10th REUNION AWARDEE – PATRICK HORVATH
Patrick Horvath received the inaugural Fred Woodbridge Award at our tenth reunion in 1992. Between graduation and our tenth reunion, Patrick devoted himself to working with and for homeless youth and adults in New York City. From 1982 – 84, he worked as a full-time volunteer with homeless youth in the Times Square area of New York City, where he lived in and eventually became board president of an international lay Catholic community that had volunteer programs in five cities and three countries. After attending Harvard Law School where he was the president of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau and from which he graduated cum laude in 1987, he received a post-graduate fellowship from his classmates to become the first staff attorney at the Urban Justice Center (UJC) in New York. At the time of our tenth reunion, Patrick was Associate Director of the UJC and directed its Homelessness Outreach and Prevention Project. In his twelve and a half years there, Patrick represented single adult homeless men and women in civil matters ranging from individual public benefits disputes to class action lawsuits. He also helped to grow an organization that now employs 80 attorneys and staff spread over nine projects. Patrick moved to Denver, CO in early 2000 for family reasons. Since then, Patrick has been the director of the Strengthening Neighborhoods Program at The Denver Foundation, the non-profit publicly supported community foundation for the Denver metro region. Strengthening Neighborhoods works in low-income communities throughout the Denver area to help residents take action on the issues that concern them most. His program supports low-income resident leaders in social change projects through grant making and also engages in direct community organizing at the neighborhood level. He is a board member of Grassroots Grantmakers, a national affinity group of the Council on Foundations that supports neighborhood grantmaking focused on civic participation and social change. Patrick is married to Michele Sienkiewicz, Associate Clinical Professor in the Graduate School of Social Work at the University of Denver. Their oldest daughter, Katie, who attended the first Woodbridge Award presentation when she was ten days old, is now a member of the Princeton class of 2015. Her siblings include Nick, Jack, and Mariah.
15th REUNION AWARDEE – SCOTT OOSTDYK
Scott Oostdyk is a partner in McGuireWoods' litigation section and the firm's pro bono partner, with responsibility for free legal work in 17 offices. He is co-chair of the Virginia Bar Association's Pro Bono Committee, and runs the Virginia Supreme Court's biennial pro bono summit. From 1995 to 1996 he served as Virginia's Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Resources. He was named by the American Bar Association as one of the 21 young lawyers to lead us into the 21st century. In 1994, he was named as young lawyer of the year by the Virginia Bar Association and also received the US Department of Justice's Award for Public Service in 1992.
Since receiving the Fred Woodbridge Award, the honors have continued to pour in. Most recently, Scott was named one of the "Best Lawyers in America" by Woodward/White, Inc. He has also been cited on multiple occasions as one of Virginia's Best Lawyers by Virginia Business Magazine.
20th REUNION AWARDEE – DALE CALDWELL
Dale is a member of the Board of Directors of the United States Tennis Association (USTA) which oversees the US Open (the largest annually occurring sporting event in the world). He has been the President and/or CEO of several government and nonprofit organizations including: Crossroads Theatre Company (which allowed him to be on stage to accept a Tony Award® on behalf of the theater in 1999); Middlesex Regional Educational Services Commission (MRESC); New Brunswick Board of Education; Asbury Park Housing Authority; and the USTA Eastern Section.
Dale has had the great honor of receiving numerous awards including the: “New Jersey School Board Member of the Year Award”; Business News New Jersey’s “40 Most Successful People Under 40 Award”; and, the International Tennis Hall of Fame’s Tennis Educational Merit Award. He has earned national rankings in tennis, triathlon and duathlon and completed the New York City, San Francisco and Athens, Greece marathons. In addition, he has raised tens of thousands of dollars for charity by running these marathons and completing three 500 mile bike rides.
