Ben A. Light ’37, M.S. ’47, was posthumously honored with the Distinguished Alumni Award, which his wife, Laverne Misener Light ’42, accepted.

Affiliated with Ithaca College almost continuously (broken only by service during World War II) from 1932 until his death in 1971, Ben Light came to the College as a student and subsequently held a wide range of athletic, pedagogic, and administrative positions.

As an IC student, he was a three-sport star. He stayed on for the next six years as an instructor and coach. After military service he returned as an assistant professor of physical education (he was later promoted to associate professor). He assisted in football and baseball and coached varsity basketball and varsity golf before being made director of athletics.

In 1951, while retaining that position, Light was named the College’s first director of admissions. In 1959 he was named secretary of the College. As such he played a major role in the development of the South Hill campus and oversaw purchasing, transportation, dining halls, dormitories, and auxiliary enterprises. In 1968 Light was named Ithaca’s first vice president for development and alumni. He fostered the reactivation of the alumni association and the organization of a parents association.

In 1968 the gym in Hill Center was named the Ben Light Gymnasium.

Fred Seither ’50, M.S. ’51, was given the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Seither was a four-sport athlete at Ithaca High School, earning 11 letters in three years of football, baseball, and basketball and two years of track and field. He was also the city wrestling champion at 155 pounds and played city league baseball, softball, and basketball. In 1969 Ithaca College selected Seither for its 1940s all-decade football team (he had played halfback at IC).

He first taught and coached in the McGraw and Virgil school systems in Cortland County, New York. He then went to Saugerties High School, where he coached varsity football and wrestling, assisted with varsity track, and coached junior varsity baseball and basketball. After helping the football team to an undefeated season in 1960 he was made head coach, and the team went undefeated again. In 1962 he became athletic director and added boys’ tennis, golf, and soccer as well as girls’ volleyball, basketball, softball, and track to the program. He served in several sport organizations and the Saugerties High School Athletic Booster Club, and was a Biddy League president and referee. Seither was inducted into the Saugerties Sports Hall of Fame in 1997 and IC’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 1998.

Since retiring, he has served two terms as a Union Springs village trustee.

Robert C. Deming, director of athletics from 1980 until his retirement in 1997, received the James J. Whalen Meritorious Service Award. Deming watched over the athletic pro- gram’s most successful period in the College’s history. A 1957 graduate of Colgate University, he was a college football player and went on to coach at the University of Houston and the State University of New York at Buffalo.

He is a past president of both the Eastern College Athletic Conference and the Independent College Athletic Conference. Deming’s tenure at Ithaca College was highlighted by 9 of the 11 NCAA Division III team championships won by Ithaca College squads. ’s teams won a remarkable 65 percent of their contests during that time. Deming was inducted into the Ithaca College Athletic Hall of Fame in 1992.

Two 1990 alumni, Paul L. Baum and Jonathan L. Hazman, were honored with Outstanding Young Alumni Awards.

After graduating from Ithaca, Baum started working for a computer company that had recruited him on campus. Corporations, he saw, were replacing their PCs before they were two years old. Baum realized there was potential in refurbishing and upgrading them. So, at 22, with $3,000 and 15 credit cards, he founded Rumarson Technologies to do just that. Incorporated in 1992, Rumarson has mushroomed into a multimillion-dollar operation with international customers and nearly 30 employees. In 1997 Rumarson was 164th on Inc. magazine’s annual list of the 500 fastest-growing private companies. And in 1998 Ernst & Young nominated Baum for its entrepreneur of the year award.

As an IC sophomore, Hazman started his first business (silk-screening clothes). He later joined and helped revitalize his family’s company. In 1994, when his grandfather’s kidneys began to fail, Hazman realized dialysis care needed vast improvement—so he founded Porter Dialysis Centers. There are now three such centers; a fourth will open soon, and surgery and radiology centers are planned. Hazman is on the board of directors of the National Kidney Foundation, the National Renal Administrators Association, the Associated Jewish Charities, and the End-Stage Renal Disease Network; he is vice president of the Maryland Renal Administrators Association. He has also established a advocacy group for dialysis patients.

Photo by Primeshot