Brooks Bulletin Magazine, Fall/Winter 2011

Fall / Winter 2011

Vic turi Te Salu tamus

F E AT U R E S 18 Leading by Example She’s held many different titles during her 43 years at Brooks, but through it all Maureen Perkins’s dedication to the Community Service program has been a constant. Her firm belief that service learning is a vital part of a high school education has benefited students and many members of the local community.

24 Destinations Last summer, the Exchange Program celebrated its 25th year. Alumni from the program reunited in June and shared memories of their experiences of traveling abroad.

34 300 Wins Is Not the Story Known throughout New England for his success as coach of the girls soccer team, Bob Morahan and his 32 years at Brooks were about so much more than sports.

ON THE COVER: Alesandra Miller ’14, Alexy Santos ’12 and Tyler Britt ’13 work on math problems in Doug Burbank’s classroom. Read more about how teachers are using whiteboard paint on page 10. THIS PAGE: Acacia Nunes ’14 gets some work in goal. For more on fall sports, see page 17.

departments 2 Head of School’s Message As we move deeper into the school year, the presence of our mission reveals itself in more and more ways.

6 News and Notes It’s been a busy fall on campus, with students doing math problems on the walls, dorm construction starting up, and the launch of an online literary journal.

40 Alumni Connections 50 Class Notes 68 Parting Shot

HEAD OF SCHOOL’SMESSAGE

Mission in mind As we move deeper into the school year, the presence of our mission reveals itself in more and more ways.

Head of School John R. Packard

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BY THE TIME WE GET TO THE THIRD WEEK IN AUGUST, I am ready. We are more than two months removed from a terrific Alumni Weekend, have the bulk of the summer in the rearview mirror and are full of new ideas and hopes for the year ahead that always emerge during a summer’s worth of thinking. When one adds the prospect of classrooms, playing fields and dormitories filling up with terrific students in a few short weeks to the mix, I find myself increasingly eager to get started on a year that is limitless in its promise, its new beginnings and its next steps with students and colleagues. Alas, I have to wait until the first day of school actually arrives, but the excitement continues to mount. When that day finally does come and we launch into the year, I always find that my excitement was well placed. Immersion in this school’s life has inspired me for 22 years, and never more so than it has during the four years I have been head of school.

This has been particularly true as 2011–2012 finds an ambitious pace that all of us will seek to hold on to through the year, and I am finding the school’s mission in my mind more and more as we go: At Brooks School we seek to provide the most meaningful educational experience our students will have in their lives. Coincidentally, in this year’s first few weeks I have often found myself in all sorts of conversations and moments that have me turning to our mission first. Whether contemplating steps for the school, in general, or individual students, in particular, this mission is the lens through which we always look before moving. The wonder of our mission is that it reveals itself to us in myriad ways — by design and in beautifully unscripted moments. While still in the early going of the 2011–2012 school year, our inventory of moments in which the school’s mission is at the center of the equation is vast. Allow me to share two such moments that are on my mind.

At some point in the middle of the summer, this year’s senior prefect, Max McGillivray ’12, and some fellow sixth-form leaders were in touch about their hope to begin the year with a galvanizing, all-school event. This quickly moved in the direction of a field day on a glorious Sunday afternoon in September with hundreds of students and faculty members on the expansive lawn behind our home and surrounding the flagpole. While spinning around baseball bats, reciting hymns we commonly sing in Chapel, jumping around in potato sacks, and trying one’s hand in Brooks School trivia, dormitory and day-student teams competed with one another for points ultimately awarded by Brooks School’s Professor Dumbledore – yours truly, in this case. I do not know if our students set out to pull together this terrific afternoon with the school’s mission in mind, I do know that the faces, laughter and raw fun had that afternoon by students and faculty members alike were meaningful and memorable for all participants.

The pictures tell the story (to see photos, please visit www.brooksschoolphotos.com).

More recently, I was in New York visiting with some alumni and alumnae and checking with some heads of school and placement directors in schools that have had students apply to Brooks in the past. As the conversation begins, I am asked a question along the lines of “What’s

new at Brooks?” As soon as the synapses begin firing in my brain, the mission is right there again, squarely in my mind. I find myself talking about meaning and our belief that truly meaningful education must be increasingly deep and profound education — experiences that allow faculty members and students to be emersed in material and not running through all of it at light speed.

Though perhaps counter to some secondary education norms, I find myself indicating that our school’s programming will continue to move in a direction that acts on this belief — a direction that believes we will become an increasingly mission-driven school as we get farther down this road. And then I turn to Winter Term and share some details about the 30-something three-week courses we will offer for the first time this January, in which every Brooks School student will take just one course, dive in and swim in an experience rich with so much discovery within reach. As I wrap up this elevator speech of

sorts, a placement director or head of school will turn to me and say, “Can I come to Brooks in January?” We laugh, but the point is clear — we are acting with mission in mind.

As fall rolls into winter on this extraordinary 251-acre campus and we get further into the year, the fact that so many missionrelated moments will continue to surface both when we least expect them and when we point ourselves in that direction explains why I have that initial inkling somewhere near the third week in August. Whether students are generating a spectacular community moment or colleagues are on the verge of unleashing passions and interests never before shared with students in a mode like Winter Term, we are immersed in school life with our mission all around us. In this state, the possibilities truly are limitless and I know more profoundly than ever that I am where I want to be. What a thrill!

I hope you’ve had a wonderful fall.

Brooks School Board of Trustees 2011–2012 President William N. Booth ’67 Vice Presidents W. J. Patrick Curley III ’69 Paul L. Hallingby ’65 Secretary Charles E. Bascom ’60 Assistant Secretary Ginger Pearson Burke ’99 Treasurer Donald R. Peck Assistant Treasurer Deane H. Dolben John R. Barker ’87 Lammot Copeland, Jr. ’50 Anthony H. Everets ’93 Carol W. Geremia Steven R. Gorham ’85 Francis X. Knott Elizabeth M. Lee Diana D. Merriam John R. Packard, Jr., Head of School Charles C. Platt ’71 David A. Rountree Lynne A. Sawyer ’83 Letitia Wightman Scott ’84 Thomas E. Shirley Isabella P. Speakman ’92 Craig J. Ziady ’85 Alumni Trustees John R. Hartigan ’11 Appalonia E. Tankersley ’10

At Field Day, students from Blake House cheer on their teammates during the relay races.

Trustees Emeriti Lucius A.D. Andrew ’57 Michael B. Keating ’58 Lawrence W. Becker Frank A. Kissel ’69 Henry M. Buhl ’48 Peter A. Nadosy ’64 Steve Forbes ’66 Peter W. Nash ’51 James G. Hellmuth Cera B. Robbins H. Anthony Ittleson ’56 Eleanor R. Seaman David R. Williams III ’67

Fall / Winter 2011

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CAMPUSSCENE

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A few days after students returned to campus, the sixth form ventured west to Charlemont, Massachusetts, to spend the day white-water rafting. After last winter’s incredible snowfall and the summer’s heavy rains from Hurricane Irene, the Deerfield River was at record-high levels.

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NEWS&NOTES Fifth-formers Isabel Hancock and Vicky Kim had active roles with the Wildlife Conservation Society’s projects in Tanzania.

They were escorted to their five-week internship by science teacher Becca Smith (top right).

Into the jungle Two science students learn about wildlife research through a new hands-on Tanzanian internship This summer, Vicky Kim ’13 and Isabel Hancock ’13 learned that kipunji monkeys are very social animals — at least with each other — and travel in groups of 20 to 30. The animals primarily stay up in the trees of Tanzanian forests and chow down on fungi, lichens and insects.

Sounds like a regular science lesson, but Vicky and Isabel didn’t learn about the animals in a textbook or in a classroom on campus — they learned by camping in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania, studying the animals and recording data on the ins and outs of daily kipunji life.

The two fifth-formers were the first Brooks students to take part in the school’s newest science internship, working with the Wildlife Conservation Society in Tanzania for five weeks.

For the two girls, it was not only an experience in wildlife conservation, but also a test of their ability to adjust to a different culture.

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The internship was created last year with Brooks School Trustee Ashley Wightman Scott ’84, P’11 P’14, who herself had an amazing travel experience with the WCS five years ago. Since then, she’s maintained a close relationship with Dr. Tim Davenport, WCS’s Tanzania country director, who is overseeing the Brooks internship.

Scott explained recently that WCS is on the ground in more than 60 countries around the world. Knowing that made her think of how this internship could grow.

“I thought if these kids do well with Tim Davenport in Tanzania, then we might say, ‘How about studying tigers in Siberia?’ or something like that; this could really develop into a liaison program for Brooks” and lead to working in other countries with WCS, Scott said.

Isabel and Vicky were originally slated to work on the REDD Program, a United Nations initiative aimed at reducting emissions

from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries.

But the equipment they needed wasn’t available, said Isabel, so they found themselves tagging along with other researchers, scientists and volunteers for a myriad of research projects.

Part of their work involved camping for three nights in the forest, going on hikes and collecting samples of carnivore scat (animal droppings) — “we bagged it and recorded on a GPS where it was found,” explained Isabel.

The kipunji monkeys were one highlight of their fascinating research. The animal was discovered by WCS in 2003 as an entirely new genus of primate. Since then, WCS has been researching the kipunji and advocating for the animals.

“It was very cool to be part of a new discovery,” Isabel said.

Both girls said their natural curiosity about travel and conservation work led them to apply for the internship last year.

When Vicky was in middle school in Korea, she was involved in a lot of studentdriven environmental campaigns. She also did a lot of reading about environmental conferences and issues such as global warming.

“One thing I was curious about for a illegal farming,” said Vicky. “They would long time was how the work gets done at educate them and then turn them into local the ground level on these types of issues,” guides about the conservation needs of the Vicky said, “especially in Third World forest. I thought that was a really good socountries, where funding for research lution.” equipment is scarce.

Isabel explained that most of the peo“I knew this wasn’t just any other or- ple near the WCS work area live in small ganization; it’s the WCS,” she said. “I communities that sometimes push right to thought it would be a really good opportu- the edge of the forest. “There’s no way to nity to see what it’s like to be out there, regulate their farming, so the choice is just doing the actual work.” to educate the farmers,” she said.

Isabel knew in some way she wanted to The girls also got to fend for themtake advantage of the international experi- selves, more so than ever before in their ences that Brooks lives.

DID YOU KNOW? offers, such as the “One thing I reSFS internships and alized was how little Tanzania is about twice the size of California. the Exchange Prowe really need to gram. live. We were able to It’s home to the highest point in Africa — Mount Although she wash, and we were Kilimanjaro. isn’t sure which area able to have food to of science she’d like eat, but we had to be More than 1.5 million flamingos live in Tanzania. They to focus her studies, very self-reliant. I are among the only animals that she realized this inrealized the freedom can tolerate its salt flats, where ternship presented a you get from that,” water temperatures can reach unique option to said Vicky.

120 degrees. combine her science Isabel agrees. interests with her “They let us be desire for international travel. really independent while we were there. We “Doing this was a good opportunity to weren’t even restricted from going into the explore conservation science, which is sort forest. That was the coolest thing, to enjoy of hard to see unless you’re working there nature that way,” Isabel said. out in the field,” she said.

Something that came in handy while Both also learned how conservation re- they were there had been learned in the search intersects with the lives of nearby Wilder Dining Hall. villagers.

“We had to make our own dinner some “It was interesting to see how WCS nights; we practiced our Brooks School stirwould employ local people who were doing fry methods to make it,” Isabel said.

Top player Kate Haslett ’13 competes on the ice at national level Kate Haslett ’13, like all good Canadians, loves ice hockey. If she could, she says, she would eat, sleep and breathe hockey. She also happens to be quite, quite good at the sport.

In fact, she was recently categorized as one of the top four female high school players in her home province of New Brunswick.

As a newly minted member of Team Atlantic, Kate was Kate Haslett selected to compete in the 2011 National Women’s Hockey Under-18 Championship, in Saguenay, Quebec. The country’s top players vie for the national title during this tournament.

“Kate earned this honor not just because of her talent, but also because of her work ethic and constant dedication to the game,” said Jenelle Ries, coach of the girls 1st ice hockey team at Brooks. “She is an incredibly driven and hardworking young lady, on and off the ice. It is rare to find a student-athlete so passionate and committed to everything that she does.”

Team Atlantic, which is composed of just 20 players from New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland, is often viewed as the underdog of the competition. There weren’t any easy games during the weeklong tournament, but Kate had been expecting the teams from Ontario and Quebec to be her toughest competitors.

Team Atlantic ended up losing in the bronzemedal round.

“This had been a goal of mine since I was a little kid,” said Kate. “It all started when I decided I wanted to play for my province. Then I wanted to play in the Canada Games. And then the next thing, really, was making Team Atlantic. I was proud and excited to be a part of the team. But I wouldn’t have made it without Brooks and my parents and Steven Ough, who everyone back home calls the skate doctor. I’ve gotten a lot of help along the way.”

Isabel Hancock and Vicky Kim camped out in these forest huts for three-night stretches in order to perform carnivore surveys in the surrounding forest.

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AROUNDBROOKS Winter Term on tap

Students choose their own adventure for January Students are making plans for how they will spend their January: Scuba diving, touring Ireland, tracing their family history or learning about the Vietnam War from veterans are all possibilities.

Plans for the school’s first Winter Term are being finalized, and students are ranking their first, second and third choices for what they’d like to study during this intense, monthlong academic exIMPORTANT periment.

DATES “With January just weeks Winter Break away, our courses are more clearly Dec. 16–Jan. 5 defined, and the schedule and all Winter Term the details are coming into focus,” Jan. 6– Jan. 28 said Associate Head of School Second John Quirk. semester begins Winter Term is meant to be a Jan. 30 an experiment in creativity — for example, the assessment of students’ work won’t be as traditional as it is in regular classes. And, Quirk says, it will affect other parts of school life.

“Maybe some sports will have morning practice time, and then a class might meet from 7:30 to 9:30 P.M. Those are the types of ‘thinking-outside-the-box’ ideas we’re looking at by doing this,” he said.

So far, students are excited to try something new.

“It really seems like there’ll be something for everybody; there’s a broad range of courses being offered,” said Coral Sabino ’13. A quick look at the offerings has Sabino thinking about several options, but she likes the hands-on nature of the Winter Term courses: “I’d be interested in anything that’ll let me use my hands; rarely do I ever get to build things.”

