Great Bend High School has announced its 2013 inductees to the GBHS Hall of Fame. Recognized will be two individuals, one who has served as a diplomat in far-flung regions of the world and one who had hand in significant medical research.
 Honored will be former Allen Keiswetter and Celia LaBranche.
The Hall of Fame ceremony and luncheon are scheduled for Friday, Feb. 28. The induction ceremony will take place between the girls’ and boys’ basketball games in the GBHS gym. A reception will follow the games in the Jack Kilby Commons and the public is invited.
 Ticket sales and prices will be announced at a later date.
This marks the sixth year for the HOF. Past inductees include globe-trotting JanSport founder Skip Yowell and microchip inventor Jack Kilby.
After the nominations come in, a committee made up of administrators, teachers, School Board representatives and local residents make the final determination. Nominees must be students, teachers or community members who have made a significant contribution to community or country.
A display case in the GBHS commons contains plaques and memorabilia paying tribute to all the recipients.
Below are the biographies of the inductees submitted by those who nominated them.
 
Allen Keiswetter
Allen Keiswetter is a 1962 GBHS grad and resident of Arlington, Va. He is a retired senior foreign service officer, is a senior consultant at the international law firm of Dentons, a scholar at the Middle East Institute, and an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland.
In his 36 years in the Department of State, he served as deputy assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs, senior advisor to the US Delegation to the UN General Assembly on Middle East Issues, director of Arabian Peninsula Affairs, director of the Office of Intelligence Liaison, and NATO deputy assistant secretary general for political affairs. He established and chaired the Middle East Peace Process Multilateral Working Group on Water Resources and has served as political counselor in the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and as Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Sana’a, Yemen. He also held posts at the U.S. embassies in Khartoum, Baghdad and Beirut. He has won four Superior Awards and four Meritorious Honor Awards.
Since retirement from the Department of State in 2003, he has taught courses on global security, Islam, and the Middle East at the National War College and at the National Defense Intelligence College. He has been a commentator on CNN, BBC, Fox and other media outlets. He has been the featured speaker at the Charleston World Affairs Forum, Fort Wayne World Affairs Council, U.S. Central Command’s Special Forces University in Ft. Walton Beach, Fla., and the Road Scholars program in Washington, D.C. Recent presentations have covered prospects for US-Iran relations, the Arab Spring and the future of the Middle East, and Middle East policy in the Second Obama Administration. He chaired the Working Group on Diplomacy and Religion at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha in June 2013.
He has had articles published in many diplomatic and foreign relations periodicals.
He received BA from Dartmouth College in 1966, a certificate from Johns Hopkins School of International Studies, Bologna, Italy, 1967, and his MPA degree from Harvard University in 1973.
 
Celia C. LaBranche
Dr. Celia C. LaBranche was born Celia Marie Crane on October 8, 1959 in Winner, SD, the youngest of the four children to Rev. Melvin B. and Doris K. Crane. By way of Iowa and Wisconsin, she landed in Great Bend in January of 1975, matriculating into Great Bend High School as a second semester sophomore. While at GBHS, she was captain of the Pantherettes drill team in the marching band, and won second place in the Parnassus piano competition. Dividing her time relatively equally between music and other academic subjects, Celia graduated valedictorian of her class in 1977 with a 4.0 GPA.
She attended Ottawa University in Ottawa where she became interested in the field of Nutrition. To pursue this interest, Celia chose to study abroad during her Junior year and, under the auspices of the University of Kansas, matriculated into the Food Science and Nutrition BSc degree program at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. Returning to Ottawa University for her Senior year, she graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BA in Chemistry, and then went on to earn a MS in Nutritional Biochemistry from Cornell University studying dietary cholesterol metabolism in the rabbit model of atherosclerosis. Wishing to explore research in an industry setting, Celia then moved to Wilmington, DE and took a job as a Biochemist with DuPont’s Medical Products Division developing immunoassays for the detection of infectious diseases.
In 1984, when HIV was discovered, Celia was part of the DuPont team that developed one of the first commercial tests for the detection of antibodies to HIV in human blood, and the first commercial test for the detection of the HIV protein p24. In 1987, she left DuPont to pursue a PhD in Immunology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA. While there, her interest in HIV and its effects on the human immune system deepened into what would be her life-long passion. Under the excellent guidance of Hematology-Oncologist and CD4 T cell expert Dr. James A. Hoxie, Celia identified genetic signatures of HIV responsible for critical steps in the viral lifecycle and the effects of mutations on the biology and infectivity of the virus. During her post-doctoral fellowships at Duke University her focus broadened to include understanding the interaction between HIV and the target cell that leads to infection and ways to prevent infection. As a faculty member at Duke University, Dr. LaBranche was awarded several research grants to study the human antibody response to HIV infection and the mechanisms employed by the virus to resist being stopped by the immune response and anti-viral medicines.
With the discovery of a new class of anti-HIV medicines, the chemokine receptor antagonists, Dr. LaBranche was recruited to GlaxoSmithKline to lead the effort to understand the mechanism of action and HIV resistance to these compounds. She and her team drafted a briefing document to the FDA on the controversial topic of HIV co-receptor tropism and developed educational materials and programs to acquaint the scientific community and the HIV activist/lay community with the mechanism of action of this novel class of HIV medicines. Also while at GSK, Dr. LaBranche joined the growing research emphasis on prevention of HIV infection, both with antiviral medicines and by vaccination. In 2008, she left GSK to join Global Vaccines, a not-for-profit vaccine start-up, but was recruited back to Duke University to work with one of the largest NIH and Gates Foundation funded teams working toward an HIV vaccine, interacting with scientists all over the world on pre-clinical and clinical trials. A major focus of this effort is determining the correlates of the modest protection observed in the HIV vaccine in Thailand in 2008 and preparing for the upcoming vaccine efficacy trial in South Africa that is slated to begin in 2014.
And other than science? There has been music, children, travel, volleyball. Celia’s passion for music has also been life-long. She has studied voice, sung in choirs, given solo recitals and soloed in local operas periodically over the years. Her church activities have been a central part of her life wherever she has lived. She has two North Carolina-born children, Emily age 19 and Alexander age 17, who are her pride and joy. Through work and for pleasure, Celia and her family have traveled across the United States, into Canada and to Europe. And the whole family plays volleyball in their respective clubs whenever possible. Our motto: work hard, play hard, bloom wherever you land.