Arnie Ferrin’s son and grandson tell the unlikely tale of the 1944 championship team.
The year was 1944, and the University of Utah’s Einar Nielsen Field House, which was to have been the home court for the men’s basketball team, had been requisitioned by the Army to serve as barracks for troops. All the team’s senior players had been drafted into the military. The only freshmen who were eligible for the team were premed, predental, or engineering students—who could all postpone military enlistment until after graduation—or those who couldn’t enlist because of health issues. Few colleges had teams, and wartime restrictions on gasoline and buses made it difficult to even schedule games.
Despite the stringencies, U Basketball Coach Vadal Peterson cobbled together an unlikely team with four freshmen as starters: Bob Lewis ex’47, Herb Wilkinson ex’46, Dick Smuin BS’50, and Arnie Ferrin BS’66 (who later returned to the U for his degree). A pre-med sophomore, Fred Sheffield BA’45, was the fifth starter. Wat Misaka BS’48, a talented player and a transfer student in engineering, was one of two Japanese Americans on the team, and he at first sat on the bench, although he later played a crucial role in the team’s success. The team’s tenacity and skill, combined with the unique circumstances of college athletics during World War II and a terrible accident for a top team in the nation, the University of Arkansas, led the Utes to the 1944 NCAA championship. The Utes beat Dartmouth, 42-40, in the first overtime game in NCAA Tournament history.
That story of March Madness in a different time has now been told by Ferrin’s son Tres Ferrin BS’71 and grandson Josh Ferrin BA’04 in a new book, Blitz Kids: The Cinderella Story of the 1944 University of Utah National Championship Basketball Team, published in February by Gibbs Smith. Arnie Ferrin went on to play professional basketball with the Minneapolis Lakers for three years, was general manager of the Utah Stars of the American Basketball Association, and eventually became the U’s athletics director, until his retirement in 1989. Josh and Tres Ferrin say they grew up hearing his recollections of that memorable 1944 team and decided they should be the ones to tell the story in its entirety.
“Luckily for us, most of the players are still around,” says Josh Ferrin. “We did hours and hours of phone calls and lots of research through old newspapers and archives to try to piece together the best tale we could find.”
The resulting book tells the story in narrative form. “We wanted this to read like a movie,” Josh Ferrin says. Indeed, the two authors sold the movie rights to the book before they picked a publisher. The movie is in preproduction, with a screenplay written and co-producers and distributors in place.
As for Arnie Ferrin, he’s pleased his son and grandson are the ones to tell the tale. “He has really enjoyed seeing it come full circle,” Josh Ferrin says.
Read more about the 1944 championship game and player Wat Misaka, who broke the color barrier in pro basketball, in the Spring 2010 Continuum feature “That’s Just How It Was.”
Web Exclusives
This 30-minute video shows highlights of the 1944 NCAA Championship game. The video clip has no audio. (Video courtesy Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah)
One U professor of architecture’s mountain home is an experiment in sustainability.
Jörg Rügemer and his family wake to a postcard view of pines against a cornflower-blue sky. The room is quiet, and the air is sweet at 7,000 feet above sea level. No furnace rumbles from below, and best of all, no heating bill lurks in the mailbox. If Rügemer has his way, this could be the reality of future building throughout the United States.
Rügemer, an assistant professor in the University of Utah’s College of Architecture + Planning, has built what he hopes is Utah’s most energy-efficient and cost-effective home.
The project, started in May and completed in September, is a personal research experiment to prove it is possible to build affordable, energy-efficient homes for northern Utah’s climate. Rügemer will monitor the home for energy savings, and the results will serve as a model for consumers, architects, and builders wishing to construct energy-efficient buildings.
The 125 Haus—named for its street address—is a 2,400-square-foot, three-bedroom home perched in the wooded slopes of Summit Park near Park City. Designed to use just 10 percent of the energy consumption of standard buildings, the home is a labor of love for Rügemer, who hopes the results will pave the way for more energy-efficient building in the U.S.
http://vimeo.com/32336279
Rügemer, who came to the U in 2006, grew up in Cologne, Germany, and his passion for sustainable building was spurred by the environmental standards of his homeland. He studied architecture there, where the building standard is 50 to 60 percent more energy efficient than in the United States, he says. “Here in the U.S., people equate energy-efficient building to technology, solar panels, and geothermal heating. This means a large price tag. I want to prove that it’s possible to build a highly energy-efficient house at standard cost,” he says.
