Profiles of Mike Hayes ’63, CEO and Chairman of the Board, C. B. Ragland; Wake Smith ’75, Climate Researcher, Author, and Adjunct Professor; and Amy Quinn ’80, P ’12, Founder, Spirit Road Travel
In Memoriam
Remembering Those We Have Lost
Scoreboard
Recap of Spring ’24 Sports
Bookshelf
Reviews of works by Thomas K. Rundel ’64, Patrick D. Joyce ’85, and Tracy Sierra ’99
End Note
A Student Perspective on Gen AI in the Classroom
FEATURES
Positively Inspired Capital Campaign Success
A Dynamic Balance
Incorporating AI in the Classroom
Play Ball
Choate Rosemary Hall Bulletin is published fall, winter, and spring for alumni, students and their parents, and friends of the School. Please send change of address to Alumni Records and all other correspondence to the Communications Office, 333 Christian Street, Wallingford, CT 06492-3800.
Choate Rosemary Hall does not discriminate in the administration of its educational policies, athletics, other school-administered programs, or in the administration of its hiring and employment practices on the basis of age, gender, race, color, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, genetic predisposition, ancestry, or other categories protected by Connecticut and federal law. Printed in U.S.A. CRH201201/17.75M
Editor
Susanne Davis
T: (203) 697-2475
Email: sdavis@choate.edu
Lead Design and Production
Beth Ann Strong
Design
Ann Marie Nolan
Classnotes Editor Henry McNulty ’65
Contributors
Christine Bennett
D. Gam Bepko
Jana Brown
Alison Cady P ’23, ’26
Ellen Devine
Kim Hastings P ’15, ’18, ’18
Rhea Hirshman
Joe Scanio P ’18
Nolan Silbernagel
Nicole Thomas
KeriAnne Tisdale
Leslie Virostek P ’15, ’17, ’20
Danny Yoon ’24
Photography
Joey Avena
Bhutan Baseball & Softball Association
Matthew DeSantis ’03
Sonam Dorji
Gelephu Tuskers Baseball & Softball Club
Tom Kates
Thimphu Red Pandas Baseball & Softball Club
Choate Rosemary Hall
Board of Trustees 2024-2025
Danya Alsaady P ’17, ’19, ’23, ’28
Kenneth G. Bartels ’69, P ’04
Marc E. Brown ’82
Seth J. Brufsky ’84
Yahonnes S. Cleary ’96
Alex Curtis P ’17, ’20
Elizabeth M. Ferreira ’92, P ’28
Katherine B. Forrest ’82
David A. Fraze ’84
Kristen Mautner Garlinghouse ’85
Gunther S. Hamm ’98
Elizabeth A. Hogan ’82
Jungwook ”Ryan” Hong ’89, P ’19, ’22, ’25
Kelly Green Kahn ’86
Daniel G. Kelly Jr. ’69, P ’03
Duby McDowell ’78
Christian B. McGrath ’84, P ’18, ’21
Takashi Murata ’93, P ’25
George F. Pyne IV ’84
M. Anne Sa’adah
Julian C. Salisbury P ’26
Life Trustees
Bruce S. Gelb ’45, P ’72, ’74, ’76, ’78
Edwin A. Goodman ’58
Cary L. Neiman ’64
Stephen J. Schulte ’56, P ’86
William G. Spears ’56, P ’81, ’90
Corrections
The original obituary for Gardiner Dodd shared with the Class of 1958 noted Dodd as having graduated top of his class. That honor was held by classmate Peter Goldmark, 1958 School Seal Prize winner.
The Spring 2024 Bulletin In Memoriam section included several errors, for which we sincerely apologize.
John Holmes Morrison was listed as an alum of the Class of 1958. He was a Class of 1959 alumnus.
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Suzanne de Lima Knowles ’64 RH should have been referred to by her nickname Sue II, not Sue Two. The hotel she ran with her husband
Jimmy is the Roger Smith Hotel, not the Roger Sherman Hotel, and an important person was omitted in our Bulletin obituary — Nancy Knowles, Class of RH ’64, and Suzanne’s sister-in-law, should have especially been mentioned as it was she who introduced Suzanne to her brother Jimmy.
Edward Spetnagel ’53 was predeceased by his wife, Judy Spetnagel, rather than survived by her.
Dear Readers,
This fall issue of the Bulletin marks the beginning of a new school year, a fresh cycle of storytelling for 2024-2025, and an opportunity to express gratitude for your support and contributions of content. Each time I read classnotes, I marvel over the Choate Rosemary Hall connections and the enthusiasm for sharing your lives with fellow alums and the institution. Other magazine editors ask me how we get such a volume of classnotes. I can’t take any credit for it. The connections seem to begin early in a student’s time here, build through that Choate experience and over subsequent years. Keep those notes coming! But don’t stop there. We would love for you to share ideas for features, profiles, and subjects you’d like to see covered in the Bulletin pages. Together, let’s aspire to a magazine as dynamic as this institution. Stories that show the Choate mission and values in action. The alchemical ingredient for that? The people. I hope to hear from you soon.
With warm best wishes,
Susanne Davis Bulletin Editor sdavis@choate.edu
Breaking News!
As this Bulletin issue went to press, Choate Rosemary Hall was recognized with an endorsement in “AI Literacy, Safety & Ethics” from Middle State Association’s Responsible AI in Learning (RAIL). Commended for efforts in policy development, access to resources, and continued consideration of the implications of AI, Choate is now part of the RAIL Founding 50 schools. Read more about the School’s approach to AI in our feature article “A Dynamic Balance: Incorporating AI in the Classroom” on page 12.
134th Commencement Marked by Inspiring Address from Adrian Grenier
Squire Stanley Site of Second Witness Stones Installation
The School community came together to commemorate the lives of Kate and Mina during a Witness Stones Installation Ceremony on campus last spring. This event marked Choate’s second installation of Witness Stones, following the inaugural one in the spring of 2023.
A PROFOUND JOURNEY THROUGH HISTORY
Head of Student and Academic Life Jenny K. Elliott welcomed those gathered, and English teacher Dr. Amber Hodge eloquently described the lives of Kate and Mina. “As mother and daughter, they shared a profound journey through the shadows of history, marked by the shackles of slavery and the faint glimmers of emancipation,” she said. Students involved with researching the stories of Kate and Mina also shared reflections.
Accomplished actor and environmentalist Adrian Grenier delivered an address to the Class of 2024 at Commencement on Sunday, May 26. Dr. Alex Curtis, Head of School, and the Board of Trustees conferred diplomas and certificates upon 246 graduates.
President of the Student Council Amanda Benneh warmly introduced Grenier, renowned for his roles in hit television series like Entourage and Clickbait, as well as notable films, including The Devil Wears Prada and Marauders. Beyond his accomplishments in entertainment, Grenier is widely recognized as a fervent advocate for environmental causes.
Grenier founded Earth Speed Media, a pioneering think tank and content production firm committed to sustainability, social responsibility, and environmental advocacy. His latest project, the documentary series Earth Speed, chronicles Grenier’s journey as he seeks out partners, companies, and visionaries dedicated to positive global change.
In addition to Grenier’s address, Sixth Form President Carter D. Foster encouraged the graduates to “remember the bonds forged at Choate” and to “become a generation of heroes.”
Dr. Curtis and Head of Student and Academic Life Jenny K. Elliott conveyed their heartfelt congratulations to the Class. Dr. Curtis, in his valedictory remarks, referred to the School’s record of accomplishment for environmentalism, saying meaningful change often does not happen overnight. He explained that the iterative steps the School has taken from the early days of composting 15 years ago, to the most recent commitment to sustainability, have resulted in Choate’s shifting its commitment to be fossil fuel free from 2050, to 2033-2035.
Kate was born around 1750, and Mina was born on September 4, 1777. Mina’s birth record reveals her lineage to a man named Tom, who himself was enslaved by Oliver Stanley’s friend and neighbor, Elisha Whittelsey. On November 7, 1783, Oliver Stanley emancipated Kate, aged 33, and Mina, a mere six years old. However, Dr. Hodge emphasized, their liberation was only a fragile semblance of freedom. Societal chains persisted even after the legal ones had been broken.
SQUIRE STANLEY HOUSE: A LIVING HISTORICAL MONUMENT
The Witness Stones now stand at Squire Stanley House, one of Wallingford’s oldest and most historically significant structures. The house’s western part dates to the 1690s, while the eastern wing was added in 1770. Originally situated 300 feet closer to Christian Street, it has witnessed centuries of change.
During the Revolutionary War era, Squire Stanley House served as a refuge for patriots, a place of hospitality for General George Washington, and a local seat of justice where Loyalists faced trial. Over time, it has been the residence of county justices of the peace, the birthplace of a Connecticut state attorney, and the home of a Connecticut senator. Almost a century later, in 1896-1897, it became the first Headmaster’s residence for The Choate School.
The Witness Stones at Squire Stanley House join the inaugural Witness Stone installed at Homestead in May 2023, commemorating the life of an enslaved woman named Lettice. The Witness Stones invite reflection and serve as powerful reminders of lives previously unseen, but never to be forgotten.
Award-winning Journalists Tell Students: Imperative to Care
During a panel on global peacekeeping, politics, and civil discourse, three award-winning journalists told students, faculty, and staff that they are inviting people to care with their work and that in the face of divisions we need to care more about each other. Journalists Nicholas Kristof, Aaron David Miller, and Robin Wright spoke during the event moderated by HPRSS teacher Jonas Akins. Following the event, each panelist met with smaller groups of School community members in optional afternoon break-out sessions.
Dean of Equity and Inclusion Rachel Myers thanked the Thalheimer Educator in Residence Fund “for the extraordinary opportunity to engage with global issues through the lens of these esteemed journalists.”
Collaboration
Receives
Excellence Award
A collaborative fundraising video project between the departments of Alumni Relations, Development, and Communications recently received an Excellence Award at the Connecticut Art Directors Club 48th Annual Awards Show. The School’s “Cheer Now for Choate” video took a CADC top honor and helped raise funds for the Choate Rosemary Hall Annual Fund. View the video:
Carr Hall Groundbreaking Ceremony
Dr. Curtis and the Board of Trustees welcomed Michael J. Carr ’76 and his wife, Shelley Sporleder Carr, back for the groundbreaking ceremony of the new welcome and admission center, Carr Hall. Carr, former Chairman of the Board of Trustees (2011-2019), reflected on the influence the School has had on his life trajectory. “Choate has given me so much throughout my life, I felt compelled to give back in a way that helps others to find the best versions of themselves, too,” he said. “At the heart of this campus, Carr Hall will be an actual and symbolic place to come together, to create community, and to have young people imagine what their lives could be here at Choate. This place is truly special, and I am honored to not only be part of its past, but its future.”
John Kirby Simon ’79 Community Service Awards Presented
Director of Community Service Melissa Koomson honored four students with the 2024 John Kirby Simon ’79 Awards last spring. These students distinguished themselves by their significant service contributions, upholding a strong dedication to serving others. The accolades were distributed across each class, with one student from each form level receiving recognition.
