Celebrating 175 Years of History

Ed founded and co-owns Chicago-based Homesick Blues Productions along with Junko Kajino. “Homesick Blues” is also the name of their entry in the 2005 Chicago Film Festival, which earned a nomination for Best Short Film that year. Their full length film “The First Breath of Tengan Ri” premiered in 2009. “Echoes Of My Father” premiered in 2023 at the NY Dances With Films festival and was also screened at the 2024 Antioch College Alumni Reunion. Their latest project, “Uncanny Terrain,” is in post-production.

An Oscar and five-time Emmy nominated filmmaker with broad experience as a director, producer, writer, cinematographer and editor, Jon is a renowned specialist in entertainment marketing. BloomFilm, established in 1987, provides audio/visual marketing materials for promotion and advertising. He was nominated for an Academy Award as producer and director of the live-action short film “Overnight Sensation,” based upon a Somerset Maugham short story and starring Robert Loggia and Louise Fletcher. A three-term Governor at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, he also serves as Chair of the Short Films and Feature Animation Branch. His early work experience includes stints with Robert Wise, Robert Altman, and Francis Coppola.

Perhaps best known as a director of television episodes for over a dozen different series, she won Daytime Emmy awards for the ABC After School Special “Just a Regular Kid: An AIDS Story” (1988) and the PBS television film “Sweet 15” (1990). One of her earliest works, the short documentary “Metroliner” (1975) was selected for preservation by the Academy Film Archive in 2015. In 1979, Victoria and five other women directors formed the Women’s Steering Committee of the Directors Guild of America, known as the Original Six, to research and document gender discrimination in the movie industry. Armed with their findings, the DGA sued Warner Bros. and Columbia Pictures in 1983. Despite the case getting dismissed on procedural grounds, the efforts of the Original Six resulted in a gradual increase in the hiring of women directors.

Karl Grossman ‘64

Julia Reichert ‘70

Jim Klein ‘72

Anthony Heriza ‘74

Andrew Garrison ‘74

Kim Aubry ‘78

Carol Greenwald ‘77

Ellen Schneider ‘79

Eric Johnson ‘73

Lynn Estomin ‘72

Peter Adair ‘67

Josh Hanig

Will Roberts

Larry Adelmen

Peggy Ahwesh ‘78

John Korty ‘59

Aimee Sands ‘76

Peter Entell 

Herb Gardner

Eugene Barron ‘62

Maria Mabre ‘91

Paige Thomas ‘92

Laurie White ‘77

Roger Stigliano ‘77

Adam Haas ‘77

Wendey Stanzler 

Brady Calestro 

Alicia R. Weber ‘70

Robert Greenwald ‘66

Wendy Dallas ‘72

Rick Nathanson ‘79

Andy Voda ‘76

Vince Waldron ’78

Jonathan G. Zimmerman ’70

Victor Nunez ‘68

Adam Beckett 

Amber Bemak ‘02

Greta Snider ‘86

Mahala Pearson Jay and her husband Eli transferred to Antioch College from Oberlin in 1853. The Jays had started a small school in Fredericksburg, IN in 1849, which convinced them they had to attend college to become better educators. Attracted by Antioch’s promise of fully equal coeducation, the Jays were both members of its first graduating class. Already a Latin teacher in the Antioch Preparatory Dept. during her Senior year, Horace Mann considered her the best Latin instructor he had ever known. In 1864 she and Eli joined the faculty of Earlham College, where she was principal of its preparatory school for twenty years. A lifelong Quaker committed to service to humanity, Mahala was also a leading figure in the Women’s Foreign Missionary Association and a founding figure of the American Friends Board of Foreign Missions. 

Born in Eaton, OH in 1841 and known by the diminutive “Rene,” Hardy entered Antioch College in 1861, but her education was interrupted several times due to among other factors the American Civil War. Despite not having her degree, she taught school back home through the 1860s. In 1874 she began teaching in the Antioch Preparatory Dept. and served as College Matron, presiding over the women’s dormitory North Hall for two years. She soon moved to California, resumed her teaching career, developed statewide standards for instruction in composition and literature, and published a textbook. In 1894 she joined the faculty of Stanford University to teach literature and writing. Hardy retired in 1901 to a cottage built by her adoring students where she wrote her memoirs. After her death in 1922, her brother Lewis deposited the 530 page manuscript in Antiochiana at the Antioch College Library, where it was eventually discovered by longtime Antioch Professor of American Civilization, Louis Filler. He edited the work and published it in 1980 under the title “An Ohio Schoolmistress.”

Springfield, OH native George Hubbell grew up on a farm near Bellefontaine. As a student he was active in the Star Literary Society. Hubbell earned a PhD at Columbia University in 1902 after a brief stint as a high school principal in Fairfield, OH. While a graduate student he held numerous teaching posts including Professor of University Extension, Professor of Geology and Higher English, and Professor of Pedagogy. In 1904 he became vice-president of Berea College in Kentucky and in 1906 was named president of Highland College in Williamsburg, KY. In 1910 he became president of Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, TN, retiring in 1922. Among his many publications was a biography of Horace Mann (1910) and his prized possession was the original draft of the Antioch College charter.

Thaddeus Plato Carr grew up in Yellow Springs and was the first of several generations of Carrs at Antioch College. As a student he was perhaps best known as a baseball player, holding down catching duties for the Antioch team that played the Cincinnati Red stockings in 1869. After College he made his reputation as a world-class tuner of pianos. In 1876 he filed a patent for Improvement in Piano-Forte Actions, which he described as “a novel application of the back catch or stop, that arrests the hammer after the latter has recoiled from the wire.”

Possessed of one of the best nicknames in Antioch history, the “Edison of Medicine” had more than eighty inventions to his credit. He returned to Antioch College in 1944 as Professor of Chemistry and as chair of Biochemistry at the adjacent Fels Institute. While at Fels in 1949, he designed, built and successfully tested his Clark Bubble-Defoam Heart Lung Machine, a breakthrough device that essentially made open-heat surgery possible.

After graduating with a degree in Engineering, David Newman worked for Yellow Springs Instrument Company, a company full of inventors and so a fortuitous job opportunity for a budding inventor. He went on to found CAMAX Tool Company, Inc., the assignee for many of his patented inventions. His patents include an insert to improve sintering (the process of fusing powdered metals into solids without melting), a design for an ornamental golf shoe cleat, an improved ratcheting mechanism for box wrenches, and an extracting tool for safely removing a cervical diaphragm.