alumni profiles

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She found a children’s book for her daughter to explain that she was going to have a baby, but Amelia Solomon Frahm, PR 1981, could not find one to tell about her battle with cancer. So she wrote and published one herself!

“Last year I decided to self-publish a children’s book called Tickles Tabitha’s Cancer-tankerous Mommy. It’s a version of a story I penned almost seven years ago while recovering from breast cancer,” Frahm said.

Despite the serious subject matter, the book is not a sad book. It doesn’t focus on death or diagnosis but the stresses that accompany recovery. It’s a humorous look at living with a mommy surviving cancer, she said.

While writing and illustrating the book was an experience for Frahm, she said self-publishing was also an adventure:

“More than once it’s been insinuated I’m an idiot for trying to do it and didn’t I realize one woman couldn’t possibly compete with the marketing and public relations necessary and readily available to large publishing companies,” Frahm said.

“Of course these people had no idea what my background was and although it might have been years, I think I might of picked up a little something while attending UF’s public relations classes.”

Becoming a dad takes a nine-month wait but publishing a “how to” book for new dads took 15 years for Walter “Skeeter” Roark, ADV 1978.

“Skeeter” Roark with daughter Meghan “then”
and “now”

Inspired by his newborn daughter Meghan, Roark started writing a humorous peek at modern parenting from a father’s point of view, 15 years ago. Finally, Keeping the Baby Alive (till Your Wife Gets Home) escorts dads through basic topics such as diaper-changing, feeding, infant behavior and father-baby games.

Meghan, now a 16-year-old high school sophomore, helped illustrate it.

“There are hilarious, helpful opinions that put dads in touch with techniques practiced by wily veterans on the infant-care front,” Skeeter said. “Meghan’s inspirations and illustrations set the stage for happy skirmishes all around.”

A Florida native, Roark lives in Atlanta with Meghan, wife Susan and son Shannon and is working on his first novel, Beneath the Tamarind Tree, a story about the 1960s.

The humorous side of the legal profession is explored in a new book and website by Andrew McClurg, JM 1977, a law professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Andrew McClurg

The book is The Law School Trip and is a parody of legal education in America. It has achieved critical (and comedic) acclaim from the legal community. One reviewer said, “This is the book Dave Barry would have written if he had gone to Law School.”

For the past four years, McClurg has written “Harmless Error: A Truly Minority View on the Law,” a humor column for the monthly American Bar Association Journal. Subtitled “the insider’s guide to law school,” the book is advertised as taking readers “on a dizzying, twisted and hilarious insider’s tour of the surreal world of legal education.”

To promote the book, McClurg started a website that has also become a hit (www.lawhaha.com) as the legal humor headquarters.

“I started the website solely to promote the book,” McClurg said, “but it has taken on a life of its own. It gets a lot of hits and seems quite popular, although like the book, it’s still new.” The book can be ordered from the website.

McClurg has been on the UALR law faculty since 1986. “I love legal education,” said McClurg. “It has been my career, but like all careers it has moments of hilarity.”

McClurg is a leading scholar and lecturer on firearms policy and is co-author of the textbook Gun Control and Gun Rights, which will be published next year by New York University Press.

Although he has never worked as a journalist, he credits faculty members in the College for his love of writing and for his writing skills. “Good writing is good writing, no matter what the subject of the writing is,” said McClurg.

	Clint Johnson as a Yankee

Civil War historian Clint Johnson, PR 1975, added a fourth book this year on the war, with two more coming next year.

In a book that combines history and travel information, Johnson’s latest entry is In the Footsteps of Robert E. Lee—A Tour Guide of Sites Associated with the General. He plans a similar effort next year concerning Gen. Stonewall Jackson, also to be published by John Blair Publisher.

His other 2002 book will be mini-biographies of Little Known Men and Women Who Had an Impact on the Civil War.

Johnson is a freelancer who writes business news for various publications and is in his 24th year of Civil War reenacting—playing both Union and Confederate soldiers.

More books ...

Sports, eduction, history and religion are topics of books by other College alumni.

The Parent’s Complete Guide to Soccer is co-authored by Owen Lockwood, JM 1995. It is written for parents of players 3 to 13 and includes moves and skills, tactics, rules, coaching and camps and tournaments. Lockwood lives in Fairfield, Conn., and is managing editor of Soccer Jr. magazine.

Robert Davidsson, JM 1976, won an historical society “best of” award for his Indian River: A History of the Ais Indians in Spanish Florida. The Florida Historical Confederation named it the 2001 Best Local History Monograph. Davidsson manages the government research service section of the Palm Beach County Library System.

Stephen Bevilacqua, JM 1998, has completed his first book, titled Best Practices for Educating Students with Autism. He is an editor at LRP Publications Inc. in Palm Beach Gardens.

Heather Collins Grattan, JM 1993, is a contributing author for Nelson’s New Christian Dictionary, published in Nashville and edited by George T. Kurian.