Family

What's in an Athletic Director's Phone?

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 07:00:00 +0000

What's in an Athletic Director's Phone? Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/07/2022 - 00:00

As ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder’s senior associate athletic director and assistant vice chancellor for Advancement, Leon Jackson III works with donors to raise funds that support the university’s more than 350 student athletes across 17 sports.

How soon after waking up do you look at your phone?

My iPhone alarm wakes me up at 6:30 a.m. daily. So, I guess I look at it first thing in the morning... likely looking for the “snooze” button. Those five extra minutes are some of the best five minutes of sleep I get.

App you wish you had the inner strength to delete?

Facebook. I love keeping up with my family around the country. But the video algorithms on developing your golf swing send me down rabbit holes.

Last person you called?

Mom.

Duration of longest call last week?

52 minutes.

Where was your last selfie taken?

In Fraser, ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ, during our family vacation. My youngest son thought he should be “cool” and show the peace sign.

Does anyone else have your passcode?

My wife.

Oldest photo on your phone?

Our Jackson family Christmas photo in 2015.

What is your lock screen or background image?

A picture of a wooden cross with a hammer and a nail in the middle.

What do you use your phone for most?

Work. I am emailing, texting or calling someone quite often.

Type and model of phone

Apple iPhone13

Three of your most-used apps

Outlook, Maps and Twitter

Most-used emoji

Thumbs up

Submit feedback to the editor

Photos courtesy Leon Jackson III

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A Houseful of Tepleys

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 18:53:00 +0000

A Houseful of Tepleys Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 12/01/2017 - 11:53

Eric Gershon

The plaque at 1145 Grandview Ave. went up in the mid-1990s. “Tepley House,” it declares. “C. 1907.”

Yet for years after the old home on The Hill became a Boulder landmark, and for some time before, the only way Bill Tepley (Pharm’87) could get inside was to knock, introduce himself and ask to poke around for old times’ sake.

Access is simpler now: In August, his younger daughter, Grace Tepley (IntlAf’18), moved into the turreted Queen Anne-style home, just off Broadway — extending the family streak to four successive generations of Tepleys in residence while attending ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder.

“Grace is in one of the rooms I stayed in,” said Bill, 57, a Denver pharmacist with a fondness for hats and a gig as the bassist in a cover band called The Vinyls.

Grace’s sister, Savannah Tepley (MechEngr’15), passed on an earlier chance to advance the streak, making a practical decision to live by the engineering center — clear across campus — where most of her classes met.

If the streak itself is remarkable, so is the story of its start.

The American dream, manifest.

Early in the 20th century, Bill Tepley’s paternal grandparents, Katherine (Hist’30; MA’32) and Leo (MD1917) Teplitzky, fled Russia for New York after their release — in Leo’s case, escape — from the Siberian lockup where they’d been political prisoners, according to family lore and research. Katherine’s offense: Teaching peasants to read. Leo’s: “backing the wrong horse,” Bill said.

The couple came to Boulder, changed their name and worked as custodians in ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ’s stables. Leo helped lay sidewalks.

Leo eventually worked his way into medical school and became a psychiatrist. He and Katherine migrated to Denver and had three children, including Bill’s father, Eugene (A&S’36; Law’39), a future ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ gymnast specializing in the flying rings, a lawyer and a political candidate.

The Grandview house entered the picture after the Tepleys’ marriage foundered. In 1924 Katherine and the children moved back to Boulder and into No. 1145.

The kids all went on to study at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ — as did Katherine, who attended alongside daughter Victoria. Katherine earned two degrees in history, then taught at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ and the University of Denver.

“She was what I would call a progressive woman,” Bill said of his grandmother, whom he never knew. “Education was important to her. She went to prison twice over it [in Russia].”

The house remained in the family long enough for Bill to live there in the 1970s and ’80s. He and friends paid his parents, who managed the house as a rental property, about $60 each per month. Nine of 15 Tepley Buffs lived there at some point.

Bill’s parents came to Boulder for home football games, usually dropping off food for their renters and sometimes doing their laundry. Over the years, Bill helped his father replace the house’s plumbing and insulation. They repainted it top to bottom.

In 1988, as Bill’s parents entered old age, the family sold the home.

After the city landmarked the house — the plaque honors the architecture, the Tepleys and also former occupant Wiley B. Rutledge (Law’22), ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ’s first alumnus on the U.S. Supreme Court — Bill would double park while friends hopped out to take a look.

Decades went by.

In fall 2015, Grace Tepley, then a sophomore, made her move to resume the streak.