The honored students for this year are:
Mikayla Rose Martins DaSilva ’24, of Wallingford, who exemplifies a commitment to working with vulnerable populations. She has helped provide essential hygiene supplies to those experiencing homelessness and instability through the New Reach Hygiene Project and has also partnered with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
Favour Oluwabusola Olagunju ’25, of Lagos, Nigeria, for her important role fostering cultural awareness. She has offered her commitment to community service through her participation with Teach Wallingford, Interact, The Mentorship Project, and Learn to Be, among others.
Ebihonmi Omoghene Oshe ’26, of Houston, Texas, for her humanitarian engagement through personal stories and experiences with groups on campus and her commitment to addressing food insecurity through her volunteerism at Fair Haven Food Pantry.
Damaris Hernandez Reynoso ’27, of Hartford, Conn., for her extraordinary dedication to vital community organizations, including Spanish Community of Wallingford, Sanctuary Kitchen, and Hartford Public Schools.
Retirements and Service Honors
At the 2024 Year-End Celebration, faculty and staff gathered to honor major milestones: From left to right: Financial Office Controller Heather Lafontaine celebrated 25 years’ service to the School, Health Center Office Manager Claudia Molinari retired, as did Languages teacher Diana Beste. In absentia: Kohler Environmental Center Program Director Joseph Scanio was honored for 25 years’ service to the School, and Paula Barrows, who retired as Administrative Assistant to the Head of Student and Academic Life, and the Dean of Equity and Inclusion celebrated retirement. Congratulations and thank you all!
Ins�ired Positively
By LesLie Virostek P ’15, ’17, ’20
At the gala launch of the Inspire the Next campaign in January 2023, Head of School Alex Curtis issued a call to action: “To inspire the next generation of difference makers and leaders requires the investment, commitment, and vision of our dedicated community.”
The Choate Rosemary Hall community responded heartily to that call, contributing in total $334 million — surpassing the goal and the School’s previous campaign record of $217 million.
While Inspire the Next has closed, thanks to the combined generosity of 8,426 alumni, parents, and friends, the Choate community will feel its benefits for generations.
What have we accomplished with the campaign? We have fueled our educational program by growing the Annual Fund. We have ensured the School’s continued strength by investing in Choate’s endowment. And we have funded impactful capital projects that support new programs and ways of learning.
Choate’s future vitality — its place as an incubator for visionary thinkers and changemakers — demands intentional planning, thoughtful growth, and the engagement of thousands of donors and volunteers. “The campaign resonated with so many community members because they understood that their support would go to the heart of the Choate experience. This broad-based campaign touches nearly every part of the School — who we are and how students learn,” says Dr. Curtis.
Support for Annual Fund and Endowment
Upholds Our
Values
Choate brings together the best and brightest students by making accessibility a priority, and the imperative of increasing funding for financial aid — through both endowed scholarships and currentuse funds — is but one major campaign success.
“We’ve brought people to the School who might not otherwise have been here,” says Dr. Curtis. “We’ve seen the financial aid program grow considerably in terms of the number of students and the amount that we can give.” Today 34 percent of students receive aid that enables them to enroll and to share their talents with the Choate community.
Chief Enrollment Manager Jeff Beaton adds,
“Next year, our students will receive over $15 million in tuition assistance, allowing the most talented students from around the globe the opportunity of a Choate education without the full financial burden. This honor — to be a school that is accessible to those families who may have never considered boarding school before — is due to the amazing generosity of our donors, whom I can’t thank enough.”
Choate has also improved its discount rate — the percentage of tuition revenue that is not collected because it is offset by financial aid. A high discount rate translates to accessibility, and generally only schools with the biggest endowments boast discount rates of 30 percent or better. The campaign fueled not only a significant improvement in our discount rate — raised from 23 to 26.5 percent — but also our aspirations. As we move beyond the campaign, growing resources for financial aid remains a priority for the School.
The campaign makes Choate more affordable for every family. The average tuition increase over the past decade has been less than three percent, something even schools with bigger endowments struggle to match. Dr. Curtis hopes that especially Annual Fund donors know that their generosity — combined with prudent fiscal management — has provided stability and predictability. Moreover, our tuition remains among the lowest in our peer group.
But accessibility to the School is not enough. Community members recognized this by supporting another priority, the Beyond the Classroom Fund, which eliminates financial barriers to the shared experiences that bind the community together and create lasting memories.
Dr. Curtis says, “If we are really talking about all of our students being able to fully participate, the Beyond the Classroom Fund is hugely important.” Whether it is a piece of team apparel or performing with the orchestra in Europe, Beyond the Classroom ensures that financial resources are never a barrier for students to fully access the breadth and depth of the Choate experience.
That same spirit of equity and inclusivity is embodied by the Ralph J. Bunche Jr. ’61 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Fund. Named to honor the legacy of the first Black American student to attend The Choate School, the fund endows the work of the Office of Equity and Inclusion. Diversity is essential to who we are. Equity and Inclusion programs and initiatives today do more than build community and promote multicultural competence — they also inspire Choate graduates to be better leaders in their future communities and careers.
Not one bit of the Choate experience would happen without the faculty. It is no wonder, then, that the campaign’s call to endow the Teaching Excellence Initiative — which included a $4 million matching gift from former Trustee Tony James ’69 — garnered enthusiastic support. Aimed at attracting and retaining the best teachers, this dedicated fund ensures that faculty salaries and benefits reflect how highly Choate values inspirational teachers, coaches, dorm mentors, advisers, and their lifelong impact on students.
Dean of Faculty Katie Levesque says, “In my role I see every day how critically important it is to recruit, retain, and support worldclass educators so they can provide transformative educational experiences for our students. To recruit the very best faculty for Choate, we need to be competitive with salary and benefits, and I see every hiring cycle how important it is to be able to do that.”
Purpose-built Facilities, Transformational Spaces
To understand how a building may transform programs and learning, one needs only to visit the Cameron and Edward Lanphier Center for Mathematics and Computer Science. According to Andrew Murgio, co-head of the Robotics Program, the Lanphier Center’s impact on robotics at Choate cannot be overstated.
The Mellon Humanities Center housed the School’s first robotics lab in a closet-like space. The fledgling program then moved to a converted classroom in the old St. John Hall math building — better, but nowhere near ideal. Space constraints limited what kinds of leagues Choate could compete in, as well as program development and the number of students who could participate.
Out-of-classroom time is an important aspect of Choate’s learning environment, and the Lanphier Center shaped even this. The academic building’s group study rooms and café blend learning and social interactions. Overall, the Lanphier Center embodies and enhances Choate’s spirit of innovation and sense of community.
Ann and George Colony Hall also inspires community. In addition to its impactful art-related spaces — such as the Airth-Mars Family Dance Studio, the recital hall, jam room, and music studios — Colony Hall’s signature space is its auditorium. A place where the whole school may gather, it was designed with the technological and multimedia capacity to flexibly host a variety of events and programming.
Dean of Students Will Gilyard ’98 says this includes lectures and panel discussions that not only help students grow intellectually, but also challenge and prepare them for the kinds of experiences they will have in college. For students who are performing or speaking, the space gives practice presenting before a large audience in a formal setting.
School meetings in the auditorium also give different forms and adviser groups opportunities to be seated together and to interact with each other. “It just creates so many opportunities to build community,” says Gilyard.
From Gilyard’s perspective, Colony Hall is exactly the space Choate needed. “We’ve created a building where it’s almost a physical manifestation of community,” he says. “We’ve created a space to help us live out our core values, a space where important conversations can take place and where the entire school can engage with one another.”
Community and the importance of student life are also manifest in St. John Hall. It is not unusual for student centers to be converted or renovated spaces — until now that was the case at Choate. In contrast, the new St. John Hall better represents and fulfills the high value Choate places on student life. Bustling with activity every day and evening, the facility is a hub for student clubs and a center for recreation. Students make constant use of the publication suite, the study and conference rooms, the Tuck Shop, and the gathering spaces that bring day and boarding students together to enjoy shared experiences.
Seamlessly connected to key student-centered resources, including the Deans’ Office and the College Counseling suite, St. John centralizes all things involving student life.
“This campaign gave us a chance to build a thoughtful and impactful student space,” says Dr. Curtis. “That whole complex — the way the Dining Hall, the Library, Hill House, and St. John all fit together to support student life is deliberate and has been incredibly successful.”
Still to make its mark on campus is Carr Hall. The new welcome and admission center, which is named in recognition of the service, leadership, and generosity of former Chairman of the Board of Trustees Michael J. Carr ’76 and his wife, Shelley Sporleder Carr, will open in 2025. It will play a key role in giving visitors and prospective families a worthy introduction to Choate.
Similarly, we look forward to the renovation of the William T. Little ’49 and Frances A. Little Theater. Built in 1972, this theater in the Paul Mellon Arts Center will receive a substantial upgrade, including lighting, sound, and seating and backstage spaces with dressing rooms, green rooms, costume and scene shops. Renovation work will begin in June 2025 and will take about one year to complete.
Dr. Curtis points out that all of the new facilities support the School’s sustainability efforts, and as such help us live our values. “We’ve been LEED Gold since the construction of the Kohler Environmental Center and now we’re LEED Platinum, and that doesn’t happen without this campaign.” He notes that meeting the stringent prerequisites for LEED certification requires a greater initial investment in both the buildings themselves and the way they are responsibly constructed.
Looking to the Future
Annual Fund. Endowment. Capital Projects. Pillars to uphold and build what comes next. Though Inspire the Next has come to a close, our aspirations continue to grow and flourish. Much potential remains, including investing in the people who make Choate the special place that it is. We continue to prioritize financial aid and faculty salaries. We will continue to invest in our physical plant. We will continue to fund those initiatives which best represent our core values.
“On behalf of the students, faculty, and staff of Choate Rosemary Hall, thank you to all who stepped forward with incredible support and generosity throughout our fundraising campaign,” says Dr. Curtis. “Your contributions have made a significant impact, and we couldn’t have achieved this success without you.”
It Takes a Community: Numbers That Inspire Pride
8,426 Alumni, parents, and friends participated
The record-breaking Inspire the Next campaign reflects nearly a decade of generosity and investment in a shared vision of Choate’s future by thousands of committed alumni, parents, and friends. Through this collective endeavor, we have made significant enhancements to our educational program and I’m grateful to every donor for their generous participation. It's a powerful reminder of what we can achieve when we unite to inspire the next generation.
$334M Total contributions $117M
Gifts added to the endowment 11%
Portion of the operating budget funded through Annual Fund contributions each year
The dedication and professionalism of Choate’s Advancement team helps our extended community stay connected to each other and to the School and engages and advises the donors who drive our institution forward. I appreciate the efforts of our current and former colleagues, especially alumnus Dan Courcey ’86, whose leadership was instrumental in shaping this highly successful fundraising campaign.
