the founder of Crew Training International.

CTI, the Memphis-based firm with top secret clearance that provides training, safety management systems and innovative programs to facilitate critical skill retention and risk management for clients such as the Department of Defense and all units of the Combat Air Forces, recently won a $17 million contract to provide Contract Aircrew Training and Courseware Development for the U.S. Air Force Fighter Weapons School, part of the 57th Wing at Nellis Air Force Base outside of Las Vegas.

The contract is significant “not totally in terms of revenue, which is important, but the length of it because it’s five years and we’ll acquire 14 or so additional employees so it’s good for the company in terms of longevity,” said President and CEO, Jack Holt … (read more)

The Sciences at Rhodes – Past, Present and Future

Fall 2012

The Biologists

A profile of former biology majors, current students and department head

(For the full texts, please click this link)

Gary Lindquester
Chair, Rhodes Department of Biology

Rhodes students today are constantly challenged, and they constantly rise to that challenge. This, says Gary Lindquester, Biology Department chair, is one of the reasons that teaching at Rhodes is so rewarding.

“It happens in the classroom with rigorous course material and complex ideas, it’s in the teaching laboratory where we develop exercises that train them in the scientific method and in various techniques … and it carries over into the research laboratories for students who work there,” he says. “The students are highly competent, they are interested and they have a good work ethic.”

Anahita Rahimi-Saber ’13

Anahita Rahimi-Saber was born and raised in Denmark and moved with her family to the United States, and Memphis, in 2000. She attended Lausanne Collegiate School and considered other colleges when the time came to make that important decision.

“I thought I wanted to study outside of Memphis, that I knew it too well and had outgrown it by the age of 18,” she says. “But when it came down to what I wanted to study, and finances and everything, Rhodes just made the most sense. It was the best decision I’ve ever made. I realized how important it is to have a family close by, and when I moved to campus it was kind of eye-opening and refreshing to learn how great Memphis really is and how much it has to offer.”

Veronica Lawson Gunn ’91, M.D.
Vice President of Population Health Management,
Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin

“I felt smarter when I stepped on campus,” Veronica Gunn says as she reminisces about her first visit to Rhodes. Though laughing, she insists there is some truth to that. “My visit at Rhodes was what undoubtedly convinced me that that is where I needed to go, and not to any other place.”

Not only did the aesthetics of the campus and the academic curriculum draw her in, but the professors—including Alan and Carolyn Jaslow in Biology, with whom she remains friends—“are examples of the faculty’s commitment to students, their full development and their full potential.”

Brian Wamhoff ’96
Vice President of Research & Development,
Co-Founder, HemoShear, LLC
Associate Professor of Medicine & Biomedical Engineering,
University of Virginia

Brian Wamhoff points to the atmosphere, the opportunity to play soccer and chiefly to members of the faculty such as Jay Blundon and Dee Birnbaum when asked what led to his interest in Rhodes College. It was these professors’ respective departments—Biology and Business—that would build the foundation for his life’s work.

Having attended the University of Missouri-Columbia for graduate school before the University of Virginia for his fellowship, Wamhoff recently took a path of entrepreneurship and biotech, while balancing life as an academic professor.

 

The Physicists

A profile of former physics majors, current students and department head

(For the full texts, please click this link)

Lars Monia ’15

After only one year at Rhodes, Lars Monia was given the keys to the moonbuggy, so to speak. The Great Moonbuggy Race is a NASA project for high school and college students who build simulated lunar rovers. It’s a challenge, says NASA, “to inspire them in Engineering and explore Engineering opportunities and possibilities.”

Monia was asked to recruit other students, put together a team to manage, and was given a prospective budget by Physics chair Brent Hoffmeister.

“Hosting a team for the first time was pretty challenging,” says Monia. “I had to teach everyone how to do the engineering programs and how the design process works and what the project even was—what in the world is a moonbuggy?”

