The 1983 Awardees

Gen. Jack E. Babcock
(1914-2017)

Ph.D. 1954
Alexandria, VA

Gen. Jack Babcock, a former associate professor in the School of Business Administration and School of Continuing Studies, received the John Carroll Award in ceremonies held at the Mark Hopkins Hotel, San Francisco, CA, on October 1, 1983.

Born in Anacortes, WA in 1914, Babcock earned a degree in pharmacy from the University of Washington in 1937 before beginning a 31 year career in the U.S. Army, which included service in three wars and across posts worldwide. he retired as a brigadier general in 1968 and was awarded the Army Distinguished Service Medal.

Gen. Babcock earned a Ph.D. in international affairs in 1954, and returned to the Hilltop in the late 1960's to teach courses in international business policy. He led the efforts to create a summer program in Oxford for business students to study abroad when many of the programs at the time were designed for students from the College and Foreign Service.

Babcock served six years as the vice president of the graduate school for the Board of Governors of the Georgetown University Alumni Association, and also served on advisory boards for the School of Business and the School for Continuing Studies.

Gen. Babcock died in December 2017 at the age of 102, the oldest living John Carroll recipient.

Joseph E. Beh
(1918-2003)

BSS 1941
Atherton, CA

Joseph E. Beh, a San Francisco area business executive, received the John Carroll Award in ceremonies held at the Mark Hopkins Hotel, San Francisco, CA, on October 1, 1983.

Beh, a native of Iowa, graduated from Georgetown in 1941. Following service in World War II with the Air Transport Command, he moved west to join Pan American Airways. Beh later founded his own insurance agency, was president of a savings and loan, and was the president of a mining investment company. He was a generous benefactor to Georgetown, served on its Board of Regents and Board of Directors, and was among four alumni honored by the university with a building named in his honor within its Alumni Square (also known as "Village B") housing development which debuted in 1983.

Joseph Beh died in 2003 at the age of 85.

Richard M. Coleman

AB 1957, LLM 1961
Los Angeles, CA

Richard Coleman, a Los Angeles-based attorney and professor, received the John Carroll Award in ceremonies held at the Mark Hopkins Hotel, San Francisco, CA, on October 1, 1983.

Raised in Englewood, NJ, Coleman attended Regis HS in New York, and was an honors student throughout his years at Georgetown. A popular figure in the College, Coleman served as junior class president and was elected President of the Yard unopposed. He fell just short of the class valedictorian honors, an award held by a lifelong friend, Antonin Scalia. Coleman and Scalia were classmates at Harvard Law School following their undergraduate years at Georgetown.

In 1961, Coleman returned to Georgetown Law to earn his LL.M as one of the original members of the E. Barrett Prettyman Fellowship program. Following Georgetown, he served as a special attorney in the Department of Justice under Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and was named chief of the Special Prosecutions Division of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles. He entered private practice in 1967, focusing on entertainment, real estate and security law, and was given the Pepperdine Teaching Award for his service as an adjunct professor in that school's arbitration law program.

A past president of the Los Angeles County Bar Association and of the National Caucus of Metropolitan Bar Leaders, Coleman served as a past president of the Georgetown Club of Los Angeles and was a member of the Board of Governors for the Georgetown University Alumni Association from 1971 to 1974.

Janice A. Noack
(1934-2021)

BSN 1955
St. Louis, MO

Janice Noack, the associate dean of nursing at Saint Louis University, received the John Carroll Award in ceremonies held at the Mark Hopkins Hotel, San Francisco, CA, on October 1, 1983.

An active member of the national nursing teaching community,. Noack received her bachelor's degree from Georgetown in 1955, followed by master's and doctoral degrees from Catholic University. She taught at Georgetown from 1969 to 1974, where she received the Edward Bunn S.J. award for teaching. In 1975 she was named dean of the Ursuline Center for Nursing, and in 1977 was named associate dean at Saint Louis University, where she taught for 20 years and was an emerita dean of that staff.

Janice Noack died in September 2021.

W. Dennis Owen
(1926-2021)

BSFS 1951
Skaneateles, NY

William D. (Denny) Owen, president of the W.S. Owen Company and former president of the Georgetown University Alumni Association, received the John Carroll Award in ceremonies held at the Mark Hopkins Hotel, San Francisco, CA, on October 1, 1983.

Raised in Syracuse, NY, Owen was a scholar-athlete at Christian Brothers Academy (CBA) in Syracuse, graduating in 1944 and joining the Naval Air Corps thereafter. Following military service, he enrolled at Georgetown in 1947, graduating in 1951 and joining his father's home furnishings business, the W.S. Owen Company, from which he was affiliated with for 50 years.

A trustee at CBA and across numerous civic and Catholic-related organizations in his community, Owen received the formal recognition known as the "Affiliation to the Brothers of the Christian Schools" in 1983, one of just five laymen honored in the previous 100 years by the clergy. A member of the Order of Malta, he was a founding member of the Order of Malta's central New York chapter.

Owen's legacy at Georgetown is a notable one, with service as president of the Georgetown Club of Syracuse, one of the founding members of the Alumni Admissions Program, and terms of service on the Alumni Board of Governors, the Board of Regents, and two years on the Board of Directors during his term as president of the Alumni Association from 1986 to 1988. He was called back into service, ever so briefly, to return as president and reconvene the board in 1992 to satisfy a condition in the settlement of a lawsuit against the Association.

An active member of the Alumni Association into his early 90's, Owen died in 2021 at the age of 94. The Association's "Owen-Riggs Volunteer of the Year Award" is named in honor of Owen and Dr. Joseph Riggs (C'55, M'59), himself a former president of the GUAA and a 1981 John Carroll Award recipient.

Frank D. Winston
(1933-2008)

JD 1958
San Francisco, CA

Frank Winston, a San Francisco based attorney, received the John Carroll Award in ceremonies held at the Mark Hopkins Hotel, San Francisco, CA, on October 1, 1983.

Born in Oakland, CA in 1933, Winston earned degrees from California, UCLA, and NYU, but his law degree was from Georgetown and law was his calling, setting up shop in San Francisco as a defense attorney and later in immigration law. He served as adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco, the UC Extension School in the Bay Area, and hosted a variety of radio shows over the years on topics from local politics to baseball. The former president of the Georgetown Club of San Francisco, he also served as a president of the American Jewish Congress.

In his later years, Winston moved to Pacifica, CA, where diabetes cost him the use of his legs and left him legally blind, yet he still was very much active in his community. The town responded by giving him the unofficial title "Emperor of Pacifica", which was warmly recalled in many obituaries that followed his death in 2008 at the age of 74.

Hon. Roy L. Wonder
(1928-2017)

JD 1959
San Francisco, CA

Roy Wonder, a former superior court judge in San Francisco, received the John Carroll Award in ceremonies held at the Mark Hopkins Hotel, San Francisco, CA, on October 1, 1983.

Wonder grew up in Kansas and received his bachelor's degree at the University of Kansas before serving as a pilot in the Korean War. In 1956, he entered law school at Georgetown and later began his practice as a corporate attorney for the General Aircraft Corporation. Thirteen years later, he became a superior court judge in Marin County, CA, serving until 1996

Judge Wonder served on the Board of Governors for the Georgetown University Alumni Association from 1983 through 1989. He died in 2017 at the age of 88.