Rep. Wally Herger and Assemblywoman Mariko Yamada presented congressional and state Assembly commendations to Davis resident Artemis Bolnik, 98, a World War II veteran, at the fourth annual awards ceremony for veterans held recently. Bolnik served in New Guinea.

Vietnam combat veteran Mike Irwin of Davis also was awarded a special congressional recognition and an Assembly certificate of recognition.

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Col. James C. Rix’s retirement ceremony took place on Aug. 5 in Colorado Springs, Colo. The event was attended by local family members.

Rix, a Yolo County resident, was the director of the plans, policy and programs division for the Directorate of Intelligence, North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command.

Rix was commissioned in 1985 upon graduation from the Officer Training School. He served in intelligence and operational positions in fighter, command and control, mobility and special operations units and as an analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency. He was a Latin America foreign area officer.

As an airborne intelligence officer, Rix had more than 900 flight hours in the EC-130E (ABCCC), the E-3 (AWACS) and the E-8 (J-STARS) and flew more than 160 combat support hours in Operations Just Cause and Desert Storm.

He served as the chief of information operations for Multi-National Corps in Iraq, planning, synchronizing and executing all operational-level information operations supporting seven multi-national division operations under Gen. David Petreaus.

Most recently, he served as the first commander of the 361st Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group at Hurlburt Field in Florida. The group organizes, trains and equips specialized forces for special operations missions around the world.

Rix now returns to civilian life with his master’s degree and a distinguished 26-year career in the military. He has
received multiple military honors and served from Korea to Iraq.

He will be greatly missed by the Air Force but his family in the Capay Valley — former Air Force Maj. Kim Rix and kids Josh and Olivia, who attend school at Da Vinci Charter Academy in Davis; sister and brother-in-law, Sue and Larry Heitman of Capay and mother and
father-in-law, Lois and Bill Forbess of Woodland — are glad to have him here to stay.

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Air Force Airman Andrew L. Forrest graduated from basic military training at Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas.

The airman completed an intensive, eight-week program that included training in military discipline and studies, Air Force core values, physical fitness, and basic warfare principles and skills.

Airmen who complete basic training earn four credits toward an associate in applied science degree through the Community College of the Air Force.

He is the son of Matthew Forrest of Davis.

Forrest graduated in 2007 from the Davis School For Independent Study.

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Preethika Ekanayake, a fourth-year medical student at the UC Davis School of Medicine, has won a Physicians of Tomorrow Scholarship from the American Medical Association Foundation.

Ekanayake is one of 18 students from across the United States who received the $10,000 award, which recognizes academic excellence and community involvement.

Ekanayake has been an active scholar and volunteer, both within and outside of the UC Davis School of Medicine. As a co-director of the Willow Clinic, she provides basic medical and psychiatric services to homeless patients and started a pharmacy for the clinic.

She also is a second lieutenant in the California Army National Guard and an officer of the American Medical Women’s Association. Her research efforts include work exploring endoscopic modalities in the medical center’s gastroenterology clinic. She also has won numerous awards for scholarship.

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Justin M. Hyer of Winters and Lauren E. Koch of Woodland made the academic dean’s list at Azusa Pacific University. These students are honored for a spring semester 2011 academic standing of 3.5 or better grade-point average. A total of 1,575 students received the same honor.

Azusa Pacific University is an evangelical, Christian university. With 53 undergraduate majors, 37 master’s degrees, 21 credentials, seven doctoral programs and five certificates, the university offers its more than 9,200 students a quality education on campus, online and at seven regional centers throughout Southern California.

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Rebekah Wheeler has joined Woodland Healthcare as a nurse midwife in the obstetrician/gynecology department.

Wheeler received her master’s degree in nursing specializing in nurse-midwifery and a master’s degree in public health from Yale University. She recently completed an internship in midwifery at the Cambridge Health Alliance/Cambridge Birthing Center in Cambridge, Mass.

