A00217 - Margaret Rose Vendryes, Amherst College Class of 1984, Tulane University M.A., Princeton University Ph.D., Amherst College Arts Professor

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Deceased March 29, 2022

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Contact

Amherst Name

• Margaret Rose Cohen

Family

Amherst Relatives

• Leslie G. Cohen (Les) '76

Personal

About Me

• You can remove a girl from the island, but the island remains within. I was born in Kingston, Jamaica to ambitious parents for whom life in the United States of America was worth everything. My mother was fast on a manual typewriter; my father fell into the lower ranks of food manufacturing. They bought a house, and made a home, in Queens, NYC. Shortly before grade school, I entered the U.S.A. with a green card that was my lifeline to Jamaica until they took the green card away when I became an American citizen. By 1965, our family had grown to nine members. I am the third child of seven, one of six daughters; the product of a Roman Catholic education peppered with short episodes of NYC public school when tuition couldn�t be made. All of my siblings are awesomely talented. While attending Amherst College, I completed a few studio courses where I began working with color, which I continue to find so seductive and pregnant with artifice. I had a family by then and turned to art history to remain connected to art makers while making a living. Artists don�t often make a decent living making art at least not the brown-skinned female kind. Details of my professional persona are recorded here on my CV. I hold a doctorate in art history and have taught facets of it for over a decade. I know that my relationship with making �art� appears to fall quite neatly into those written about since at least Vasari. I began drawing as a child copying mostly figures and faces from magazines. My sisters can attest to how fabulous my homemade paper dolls were. I was neither encouraged nor discouraged to take my art seriously. At the beginning of my college career, I was a theater major� costume design. That learning period, although short-lived, resonates in my current work. Over the years, I never stopped painting and accumulating �stuff� to use in statements about the human condition from where I stand. Popular culture and private memories combine, at times unconsciously, to inform my work. The growth of my ongoing practice was literally weighed with every location change I have made in my adult life� twenty-five of them to date. It may sound wrong, but I am not a nomad. In 2007, I began to make use of not only the stuff, but also the energy that drove me to acquire and keep it.

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Professional

Employment Information

Former

• Curator and Director

  York College Art Gallery

  Start:

  05/2021

  End:

  03/2022
• Chair, Department of Performing & Fine Arts

  CUNY: York College

  Start:

  05/2021

  End:

  03/2022
• Professor

  CUNY: York College

  Start:

  11/2013

  End:

  03/2022
• Artist/Historian/Curator

  Self Employed

  Start:

  02/2009

  End:

  04/2022
• Associate Professor

  CUNY: College of Staten Island

  Start:

  09/2002

  End:

  11/2007
• Assistant Professor

  Princeton University

  Start:

  01/2000

  End:

  09/2002
• Ind. Scholar

  Self Employed

  Start:

  01/2000

  End:

  02/2009
• Visit Asst Prof

  Amherst College

  Start:

  07/1999

  End:

  06/2000
• Asst Archivist

  Tulane University

  Start:

  01/1991

  End:

  01/1992

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Amherst

Reunion Class

• 1984

Graduation Year

• 1984

Major(s)

• Fine Arts

Other Academic

Secondary Schools

• Andrew Jackson High School

Higher Ed

• Princeton University

  Field of Study:

  Art History

  Degree:

  Doctor of Philosophy

  Year:

  1999
• Tulane University

  Field of Study:

  Art History

  Degree:

  Master of Arts

  Year:

  1899

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Amherst

Fraternity

• Independent (no fraternity affil)

Post-Graduate

Publications/ Creative Works

• Margaret has a show coming up at Calabar Gallery in Harlem that opens on May 29th, 2021 The show will be on view there for one month. Her painting "Guro Ntozake" has been traveling with the exhibition "i found god in myself", a 40th-anniversary celebration of Ntozake Shange's for colored girls., and can be viewed at the City Without Walls Gallery in Newark, N.J., Oct. 12 through Nov. 12. 11/3/2017
• "33 1/3 Pushing the Needle: Selections from the African Diva Project"
• Featured in an article in Artwork Archive
• Author - 'The Art of Ellis Wilson' 2008 Co-Author - 'Barthe: A Life in Sculpture'