The 125 Haus faces south and was designed with large front windows to capture the southern heat in the winter. (Photo by Scot Zimmerman)
Efficiency in home design is vital, because the building sector consumes 77 percent of all electricity produced in the United States and produces nearly half of U.S. carbon-dioxide emissions, according to Rügemer. About 70 million new housing units are projected to be built within the next three decades.
“Architecture today—if applied correctly—has the potential to significantly reduce energy consumption and dependence on fossil fuels through energy-efficient, passive design and construction,” he says. “With the 125 Haus, we aim to capture those savings and make structures affordable and attractive to a broad clientele.”
To pursue his experiment in Summit Park, Rügemer used a small University of Utah grant to install the necessary monitoring equipment and pay a research assistant for the monitoring process; he paid for the rest of the costs himself. He intends for the home to be a living laboratory, and he holds classes in the basement studio he designed for students to learn about “passive” architecture.
“In the U.S., a lot of weight is given to LEED building, but people aren’t familiar with passive architecture and its simplicity, or its affordability,” he says.
LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is an internationally recognized green building certification system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council. The system measures factors such as a building site’s ecosystem impact and a building’s water and energy efficiency. Within that broad realm of sustainable construction, a “passive house” is built with elements that reduce energy consumption—thick insulation, airtightness, insulated glazing, and heat recovery ventilation—and needs no active heating. Such houses are kept warm passively, using only the existing internal heat sources, solar energy admitted by the windows, and by heating the fresh air supply.
It’s a simple concept, but making it a reality at the 125 Haus required a unique collaboration of experts.
Unlike most residential projects in which an architect designs the home and then hands the package over to a general contractor to build the structure, Rügemer was embedded in the entire process as architect, developer, design-builder, and principal investigator.
“The architect usually has little control over the execution of the project,” he says. “In the case of the 125 Haus, this would have been disastrous with regard to its energy efficiency and cost effectiveness. Only through a tight collaboration between the architect and the builder [Garbett Homes] were we able to keep the cost at market-rate level, because we critically questioned each component, assembly method, and material for its efficiency and cost.”
The building department of Summit County, where the home is located, also played a crucial role through its active involvement in the planning and building process. “They had to be convinced that such a building would perform without a regular heating system. This required a process in which they were involved, rather than being confronted with a final result,” says Rügemer.
“We ran more than 35 simulations testing different design configurations, wall systems, and components to optimize performance with regard to efficiency and costs,” he says. “Based on the simulations, this house should be approximately 90 percent more energy efficient than the built-to-code International Energy Conservation Codes standard buildings.”
U Professor Jörg Rügemer and his wife, Manuela, relax in the thick-walled, energy-efficient 125 Haus. (Photo by Scot Zimmerman)
With a construction price of $120 per square foot, the 125 Haus is on par with market standard for new home construction: More energy efficient, yet built at a cost of around $250,000.
What made the difference?
“Building low-tech,” he says, “and site-specific.”
Rügemer’s house lies at the end of a cul-de-sac on a mountainside. South facing, it was designed with large front windows to capture the southern heat in the winter and framed by metal shades to shield the summer sun. Narrow, horizontal windows provide snapshots of the forest to the north while limiting heat and cooling loss.
“If we rotate this house by just 15 degrees, the energy efficiency would fail,” explains Rügemer. “It was designed specifically for this location and exposure.”
Virtually airtight, the house is primarily heated by passive solar energy and by internal energy from people and electrical equipment. A small heat-recovery ventilator paired with an instant gas hot water heater supply the remaining heat. The ventilator recovers 95 percent of outgoing heat and recycles it, providing a constant, balanced fresh air supply. In summer, cool mountain air is flushed through the house at night using the windows and the central staircase as a thermal chimney. The house’s insulation maintains the cool temperatures throughout the day.
An innovative wall and roof system based on 11-inch-thick walls with four inches of foam provides an insulation rating nearly four times that of standard buildings. Likewise, the flat roof, built with joists spaced eight inches apart rather than the usual 16 inches, utilizes the 400 inches of annual snowfall as a thermal blanket, increasing its insulation with every foot of snow.
