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City’s Bingham, Brown to get DPU commencement honors
When DePauw University conducts its 179th commencement ceremony on Sunday, May 20 there will be a decided local flavor to the honorary degree recipients.
DePauw will present two longtime Greencastle community leaders -- Jinsie Scott Bingham and Dorothy Chapman Brown -- with honorary doctoral degrees along with Holocaust survivor Eva Kor of Terre Haute when the ceremony unfolds on Holton Memorial Quadrangle in front of the Roy O. West Library.
The 10:30 a.m. ceremony is open to the public as long as the weather allows it to commence outdoors. The Sunday forecast is currently calling for highs in the 80s with scattered afternoon thunderstorms possible.
Delivering Sunday’s principal address to nearly 480 members of the DePauw Class of 2018 will be civil rights legend and 1957 DePauw graduate Vernon E. Jordan Jr.
Born and raised in Greencastle, Bingham was a member of DePauw’s Class of 1956. She also attended Coe College and Northwestern University.
In 1977 she purchased what was then Greencastle radio station WXTA (94.3 FM), which became WJNZ under her guidance and is now WREB. Bingham became the first Indiana woman to own and operate a commercial radio station.
Bingham, who retired from broadcasting in 1994, was inducted into the Indiana Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 1999.
Meanwhile, she’s also helped enhance her community as one of the founders of the Greencastle High School Alumni Association and the GHS Alumni Scholarship Fund. She served two terms as president of the Greencastle Business and Professional Women’s Club; three terms on the Greencastle/Putnam County Development Center Board and two terms as a Greencastle city councilor; was president of the Greencastle Chamber of Commerce, Greencastle Board of Zoning Appeals, Putnam County Historical Society and Main Street Greencastle among many other activities.
Bingham has been presented the seal of the City of Greencastle, named a Sagamore of the Wabash and Kentucky Colonel, and last year received the Golden Hoosier Award, the highest recognition of service to the community by a senior citizen.
Meanwhile, Tennessee-born Dorothy Brown has served DePauw for more than 30 years, coming to the university as an instructor of education in 1986 after a stint as principal in Warren Township Schools in Indianapolis and, before that, at Ridpath Elementary School in Greencastle.
Brown holds the distinction of being the first African American to teach in Greencastle schools.
With bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Indiana State University and endorsements in special education, Brown has dedicated her life to creating educational opportunities and hope for young people.
In 1987 she was appointed assistant dean and director of minority affairs at DePauw. She left Greencastle in 1992 to serve as consultant to the president and coordinator of campus climate at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College, returning to DePauw a year later to teach education and to serve as house director for Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, a position she holds to this day.
In March 2009, DePauw’s Cultural Resource Center was renamed the Dorothy Brown Cultural Resource Center.
Brown has been active in many local organizations, including Greencastle Kiwanis, Putnam County Museum, NAACP, Gobin Church and Girl Scouts. She has been recognized for her focus and determination to make her community a better place for all families to raise children.
The third 2018 honorary degree recipient, Eva Kor, is one of the few surviving twins still sharing her personal account of medical experiments supervised by the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele at Auschwitz. Now 84, she continues to travel, sharing her message of forgiveness and to “never give up,” in addition to leading hundreds of people on a journey to Auschwitz each year.
In 1995, Kor opened CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Terre Haute.
Her story of forgiveness is the subject of a new feature-length documentary, “Eva A-7063,” and is recounted in the German book “Die Macht Des Vergebens” (The Power of Forgiveness).
Last year, Kor received the Sachem Award, Indiana’s highest honor, and has also been awarded the 2015 Anne Frank Change the World Award from the Wassmuth Center for Human Rights.