Thank you for being a part of this remarkable community and for joining together to Inspire the Next. I look forward to our ongoing collaborations in service of Choate’s educational mission.”
– Anne Bergen, Chief Advancement Officer
A DYNAMIC BALANCE:
Incorporating AI into the Classroom
By EllEn DEvinE
At the start of the 2023-2024 academic year, Head of School Alex Curtis and Head of Academic and Student Life Jenny K. Elliott acknowledged the rapid developments of Generative AI and the exciting historical moment we find ourselves in as the world considers how this emerging technology might revolutionize life as we know it. For Curtis and Elliott, encouraging the Choate community to lean into this significant moment and grapple with both the tremendous opportunities and concerns raised by this new technology was a natural extension of Choate Rosemary Hall’s ongoing commitment to the dynamic balance between tradition and innovation.
Building on work that began in the 2022-2023 academic year, the Generative AI Steering Committee was created and began its work in October 2023 with the charge to provide the Choate community with guiding principles; to create a framework that organizes existing practices; and to establish the foundation upon which future decisions, policies, and approaches can be built. The Committee included representatives from each academic department and our Director of Institutional Research. The final report published by the Committee offered guidance about how to proceed based on our understanding of what the Choate community needs, wants, and envisions for the future. While the Steering Committee had a clear set of goals and tasks, examining the many issues raised by Generative AI was never the sole domain of the Steering Committee. Many groups such as the Academic Technology Department, the Instructional Technology Committee, the Andrew Mellon Library team, the Information Technology Services Department, and the Generative AI Collaborative Group worked throughout the year to contribute resources, professional development, curricular guidance, and professional standards to support the work we do every day at Choate Rosemary Hall. As is so often true with the best and most successful efforts at any school, Choate’s comprehensive response to the use of Generative AI has been, and will continue to be, a collective effort.
To begin our work, the Committee gathered feedback from students, staff, and faculty through surveys and focus groups over several months. We also examined and compared different educational institutions’ published approaches to Generative AI and collaborated with external experts to ensure our work aligned with evolving wisdom and best practices. Finally, we completed polarity mapping and a SWOT analysis to align the Committee’s own understanding of the challenges and opportunities associated with this technology.
Unsurprisingly, results from this work were varied, but there were also dominant and unifying themes. The entire Choate community held deep concerns regarding the ability to maintain standards of authenticity, knowledge acquisition, creativity, and ethical behavior while also genuinely seeking ways to learn about and use this promising technology.
Our students clearly stated that they value a Choate education and want to make sure that the integration of this technology doesn’t supersede or circumvent the development of their own learning. They also expressed a real need for guidance, instruction, and help in navigating and exploring this technology. Students also hoped that their teachers could help
them learn how best to use this technology in the moment, understand its existing limits and dangers, and consider the implications of this technological advancement as it intersects in so many areas of their life at school and beyond.
Staff and faculty concerns echoed those of students while also expanding upon the ethical implications, both immediate and long term, of embracing such technology. The staff and faculty also articulated hopes and concerns that ranged from highly practical to existential. While there was a clear spectrum of interest in accepting and using this technology, there was a consistent desire for an explicit articulation of Choate’s stance on how it would approach Generative AI.
It was this confluence of shared concerns, opportunities, interests, and needs that led the Steering Committee to compose “Choate Rosemary Hall’s Current Stance on the Use of Generative AI.” The goal of the stance is to clearly signal the School’s position in this current moment, affirm essential elements of our community that transcend technological developments, and articulate the core values that should inform future decisions.
CHOATE ROSEMARY HALL’S CURRENT STANCE ON THE USE OF GENERATIVE AI
Choate’s values promote a dynamic balance between tradition and innovation. Because the rapid development of Generative AI provides opportunities to enhance the educational experience, advance the generation of new knowledge, foster continuous learning, and support the collective pursuit of excellence, Choate endorses the discerning, informed, and ethical use of Generative AI by students, faculty, and staff.
At Choate, an ethical approach to Generative AI is rooted in the deep trust and meaningful relationships that define our community. The human connections, interactions, and authentic work that are central to the Choate experience should only be amplified by the use of Generative AI, never replaced by it. This approach must also include critical examination of the tool itself. Such direct interrogation of the diverse human concerns and possibilities within Generative AI will ensure that the Choate community remains aware, reflective, curious, and responsive. Finally, as we explore, experiment with, and examine this powerful new technology, we must also recognize and attend to uses of Generative AI that are not appropriate, beneficial, or desirable.
Through this balanced approach, Choate aspires to model how to embrace this technology responsibly while remaining aligned with core institutional values.
Once we articulated Choate’s specific, high-level approach to the use of Generative AI through the Current Stance, the Steering Committee set about to propose precise and practical policies, guidelines, and best practices across all elements of School life to support students, staff, and faculty in their ongoing work.
The Committee’s recommendations and policies were shaped and informed by the values expressed in the stance and drew and expanded upon existing institutional structures that guided Choate through other transformational moments. Models used to navigate other technological developments (e.g., iPad), as well as models developed to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, inspired the Committee’s recommendations. While there are undoubtedly complex connotations and implications of blending traditional responses to emerging technology with emergency responses to a sustained global health crisis, the Steering Committee felt that a comprehensive and appropriate response to such a tool required the merging of models that have previously been separate to answer the needs of this unique moment while also benefiting from reliable and tested systems and structures.
A few examples of these recommendations, policies, and practices include:
• Updates to the Acceptable Use policies in the Student Handbook and the Faculty and Staff Handbook to account for the ways in which Generative AI complicates our traditional use of technology to date.
• The creation of the Generative AI Portal on Choate’s internal website so that all relevant information and resources regarding Generative AI is collected and curated in one place.
• The creation of a Generative AI Policy Group that will include representation across many areas of School life to ensure that we remain responsive and current in our policies, practices, and uses of Generative AI.
• Providing faculty with professional development opportunities to increase their Generative AI awareness and literacy before the start of the 2024-2025 academic year. To aid the community in reaching our institutional goals regarding the discerning, informed, and ethical use of Generative AI, teaching faculty were offered professional development grants to further develop their Generative AI literacy and awareness. Various paths to increase literacy and awareness were provided, including self-paced study through a custom Choate-developed online course offering wide-ranging and diverse topics to account for faculty’s varied interests and needs. One of the great benefits of the resources collected in the Canvas course is that many of the resources and tools can easily be incorporated into classes for students as well.
AI BEYOND TEACHING AND LEARNING
Recognizing that Generative AI technology already impacts the way businesses and organizations function, the Generative AI Collaborative Group was charged to identify, create, and recommend foundational resources, guidelines, and/or policies specific to responsibly using Generative AI for the business and administrative operations of Choate Rosemary Hall. Throughout the spring, the group of 14 staff members from business and administrative offices across campus met in collaboration with their faculty colleagues to recommend a path of exploration, evaluation, and adoption of AI to maximize creativity, productivity, and efficiency, keeping Choate at the forefront of the boarding and independent school landscape.
In tandem with the faculty, Choate staff and administrators are participating in professional development and experimentation with AI, implementing AI tools into everyday work, and streamlining business processes, while also evaluating the ethics, privacy, risk, and efficacy of AI across the institution.
One of the greatest efforts we are making as a school is to help our students develop the skills to be informed and discerning users of Generative AI and to ensure that they use the tool only in service of their learning and never in place of it. Additionally, we want to provide students with clear and supportive instructions that allow them to use this tool without violating our values and rules regarding academic integrity. To that end, the Acceptable Roles of Generative AI for Student Use Chart was developed by the Committee and will be used in the coming academic year in all classes. This chart indicates many ways students might be allowed to use Generative AI in their assignments and the type of acknowledgment and citation expectations required depending on that role. In all cases, students must first receive instruction from their teacher regarding which level is allowed on any given assignment. Beginning this fall, students must sign the AI disclosure statement for all assignments that allow use of AI in some capacity.
STUDENT GUIDE FOR ACCEPTABLE AI USE
AI NOT INVITED: NO USE
THINKING WITH AI:
AI-ASSISTED IDEA GENERATION AND STRUCTURING
TUTORED BY AI:
AI-ASSISTED FEEDBACK AND REVISION
COLLABORATION WITH AI:
AI FOR SPECIFIC TASK COMPLETION
OUTSOURCED TO AI:
FULL AI USE WITH CAREFUL HUMAN OVERSIGHT
GENERATIVE AI IN OUR CLASSROOMS
DATA SCIENCE
In this mathematics course, students work extensively with real and large data sets, gaining hands-on experience crucial in today’s data-driven world. AI acts as a virtual tutor, available at any time to help students overcome hurdles and explore more advanced topics. This kind of support is particularly valuable for students who might otherwise feel left behind in a traditional classroom setting. AI simplifies this process by offering step-by-step guidance and troubleshooting tips, making programming more accessible and less intimidating.
SPANISH HONORS ELECTIVE
Students enrolled in Alternate Realities, a termlong elective, used the image creation capacity of Generative AI to co-create their own surrealist images. After viewing and discussing a variety of Spanish Surrealist artists and their work through a traditional gallery walk, students kept a dream journal and then input the details of those dreams into ChatGPT. Students then did another gallery walk viewing and discussing the AI-assisted creations inspired by their own “sueños surrealistas.” Generative AI helped students gain a deeper understanding of the Surrealist artistic movement and reflect upon their own creative processes.
THIRD FORM ENGLISH
During their study of poetry, students identified a poem that inspired in them a sense of being sheltered or cared for. Once they found that poem, they each created a 3-D sculpture that represented their interpretation of the poem. The last step of the project was to compose a reflection about their creative process turning their interpretation of their poem into a new piece of art. Students used Generative AI to assist their revision process, asking AI for feedback on the strengths and areas of improvement in their drafts.
SIXTH FORM ENGLISH ELECTIVE In Imagined Futures and Alternate Realities: The Literatures of Tomorrow, students used Generative AI to design and pitch their own artificial friends after studying Ishiguro’s dystopian novel, Klara and the Sun, which features a world in which artificially intelligent robots serve many of the practical and emotional needs of humans.
In our final report, the Steering Committee offered many proposals that addressed the immediate and practical needs that arise in an educational setting when such a powerful and capable tool is invented and made public.
Ultimately though, the recommendations regarding the collective literacy and awareness of Generative AI for the Choate community are the essential and lasting outcomes of this process.
Imagine if educational institutions had understood early on and with equivalent urgency the benefits and harms of human reliance on fossil fuels or plastics, and how we might have altered the way we talked about, taught about, and used those resources over the decades if there had been comparable shared understanding, hope, and concern as there is in reaction to Generative AI. We could also draw a more recent but similar parallel to the invention, development, and seemingly endless proliferation of social media. Because the many literal and existential hopes and consequences that Generative AI poses are the actual stuff of science fiction dreams and nightmares, it is easier to anticipate the far-reaching consequences more thoroughly than in many other moments of technological advancement. We do not need to strain our imaginations to conjure the long view; we are aware of the apocalyptic extrapolations for the future (e.g., Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Terminator, The Matrix, etc.) as well as the more nuanced and even utopian ones (e.g., I, Robot, Star Trek Next Generation). While those visions are not representative of the near future, the fact that many examples of what a future with Generative AI looks like can serve as an inspiration and catalyst to ensure that we remain an informed, responsive, curious, and innovative educational institution that encourages our whole community to face the world and its challenges in an ethical, informed, and discerning fashion.