Winter Term courses will feature an average of 12 or 13 kids in each class, and many of them involve travel.

The scuba course, for example, is focused on taking a group of students to Mexico to put their skills to the test during March break.

“After you have experienced the underwater world, you can never look at the ocean the same way again,” said Laura Hajdukewicz, who will be teaching The Art and Science of SCUBA Diving with Alex Konovalchik and Ali Mattison. “Where some people may see a huge expanse of water, divers know that there is an unbelievable world just beneath the surface. Scuba diving allows me the opportunity to have an underwater classroom. These students will learn about the physics of diving and weightlessness, the chemistry of gases, and the marine biology of the regions we plan to visit in the future.”

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Good shot Max McGillivray ’12 directed, shot and edited the promotional video for Lazarus House’s Hike for Hope. The October fundraiser draws support for Capernaum Place (a 20-unit housing facility for families) and programs that focus on education, job placement and life skills for people trying to transition out of homelessness. “Capernaum Place offers families a chance to get back on their feet,” Max said. “Meeting the people who work and live there really made me appreciate the good work being done.”

Golf now a varsity option

In the spring of 2012, Brooks will field a varsity golf team that will compete in the Independent School League (ISL) For the last three years, Brooks has offered golf to a handful of students in both fall and spring. What started as a small group spending the afternoon at North Andover Country Club has slowly grown so that last year seven golfers split time between North Andover Country Club and Renaissance Golf Club in Haverhill. The spring ended with Johnny Gratton ’13 competing in the ISL Championships at Belmont Country Club, where a 74 earned him a second-place finish and an automatic exemption into the Massachusetts State Amateur Championship.

At the end of the spring, the ISL athletic directors voted to allow both Brooks and St. George’s School to join the league. Tournaments in the ISL are in a matchplay format, with eight golfers representing each school.

“There has been strong interest in golf for several years,” say golf coach Dan Callahan. “We wanted to make sure, though, that adding another spring sport wouldn’t have a negative impact on the teams we already have. In the end, all the coaches were great about it and were very supportive.”

“

I’ve never worn a costume like this before.

Head of School John Packard talking about dressing in an inflatable “big baby” during School Meeting in October.

Packard wore the outfit as the conclusion to the costume contest put on by Jayda Pounds ’15 to raise money for Lazarus House in Lawrence. The contest raised $400 from students.

New spot

Luce Library will now house computer lab

Johnny Gratton ’13 plays a shot into the green during the Massachusetts State Junior Amateur Championship.

We remember: 9/11

Students, faculty gather for service to commemorate 10-year anniversary

Among the busy events of opening day this year, students and faculty paused in the evening to reflect on the 10-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Nearly 50 gathered in the Ashburn Chapel, where School Minister Bob Flanagan led the students in a solemn service, illuminated only by the candles held by each member of the congregation. Gospel Choir Director Shaunielle McDonald ’94 and sixth-former VJ Gladney sang an a cappella version of Hezekiah Walker’s “I Need You to Survive,” while faculty member TJ Baker lead the group in a reading.

“I felt that it was important to stand still for a moment and give our community a chance to be connected in prayer and thought,” said McDonald. “The readings and scripture were suggested by Mr. Flanagan and were ultimately chosen for the unique way that they acknowledged the difficulty of the moment while at the same time focusing on the hope for unity.”

The computer lab is on the move. The school’s public computing labs are now located in newly created spaces in the Henry Luce III Library. “As the Information Technology Department and Library Services are merging, this gives us a greater opportunity to better serve the needs of our whole community and work more closely together,” said Assistant Director of Technology Lisa Saunders, who also runs the Computer Camp in the summer. A fully outfitted 16seat Mac lab is located on the main floor of the library in a new glassed-in space, and its sister PC lab is now set up on the lower level.

GOOD TO KNOW: TIPS FOR A TROUBLE-FREE HOLIDAY MEAL With the holidays around the corner, we asked a man who knows all about cooking for a crowd — Brooks Head Chef Kevin Castle — for some timely tips.

“First, you have to have the right tools,” Castle says. His favorite is an electric hand blender, especially when it comes to making his family’s Thanksgiving feast: “You can do anyKevin Castle thing with it — get lumps out of your mashed potatoes, smooth the gravy, anything.”

Second, make sure you are working with enough space. Don’t be shy about kicking would-be helpers out of your kitchen; a chef must be able to move freely around his or her workspace in order to get all the dishes prepared and ready at the same time. And, just as he does for Brooks students and employees seven days a week, offering a variety of food is key to pleasing a large crowd of diners.

So, has the Castle household ever had any holiday-meal mishaps? “We did have burnt rolls one year,” he says, but added quickly, “but my wife made those.”

Pesto, anyone?

Community garden enables students to create fresh meals on campus Everyone knows the best food comes from the freshest ingredients, and anything made from what you grow in your garden is always better than what you buy at the store.

Brooks fifth-formers Cat Lau (at right) and PingHwa Okorie know that too — so when they saw the leafy green basil flourishing in the community garden here on campus, they knew what they wanted to do: throw a pesto party.

They plucked enough leaves to fill two plastic containers to make their homemade creamy pesto, which they served with bow tie pasta and shared with 15 other girls in Hett West. They even used a little parsley as a garnish. “I wanted to be able to use the stuff in the garden because I’m a vegetarian, and I figured that if I made delicious vegetarian dishes for the dorm, maybe they’ll consider eating less meat,” Cat said. She’s also sharing her recipes with the school through a column in the Brooksian. “I cooked every day this summer and had so much fun looking up recipes and making them at home. I think it’s important to add vegetarian choices to the school lunches and dinner,” Cat said.

NEWS&NOTES Other departments are already clamoring to refresh their own academic space with the whiteboard paint, being used by students (left) and Math Department Chair Doug Burbank. For example, Chair of the English Department Dean Charpentier is considering painting part of the academic building’s third-floor hallway, providing a place for kids to write poetry and prose.

“Writing on walls without limits: It’s the artist in me that’s attracted to it,” Burbank said. “It’s low- tech, simple things that can make a big difference.”

Mathematics: floor to ceiling Students get expanded work space with dry-erase paint Chair of the Math Department Doug Burbank likes the idea of students being able to build on each other’s ideas in his classes.

To do that, you need space: massive, expansive space to scribble, erase, try again, sketch out and solve math problems.

“It might be the artist in me, but I’ve never like framed white boards. I want to have problems written on the wall and then have students expanding upon each other’s work,” Burbank explained. “We like the kids to get up and be active. There’s too much sitting in rooms, which then allows kids to be passive.”

That’s why he’s loving his new whiteboard surfaces — an entire wall in his classroom. All of the math classrooms now feature IdeaPaint, which is paint that turns anything into a dry-erase surface. Each classroom has between 12 and 21 feet of IdeaPaint canvasing a wall. Two large tabletops are painted in Kihak Nam’s classroom and an entire wall, floor to ceiling, is painted in Burbank’s classroom.

“The wall easily enables me to see all the students in action, doing and thinking math both individually and in teams,” Burbank said.

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Students in Nam’s advanced precalculus class were certainly in action recently. The competition was INSIDE THE fierce and highly enCLASSROOM ergetic, as two student teams huddled around their worktables, trying to correctly answer seven assigned questions.

Eric Gisness ’12 read off a problem to his teammates and Tammy Hernandez ’12 quickly wrote down the first step on the team’s tabletop. Eric then jotted down the next two steps on the same table before Punn Chirakiti ’12 reached over to complete the question, right on the tabletop with his own erasable marker.

Burbank first saw IdeaPaint while visiting Buck Clay ’02 at Google’s headquarters in California, and subsequently at the MIT Entrepreneurship Center in Cambridge. Intrigued, he decided to visit the start-up company’s headquarters, in Ashland, Massachusetts, this past summer, to see if the product was something that could work for Brooks.

“When I was at Google, I saw one guy write down an idea on the wall. Then some-

one walking by expanded upon it,” Burbank said. “They’ll continue doing that until, who knows, a product is created.”

IdeaPaint also painted a wall, desktop and dorm door in Nam’s home study, where both he and Burbank, a fellow dorm parent, frequently tutor students at night during study hall hours.

Burbank also decided to paint portions of the hallway in the first floor of the academic building, where traditional bulletin boards once hung. He typically posts two problems a week for students to solve as they’re passing through the halls.

“We wanted to get math outside the classroom,” Burbank said. “If Aaron Baumgarten ’12 is doing a homework problem that’s really cool, I want all our younger kids to see what one of our most advanced students is working on. We also post math team problems there. I want math to be more visible and outside of those four walls of the classroom.”

On a recent afternoon, Vicky Kim ’13 worked quietly on the math team problem in the hallway. Within minutes, Earn Sakornpan ’12 stopped to see what she was up to, followed by math teacher Don Cameron. They chatted a little about Vicky’s answer, and then she asked Cameron how she might have used the Pythagorean theorem to solve the problem — it was just a brief, meaningful moment that otherwise would never have happened.

“It was an easy question. I just used a bit of algebra and geometry,” Vicky said. “But I think this is a cool way for people to spend a few minutes refreshing their minds with a math question.”

Lyndsay Domoracki ’13, volunteer

FAST What did the work consist of? I worked at two different places with elderly folks, and then on other days I worked in the volunteer office doing various helper jobs — filing, hauling boxes, delivering flowers and letters to patients.

I also worked at the Child Development Center, with four- and five-year-olds.

Sounds like a busy summer — what part was the most rewarding? Even though I adore children, I would have to say my favorite part was going to the elderly facilities and talking to some of the most interesting people I have ever met.

You admit you haven’t had time to do volunteering through Brooks, such as doing community service.

Why did you want to get involved at the hospital? I guess I was always interested in the way doctors and nurses work. Volunteering gave me an opportunity to learn about the medical field, and whether it’s something I want to pursue.

If Lyndsay Domoracki wants to become a successful doctor or a nurse, she’s already got a head start on one necessary piece: She’s perfected her bedside manner. Lyndsay, a day student who lives in Hamilton, Massachusetts, spent the summer volunteering at Beverly Hospital. She did a variety of work from visiting elderly residents at the Ledgewood Rehabilitation and Nursing Center to reading books and playing games with little kids. Lyndsay, who is on Brooks’ cross country team, bonded with some of the elderly patients she met, and says the experience opened her eyes to the medical field. She was lauded by her supervisors at Beverly Hospital, who wrote to Head of School John Packard to comment on Lyndsay’s “friendly and enthusiastic” work with patients.

And? Thinking about medical school already? It’s too soon for me to really decide, but volunteering was such an amazing experience. At Herrick House, with about 10 older ladies, I made lunches for children whose families couldn’t afford to make their own. We talked mostly about their lives and their pasts . . . what they went through, how many kids they have, grandchildren. We also talked about how they lived through the war.

Some people are actually intimidated in trying to strike up a conversation with someone in a nursing home — was it hard to get those conversations rolling? At first I was a little intimidated, but as we talked, they were really open. It was more like they were my grandparents.

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NEWS&NOTES

In November, the new dorm started to take shape.

Construction of new dormitory moves ahead Building planned with the idea of fostering strong faculty/student relationships The school’s new dorm is taking shape, as construction crews are clearing land and digging in to create Brooks’ first new residential building since 1984. But it’s more than just a new dorm — it’s a building created with sustainability and longevity in mind, as well as a way for the school to live up to its recently adopted mission.

Head of School John Packard says the goal of the new building will be to provide a physical space in which meaningful relationships between faculty and students can flourish, adhering to the school’s mission statement: At Brooks School, we seek to provide the most meaningful educational experience our students will have in their lives.

“We can’t be a residential school with a mission statement that centers on meaning if we’re not living with and around kids in settings that make meaningful relationships reachable,” Packard said. “Our premise as a school is that strong relationships between students and faculty are primary to realizing our mission. If we’re taking steps that are mission-driven, then we need inclusive residential space.”

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Ground officially broke in mid-September, with a completion date of June 2012.

The building will feature a 600-square-foot common area big enough for all building residents to gather; an outdoor seating area for students to collaborate with dorm faculty; a rear patio for cookouts and gatherings; and a small lounge/study area for after-hours homework help.

“There is an important residential commitment we make to our kids,” Packard said. “This new dorm is an important step in moving the school forward and having all the dorms become mission-enhancers.

This is going to be a prototype for any other dorms we add or refit in the next decade.”

The two-story structure — which will consist of a 22-bed dormitory, a second-floor faculty apartment and two attached faculty houses — is the first student residential space to be built since the Hettinger East and West dormitories. Without increasing enrollment, the building will not only feature the lowest faculty-to-student ratio of any

dorm on campus, but will also help ease tight quarters in other residences.

The administration decided to build the 13,992-square-foot building perpendicular to Blake House and across the street from PBA dormitory because of the proximity to the other dorms. Should another dorm be built along Russell Drive at a future date, it could complete a well-designed dormitory quad, Director of Facilities John Trovage noted.

Parents should rest assured that the construction site is enclosed and completely offlimits to the community. All construction workers and deliveries exclusively use the north entrance and Russell Drive.

For the project’s general contractor, Nauset Construction Corp. President Anthony Papantonis ’81 P’13, the campus project is quite personal. Papantonis lived in Thorne House during the construction of the Blake dormitory, but valued his strong bond with faculty dorm parents Ray Broadhead ’70 and Mark Shovan “too much to ever consider leaving for the ‘new dorm,’ ” he said.

“Brooks played such an important role in shaping my future that being able to actively participate with improving the campus environment is very gratifying,” Papantonis said.

“It also is a good excuse to visit my son, Nicholas, a little more throughout the year.

Needless to say, all hands were on deck to ensure that Nauset prepared a competitive and comprehensive bid proposal in order to be the selected contractor. We very much appreciated John Trovage’s efforts and responsiveness during the pre- and post-bid discussions and final contract negotiations.”

The $3.3 million project, which is fully funded, features a number of environmentally friendly elements that align with the school’s current construction model: to build durable, sustainable buildings, like the Science Center, that will minimize the use of resources and their impact on the environment, as well as minimize future operation costs.

For example, Rob Bramhall Architects incorporated a heating system with a natural gas–fired burner that is 97.5 percent efficient to reduce the heating bills; a high-efficiency envelope with superior insulation to prevent energy loss and reduce the electric bills; and low-flow water facilities to reduce the sewage bills.

“It’s important that we show the kids in our community a responsible way forward and to recognize that the decisions we make here at Brooks, in terms of how we build, do have an impact in the world,” said Brian Palm, director of environmental stewardship.

