Mike Ferguson ’91 was elected to Congress for the first time in the November 2000 elections. He represents north-central New Jersey’s 7th District. . . . H. David Prior ’69J.D. was selected by President Bush to be general counsel in the Department of Housing and Urban Development. . . . Ann Laine Combs ’78 was confirmed as assistant secretary of labor. She was vice president and chief counsel for pensions and retirement at the American Council of Life Insurers and had served as deputy assistant secretary of labor for pension and welfare benefits. . . . Bush nominated John F. Turner ’64 to become assistant secretary of state for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs. He has served as president and CEO of the Conservation Fund since 1993. He was director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from 1989 to 1993. The Conservation Fund is a non-profit group that aims to protect natural areas while balancing environmental and economic interests. . . . South Carolina’s attorney general, Republican Charlie Condon ’75, is running for governor. . . . Joseph Novak ’90J.D., formerly with the NATO desk in the Bureau of European Affairs at the State Department in Washington, D.C., has become head of the political section at the U.S. Embassy in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He also will be accredited to the Maldives Islands. . . . Jeff Lungren ’95 was named communications director for the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by his boss, Republican James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin. . . . Thomas G. Paese ’79, former secretary of administration under Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, has joined the law firm of Klett Rooney Lieber & Schorling in Pittsburgh as a shareholder in its government relations and corporate practice groups. . . . Joseph W. O’Reilly ’71, ’74J.D., was appointed a family court judge in Jefferson Country, Kentucky. . . . Rusty Hills ’84M.A. ran unopposed for re-election as chair of Michigan’s Republican Party. . . . Joseph Gower ’77Ph.D. was named 24th president of Loras College in Iowa. . . . Charles J. Dougherty ’73M.A., ’75Ph.D. was named 12th president of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. . . . Stephen J. Dollinger ’72, a psychology professor at Southern Illinois University, won the school’s highest teaching award for his innovative methods of teaching about the study of personality. His methods include autobiographical photo essays, behavior prediction games and an “illusion of control” lottery. . . . The Athenaeum Museum in the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg, Illinois, reportedly received more than 100 complaints when it exhibited the Dick Detzner ’80 painting the Last Pancake Breakfast. A parody of da Vinci’s The Last Supper, the piece substituted Mrs. Butterworth for Christ and Cap’n Crunch for Judas, with the Trix Rabbit, Tony the Tiger and other familiar cereal box personalities depicting the apostles. The painting was part of a series the Chicago-based artist dubbed Corporate Sacrilege. He said he hoped the images would get people to think about corporate power. . . . Salvatore G. Cilella Jr. ’63, ’66M.A. has been named executive director of the Indiana Historical Society. . . . Michael P. Esposito Jr. ’61, former chief financial officer and chief administrative officer of The Chase Manhattan Bank, joined the board of directors of LiveCapital, a leading provider of real-time credit and financing solutions for companies serving the business market . . . . Joe McCarthy ’87 was named chief financial officer of BlackHog, Inc., a provider of software for ordering materials over the Internet. . . . Richard W. Reinthaler ’70, ’73J.D., made the 2001 Guide to the World’s Leading Litigation Lawyers, which lists 662 lawyers from 42 countries, including 100 from the United States. . . . Ted Smith ’73, ’76J.D. was elected president of the Indiana Trial Lawyers Association. . . . Robert B. Clemens ’82J.D. was named president-elect of the Indiana chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates. . . . Kevin Hasson ’79, ’82M.A., ’85J.D., founder and president of the Becket Fund, a legal group that specializes in bringing suits that promote religious rights, was featured in the article “Religion-Oriented Legal Group Looks to Bush Court Picks” in the May 8, 2001, edition of The Wall Street Journal. . . . More than 1.4 million books were delivered through Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin in February as part of a literacy project funded by the James Flanigan Foundation in Chicago. Jim Flanigan ’94 was a football star at Notre Dame and later played for the Chicago Bears. Earlier this year he signed with the Green Bay Packers. . . . New Jersey state officials charged that a pharmacist in Paterson misread a doctor’s instructions and ignored warning signs when