AI STEERING COMMITTEE
• Matthew Bardoe, Math and Computer Science Teacher
• Carissa Casey, Director of Institutional Research
• Deron Chang, Director of Curricular Initiatives, Science Teacher
• Scott Davis, Latin and English Teacher
• Ellen Devine (Chair), Director of Studies, English Teacher
• Kyra Jenney, HPRSS Department Head
• Matthew McLean, Arts Department Head
AI COLLABORATIVE GROUP
• Shannon Boni, Admission Interview Coordinator and Data Specialist
• Vincent Carbone, Manager of Arts Center Operations
To read more about the committees’ work on Generative AI, visit Choate’s AI portal:
Play Ball Bringing Baseball to Bhutan
By RhEa hiRshman
In 2010, when Matthew DeSantis ’03 — a former captain of the Choate Rosemary Hall baseball team — moved to Bhutan, hardly anyone in the small Buddhist nation, nestled in the high eastern Himalayas between China and India, had ever seen a live or even a televised baseball game. But when Matt and a Bhutanese colleague put out a Facebook ad through the Bhutan Olympic Committee, inviting local people to come try the game in Thimphu, Bhutan’s capital, nearly 60 young people, aged from 6 to 20, showed up. Three weeks later, when that number grew to many hundreds, Matt knew they had started something.
Now, a decade and a half later, baseball — that most American of pastimes — is the fastest-growing sport in a country a world away, culturally and geographically, from Matt’s hometown of Wilton, Conn.
In Wilton, his parents’ backyard was the neighborhood sandlot, always full of friends who were often out there playing even before he woke up. “I played baseball ever since I can remember,” Matt says. “It was how I bonded with my father and siblings. My father coached for years, and I learned from him the importance of building community around the game.”
After graduating from Choate, where he played varsity baseball all four years, Matt completed a five-year joint program with College of the Holy Cross (where he continued to play ball) and Columbia University in economics, computer engineering, and management systems. Post-graduation, he took a position with Accenture, an international IT company. While still stateside, he also began providing systems guidance on a volunteer basis for various parties in Bhutan. In 2010, he arrived in Bhutan to work on other projects, including building a payment infrastructure to support Bhutan’s service industries, particularly tourism, and helping build computer systems for various industries shortly following the country’s governance transition from a monarchy to a parliamentary democracy.
Once in Bhutan, working and exploring the mountain terrain, rainforests, and villages, Matt knew that he wanted to stay, and that he wanted to bring baseball with him. He currently runs two businesses in Bhutan — a boutique luxury travel designer and outfitter called MyBhutan (an avid explorer himself, Matt has surveyed some of the least-traveled areas of the Himalayas), and Beyul Labs, a technology company offering business software platforms for emerging economies.
His partner in the baseball endeavor from the day they placed the Facebook ad has been Karma Dorji, with whom Matt shared a cubicle while volunteering in the office of the Bhutan Olympic Committee. Together, they also founded the sport’s governing body, Bhutan Baseball and Softball Association (BBSA), with Matt as chairman and Karma as president. The game’s creation stands as a minor component within a broader initiative led by the Bhutan Olympic Committee, under the guidance of His Royal Highness Dasho Jigyel Ugyen Wangchuck ’03, who was a former classmate of Matt’s at Choate, to foster a vibrant sports culture in Bhutan.
For the first few years, there was no particular organization — games happened whenever Matt and Karma were able to get to the makeshift field after their workdays.
“One Sunday in the fall of 2013, we saw a few kids hanging around the playing ground, hoping that we would show up as we had on the other days,” Matt says. “That’s when we realized that what was happening was just the beginning.”
Soon, players were forming their own teams with friends. In a particularly Bhutanese touch, one of the teams decided to name itself and have its logo designed after one of Bhutan’s singular wildlife species — the Thimphu Red Pandas. “Bhutan’s primary policy driver is Gross National Happiness (GNH),” Matt says, “and one of the four pillars of GNH is environmental conservation. The Red Pandas founder, Namgyel Wangchuck, proposed the idea to model the sport’s development around this concept.” When the Thimphu Red Pandas, the Paro Ravens, the Wangdue Cranes, the Phuentsholing Crocodiles, the Gelephu Tuskers, and the Samtse Rhinos start earning money, those funds will go toward protecting the animals represented.
GNH is a holistic approach towards notions of progress that gives equal importance to non-economic aspects of well-being. Bhutan adopted the concept in the 1970s as an alternative to GDP (gross domestic product). While Bhutan remains the only country that measures GNH, the United Nations, in 2011, unanimously adopted a resolution introduced by Bhutan calling for nations to embrace a “holistic approach to development.”
Bringing baseball to Bhutan poses several challenges. The mountainous terrain makes finding suitable playing fields difficult. Equipment can be expensive, and getting it into a remote landlocked country adds to the cost; international freight must be trucked in from ports in India or airports in Thailand. As more players started showing up, Matt and Karma started reaching out. Matt’s younger brother, Will, rallied Wilton-area high schools to donate bats, balls, and gloves. Other donations came through personal connections.
Ramon Riesgo, a young man who was captivated by their story in Matt’s hometown newspaper, started talking to — and soliciting support from — anyone who would listen. They built connections with Major League Baseball International and the BBSA has partnered with Baseball United, the upcoming league in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. As part of that agreement, one of Bhutan’s players — the country’s first professional baseball player — will be signed to a contract to play in the upcoming Baseball United Dubai inaugural league later this year.
Back home in Bhutan, thousands of boys and girls are now playing in four baseball leagues (co-ed) and four softball leagues (for girls) hosted by the BBSA. While the basic elements of the game would be familiar to any fan, Karma notes that “In a predominantly Buddhist country like Bhutan, players integrate Buddhist principles such as mindfulness, compassion, and non-violence into the approach to the game, and incorporate a variety of cultural practices.” In addition to beginning games with traditional Bhutanese offerings or prayers, players also draw on their culture to help them with their on-field techniques, whether that means pitchers who draw inspiration from the steady aim and focus required in traditional Bhutanese archery, or fielders who incorporate footwork exercises inspired by Bhutanese folk dances to improve agility and reaction time.
Both Karma and Matt remain deeply involved in developing and promoting the sport and are hopeful about the future as the country continues to embrace baseball in its own unique way.
“What I appreciate most about Choate Rosemary Hall,” Matt says, “are the friendships I’ve formed within its community. Among these friendships, both new and old, are individuals who share an enthusiasm for Bhutan or baseball, including colleagues introduced to me through our broader network, who have been instrumental in the program’s growth.”
As Matt continues his life in his adopted country, he has also taught other skills and devoted his energy to several projects focusing on preserving Bhutanese national treasures, both natural and human-made. Among the latter is a project to document, digitize, and archive the country’s sacred relics housed in Bhutan’s monasteries. “I spent six years developing the project’s production strategy and technical framework, as well as training a brilliant team of monks how to analyze data and build systems architecture,” he says, “while jokingly asking them to teach me the secrets of reincarnation — because the project is intended to last for multiple generations.”
ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
The Choate Rosemary Hall Alumni Association’s mission is to create, perpetuate, and enhance relationships among Choate Rosemary Hall alumni, current and prospective students, faculty, staff, and friends in order to foster loyalty, interest, and support for the School and for one another, and to build pride, spirit, and community.
OFFICERS
President
Elizabeth Alford Hogan ’82
Vice Presidents
Jaques Clariond ’01
Justin Graham ’98
Lena Sullesta Jessen ’92
Dewey Kang ’03
John Smyth ’83, P ’20
Members
Sam Chao ’04
Marisa Ferraro ’92
Chris Herzog ’99
Ashley Holt ’11
David Javdan ’86
David Kestnbaum ’00
Jack Kingsley ’87
Lambert Lau ’97
Brad Mak ’96
George Ramirez ’11
Will Gilyard ’98, Faculty Representative
Additional Executive Committee Members
Chief Advancement Officer
Anne Bergen
Director of Alumni Relations
Andrea Solomon
Alumni Association
Past Presidents
Susan Barclay ’85
David Hang ’94, P ’25
Chris Hodgson ’78, P ’12, ’14, ’17
Parisa Jaffer ’89
Woody Laikind ’53
Patrick McCurdy ’98
REGIONAL CLUB
LEADERSHIP
Boston
Gabby Rundle Robinette ’06
Chicago
Maria Del Favero ’83
Jacqueline Salamack
Lanphier ’06
Connecticut
David Aversa ’91
Katie Vitali Childs ’95, P ’24, ’26
Los Angeles
Wesley Hansen ’98
Alexa Platt ’95
New York
Conrad Gomez ’98
Leah Lettieri ’07
Rosemary Hall
Anne Marshall Henry ’62
San Francisco
Albert Lee ’02
Washington, DC
Olivia Bee ’10
Dan Carucci ’76
Tillie Fowler ’92
Beijing
Matthew Cheng ’10
Gunther Hamm ’98
Hong Kong
Jennifer Yu Cheng ’99
Lambert Lau ’97
Sandy Wan ’90
London
Tatiana Donaldson ’13
Elitsa Nacheva ’08
Seoul
Rae-Eun Sung ’97
Shanghai
T.C. Chau ’97
Thailand
Uracha Chaiyapinunt ’13
Isa Chirathivat ’96
Pat Sethbhakdi ’85, P ’18, ’18, ’20
Tokyo
Kirk Shimizuishi ’96
Miki Ito Yoshida ’07
REUNION 2024
CALENDAR OF EVENTS
SEPTEMBER 2024
9 – ChoateNexus Law Workshop, Virtual 19 – Wild Boar Book Club, Virtual 29 – Student/Alumni Career Fair
OCTOBER 2024
1 – Austin – Eight Schools Career Networking Reception 15 – NYC – 1890 Society Reception 18 – Alumni Association Executive Committee Meeting 23 – ChoateNexus Career Networking, Virtual 23 – DC – Event at SPIN
24-26 – Family Weekend
NOVEMBER 2024
9 – Deerfield Day Home! 13 – ChoateNexus Career Networking, Virtual
DECEMBER 2024
5 – NYC – Holiday Party 10 – London – Reception with Head of School 12 – Denver – Holiday Party
JANUARY 2025
27 – DC – Student/Alumni Dinner
MARCH 2025 27 – Sixth Form Alumni Dinner & AAEC Meeting
MAY 2025
16-18 – Reunion Weekend
Kristin Hanley Richman ’99, Joshua Barrow ’94, John Ford
Shantell D. Richardson ’99
Thomas M. Viertel ’59
The Celebration of the Decade!
