Three to Receive UW Distinguished Alumni Awards

Oct. 4, 2006 -- Three University of Wyoming graduates who became leaders in their respective fields will be honored with Distinguished Alumni Awards during UW Homecoming Oct. 13-14.

They are legendary Wyoming sports figure Keith Bloom of Powell (B.S. '50); renowned physical anthropologist Doug Owsley (B.S. '73), who grew up in Sheridan, Laramie and Lusk; and consultant and speaker Mary Ellen Smyth, (B.A. '56, 'MA '60) who was raised in Thermopolis and Laramie.

They will attend several Homecoming activities, will ride in the parade that starts at 9:30 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 14, attend the all-alumni luncheon after the parade, and be recognized during the football game with Utah at 1 p.m.

As a teenager, Bloom's favorite sport was whatever was in season, and at PHS he earned 12 varsity letters and all-state honors in football, basketball and track.

After graduation, Bloom entered military service, but continued to play basketball. He had offers to play professionally, but legendary UW coach Ev Shelton offered him a scholarship to play for his beloved Cowboys.

Shelton urged him to try football and baseball at UW, and Bloom is one of only three athletes in the history of UW sports to earn varsity letters in three separate sports. His athletic endeavors led him to play professionally for a now defunct basketball league and two years in the Brooklyn Dodgers minor league system.

After teaching and coaching in Evanston for two years, Bloom returned to Park County, where he taught and coached for 38 years, retiring in 1992. He taught general science, social studies, physical education, drivers education, coached many of the Panther teams and was the school's athletics director.

"Working with young people helped me stay young in my thinking," Bloom says. "It helped me stay young at heart."

Bloom has remained close to UW, serving as president of the UW Alumni Association in 1979 after three years on the board. He was inducted into the UW Athletics Hall of Fame in 1996 and was chosen as one of the Top 50 Athletes of the Century and one of five finalists in the sports division of the Wyoming Citizen of the Century search. He was inducted into the Wyoming Sports Hall of Fame in 2002.

When Owsley was a boy, he didn't even know what a physical anthropologist was, let alone dream he'd become one of the most recognized experts in the field.

The son of a game warden, Owsley attended UW to pursue an undergraduate degree in zoology. In a UW introductory anthropology course, he discovered a passion and aptitude for the subject and changed his career path. He went on to earn master's and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Tennessee and then taught at the collegiate level.

Married to a woman he'd met as a child at a Lusk playground, Owlsey is now the curator and division head for physical anthropology at the Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution.

During his distinguished career, Owsley has been involved in nationally-recognized projects, including identifying the crew of the Civil War Confederate submarine CSS Hunley and determining whether Kennewick Man, a 9,600 year-old skeleton discovered in Washington state, was a direct ancestor of an existing Native American tribe.

He also has worked closely with law enforcement agencies to identify the remains of crime victims and those who died at the Branch Davidian complex in Waco, Texas, removed the anonymity of Croatian war victims, and identified the remains of U.S. service personnel serving in a variety of combat zones.

In November 2005, Smithsonian magazine included him, along with software pioneer Bill Gates, astronaut Sally Ride, and filmmaker Steven Spielberg, among "35 Who Made a Difference." The magazine recognized artists, scholars and scientists who have enriched American life.

Smyth's mother was an orphan forced to quit school to take care of other children in the orphanage, but as a mother she stressed that her children go to college. "College education was the secret to doing better than she did," Smyth says.

She earned several scholarships to UW, where she double-majored in English and speech and theater. After graduation, she taught high school before returning to UW to earn a master's degree in theater. She then taught at Penn State University before returning to teach at UW after learning her mother had leukemia. She married UW alumnus Pat Smyth. After her mother died, they moved to Chicago, where she taught high school English and speech.

Her husband started one of the nation's largest solo medical practices, and she managed it. "I didn't know a thing, but boy, did I learn fast," she says.

In the 1980s her son and husband died three years apart. "My son and I were left pretty much clinging to each other. But you learn to cope," she says.

Smyth started successful businesses, as a consultant to doctors, and as a speaker and trainer, helping boards of all kinds to organize and devise strategic plans. Her work grew out of her involvement with the American Association of University Women (AAUW), where she served as national president from 2001-2005. Smyth also served on the UW Foundation's national capital campaign committee to build the Centennial Complex and the Art Museum.

"I was blessed with a good education, provided by UW, and the vision to continue learning, exploring, growing," she says. "Once you 'learn how to learn,' the world opens up. It certainly did for this girl from Thermopolis."

Posted on Wednesday, October 04, 2006