6 DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI INDUCTED IN WEST HIGH HALL OF HONOR

The Hall of Honor program has two goals, says '06/'07 Alumni Association President William Foote ’50. One is to honor distinguished alumni for their achievements. The other is to raise the self-expectations of West Aurora High School students with the realization that the alumni grew up in their neighborhoods and attended their school.

2007 Honorees

H. Ashley Barber
Class of 1929
H. Ashley Barber (“Ash”) was an inventor of road building and materials handling equipment covered by 16 U.S. patents and a number of foreign patents. He was instrumental in applying the continuous principle of material handling and processing to a variety of applications. He played a major role in the development, testing and introduction of the first successful asphalt-paving machine and the continuous asphalt mixing plant that eventually were utilized all over the world. In addition, he is responsible for many of the innovations that are still used on virtually all asphalt pavers. After graduation from West High, where he was a student leader and football captain, Barber earned a degree in mechanical engineering in 1933 from the University of Illinois and joined Barber-Greene Mfg. Co. He was elected president in 1954 and retired as chairman in 1976. Barber served on the boards of Copley Memorial Hospital, Aurora Redevelopment Commission and Northern Illinois Gas. He was a member of the Illinois Governor’s Advisory Council and the Governing Board of the Illinois Council on Economic Education.

Kathleen L. (Forsell) Caldwell
Class of 1979
As a research chemist, Kathleen L. Caldwell tackles diverse health issues from iodine deficiency and lead poisoning, leading causes of preventable brain damage in children to emergency response preparation for chemicial/radiological terrorism. Caldwell, who earned a Ph.D in Chemistry from Emory University in 1998, is assistant chief of the Inorganic Toxicology and Radionuclides Laboratories at the Centers for Disease Control. She also is an assistant chief in the Inorganic Toxicology and Nutrition Branch of the Division of Laboratory Science in the National Center for Environmental Health. Her duties include directing analyses for the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and multiple human health studies. She directs research activities toward developing improved analytical methods for the detection of arsenic, mercury, lead and cadmium in blood. Caldwell has contributed to the development of many new methodologies aimed at detecting harmful elements in the blood, including arsenic, lead, cadmium and mercury. Her work has helped insure future generations will be healthier generations

Dr. George Everitt
Class of 1961
When the space shuttle reenters Earth’s atmosphere, protective tiles shield the vehicle and its occupants from the extreme heat. The tiles contain heat-resistant ceramic fibers developed and patented by George Everitt during his work as a research chemist at 3M Corporation and Imation. Those same fibers today shield rockets and aircraft, protect NASCAR drivers, line furnaces, prevent flames from burning through doors and walls and are used in firefighters’ clothing. In addition to his important contributions as a scientist, Everitt brought his exceptional organizational skills to bear in his work with the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America.

R. Lawrence Hatchett
Class of 1977
Dr. R. Lawrence Hatchett, MD is a national leader in the field of urinary medicine. After a noteworthy career at Marquette University, where he was a student-body leader and four-year letterman on the varsity basketball team, Dr. Hatchett attended the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and later completed a fellowship through the Harvard University School of Medicine. He went into private practice in 1991 and became director of The Bladder Control Center of Tallahassee.  In 1996, Dr. Hatchett founded Incontinence Center Consultants, Inc., a national consulting firm designed to educate hospitals and physicians in the development of an incontinence niche through surgical training, market evaluation and practice marketing. Dr. Hatchett’s main interests lie in men’s health, benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH), erectile dysfunction, and kidney stone treatment and prevention.  As a leader in his field and has toured as a national speaker for a variety of health-related topics and consults on minimally invasive techniques to treat BPH. He founded Southern Illinois Urology in May of 2003 in Herrin, Ill.

Edward Ochsenschlager
Class of 1950
Edward L. Ochsenschlager, Professor Emeritus at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, chaired the Department of Classical Languages for 8 years, the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology for 7 years, served on the Committee for Administrative Policy for 15 years and founded and directed the CUNY Archaeological Research Institute.

He served as the Director or Assistant Director of excavations at Aphrodisias in Turkey, Thumuis, Mendes and Taposiris  Magna in Egypt, Sirmium in Yugoslavia, al-Hiba in Iraq, and Jujah in Yemen for, among others, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Institute of Fine Arts  of NYU,  the Brooklyn Museum, the Oriental Institute  of the University of Chicago and the  Detroit Museum of Art with the support of the National Endowment for the  Humanities, The National Science Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and many private foundations.  He has lectured extensively and given guest seminars at leading Universities both here and abroad.

Ochsenschlager has authored more than 40 books and articles, among them his 2004 book “Iraq’s Marsh Arabs in the Garden of Eden,” which has made a significant contribution to the discipline of ethnoarchaeology and recorded a way of life which no longer exists. His most recent work focuses on the relationship between classification, style and visual perception and a cognitive study of the link between the human mind and the origins of art.

Jacqueline Pongracic
Class of 1979
Jacqueline A. Pongracic, MD is working toward the elimination of children having to suffer from allergies and asthma. Featured in Chicago Magazine as one of Chicago’s top doctors of 2006, Dr. Pongracic heads the Division of Allergy and Immunology at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago and is Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. Her clinical practice and research have focused on inner-city asthma and food allergy. She has been active in advocacy initiatives for children at the state and national level. She has also been an educator, teaching medical students, physicians, nurses and the public about food allergy and asthma. With her clinical practice and current academic research— a federally funded look at asthma among inner-city children and the Children’s Memorial Food Allergy Study—she is trying to find remedies for both of those afflictions. Pongracic is a 1985 graduate of the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University and completed postgraduate training at North Shore University Hospital & Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in 1988, and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1991.