Eli Fleurant ’76 is a poet, philosopher, lecturer, inventor and historian. He created Diaphanism, a philosophy of reason, harmonic social-interaction, positive emotion and well-being. He received a master’s at St. John’s University and has taught at CUNY and Hoftsra University.

He lives on Long Island and teaches modern languages at SUNY Farmingdale.

He is working on two books: Toussaint Louverture and the Panorama of Haiti: Before and After the Quake and Diaphanism: The Formula of Happiness.

Eli Fleurant ’76

Sandy and Mr. Mangrove

Neither oaths, nor sciences

Or man’s stratagem

Dared to halt her fury and rancor.

Before her fierce raid,

She rallied the towering of the ocean,

Emboldening her measure,

Inflating her lungs;

Her bloated cheeks

Gusting the wind

Rushing the monster waves to shore.

There she was, Sandy the savage lover

Lingering, wrecking, taunting.

The tide bursted, ripped free.

Flood, deluge, everywhere!

Then came night;

A tenebrous abyss

Filled the latitude.

And souls espoused nothingness,

The unknown and dark spirits of the elements.

Trees and prides hitherto tall and mighty

Thereon surrendered hubris and heightening.

Fear, tears, anger

Simmering in the torments of the night.

Sneers, curses and prayers

Met with deaf ears.

Mayhem reigns everywhere.

The tempest roars with no yield or pity.

Apocalypse seemed impending.

Sandy the furious nymph,

With her veils, her wretched kisses and rough kicks

Shattering pines, oaks and elms …

Abruptly, she veered to court Mr. Mangrove.

Oohh! Mr. Mangrove!!! She mocked.

Mr. Mangrove, a stern and robust timber

With luring brow.

Sandy paused, stared and stormed with vigor.

The Stoic Tree defied the strike.

In time, the fearless lover, tamed and beguiled

Unwinded her fury and lust

At the shrine of the wooden Centaure.

Eli Fleurant ’76
Oct. 29, 2012

With the release of its report card May 17 moderated by Benita Zahn ’76, SUNY took the unprecedented step of measuring the university system’s performance against New York’s greatest social and economic needs, including the alignment of SUNY’s research capacity to statewide job growth and the state’s ability to capture a greater share of the global green energy market, among other measures.

Benita Zahn ’76, left, moderated the May 17 presentation of the SUNY Report Card by Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher, right.

“Part of what makes the Report Card unique is that it doesn’t merely measure SUNY’s value in terms of the number of degrees it bestows or the breadth of its curricula, but by the tangible, long-term impact SUNY will have on the economy and quality of life in New York State,” said Zimpher. “No other university system in the country is doing this. We are thinking outside of the SUNY box — inviting the public to measure the system’s actions against its ability to address our state’s greatest needs.

The inaugural SUNY Report Card establishes a baseline for
providing the public with a comprehensive look at the status of SUNY’s goals and initiatives across a broad spectrum of critical areas, including: student diversity and creating greater access to higher education, SUNY’s impact on the state economy and reducing energy consumption.

SUNY Oswego President Deborah F. Stanley said, “The SUNY Report Card is a great start at using metrics to help provide focus and direction as we work to bring excellence and accountability to every aspect of our entire State University system, and it will only improve as we further refine the metrics to give us the best and most helpful information. The SUNY Report Card will also help citizens understand what a great resource we have now in our state’s higher education system and ways we can make it even better and harness its full power for the greater good of New York.”

See the Report Card online at suny.edu/powerofsuny/reportcard

As commanding officer of the Naval Medical Logistics Command from 2001 to 2005, Shari oversaw distribution of medical supplies to ships, bases and hospitals worldwide.

Shari Holtzclaw Kirshner ’76 stands with friend and comedian Lewis Black at the USO Gala in 2009.

“Our motto was ‘Suppliers for Life’ and our mission was to get the right medical products to the right place at the right time,” said Shari. “I knew that the patient would not get the services they needed if my staff didn’t do its job.

“The doctors, the nurses, the hospitals depended on us,” said Shari, who was the first African-American woman to be promoted to captain and given command in the Medical Service Corps.

After graduating from Oswego with a communication studies degree, she went on to study health care management at Webster University and earned a special designation in medical logistics from the U.S. Naval School of Health Sciences.

The responsibility of getting medications, lab equipment and basically anything needed to treat servicemen and women of the Navy and Marine Corps was intense, Shari said. But, she also had a hand in distributing some levity abroad.

After meeting soldiers in Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s Wounded Warrior Clinic, Shari invited friend and comedian Lewis Black to visit. A regular on Comedy Central’s Daily Show, Black was inspired by the experience to get involved with the United Service Organization and has done performances abroad ever since.

“It’s pretty hard if you think about it — you’re sitting in a vehicle in Iraq and a roadside bomb goes off. The next thing you remember is being in Germany a few days later and flying 12 hours overnight to get to Walter Reed,” Lt. Cl. Mary King ’76, M.D. says. “It’s difficult for me to see young men and women who were very productive have their lives changed.”

But, she adds, her work is very rewarding.

A soldier in the U.S. Army Reserve, King is serving a three-year tour at Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s Wounded Warrior Clinic. The facility, which opened in 2008, is dedicated to rehabilitating soldiers from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.

“This is a first stop,” for wounded soldiers, King says. Most often the troops arriving directly from the battlefield suffer from concussions or post-traumatic stress disorder, or need a limb amputated.

King, who earned a degree in biology at Oswego before attending medical school, has had a practice on Long Island since the early 1990s. She was inspired to join the Reserves after 9/11.

“Sept. 11 had a big impact on Long Island,” says King. “Several of my patients lost husbands and a lot of people in town were firefighters.”

King did a tour of duty in Ramadi, Iraq, for four months in 2006. Today she and three other doctors handle a caseload of about 200 soldiers apiece at Walter Reed.

King recently received the 2010 Primary Care Manager of the Year Award from the U.S. Army Warrior Transition Command.

“You take care of the soldiers from the time they get out of [Walter Reed] to the time they medically retire or return to active duty,” King says. She likens the satisfaction she gets from watching the progress of recovering soldiers to watching a child take his or her first steps. One recent patient even completed a 10-mile footrace.

“I feel really good about it,” she says. “I would be very happy if there were no more reason for it. Being that that’s probably not going to happen, I would miss this work if it wasn’t here for me anymore.”

— Shane M. Liebler