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A00216 - Yvette Cecilia Mendez, Amherst College Class of 1984, Marymount School of New York (New York City, New York), Fordham University (J.D.), Massachusetts Attorney

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Photo added by Erin Bohannon

 

Yvette C Mendez

Birth

1962

Death

1999 (aged 36–37)

Burial

St. Brigid's Cemetery

Hadley, Hampshire County, Massachusetts, USA

Memorial ID

· View Source

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Black Women of Amherst College, pgs. 126-129

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Yvette Cecilia Mendez did not reply to my two letters but when I telephoned her she responded with charm and promptness.  She graciously apologized for not having replied but "was grateful for your reminder call since I do wish to be included in this momentous and worthwhile effort.

Yvette majored in Political Science and it is obvious that she has always been interested in the legal profession.  Even while at Amherst her intern positions were with the District Attorney's Office in New York County and the Law Department for the City of New York, in January of 1983 and the summer of this same year, respectively.  But Yvette was also engaged in other activities here at Amherst: She was a member of the Student Assembly, of the Black Student Union and she was elected a member of the Admissions Search Committee.  She also played varsity volleyball.

Upon graduating, she attended the Fordham University School of Law and gained the J.D. in 1990.  But during this time she was also actively involved with the New York Public Interest Research Group, Inc.  (NYPIRG) where she was employed in different situations: she was a staff person organizer with varying responsibilities including supervising student-run lobby organizations, and was soon promoted from entry level to senior staff person; she then became Divestment Coordinator, where she conducted statewide grassroot campaign dealing with the extent and scope of New York State's divestment endeavors; she then went back to personnel affairs but in this case as Director and here she organized, developed and coordinated NYPIRG's recruiting program; later she became Legal Assistant to the group and in this capacity she organized and documented evidence and interviewed prospective witnesses in student-fee cases and finally, under this same group, she became Project Coordinator and was involved with the coordination of certain activities dealing with Hunter College in New York City. 

All this she did between 1984 and June of 1987, when she took a new appointment with the New York City Charter Revision Commission as Research Assistant.  Here she interpreted, analyzed and summarized various sections of the New York City Charter and, having done this, she would then write briefing papers, detailing and explaining charter provisions; she compared federal, state, and city ethics provisions and summarized the findings for the Commissioner's use; and she also researched and briefed case laws regarding land use, as well as the zoning and formation of greater New York City. 

By May of 1988, Yvette found herself working with a private firm, Brown & Guilbert, as Legal Assistant.  In this position she assisted the general practitioner, prepared complaints, affirmations, jury instructions, affidavits in matrimonial, real property and probate matters.  She also compiled a successful opposition to a summary judgment in a multi-million-dollar personal injury lawsuit.  During the fall of this year (1988) she also participated in Fordham's two-credit Judicial Clinical Program, where she researched and wrote opinions, observed trials and court procedures.

Upon leaving Brown & Guilbert in May 1989, she went on to another private firm, Gold, Farrell & Marks, as a part-time summer associate where she prepared briefs and memoranda for entertainment litigation firms on issues of contract, construction, securities and attachment laws.

Having now received her Fordham law degree (J.D.) in May 1990, Yvette then went back to the public sector, in this case as a full-time Law Clerk for a federal district court judge in Boston in September of 1990.  In this capacity she attended court sessions, acted as courtroom deputy on bench trials, in addition to which, she briefed issues for motion sessions and prepared memoranda and opinions. She also acted on different occasions as a judge for trial advocacy classes and summary jury trials.  She was also involved in the training and coordination of student intern programs, which must have reminded her of her own intern service in New York in 1983.  She remained in this position until September 1991, when she went back into private practice, in this case with Goodwin, Procter & Hoar, still in Boston, but on a part-time basis.  Again she is involved in trial practices, mostly civil, including discovery, trial, preparation of motion practice, in environmental, insurance and personal injury matters; she also is court-appointed counsel in contempt and First Amendment cases. 

In the meantime, Yvette has been involved in some teaching. From September 1992, she signed up with the New England School of Law and became a writing instructor to law students, teaching them, on an individual basis, how to gain skills in legal writing and reasoning.  She also became a writing specialist, through the Legal Practice Skills Program (LPS) at Suffolk University School of Law, and is still involved in this teaching program.