he told Ximena Clavijo ’98 to take a 190 milligram dose of the chemotherapy drug Lomustine once every night instead of once every six weeks, as prescribed by her doctor. According to a complaint filed against the pharmacist by state regulators, Clavijo, who had a brain tumor, took the medication daily for 21 consecutive days before dying during April 2000. . . . James Doyle ’70J.D. won an $800,000 award for his clients against Dillard’s department stores. A jury decided security personnel and an assistant manager of a Dillard’s in Texas acted negligently during a confrontation with an unruly customer, Doyle’s client, in 1994. The incident left the man brain dead. The family of the victim initially sought $30 million in damages. The case attracted national attention because the victim was African-American and the family alleged racial profiling had been a factor in the incident. . . . John Cerone ’98J.D. traveled to West Africa to serve as legal adviser to the attorney general of Sierra Leone in the government’s negotiations with the United Nations. The negotiations concerned establishment of a special court for war crimes in the conflict-torn country. In June Cerone became executive director of the War Crimes Research Office at American University’s Washington College of Law. . . . David Satterfield ’80 was named business editor of the San Jose Mercury News. He will oversee a staff of 50 that covers commerce and technology in Silicon Valley. . . . Lucio A. Noto ’59 retired as vice chairman and director of Exxon Mobil Corporation. . . . James J. Drury III ’64, vice chairman, Americas, of the global executive search consulting firm Spencer Stuart, was elected to the Board of Trustees of Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. . . . James K. Markey ’77, who once served in the law department of The Quaker Oats Company, has joined the Kellogg Company as vice president, chief counsel-securities and international . . . Steven G. Rothmeier ’68, chairman and CEO of Great Northern Capital, a Saint Paul, Minnesota-based private investment management firm, was elected a new director of SmartSignal Corporation, a software company in Lisle, Illinois. He previously served as chairman of the board and CEO of NWA, Inc. and its principal subsidiary, Northwest Airlines Inc. . . . David A. DeMuro ’74J.D. was recently named to the board of governors of the National Association of Securities Dealers, which owns and regulates the NASDAQ stock market. . . . Sean Elliott ’97J.D. has joined the Endeavor (talent) Agency in Beverly Hills. His department represents up-and-coming actos along with more established talent like Dustin Hoffman, Ben Affleck, Mark Wahlberg, Frances McDormand, Edward Norton and Matt Damon. . . . American Bob Kiley ’57, who turned around New York’s subway system, is trying to remedy the many problems of London’s Tube in his capacity as that city’s transport commissioner. . . . Richard Pacropis ’78, an internal-medicine specialist who directs student health at Villanova University, signaled a national alert this past spring when he diagnosed a fungal lung infection in students returning from spring break in Acapulco. After Pacropis made his diagnosis, more then 200 students from 37 colleges and universities in 18 states were found to be suffering from a similar illness. Nearly all had stayed in or visited the same hotel in Acapulco. . . . The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel did a feature this past April on the 50th anniversary of Wisconsin’s Tommy Veech ’52 playing in the 1951 Masters golf tournament while a junior at Notre Dame. Veech received an invitation to the Masters by reaching the quarterfinals of the 1950 U.S. Amateur tournament. He played three undistinguished rounds at Augusta before dropping out with intestinal flu. The golfer, who now lives most of the year in Vero Beach, Florida, had a sporadic professional career highlighted by a sixth-place finish at the 1964 Western Open. He told the paper he quit the PGA tour because the money wasn’t good enough. He also was hampered by a lifelong problem with obesity. Two-time PGA Player of the Year Billy Casper, who was at Notre Dame with Veech for less than two years starting in 1950, told the paper he thought Veech could have been one of the greats. . . . William O. Schmidt ’72 was sworn in as an associate judge of the 21st Judicial Circuit in Illinois after 23 years as Kankakee County’s chief public defender. . . . The Washington Post ran a lively feature August 2 on the Philosophy on Tap program, in which participants meet in a Washington bar for a philosophy lecture and discussion. V. Bradley Lewis ’96Ph.D., an assistant professor of philosophy at Catholic University, was one of two lecturers in the program, which was offered for the first time this year by the Smithsonian Associates, the continuing-education wing of the Smithsonian Institution.