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Information technology company Virtusa Corporation has welcomed Bentley trustee emeritus William K. O’Brien, Boston, Mass., to its Board of Directors and Audit Committee. O’Brien has 30 years of experience working with global technology companies.
Robert G. Swan, Salem, Conn., worked on the presidential campaign of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, as a consultant on health care and economic policy positions and issues.
Joseph A. Maurath Jr., Abington, Mass., has enjoyed success implementing energy conservation programs, which have become models for municipal utilities across Massachusetts. His first project was in 1977 for the Plymouth County Extension Service of Hanson, Mass. Maurath has also worked with Hingham officials on that town’s energy conservation service.
Millbury Federal Credit
Union has appointed
Paul R. Crimlisk, Needham
Heights, Mass., as senior vice president and manager of MCU Commercial Services, a subsidiary of the credit union.
Pace University has elected Richard F. Zannino, Greenwich, Conn., to the school’s Board of Trustees. The media and retail industry executive most recently served as chief executive officer for Dow Jones & Company. He earned an MBA in Finance from Pace in 1984.
Marketing research firm Burke Inc. has announced the promotion of Diane
Surette, Cincinnati, Ohio, to executive vice president and head of client services.
James M. Freedman ’MBA, Holliston, Mass., vice president of leadership development at Waltham, Mass.-based Fresenius Medical Care North America, traveled to South Korea in October for a weeklong ceremony. The alumnus received the Van Fleet Award for outstanding contributions to U.S.–Korea relations.
= Reunion Class
Extraordinary valor was just part of the job for Roger G. Whear Jr. ’59. A former hospital corpsman in the U.S. Navy, Whear received two medals for heroism in the Korean War. But his military career almost never started.
In 1950, the newly minted high school graduate stopped by his local recruiting office. “They thought I was a runt,” he says with a laugh.
Indeed, the five-foot-tall native of Medford, Mass., tipped the scales at a mere 100 pounds. “The Navy recruiter sent me home and said I had to gain 10 pounds in a month. My mother made me milk shakes and banana splits.”
Thirty days and many calories later, Whear enlisted and went on to become a Navy medic. “When you’re under fire, everyone’s kneeling down — but if someone’s wounded, they yell ‘corpsman up,’ and you have to run out there to retrieve them,” he explains. “A medic’s chance of being wounded is tremendous.”
Whear himself fell victim to the odds in August 1952. He was on a reconnaissance mission with a Marine patrol when a mine exploded, injuring his legs. Even so, the alumnus forged through the minefield to render aid to two injured Marines, saving one man’s life. He refused treatment for his
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own wounds until ordered to do so. These actions earned Whear not only the Purple Heart but the Navy Cross: the Navy’s second-highest award, which recognizes extraordinary heroism in a combat situation.
After his military discharge in 1954, Whear joined Liberty Mutual and took night courses at the Bentley School of Accounting and Finance. “Mr. Bentley was still teaching then,” he remembers. “I was always interested in numbers and math.”
Struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder as the result of what he’d witnessed in Korea, Whear focused on work. He stayed with Liberty Mutual for 16 years, then became an accountant for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts — a job he held until retirement in 1992. Whear and his high school sweetheart, Roberta Hanson, married and raised a family: five children and, now, 10 grandchildren.
The approach of his 50th reunion finds Whear making plans to attend the Blue and Gold Society Celebration in June. In catching up with classmates and friends, he isn’t likely to cast himself as a war hero. As he puts it: “I carry the Navy Cross for many men who didn’t live or weren’t written up for their valor.” Kerry L. Gorgone ’95, ’97 MBA
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