“By minimizing that impact, or that use of resources, it serves a lesson and a purpose.”

Palm oversaw the Brooks Institute for Sustainability (B.I.S.) last summer, through

portunity to learn in depth about all of the “green” aspects of the new building.

“It was very interesting to learn about how the dorm is going to reuse and conserve energy, and it’s even cooler to think that we were part of the planning,” B.I.S. member Nick Gates ’13 said. “I think that the new dorm is going to play a huge role in educating the community about the environment and prompt students to make a difference.”

“

In terms of the cost to operate and maintain a building over time, it is important to minimize that for future years. We want to demonstrate that we’re doing that for our current parents, who are paying tuition, and alumni, who are supporting the school.”

— DIRECTOR OF ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP BRIAN PALM

which current Brooks students worked on a number of projects to make Brooks a greener campus. Part of their work focused on vetting three potential elements for the new dorm: composting toilets, triple-glazed windows, and a solar hot-water system.

“Some of the ideas that we put forth are now going to be incorporated into the new dorm, so in a year or two down the line, when I see something that we pushed to put in the dorm actually in the dorm, I think that it will feel pretty cool knowing that was something that I helped do,” said B.I.S. member Michael Schelzi ’13.

After interviewing installers and maintenance workers, as well as making site visits, the B.I.S. kids recommended that the school invest in just the composting toilets. They presented their findings to a group of administrators this summer.

“Getting to see all the players and stakeholders was powerful for the kids: to really see how much work goes into relatively small decisions,” Palm said.

When the students finished their research on the composting toilets, they got an op-

Palm’s hope is that more kids will become involved with the building project over time — through classes that meter and monitor water, gas and electricity usage; through increased recycling efforts; and through the school’s polar bear energy conservation program that utilizes television monitors in dorm hallways to display current energy consumption. By seeing technology and green practices aimed at reducing the building’s environmental impact on a daily basis, they’re likely to take those concepts with them after their time on campus.

“If Brooks truly seeks to provide the most meaningful educational experience of our lives, that experience must extend beyond the classroom and into real-world situations, especially caring for the environment,” Nick said. “I think this new ‘green’ dorm will be able to provide that experience.”

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NEWS&NOTES Senior speaker Will Parker (front) cheers on fellow classmates during Prize Day.

Saying good-bye to Brooks Class of 2011 feeling ‘just ducky’ as they celebrate traditions of Prize Day Weekend in May With rubber duckies in hand, the members of the class of 2011 made their way to the stage underneath the tent at the flagpole during Memorial Day weekend, handing the ducks to a quizzical John Packard, and then shaking hands with faculty and trustees as they accepted their diplomas.

It was a classic scene from any Brooks School graduation weekend — except for the rubber duckies, of course. The members of the class ran through the usual course of events: rosette-pinning, tear-filled Boo Hoo Chapel, and then of course the hours-long ceremonies of Lawn Ceremony and Prize Day. This year’s event was especially warm, with heat and humidity keeping everyone under the tent, where they enjoyed the shade and listened to encouraging words from their teachers and reflections from their peers on academics, the arts and athletics.

But the speech that was perhaps the most anticipated was from Will Parker, who was elected by his peers to be last year’s senior speaker.

The senior speech is always a highlight of graduates, who listen to the inspirational

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See more photos of Prize Day Weekend www.brooksschoolphotos.com

words of adults and patiently sit while each student’s name is read aloud and classmates make their way to the stage. While the whole day has been described as overwhelming, emotional and surreal by generations of Brooks graduates, the senior speech is often the lighthearted, funny part of the ceremonies.

“I didn’t want to disappoint anyone, so for several weeks I sort of hoped that the perfect topic would somehow come to me,” Will recalls.

Will’s speech focused on the people he had met at Brooks who had a profound effect on his life here and will continue to be sources of inspiration — classmates Sachin Shah and Tommy Wentling, and several faculty members, particularly Mark Shovan.

So how did Will Parker, known amid classmates to have a dark sense of humor and

a talent for stage performance (he was active in the improv group on campus, as well as several theater productions), come up with the speech that combined sentimentality with his usual humor?

It all came down to working well under pressure. After much procrastination, he sought the advice of two trusted faculty members: Alex Costello and Becca Smith ’05.

Costello reminded Will that “the students are your audience. They were the ones that picked you because they thought you would entertain and do the best job, and what you have to say should be geared toward them.”

And when he reached a stopping place — he had some things down on paper, but he wasn’t excited about them — he sought the counsel of Smith. “I called Ms. Smith and whined for about five minutes about how it wasn’t good,” he says. But then finally he put the phone on speaker, and for almost two hours, crafted the perfect speech with the help of Smith and Tommy Wentling, his roommate.

“Delivering a speech is, to me, one of the unique types of performance. All of the best speeches I have ever seen were delivered (not read) by people who were just as intent on entertaining an audience as they were on delivering a clear, important and meaningful message,” Will said. Though he was nervous at first — “I got an uncontrollable twitch in one of my legs, so I delivered the speech on one foot” — he quickly got acclimated to a role in which he is comfortable: being an entertainer.

“Once I could feel the audience responding by laughing (to me, the biggest joy of performing has always been hearing the laughter of your audience). I started to relax and try to perform the speech as best I could,” he said.

Now a few months into his freshman year at Gettysburg College, Will says his advice for the class of 2012 is to savor every moment of these remaining months at Brooks.

“As you near the time of your own final day as a Brooks student, identify things at Brooks you like to do the most, or your favorite spots on campus to hang out, and the people you like to spend time with the most at Brooks. Whatever they are, make sure that you revisit all of them one last time before you leave,” he said. “Relive those best times and take your final year as a gift.”

Still Waters editors (from left) Kristin Nichols ’12, Georgina Ustik ’12 and Taylor Carlson ’12 say their love of writing inspired them to resurrect the school’s literary magazine in an online format.

Literary magazine hits Web Still Waters features student writing in new online format Kristin Nichols ’12 was bored last spring. She wanted to get involved in something. She wasn’t sure where to focus her attention, but she knew she wanted it to have something to do with writing. She wanted to be able to spend more time working on her hobby, writing poetry. She turned to chair of the English Department Dean Charpentier, who taught her fourth-form English class, for advice.

Turns out Charpentier was thinking of starting a literary magazine through the English Department, and asked Kristin to take part.

Still Waters, the newly renamed school literary magazine, is now up and running at www.brooksschool.org. The online-only publication features original material from student writers in new issues each month. Along with Kristina, fellow sixth-formers Georgina Ustik and Taylor Carlson are heading up the literary magazine as editors.

The October issue features poetry, memoir and fiction.

Nichols says she’s proud the magazine ac-

complishes one of her main goals: to allow students to see a different side of their peers — “maybe a more vulnerable, funnier or more expressive side” — as well as to show parents and prospective students the talents that reside here at Brooks.

“I guess I want this site to show everyone the hidden talents, thoughts and dreams that many of our students have,” she said.

Charpentier said the fact that the publication is online makes it more likely to get students involved — it’s moving at a little faster pace.

“Doing it digitally . . . means there are no deadlines; students can submit anytime they like. We’ll sit down as a staff and determine what we’d like to see on the site,” he said.

He also said it’s great for student authors to be published this way.

“First, it’s exciting to see your work publicized. And in a broader sense, people will be talking about their writing,” he said.

Leigh Perkins, faculty advisor to the literary magazine, agrees that the exposure will be

something exciting for the school’s writers.

“The kids who are writing will finally have a chance to have their work showcased in what amounts to real time. The magazine in this format allows students to think of literature as something to refine and share: something of value both to the writer and to the audience.

Enabling them to get great feedback from their audiences is a wonderful thing and builds a different kind of self-confidence.”

Georgina says it was a challenge to get submissions in for that first tight deadline, but the girls handled that by contacting students they knew had written some pieces during the summer.

For Taylor, the appeal is the accessibility of having this writing online.

“It will be a great opportunity to get your stuff published and read,” she said. “As a writer myself, I know how satisfying it is to see something you’ve written in print — or in this case, on-screen.”

To read the latest edition of Still Waters, go to www.brooksschool.org/stillwaters.

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NEWS&NOTES

John Quirk has spent 25 years in the Brooks classrooms.

Quirk heads to Tabor next fall Associate head for school affairs reflects on Brooks years Every organization needs a Mr. Fix-it. For many years at Brooks, that person was John Quirk. Since starting here as an intern in 1986 while still in college, to his current role as associate head for school affairs, Quirk has benefited students and the school from the classroom, the administrative vantage point and the basketball court and athletic fields.

“When John is needed, he’s there, able, talented and committed to his work. John is a master at changing a school from within,” said Head of School John Packard.

Quirk will take all of that experience with him when he becomes the head of school at Tabor Academy, in Marion, Massachusetts, next summer.

“It’s so difficult to leave,” Quirk said. “I love it here and so much of the school is intertwined with my personality that it can’t be ripped out. I’ve left some fingerprints on Brooks, but it’s left many fingerprints on me.

It’s not really clear where, in my heart, I end and this school begins.”

In October, Tabor Academy’s board of trustees named Quirk Tabor’s ninth head of school. Quirk will remain on the Brooks campus for the remainder of this academic year.

“In many ways, John Quirk is Brooks

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School,” Academic Dean Lance Latham said.

“No one works harder. We’ll miss him — and his guitar.”

Packard noted that when you choose to work at a school like Brooks, you want to do it with people who are “all in.” And not for one second since Packard and Quirk assumed their current administrative positions does Packard recall Quirk offering anything less.

During his 25 years on campus, Quirk certainly has been there, done that — teaching both Greek and Latin, coaching football, basketball and baseball, overseeing international student life, coordinating the exchange programs, acting as dean of students and afternoon programs, and maintaining the all-important master calendar.

“I found all those changes really exciting for me,” Quirk said of wearing so many different professional hats over the years. “The learning curve for my next position will be steep again: even steeper because I don’t have any local knowledge. I know how things fit together here. At Tabor, I’m really starting at zero. It’s a whole brave new world. Landing in Marion on July 1, ready to go, will be a challenge. But I’m excited for this new learning opportunity.”

Former fellow intern and current Math Department Chair Doug Burbank said that Quirk’s blood runs a rich Brooks green and that it might takes some time to turn Tabor crimson. But he’s looking forward to seeing all that Quirk accomplishes, saying that he now sees Tabor as a sister school. “I just want the best for them,” said Burbank, “for John and for Tabor.”

“I’ve always appreciated his creativity in thought,” Burbank said. “He’s implemented some tremendous ideas, from very small to very large ones, that have made the school a much better place. Very few people put in the time that he does. And he’s always trying to make things better; I don’t think any program he’s run has been exactly the same in back-toback years.”

Quirk also served as dorm parent for 21 years — living in Merriman, Whitney, Peabody and Thorne — before moving into Goelet House across the street with his wife, Casey, and two daughters, Maggie and Emma.

But the move hasn’t created any distance between him and the students.

“Mr. Quirk was always pushing us through the hard things we struggled with,” said Thalia Garcia ’13, co-captain of the girls 1st basketball team, which Quirk still coaches. “He forced us never to take the easy way out. Quirk and I always had these talks after games, and they were always inspirational and motivating. At the end of the day, Quirk never lost faith in us and always believed that our work ethic could not be topped and his positive attitude boosted the team’s confidence and always kept us moving.”

Nor have his relationships with his fellow faculty members diminished in the past few years. For example, he remains a key member of the school’s faculty band, the Rusty Pickers.

“Some of my favorite times with John have been in the boathouse when the Rusty Pickers are playing for the faculty,” Dean of Faculty John Haile said. “John has such a wonderful capacity to enjoy being with other people, a capacity to reach out to others and to share his own deep joy in being alive. Listening to John make music has really shown me that, and I envy the folks at Tabor the chance to continue to experience that side of him.”

Boys 1st soccer earned the 3rd seed in the Class B tournament and made it all the way to the championship game.

Fall sports recap Boys soccer makes a run to the Class B championship match The boys 1st soccer team battled their way to the finals of the Class B New England Tournament. Seeded third, Brooks defeated Suffield Academy 1-0 in the quarterfinals and then took down Williston Northampton School in the semifinals, 2-1.

The road ended with a loss to top-seed South Kent, 3-0, in the championship game.

Despite the three-goal deficit, the Brooks boys never gave up, narrowly missing several scoring chances within the final minutes of the game.

“South Kent was a very good team,” captain Nick Potter ’12 said. “I was proud of every single one of our guys; I was proud to be their captain. I wasn’t upset we lost; I was upset my time with this team was over.”

The sentiments were similar on the girls 1st field hockey team, as the tri-captains were devastated that their time together ended a little early. In the Class B quarterfinals, the team lost in overtime to St. Mark’s by a score of 65. And yet the team’s performance that day was its best of the season.

“None of us should regret how we played,” said tri-captain Ellie Donohue ’12. “Everyone gave 100 percent. You can’t ask for more.”

The cross country teams also participated in the New England Championships: the girls placing 5th out of 22 teams and the boys placed 7th out of 20 teams. Three runners truly excelled: Sawyer Rogers ’13 finished 5th of 140 runners, while Cecile Harmange ’12 finished 8th and Hadley Barlow ’13 finished 17th of 154 runners.

Cecile was in fact the first Brooks cross country runner to move on to compete in the New England Race of Champions, for which she qualified during the New England Championships. She had a strong showing, finishing 28th out of 51 runners.

“No runner at Brooks has ever accomplished such success as quickly as did Cecile Harmange,” head coach Don Cameron said.

“In only her first year as a runner, she finishes as the third best runner Brooks has ever had.”

TEAM RESULTS Boys 1st soccer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13-3-3 Girls 1st soccer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9-5-4 Field Hockey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11-5-1 Football . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .0-4 Boys 1st Cross Country . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1-9 Girls 1st Cross Country . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4-6 Boys 2nd A Soccer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9-0-2 Boys 2nd B Soccer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3-0 Girls 2nd Soccer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3-8 2nd Field Hockey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4-0 2nd Football . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1-1-1 Boys 2nd Cross Country . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3-5 Boys 3rd Soccer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4-1-5 Girls 3rd Soccer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .0-6-2 3rd Field Hockey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2-0-2

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LEADING BY EXAMPLE

by Michelle Morrissey

M

aureen Perkins might be getting used to hearing thank

you. As head of the Community Service program at

Brooks for nearly three decades, she’s had plenty of opportunity to hear thank you from the students she works with, but even more from the countless clients at places like the Cor Unum meal center in Lawrence and the Haverhill Boys & Girls Club. She’s also heard words of appreciation from the people who run such organizations — those who know that volunteers who come by on a regular basis are vital to keeping nonprofits running.

