Philip Merrill College of Journalism | University of Maryland

Fellow Friends

For Fellows, enduring relationships continue after the Humphrey Year

After Humphrey Fellow A’an Suryana returned to Indonesia, he stayed in touch with his host, who helped him to arrange training sessions at his newspaper, The Jakarta Post.

**Leslie and Jin at Tienanmen Square**

Journalist Jin Yang from China (Class of 2005-06) had interned during her Fellowship at the Washington Bureau of the Los Angeles Times under the supervision of editor Leslie Hoffecker. When Hoffecker’s college-aged son traveled to Beijing, Yang showed him the town and looked after him for a few days.

Humphrey Fellows use their year at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism to establish lasting relationships with each other and with people in Washington’s media community. Often the Fellows make enduring friendships that lead to collaborations across borders.

In many cases, it starts at the airport.

Fellows receive a local host on arrival to Maryland – either an individual or a family that picks them up at the airport, houses them for a few days, and “acts as a safety net,” said Frank Quine, a host since 1993. While Fellows don’t live with their hosts, they oftentimes eat holiday meals together, go to sporting events and museums, or just spend a slow weekend together.

**Milena with her host family, the Quines**

Patrick Butler, who supervises training programs with the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), has been hosting Fellows for five years. “This is my work,” Butler said, “so it’s good for me professionally to meet these journalists, but it’s also a pleasure personally.”

When Butler recently traveled to Jakarta on business in July 2007, Suryana (Class of 2006-07) set up some of his appointments and drove him around town. Butler and Suryana are arranging to have U.S. journalists run short training programs at The Jakarta Post, where Suryana is responsible for training.

Some of the strongest Humphrey relationships have no professional basis. Frank Quine calls himself and his wife, Mary Ellen, surrogate parents to Fellow Milena Djurdjic and her husband, John Jai.

Djurdjic was introduced to Jai, a teacher from Northern Virginia, by another Fellow from her 2004-05 class, Sandor Orban. The two men had met in Hungary through the Fulbright program.

“We watched this relationship develop,” said Quine, an assistant dean at the Merrill College, who hosted Djurdjic in the United States. “And we told her that if they decided to get married, because it was getting very serious, we’d come to Montenegro.”

Sure enough, the Quines visited Djurdjic, her husband and Djurdjic’s family in Montenegro in late July for a wedding celebration, followed by the official ceremony in San Francisco over Labor Day weekend.

by Andy Zieminski