Tippecanoe Valley Honors Distinguished AlumniTippecanoe Valley High School graduates from different walks of life came together Friday to be honored as the 2011 Tippecanoe Valley High School Distinguished Alumni. The 12 members of the 2011 class join a group of graduates who have led successful lives while making substantial contributions to their chosen field of work or have provided outstanding services to their community, state or country. Starting the day with a welcome breakfast, each inductee was matched with a student liaison that provided a tour of the school and moderated each of four presentations made by the inductee. During the presentations the inductees shared information about their personal experiences at Tippecanoe Valley High School, their professional career experiences, and personal interests. In the afternoon individual interviews were conducted and recorded by the Rochester Telephone Company for future broadcast on the RTC community cable television station as well as a digital display at Tippecanoe Valley High School. Induction Day concluded with the introduction of the TVHS Distinguished Alumni at halftime of the Valley versus Wabash football game. Each inductee was presented a beautiful commemorative plaque. This year’s Distinguished Alumni Class includes four graduates from the 1970s – Vernon Goodman (1977), Greg Hoover (1978), Sherri (Miller) Johnson (1978) and Kevin Deardorff (1979). Three are 1980s graduates – Jerry Meadows (1982), Todd Stokes (1982) and Dean Trippiedi (1988). Three are graduates from the 1990s – Nicole Borem (1995), Jason Bowman (1995) and Micah Lukens (1999). Two are graduates of the 2000s – Jayme (McCalla) Parker (2001) and Rebekah Parker (2004). Goodman was the salutatorian of his 1977 graduating class. He currently works as a senior principal physicist at Raytheon in Garland, Texas. He has multiple awards, publications, patents and patents pending. He was named outstanding author and inventor for 2009 and 2010. After working for Atlas Van Lines for 20 years, Hoover was recruited two years ago as president and CEO of suburban Chicago-based Bekins Van Lines. He served as campaign director for Patricia Williams’ bid for Congress, and campaign manager for Bud Hillis for Congress. An art teacher for Warsaw Community Schools since her graduation from Manchester College, Miller Johnson has taught more than 8,000 students. She received two Lilly Teacher Creativity Grants, one to study in Brazil and the other to Australia. Deardorff is executive vice president at Lake City Bank, where he is responsible for retail operations and staff in all branch and main office locations. Since moving to Warsaw in 1995, he has served as campaign chair, president and chairman of United Way, earning Volunteer of the Year honors. President of the TVHS class of 1982, Meadows graduated from Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Mich., where he majored in pastoral ministry with an emphasis on students. He served as a youth pastor near Hershey, Pa., and later as global outreach director for CURE International. At CURE, he worked with leaders in Africa, Latin America and Central Asia in establishing teaching hospitals for the surgical care of disabled children. After leaving CURE and moving to Michigan, he found a position with Youth Unlimited. Stokes was a sergeant with the 101st Airborne division in 1991 when his unit was flown into a corner of Iraq as part of a 100-hour ground war that liberated Kuwait. Now retired from the Army with numerous awards and citations, he is an Army instructor at Mattoon High School. Trippiedi joined Symmetry Medical in 1993. He has worked there since that time, advancing from customer service to sales manager in 1994, to southeast regional sales manager based in Memphis, Tenn., in 1996. He then became Midwest regional sales manager in Warsaw in 1997, and director of sales in 1999. Since 2006, Trippiedi has served as senior vice president of global sales. Now employed by Great Lakes Anesthesia, Borem is a certified registered nurse anesthetist at Kosciusko Community Hospital, along with several other medical facilities in Northern Indiana. Recently, she won a USA National Championship in cyclocross, and placed among the top 90 in the world. Bowman has been working as an emergency medicine physician at Helen Devos Children’s Hospital and Butterworth Hospital in Grand Rapids, Mich., since 2007. He also serves as an associate clinical professor at the Michigan State University School of Medicine. As the first and only classroom teacher at Valley’s Burket Educational Center, Lukens has helped more than 150 students earn their high school diplomas. Jayme McCalla Parker studied at IPFW as a student nurse while working part time at Parkview Hospital. She went from student to nurse practitioner at the Compassionate Health Center in Rochester. After earning a bachelor’s degree in physical education and health with a coaching endorsement, Rebekah Parker moved overseas to play professional basketball for two years both in Finland and Germany. Currently working on a master’s degree in public service administration, she is now at the University of Toledo serving as the director of women’s basketball operations.
