Three Columbus/Columbus North High School alumni are the newest members of the Bull Dog Alumni Association Hall of Fame, joining 23 other individuals who also have been recognized for their accomplishments.
Two inductees, Pamela Robillard Mackey and Brad Garton, attended a reception and ceremony Friday evening in the student commons area at Columbus North that drew a crowd of more than 50 people. A third alumni, the late Stephen Sprouse, was inducted posthumously.
The alumni association recognized the fifth Hall of Fame class in advance of the school’s homecoming football game against Perry Meridian High School. Sprouse, a pioneer fashion designer and artist who graduated from Columbus High School in 1971, was honored for his work and died in 2004 at age 50 of lung cancer.
Sprouse helped design clothing for rock stars including Debbie Harry, Duran Duran, Bily Idol, David Bowie and Axl Rose. He also was a costume creator for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, also designing staff uniforms when the building opened in 1995.
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He also worked with fashion designer Halston during his career and had attended Rhode Island School of Design but left the school at the end of his first semester of freshman year to work for Halston in New York City, according to his mother, Joanne Sprouse, who was unable to attend the ceremony.
Columbus resident Lori Phillips, who graduated with Sprouse, spoke during the ceremony and was asked by Joanne Sprouse to accept his award on behalf of his family. Phillips said she thought her late classmate would be honored by the recognition.
“I think he would be humbled and I think he would be grateful,” Phillips said.
Mackey, who graduated from North in 1974, works as an attorney for Haddon, Morgan and Foreman, a Denver-based law firm, where she focuses on criminal defense, civil and environmental litigation and government investigations.
She appeared at the ceremony with her husband, Craig, in addition to her mother, Roseanne Robillard.
Mackey credited the community and the school in allowing her to meet some amazing people in her life. She said she was honored by the recognition in being inducted into the Hall of Fame and spoke positively about her life growing up in Columbus.
“This is a wonderful, wonderful place to be,” Mackey said. “It all started here.”
Brad Garton, a 1975 North graduate, also was in attendance during Friday’s ceremony. Garton is a professor of music composition and director of the Computer Music Center at Columbus University, a private Ivy League school in New York City, where he has worked since 1987.
Garton, who was joined by his parents Bob and Barb Garton at the ceremony, earned his bachelor’s degree in pharmacology from Purdue and doctoral degree in music composition from Princeton University. As part of his work in academia, Garton helped co-develop RTCMIX, a music synthesis and signal processing language and has also assisted in establishing more than 50 computer music centers around the world.
Garton also was appreciative of the recognition as well.
“I’m just thrilled to death,” he said.
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He is considered to be a pioneer fashion designer and artist and initially worked with fashion designer Halston for the Seventh Avenue collection. Sprouse also helped merge pop culture’s uptown and downtown sensibilities to fashion’s connections to contemporary art.
Sprouse is the creator of Day-Glo colors, mirrored sequins and velcro attachments in the early 1980s and was recognized by the Council of Fashion Designers of America for Fashion Design in 1984. He also was a designer of clothing for rock stars such as Blondie’s Debbie Harry, Duran Duran, Billy Idol, David Bowie and Axl Rose.
He was costume creator for the new Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and designer of staff uniforms when the building opened in Cleveland in 1995. He created prints using NASA photos taken on Mars by Pathfinder in 1999 and also was the designer of graffiti patriotic motif clothing for Target, as well as handbags and luggage for Louis Vuitton and Diesel brand clothing.
Sprouse died March 4, 2004, at age 50 of lung cancer.
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She is an attorney practicing in the areas of criminal defense, civil and environmental litigation and government investigations for Haddon, Morgan and Foreman, a Denver-based law firm.
She came to Haddon, Morgan and Foreman as an associate attorney in 1987 and then served as deputy state public defender for five years beginning in 1989. She then returned to Haddon, Morgan and Foreman in 1994.
She has been honored as a fellow of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers, American College of Trial Lawyers, the American Bar Association and the Colorado Bar Association.
Mackey served as chairperson of the American College of Trial Lawyers Task Force that published a nationally recognized white paper on best practices for Title IX investigations by universities and colleges this year.
A graduate of the University of Colorado at Boulder with a degree in journalism and a law degree from George Washington University, both with honors, she has been honored annually by Best Lawyers in America in various areas of litigation since 2001.
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He is a 1975 graduate of Columbus North High School and serves as professor of music composition and director of the Computer Music Center at Columbia University in New York City. He has had faculty appointments at other universities such as the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, New York University, Bard College, the University of Thessaloniki and Tamagawa University.
He has assisted in establishing more than 50 Computer Music Centers around the world and is an active composer and music software developer. In addition, he has written three books, collaborated with a professor of neurobiology at Columbia Medical Center for the brainwave music project to convert brainwaves into sound.
Garton was named as a recipient of the Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award at Columbus University in 2015 and is a former member on the board of directors of the International Computer Music Association. He is a graduate of Purdue University with a bachelor’s degree in pharmacology and earned a doctoral degree in music composition from Princeton University.
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