An outdoor enthusiast and avid skier, Rügemer also designed the home to meet his family’s active lifestyle. Taking into account the southern exposure, a small but comfortable patio offers shade in the summer and opportunity for sun soaking in the winter.
“We experienced these patios skiing in Switzerland and loved that we could sit outside in the sun, even in winter, and wanted this for our own home,” he says.
The house itself is a little slice of Europe. Rügemer’s space-conscious design includes in-wall toilet-water tanks and an instant hot-water heater to maximize usable living space. The two-car garage is designed for smaller, energy-efficient vehicles, while the kitchen is adorned with European appliances.
When asked if he is concerned how these design choices may affect resale, Rügemer is optimistic that a home without a heating bill will win over the hearts of real estate consumers.
“Albert Einstein once said, ‘Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler,’ ” he says. “In today’s world, we have lost this kind of approach in many regards, which means we are no longer able to concentrate on the essence of things. This applies to architecture, too.”
—Taunya Dressler BA’96 (along with a master’s from the SIT Graduate Institute) is assistant dean for undergraduate affairs with the College of Humanities.
President Barack Obama presents the National Medal of Science to University of Utah chemist Peter J. Stang on October 21, during a ceremony at the White House. / AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais
University of Utah organic chemist Peter J. Stang has won a National Medal of Science–the highest U.S. honor for a scientist or engineer–and was honored by President Barack Obama during a ceremony at the White House on October 21.
“I am very humbled, honored, and pleased,” says Stang, a Distinguished Professor of chemistry and former dean of the University of Utah College of Science. “To date, I have had approximately 100 postdoctoral students and Ph.D. students whom I mentored, and this recognizes their work, too.”
Stang was among seven scientists honored with the Medal of Science and five inventors honored with a National Medal in Technology and Innovation. He was cited by the White House “for his creative contributions to the development of organic supramolecular chemistry and for his outstanding and unique record of public service.”
Stang has pioneered new methods in a field called supramolecular chemistry for the self-assembly of molecules–large molecules that mimic nature and build themselves from a mixture of pre-designed chemical building blocks.
“It’s like a Lego set with individual building units,” Stang says. “You can make complicated structures and systems.”
These molecules, created through what chemists call rational design, have many uses, from new drug-delivery vehicles against cancer to substances with promise as modern catalysts to speed chemical reactions in petroleum refining.
Stang received his undergraduate degree from DePaul University in 1963 and his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1966. He joined the University of Utah faculty in 1969 and became Distinguished Professor in 1992. He chaired the Department of Chemistry from 1989 to 1995, and served as dean of the College of Science from 1997 to 2007.
Watch a video of Peter Stang accepting the National Medal of Science at the White House,
U Community Weighs In On Presidential Search
Meetings with University of Utah constituent groups were held in late summer and early fall to help define the criteria most important to consider in selecting the next University president. Search committee members (20 total) spoke with faculty, staff, students, alumni, and business-community representatives in meetings from Salt Lake City to St. George (where the U has a satellite campus for certain advanced programs).
Many people who attended the meetings talked about the need for a leader who is a good communicator. Keven Rowe BS’83 JD’86, president of the U’s Alumni Association and a search committee member, said during a meeting with alumni, “They want someone who can have a strong academic and community presence, someone who can reach out to the Legislature and the community and still be an academic leader.”
Dinesh Patel, chair of the USTAR Governing Authority and also a search committee member, told the alumni the U community’s expectations are high. “They want a superhuman,” he said. “Someone has to be academically stellar,” he added. “For me, personally, it’s an out-of-the-box thinker.”
A recurring theme was the importance of a new president’s ability to woo legislators without sacrificing the U’s integrity. Many urged the committee to select a president capable of communicating the University’s academic and economic impact while ensuring that the Legislature contributes appropriate funding for the U.
Numerous comments from the community suggested the new president should favor allowing guns on campus—and not surprisingly, a raft of comments recommended the opposite.
