Iowa State University Alumni Association| online edition | spring 2006

SPRING 2006
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Cover Story:
>>The 20 Most Ingriguing People on Campus

• An extraordinary tale of luck and pluck
• Handyman extraordinaire
• Please don't hate me
• The ecology of chimps
• Cy spoken here
• (N)ice guys
• Designed to dance
• Christmas every day
• Unlikely warrior
• Renaissance man
• Ask me anything
• Rescue K9-11
• You're so vein
• Behind the bells
• Bug Brockman, boy entomologist
• The ultimate Cyclone fan
• On the road with Paul Lasley and The Guys
• Calling Dr. Vosburg, Dr. Vosburg

Alumni Profile:
An Iraqi hero

Alumni Profile:
Putting the fun in functional

Alumni Profile:
Three wishes for Stephanie Kobes

Alumni Profile:
Roy Reiman: I could write a book

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Calling Dr. Vosburg, Dr. Vosburg

Back in the early 1970s, when Don Vosburg was a student at Iowa State, he wanted to be a veterinarian. So when he graduated with his BS in animal science, he applied to vet school.

He wasn’t accepted.

“You go on,” he said.

Don Vosburg (’75) did go on. He raised a family in Hampton, Iowa. He was a news-paper reporter. He raised sheep and cattle. He made a living shoeing horses.

“You kind of bury that dream,” Don says. “I guess I just always had it in the back of my mind that [going to veterinary school] was something I wish I would have done.”

Then Don’s son, Zach, got into ISU’s veterinary medicine program, and the old dream came rushing back.

“I just kept thinking that was something I really wanted to do,” he said.

So he applied again. And this time, he got accepted.
Zach Vosburg is ISU vet med class of 2007. And his dad is class of 2009.

Zach doesn’t find it the least bit strange running into his father in the hallway of the teaching hospital or studying for a radiology final together in the library.
“It’s great,” Zach says. “We came to vet school independent of each other, but we’ve always made a good team.”

Don clearly values having his son as a mentor.

“At different times when Zach was a kid, I was his T-ball coach, his 4-H leader, and his Sunday school teacher,” Don said. “You always think that the paybacks are coming in the next generation. This is a kind of payback that you never, ever expected. I just feel very lucky.”

Zach agrees.

“Yeah, I’m pretty darn proud of the old man.”

-- C. Gieseke