Letting Our Lives Speak Alumni Tour Heads Back on the Road This Fall

Mitch Zeller ’75 stood at the podium of Pace University’s Schimmel Center and just smiled for a moment. His rousing, entertaining speech dedicated to the Class of 2022 was over, and he was just taking it all in. Forty seven years after his own graduation from Brooklyn Friends School, Mitch was selected to deliver this year’s Letting Our Lives Speak Distinguished Alumni Address.

Six months earlier, Mitch sat across an outdoor table from Head of School Crissy Cáceres—sipping a cup of coffee— at a small cafe on Calvert Street in Washington, DC. He and Crissy were not there to experience the coffee, although on what was a chilly evening, it certainly helped. More importantly, they were there to have a conversation—which would be recorded for the upcoming BFS Documentary Film entitled, “BFS: Letting Your Lives Speak.”

Mitch was one of the first to be interviewed for the project and wasted little time proving to be quotable: “All roads lead back to BFS,” he told Crissy.

Since sitting down with Mitch in Washington, DC, Brooklyn Friends School has traveled to multiple cities in multiple states (and even overseas) to interview nearly two dozen alumni to date. This is just the start, however! In the fall, Crissy will be traveling to Florida, Washington State, Boston, Philadelphia, and many more locations. Of course, we always take additional opportunities to interview alums who are living in the New York City area.

The aim of the film is extremely simple—to prove that no matter when someone may have graduated from BFS—the overall experience was similar. Crissy is out to prove that no matter when you graduated from Brooklyn friends school, there is a connected thread among our alumni. From the places they’ve lived, to the schools attended, to the friends made, to the professions pursued, there is a story that highlights the ways in which the values of Brooklyn friends school affected and continue to influence their lives.

“I am out to prove that there is a way in which our school permeates our being in such a way that it defines our humanity— in ways that we are proud of and which can change the world,” Crissy said to one of the alums she was speaking with. We have done interviews with an alumnus from 1940, and we have done interviews with the members of the Class of 2022—an unbelievable 80-year span of time and an extremely entertaining span of humans.

“I just loved school, and I loved Brooklyn Friends School,” said Muriel McClendon ’77, who is a professor at UCLA. “Every teacher I ever had at Brooklyn Friends completely and totally embraced me. I always felt happy there.”

Jonathan Bach ’15 began his BFS education at the age of 2 with Sara Soll as his first teacher.

“Brooklyn Friends in a nutshell is a place where people care about your life,” said Jonathan, who is currently a stage manager on Broadway for the hit show, Wicked. “My whole life was Brooklyn Friends, and I would not be where I am today without Brooklyn Friends.”

But we are just getting started! We may be heading to your town soon this fall. If you are interested in being a part of this special film, please contact Director of Institutional Advancement, Karen Edelman at kedelman@brooklynfriends.org.