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But in recent months, those thank-yous have taken on special meaning. In June, there was the thank-you for her 43 years of dedication to Brooks. At the Alumni Weekend Awards Convocation, the class of 1981 named Maureen an honorary member of their class, and one member lauded Maureen by sharing a story about how she took a “shy boy from the city” and helped him find comfort here away from home.

The Alumni Weekend event was the culmination of a spring of thank yous and goodbyes for Perkins, who retired from Brooks in May after 43 years and several job titles.

As she nears 70 and looks back on a career of working with teenagers in jobs such as dean of students, dorm mother and French teacher, she says she’s ready to enjoy the next chapter of life.

She still feels as strongly today as she did more than 20 years ago about the need to provide service learning at the high school level.

“Service is an essential part of learning.

It’s a lesson best learned early — it’s not really a lesson, it’s a part of life,” Perkins said. “We require kids to take math and science” and other core subjects, says Perkins. She feels community service should carry the same weight. It was that idea that sparked her interest in starting the program more than two decades ago.

BEGINNING AT BROOKS Perkins first came to Brooks in 1966, with her husband, Skip, who had graduated from Brooks just 10 years earlier and was returning to teach French. She started out teaching French in 1968, and also taught a little Latin.

When the school went co-ed, in 1979, then headmaster Peter Aitken asked Maureen if the Perkins family would move up to PBA Dormitory to run what was the only girls dorm that first year of co-education.

Perkins’ Brooks résumé flourished from there: In addition to being a dorm parent, she served as the assistant dean of students under Richard Holmes, and when he became assistant headmaster four years later, she stepped into the dean of students role. She remained there until the mid-1980s, and soon after started the Community Service program for students.

There had always been some kind of service program but nothing formal, Perkins says.

“School minister George Vought used to take

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Perkins is well-respected at the Lawrence Boys and Girls Club. During a recent visit to the homework room she was greeted with hugs before sitting down to help some students with their reading assignments. She was voted the club’s volunteer of the year in 2007. “Not only is her dedication notable, but it’s the way in which it was done; kindness is so important,” said Maureen Kelley, volunteer coordinator at the club.

kids to Headstart programs in nearby cities and towns every now and then,” she remembers, but it was under her own leadership that the program was formally established.

“When I was leaving as dean, in my report I wrote to [former headmaster] Larry Becker that there were so many opportunities around the Merrimack Valley for service,” she recalls. “We could certainly run a more formal program that would reach out even farther.”

On her own, Perkins had spent a few years tutoring kids and adults in Lawrence in English as a second language. Every once in a while she would bring them to the Brooks campus — and she saw how they reacted.

“My philosophy is that . . . we are so lucky to live here, it’s so beautiful. At times it’s been called the ivory tower. It’s important to realize that there’s a whole world beyond us where people are less fortunate,” she said. “It’s

important to get kids to think about people other than themselves.”

BUILDING A LEGACY Under Perkins’ supervision, the program has expanded to include independent projects like working at Windrush Farm, an equine therapy facility; on-campus events like the Hike for Hope, which raises money to build schools in Afghanistan; and a turkey delivery drive for Bellisini Academy students and their families.

Dean Thayer believes Perkins’ legacy is the example she set for each of the Brooks students she worked with. As the activities director at German Home in Lawrence for more than 10 years, he’s seen the good that Brooks brings.

“She’s absolutely got one of the nicest personalities you could have; she’s kind and compassionate, and you can see it gets passed

ley, volunteer coordinator of the club.

Kelley said Maureen’s work ethic with the Brooks visitors is part of what made her the unanimous choice for Volunteer of the Year in 2007.

Both Kelley and Perkins have the same ideas when it comes to working with kids at the Boys and Girls Club.

“I have high expectations for my volunteers, and she has the same of her Brooks kids,” Kelley said.

(Left) “Grammy” time — Perkins grew close to Marjeela Basij-Rasikh ’11, who came to Brooks from Afghanistan and lived with Leigh Perkins and Matt Grant. (Right) Perkins was proud that her granddaughter Samantha Grant ’14 took part in Community Service this year.

on to her students,” Thayer says.

Over the last several years, Brooks students have worked closely with residents of the German Home — during visits, they socialize, play cards and serve refreshments to the residents. The school also donates money from its recycling program to sponsor activities for German Home residents, Thayer said, and buys Christmas gifts and clothing for them.

“If it wasn’t for Maureen and the kids, a lot of what happens in terms of activities and recreation here wouldn’t happen to the extent that it does,” Thayer said.

He lauded Perkins and Brooks students for being respectful, always, of the residents at the home.

“You know, young people don’t get enough credit sometimes, but they’ve treated our residents with nothing but the utmost compassion and dignity all these years,” he said. “A lot of that comes from Maureen’s example.”

Generations of students have followed Perkins’ example in thinking about others first. For graduate Maddie Parrish ’11, working with her was an inspiration.

“Working with Mrs. Perkins was about learning from her kind and helping spirit, and her determination to do good,” said Maddie, who started at Tulane University as a freshman this fall.

Maddie said the best part of doing Community Service at Brooks (which she did for three years) was getting to form lasting relationships and meaningful with the people she

met off campus.

“I got very close to a woman at Sutton Hill [nursing home] and a little boy at the Haverhill Boys and Girls Club. I really found myself looking forward to getting to be with them,” she says.

Now with her high school graduation behind her, Maddie feels she’s gained some perspective on her experience as well. She said one of the challenges of Community Service was working with kids at the Boys and Girls Clubs and trying to get them to focus on their homework, and “to remain patient with themselves when they couldn’t answer a problem or understand a concept.

“They made me so thankful for my parents’ patience when they had to do the same with me,” she said.

For English teacher Leigh Perkins ’81, her mom’s legacy is pretty much the example by which she lives and raised her own children: “It’s really simple. Everybody needs to be accepting, do the right things, and be responsible,” Leigh said.

“Ensuring that everybody in our community is a good citizen not only of our community, but of the greater community, and then of the world as well was pervasive in everything she did here,” Leigh said.

It’s a lesson that Maureen Perkins passed on to her Brooks volunteers, and to the kids they worked with at places like the Lawrence Boys and Girls Club.

“What sticks out to me is Maureen’s love of the members here and the club itself, and the dedication she’s had,” said Maureen Kel-

FINDING HER STRENGTH As Perkins was building the Community Service program into what it is today, she was also dealing with difficulties at home. In 1988, she went through a bout with cancer, and, in 1989, her husband, Skip, was paralyzed in a bodysurfing accident during a Florida vacation.

Life as Perkins knew it changed dramatically.

Tod ’83 and Leigh ’81 had both already graduated from Brooks, so it was Maureen who was Skip’s main caregiver at home and often in the classroom, as he continued to teach French.

And although it was the best of times in terms of support from friends and colleagues in the Brooks community, Maureen said that in some ways, it was the worst of times for her, despite her love for her husband.

“It was extremely difficult,” she said, explaining that continuing to teach as well as be the caregiver stretched her to her limit. The lack of sleep alone was a challenge: Serving as caregiver to her husband meant she was doing things like turning him every two hours during the night, “which meant I wasn’t sleeping. It was like that for sixteen years.

“There were days when the health aides wouldn’t show up at the last minute. I rapidly learned how to get him out of bed all by myself. I know I lost patience with him at that time. I was not at my best,” she says, remembering the moment she realized she was overstressed. “One day I found myself yelling at a bag boy in the grocery store — I don’t do that.”

Because of the lack of sleep and the stress, Maureen found her day-to-day Brooks life difficult. She feels she wasn’t functioning well in the classroom. After leaving the work at home, she said, “and then to walk into a class where a kid hadn’t done his homework . . . you just wanted to shout, ‘Don’t you guys know how important life is?’”

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“

My philosophy is that . . . we are so lucky to live here, it’s so beautiful. At times it’s been called the ivory tower. It’s important to realize that there’s a whole world beyond us, where people are less fortunate. It’s important to get kids to think about people other than themselves.”

— MAUREEN PERKINS

“Women tend to expect that they should be superwomen. You can’t do it all, you really can’t,” she said. She calls her depression at times debilitating: “It made me more aware of stresses and how they affect you.”

That experience guided her philosophy on the Community Service program.

“I tell kids before we go to Cor Unum: You might find people who are angry. Try to put yourself in their shoes. Maybe they’ve lost a job, or a spouse. How do you think that might feel?”

And after caring for her wheelchairbound husband, she became more aware of how people, some teenagers especially, treated people with disabilities of all types.

“I saw kids being afraid, and drawing back from people in wheelchairs,” she said.

“It’s important for our kids to reach out beyond what they know. That’s part of growing.

Getting to know different people is the only way to have kids grow and learn about others, and respect others — and to not be afraid of others who are different.”

She feels that’s especially important in today’s world of globalization and instant communication. “They’re seeing more, and are being exposed to more. If they don’t have context, or a little more knowledge of how others live, they’re at a distinct disadvantage,” she says.

LOOKING AHEAD So why now, after going so strong for so many years and lighting the spark of charity in so many young Brooksians, has Maureen decided to retire? The timing was just right, she said.

“One of the things I had hoped to have happen was have my granddaughter [Samantha Grant ’14] doing Community Service, and that happened this past winter,” she said.

Another granddaughter is headed to college

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this fall, and other grandkids and family members are all doing fun and interesting things — things that Maureen wants to be there for.

“I want to spend some time being able to take a granddaughter in college out to dinner or go watch Sammy’s crew race,” she said.

“There are things like that that I can’t do right now because of time.”

As she is about to turn 70, Perkins wants to have more free time to spend with family. She started that family time this summer, with a big trip to Ireland to see some relatives she had never met, and to travel with her children, grandchildren and one of her sibPerkins is an active cheerleader at fundraising events lings. like the Hike for Hope at Merrimack College, where “It was wonderful!” she said students raise money for Lazarus House. after returning from the July adventure of her kick-off to retirement. about introspection and learning more about Maureen is handing over the reins of her yourself as you help others — the idea that by two jobs — school archivist and Community learning about someone different, you gain Service director — to two Brooks faculty more knowledge of yourself. members already familiar with the school.

“It’s easy to stay within a bubble where all Academic Dean Lance Latham will be taking your needs are met,” she explained. “But when over in the archives and Shaunielle McDonyou look at making this the most meaningful ald ’94 (the diversity and inclusivity coordiexperience for our students, you can’t possibly nator at Brooks) will take over the do that in a bubble.”

Community Service program.

Part of what McDonald would like to In considering expanding her role here to focus on is doing “even more processing” with include Community Service, Shaunielle said the students who participate in Community she did a lot of soul-searching and thinking Service: “We want to help them answer a ‘why’ about compassion. behind community service . . . what does serv“For me, I wanted to make sure that I ice mean to you as a human being?” could walk with the same exemplary manner For Leigh, the idea of looking out for the that I saw in Maureen,” she said. “I can say underrepresented student is something she now I feel like I will. It might look a little difbelieves in, and that both of her parents beferent to some people, but I’m driven to conlieved in, based on their own experiences. tinue what Maureen was doing.”

Part of her mother’s perspective, she says, Like Perkins, McDonald believes the program is not just about helping others, but also comes from Skip, who was one of the first

Her husband’s accident gave Perkins a new perspective on how teenagers view those with disabilities. “I saw kids drawing back from people in wheelchairs,” she recalls. “Getting to know different people is the only way to have kids grow and learn about others, and respect others.”

scholarship day students here and struggled with “being a townie, coming in with mainly privileged boys from Manhattan,” Leigh says.

She says her mother also draws on her own experience: “Mom was coming in as one of only a few women in the administration here for a long time, and helping the coeducation process become a reality, talking to all these men in charge, and giving them some perspective on some decisions they were making.”

All of that, she says, shaped her mother’s drive to be “an advocate for the unempowered kid or group here.”

David Bonner ’81, also says he was touched by Perkins’s generosity, but not through Community Service.

He spoke during Alumni Weekend about his gratitude to Maureen, one of the caring teachers who welcomed him in 1977.

“Those first few weeks of French class were a challenge, but with care and skill, Maureen worked hard to find what I knew, and eventually put me on the right track,” he said.

He lauded her “care, skill and patience” with all facets of her job, and dubbed her “one of the right people in the right place at the right time” to make a difference either on campus or with organizations off campus.

Leigh Perkins said she’ll miss having her mom around as much to catch up on the daily happenings of the school. “We’re all pretty like-minded, and have a pretty long-term perspective on this place. She and I have the same long view of how we see the school. It’s nice to debrief a little bit at the end of the day and share our reflections on what’s been happening,” she says.

But Perkins is still a presence on campus.

This fall, she’s been visiting regularly, and vol-

unteering to walk Dash, the mini-Australian shepherd that belongs to Leigh and her husband, faculty member Matt Grant.

She’s been just as selfless in her goodbyes as she was during her tenure. As Perkins was accepting that honorary induction into the class of 1981 in June, a downpour was pelting the tent where alumni, family and friends had gathered, and she was once again thinking of others.

“It’s much too damp and cold for me to keep you here any longer, but thank you so much,” she said. Summing up her Brooks career, she said, “It’s been a real blast.”

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Sarah Crockett '11 (second from left) and Maddie Parrish '11 (third from left) were students at King’s College Budo in Uganda. Crockett says she learned that teenage girls are interested in the same things, even in different countries. "All the friends I made there showed me how similar all the kids are. Even though I’m thousands of miles away from home, I could get along with these new friends fine. We understood the same things, we saw things the same way — we still found ways to connect.”

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“We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate.”

—Pico Iyer, Why We Travel

Destinations

by Michelle Morrissey

Since the 1980s, the Brooks School Exchange Program has enabled students to experience different world cultures as a way to learn about themselves. They’ve had to navigate their way past the border guards in Kenya and around the public transportation of Szeged, Hungary.

They’ve been welcomed by host families in Scotland and ogled by schoolchildren in Botswana. Last June, Brooks celebrated 25 years of exchange programs with a reunion where participants relived memories and told stories of their travels.