Comments from faculty and students in the Academic Senate ranged from wanting someone who would strongly support the U’s commitment to becoming carbon neutral by 2050 to seeking a fearless champion of the importance of the humanities in a university education. One faculty member stated, “The new president should be a ‘renaissance’ person in spirit who values all sides of the academic world—teaching and research, sciences and humanities; a diplomat who is firm in dealing with legislators.”
Finalists for the position are expected to be identified in early 2012.
New Life For an Old Building
Meldrum House, on the southeast corner of 1300 East and 200 South in Salt Lake City, will house actors and other artists visiting the University of Utah.
The historic but run-down building on the southeast corner of 1300 East and 200 South in Salt Lake City has been transformed during the past year from a neglected boarding house to “Meldrum House,” an attractive apartment building that visiting artists to the University of Utah campus will call home. Pioneer Theatre Company (PTC) and Cowboy Partners, which did the renovation work, purchased the building and spent the past year gutting the inside to create compact apartments from the original common-area spaces. Cowboy Partners retains ownership of the ground floor and will lease it as restaurant space. PTC owns the upper floors and has created one-bedroom living spaces for the professional actors, directors, designers, and musicians who come to Salt Lake City to participate in performances on campus. The rooms have high ceilings and big windows, and all have stovetops, refrigerators, and their own heating and air conditioning systems. The second floor has a laundry room and a gathering space for meetings and social events. During the academic year, the apartments will be used 80 percent of the time by PTC, with the remaining 20 percent for use by other campus entities. During the summer, that proportion will reverse.
Support Center Aims to Help Veterans at the U
Roger Perkins / Photo by Lawrence Boye
The University of Utah recently established a Veterans Support Center to help veterans transition into the sometimes unnerving world of civilian life. The center, located on the first floor of the Olpin Union Building, is under the direction of Roger L. Perkins.
Perkins notes that the center is set up to help with the myriad needs of any student navigating a large university system for the first time, in addition to the specific needs that may arise in the veteran population. “The center and our staff can help with anything from finding a tutor for that pesky organic chemistry class to helping find part-time employment, to arranging counseling for post-traumatic stress disorder,” Perkins says.
The center’s team is also working to help veterans with their educational benefits. Perkins and the staff advise students about how to apply for veterans benefits and where to go on campus for various services. They also act as advocates for student veterans should the need arise.
The Veterans Support Center falls under the auspices of Student Affairs at the University. Associate Vice President for Student Development Kari Ellingson says that the office’s creation was spurred by newly collected data on student veterans’ issues, coupled with establishing the National Center for Veterans Studies on campus and support from the Office of Budget and Planning.
David Rudd, dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Science and co-director of the veterans-studies center, explains there is a great need to provide support for this portion of the population at large. “After 10 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, large numbers of veterans will be making their way to college and university campuses around the country. In addition to navigating a somewhat complex Veterans Affairs benefit process, a student veteran service center will allow us to target additional needs across the full academic and social spectrum.”
The center’s opening comes at a critical time for U.S. veterans. A recent study by Rudd indicates that up to half of student veterans have contemplated suicide. Rudd’s study garnered national press coverage, including an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (available at http://chronicle.com/article/Half-of-Student-Veterans-Have/128524).
Campus Notebook
Bryan Ritchie to Lead Technology Commercialization Office
Bryan Ritchie
The University of Utah has selected Bryan Ritchie to be the next director of the Technology Commercialization Office. The office manages the University’s intellectual property, which includes collecting invention disclosures, filing patents, licensing technologies, and fostering startup companies. Ritchie joins the U from James Madison College, a residential college that is part of Michigan State University, where he served as a professor of political economy with a focus on international relations. He also was director of the Michigan State Entrepreneur Network and co-director of the Michigan Center for Innovation and Economic Prosperity. He holds a doctorate in political economy from Emory University, a master of business administration from Brigham Young University, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.
U Research Dollars Hold Steady, Not Counting Stimulus Money
The University of Utah collected nearly $411 million in research grants and related funding during the recently ended 2011 fiscal year. The total was down 8.8 percent from the previous fiscal year, due to an expected sharp drop in federal economic stimulus money. Not counting stimulus money, funding for research and related projects at the University remained flat at $368,489,250 in the 2011 fiscal year, a small increase over the 2010 fiscal year’s $368,142,468. From July 1, 2010, through June 30, 2011, the University was awarded $410,563,908 in research grants, contracts, and outside money. That was 8.8 percent below the $450,336,188 awarded during the 2010 fiscal year. Federal economic stimulus funding—provided by the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009—fell to $42.1 million in the 2011 fiscal year, a decrease of about $40 million from the $82.2 million the U received in the 2010 fiscal year.
