As Tiger Woods stretched out his accumulated kinks and prepared to play golf again, Natalie Redcross, who teaches public relations and other journalistic classes at Iona College in New Rochelle, said from her perspective the Woods fiasco has been handled all wrong. But not for the hard-nosed reasons you might expect of a PR professor.
“No sponsor will fall apart without him,” Redcross said. “But his family might fall apart without him. This is going against the rules, but it”™s also a case of ”˜the less I know the better.”™ He needs to make an apology, and take care of what matters: his family. He”™s not a political figure.”
Her students find themselves dissecting just such case studies and making presentations: your company implodes (product tampering!); save the day. And be quick about it.
Redcross teaches 55-65 students per semester. Her focus is mass communication, including journalism, which she is teaching on the introductory level this semester. Next semester, she will teach exclusively public relations: an introductory course for 35 students, a course in writing for PR and a graduate-level media relations course that she will teach at Iona”™s Rockland County campus. She takes attendance.
Redcross”™ academic degrees include a Bachelor of Arts in communication arts and a Master of Science in journalism, both from Iona College, and a doctorate in communications and culture from Howard University in Washington, D.C. Her doctoral dissertation ”“ more than four years in the production ”“ focused on the influence of editorial content on teen magazine audiences.
“Education was always a presence growing up,” Redcross said. Her parents are Shauneille Perry Ryder, a stage director and theater professor at Lehman College in the Bronx, and Bond Ryder, a Manhattan architect and chairman of the architecture department at City College of New York. She (and her husband Kenneth Redcross and 4-year-old twins Evan and Sophia) remain close with her parents, now retired, a love that shone through with hot showers during recent storms when her power was out. “They were pioneers,” she said with evident pride. “They were firsts. They accomplished what in those days was not accomplished.”
She said for her there was a natural attraction to the stage, owing to her mother”™s background (her movie-star smile would have been a big asset). “She told us ”“” her sisters are Lorraine Ryder and Gail Perry-Ryder ”“ “”˜If you want to go into theater, that”™s fine, but it”™s not easy.”™ And we were always exposed to the teaching side of our parents”™ lives. I decided on teaching.”
By 1996, Redcross was standing before a class of fourth-graders. That year she also taught junior high. “I had a knack for teaching,” she said, “but I realized I preferred teaching adults.” The knack of late has turned into a love: “I didn”™t appreciate that until this year.”
A mention of Redcross”™ family spawns an asterisk ”“ another pair of sisters: Judy, who lives in Ossining, and Florence, who lives in Ohio ”“ and that asterisk leads to another continent entirely.
Redcross”™ Aunt Camille married Martin Aliker, a Ugandan. Her Uncle Martin was also uncle to 19 children through his brother and that brother was mayor of a Ugandan village during the reign of terror of Idi Amin ”“ not a healthy situation. Redcross”™ parents took in Judy and Florence and they have remained in America.
Redcross first went to Africa as a 5-year-old girl. She has since returned twice and will again return next month ”“ to Kenya ”“ with an outreach group of a dozen students and a colleague from Iona College. Iona Campus Ministries is the sponsor.
“Every time I go I feel as if it”™s life without distractions,” she said. “It frees me to see a person on the inside ”“ what real struggles are and what real joy is. There is no middleman and there are no middle things. What surfaces is often painful. I have to prepare myself to be hurt.
“But there is also real joy ”“ sitting and talking with a not-cold Coca-Cola, people just getting into each other. You see that doing nothing can be so much more than doing nothing. You come to see the interpersonal nature of something like washing clothes.”
Her own children, she said without hesitation, will know Africa. “They”™re blessed to have family there. They will see Africa ”“ there”™s no doubt.”
Meantime, the twins will endure in May their longest separation from their mother when she steps on the 14-hour flight to Kenya. “But I”™ll be a better mom upon my return.”