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wake up this morning to embark upon my last day in Peru. My host family has made sure that this weekend has been a really great one. On Saturday we went to a giant Peruvian Box Festival. The Peruvian box is this musical instrument that emits different sounds based on where you hit it. I played a little box and then went to play fútbol on the turf with some kids. On Sunday, we got up early to go to this market called Gamara. I kinda wanted to buy some Peruvian pants before I go, but I don’t know if that will happen. After Gamara, we went bowling with Nicolas and Riley and their mothers. Our team won (naturally), and I bowled an 83! Nicolas (who came to Brooks in the spring of this year) and I had a nice talk about the internal conflict between wanting to stay on exchange forever and wanting to go home. And then we all called it a night. It was a really good weekend. . . .

A very nice note to finish a beautiful piece of music. I found myself thinking in Spanish today. . . . That was exciting.

VJ Gladney ’12 blogged about her exchange experience in Peru this summer, sharing the emotions she felt at various points along the way. For more than two decades, Brooksians have been on similar paths of self-discovery.

During the past 25 years, Brooks students have been amazed at how quickly they’ve mastered living in another country for weeks at a time — from learning to navigate the public transportation system in Szeged, Hungary, and mastering the art of doing their own laundry without indoor plumbing in Uganda to how to translate the sometimes tricky slang in the hallways of Scotland’s Glenalmond College.

For a quarter-century, Brooks’ exchange program has allowed students to gain a deeper understanding of foreign cultures in an intense and meaningful way. More than just learning to acclimate, the result has been a transformation for each of those students — a deeper understanding of themselves, and an understanding of their place in the world.

To be sure, it’s a lesson hard to teach teenagers, many of whom readily admit that theirs is a self-focused view of the world. But through the exchange experience, their horizons broaden. Their worldview expands to a larger footprint, and is no longer based solely on themselves, but also on the knowledge and perspectives of others they met in Szeged, Lima, Gaborone or Seville. They learn to move beyond themselves and to absorb the sounds, sights, lives, voices and cultures at times so radically different from their own, and at other times so similar, that they can only soak them in.

“It’s this whole idea of enculturation,” explains John McLoughlin, who directs the Exchange Program. “What is so powerful is that, on the one hand, it’s a very personal experience — there’s a personal growth for these students. On the other hand, the places that they go to, and the relationships they have there, also have a very powerful impact. Enculturation is that idea: that the places we go and the people we meet change us and have a profound effect on us.”

The Exchange Program celebrated its 25th anniversary this year, and when past participants gathered to talk about their experiences during June’s Alumni Weekend, it gave them an

opportunity to reflect on how this unique program has changed the lives of so many students. >>>> “We travel, then, in part just to shake up our complacencies by seeing all the moral and political urgencies, the life-and-death dilemmas, that we seldom have to face at home.” —Pico Iyer <<<< One thing all Exchange Program alumni will tell you: This wasn’t a vacation. For some, it’s a lesson about getting by with less, about realizing the comforts of home are just that: comforts, not necessities. For others, the reality that exchange is more than a vacation comes from the strife they see in another country — from poverty to homelessness to political violence.

“The first week, you are in culture shock, and you can’t really talk to anyone there about it,” says Sarah Crockett ’11, who attended King’s College Budo in Uganda in her junior year.

Through studying and preparing for her trip at Brooks, Crockett knew what to expect — the modern conveniences of indoor plumbing, technology, electricity might be scarce. But having that as your day-to-day reality felt different from just reading about it.

“This wasn’t going to be a vacation, but the hard work got easier. When people think of traveling, they think of a relaxing time. It was different from that. It wasn’t a vacation, but it was fun, in that I learned about life.”

It was the same for Reed Bundy ’96, who went on exchange to Bishop’s School in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1995.

Bundy says he and his family had been on some “generic” family vacations to Mexico and to Europe, but nothing like what he would experience on exchange. “I thought it would give me some new challenges and totally open my eyes,” he says.

His culture shock set in right away. “I still remember after a long flight getting out of this van, in the middle of a school in Cape Town, with a ton of kids surrounding me, bleary-eyed — for a seventeen-year-old kid, it was surreal.”

The 10-week existence in South Africa was also a chance to view history in the making.

“I was there right after Nelson Mandela was elected, and the country was just exploding,”

Richard Holmes (center, in pink shirt and sunglasses) founded the Exchange Program in 1986. According to former faculty member Michael McCahill, who compiled a history of the Exchange Program, Holmes was fascinated not only with African culture, but also with the breathtaking wildlife and the ever-changing political landscape there. He felt it was a good experience. "Richard believed that it was essential for everyone at Brooks, faculty and students alike, to go beyond the school into worlds that were unfamiliar — in his words, to escape from the ‘world of stoplights,'" McCahill writes.

Bundy remembers. “There was an incredible parallel of joy, celebration, excitement and fear among people when I was there. It was unbelievable.”

Zoe Stathopoulos ’06 also learned some lessons while she was at Alliance High School in Kikuyu, Kenya, during her senior year.

“I learned to appreciate everything in life — not having hot water for two months was definitely a wake-up call, and I began seeing all of my material goods as trivial. I learned what true poverty means. Seeing the slums of Nairobi was unlike anything I had ever experienced before; visiting an HIV/AIDS orphanage made the disease more tangible.”

Program director John McLoughlin says the importance of this international experience

is equal in importance to including a community service component as part of the curriculum, in that both are ways in which students learn about those unlike themselves and find ways in which they are, in fact, alike.

“Good education has to be counter-cultural,” he says, pointing out that so many students return from an exchange trip and have a new perspective through which they examine issues of consumption, materialism, environmentalism and other related topics.

Bundy recalls his time in Africa as a sometimes violent one.

“It was the most eye-opening experience I’ve ever had. I had a pretty sheltered, blessed childhood,” he says, so he was shocked when someone was carjacked right in front of him on the street. He says working in the orphanages of the townships around Cape Town he saw “the worst of the worst.

“For a seventeen-year-old, it was an incredible dichotomy of a country evolving right before my eyes,” he says. “It was so palpable, all you could do was soak it all in. There was so much going on, you didn’t have time to be homesick.” >>>> “The first great joy of traveling is simply the luxury of leaving all my beliefs and certainties at home, and seeing everything I thought I knew in a different light, and from a crooked angle.” —Pico Iyer <<<< Faculty member Richard Holmes, who served as assistant headmaster for more than three decades, founded the Exchange Program in 1986. That first year, Brooks students attended Alliance High School in Kenya and Bishops Diocesan College in South Africa.

Although many schools these days offer an international program, the Brooks experience has long been on the forefront of providing extended international immersion programs to teenagers.

According to research from longtime faculty member Michael McCahill, Holmes’s goals were to afford the opportunity for students to live in and participate in another culture and education system, “to become residents of another country, and therefore to become more

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Mark Shuttleworth (left), who came to Brooks as an exchange student from Cape Town in 1990, checks out old photos with friend Jordan Creighton ’90, who went to Bishops in South Africa as a sixthformer, and Phoebe Milliken ’90 during June's reunion at Brooks.

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effective, meaningful and resourceful citizens of the larger world community.”

It was Holmes’s connection to Africa that inspired him to start the program, and, McCahill notes, while the program has expanded to other continents, Holmes always felt the African exchange was the core of the Brooks program.

He made his first visits to the continent in the late ’50s and early ’60s and fell in love with the place. He continued his work even after retiring from Brooks in 1991, living near Cape Town until his death in 2008.

The early days of the program were a renegade endeavor, alumni recall.

“We were just kind of put on a plane, picked up at the airport by Reverend Welch from Alliance High School in Kenya, and left to our own devices,” recalls Christian Albert ’86, who was one of the first two exchange participants in its inaugural year.

Lloyd Dahmen ’92 said before he left for Kenya he might have described his adventure as “having no idea what it’s going to be like,” but added quickly, “that was the best part about it for me.”

“These kinds of experiences allow you to

look at things in your life that otherwise you might not,” he told fellow exchange alumni.

Albert recalls a telegram he received from Richard Holmes during his time in Kenya.

He and classmate John Barker were set to visit the mountain gorillas in Rwanda.

“The telegram Richard Holmes sent me read: ‘Fly Nairobi Kigali, Hitch Ruengri, Contact Jean-Pierre, Be Adventurous,’” Albert said.

“I think one of the nicest things, especially for those of us in those early years, was that we really felt like guinea pigs, and there was a sense of adventure that defined the experience.”

He still has the telegram.

John Barker ’87 told McCahill of an early meeting he had with Holmes to discuss the details of his exchange experience: what he would eat, how was laundry done. He noticed that all of Richard Holmes’s answers had a common theme: “I don’t know, but you’ll have to tell me when you get back.”

Holmes was interested in students finding their own solutions to routine problems they might face — from laundry to language barriers.

Through these tales came a persona of Holmes as a larger-than-life, Hemingway-esque character — from his big-game hunting to his trusted methods of bribing border guards with whiskey.

But that renegade nature was what attracted people to their program.

“It was unlike anything I’d ever been exposed to. I had never heard of a program like that at any other school, and I had never conceived of the idea of me traveling like that in high school,” said Reed Bundy.

Today’s program is more structured in that students are prepped well in advance of stepping off a planes in a foreign country.

Students now take an exchange class to prepare for their trip, taught by McLoughlin, which consists of reading about travel in general, researching the countries they’ll each stay in, and preparing for the possible difficulties of navigating foreign countries.

Before they depart, they are required to make a brief presentation to their parents and fellow exchange participants, and McLoughlin asks them to think about the experiences they

would like to have overseas.

To be selected for the program, students have to have shown an interest in engaging with visiting students, and therefore an interest in going abroad.

They also have to be adaptive, McLoughlin said.

“The kids who get the most out of an exchange are kids who have been successful here, and I don’t mean just academically. They are kids who have a sense of adventure, and who can roll with the punches, and can engage with different people. We select students we know will be good ambassadors and extend themselves to another place, people, language, cuisine, all of that.” >>>> “We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed.” —Pico Iyer <<<< For many of the exchange students, studying abroad is not only about tasting new food, meeting new people and seeing new things. It’s about becoming part of a new culture for several weeks, and living their regular teenage life as teenagers do around the world — even thousands of miles from home.

Albert Nascimento ’10 always knew he wanted to apply to go on exchange, but never imagined how much he would feel at home during his stay in Botswana.

“My favorite part was traveling with the basketball team to a big tournament. They were halfway through their season, so I had to try out. They weren’t too sure if I was good or not, but I tried out and I made it. We ended up coming in third place out of about twenty teams,” says Nascimento, now a sophomore at Middlebury College. “Anyone can travel and be a tourist in a foreign country, but doing this type of travel through Brooks and experiencing life at another school, I thought it would be a oncein-a-lifetime chance.”

Much like those unscripted moments here on the Brooks campus, the campuses from Lima, Peru, to Beijing, China, allow for organic interactions that might seem insignificant at the time — a conversation, a basketball game, a cup

of coffee — but actually carry much meaning for Brooksians some weeks or even years later.

Narvel Mayo ’91, attended Alliance High School in Kenya his senior year and said those unplanned moments are when we learn the most about each other.

He recalls when a group of exchange students from South Africa came to Brooks. During that time, South Africa was pictured in the media as a very troubled place. But he found the students to be nothing but friendly.

“When I met them, that encouraged me to think that maybe the world isn’t quite what’s pictured in a tabloid. Once I realized that these were people who had their own stories, I thought they were so much more than what’s in the headlines,” Narvel said.

He said that interaction encouraged him to take part in exchange himself.

“Once I got to South Africa, I realized the world is an incredibly fractured place, and in some respects, at the same time, very much we are the same. That can only happen when you get the chance to meet someone from a place you might not know, and have those real moments.”

Chase Stone ’11 spent a few weeks of his junior year in Scotland, studying at Glenalmond College.

While he said the first few days were tough, by the end he didn’t want to leave; once he got into the Glenalmond routine, it was hard to think of getting out of it.

Upon his return to Brooks, Stone made a speech about finding opportunities and taking them, and keeping your eye on the bigger benefit of that.

“Maybe my average dropped a few points, or I missed some events on campus. I’m not going to remember that in thirty years. But I will remember this exchange experience,” says Stone.

Andie Missert ’11 found she was bringing her love of hockey to her newfound friends at Glenalmond. She said one of the best moments for her was watching the U.S. men’s hockey team face Canada in an Olympic showdown.

Missert, who was on the girls varsity hockey team here at Brooks, gathered a couple of

“The kids who get the most out of an exchange are kids who have been successful here, and I don’t mean just academically. They are kids who have a sense of adventure, and who can roll with the punches, and can engage with different people.”

—John McLoughlin

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“The exchange program largely shaped my career path, and my interest in helping people, and recognizing economic growth as a driver to helping people. I felt like it hit me there: Oh my gosh, I’ve been so sheltered.”

—Reed Bundy ’96

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friends to watch with her when the game was televised.

“Little did I know that ice hockey is not at all a common sport around Scotland. It was so funny when they’d ask different questions about what was happening, and made loud cheers whenever somebody got checked into the boards,” she recalled. “When they heard that I played ice hockey at home, they thought it was pretty cool, so it was neat to tell them about a little part about me that they wouldn’t have expected. Hopefully I’ve hooked a couple of them on hockey!”

For Zoe Stathopoulos ’06, sports was also a way to connect with her new friends. She did the Kenyan exchange in 2006, and joined the swim team of her Kenyan high school. It allowed her some travel experiences, but also some cultural experiences she might not have had.

“I remember traveling up to the mountains for a meet. Our bus pulled in, and as soon as I stepped off the bus, hundreds of little boys and girls rushed to the fence to get a closer look,” she recalls. “They started pinching me and pulling my hair — they didn’t think I was real.

Turns out, I was the first white person they had ever seen. Once I understood that, I really began to embrace it and realized what an experience it must have been for these kids.” >>>> “Travel, then, is a voyage into that famously subjective zone, the imagination, and what the traveler brings back is — and has to be — an ineffable compound of himself and the place, what’s really there and what’s only in him.” —Pico Iyer <<<< Recent graduates are still learning how the Brooks exchange experience will eventually help shape who they are, but for alumni with some hindsight of either a few years or more than 20 years, the message is almost universal: The exchange experience at such a young age played a role in molding their future.

For Reed Bundy, the things he learned about himself on exchange have guided his career path.

“This was my first exposure to real human suffering, which we saw when we did the work in the townships. I’d never seen what an im-

poverished community looks like; it’s jarring.

