Notable Alumni
Tim Blake Nelson ’82
Actor & Producer
Tim Blake Nelson has appeared in over 30 films including Leaves of Grass, American Violet, The Incredible Hulk with Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, and William Hurt, The Astronaut Farmer, Fido, the Emmy-winning HBO movie Warm Springs, Meet the Fockers, Syriana, Holes, The Good Girl, Wonderland, Minority Report, and the Coen Brother’s O Brother Where Art Thou?.
Nelson’s Leaves of Grass, currently in post-production, stars Edward Norton, Susan Sarandon and Richard Dreyfuss. In addition to playing a supporting role, he wrote, directed and co-produced the dark comedy with Edward Norton and Class 5 Films.
Nelson was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He is a graduate of Brown University and the Julliard Theater Center. He resides in New York City with his wife and three sons.
Leanne Taylor ’80
Co-host of Six in the Morning, The News on 6 KOTV
LeAnne Taylor joined The News On 6 in January 1998 as co-host of “Six in the Morning”. She can be seen Monday through Friday from 5 a.m.-9 a.m.
LeAnne Taylor is a native Tulsan. Taylor graduated in 1984 from Oral Roberts University with a degree in telecommunications. LeAnne Taylor’s been on-air in Tulsa Since 1984. LeAnne has fought her own battle with breast cancer. Diagnosed with the disease in 2003, she now works tirelessly to educate others and to tell the story of her personal journey. LeAnne Taylor and her husband Andy are members of Asbury United Methodist Church. They enjoy travel, sporting events, movies, and playing golf when they have a spare moment. They love spending time with their children, Rachel and Nicholas.
Roy S. Johnson ’74
Editor-in-Chief for Men’s Fitness Magazine and former Assistant Managing Editor for Sports Illustrated
Roy S. Johnson is the Men’s Fitness editor-in-chief (since July 2007) and the former Fortune/Sports Illustrated senior writer. He has co-authored two books: Magic’s Touch (Addison Wesley) with Earvin Johnson and Outrageous (Simon & Schuster) with Charles Barkley.
Johnson began his journalism career at SI as a reporter from 1978-81. From 1982-89, Johnson worked at the New York Times, before returning to SI as a senior editor in 1989. During that tenure, Johnson co-authored the magazine’s exclusive, first-person account of Magic Johnson’s sudden retirement from the NBA due to the HIV virus.
In addition to his professional credentials, Johnson is a longstanding member of the National Association of Black Journalists; a board member of the International Amateur Athletic Foundation; and helps oversee the Bill Spiller/Homeboy Golf Classic. He created the Roy S. Johnson Foundation, which provides financial assistance to minority youth from his hometown (Tulsa, Okla.) who are interested in pursuing an education at prestigious Holland Hall Preparatory School, Johnson’s alma mater.
Johnson is a Stanford University graduate with a B.A. in political science. He lives in New York with his wife, Barbara, and their two children.
Steven William Sparks ’82
Former Major League Baseball Pitcher
Steven William Sparks is a former knuckleball-throwing right-handed Major League Baseball pitcher, who graduated from Holland Hall High School in 1982, then attended Sam Houston State University in 1987.
Sparks started his Major League career with the Milwaukee Brewers in 1995. He signed as a free agent with the Anaheim Angels in 1998 and was a free agent again in 2000. He signed briefly with the Philadelphia Phillies, but was released in spring training. Sparks started the 2000 season with the Detroit Tigers and had a career-high 14 wins for them in 2001. After starting the 2003 season with the Tigers, he briefly played for the Oakland Athletics and ended the season with the Toronto Blue Jays, before moving to the Arizona Diamondbacks for the 2004 season. He was signed by the San Diego Padres to a minor-league contract before the 2005 season. After the 2005 season, he was signed by the Houston Astros to a minor league contract, but after being cut, he retired at age 40.
Sparks now lives in Houston and occasionally appears on pre-game and post-game shows for Houston Astros games as an analyst.
Jennifer Lynn Barnes ’02
Author of “Raised by Wolves”, Random House Publishing Company
Jennifer Lynn Barnes (who mostly goes by Jen) was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She has been, in turn, a competitive cheerleader, a volleyball player, a dancer, a debutante, a primate cognition researcher, a teen model, a comic book geek, and a lemur aficionado. She’s been writing for as long as she can remember, finished her first full book (which she now refers to as a “practice book” and which none of you will ever see) when she was still in high school, and then wrote Golden the summer after her freshman year in college, when she was nineteen.
Jen graduated high school in 2002, and from Yale University with a degree in cognitive science (the study of the brain and thought) in May of 2006. She’ll be spending the 2006-2007 school year abroad, doing autism research at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
Leslie Ritt Berlin ’87
Author of The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley
Leslie Ritt Berlin is Project Historian for the Silicon Valley Archives at Stanford University. She is the author of The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley, a biography of Intel co-founder and microchip co-inventor Robert Noyce. She also contributed the “Prototype” column on innovation to the Sunday Business section of the New York Times from September 2008 to July 2009. She serves on the advisory committee to the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and is also a director of the IT History Society. She received her Ph.D. in History from Stanford in 2001 and also holds a B.A. from Yale.