MAY 16-18
Classes ending in 0s and 5s: it’s been 10 years since we’ve all been together. Much has changed both on campus and in your lives, but the important things remain the same. Meaningful connections. Transformative education. Lifelong friendships.
It’s time to reconnect with your school, your classmates, and your friends! Mark your calendars and start making plans to attend. You don’t want to miss this epic weekend!
See you there!
For more information, visit the Reunion Webpage: choate.edu/reunion
1940s
’49 C Paul (Dan) Ritter writes, “Missed our 75th due to a family wedding. Was able to celebrate by phone with Brud Humphrey, Bill Plauth, and Lynn Parry; and by message to Sherm Andrews in California. All seemed well and happy to recall our Choate days.”
1950s
’53 C Benjamin H. Heckscher writes, “It is clear to me Choate turned my life around, getting to Harvard and a successful career. After college I was on active duty in the Army military intelligence and then 31 years at Scott Paper (head of TP marketing ). Clearly squash (#1 national ranking) and tennis supported my success in my business career competition with other companies. Recently I have had a number of medical issues — two cancers at once and now have been dealing with Parkinson’s for 15 years. My balance is better than expected because of the sports and exercises at home. Today I have three boys and two stepchildren (Jon and Kali Pratt) who have successful careers. My wife, Nancy, of 47 years was instrumental in their development. I send greetings to all my old Choate friends!”
’54 C Robert McIntyre writes, “Sook and I recently enjoyed a great cruise on the Columbia River, from Lewiston, Idaho, to Portland along with David Hopkins ’60 and his wife, Rosemary. We visited an alpaca farm outside Stevenson, Wash. Interestingly, the farm has had to increase security for their herd with high fencing and large guard dogs due to the many cougars roaming in their area. Great trip though traveling through many locks and learning volumes about Lewis and Clark’s grueling two-year, 8,000-mile journey to the Pacific and back.”
’56 C Geoffrey Bullard writes, “I am saddened by the news of the passing of Ward Smith, a great friend, and a wonderful man! Having myself just recovered from multiple stent insertions, one hopes that he had the same attentive care prior to his death. Having now arrived at the ripe and savory age of 87, the normal slings and arrows of life seem to have been successfully o’er lept! Well, apparently … Deafness being addressed with double cochlear implants in 2014-2015 is a blessing, though for a ‘singer,’ music is now relegated mostly to memories. At Choate, and then at Yale Music School I got to be pretty good. Well, perhaps that is just a personal opinion. Following that I went on to graduate from Cornell, the Navy, and graduate school at Syracuse with a Master in Public Administration in 1964 and Ph.D. in 1968. My teaching career (1968-1975) was spent at SUNY, The American Institute in Florence,
Italy, and as a founding faculty member of the SUNY Empire State College. I was a visiting scholar and post-doctoral fellow at Princeton in 1973. On the Board of Manhattan Music School (1979-1990), Albany Memorial Hospital (1982-1992), Finance chair of the Capitol region Community foundation (19952003), etc. Just as with Ward, serving on these many boards and organizations has been an enriching experience. After leaving academia in 1975, I joined a regional brokerage firm (First Albany Corp.) as research director (1975-1980) to become research director in NYC for Shearson Loeb Rhodes (19801981) to become First VP at Lehman Management (1981-1983). In late 1983, I formed Bullard, McLeod & Associates, an investment management company, subsequently, after my retirement in 2016, now owned by my children.”
Ted Martin writes, “Greetings to my classmates who with me have joined Club 86! As the saying goes, I’m not buying green bananas, but life is good and while age-related issues have arisen from time to time I am grateful for excellent docs. Gym visits seem to help as does a wonderful lifestyle in Dallas, where we have lived for 53 years. I am still able to pursue my passion of fly fishing, although a staff is needed to balance when wading rivers in Colorado and Montana. The motto of our 30-member fly fishers club is ‘Fishermen are born honest but they get over it.’ Thus we are the Dallas Liars Club and enjoy telling each other fish stories and other topics of questionable importance. I also find time to play music with an amateur band. I did the golf bit for a number of years but when the joints started to argue I had to give it up. In September, Liz and I will celebrate 63 years together. How she has put up with me for so long is a miracle. We have three wonderful and successful sons and enjoy seven grands who, of course, make us proud. We downsized a few years ago to a little red brick garden home that was our choice over other senior living options. It’s cozy, but perfect for us. My very best to Choaties of 1956 and thanks to Bob Gaines for keeping us connected.”
William Spears writes, “My wife, Maria, and I spent a summer in Italy and Greece. Happily, we are both well and enjoying our 80s despite normal aches and pains. We now have 12 grandchildren and two great-granddaughters, with another two greatgrandchildren expected soon. Both Maria and I lost our spouses after long marriages and have ourselves been married for 22 years. Cannell Spears, our investment firm, continues to grow, though I am only an interested observer. Our home is New York City and we would love for classmates to visit.”
’57 C Barry Feinberg writes, “My wife and I are happily living in New Hampshire. Traveled to 75 countries and still counting. Had to give up playing my beloved tennis a couple of years ago. Health has been good and we have been blessed with fulfilling lives.”
Mason Morfit writes, “I am spending a lot of time working with a local climate change action group, of which my wife, Margaret, and I were co-founders. It reminds me of the scene in Saving Private Ryan on which a mortally wounded Tom Hanks is firing his .45 caliber sidearm at approaching Nazi tanks, with the bullets bouncing ineffectively off the heavily armored vehicles. And I don’t see any American fighter planes coming to the rescue. I have also spent a lot of time mentoring a 26-yearold Congolese asylum seeker, teaching him English, finding him a French-speaking pro-bono trauma psychiatrist, a pro-bono asylum attorney and, most recently, teaching him to parallel park in anticipation of a forthcoming road test for a driver’s license. The English is going frustratingly slowly, but the Immigration Court has given him a generous extension before his next hearing (for which I bought him a great-looking used Armani suit at Goodwill and instructed him to say ‘your honor’ at every opportunity) so he should be OK for several months and possibly years.”
Jim Smith ’65 (left), his wife Rita (not pictured), and Bob Gordon ’52 (right) had lunch at Danny Ray’s restaurant in Lakewood, Colo., on May 18, 2024. They celebrated Jim and Rita’s return from their round-the-world cruise.
Bob McIntyre ’54 and wife Sook at an alpaca farm just outside Stevenson, Wash.
Peter Sipple writes, “2024 is a year of anniversaries for Margaret and me; we celebrated our marriage’s 60th; I was ordained an Episcopal Priest 50 years ago; and like most of our remaining classmates, I turned 85. We continue to enjoy our 18th century home in Guilford, Conn. I assist with worship at Trinity Episcopal Church on the New Haven Green; other Sundays we attend Trinity Church in Branford, where we have come to know Andrée Pierson, widow of classmate Lee. I direct the A Cappella Singers, a small choral group that recently performed music of Brahms, Debussy, and Vaughan Williams. Over the years, good singers have made good friends for Margaret and me. We love choral music, both sacred and secular, and hear a lot of it performed at Yale’s Woolsey Hall. Each day we give thanks for relatively good health, for our two wonderful adult children and two grandkids of whom we are of course inordinately proud.”
’58 C Peter Goldmark writes, “I spend most of my time advising families and foundations on their philanthropy or investment in the climate change area. Let’s be frank; we (the older generation) has done a lousy job on climate. So I want to spend my last useful years on the only planet we will ever have helping those who are younger develop the ideas and tools they will need to be more effective than we were. As George Orwell said: Let’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying.”
Robert Knisely writes, “In mid-May I took a road trip to Boston and stopped for an afternoon in Wallingford. Driving around our campus, I found the grassy areas around Hill House and Memorial circles covered with young women sunbathing! (The boys were over on Horsebarn Field, watching a baseball game.) Choate has changed so much since I graduated in 1958 — all for the good. I’ve been retired since 2000, although I later did some teaching at St. Albans School in DC and Johns Hopkins University. Two years ago, Susan and I welcomed our eleventh grandchild, Linus, who lives in Baltimore. His mother often brings him to us for visits — he is a joy! In November of 2023, I was elected as a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, which brought me more pleasure. And in June, I made my ninth visit to the Chautauqua Institute for a week of lectures and discussion. The sense of community at Chautauqua always reminds me of my years at Choate. My lifelong interest in making government work better for all can be explored at my website, government-reform.info.”
William Shipley writes, “We attended the wedding of our oldest grandchild this summer. After my retirement from the MGH after being there for 55 years, we continue spending our summers in Chatham on Cape Cod at our ‘compound,’ sailing, playing tennis, and enjoying our three children, their spouses, and eight great-grandchildren being together.”
1960s
’61 RH Sue Bristoll Sayles writes, “I have just ended my sixth year of working with autistic kids. What a delight they are: bright, prankish, funny, challenging, unpredictable, but so pure. This has been a dream experience, and I will continue. Four of my five grandkids have graduated from college and the ‘baby’ will graduate in May of 2025. I live in a small senior complex on Martha’s Vineyard. My apartment is directly on the water and life couldn’t be better. I have a very close relationship with all my grandkids as well as my kids. Love it when they come to visit.”
’62 C Deaver Brown writes, “George Colony ’72, founder of Forrester, a generous donor to Choate in money and advice, advised us in a Choate-sponsored meeting early on in cell phones, ‘The next big thing is cell phones online.’ How right he was. I took note. Now it is AI; in my downloadable $2.99 eBook and audiobook, with thanks to Mr. Colony for prioritizing it, AI provides extraordinary tools: with little true tech skills in or required in my company Simply Media, AI has helped us create eight times the number of titles at a fraction of the cost with nuanced AI narrators rated higher on Audible, Spotify, and Walmart than live ones. Thus following on Mr. Colony’s advice about online being the future which he recommended in its infancy, I recommend going all in on AI or being left way behind.”
TOP LEFT Min and Barry Feinberg ’57 in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
TOP RIGHT Peter Goldmark ’58
BOTTOM LEFT Peter Sipple ’57 and wife of 60 years, Margaret
BOTTOM RIGHT Ted Martin ’56 and wife Liz — Thanksgiving 2022
John Wilkes writes, “Among many other things, Choate offered me an appreciation of the wider world — most importantly, France and Africa. My wife, Gini, and I have been lucky enough to capitalize on this by exploring many intriguing venues. Last winter, we traveled to the African continent, sailing on a cruise ship from Barcelona to Cape Town. The colors, customs, cuisines, costumes, and cultures all painted a vibrant picture of life’s challenges and achievements in the various West African countries. (By the way, my days at Choate and Africa are mentioned in my novel, The Star Gazer — Second Edition.) A special treat in visiting the Ivory Coast where I served in the Peace Corps for two years was returning to visit the capital, Abidjan, and more specifically L’Hôtel Ivoire. On the home front, our grandchildren just keep on coming. We are celebrating the birth of two granddaughters in the past six months, adding to our four-year-old grandson and two-year-old granddaughter. Finally, June 27 we flew to Prague to visit the Kafka Museum before cruising the Mediterranean and dining with our French Peace Corps friends (1966!) in Cannes.”