Charles Robertson Jr. ’65

For Charles Robertson, a Rhodes education began not when he walked on campus for the first time as a freshman, but when his parents did as students. Thanks to Charles William Robertson Sr. ’29 and Lola Ellis Robertson ’33 being scientists themselves, Charles Jr. may have been looking at a preordained career.

“I had some interest in Engineering, but by the end of my senior year in high school I was pretty much hooked on Physics,” Robertson says. “My father, though a biologist, had a significant interest in the physical sciences and encouraged my interest in Physics.”

Harry Swinney ’61
Sid Richardson Foundation Regents Chair
The University of Texas at Austin

Harry Swinney heard about Rhodes College—then Southwestern—from several people, including the family doctor, James Gladney ’38, in his Presbyterian church in Homer, LA.

“I asked my parents if I could visit Southwestern and they drove me there for a two-day visit in the spring of 1955,” Swinney recalls.

He never considered any other option and enrolled with plans to obtain two bachelor’s degrees in five years in the 3-2 plan, with three years at Rhodes followed by two at Georgia Tech. In his freshman year, however, he took a Physics class from professor Jack Taylor ’44 and “became excited about the subject.” It was a class that would turn his plans, and life, around. In honor of Taylor, Swinney in 2000 established the Jack H. Taylor Scholarship at Rhodes for students majoring in the physical and biological sciences.

Brent Hoffmeister
Chair, Department of Physics

Research teams in Geneva, Switzerland, recently provided proof of the elusive Higgs Boson particle, making the kind of news that gets physicists, and future physicists, excited. Closer to home, Rhodes Physics professor and department chair Brent Hoffmeister is excited about newer courses being offered, including Nuclear Physics, Engineering Physics, Medical Physics, and Fluid Dynamics. This semester, a course on Accelerator Physics, the sort of science that gave the world the Higgs Boson, is being offered for the first time.

Passing along his passion for the sciences is paramount in Hoffmeister’s teaching. “Personally, I like how teaching and scientific research have fused together to become the same sort of thing for me at Rhodes,” he says. “I really enjoy involving students in my research, and I think it is an important experience for the students too. A great way to learn about science is to function as a scientist.”

Law Talk profile for The Memphis Daily News

Oct. 18, 2012

Upon graduating from the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law in 2000, Josh Spickler took a fortuitous first step into his legal career with the Shelby County’s Office of Public Defender under A C Wharton Jr.

It was an experience that ignited a passion for the courtroom and public service in the young lawyer.

“I didn’t have grand dreams to be some Atticus Finch kind of guy, but I did, during law school, gravitate toward the courtroom in trial clinics and trial advocacy classes,” Spickler said.

He clerked for the public defender’s office where he said he “just fell in love with the courtroom, with the clients, with the challenge of trying a case against another lawyer and doing it from the hip sometimes and with surprises around every corner.”

But there are experiences to be had in any young man’s life and after a few years he left the public defender to start his own firm, one in which he was able to continue the same sort of work but “was able to get more trial experience a little quicker,” he said.

A law firm, being a small business, demands attentions outside of the courtroom with overhead and marketing, lean months and fat, and once the first of Spickler’s two sons with his wife, Ginger, came along, it was time for a change.

“I kind of panicked because it’s one thing to starve myself … but it was sort of a wake-up call that this month to month and crazy revenue fluctuations is a big risk, it was just a grind,” he said … (read more)

Feature story for The Commercial Appeal

Sept. 20, 2012

In the early 20th century, those needing to call a friend across the city might have been discouraged, when lifting the receiver of the phone to their ear, to hear someone else speaking on the line. That someone else could have been next door or a neighbor down the block. This was the party line, and it was the predominant way residential phone service worked before World War II.

There was one simple rule if you wanted to maintain privacy: Stay off the line.

In today’s world of e-mail, Twitter, private messages, blogging and texting, the expectation of privacy may not be as simple or as guaranteed as it was 80 years ago. How many of us have been the recipients of unwanted information — or inflammatory remarks — because someone clicked “Reply all” instead of the safer, solitary “Reply?” Clicking “Reply all” to an e-mail may be our century’s party line, and there is very little option to stay off the line.

