LEAVE A LEGACY. SUPPORT BERKSHIRE’S FUTURE.

Celebrating a Berkshire Family Legacy

Sam Quincy Nichols ’58 loved his Berkshire experience and the lifelong friends he made under the Mountain. Earning 13 varsity letters during his Berkshire career, Nichols captained both the soccer and hockey squads his senior year. Upon his passing in 2014, his family established the Samuel Q. Nichols ’58 Hockey Scholarship to create endowment funds for future Berkshire student-athletes. The Nichols family boasts three generations of Bears, including Sophie K. Reed ’19. Critical to this effort was the entire Nichols family joining the John F. Godman Society by creating legacy gifts in Nichols’ honor to support this endowment in perpetuity.

“Our dad was always willing to help others, and we are thrilled to make our respective bequests to Berkshire to ‘pay it forward’ and support the School and its future students.

Dad loved his Berkshire experience and appreciated his time there and the lifelong friends, faculty, and staff that contributed to his growing up under the Mountain. We’re honored to support this named scholarship, the Samuel Q. Nichols ’58 Hockey Scholarship, and Berkshire’s top priority of growing the financial aid endowment.”

—The Nichols Family

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In this constantly changing world, we know everyone is carefully considering which deserving organizations to support. We would be honored to discuss the many ways you can support Berkshire’s future with a tax-saving legacy gift.

If you’d like to learn more about planning your Berkshire legacy, please contact Director of Advancement Andrew Bogardus at (413) 229-1237 or abogardus@berkshireschool.org.

Learn more at berkshireschool.planningyourlegacy.org.

A New Home for the Archives

By Bebe Clark Bullock ’86, School Archivist

Berkshire Hall’s Fentress Reading Room has long been one of the School’s most elegant rooms, with its fireplace, wood paneling, Audubon prints, and large windows. According to Seaver Buck, the room was designed to be the students’ “academic workshop” from which the Student Council ran school life.

After Allen House was rebuilt in 1971, Fentress became the school library until Geier Gymnasium was converted to a library space in 1986. Since then, Fentress has served many roles on campus: quiet study spot, rowdy group-study space, and stately locale for receptions and dinner parties. Now, it is also home to the School Archives.

Last summer, countless boxes of photographs, letters, documents, and various treasures were unearthed from the basement of the James C. Kellogg ’33 Alumni Center and rehoused within Fentress’ cabinets and shelves. In addition, large archival cabinets with display tops and multiple mini-exhibit drawers were installed, each drawer holding a different collection of school history, including mountain cabin inventories, wartime memorabilia, papers and photographs documenting the evolution of dormitory spaces on campus, and more.

During Pro Vita, students who were enrolled in “Display Design: Showcasing Berkshire’s Archives” helped bring the Archives to life within Fentress, learning how to create themed displays that became part of the permanent exhibit.

The Archives in Fentress also allow for teaching and research. English and history classes have learned about the School’s involvement in both World Wars, the expansion of the student body to include international students, the history of skiing and the cabins on the mountain, and the turbulent times of the 1960s and ’70s at Berkshire.

With its primary documents that dovetail so nicely with the Berkshire curriculum, Fentress is a rich and fulfilling space for student research. When history connects students to the past it can be profound: They are moved when they realize a student from the 1940s would have sat in the same room, looking at the same Buck Valley view, but may have been headed off to war instead of to the dining hall. With the inclusion of the Archives in Fentress Reading Room, it is once again a workshop to understand our society’s history through the lens of Berkshire.