Amy Falkner stood in front of students, colleagues and community members in Hendricks Chapel, wearing blue to honor her friend, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications Dean Lorraine Branham. She died Tuesday after a battle with cancer.

Branham loved orange, Falkner said, and she would always wear it. She also loved to laugh. She loved her students. She loved her family.

“(An) instigator, an innovator, a jokester. That was Lorraine Branham,” Falkner said.

Branham was dean of Newhouse for more than a decade. Prior to her time at SU, she was the dean of the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. She spent part of her career as a newspaper journalist at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Baltimore Sun.

Hendricks Chapel Dean Brian Konkol spoke first at the vigil. Everyone connected to Branham hoped that she would recover from cancer, he said. Konkol emphasized the importance of grieving together as a community.

“Perhaps our task is simply to be together,” Konkol said. “(To) receive the freedom that we feel whatever we wish to feel together.”

Falkner spoke next. She called the vigil “a collective hug” for the student body. Students were the reason Branham became an educator, she said.

Branham, as a woman of color in the media, was a “trailblazer,” Falkner. When reading tweets from people who knew Branham, the words “pioneer,” “fighter” and “fierce” often came up, she said, but “funny” was the best way to describe her.

Russell Ladson is Dean Branham’s nephew. To him, she was not Dean Branham, she was just Aunt Lo. “She was the first model of success that I know.” Ladson said. Kai Nguyen | Staff Photographer

“What an influencer, and what a memory for us to live by,” she said. “You cannot work with Lorraine Branham without laughter.”

Kelsey Davis, a senior television, radio and film major, spoke after Falkner. Davis said she had known Branham since she was in high school. When she considered leaving the university due to poor academic standing, Branham told her that her grades were not a reflection of her worth.

Following the speeches, a moment of silence was held in honor of Branham.

Hub Brown, associate dean for research, creativity, international initiatives and diversity, said after the ceremony, in Hendricks, that although he understood Branham’s cancer would be difficult, her death feels very sudden.

“We all had been missing Lorraine for quite a while, even before yesterday,” Brown said. “We’re all just going to try and recover together.”

A procession followed the vigil and attendees tied orange ribbons to the trees outside of Newhouse 3. The ribbons waved in front of the First Amendment, which is written across the side of the building.

Taylor Epps, a senior broadcast and digital journalism major, said she’s hurt that Branham will not get to see her graduate. Epps said she works to make Branham proud, and that she felt empowered seeing a woman of color in a powerful position.

“Everything that I do from here on out, from the minute I walk back into Newhouse, is for Dean Branham,” Epps said. “My path would have been so different had I not had Dean Branham to guide me through it.”

 

Published on April 3, 2019 at 10:37 pm

Contact Natalie: nrrubiol@syr.edu