Jan Perry was a professional journalist for 15 years, working first at the Pacific Sun newspaper as a proofreader and writer and then at string letter as a copy editor. She has lived almost all her life in Marin and is an enthusiastic reader, walker, cook and crossword fan. When she’s awake, she always has some kind of music playing.
William J. Drummond’s career includes stints at The (Louisville) Courier-Journal, where he covered the civil rights movement, and the Los Angeles Times, where he was a local reporter, then bureau chief in New Delhi and Jerusalem and later a Washington correspondent.
Drummond was appointed a White House Fellow in 1976 by President Gerald R. Ford, worked briefly for Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and eventually became associate press secretary to President Jimmy Carter. In 1977 he joined NPR and became the founding editor of “Morning Edition.” He joined the Berkeley faculty in July, 1983.
His most significant recent contribution to journalism came by way of the partnership he established with the San Quentin News beginning in the summer of 2012.
My name is John C. Eagan and I am a retired journalist with more than 30 years in the news business. Born and raised in Florida, I served three years in the U.S. Army in South Carolina and Germany. I graduated from the University of Florida with a bachelor’s degree in Journalism. For 12 years I was with The Associated Press as reporter, editor and executive in San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles and Chicago.
Community activities have included San Rafael and Ignacio Rotary, Petaluma Kiwanis and Napa Optimist clubs, and Temple City Junior Chamber of Commerce. I am a member Tiburon Baptist Church. For more than 20 years I have come periodically with members of my church to Saturday evening services in the San Quentin Protestant Chapel.
Since 2008, I have been an adviser and mentor to the inmates who produce the San Quentin News, which had been shut down for about 18 years. In April 2008, then-Warden Robert Ayres Jr. asked me to help reactivate the newspaper, which I agreed to do as a volunteer.
If you'd like to know more, go to John C. Eagan's Bio.
Susanne Karch began volunteering at San Quentin with the S.Q.U.I.R.E.S. program in 2012. From the beginning she was extremely impressed with the quality of the men she met inside and she promptly became a subscriber of the San Quentin News. She is honored to contribute her time to helping the SQN grow its donor base.
Born and raised in Germany, Susanne emigrated to the United States with her family when she was 8. After many years in the corporate world as a sales executive on both coasts, she took time off to care for her ailing parents. Susanne has been self-employed for the past 18 years and has lived in the Bay Area since 1989.
Steve McNamara was one of the three initial advisers of the San Quentin News when Warden Bob Ayers revived it in the spring of 2008. Steve devised the paper’s design and typography, moving it toward its appearance as a real newspaper.
Steve brought 53 years of newspaper experience to the News. He had been a reporter and editor for daily, weekly and monthly publications in North Carolina, Miami, Europe and San Francisco. He was owner/editor/publisher of the Pacific Sun in Marin County from 1966 through 2004. He was president of the California Society of Newspaper Editors (dailies and weeklies), a director of the California Newspaper Publishers Association, and founding president of both the National Association of Alternative Newsweeklies and California Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. Also, he taught journalism at San Francisco State University and was a member of the Innovation and Planning Commission of the California Department of Education.
If you'd like to know more, go to Steve McNamara's BIO.
I am a native of Connecticut, but have lived in the Bay Area for all but six years since 1964. I served in the Marine Corps after high school and completed my undergraduate work at The University of Connecticut and my graduate studies at Stanford University. My Ph.D. dissertation research took me to Bogotá, Colombia where I lived for a year. I taught modern Latin American history and Chicano Studies at the University of Minnesota for five years. I returned to the Bay Area in 1974 to launch an electronics business which I administered until I retired in 1989. In retirement, I became an art student and have done course work at the College of Marin and San Francisco City College as well as numerous workshops. I consider myself primarily a 3 dimensional artist and work with a wide variety of materials from steel to digital images.
For years I have been interested in issues of criminal and social justice; that interest often manifested itself in my art. I realized the opportunities of service at San Quentin when a SQN volunteer invited me to Peace Day in 2017. After meeting the staff I became convinced that I could make a contribution and since then I have focused my efforts on the search for sources of funding for the San Quentin News.
Tom is a retired management consultant who now works as a mentor and advisor to startups, small businesses and nonprofits on strategic messaging. He started working with the San Quentin News in 2018, helping them reboot their social media presence on Twitter. During his consulting career Tom worked for global firms including IBM Global Services, Gartner, and PWC, helping his clients bring about change by creating compelling narratives for leadership and employees. He has dabbled in journalism throughout his life and enjoys working with the men on promoting the San Quentin News and supporting its mission.