J. Michael “Mike” Hayes
’63
Honoring His Legacy
A year after J. Michael “Mike” Hayes ’63 was born in Birmingham, Ala., his mother died suddenly, leaving his father, John Boniface “Jack” Hayes C 1923, to raise Mike and his brother, John Burton Hayes ’59.
Jack Hayes had grown up in New Britain, Conn., and landed in Wallingford after a baseball coach saw him playing for New Britain High School and recruited him to suit up for Choate the following spring.
“Choate opened up education for him and exposed him to a lot of other opportunities,” says Mike Hayes, whose mother, Julia Ragland 1930, attended Rosemary Hall. “My father wanted his sons to have that same type of experience.”
When their father died, Mike and John Hayes, along with their stepmother and others, established the John B. Hayes ’23 Scholarship at Choate as a way to honor their dad and recognize the significance of the School to the Hayes family.
Now semi-retired and splitting his time between Delray Beach, Fla., and Cashiers, N.C., Mike has remained a loyal Choate alumnus for more than 60 years. He remains in touch with several Choate friends, served as a volunteer for the Class of 1963’s 25th reunion, and has returned for his 50 th and 60 th reunions. He also has been a faithful donor to the Annual Fund for decades. Earlier this year, he decided to further recognize his commitment to the School by establishing a charitable gift annuity here.
Looking back on his Choate experience, Mike recalls the enjoyment he found in the busy life of a boarding school student; the athletics, the academics, and even attending chapel seven days a week. “We received very positive messages there,” he says. Mike also recognizes the significance that faculty members played in his maturity and personal growth. He maintains particularly fond memories of Richard Hunter, who served for two years as his head of house in Prescott Knight.
“Teachers at Choate are about much more than just academics,” Mike says. “They can be important influences on character development. This was a very meaningful part of what being at Choate was for me.”
A southern gentleman with a wry sense of humor, Mike studied history at Washington and Lee University and served six years in the Air National Guard. He soon became a third-generation employee of C.B. Ragland, a Nashville, Tenn.–based wholesale grocery business founded by his mother’s family. Over the years, Mike rose up the chain, eventually becoming CEO and Chairman of the Board.
“I basically started on the payroll in the summer of 1968, and I’m still on the payroll,” he says, “so I jokingly say that I’ve never been unemployed.”
Mike also has been a devoted community servant, including roles as director of Food Distributors International, president of the Tennessee Wholesale Grocers Association, and a member of the Advisory Board of the Nashville Opera Association.
He has two grown children, three stepchildren, four grandchildren, and eight step-grandchildren. His wife, Joanne, was his best friend from childhood, and the two reconnected later in life, after Mike was divorced from his first wife. The couple has now been married for 37 years. When he was at Choate, Joanne was a student at Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, and the two would often serve as one another’s dates for school functions.
By Jana BRown
Jana Brown is a New Hampshire-based writer and editor.
’62
RH Susan Huberth Johns writes, “Biggest news is that I am remarried! I am now Susan Johns, Mrs. Richard A. Johns … Mrs. Rick Johns … goodness! I am still getting used to it! What fun!”
’63
RH Rozzie Chubb Davis writes, “Quiet time! I did have one granddaughter, one great-nephew, and one great-great-nephew all graduate from high school together. My granddaughter, Wilson, was Magna Cum Laude. My oldest nephew was the commencement speaker as a 1982 graduate of the Brookwood School himself. He now is the CEO of Oxford Industries based in Atlanta, which owns Lilly Pulitzer, Tommy Bahamas, Johnny Was, Jack Rogers, and Southern Tide. Amazing to have them all together for such an event. A third great-nephew graduated from Mountain Brook in Birmingham, Ala. His grandmother was my late sister, Victoria Chubb Wolsfelt, Class of ’59.”
Donna Dickenson writes, “Our vegetable patch, usually a source of satisfaction as well as healthy food, has become something of a trial this year. With temperatures rarely rising above 60 in the incessant north wind, corn and zucchini are definitely sulking. Ironically, the best weather we’ve had has been on our annual excursion to the Scottish Highlands, where we were sitting with a cold beer in 80-degree heat, overlooking Loch Linnhe and the ancient island of Lismore. My son, Anders Lustgarten, has just brought out his first novel (Three Burials) after a dozen plays. Theater attendances are still below normal in the aftermath of the pandemic, making life tough for playwrights. With good reviews from The Guardian and the Times, he hopes the novel might reach a wider audience.”
Penny Griffith Dix writes, “Dennis and I are looking forward to being in the Carolina mountains. The whole Dix family, all 20 of us, will gather to hike, play golf, eat, and most important, celebrate Dennis’s 80th birthday. We range in age from 8 to 80 … I love all three generations and what they bring to the gathering. Our plans after the summer include two trips this fall: connecting with our Canadian friends to explore some of the unique parts of the northeastern Canadian mainland in September, and in the middle of October spending four days in Maine with my first cousins and their spouses. We gather every two or three years at different parts of the country.”
Alice Chaffee Freeman writes, “We are mourning the loss of our son Alex, who died suddenly at home at the end of May. Castle and I seem to be slowly emerging from shock. I’m feeling better about Alex. I know he’s at peace.”
Margo Melton Nutt writes, “Still doing publicity for church events, Mother’s Day Plant Sale for the Friends of the Norwich Library, working on my own garden, and having fun visiting other people’s gardens for inspiration. There’s a loosely organized local group that promotes such visits called ‘Pardon My Garden.’ Adult beverages are often served along with fun socializing. Jean McBee Knox, Chris Murray McKee, Alice Chaffee Freeman, and I had a lovely luncheon at my house in May.”
Reeve Lindbergh Tripp writes, “I wish I had more exciting news, although I sometimes feel that no excitement is the best thing that happens in my life lately, with all the divisive political turmoil around us, as well as the troubling medical news from some of the people we have known and loved for many years. We are keeping things going here at the end of our old dirt road, feeding dogs and chickens and tending to the flower garden as much as time and energy permit (that’s Reeve) and keeping the woods in trim after storms and the winter season, and the hayfields mowed in summer (that’s Nat) and enjoying visits from family when they can get here.”
’64 RH Christie Thompson Sumner writes, “Members of the Rosemary Class of 1964 gathered in Vermont June 15 to 17 for a 60th reunion organized by Christie Sumner and Karen Browning. We were late to all our meals, a little rowdy, and had a wonderful time!”
1. David Hopkins ’60 and his wife, Rosemary, at the Lewis and Clark Discovery Center in Lewiston, Idaho.
2. Left to right: Lori and David Wilmoth ’65 dropping Rita and Jim Smith ’65 off at the cruise terminal in Sydney on Feb. 15.
3. Members of the Choate Class of 1962 in Lake George June 2017 – left to right: John McWilliams, Peter Miller, Terry Beaty, Joe Pawlak, Alex Goodwin, John Campbell, Steve Gilhuley, Nick Chinn, Deaver Brown.
4. Cathie and Ras Smith ’61 in June during their annual visit to Portofino.
5. Members of the Rosemary Class of ’64 – left to rightTop row: Christie Thompson Sumner, Molly Maddox Hyde, Susanne Jackson Miller, Karen Browning, Nancy Knowles, Jane Heroy Winn; Bottom row: Patty Jayson, Cindy Webb Hendrick, Sally Schaefer, Sam Barnes, Sherry Stevenson Griffith, Susan Heyn Billipp
’65 C Jim Smith and his wife, Rita, enjoyed a “bucket list” world cruise on the Viking Sky, leaving Los Angeles on January 6 and returning from London on May 6. While in Sydney, they enjoyed an evening with David Wilmoth and his wife, Lori. Having sold their single-family home two years ago, they’re enjoying their third-floor apartment in Golden, Colo., with mountain views from all windows and the balcony.
’65 RH Wesley Cullen Davidson and her husband, Sandy Davidson, celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in Paris and Belgium. They took a 12-day trip starting in Paris to view sites they missed before and going to Bruges, Haarlem, and Ghent to see art (Dutch painters). Wesley’s love of art history started at Rosemary Hall.
Julie Newhall writes, “In mid-May, my home congregation and I celebrated the 20th anniversary of my ordination as a Unitarian Universalist minister. It was a thrilling event: many of those present had been there 20 years earlier. I have happily served many fellowships and congregations over the years and been a guest minister at more, including four in New Zealand. For the past 13 years I have been, and continue to be, minister of the Unitarian Universalist Ocean County Congregation. The biggest surprise in all of this is seeing myself on YouTube.”
’66 C The San Francisco Giants organization invited Noel Hynd to speak to their season’s ticket holders at The Gotham Club at Oracle Park on May 29, just before a homestand against the New York Yankees. The topic was his book The Sputnik Season: 1957, which is about the final baseball season played in New York by the Giants.
Rod Walker writes, “Last year I sponsored a young couple from Ukraine, whose official residence is now my guest house. He obtained a commercial driver’s license and hired on as an over-the-road truck driver with her as the co-pilot. Since last November they have mostly been living out of the truck, they have been to 44 states, and they are financially self-sufficient. If anyone else is interested in sponsoring Ukrainians, feel free to contact me at rodswalker@gmail.com.”
’67 RH Mary Lou Lange writes, “I continue to keep very busy with my one-year-old puppy, Dovydas, a German Shepherd and Great Pyrenees mix. Working on the house, exercising, reading, spring skiing out west, and now camping with Dovydas on the Cape have been super. Searching for that meaningful ‘work’ niche amidst my pause from such valuable 35 years of clinical work. Holiday contacts with many Rosemarians.”
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1 Noel Hynd ’66 at The Gotham Club in Oracle Park, San Francisco — home of the San Francisco Giants.
2 Mary Lou Lange ’67 with her one-year-old German Shepherd/Great Pyrenees mix, Dovydas, in January.
3 Choaties got together for the 75th birthday of Doug Bryant ’67. His wife threw a surprise birthday party. From left to right are Dan Hunt, Doug Bryant, Bill Bryant ’59, Hank Bryant ’60, and Tony Childs ’68.
4 David Hill ’69 with the documentary film team Nomad Footprints (Tonny, David, Laisa and Frank), in Kenya in December 2023.
5 Julie Newhall ’65 celebrating the 20th anniversary of her ordination as a Unitarian Universalist minister
6 Merrick Murdock ’75 in her design studio
7 Christopher Greene ’74
Frances Schaefer Severance writes, “We are 75 this year, which is quite amazing. Grateful for every day and for lifelong friends. Living in South Dartmouth, Mass., with my husband, Bruce Severance, and would love to see anyone who may be near. Four children between us, seven grandchildren, and feeling very lucky. Still lots to do!”