But it also gave me perspective. It affected me and the priorities in my life,” Bundy says.

“The work I do now is focused on corporate social responsibility; I’ve done a lot of work in nonprofits, and with sustainable energy projects in poor countries,” he says.

“The Exchange Program largely shaped my career path, and my interest in helping people, and recognizing economic growth as a driver to helping people. I felt like it hit me there: Oh my gosh, I’ve been so sheltered.”

Christian Albert said his experiences in Kenya led to an interest in sub-Saharan Africa.

His master’s degree at Oxford centered on British Commonwealth history since the 1850s, focusing on Africa and the Middle East; his thesis was on South Africa’s contribution to World War II. He has traveled to the region 20-odd times since Brooks.

“A lot of things I did postcollege were internationally based; I lived overseas for ten years,” Albert said. “My ability to integrate into those different societies was strengthened from having gone on the Brooks exchange.”

For Amy Harmon ’91, the connection between Hillcrest School in Nairobi and her present day life in Denver is an obvious one.

Harmon, who works in real estate and community development, traveled to Kenya in 1991.

Like many exchange alumni, she says that was the part of her Brooks experience that carried the most meaning for her, and that changed her outlook on other people.

In Denver, she’s working with the homeless population and immigrants, and has found a great rift between different socioeconomic groups, even though they all could consider themselves neighbors — and even more troubling, she says, is their inability to communicate with each other.

“I’ve learned that people in these different groups are afraid to talk to each other, and it’s the weirdest thing to me. Coming out of the Kenya experience, I’m more of the stance of, ‘Well, let’s go talk to them to sort this out.’ Part of my work is collecting leaders in these various areas, and breaking down those barriers, which is what the Brooks Exchange Program

Brooks students on a 1996 trip to South Africa, pictured here with Consul General Bismarck Myrick.

has always represented to me.”

Jordan Creighton ’90 says his exchange experience made him a lifelong traveler. He did a junior semester in London while a student at Tulane University, and during his first job at an engineering firm he was approached by a manager to take an overseas stint: “He said, ‘We need someone to go to Malaysia for three months’ and right away I said, ‘I’ll do it,’” Creighton recalled. “He asked me if I wanted to think about it, and I said, ‘Nope!’”

A few years later he accepted an opportunity to live and work in Hong Kong.

Creighton said he was always someone who sought out new people and new experiences, but that his Brooks exchange experience gave him the opportunity to fully understand that “there is another perspective on life, to realize

that every culture has something to offer,” he says. >>>> “So travel, at heart, is just a quick way to keeping our minds mobile and awake ... travel is a heightened state of awareness, in which we are mindful, receptive, undimmed by familiarity and ready to be transformed.”

—Pico Iyer <<<< McLoughlin feels that in an ever-shrinking global community, international experience, especially at a young age, is essential if Brooks is to be committed to a full and robust education of its students.

“Exchange trips offer students an understanding of the broader world, and help to meet that larger goal of what good education should be: transformative,” he says.

Ask any high school student the question

“Why do we study?” and you might hear an answer that implies their life’s direction, he says: to get into a good college, to get a good job, to make lots of money, to have a nice house.

But he feels certain experiences — exchange trips among them — get to the deeper answers to that question.

“We study in to order to gain a better understanding of the world, and to get into a more complex conversation with ourselves about what is important,” he said. “When that internal conversation deepens, in that process we become fundamentally better people, in a very humanist way.”

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The Impact of the Exchange Program MARK SHUTTLEWORTH believes that everyone should have access to software and technology. It’s a simple dream that the South African entrepreneur, considered among the “IT illuminati,” is making happen. Shuttleworth is not only the founder of the Ubuntu Project, a popular Linux-based operating system that is freely available worldwide; he’s also the founder of the Shuttleworth Foundation, a non-profit group in South Africa that focuses on innovation in education, and HBD Venture Capital, an investment company also based in South Africa. He sold his first company, Thawte, a certificate security system for Internet sites, to VeriSign for a reported $575 million. His success has enabled him to follow his dreams, including space travel: Shuttleworth became the second-ever self-funded cosmonaut when he traveled into space in 2002. The “HBD” moniker says a lot about Shuttleworth’s approach to his work and life: It stands for “Here be dragons,” which in ancient times was written on maps to mark unexplored territories. It’s a guiding principle for Shuttleworth; exploration and discovery drive his personal and professional endeavors. These days, he’s preparing for Ubuntu to make the move to mobile devices, and tech bloggers are saying that he might be the next Steve Jobs. But before all of that, he was a teenager who arrived at Brooks in the dead of winter, many miles from his home in South Africa, warming up with a cup of hot cocoa in the dining hall after a long bus ride from Logan Airport.

What memories of your time at Brooks are most vivid to you?

I remember clearly watching the release of Nelson Mandela and the unbanning of the African National Congress in 1990, which happened during the time that we were there, and to see such a historic moment, surrounded by kids who were looking at it from a different perspective, kids who were curious about the outside world . . . to have South Africa thrust into the headlines while were at Brooks was amazing.

As someone who experienced our Exchange Program from another country and who is interested in the field of education, what do you think the benefits are of Brooks’ program, or others like it?

Brooks has a great Exchange Program. At that time, I hadn’t traveled internationally before. It’s a profoundly different experience when you’re looking through the window of a tourist bus and you are surrounded by a critical mass of your own travelers from when you are thrust into a situation and you have to adapt. . . . I remember being delighted that Brooks was a co-ed school — it was both traumatic and exhilarating, although I’m not sure how much of that was cultural and how much was hormonal, but it sticks in my memory.

You came to Brooks as a white South African. Did you feel that any issues related to race played out while you were here?

I wanted to show that white South Africans weren’t as they were displayed. But I remember coming here, the night we arrived. I thought of myself as a liberal person, and not as a racist. We arrived late at Brooks, and we went to the dining hall for hot chocolate, and as we walked in, I saw a woman scrubbing the floor. She was down on her hands and knees, and she was white. I immediately put my bags down and asked if I could help her. I had never seen that before. It just showed me

that there are deep stereotypes of what was normal and what wasn’t normal. That was a hell of a wake-up call on Day One. The whole experience was like that.

How did Ubuntu start?

Among the changes that sweep through society, I’m interested in the relationship between technology and those changes.

When I was at Brooks, we were just starting to see personal computers reach schools, I’d never seen that before. Ubuntu is a shift in the way software is produced; it’s one of the most fundamental shifts in technology and society. It’s open-source software, which means users are participating and contributing as much as anyone who works in that field as a software developer. I think it’s important to work on things you’re inspired by and interested in, and share the benefits of that with other people.

Let’s talk about the trip into outer space? How did you make that happen?

That had been a long-standing dream of mine. As a South African, it wasn’t very realistic to think of going into space. But after 1999 and the Net bubble, I started to realize that you should do in life the most difficult or profound thing you possibly can because life is short. It was clear to me, if I could, I wanted to fly in space. So I went and chased it down: I spent a year in Russia, and then in 2002 I visited the space station.

The whole experience was a bit like going to Brooks, in that I was immersing myself in another culture.

Wait — are you comparing a semester at Brooks to a trip to outer space? We’re flattered.

Well, meaning the year I spent in Russia. The culture wasn’t as different — Russia was much more of a leap from South Africa than America was. It was that feeling of making friends across cultural lines. That feeling was very powerful.

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300 Wins is not the story

He spent 32 years in the classroom and 11 years in the dorms; led the girls 1st soccer team to 317 wins and 14 championships.

But Bob Morahanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time on campus was about so much more than a series of impressive numbers. He touched countless lives during his career at Brooks, which came to a close in June.

by Emily Young Fall / Winter 2011

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Allison Jackson ’93 didn’t want to hear the news.

Last winter, she was once again diagnosed with thymic carcinoma — cancer. She knew the drill: chemo. And she knew how to get through it, thanks to her former soccer coach Bob Morahan.

“I sit here today preparing to begin chemotherapy and I hear Coach Moho’s voice reverberating in my ears telling me to focus. Telling me to play my game. Telling me to take care of the ball. Telling me to look for my support. All those things he repeated day in and day out,” Jackson wrote in February. “Coach Moho had one desire: He wanted every one of his players to find the best fighting spirit within themselves. I know that the spirit he helped me find within myself during my senior year is the spirit that has helped me to push through countless adversities in my life. And I know will help me to face off what may be the toughest ‘shoot-out’ of my life.”

To say Jackson is grateful that her doctors subsequently declared a misdiagnosis is an obvious understatement. But she’s equally grateful to have Morahan in her life to influence the personal philosophy she’s used during her previous battles with the disease.

And she’s not alone.

Bob Morahan touched countless lives during his 32-year career at Brooks, which came to a close in June. Ever patient, Morahan always made sure even the weakest of math students grasped his course concepts. Ever enthusiastic, he approached each academic year and athletic season like his first. And ever the team player, he tackled several thankless jobs — like running sit-down dinners for seven years — without a whimper.

“Every team needs a guy like Bob on it. He does what’s needed and never complains. All good teams are made up of different types, but you always need a Bob,” fellow math teacher and boys soccer coach Dusty Richard said. “He’s had a great career and he should be proud of such a career.”

That career dates back to the 1970s, when Morahan first taught at

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Becket Academy and Indian Mountain School, before arriving in North Andover in 1979. His son, Chris Morahan ’93, was seven and his daughter, Susie Morahan Britton ’96, was four when the family moved into Thorne House, which Morahan ran with former science teacher Bob Moore for 11 years.

During those early years, Morahan loved watching Joe Piscopo, Eddie Murphy and Chevy Chase on Saturday Night Live with the boys in his dorm, as well as participating in the dormitory softball league that played after dinner for nothing more than bragging rights.

His daughter also particularly loved dorm life, as it allowed her to “be a part of the action.” She even opened a candy store in Thorne’s common room when she was 10, selling Willy Wonka candy to the 40 teenage dormmates and using her profits for dorm activities.

“My dad was always trying to include us in aspects of his job when he could, but he also kept boundaries. And the good part of living where you work is that you can come home and check in frequently,”

Hill, where she was a four-year member of the varsity soccer team that won the NCAA National Championship in 2006 and the ACC Championship in 2005, 2006 and 2007.

“One of the things he said to me was that he wasn’t sure how much longer he would be coaching at Brooks, and he wanted to leave the program in good hands,” Gilbert said. “It was flattering to know that Coach thought I was a good replacement for him.”

Morahan is synonymous with the girls soccer program. In fact, he was around long enough — 30 seasons to be exact — to coach both In the Classroom Catherine Colt Fleck ’83 and her daughter, Samantha Fleck ’11.

Upon his arrival at Brooks, Morahan quickly became the math deServing as the athletic director at the time, he appointed himself partment’s “go-to guy” for teaching the lower levels of algebra I and head coach to the girls 1st soccer team in 1981 after the team’s inaugugeometry, patiently spending hours with young students who strugral (and winless) season. While he had never actually played the game gled to excel in mathematics. Then in the ’80s and ’90s, he became the himself — he grew up playing baseball and basketball in Rahway, N.J. department’s “maven on calculator technology,” answering all of his — he gained some coaching experience back at the Indian Mountain colleagues’ questions just as patiently, Richard said.

School, in addition to coaching both the Brooks boys intramural and “Technology has changed. When I started teaching, we didn’t use 3rd team for a year. calculators. Then we got into calculators, then graphing calculators, He peppered Richard, the longtime boys 1st soccer team coach, and now most teachers have projectors. But it’s still math,” Morahan with questions during those early years. Then Morahan’s program said. “I try to make it relevant as best I can. I really enjoy teaching it all.” began to rival the success of its male counterpart. Morahan compiled And Morahan was always sure to help a student in need, even after a final record of 317-112-60, winning more the class bell rang. He always made time for games than any other girls team coach. Adsixth-former Elijah Soko’s questions after “Technology has changed. ditionally, his teams won the Class A New advanced pre-calculus last year, just as he England Championship in 2002, the Class B made time helping Amanda Tarr ’94 preWhen I started teaching, we New England Championship in 1992, 1993, pare for the GREs well after she graduated didn’t use calculators. Then 1995, 1996 and 2001, and the ISL Champifrom Brooks — and asking for nothing in we got into calculators, then onship in 1990, 1991, 1992, 1995, 2001, return.

2002, 2005 and 2007.

“I’m still amazed he approached every graphing calculators, and now “Our boys and girls programs are very school year like it was his first,” Britton said. most teachers have projectors. good, excellent, really, and one might see “As an assistant principal, I have to evaluate But it’s still math.” them in competition. But it’s never been teachers and we have some older ones who that way. He had his success and I had mine make you wonder, ‘Did you teach for thirty and he was alway supportive,” Richard says. years or did you teach your first year thirty “And he really was a great thing for girls athletics. If you remember times?’ My dad was always looking into new technology and was still what girls sports were like back then, it was rare to be so consistently writing exams right up until the end. It blows me away. I taught for ten strong. What he brought to girls athletics is significant.” years and there’s no way I could do that, especially at a boarding school Dr. Christine Finn ’89 chose to attend Brooks over Phillips Acadwhere the job is 24/7. I don’t know where he gets all that energy. For me, emy solely because she wanted to play for Coach Morahan. it’s really inspiring to see someone keep going at a career until the very “What I remember most about Coach Morahan was his example of end.” quiet leadership,” Finn said. “He was not one to yell and scream on the In addition to spending four years together on the soccer field, sidelines — although when he did, you knew that you were really in Jaime Gilbert ’04 somehow ended up Morahan’s classroom at least trouble. Yet he managed to motivate and inspire us. During my four once a year. Gilbert called Coach one of her favorite teachers, and not years on the team, I got to see firsthand the effectiveness of this leaderjust because her highest grades often seemed to come from his courses. ship style, and it is something that I try to emulate professionally in my “Coach is very passionate about math, just like he is about soccer,” job overseeing a busy psychiatric emergency service, where not losing Gilbert said. “And when your teacher or coach is passionate about what your cool is an important skill to master.” he does, it makes the player or student equally as passionate. That's His calm coaching style was definitely one to emulate, agrees Conwhat makes Mr. Morahan such a great teacher: his passion.” nell Tarr P’94, who served with Morahan on the North Andover Soccer Association Board of Directors for several years.

On the Field “While working with the town, he was a good ambassador for Gilbert assumed Morahan’s longtime role as head coach of the girls 1st Brooks,” Tarr said. “I always paid attention when he talked about things soccer team this fall. It was a transition in the works for several years.