25th REUNION AWARDEE – EVE THOMPSON
30th REUNION AWARDEE – BURNS STANFIELD
Burns Stanfield was ordained in 1991 to pastor Fourth Presbyterian Church in South Boston. Situated between two housing projects in a generally low-income area, Fourth Church then had 25 mostly elderly congregants. The church has evolved into a diverse and active group of 200 with a strong community presence. Stanfield and the church have been recognized for their work by the national Presbyterian Church (USA), Harvard, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and local papers. (“All that a dynamic church should be,” boasts The Boston Herald). At the core of the church’s mission over these twenty years has been a desire to meet neighborhood needs. When there was an uptick in juvenile crime, Stanfield worked with the Boston Police to develop an outreach program with local youth. Experiencing first-hand the challenges of working poor families, the church launched a free diaper distribution program. As the community reeled from a teen suicide epidemic, the congregation organized family mediation trainings and began the area’s first AA group for young people. Today, Stanfield and the church continue programs that have created key anchors for South Boston’s moderate-income families: three summer day camps which serve some 250 young people of varied ages with free meals, safe space, and classes in the arts; tutoring and supper during the school year; a food pantry serving 300 families every two weeks; teen mentoring; daily substance abuse recovery groups; ESL for new immigrants; robotics for the local elementary school; a seniors club; and afterschool programs in music, art, film and theater. “Teaching six-year olds how to deliver a line from Newsies or belt a song from Shrek is a personal highlight,” says Stanfield. Over the last three years, he has worked with a local foundation to train local youth in community organizing, and these youth have worked with church volunteers to increase local voting rates by at least 18% or more in each of the last three elections. Currently, the church is also collaborating with Citizens Bank in a “Moving from Debt to Assets” training program in financial literacy. Stanfield also teaches at Harvard Divinity School and Andover Newton Seminary. As president of the South Boston Neighborhood Development Corp., he is working on affordable housing for returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. For 2012, he has also been elected president of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization (GBIO), a community organizing network through which Christian, Muslim and Jewish congregations have worked together to create affordable housing, develop youth jobs, and improve Boston schools, among other issues. GBIO helped secure the landmark Massachusetts universal health care bill in 2006; and this year Stanfield and GBIO will work with other stakeholders on a Health Care Cost Containment bill.
35th REUNION AWARDEE – LARRY ARATA
After graduating, Larry worked in software sales for 20
years for various companies including McDonnell Douglas Automation and
Comshare. At every hiccup in his sales career, he thought about the calling he
thought he heard his senior year, to become a teacher and coach. Larry wanted
to do for other kids what his teachers and coaches did for him, steering him
from being a troubled eighth and ninth grader, often in trouble, to playing
football for the Tigers a few short years later. From ’87-’02, he volunteered
with his church as a Sunday school teacher, youth group advisor and mentor to
six fatherless young men from the former Schuylkill Falls federal housing
project in Philadelphia. He was moved by the vast differences between the level
of academic and athletic opportunities afforded the boys he mentored in the
city and those available to his children a few miles away in the suburbs. Then
his mother found out she had stage four breast cancer. She told him, “If being
a teacher and coach is what you always have wanted to do, what you always
thought God wanted you to do, then do it because none of us is guaranteed
tomorrow.” Being a stereotypical Irish-American mamma’s boy, Larry did what his
mother told him to do. More remarkable was the complete support provided by his
wife, Heather, going back to work to support his teaching habit. How many wives
would say, “Sure honey, go ahead and take a $100,000 pay cut and spend over
$25,000 we don’t have on your master’s degree.” Together, the couple has
managed to navigate Larry’s transition to teaching and coaching in the
Philadelphia public schools during the past fifteen years. Larry teaches
English and history, focusing on improving his students’ writing skills and
challenging them to form and defend their opinions. He relishes one on one
conversations with his kids, showing them he cares, earning the right to
provide advice. Larry loves coaching football and wrestling and continues to
believe that nothing short of the love of God and family shapes the character
of a young person as much as the rigors of being a true student-athlete. With
the help of many of his generous classmates from Princeton, Larry raised over $66,000
during four campaigns, starting two football programs and enabling two others
to send players to overnight summer camps at Villanova University. His best
days have been spent seeing students present the dreaded senior project and
celebrating their successes. The worst times have been attending funerals for two
of his students who were murdered in the streets. These past fifteen years have
been extremely challenging and rewarding for Larry. He is not sure he can do it
for another eleven years but whatever he does, it will be related to providing
our youth with the opportunities he had, hopefully leading a few to Tigertown.