Former Middle East Center Head Files Lawsuit After Being Fired
Former University political scientist and head of the Middle East Center Bahman Bakhtiari was fired from the U in late June. Bakhtiari had been accused of failing to correctly cite passages used in materials submitted to the U when he applied for a tenured position, as well as plagiarizing other published materials. A faculty panel recommended suspension and a public reprimand, but that decision was overruled by Lorris Betz, the University’s interim president, who noted in his decision, “The only appropriate sanction in this case is dismissal, which is necessary to preserve the academic integrity of the institution and to restore public confidence in the University.” Bakhtiari responded by filing suit against Professor Peter Sluglett, the Middle East Center’s former director. The lawsuit alleges that senior faculty in the program—including Sluglett—conducted a smear campaign against Bakhtiari that resulted in his dismissal from the U. The case is pending in Third District Court.
Grant Provides Funding for Student Newspaper Digitization
Thanks to a grant from the Lawrence T. and Janet T. Dee Foundation, the J. Willard Marriott Library will be digitizing issues of The Daily Utah Chronicle from 1940 to 1994, making them freely accessible via the Web. The library’s Utah Digital Newspapers program is recognized as one of the leaders in newspaper digitization in the United States. Digitizing the Chronicle issues will make the history contained within them more accessible to students, faculty, staff, alumni, and other researchers. Visit http://digitalnewspapers.org to view the Utah Digital Newspapers archive.
Construction Begins on $22 Million Thatcher Biochemistry Building
An artist’s rendering shows the Thatcher Building for Biological and Biophysical Chemistry.
Ground breaking for the new $22 million Thatcher Building for Biological and Biophysical Chemistry was held September 22. Located adjacent to the southwest corner of the Henry Eyring Chemistry Building, the five-story, 41,000-square-foot structure will provide space for a complex of mass spectrometers to analyze chemicals, one floor for advanced undergraduate teaching laboratories, organic and biochemical synthesis labs, world-class imaging and spectroscopy equipment, and a new campus home for theoretical chemistry. The building is scheduled to open by spring 2013. The facility is named in honor of the Lawrence E. and Helen F. Thatcher family of Salt Lake City in recognition of their support in providing a lead gift to the project. The National Institutes of Health contributed $8 million toward the building’s construction.
Learning Center Will Develop Apps for Teaching Neuroscience
In September, the Genetic Science Learning Center in the Department of Human Genetics was awarded $1.33 million by the National Institutes of Health to create a neuroscience curriculum for middle and high school students designed for fast-growing classroom technologies such as interactive white boards and touch pads (e.g., the iPad and Xoom). The Neuroscience of Our Senses will employ multimedia
and touch interface to engage students in the anatomy, physiology, and function of the five senses. The lessons will incorporate research being conducted at the U’s Brain Institute, conveying the subject’s immediacy and relevance to human health. To be completed in 2016, the project will be presented in workshops to 850 secondary school teachers nationwide and will be available to the public as freely downloadable apps.
In Memoriam
Esther Fujimoto ex’91, 49, a University of Utah scientist who was on a team that helped discover a breast cancer gene
Billings Witbeck BS’57, 82, a longtime University of Utah manager in education administration
WEB EXTRA: Valene Smith (featured in this issue’s Through The Years) has released a documentary of the 1976 Inupiat Paitot (Eskimo Heritage) gathering, where some 80 Inupiat elders from the 11 villages of the Northwest Arctic Native Association (now simply NANA) territories came for two weeks that March to have their teachings recorded. More….
Meetings with University of Utah constituent groups were held in late summer and early fall to help define the criteria most important to consider in selecting the next University president. Search committee members (20 total) spoke with faculty, staff, students, alumni, and business-community representatives in meetings from Salt Lake City to St. George (where the U has a satellite campus for certain advanced programs).