She strode to the door of 1145, introduced herself and asked for the landlord’s number. She called, only to learn the house had already been leased for the next year.

But the landlord, who’d bought the house from the Tepleys, gave Grace first dibs for 2017. All she’d have to do was round up roommates.

Once she had — and not before — the aspiring lawyer, now 22, gave her dad the good news.

“I knew he’d call our entire family,” she said. “I didn’t want it to fall through.”

Bill sees 1145 Grandview as a symbol, not just of his own family.

“In a time where people are saying, ‘Immigrants, we don’t need ’em,’ you look at my family, they came here with no language and no skills and had to change their names to get jobs — and yet they turn into the American dream,” he said. “It all goes through that house.”

Photo by Glenn Asakawa

One house on The Hill. One family. Four generations of Buffs.

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A Family Tale

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 18:50:00 +0000

A Family Tale Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 12/01/2017 - 11:50

Janice Podsada

Marc Fawaz couldn’t help but notice the unusual dynamic between Marty O’Connor (Film'10), an MBA candidate in his marketing management class at Chapman University, and Marty’s assistant.

Marty was paralyzed from the shoulders down and couldn’t take notes or use a computer without help, so an assistant made sense.

I couldn’t have done it without her.”

But she was unusually doting, Fawaz thought, even tender.

No wonder: “Yeah, that’s my mom,” Marty, now 30, told him.

For two academic years, from 2015 to 2017, Judy O’Connor served as her son’s full-time study partner and aide — shuttling him between home and campus, pushing his wheelchair to classes, taking notes. At home, she created study guides and taped the notes to the walls of Marty’s room, so every page was within his sight.

“I couldn’t turn the pages of a book by myself,” said Marty, who’d been a member of the club snowboarding and men’s volleyball teams at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder.

After his ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ graduation, Marty, originally from Anaheim, Calif., moved to Newport Beach. He worked in sales for a packaging supplier, TricorBraun, and spent a lot of weekends at the beach.

“I was living the life,” he said.

Then one hot day in August 2012, while out with friends after a long day of golf, a dehydrated and fatigued Marty stood up, lost consciousness and fell down the stairs of a fire escape behind a Newport Beach restaurant.

“I don’t remember the rest,” he said.

The fall injured Marty’s spinal cord.

His parents, then living in Tierra Verde, Fla., moved back to California to care for him. It took two years of physical therapy to tame the spasms in his legs.

In time, Marty regained strength, if not mobility, and he began to consider what to do with the rest of his life.

It wasn’t obvious at first.

“Marty was really struggling to figure out what his future was going to look like,” said Judy, a former sixth-grade teacher with a business degree from Notre Dame.

Marty had always been entrepreneurial, so she encouraged him to consider business school. He was anxious about it, but in fall 2015, he entered the MBA program at Chapman in Orange, Calif., armed with a mouth stick for operating his phone and voice recognition software on his computer.

Initially paired with a note taker, Marty saw he needed more. Judy was already helping him study. So she became his on-campus assistant, too.

For two years, she attended every one of Marty’s classes, helping with every assignment and every exam.

I did what I did out of love for my son.”

“I quickly got over that awkward feeling of going back to school with my mother,” Marty said.

Last year, with commencement on the horizon, Marty approached university officials to ask if they would consider recognizing his mother’s contribution.

“I couldn’t have done it without her,” he said.

The school's leadership agreed and proceeded to make secret plans with Marty, avoiding telltale texts or emails.

“I didn’t want my mom seeing anything popping up on my phone,” said Marty.

At commencement exercises last May, Judy pushed Marty onto the stage in his wheelchair, then stepped back to let him have his moment of triumph. Marty received his degree.

Then teary-eyed officiants turned to Judy and presented her with a degree of her own, an honorary MBA, prompting an ovation from the crowd.

“I certainly never expected any recognition,” Judy said. “I did what I did out of love for my son.”

After commencement, she and Marty took a break. Judy visited her ailing mother in Florida and Marty began plotting his next career move.

This fall Marty started a job in business development with DIVERTcity, a Los Angeles startup that’s developing programs and facilities to make action sports more accessible and affordable for urban youth.

It’s a ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder reunion of sorts: Marty’s former ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ roommate David Monhait (Arch’11) and Zachary Adamson (Mgmt’11), founded the firm.

Judy’s back in Florida, caring for her mother.

If she sees Marty less now, she still sees him often.

“You can fire your assistant,” she said, “but you sort of have to keep your mom.”

Photo courtesy Chapman University

A 2012 accident paralyzed Marty O'Connor below the shoulders. When he went to business school, a study buddy joined him for every class.

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