At present, she is working with the firm of Sugarman, Rogers, Barshak & Cohen, as an Associate.  This firm concentrates on insurance coverage, insurance defense and discrimination cases.  Although Yvette leads a very busy life, she nevertheless finds the time for some pro bono activities, including the presidency of the Massachusetts Black Women Attorneys and membership of the Metropolitan Black Bar Association of New York.  She is also a member of the American Bar Association, the Boston Bar Association, and the Massachusetts Bar Association, among others.

She is very concerned about hiring practices in the legal profession and has always been an advocate39of more diversity.  This is well reflected in an article she wrote, "Affirmative Action and Diversity: A Hand in Glove Situation," published in the Boston Bar Journal, vol. 39, no. 4, September/October 1995. It is a level-headed, well-reasoned article that made positive suggestions on how the situation could be alleviated.

Like so many of these alumnae of the College, Yvette has paid tribute to her Amherst education: "At the time that I graduated from Amherst College in 1984, I was merely pleased that I had endured four years of college and had received the payoff -- my Bachelor of Arts in Political Science.  Now, as a practicing trial attorney at a 24-lawyer firm in Boston, Massachusetts, I am grateful for my Amherst experiences -- both inside and outside of the classroom -- and for the benefits that the Amherst reputation has sent my way."  She felt that the sense of community service that has become a part of her lifestyle was "spawned during my Amherst years, during which I served on the Student Assembly and played an integral part in the planning and execution of many of the rallies and community events that occurred in the Five College area during my [time there].  Today, I can say that my Amherst education and experience played a supreme role in my development as an attorney and has made me a concerned and active citizen.  It has also given my family, who emigrated from Panama, a sense of great pride in my accomplishments.  I owe many of these accomplishments to my Amherst experience. ... I encourage all Amherst students and graduates, indeed, all young people -- college-educated or not -- to pursue their dreams and make their voices heard." 

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May 27, 1999

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Contact

No data available

Family

No data available

Personal

No data available

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Professional

Employment Information

Former

• Attorney

  Sugarman Rogers Barshak & Cohen, P.C.

  Start:

  02/1995

  End:

  05/1999
• Law Clerk

  US District Court

  Start:

  09/1990

  End:

  06/1991
• Law Clerk

  Goodwin Procter LLP

  Start:

  01/1990

  End:

  08/1990
• Attorney

  Goodwin Procter LLP

  Start:

  01/1990

  End:

  05/1999
• Divestmen Coord

  New York Public Interest Research Group

  Start:

  01/1985

  End:

  06/1987

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Amherst

Reunion Class

• 1984

Graduation Year

• 1984

Major(s)

• Political Science

Other Academic

Secondary Schools

• Marymount School of New York

Higher Ed

• Fordham University

  Field of Study:

  Law

  Degree:

  Doctor of Jurisprudence

  Year:

  1990

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Amherst

Volunteering

• Wade Fellow

  Role:

  Member

  Start:

  July 1998

  End:

  May 1999
• Alumni Fund

  Role:

  Associate Agent

  End:

  May 1999

Athletics

• Women's Volleyball

Post-Graduate

Publications/ Creative Works

• Note-'Times Baring and Realty...'Urb Law 1989
• Writing/Rsrch Edit-Urban Law Journal 1989-90
• Urban Law Journal Member 1988-89
• Articles in the 'Boston Bar Journal'

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A00215 - Leopold W. Giscombe, Amherst College Class of 1984, Cardinal Spellman High School (Bronx, New York)

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Photo added by Mark Womack

 

Leopold Giscombe

Birth

1960

Death

1985 (aged 24–25)

Burial

Mount Hope Cemetery

Hastings-on-Hudson, Westchester County, New York, USAShow MapGPS-Latitude: 40.9860721, Longitude: -73.8542172

Memorial ID

· View Source

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Contact

No data available

Family

No data available

Personal

No data available

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Professional

No data available

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Amherst

Reunion Class

• 1984

Other Academic

Secondary Schools

• Cardinal Spellman High School

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Amherst

Affinities

• Black Alumni

Post-Graduate

No data available

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