GRADUATES | 2023 | FALL ISSUE

GRADUATE ARCHIVES

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While Bob Stepno MA ’83, MALS ’88, did not get to his double reunion in June, the former Hartford Courant education editor and journalism professor did invoke his Wesleyan studies while marking the 10th anniversary of his retirement from southwestern Virginia’s Radford University.

Bob, who once studied with ethnomusicologists Mark Slobin and David McAllester, gave a public lecture/concert at Radford’s university library, titled Dr. Bob’s Four-String Obession, playing and discussing a dozen mandolin and ukulele-family instruments. He did not bring his five-string banjo but reminisced about playing it as part of his last journalism lecture in 2013.

Since retirement, he has collected 13 ribbons (one of them blue) at old-time music conventions in Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina, playing various instruments, and reported considerable “pandemic woodshedding” in the past three years on his first fiddle, acquired at age 70. Radford’s mayor, David Horton, attended and live streamed part of the modest event. 

For those who might remember Bob, he received his MA in anthropology and music and performed in the Clean and Sober String Band with classmates. Bob went on to write for magazines, get his PhD from the schools of journalism and information science at UNC Chapel Hill, and taught at several colleges before retiring from Radford.