Morahan asked Gilbert to be his assistant coach immediately after she because he had all this experience with high schoolers. He commanded graduated in 2008 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel a lot of respect from the board and was a class act. He wasn’t a Britton said. “It wasn’t until adulthood that I really understood the impact his career had on me. I loved going to the cafeteria for dinner.

And I would sit in his classroom during spring vacation, trying to answer the questions with his students. I saw teaching as a rewarding profession. Now I’m an assistant principal at a middle school and I truly understand that being around young people keeps you energetic and on your toes.”

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“His steady, practical wisdom has made him a real asset to the faculty.”

—Dean of Faculty John Haile

“I knew as soon as I walked in to meet Mr. Morahan that he would remain my advisor for the next four years. He was adorable.

He has always been the presence that I needed, whether that be weekly meetings or just catching up in the hallway. He has been someone who I have never wanted to let down and has always pushed me to do my best.”

“For many years, we would always sit next to each in the faculty room. And we always stayed on the same side of issues in department meetings and faculty —Graye Robinson ’11 meetings. We truly see the world similarly. There are a lot of people who come and leave. I have a great respect for people who stay. Those are the folks who realize this is a life and not a job.

He stayed, and that’s to be admired.”

—Math teacher Dusty Richard

“I had Mr. Morahan for Honors Pre-Calculus last year, a class that I thought would be extremely challenging. However, Mr. Morahan was dedicated to working with us every day and always explained the material in a way I could understand. Because of him, I am confident that I can continue on to calculus.”

“Mr. Morahan was a great advisor this year. It’s too bad I was only lucky enough to have him for my first year. He helped me whenever I needed —Max McGillivray ’12 it. He helped me significantly when I approached him about taking a summer course in math. He even found me a tutor who taught at Brooks last year and knew the course well.”

—Will Adie ’14

“Mr. Morahan's biggest asset as an advisor was his ability to never mince words. If he thought something was a bad idea or conversely a good idea, he would tell you. His experience proved him right every time. There was never any gray area with him. I found this honesty incredibly refreshing and it was a real help as I was trying to find my footing those first two years.”

—Jack Hartigan ’11

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screamer, if you know what I mean. On the sidelines, he’d tell the kids what do and then let them go out and do it.”

Winning was nice, but Morahan never put one of his injured players back onto the field too early. Former head athletic trainer Nairi Melkonian said he always respected her call and never put a player back out on the field until she was 100 percent healed.

“He gets it: The health of the player is always most important,” Melkonian said. “He’s everything you want in a coach: He understands the kids and understands that they are just kids. He’s a role model of a coach, a teacher, a friend and a father figure.”

Morahan, who also coached boys baseball for 20 years, can quickly rattle off numerous virtues about coaching female athletes: “Girls don’t think they know it all. They’re more apt to listen and are more into the experience of being on a team. And they get over losses more quickly.”

Through hard work, Morahan helped countless players improve, like Jessica Rowland Hazelton ’91, who went from an unskilled player to one with speed and confidence. But building lasting relationships was always just as important.

“Brooks soccer holds a very special place in my heart,” Julie Petralia Derderian ’99 said. “I remember the excitement of coming back to campus early for preseason training in the summer: Monday runs, game days and team dinners. We were very competitive from 1995 through 1999, and while the wins and championships are impressive, the relationships developed in the team environment are what I remember most. Even today, twelve years after graduation, the girls I played soccer with at Brooks are my closest friends.”

On Tap Morahan has dropped by campus to watch a few games this fall, he was really excited about finally being able to enjoy all that autumn has to offer. He’ll continue to live with his wife, Carolyn, in their home in Cape Neddick, Maine. He’ll spend more time taking walks, doing Sudoku, and researching deals on the Web. “Dad also loves to go shopping,” Britton says. “I can always bank on him to come to the outlets or walk around the mall. He doesn’t buy much; he’s pretty conservative in that regard. But he’s always up for going to a store.”

Morahan also plans to continue officiating basketball games in the Merrimack Valley, in addition to refereeing games in southern New Hampshire and southern Maine for the first time.

“There is plenty of work year-round as a basketball official and that, along with visits to New York and Virginia to visit children and grandchildren, should keep me busy,” Morahan said.

He found coaching the sport too restrictive, but he says he’s enjoyed refereeing high school basketball games and summer leagues for the past 35 years.

“Last winter I was doing three games a week,” Morahan explained.

“It gets you off campus for a few hours. And it gives you a good perspective and makes you appreciate what you have here at Brooks: the facilities, the people.”

It is the people on campus who Morahan misses the most. One of the most valuable aspects of being a faculty emeritus: being able to hang on to that Brooks School e-mail address and staying in the AllFaculty e-mail group.

“He gave his life to Brooks, but it really impacted the entire family,” Britton says. “We’re all very interested what this year will bring, after a lifetime of passion.”

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ALUMNICONNECTIONS Sam Chu ’80 establishes new scholarship Funds aim to bring talented Asian students to Brooks For Sam Chu ’80, Brooks School was a place that prepared him well for his future: for his studies at Georgetown, for his career in finance, and ultimately for his career as founder of a Sam Chu ’80 billion-dollar equity management firm in Hong Kong.

For Sam, Brooks was a first step on a successful path. And now he’s hoping that other students from Hong Kong will be able to take that first step, with his assistance. With a $500,000 gift from Chu earlier this year, the Brooks School Asian Scholarship Fund was founded, and will help pay for a Brooks education for the best and brightest students from Hong Kong for the 2012-13 school year.

“This is a very worthy cause,” Chu said recently. “This is a great way to get brilliant stu-

dents from this part of the world to Brooks.”

The idea for the scholarship program came from Chu’s discussions with Trustee Nick Booth, who has been living in Hong Kong for several years while at Wellington Management. Chu was influenced by Nick’s enthusiasm and vision for Brooks’ future.

And when Head of School John Packard visited Asia last year, he and Chu found time to sit down and chat about it as well.

He was also interested in starting this fund because of the experience of a close friend, who has been funding students to attend Millfield School in England for several years. He’s helped some 50 students from the Hong Kong area attend Millfield.

“All of these kids are super smart, and from extremely poor and humble backgrounds, but they are well-rounded,” Chu said. “It’s the most generous education fund I’ve come across.”

Chu wanted to do the same thing at Brooks. According to Booth, Chu’s plan fits

perfectly with Brooks’ mission to offer its students the most meaningful educational experience they will have in their lives.

“Sam has always been an enthusiastic supporter and advocate for Brooks in the Asia region, particularly in his home-base of Hong Kong,” said Booth.

So enthusiastic is Sam about this that he celebrated his 50th birthday recently with Brooks in mind. He asked friends who attended his 50th birthday party in September to contribute to the Brooks school fund in lieu of birthday gifts for him.

“I had a great experience at Brooks,” he said. “ Setting up this program is something important I could do for the school.”

RAISING MONEY TO HONOR TARYN KING ’03 When Kaylan Tildsley ’03 first met Taryn King ’03, she was helping the new fourth-former find her way around campus during field hockey practice. Tildsley can’t recall what they spoke about, but she does remember that the two were laughing together after just a few minutes. From there, their friendship flourished; they grew even closer during lacrosse season that year and became great friends.

“Taryn was a truly special person — one of the most loyal and kind-hearted people I have ever known,” says Tildsley. “She was the oldest in a large family, so it was in her nature to look out for others. I learned a great deal about kindness and generosity from being her friend.”

Five years after King’s death, Tildsley is keeping her memory alive. And for her, keeping King’s memory alive means living by those lessons that King taught her: be generous and care for others.

In September, Tildsley ran the Reach the Beach Relay in New Hampshire, and along the way raised $13,499 for the Taryn Lindsay King Scholarship Fund at Brooks.

Tildsley, an associate at Goldman Sachs, credits the “phenomenal matching gifts program” there for helping her boost her donation. She says the company is “very focused” on giving back to the community, and says the program essentially allows employees to

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double the impact of their charitable giving.

“Taryn and I were both financial aid students at Brooks, and the TLK Memorial Scholarship will hopefully give future students the same opportunity Brooks School gave to us,” Tildsley said.

Tildsley’s contribution to the fund gets it even closer to the $50,000 goal — the fund is about halfway there, according to Emily French ’03, assistant director for young alumni programs and a classmate of King’s and Tildsley’s.

King died of septicemia in 2006, while studying abroad in Ireland. A memorial bench overlooking the Brooks field hockey and lacrosse fields was dedicated in her honor in 2010, and a memorial scholarship fund was set up by those same friends and family in 2009. A junior at Bowdoin College at the time of her death, King was studying in Ireland when she became ill with the infection.

Tildsley says she went through the textbook stages of grief when she learned of King’s death, but “ultimately decided to take the lessons Taryn taught me in the way she lived.

“One of TK’s favorite quotes was ‘Life is short, so laugh often, kiss slowly, forgive quickly and love truly.’ In the years since Taryn died, I’ve worked hard to not focus on unimportant minutia and to truly treasure my relationships.”

Supporting future Brooks students Galen Brewster ’61 directs his annual giving and philanthropy to financial aid Galen Brewster ’61 has vivid memories from his years at Brooks. But the most meaningful come from the time he spent on Lake Cochichewick.

“Ox Kingsbury introduced me to rowing here. It’s where I first learned the meaning of discipline and hard work. Like a lot of things I learned at Brooks, those early lessons become more meaningful to us as we get older and wiser,” says Brewster.

Those experiences inspired a lifelong love of rowing, which Galen still enjoys in the Maine waters near his home in Cushing.

Brewster says he grew up on the Brooks campus, after arriving as a “sheltered, skinny, immature little boy.” Here he learned to navigate the sometimes trying times of a typical teenager.

“I ran into a rough and tumble world of adolescent boys, and I learned to deal with difficult situations that would never have been allowed in my sheltered home life,” he says.

As the school becomes an increasingly inclusive setting for learning and involvement, Brewster believes it’s important to support his alma mater by investing in its future students.

“In addition to teachers and coaches like Ox, my fellow students were also a source of education for me. Like many of my classmates, I

believe that a strong financial aid program will continue to make that true for every Brooks student,” Brewster says.

In support of his recent 50th reunion, Brewster directed his $10,000 annual fund gift, his $25,000 bequest and his $100,000 charitable remainder trust to student financial aid.

Education continued to be important to Brewster after his Brooks graduation. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard, where he was also crew captain, in 1965, and then a master’s degree in education from Harvard in 1978. After first becoming a bank officer, he next worked as a teacher, coach, college advisor and director of admissions at Middlesex School; headmaster at St. Timothy’s School in Maryland; and head of school at Phoenix Country Day School in Arizona.

Now retired, Brewster is not just supporting Brooks financially. He was one of the planners of his 50th reunion and is now class correspondent, keeping 1961 alumni connected and gathering news for the Bulletin.

“I admire that Brooks has grown stronger in every way, thanks not just to its people, programs and facilities, but because of those who are devoted to the idea that such a unique educational institution is worthy of our support,” Brewster says.

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Alumni Weekend 2011

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For more photos from Alumni Weekend please visit brooksschoolphotos.com

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The classic lawyer-statesman: Michael Keating ’58 from the Massachusetts Bar Association [MBA]. It was only the 20th time the award has been given in the 100-year history of the organization. In the citation, MBA President Dick Campbell noted that while Keating is “the consummate trial lawyer . . . he is also deeply and irrevocably committed to public service beyond the courtroom. He is the classic lawyer-statesman.”

In his 43 years at Foley Hoag, Keating has chaired the trial department for 30 of them.

But his path to Foley wasn’t quite as preordained as his advice to young lawyers might suggest. Strangely enough, in some ways Keating’s road to success began almost a century ago with Groton Headmaster BIO HIGHLIGHTS Endicott Peabody. It was Peabody who read with interest a letter from Hails from: Boston, Massachusetts an Army medical officer stationed in In the classroom: Michael Keating is just at the Philippines, asking if there was a home in the classroom as he is in the court place at Groton for his son, Frank room. For the last 15 years he’s taught trial Ashburn. The father didn’t have practice at Northeastern University Law School. enough money to pay for Holding court: Keating is also comfortable on tuition, but the Groton headmaster another kind of court — he is a Massachusetts told him to send Ashburn anyway. state squash champion in his age bracket, a sport he first learned to play at Brooks.

Michael Keating also grew up in a military family. His dad was a naval Long-time trustee: For more than 15 years, officer stationed in Key West. “At one Keating served as a trustee at both Brooks and point, my dad expressed to another Williams College. He is trustee emeriti at both schools. officer his concerns about the quality of the schools in Key West,” says KeatThe Keating Room: Current Brooks students ing. “That officer mentioned that a associate the Keating name with the popular conference room that adjoins the Wilder Dining boarding school might be a good alHall. That space is named after Michael’s ternative, and recommended Brooks. brother, Tim ’53.

So my father wrote a letter to Headmaster Frank Ashburn about his old-

When he welcomes new attorneys to the litigation department of Foley Hoag, Michael Keating’s message is always the same: “Up until this point, your path was laid out for you,” he says. “From high school to college to law school, someone else dictated the steps you needed to take. Right now, for the first time, your future is in your hands. It is up to you to decide where your career will take you.”

Keating is a good person for those young attorneys to model themselves after. The choices he’s made that directed his own career resulted last spring in a Gold Medal Award

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est son, Jack. He noted in the letter that as a military officer, he didn’t have enough money to pay for a Brooks education, but that his son was smart and deserved better than what the Key West schools could offer. Just as Peabody had done for him at Groton, Ashburn wrote back and told my dad to send Jack to North Andover and not to worry about the cost.”

Jack did so well at Brooks that he was soon followed by middle brother, Tim, and then by the youngest, Mike.

“The opportunities that Brooks offered reinforced in my mind the importance of education,” says Keating.

From Brooks, Keating went to Williams College and then to Harvard Law School. And then he started to make his own decisions about the direction he wanted his path to take.

Initially, he clerked for two trial court judges and served in the Naval Reserves as a JAG officer.

“Clerking at the trial court level allowed me to get to know the judges and administrators well,” says Keating. “ I was in court every day and grew to love the atmosphere of competition and strategy.”

When his clerkship ended, Keating joined Foley Hoag, where one of his former Harvard Law professors was a senior partner. From the very beginning, Keating focused his attention on civil litigation, most notably playing a key role in the Woburn water contamination trial that gained national press coverage and was the subject of a bestselling book and popular movie, A Civil Action.

