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PLUM HONORS 2017 CLASS OF DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI
Plum Distinguished Alumni Class of 2017 members were honored at a banquet that took place at Oakmont Country Club on Sunday, April 23. On Monday, April 24, honorees spoke to students during classes at Plum Senior High School, and gave brief remarks at the National Honor Society Induction ceremony. Each inductee received a Proclamation from the Pennsylvania State Senate, Senator Jim Brewster’ s office, and their photographs were unveiled at the Wall of Distinction.
Cristopher Cooley, Plum class of 1990, is the husband of Alison and the father of Michael and Maria. Cooley has been teaching math since 1997 and founded the 501c3 nonprofit Serving Other Souls, Inc.( SOS) in 2011. Serving Other Souls is a servant-leadership group built to create leaders through servicebased initiatives. Members of SOS are 6th through 8th grade students at Franklin Regional Middle School. In order to gain the empathy that will allow SOS members to connect to an ever changing world, SOS members offer their time, talent or treasure to SOS service projects that serve the needy. SOS is working on creating chapters within other school districts in the region. Visit the SOS website at servingothersouls. org.
Cooley has received numerous awards for his service to the community including the 2012 Hero of Hope Award from Murrysville
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Cristopher Cooley
Relay For Life, service award from Mayor Hrivnak in 2013, a Meritorious Award from the mayor of Murrysville in 2014 on behalf of SOS and the Franklin Regional Excellence Award as teacher and SOS director at FR Middle School. In 2015 he received the Jefferson Award for Public Service, which is widely considered to be the“ Nobel Prize” of volunteerism.
Steven Fabian Lisowski, a 2002 graduate, learned the ropes of television production at Plum High School while working on the Make-A-Wish telethon and hosting the morning announcements. Today he can be seen by 6 million television viewers on a daily basis.
After graduating from Plum and Allegheny College, he launched a career in television that quickly put him in front of a national audience. His presence on the small screen has led him to serve as a correspondent for“ Inside Edition,” the award-winning, highly rated newsmagazine that has been on the air for three decades. Fabian Lisowski has
Steven Fabian Lisowski
also co-hosted the hit viral-videos show“ RightThisMinute” and served as a reporteranchor for“ Channel One News,” a national news program for teens that jumpstarted the careers of Anderson Cooper and Maria Menounos.
Working in broadcast television has allowed Steven to cover everything from the drug wars
in Juarez, Mexico, to the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, Canada, and stops along the campaign trail during the 2016 presidential election. He’ s swum with sharks in the Bahamas, been caught in the middle of riots in Baltimore, MD, and Ferguson, MO, and interviewed celebrities on the red carpet of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Joseph F. Gassette, Jr.
Joseph F. Gassette, Jr. graduated from Plum High School in 1977. He was a letterman in football and track and a member of the National Honor Society. He earned a National Achievement Scholarship and attended Northwestern University. He transferred after his freshman year to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he graduated with a bachelor’ s degree in Chemical Engineering in 1981.
Since that time Gassette has enjoyed a long and varied career with DuPont. He began with two-year assignments in Chemical Engineering and Information Technology. This included stints as a Research Engineer at the Experimental Station and as an I. T. consultant in the Engineering Department. He transferred to the Spruance plant in Richmond, VA, where he has developed and implemented I. T. systems that are used globally.
The I. T. systems are used to control production at multiple sites domestically
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