The Brookfield Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame Class of 2023 is, from left, Erin Hennessy Cockrell; Kathryn Yazvac Ferrara; Ray Blakeney; Deborah Nagy, representing her father, the late Alex Nagy; John Riccardi Humphrey; and Fred Paulenich.
There’s always at least one inductee into the Brookfield Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame who doesn’t feel he or she belongs there. This year, there were two.
Joan Riccardi Humphrey was one of them. Never mind that she has earned five degrees on her way to becoming a nurse practitioner, has taught at two colleges, created classes in nursing and public health, has taught countless people to perform CPR and often serves the Amish, a group of people who hesitantly seek medical care.
“I was one of these people who was a B student,” Humphrey, a 1975 Brookfield High graduate, told Brookfield High School students on Sept. 13, the day before her induction. “Got A’s bunches of times but not all the time. Had a hard time dragging myself to school my senior year. Just really struggled to find a way to make it work.”
She was a girl from a blue-collar, working-class family who never dreamed of going to college until her high school guidance counselor, Wayne Bair, told her he thought she could do it.
“If I can do this, there’s not a person in this room that cannot achieve a dream that they have for their life,” said Humphrey, who still lives in Brookfield.
Kathryn Yazvac Ferrara reduced her accomplishments to “I’m just a lady who finds dead people.”
A former teacher of special needs students, Ferrara trains and leads search dogs to find missing people and human remains. She and her dogs – she has had four – have found 10 missing people who were still alive, and 10 deceased individuals over 25 years.
Despite discounting her accomplishments, she used her story to promote community involvement.
“You are not too old to do something new,” the 1974 Brookfield graduate, who also still lives in Brookfield, said at the induction ceremony. “You can’t make a difference if you don’t get involved. There’s no greater purpose in this life than providing assistance to those in need. You never know what kind of profound difference you might make in somebody’s life just by performing that one act of kindness.”
The Brookfield Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame honors Brookfield High School graduates who have excelled in their professional lives and made a difference in their communities. Also enshrined were Ray Blakeney, Class of 1989; Erin Hennessy Cockrell, Class of 1992; Alex G. Nagy, Class of 1958; and Fred F. Paulenich, Class of 1959.
Blakeney, who now works for Microsoft and put in 10 years with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said he started at “the Bottom” – the neighborhood at the western end of Davis Street that an earlier generation had called “Shanty Town.”
“I grew up in a trailer in Masury,” Blakeney said “Some nights, I didn’t eat dinner. Some nights, I didn’t have electricity. I lived with my grandmother, who had a fourth-grade education.”
“The break that I got was in Brookfield,” he said. “I got to go to this school in this community. This community adopted me.”
Blakeney’s teachers, club advisers and even support staff such as lunch lady Mrs. Bolling, who would turn the other way so he could get a second lunch when he looked extra hungry, encouraged him and let him dream of things that seemed to be impossible, such as going to college.
“This community really lifted me up,” he said. “So, I’m proud to be a Warrior and I’m proud to be home.”
Cockrell is a pediatric oncologist and runs a hemophilia treatment center serving children and adults with bleeding and clotting disorders in Tampa. Living in a big city, she said she misses the small town she so desperately wanted to get away from.
“I now realize what a great community this is,” she said. “I do miss the sense of community, now living in a larger area. Just don’t feel that anymore. I love coming back to the Midwest. People actually acknowledge and say, ‘Hello,’ ‘Good morning’ and greet one another.”
Nagy, who died in 2016, entered the Air Force after high school and eventually became the director of White House Telephone Services, serving seven presidents.
“He was proud of his humble beginnings and never boasted of his achievements or illustrious career,” said Nagy’s daughter, Deborah. “But, I do feel that he is looking down on us today and and is definitely tickled pink that he’s being bestowed this honor.”
An English teacher at Crestwood High School for more than 30 years, Paulenich used comic books, catalogs and other unusual media as supplements to his lessons in literature, and used a lesson of failure from his early life to endlessly encourage his students.
Paulenich was 14 when he prepared for the Brookfield Optimist Club Speech Contest, but froze on the day of the contest, resulting in him being “overwhelmed by humiliation,” he said.
James E. Hoffman Jr., who ran the speech contest, sought him out, calmed him down and had him deliver the speech at the end of the competition, which elicited a warm reception from the members of the audience. Hoffman wanted him “to see what you are capable of doing,” and Paulenich strove to do the same for his students, Paulenich said.