Prior to joining Woodland Healthcare, Wheeler worked as a registered nurse at the Women’s Services Unit, Yale New Haven Hospital, New Haven, Conn. She has also worked as a doula in New York and is the founder of the Malawi Women’s Health Collective in Malawi, Africa, a comprehensive training program for traditional birth attendants from rural villages in southern Malawi.

Wheeler is seeing patients at the Woodland Clinic, 632 W. Gibson Road, Woodland.

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Omar Hafez of Davis has been awarded a computational science graduate fellowship from the U.S. Department of Energy. Hafez, a 2005 graduate of Davis High School, will pursue a doctoral degree in structural mechanics at UC Davis beginning this fall.

The fellowship is a highly competitive program funded by the DOE’s Office of Science and the National Nuclear Security Administration. Initiated by the Office of Science and first awarded in 1991, this fellowship has supported more than 250 students at more than 50 universities.

Fellowships are granted annually and fund the education of doctoral students whose course of study focuses on the use of high-performance computers to solve complex problems in science and engineering.

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The Rev. L. Ann Hallisey of Davis is the new dean of students at Church Divinity School of the Pacific, the Very Rev. Dr. W. Mark Richardson, president and dean, has announced.

Hallisey returns to serve the Berkeley seminary where she earned her doctor of ministry degree.

In her 28 years of ordained ministry, Hallisey has served as rector and interim in congregations and has developed an independent practice as an organizational consultant. She is a spiritual director and retreat leader, and is a licensed marriage and family therapist. She is working toward certification as a master practitioner in appreciative inquiry.

The Rev. Jan Wood, former dean of students, left the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in July after six years to accept a call to be priest-in-charge of Grace Episcopal Church in Sandusky, Ohio.

Hallisey, a Los Angeles native, received her bachelor’s degree from UC Santa Barbara, a master’s degree in clinical counseling from California State University Hayward, a master of divinity from Yale University and a doctor of ministry from CDSP.

She has been an Episcopal priest of the Diocese of Northern California for 28 years; 22 of those years have been in parish ministry, including nine years as rector of Church of the Ascension in Vallejo.

Most recently, she has been the interim associate rector at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Oakland and Good Shepherd Episcopal Church in Berkeley.

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Danielle Wishon, an entomology major at UC Davis and president of the UCD Entomology Club, received the department’s Outstanding Undergraduate Student Award.

Wishon acknowledges that she’s always loved insects and “anything creepy crawly, for that matter.”

Her name appears on a plaque outside the department’s administrative office on the third floor of Briggs Hall.

Wishon, who transferred to UCD in the fall of 2008 from Sierra Community College in Rocklin, works at the Bohart Museum of Entomology with director Lynn Kimsey, and interns in the forensic entomology lab with Bob Kimsey.

The Kimseys, husband and wife, are longtime faculty members of the entomology department.

Born in Coronado, Wishon moved to Las Vegas at age 11. She’s a 2000 graduate of Cimarron Memorial High School in Las Vegas, and attended colleges in Las Vegas and San Diego before settling in Rocklin, and now Davis.

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Samantha Harris, an associate professor in the department of neurobiology, physiology and behavior at UC Davis, has been awarded a Muscular Dystrophy Association grant totaling $244,024 over two years. The funding will help Harris in her quest to determine the properties of a skeletal-muscle protein called myosin binding protein C.

Mutations in the gene for myosin binding protein C affect muscle contraction and could play a role in a number of muscle diseases.

The MDA announced funding, totaling $13.7 million, for 40 new research initiatives targeting nearly two dozen progressive neuromuscular diseases.

These new projects are in addition to hundreds of other MDA-funded scientific investigations being advanced worldwide to find effective treatments for neuromuscular diseases.

— Do you know of someone who has won an award or accomplished something noteworthy? Send it, preferably by email, to [email protected], or to Name droppers, The Davis Enterprise, P.O. Box 1470, Davis, CA 95617.

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