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About a dozen people gathered Friday in Murray-Dodge Hall to remember the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and the 13 Princeton alumni who died in the terrorist attacks that day.

Normally held in the memorial garden between Chancellor Green and Nassau Hall, the short ceremony was forced inside Murray-Dodge by stormy weather. The names of the alumni who died were recited, and a small bell was rung for each.

PAW remembers these undergraduate and graduate alumni:

Robert L. Cruikshank ’58 was a vice president at Carr Futures.

Charles A. McCrann ’68 was a senior vice president for Marsh and McLennan.

William E. Caswell *75, a Navy physicist, was aboard American Flight 77.

Martin P. “Buff” Wohlforth ’76 was a managing director for Sandler, O’Neill, & Partners.

Robert J. Deraney ’80, a consultant, was attending a breakfast meeting at Windows on the World.

Joshua A. Rosenthal *81 was a senior vice president for Fiduciary Trust.

Karen J. Klitzman ’84 worked for e-Speed, a division of Cantor Fitzgerald.

Jeffrey D. Wiener ’90 worked for Marsh USA.

John T. Schroeder ’92 recently had joined Fred Alger Management as a Nasdaq trader.

Christopher N. Ingrassia ’95 was a partner with Cantor Fitzgerald.

Robert G. McIlvaine ’97 who worked for Merrill Lynch, was attending a conference on the 106th floor of Tower One.

Christopher D. Mello ’98 worked for Alta Communications and was aboard American Airlines Flight 11.

Catherine F. MacRae ’00, was a research analyst for Fred Alger Management.

Remembrances of these alumni, written by family members and friends, were published in the Nov. 7, 2001, issue of PAW and are available here. By Marilyn H. Marks *86

They’re back: A new school year begins, 1994

Finding a place to rest amidst the hustle and bustle of student move-in day can be a challenge. Ashley Hall ’95’s peaceful repose in September 1994 caught the attention of PAW, which featured her on its Oct. 12, 1994, cover. (Hall, a caption explained, was working at the booth of the Student Futon Agency.)

As the Class of 1998 arrived on campus, the top news was the proportion of freshman women — 47.5 percent of the class, then a Princeton record. See story below.

From PAW, Oct. 12, 1994

University greets Class of ’98

In the 25th year of coeducation, a record number of first-year women

Princeton began its 25th year as a coeducational institution last month by greeting a freshman class with the highest proportion of women ever. Some 47.5 percent of the Class of 1998, which numbers 1,158, is female; if prospective engineering students are removed from the count, women are a 51.2 percent majority.

Economist and former Seoul National University president Chung Un-chan *78 was appointed prime minister of South Korea Sept. 3. [New York Times]

Charles Gibson ’65 will retire from his job as anchor of ABC’s World News at the end of this year, his 35th at the network. [New York Times]

Broker-turned-yoga-instructor Lauren Imparato ’02 is “tapping into yoga’s growing appeal” on Wall Street. [Bloomberg]

In a recent opinion piece, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels ’71 wrote about the challenges that state governments are facing this year. [Wall Street Journal]

Temperatures in Princeton dropped to the 70s last week, but the Woodrow Wilson School’s Fountain of Freedom remained a popular spot for young swimmers. (Photo by Marianne Nelson)

Princeton football fans have several reasons for optimism in 2009: A star running back returns, along with most of the offensive line, from a 4-6 team that fell a few plays shy of a winning season last year. On the other side of that coin, there are plenty of unknowns, including newcomers at quarterback and on the the defensive line. At the team’s preseason media day Sept. 4, head coach Roger Hughes gave his first assessment of the coming season: “cautiously optimistic.”

Some of his optimism comes from what happened before practice began. Dozens of Princeton players spent the summer on campus, lifting weights and training together in seven-on-seven games. Hughes said the team entered its August workouts with a healthy dose of camaraderie, much like it did in Princeton’s 2006 Ivy League championship season. “Conditioning shouldn’t be an issue, chemistry shouldn’t be an issue,” he said. “Now it’s about execution.”

Below, previews of the offense, defense, and special teams.

If they were a circus act, they could be the Flying Slovenskis. Brothers Steve Slovenski ’09 and Dave Slovenski ’12 have excelled as Princeton track athletes — Steve was one of the Tigers’ top decathletes, and Dave won the pole vault at the Ivy League Indoor Heptagonal Championships last February — but they appear even more impressive competing against each other in an event they created: the unicycle pole vault.

The younger Slovenski first brought his unicycle to track practice to use it in warm-ups. (It’s similar to pedaling an exercise bike, he says, but it works more muscles.) When Princeton coach Fred Samara saw the brothers riding while carrying poles, he asked incredulously if they were planning to vault off of their unicycles.

“That sounds crazy and dangerous,” Dave said.

“Let’s try it!” Steve replied.

The results of their creative combination can be seen in the YouTube video below, which shows the brothers clearing the bar at up to 10 feet while big-top theme music plays in the background.