“I knew that case was big when my old

Michael Keating (left) with Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer at the Massachusetts Bar Association’s Centennial Ball.

college roommate called me up,” recalls Keating. “He told me he had fallen asleep with the television on, and he woke up in the morning to the sound of my voice on The Today Show.”

As much as he loves civil litigation, Keating also feels a strong pull toward public service. Early in his career, he was appointed by the federal court to represent Walpole inmates in cases involving prison conditions. That experience exposed him to underrepresented people who were caught up in the criminal justice system. It also led to a major role in bringing an end to the prison riots in the ’70s.

“I had previously represented many of the inmates, and I had built some trust with them,” says Keating. “So during the riots, a number of the prisoners asked for me. The Commissioner of Corrections asked me to chair a negotiating committee, which ultimately ended the riot. My ability to represent those clients was a direct reflection of the commitment at Foley Hoag to public service. It’s one of the primary reasons I came to this law firm in the first place. Through the years, the firm has very generously supported my desire to take on criminal justice cases pro bono.”

Keating’s interest in public service didn’t end in Walpole. He is a past president of the Boston Bar Association, and under his leadership that group placed 1,200 lawyers in city schools as mentors and teachers. He is also the current chair of The Boston Foundation, an $800 million philanthropic foundation that issues $80 million in grants each year to promote improvements in education, safe neighborhoods, and robust arts and cultural opportunities.

Sitting in a Foley Hoag conference room on Seaport Boulevard, Keating talks passionately about how important both facets of his career — civil litigation and public service — have been to him. Through the window, a cruising boat raises a bright red spinnaker and sails quickly out of view. Down the road, a hungry lunchtime crowd fills the parking lot of the Barking Crab. Keating’s passion for the city that surrounds him is obvious.

“I’ve been so very fortunate to be associated with and then lead a number of organizations that have been able to have a significant impact on the life of the city,” says Keating. “I feel lucky to still be engaged in areas that are relevant and keep me motivated and invested.”

After accomplishing so much, is there anything else that Keating is compelled to address?

“Civility,” he says quickly. “Specifically, civility between lawyers.”

As the legal profession has grown, Keating believes that it has evolved — or devolved — from a profession into a business. “The relationship between lawyers has deteriorated,” he says. “However, it is important to note that the best lawyers I’ve ever known are also the most civil lawyers.”

Keating has written on the subject extensively, most notably in the American Bar Association’s treatise on business and commercial litigation in federal courts. “I don’t know that it’s possible to reverse course and get back to the law as a more civil profession,” admits Keating. “But we need to try.” DC

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Bluegrass on overdrive: Kier Byrnes ’91 The night was a success, and the next thing Kier and his bandmates knew, they were the house band playing at Aerosmith’s bar on Thursday nights to packed crowds.

Country music used be like a dirty word, he recalls. “When we first started playing in Boston, we couldn’t get a gig to save our lives,” he said. “Now, country music has definitely become more abundant. The country scene has definitely grown here in New England.”

From the music room of Brooks School to the Boston music scene — and even a stage in Afghanistan — Kier Byrnes has been sharing his music with audiences since he was a student here at Brooks.

But it’s not his full-time job. He’s also balancing his day job behind the scenes of big events at Northeastern University, where he is the school’s director of operations for events management. It’s a symbiotic BIO HIGHLIGHTS relationship — knowing how it runs in the front of the house as the lead Hails from: Salem, New Hampshire singer of Three Day Threshold has Taking a day off: One big gig he and the band helped Byrnes in his job managing all didn’t play: Kier’s wedding to fiancee Mandy the back-of-the-house operations to Morin in late September, followed by a create a great audience experience. honeymoon to Greece.

“That’s what’s so great about my Dream duets: Kier says he’d love to play with job, it’s co-existed with my band. ReKeith Richards, Johnny Cash or Bob Dylan. He ally, it’s just being on one side of the also would like a chance to perform with Steve Earle or Pete Seeger. “I did get a chance to do a stage, managing the other side,” he duet with Peggy Seeger, Pete’s sister, in an old explains. “I understand how to throw church once. It was definitely a personal events, manage touring artists . . . and highlight.” it helps knowing the technology, too.”

“Let Three Day Threshold Play.”

That’s all it said on thousands of fliers and T-shirts that Kier Byrnes ’91 and his bandmates printed to drum up some fans in Boston in the early ’90s.

They put fliers all over cars around Beantown, and without knowing it, they happened to flier one very important vehicle.

It belonged to the booking agent at Mama Kin’s on Landsdowne Street — the club opened by Aerosmith that was once the place for live music in Boston.

“We accidentally got his car, and he was like, ‘I’ve seen your fliers everywhere, alright, I’ll give you a shot.”

So they finally had broken into the Boston music scene with their Wednesday night gig at Mama Kin’s.

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Three Day Threshold has been going strong for a decade playing locally, but one of their biggest accomplishments has been finding themselves on stages in front of thousands of U.S. military troops.

Kier got a call one day from someone from the Pentagon. After realizing it wasn’t a prank, he and the band agreed to play for the troops. Their first gig was in Central America, and this year, they were asked again to play for the troops in Afghanistan.

He said it’s one of the coolest things he and the band have done.

“Politics aside, the people over there are doing their job because they believe in the country, and they believe in the principles our country was based on and what it stands on,” he said. “Just to see that in action was extremely inspirational.”

The band’s success traces its roots back to Brooks, when Kier started playing with classmates Constantine Valhouli, Jung Lee, Mike Sheehan and Pervez Taufiq.

“We would come down and spend countless hours in the music rooms, jamming out. I don’t know how we did it, but we’d play one song for hours as we tried to master our instruments. Deep Purple’s Smoke On the Water still haunts me,” he jokes.

After being part of bands like The Crabs and Tapestry while in college, Kier’s musical vision started to take shape.

After graduating from Holy Cross in 1995

Kier Byrnes, center in sunglasses, recently returned from a recording session in Dublin, Ireland. He and his bandmates call Three Day Threshhold’s music “good country gone terribly, terribly bad.”

it was Valhouli that signed up along with Kier to working on Lollapalooza for the summer. “We were driving around fully exposed to music 24/7,” and he and Constantine were sending some tapes to a musical connection in Florida.

“It was a lot of punk and ska, and we only had one country tune, but it was that one that always went over better than all the other stuff,” Kier recalls.

So he wrote a little more country, while the musical genre was finding a new popularity in the area.

Their first album was sort of a country album, he says, and while it was a risk, it has paid off.

“A lot of people used to say, ‘I like any kind of music, except for country,’” he said. “But things have changed a lot. There wasn’t even a country music station in Boston back then, and now there is. We were fortunate to get in on the early side of that bubble.”

Made up of five core members, with additional dozen or so musicians who sit in on sets and CDs, the band describes their music as “good country gone terribly, terribly bad.”

It’s been called “bluegrass on overdrive” and the soundtrack for “afterhours rockabilly prom.” Kier said he’s also heard people describe it as country music for people who don’t like country — to be sure, it’s

songs take the Americana country roots of whiskey-swilling and truck driving and fuse them with the hard-driving vocals and guitar riffs of rock ’n’ roll.

And the critics are liking it. They were named best local band by Boston Magazine last year, and in 2009, they were flown down to the Jim Beam Estate in Clermont, Kentucky, to perform by special request.

They were nominated for ‘outstanding Americana act” in the 2007 Boston Music Awards, and in 2000 were named best live band by The Noise magazine — an accolade Kier said still means a lot.

“We were competing against some really good bands: the Dropkick Murphys were young then, and Morphine was another band that was really big in Boston at that time,” he recalls.

Their most recent performance was at the Mass Brewers Fest at the Seaport World Trade Center. With the Boston skyline as a picturesque backdrop, Kier tried to think of what the band’s future will be.

“I’ve been surprised where this band has brought us already. Right now, there have been preliminary talks with agents about tours in both Japan and Australia, as well as talk about another southern tour, ending up in Austin, Texas,” he said. “As for the immediate future, we’ve been going solid for over a decade, and I feel like we’ve hit a new peak.

What I’d really like eventually is a little time to enjoy the view.” MM

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Coming back from grief: Lindsay Harrison ’04 “Yes, it’s a little scary to share this story, but I hope it can help people going through something difficult,” Lindsay said from New York City, where she recently completed her graduate work at Columbia’s MFA program.

It’s ultimately the chronicle of a family’s recovery from loss and the lessons learned about how they can and should rely on each other. It was a story that captured much attention in the cities and towns north of Boston: Michele Harrison, 55, went missing on March 17, 2006.

Lindsay and her two brothers, eldest brother Chris and middle brother Brad ’03, had grown up with both parents in a home in North Andover. But her parents divorced in 1992, and in 1996, her father remarried and had another daughter. Just before Lindsay left for Brown, her BIO HIGHLIGHTS mother announced she was selling Hails from: North Andover, Massachusetts the North Andover house, and rented a one-bedroom apartment in NewNotes of gratitude: In her book, Lindsay thanks her mentors — including Brooks’ own Donald buryport. “She seemed primed for a Cameron — for “showing me not where to go fresh start, and as we transported her but how to get there.” belongings, we were not too worried,” Lindsay wrote.

Extra-curriculars: In addition to crew, hockey and cross-country, Lindsay was also involved in It was during her sophomore year The Bishop, Ashburn Society, Brooks Brothers of college that Lindsay started to noand Sisters and the Exchange Program (she went tice a change in her mother. They to South Africa during her senior year). As a runner, she won the New England Prep Girls went from getting along like best Division III championship in November 2003. friends to sometimes arguing, as Lindsay sought more independence, Early writing review: Lindsay took Fiction Writing with Mark Shovan in the fall of 2002. leaving her teen years and life at Shovan wrote of her work: “Lindsay needed home with Mom behind. only the space to run with her ideas. All around Michele had been living in Newus, a myriad of stories abound; this semester, buryport at the time, and had been Lindsay caught them in her hands like leaves, snowflakes, dust motes. This young woman is in daily touch with her three children one of the best writers of fiction I have seen in a as well as her colleagues at Greater coon’s age.”

Lawrence Education Collaborative

There are days when Lindsay Harrison thinks about the book she wrote: about a family’s search for a mother who has gone missing.

The book focuses on the three siblings’ search for their mother, and the mystery that unravels about her and her disappearance. It also follows the journey the family takes, both separately and together, to ultimately find peace when their mother is found dead.

And then there are days where she remembers: Wow, that all really happened to me.

Lindsay recently published her book, Missing: A Memoir, which chronicles her mother’s disappearance and suicide just two years after Lindsay graduated from Brooks.

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where she was a special education teacher.

So when her kids didn’t hear from her that Friday, and she didn’t show up for work, everyone knew something was wrong.

That’s where Lindsay’s book starts off, with the unnerving calls from her brothers, and uneasy feeling that something bad had happened.

“I wanted to open with a scene to drop the reader right into this disorienting feeling that I was feeling at that time,” she explains.

What follows is a weeks-long search, that had Lindsay and her family playing detective — figuring out why she left without her red suede purse, trying to follow the trail of a receipt for a Budget rental truck, working with Newburyport police to trace their mother’s movements before her disappearance. E-Z Pass transponders marked when their mother crossed through the Hampton tolls and back, but that lead went no further. There were several sightings of Michele Harrison in Millinocket, Maine, but those leads also turned cold.

Much of the first part of the book focuses on that panic of searching for a missing loved one. Lindsay writes, “I phoned an old friend we’d sailed with every summer in Rhode Island, soccer moms from our hometown of North Andover, and the neighbor across the hall in Mom’s apartment building in Newburyport. … Everyone was quick to assure me that she probably just needed a long weekend away. I thanked them and moved down the list, feeling dizzy…”

Then, in late April 2006, the family learned Michele’s fate: a diver off Rockport’s Granite Pier had found her car — and Michele inside, submerged underwater.

Lindsay’s book signing in New York City was a success.

In the last three years, the family has grown closer, and learned to heal from their loss. But with few clues as to why and how her mother ultimately met this fate, Lindsay admits writing the book was a type of therapy.

“I had been wanting to answer that question — why — for a long time. At first, I thought if I could order this situation into linear narrative chapters, I would sort of come to some deeper understanding of what happened,” she recalls. “But it’s like trying to solve an unsolvable mystery. Halfway through, I realized it wasn’t really about that, it’s about coming to peace with the fact you will never understand why.”

Cutting her teeth as a published author on such a personal subject was a challenge, because Lindsay knew the hardest part would be keeping the chronology accurate while incorporating flashbacks of her family’s life together.

She also knew that by delving into something that was difficult for her siblings and father, she might be angering them or upsetting them in some way.

“I had been trying really hard not to write a book about it. But writing is my way of processing things, and all the fiction I was trying to write were all a thinly veiled accounts of this story,” she explains.

“So I thought I would give myself two years to face this story head on.”

Before the August 2 release date of the book, Lindsays says, most family members and friends had come around to the fact that such personal information would be out there for all to see, but she said some are “uncomfortable with my choosing to make this public.”

She, too, had some nervous feelings as the release date drew closer this summer. “It’s bringing it all to light again, and that’s been a little bit tough. But ultimately, my family and friends have been really supportive.”

She feels, too, that her mother would approve of her sharing this story. When she thinks of her mother, she recalls that she was always supportive. “I remember she came to all my cross-country races at Brooks,” Lindsay says.

She formed a close relationship with cross-country coach Don Cameron — “he was really like my mentor … we always had some amazing conversations,” she said. She thinks her love of writing grew after her first writing classes with Mark Shovan.

Lindsay’s plans involve staying in New York, and continuing to build her writing career. “I didn’t plan on loving New York as much as I do. I love Brooklyn; it’s a really dynamic place to live, there are always readings and other literary things going on,” she says. MM

Fall / Winter 2011

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PARTINGSHOT

Clara Brown ’14 steps behind the lens to take a photo for a still life drawing she is working on in her her art class. “Photography is definitely a hobby of mine; I love taking pictures of nature and Lake Cochichewick is a wonderful spot to shoot photos,” she says.

Director of Communications Dan Callahan

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Editor/Writer Michelle Morrissey

Writer Emily Young

Unsolicited manuscripts are welcome. Opinions expressed in the Bulletin are those of the authors and not necessarily of Brooks School. Copyright © 2011 Brooks School, North Andover, MA