Memphis-based Accredo Health Group felt the sting of a missent e-mail last month when a private note regarding possible job cuts — and meant for executives’ eyes only — went public to a larger number of employees … (read more)

Small Business Spotlight for The Memphis Daily News

Sept. 10, 2012

Special emphasis: Logistics

Founded in 1856, Patterson Warehouses Inc. is one of the leaders and most respected players in Memphis’ robust third-party logistics (3PL) industry.

Yet even with the advances in technology, and acres and acres of warehouse space that Patterson Warehouses operates in Memphis and Horn Lake, vice president of sales and marketing Buzz Fly said it’s the company’s employees that drive its success.

“We’ve got a very experienced management team, a lot of veteran logistics guys, and we’ve just tried to keep our head down and take care of our customers,” Fly said.

Patterson’s main niche is importing goods going to retailers. Many of these goods arrive via container ship from Long Beach, Calif., where the cargo is loaded on trains headed to Memphis. Patterson employees move those containers from local rail yards to their facilities, unload them and inventory the product.

It’s a service that is becoming ever more specialized as technology advances. Far different than the 19th century when Patterson boasted the fastest delivery time from Nashville to Memphis (52 hours), these days there are such offerings as 24-hour Web tracking of inventories and the ability to re-supply, not just full pallets to a warehouse, but product at the case level for retailer shelves … (read more)

“Because I Said So” column from The Commercial Appeal

Aug. 16, 2012

Last week, I scattered my four kids like comet tails and left them with their various teachers at their various schools. For the older kids, this is old hat, they’re pros who have been at this for years. They may not like it — in fact they don’t — but they understand the routine and joined the countdown to the launch of another Memphis City Schools academic year.

But then there’s Genevieve. She’s the youngest and the most spirited, some will say. A challenge, her parents say. Things did not go well that first morning of first grade. There was a lot of clinging and tears, and even some desperate pleas for her sentence to first grade to be commuted. Alas, I left her there in the capable hands of Mrs. Armstrong and the whole Richland Elementary crew.

I came home, walked the couple of blocks back, and turned on the Internet to see that NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity had landed safely the night before. Space exploration fascinates me, and I was enthralled watching video images from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, as the rover touched down and the scientists went crazy with exultation.

That celebration was rightly deserved. Those people landed a buggy on a planet 35 million miles away with more ease and less drama than I had landed my daughter in a first-grade classroom two blocks away. Granted, they’re rocket scientists and I’m only a parent, and parenting isn’t rocket science. Or is it? Maybe when scientists come upon a complex theorem that becomes easily proven, they say, “Well, it isn’t parenting.”

Adam Steltzner, a mechanical engineer with the laboratory, said the rover’s landing “is the result of reasoned engineering thought.” Reasoned thought is as unnatural to a 6-year-old as space travel. When told that school can be fun or that it won’t last so long or that her friends will be right there with her, all she can imagine is an endless expanse of black sky, a vacuum of loneliness.

Upon re-entry into the school’s atmosphere, while dodging other children and supply-laden parents, my daughter began to break apart, the heat from

the classroom too much to bear; the promise of another school year built up until not even her protective khaki jumper could withstand the pressure and she exploded in a barrage of tears. And what could I do? I’m helpless. I’m a parent. I’m ground control, yet I failed to keep her grounded in any sense of safety and serenity, while floating there among her friends and siblings.

They call it the “seven minutes of terror.” That’s how long scientists had to wait upon Curiosity’s entry into the Mars atmosphere before they found out whether their rover was intact on the surface of the planet. It takes us about seven minutes to walk to school in the morning, but I had to wait seven hours to find out that Genevieve did eventually compose herself, that she acclimated to the foreign surroundings of first grade and that her own curiosity about it all proved to be stronger than her home’s gravitational pull.

Permanent link to The Commercial Appeal