AAUP posthumously awarded the 2010 AAUP Constituency Award to Will Powers, for 11 years the design and production manager at the Minnesota Historical Society Press (MHSP). The award was established in 1991 to honor staff at member presses who have demonstrated active leadership and service to the association and the university press community.
The award was announced on June 17 at the 2010 AAUP Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City. Betsy Litz, Production Manager at Princeton University Press, introduced the award, describing Powers as “embody[ing] everything that is so wonderful about the AAUP.” The award was accepted by Pamela McClanahan, director of the MHSP, on behalf of his wife, Cheryl Miller.
Among Powers’ numerous accomplishments while at the MHS Press, five of the projects he worked on were honored by the annual AAUP Book, Jacket, and Journal Show. He began his career in publishing as a typesetter at Stinehour Press in Vermont. He went on to establish his own fine press, Amaranth Press, in San Francisco, while also doing editorial work for the University of California Press and North Point Press. Moving to Minneapolis in 1988, he worked briefly for an advertising agency, and returned to book design with Stanton Publishing Services (BookMobile) before assuming his role at MHSP.
Over the years, Powers served the AAUP community in a variety of ways, with a remarkable generosity of spirit. Colleagues remember his willingness to share advice and information with others on the AAUP email lists, and to mentor students, interns, and young colleagues. He moderated and participated in numerous panels at the production managers and annual meetings. At the 2004 Annual Meeting, he distributed a chapbook he had developed, New Types for New Books: What We Have; What We Need, which subsequently went into three printings. He was a member of the Design & Production Committee in 2007, and served as its chair in 2008.
Powers passed away on August 25, 2009. Together, the Minnesota Historical Society Press and his wife Cheryl Miller compiled a chapbook celebrating his life and work, A Tribute to Will Powers, where colleagues, family, and friends shared memories and photographs.
Jack G. Goellner
Director Emeritus, The Johns Hopkins University Press
Undoubtedly not many of the people working today in the university press community knew and can remember Carol Franz. Probably few even recognize her name. Yet for two decades Carol was the beating heart of the AAUP’s Central Office. She helped plan and made arrangements for the AAUP’s annual meetings, committee meetings, and special conferences. Her acquaintance among university press staffs was wide and deep, and her dedication to scholarly publishing was legendary among the presses.
But that was quite awhile back. From the late 1950s until she retired in 1979, Carol served as Assistant Director of the AAUP, providing continuity in the association as executive directors came and departed. She was revered as a mentor, especially by newcomers just starting their careers in the university press world. Carol died at the age of 94 in August 2008.
Now a small group of “old hands” who remember Carol with gratitude and affection have undertaken to establish a memorial fund to honor her. The sole purpose of this fund will be to provide newcomers to university press staffs with financial help that enables them to attend annual meetings of the AAUP. Her abiding concern for young people led Carol to recognize how they benefited from participating in the national get-togethers, building acquaintances, and learning the craft from those who had mastered it.
The Carol Franz Memorial Fund will make grants of up to $1,500 to successful applicants who have worked on university press staffs for less than three years. Such grants are intended to cover travel expenses and registration fees for AAUP annual meetings. The availability of this funding will be announced by the Central Office. The selection of grantees will be made by a subcommittee of AAUP’s Board of Directors.
Those of us who knew Carol well remember her as a small woman, seemingly fragile but in fact energetic–and sometimes delightfully wacky. At one annual meeting, the newly elected president was preceded up the aisle to his inaugural address by a parade of kazoo players that Carol had mustered. On another occasion, she hosted a meeting of the AAUP’s Education and Training Committee to celebrate its origination of the Exchange. This meeting was at the New York Advertising Club–on “Guest Speaker Day,” as it turned out–and the speaker’s earnest presentation of a client’s newly coined advertising slogan (“It takes a licking and keeps on ticking,”) aroused so much merriment at the AAUP table that those seated at it were about to be thrown out. Later the committee chair commented, “With Carol at committee meetings we have a lot of fun, but we get a lot done.”
During World War II Carol was assigned to an ambulance unit of the American Red Cross and a field hospital. She was sent to France during the Battle of the Bulge to work with POWs. I was reminded of this during a Southern Presses meeting in New Orleans. Walking along Bourbon Street one evening she and I suddenly found ourselves in a violent rumble that filled the street from curb to curb. Fists, clubs, chains, studded belts, and finally a knife thrust into a belly all drew blood. I feared for the sweet little lady with me and tried to shepherd her out of the violence. She didn’t want to leave the scene. “Some of those boys are going to get badly hurt,” she said, “and they’re going to need help.” There spoke the Red Cross ambulance worker.
Carol wrote poetry and was an accomplished violinist, playing with several chamber groups. She was born and bred in Brooklyn, educated at Barnard and NYU–and longed to live in Maine. She did that, too, when she retired, first in Damariscotta, later in Portland; and then, in flagging health, she finally moved to Connecticut, where she lived with her sisters. Although Carol had transplanted herself to New England, she never left her Brooklyn accent behind. She wouldn’t have been Carol without it.
Carol told me several times in letters and during visits to her home in Portland that her years with the university presses were the best in her long life. “It was the people,” she
said. “I always loved the people. They were the best in the world.”
She would surely be delighted to be remembered in a way meant to help young men and women become university press people.
We hope that all who share fond memories of Carol and would like to
join in this memorial endeavor will contribute generously to the fund. Contributions
are tax-deductible: AAUP is a 501(c)(3) organization.
Checks should be made out to the AAUP, with “Carol Franz
Association of
Presses
71 West 23rd Street
Suite 901
New York
York
Attn:
Peter Givler, Executive Director
Organized by:
Jack Goellner, Nancy Essig, Joyce Kachergis, Janet Hose
Les Phillabaum, director emeritus of Louisiana State University Press, died on Wednesday, January 14, 2009. A legendary press director, champion of distinguished authors and poets, and former president of AAUP, he will be greatly missed by the university press community.
Phillabaum had a long history of involvement with AAUP, serving a term as AAUP President from 1984-1985, and co-authoring, with Sheldon Meyer, the pamphlet “What Is a University Press?” First published in 1980, the revised pamphlet from 1994 has been made available for viewing on AAUP’s website in PDF format.
Born in Cortland, NY, in 1936, he received his master’s degree in English from Penn State University. It was at Penn State’s press that he began his career in scholarly publishing as a manuscript editor, moving next to an appointment as editor-in-chief of the University of North Carolina Press in 1963. In 1970 he went to LSU Press as executive editor and associate director, and was named director of the press in 1975. He held the position of director until his retirement in February of 2003, and at which point he was named Director Emeritus.
During Phillabaum’s tenure at LSU Press, the press experienced tremendous growth: more than doubling its yearly title output and staff size, and publishing over 1,700 books. He helped publish numerous award-winning books, including A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. This legendary novel won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the first time a university press publication had received that honor. Phillabaum also worked with Mobil to develop the Pegasus Prize for Literature, promoting translations of award-winning fiction from other countries. In 2003, he was made an honorary member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers for his “service to the cause of southern literature.”
Phillabaum was also known for his commitment to publishing poetry. Under his directorship two books won the Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry (Henry Taylor’s The Flying Change and Lisel Mueller’s Alive Together); and he is credited with helping to revive interest in the poet Robert Penn Warren. LSU Press established the L. E. Phillabaum Poetry Award in 2005 to honor this commitment and his venerable career.
Phillabaum is survived by his wife, Robbie; their daughter Diane and her husband; their son Scott and his wife; and two grandsons, Trey and Stephen.