SEPTEMBER 2000

COMPRESSION

Oscar winner

Alan Ball, writer of the movie, "American Beauty," which won five Oscars this year, should also be remembered for his time at FSU, where he studied theatre.

The film won best original screenplay (Ball's own oscar), best picture, best actor (Kevin Spacey), best director and best cinematography.

Ball, a sitcom writer, had never made a movie before he wrote "American Beauty."
He lived in Marietta, Ga., as a teenager, went to Marietta High School, then enrolled at the University of Georgia for his first year of college. After that, he transferred to Florida State.

"Doing sketch comedy at local clubs cut into my studies," he said about the college years. "I was really a terrible student. One of the great things about FSU is that it gave me time to write my own shows; a very practical education, you might say."

"American Beauty," a comedy about dysfunctional suburban households, has been a spectactacular success, but Ball has nevertheless returned to the sitcom career he once said he hated.

Alumni officers

The FSU Alumni Association has new officers:

·Dr. Tom Haney, ('64), Tallahassee: chairman of the board. Dr Haney has an orthopedic surgery and sports medicine practice.

·Tom Goldsworthy, ('67), Oklahoma City: chairman-elect. Goldsworthy is chairman and chief executive officer of Fremont Exploration Inc.

·Cheryl Beckert, ('72), Winter Haven: executive vice president. Beckert owns Cheryl Beckert State Farm Agency.

·Gene Walden, ('68), Middle-burg: secretary. Walden is president of McCurdy-Walden Inc. of Jacksonville.

·Mark Hillis, ('64), Atlanta: treasurer. Hillis is first vice president of Real Estate Finance, SunTrust Bank of Atlanta.

·Dr. Raymond Cottrell, ('69), Orlando: immediate past chair. Dr. Cottrell is a partner with Internal Medicine Specialists of Orlando.

·James H. Melton, ('75), Tallahassee: president. Melton has been associated with Florida State since 1969 and with the Association as COO since 1982.

Police courage

An FSU police officer who was shot in the line of duty last summer was honored in June by the Florida Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Christopher Lee, 34, was named "Outstanding Law Enforcement Officer" for the 1999-2000 year.

"It's a great honor to receive an award from the VFW," Lee said. "To me, you can't even compare what I did to the sacrifices these veterans have made for our country."

Lee was shot in the arm and chest July 30, 1999, by a Kentucky fugitive whom officers had arrested and taken to Tallahassee Memorial Hospital for treatment.
Lee was nominated for the award by FSU police Chief Carey Drayton.

He is credited with preventing a near-fatal situation from escalating after Wallace Ray Bolus, who was wanted on a sexual battery charge, shot him. Despite his injuries, Lee shouted warnings to hospital staff and officers outside the locked emergency-room doors and shoved Bolus into a bathroom, where Bolus killed himself with a gunshot to his head.

In December 1999, the FSU Police Department voted Lee the 1999 Officer of the Year.

Loss of male fish

As a result of nearly 10 years of research conducted by FSU marine biologists Felicia Coleman and Christopher Koenig, the National Oceanic and Atmo-spheric Administration has created two experimental marine reserves in the Gulf of Mexico to find the best way to manage depleted reef-fish stocks.

Coleman and Koenig will conduct a detailed characterization of marine life in the area and map the reserves' combined 219 square miles of ocean bottom.

"This will give us the baseline information necessary to characterize the communities of important reef fishes - such as gag, scamp, red grouper and red snapper - and other important biological and geological characteristics of the habitat," Coleman said.

Ocean scientists are now looking at marine reserves as a means to protect endangered habitats and fish stocks, Coleman said.

Many reef fishes, especially grouper, come together once a year in spawning aggregations, which make them vulnerable to overfishing.

In the early 1990s, Coleman and Koenig were among the first scientists to recognize the pressure overfishing was placing on grouper stocks, including hampering the stocks' ability to reproduce because of loss of males.

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