’69 C David Hill writes, “I am currently a faculty member at Quinnipiac University’s Frank H. Netter School of Medicine. I joined the faculty in 2012 after spending a decade in the UK directing a national public health program. At Quinnipiac, I helped establish the Netter School, and I teach infectious diseases and public health to both medical students and undergraduates. My wife and I spent the fall semester (2023) on sabbatical in the highlands of Kenya, where I was making a documentary film on the district hospital with which our global health program has a long-term relationship. The goal of the documentary is to tell the story of the hospital through the voices and images of those who are patients and those who provide their care. We found a wonderful Kenyan film crew who successfully captured many hours of content. Now the challenge is to edit it! I would love to share the final product with the Choate Rosemary community, as I believe it will give excellent insight into medical care in a lower-middle-income country.”
1970s
’73 C Jim Campbell writes, “The Netflix series came out: Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street, based on my book Madoff Talks: Uncovering the Untold Story Behind the Most Notorious Ponzi Scheme in History.”
’73 RH Roberta Kirn writes, “Things have finally returned to semi-normal post-COVID in terms of singing, and I have resumed my work with bringing singing in community to as many settings as possible: leading workshops and community sings, getting people singing at staff retreats and at fundraisers. Basically getting people singing together to create a sense of connection wherever they might gather in a group — as we did at our 50th reunion. I am traveling again and would love to do more. Please get in touch to find out more.”
’74 C John de Jong writes, “After sharing a wonderful 50th reunion with classmates in May, I have been busy traveling as president of the World Veterinary Association to South Africa, Paris, Crete, and speaking at the United Nations with trips coming up to Austin, Calgary, Alberta, and the Hague.”
Jesse Bogdonoff Dean celebrated the birth of his first grandson, Theodore Jai Dev Bogdonoff, on February 28, 2024 to Jiji Jolly and Leonard Bogdonoff. Jesse then attended the 1974 50th class reunion lovefest with music, friends, and golden memories in May on the Choate campus and celebrated his 36th wedding anniversary on June 25 with the whole family in San Francisco.
Christopher Greene writes, “Sorry to miss our 50th. Pics looked great! Moved to Summerville, S.C. 68 years living in New England, and now finding out a heat wave isn’t four days over 90 degrees. It’s every day down here.”
’74 RH Kate Bigwood Atkinson writes, “After going through treatment for non-Hodgkins lymphoma last year, I wrote a book, BALD, which describes the critical days leading up to and following my stem cell transplant. Enhanced by observations and discoveries, powerful memories, and spiritual reflection, BALD has turned out to be a popular read for those who’ve been affected by cancer or not. The cover design had just come out when I attended the 50th reunion of my original class (although I graduated a year later due to spinal surgery) and now I’m delighted to announce that the book is available on Amazon.”
Jody Gelb writes, “Being at our 50th reunion was a joyous time. It was full of goodwill and gratitude and a huge thank you to Choate Rosemary Hall for all they did to welcome us. I have reconnected with classmates all year and I’m so grateful for these friendships.”
’75 C John Geoghegan writes, “I have enjoyed keeping up with numerous classmates, including Linda McCulloch, Cristian Edwards, Andres Edwards ’78, Joe Dryer, and Chip Lamb. My fourth non-fiction book, White Elephant Technology: 50 Crazy Inventions That Should Never Have Been Built and What We Can Learn from Them was published by The History Press in the U.S. in April. I am hard at work on my next book, which tells the true but little known story about 20 of the greatest adventurers they never taught us about in school. Lots of inspiring tales about men and women from all parts of the world and all walks of life. Please friend me on Facebook at John J. Geoghegan.”
Mark Vollmer writes, “Post-pandemic, I’m living on Shelter Island, N.Y., and going into the city three days per week. I’m working at New York Life Real Estate investors, where I head up the Appraisal and Architecture/Engineering Departments.”
John de Jong ’74 outside the Maisons-Alfort Veterinary School founded in 1765.
Roberta Kirn ’73 leading a song with the audience at a festival on Martha’s Vineyard.
Kate Bigwood Atkinson ’74 with her book, BALD
Wake Smith
’75 Climate Change
Can’t Wait
How does someone whose college major was East European Communist history and economics wind up as an expert on climate change, including teaching at Yale, publishing numerous papers, and writing a book about the topic?
“I was drawn then, as I am now, to study what I saw as the biggest issue of the time,” says Todd Wakelee “Wake” Smith ’75. “Then it was the cold war. Now, it’s climate change.”
Wake also used to be “a theater guy” — acting in several Choate productions and, while still an undergraduate at Yale, founding the National Theater for Children, which produces and presents educational theater for schools nationwide on topics ranging from financial literacy to environmental stewardship.
“After a few years of doing that,” he says, “I decided I needed formal business training.” He earned an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he met his future wife, Mary Anne Citrino. (“I looked across a classroom of 90 people,” he notes, “saw this woman, and married her less than a year later.”) After Harvard, Wake became a financial analyst for a film studio, served in executive roles in the commercial aviation industry, including as president of the flight training division of Boeing and the chief operating officer for Atlas Air, and held senior positions in private equity firms.
A father of three, all of whom went to Princeton, Wake found “every helicopter parent excuse to be there during one glorious year when they were all there together.” At Princeton’s Bendheim Center for Finance, he and Mary Anne offered a short non-credit undergraduate course on private equity, a course he subsequently reconfigured and reprised as a semester-long college seminar at Yale.
As he began wrapping up his business career, Wake became aware of geoengineering — a range of ways to intervene on a large scale in the Earth’s natural systems (e.g., oceans, soils, and atmosphere) to counteract the effects of climate change. “I began to educate myself,” he says. “I decided that the climate information I was studying was much more important than the finance I was teaching. I wanted this field to be a second career, not just a hobby.”
He read everything he could find, developed a cohort of academics who could guide him, and published his first academic paper on solar geoengineering in 2018. For the following year, Wake proposed a Yale college seminar called Geoengineering in Response to Climate Change, which he taught in 2019, 2021, and 2022. When COVID-19 intervened in 2020, he took the year away from teaching and wrote a book based on his course: Pandora’s Toolbox: The Hopes and Hazards of Climate Intervention, published in 2022 by Cambridge University Press.
Now an official member of the Yale faculty as a lecturer in the School of the Environment, Wake teaches a graduate-level course called Geoengineering in the Context of Climate Overshoot (He is also a senior fellow at the MossavarRahmani Center for Business and Government.) Like his book, the course examines the current realities of climate change and the hopes and hazards of climate intervention technologies. Last October, he gave a presentation on his work, entitled “Overshoot and Everything After,” to students at the Kohler Environmental Center.
Wake is focused particularly on a technology called solar radiation management — using specialized aircraft to create an artificial aerosol cloud in Earth’s stratosphere that could have a similar temporary cooling effect as when volcanos emit aerosol particles, curbing global warming until emissions could be controlled. The idea comes with risks and may not stand up to further scientific scrutiny or to political and social forces. Wake says, it is “a terrible idea whose time may come nonetheless.”
While we must rapidly decarbonize to maintain any hope of keeping temperatures from rising beyond 1.5°C (2.7°F) above preindustrial levels, Wake notes that if we decarbonize too slowly we could find — for example — that extreme heat has rendered agriculture no longer viable in large swaths of the world. “When we get to net zero, the temperature stabilizes at its peak. We don’t just suddenly cool down again,” he explains. “If we get there too slowly, we’re stuck with those high-temperature problems for centuries.” What could help, he says, is slightly turning down the intensity of the sun; less energy coming into the climate system will cool the Earth a little bit.
Wake is particularly concerned about the potential collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) which drives the gulf stream that keeps Europe temperate; a shutdown of the AMOC would change weather all over the globe. “We have way more climate change coming than the general public is aware of,” he says. “At the rate we are going, the Paris accords will not save us. I suspect that 30 years from now, people will want this tool available even if we choose not to use it.”
By RhEa hiRshman
Rhea Hirshman is a freelance writer based in New Haven.
’75 RH Merrick Murdock writes, “Looking forward to attending next year’s 50th reunion! Enjoying designing and creating handcrafted jewelry for Adorn to be Worn and also engaging with like-minded and dedicated people in helping establish a foundation and program to assist women recovering from addiction and trauma to lead happy, vital lives.”
’76 C David Beecher was with Michael Breed ’81 (a nationally known golf instructor, CBS golf analyst, and SiriusXM morning talkshow host of A New Breed of Golf) and his assistant Greg Ducharme at the Titleist factory in Massachusetts. Michael and David were talking about golf and hockey and discovered that they both had attended Choate.
Rob Kilgore writes, “Recently sold our waterfront apartment in Brooklyn and moved north to Burlington, Vt., in search of more space and a climate-friendly community. Still working as the Director of Speech Technology for Amazon Games and having a ton of fun. Our new place has enough space for all the music and studio and gear — sadly, it’s mostly for my own amusement these days.”
’76 RH Donna Booth Quinlan writes, “Still living in the Burlington, Vt., area since I graduated from UVM in 1980. I retired after teaching K-8 physical education for 20 years in 2018. Both my children also live and work in the area and have provided me with four beautiful grandsons, who fill up my week doing everything from skiing, swimming, biking to any other activities they grow to enjoy. The last couple of years I have been hiking all the 115 4,000-foot peaks in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York. I just have 13 left in the Adirondacks, which is my goal this year.”
’78 Pamela D’Arc writes, “I was terribly saddened by the news of Peter Connick’s untimely death, and wish I had been in New York to be at the remembrance. I have many fun and funny memories of times with Pete. I continue to cherish my years at Choate and the many friendships I made and still have today. Life remains busy — 2023 was a memorable year as both of our kids got married. I continue to work full-time in residential real estate at Compass in N.Y. and spend time in beautiful Madison, Conn.”
1980s
’80 Brian Harris writes, “I have just published my third collection of short plays, titled Last of the Red Hot Robots: Four One-Act Sci-Fi Comedies. It is available on Amazon.”
Andrew Karp writes, “After nearly a generation of working in my adopted home town of Chicago (albeit with a short-ish detour to Washington, DC), I am back working in NY, where I am a partner at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. (Life in NY still moves too fast for me!)”
Michael Lewyn writes, “At Touro Law Center (where I teach) I was promoted from Associate Professor to full Professor.”
Alan Reid writes, “I enjoy catching up regularly with Bungalow Fellows (now an academic term) Tony Forstmann and Chris Ryan. John Duncan, Jamie O’Donnell, and Jon Moffly have chaperoned me through concerts of late … what to do without my dear friends from the iconic Class of 1980?”
’81 Tom Colt writes, “I’m finishing my seventh year working as a college counselor at Shanghai American School. My wife, Megan, and I have had the opportunity to travel this past year to Thailand,
Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Kyrgyzstan, and Laos. In December ’23, I went to a dinner for Choate parents and alumni in Shanghai, where I met Choate Rosemary Hall’s Chief Enrollment Manager, Jeff Beaton. A fun event for all involved!”
Chambers Boyd Moore writes, “I now have a second home in NYC and am there often. ’82s who are nearby and would like to get together for lunch, drink, etc., contact me at cbmoore@rwbaird.com.”