Last month, Woodrow Wilson School professors Paul Starr and Uwe Reinhardt offered their views of the current health care debate through two different perspectives.

In an interview with WNYC’s On the Media, Starr, the Stuart Professor of Communications and Public Affairs, discussed the past, recapping tactics used to bury earlier U.S. health reform efforts. During the late 1940s, for instance, Starr said that an American Medical Association PR effort hinted that national health care was akin to Soviet-style socialism:

“They suggested that Lenin had supposedly said that health care was the first step toward instituting Communism. There was a mythical quote that no one has been ever able to discover to that effect. And they argued that it was, you know, like a gateway drug and the beginning of a slippery slope toward government control of everything. In that period, given the Cold War, that argument was a powerful one.”

Click here to read or listen to Starr’s interview.

In a CNN.com commentary, Reinhardt, the James Madison professor of political economy, considered the future and what it might look like if the current round of health reform fails. The total yearly health spending by a typical American family has more than doubled in the last decade, and that trend, he argued, is likely to continue:

“… America’s currently insured middle class will be increasingly desperate if health reform fails. Millions more such families will see their take-home pay shrink. Millions will lose their employment-based insurance, especially in medium and small-sized firms. And millions will find themselves inexorably priced out of health care as we know it.”

Click here to read Reinhardt’s commentary.

Three Princeton alumni — Jeffrey Bigham ’03, Andrew Houck ’00, and Erez Lieberman-Aiden ’02 — have been named to this year’s TR35, Technology Review magazine’s list of top technologists and scientists under age 35.

Bigham, a computer science graduate who teaches at the University of Rochester, was honored for creating WebAnywhere, a free, versatile screen-reading application that converts Web pages to audio for people who have little or no vision. (A video of Bigham discussing his work is available here.)

Houck, a Princeton valedictorian who has returned to the electrical engineering department as an assistant professor, received praise for his work in quantum computing. He has developed a superconducting quantum bit, or qubit, that helps keep quantum information intact for a few microseconds — a significant advance in the field.

Lieberman-Aiden, a Ph.D. candidate in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, was cited for his contributions to advanced models of evolutionary theory, the evolution of language and culture, and the structure of genomes. He also created the “iShoe,” an insole that detects balance problems and aims to help prevent elderly people from falling.

The full list of 34 young innovators is available online and will be featured in the September/October issue of Technology Review.

Princeton football practice kicks off this week, and in September, Princeton Stadium will begin its 12th year as the team’s home. But the familiar venue still has a long way to go to match the history of its predecessor, Palmer Stadium, the Tigers’ legendary lair from 1914 to 1994.

Just before the start of the 1974 football season, Palmer’s 60th anniversary year, PAW contributor Dan White ’65 took a look back at the stadium’s construction and its enduring charm. See story below.

New book: In This Way I Was Saved, by Brian DeLeeuw ’03 (Simon & Schuster)

For a young child, having an imaginary friend is not all that unusual. Typically as a child ages, the benign friend fades away, as the youngster doesn’t need the companionship any more.

But what if the imaginary friend wasn’t sympathetic? What if as the child grew up, the friend resisted leaving? “What if he refuses to go away,” thought Brian DeLeeuw ’03, whose debut novel was sparked by that notion. Published this month by Simon and Schuster, In This Way I Was Saved follows Luke and his imaginary friend, Daniel, whom he meets playing in the park at age 6.

New book: Huge, By James W. Fuerst ’94 (Crown)

The author: Fuerst, a first-time novelist, earned a Ph.D. from Harvard’s Department of Government and an M.F.A. from the New School. At Princeton, he majored in politics and played on the sprint football team.

The story: Eugene “Huge” Smalls is a precocious 12-year-old detective who idolizes Philip Marlowe and aims to solve crimes in his New Jersey hometown. He’s also an angry, lonely, foul-mouthed boy looking to find his place in the frightening world of junior high school. Fuerst’s novel blends classic detective fiction with coming-of-age themes in this story of an eventful suburban summer.

Opening lines: “It was one of those lurid August days, all haze and steam, the sun hidden and stewing like a shameful lust. I dropped the kickstand, locked the Cruiser to the NO PARKING sign, and wiped the glaze of sweat off my face and neck.”

Reviews: Booklist said Huge is “always engrossing,” and People gave the book four stars, calling it “a hugely entertaining novel” with “a winning protagonist (who needs to have his mouth washed out with soap).”

Sid Lapidus ’59 has donated to Princeton 157 rare books, pamphlets, and prints that are displayed in a new exhibition in the main gallery of Firestone Library. The exhibition, entitled “Liberty & the American Revolution: Selections from the Collection of Sid Lapidus ’59,” opened May 28 — just in time for the 50th reunion of Lapidus’ class.

The items span more than 150 years of American and British history, from the 17th century to the early 19th century, and are arranged thematically into four groups. “Revolutionary Origins” features documents relating to political theory and ideology, beginning with a 1651 edition of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan. “The American Crisis” displays a wide array of views on the 18th century controversy over taxation and the push for independence in the colonies.