’83 Cammie Phillips Hunt writes, “My 2024 triathlon season got off to a strong start at the Sebago Lake Sprint, taking 1st F55-59 and 4th overall female. I’ll be racing the Olympic distance at the USAT National Age-Group Championships this September in Atlantic City. One day I hope to toe the line with Ed Keating and Peter Sachner!”
’84 Bob Lord writes, “I just passed my two-year anniversary working for the federal government. I’m helping lead CISA’s Secure by Design initiative to make software safer. Still based in San Francisco.”
George Stein writes, “I am excited to have started a free lacrosse program for boys and girls in the Compton area of Los Angeles. So appreciative of Bill and Cristina Ryan, Noel and Maria Williams, and Greg and Francoise Williams, who have supported this endeavor.”
’85 Stephanie Baker writes, “Excited to share news that my book, Punishing Putin: Inside the Global Economic War to Bring Down Russia, will be published by Scriber/Simon & Schuster and Mudlark/HarperCollins in the U.K. It takes readers into the frantic backroom deliberations that led to a whole new era of economic statecraft and radically rearranged global alliances, influencing the world order for generations to come. I have vivid memories
John J. Geoghegan ’75 signing his most recent book at a June author’s talk in California.
From left to right: Greg Ducharme, David Beecher ’76, and Michael Breed ’81.
Old roommates Jamie Walter ’80 and Pat Rosato ’80 meet at the Lakeland, Fla., air show. Jamie brought his Phoenix motor glider to display.
of studying Russian history at Choate in my final year, so you might say the seed for the book was planted back then.”
Courtney Ingraffia Barton writes, “I was recently promoted to Vice President, Assistant General Counsel, Global Privacy & Data Governance at Marriott International, where I lead the Global Privacy Office and advise on all issues related to data governance, including AI. I plan to see Katie Prezzano Durfee, Deb Leckonby, and Kristin Beeman Dunning in Maine this year. I also recently caught up with Abby Messinger, in DC, and Kate Roosevelt and Rob Erdmann at our 35th Colby reunion, and we are all looking forward to our reunion next year so hope we have a great turnout!
Kara Thompson writes, “I am so excited that my daughter, Juliana Dlabal, will attend Choate as a fourth former this year! I look forward to many trips back to Choate in the next three years!”
’86 David Dinielli writes, “After a handful of years in DC, I’ve relocated to Palm Springs, Calif., which, for those of you who don’t know, is basically Barbieland for middle-aged gay men. I continue to teach at the Yale Law School, though my commute now will be a bit longer than it was before. Classmate visits to Palm Springs are encouraged, in part so that y’all can share the enthusiasm I feel for my ‘one’-of-a-kind new address, which is 1111 Highway 111, Unit 111.”
Jerry Farrell is spending this fall running for State Representative in Connecticut’s 85th House District, which is much of downtown Wallingford, including the Choate Rosemary Hall campus.
Peter Finfrock writes, “I’m taking an alumni summer session on Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost taught by faculty member David Loeb on Zoom with classmates David Dinielli and Emily Whitmore. I’ve been in contact with Deann Frank and Laura Kyropoulos, who have hit it off and are both living in the Bay Area.”
Jordan Patt-Rappaport stopped by campus to catch up with Stephen Farrell. “One of the highlights of my time at Choate was ‘American Studies,’ a teamtaught class spanning American History and American Literature,” he writes. “The satisfaction of hearing that fifth formers the year behind me were reading my Huck Finn essay contributed to my decision to pursue a research career (albeit in economics rather than history or literature).”
’88 Alison Hunt Perruso has retired after a nearly 30-year teaching career. She and her husband have relocated to Boise, Idaho, where they are looking forward to having many new adventures.
’89 Susanna Howe writes, “After a decade in the suburbs, we are moving to the Hudson Valley! Excited for a new view. Find me if you’re around. We will be in Old Chatham after August.”
1 Donna Booth Quinlan ’76 — A winter hike atop Mt. Mansfield in Vermont.
2 Halfway between Stanford and Menlo College Alan Reid and John Duncan (both Class of 1980) meet again.
3 Jesse Bogdonoff Dean ’74 celebrated the birth of his first grandson, Theodore Jai Dev Bogdonoff (photo taken in March).
4 Choate Class of 1982 roommates Alex von Cramm (in hat) and Adam Greene, and Adam’s wife Martha, met up for a ski vacation in Chamonix this past Christmas.
5 Jamie O’Donnell ’80 with his daughter, Honor O’Donnell ’22, on Lion Rock above Hong Kong, June 2024.
6 Stephanie Baker ’85
Amy Quinn
Traveling with Intention
Amy herself is an avid traveler, who has spent a month in Medellín, Colombia, exploring rehabbed neighborhoods and contemplating the history of the city. She’s also ventured to the Antarctic Peninsula, where she witnessed the power of massive icebergs and the wild beauty of penguins living in extreme circumstances. Amy most recently visited Costa Rica, where she walked the wild beaches and contemplated the poetry of David Whyte, a former naturalist whose work is known for its “conversational nature of reality.”
In 2022, Amy and her husband joined a remote working group living in Valencia, Spain, for a month. The residency allowed professionals to share a different lifestyle, schedule, and alternate way of balancing life and work.
Amy’s own career has been anything but linear, although it has been defined by the ideas of hospitality, goodwill, and reciprocity, concepts she says were reinforced in her three years at Choate. Originally from New Jersey, Amy had never thought to attend Choate, although her father, Henry G. Stifel Jr. ’46, was an alum. But when she did an overnight visit as a prospective student, Amy found the school “warm, friendly, and engaging; I knew it was the place for me.”
At Choate, Amy was a tour guide, history enthusiast, and multi-sport athlete, a member of the inaugural swim team. The squad was coached by Bob Burns, whom Amy remembers as a wonderful mentor. “The teachers, coaches, and administration were so dedicated to the student body,” she recalls. Her daughter, Kaelyn Quinn, graduated in 2012.
As a child, Amy discovered a love of travel and immersing herself in new cultures. She found lifelong friends on Bucknell University’s study abroad program to the city of Freiburg im Breisgau, in the southwestern corner of Germany. Fast forward to early 2014, and Amy was grieving the losses of her father and of a beloved German couple who had become like second parents to her over the years.
Thinking about travel as a regenerative experience rather than a destination-based exercise can be transformative. It is on this principle that Amy Quinn ’80, P ’12 has built a successful business.
“When you’re able to step away from what’s comfortable, the narrowness broadens, the paradigm shifts, and we’re able to see ourselves better,” says Amy, who lives in Denver, Colo. “When you land in a new place, you’re really paying attention.”
Following the path of a life that has included technology, extensive travel, embracing the practice of meditation, and stints as a fundraising consultant, Amy founded Spirit Road Travel five years ago. Spirit Road specializes in creating experiential itineraries for small groups and 50-plus individuals passionate about culture, active experiences, and giving back to the communities they visit. “The benefits of travel are magnified when shared,” she suggests.
“Traveling with intention means knowing why you’re choosing a particular destination,” Amy explains, noting that trips can be both active and cerebral. “It’s being aware of where you are and pausing to let a sense of place seep in.” ’80
“When I considered what they had given me, it was all about hospitality,” she says. “It was about listening and valuing the person in front of you, celebrating around the table. That ethos of valuing the individual has always been with me, but this reinforced it.”
Today, in addition to facilitating group travel, Amy works with individuals, to help them plan intentional journeys. Overall, her mission is to create goodwill in the world through travel and to help her clients actualize their travel dreams. While adventure is not a requirement, Amy explains these trips are not devoid of risk-taking, though the definition of that is broad.
“Adventure travel can have a physical component,” she explains, “but it’s also about tasting food when you don’t know what the ingredients are, or it can be about walking through unfamiliar neighborhoods. You’re paying attention, and that feeds into being more aware of your life. You come out on the other side more tolerant, more open, more flexible. The traits we find through traveling are helpful for how we live our lives.”
By Jana BRown Jana Brown is a New Hampshire-based writer and editor.
Cammie
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1 George Stein ’84 coaching a future lacrosse player.
2 In June, Libby (Applebaum) Harrison ’87 (top left) and her daughter Stephanie traveled to the Douro Valley in Portugal and enjoyed wine tasting with classmate Stephanie (Germain) Vinokour (top right) and her daughter Nathalie.
3 Jordan Patt-Rappaport ’86 (left) reminisces with former Choate Rosemary Hall faculty member Stephen Farrell.
Peter Finfrock ’86 on his way to his northern home arranged to meet up with classmate Samantha Whitcraft.
This past June, several members of the Class of 1985 embarked on an exciting expedition. Group leader Anne Davis fulfilled her lifelong dream of reaching the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro, the highest freestanding mountain in the world and commonly referred to as the Roof of Africa, via the Machame Route. She was accompanied by Jennifer Pye Gebbie and Robert Geary. What an adventure! Left to right: Robert, Anne, Jennifer.
Sarah Handyside Daily ’98 climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), reaching the summit in a blizzard on April 11, 2024.
“I was watching the solar eclipse, and without realizing it, wore the Choate hat I got 14 years ago at reunion. Hope everybody along the path got a good glimpse. Shout out to all my McBee Bluesers!” –MIKE MINADEO ’90
1990s
’90 Mike Minadeo writes, “I was watching the solar eclipse, and without realizing it, wore the Choate hat I got 14 years ago at reunion. Hope everybody along the path got a good glimpse. Here in Southern California we got about 60 percent coverage. Shout out to all my McBee Bluesers!”
Christina Chen Paul met fellow 1990 classmates Hannah (Lintner) Hickey, Jeff Hickey, Kossouth Bradford, and Liz (Caputo) Bashawaty in New Haven for dinner. She writes, “Needless to say, not much has changed … still an amazing time with great friends, food, drinks, and lots of laughs!”
’91 Anthony Marino writes, “After over 10 years living in the SF/Bay Area, my family and I are moving back east. We’ll be living in Rye, N.Y., and I’ll be working at L Catterton. Really excited to be closer to Choate and so many classmates I haven’t seen since we lived in San Francisco. Looking forward to being closer to campus and old friends!”
’93 Amy Cohn Crawford writes, “I’m excited to share that my daughter, Molly, was accepted into the Class of 2026 and will begin her fifth form year at Choate in September.”
Jill Santopietro Panall writes, “My family and I headed up to the Burlington, Vt., area to be in the path of totality for the 2024 solar eclipse, hosted for the weekend by the always-fabulous Jemima Talbot and her family. We also got to visit with our awesome fellow Boston-area friend Julie Lippert and her family while there. Nobody looked directly into the sun, as all of our Choate science teachers will be glad to know.”
Kate Wilson’s debut novel, Prospects, has been published by Cinnamon Press. Prospects is about the immense magnetism of California and
its many false promises, and the ways in which Hollywood commodifies, fragments, and mutilates dreams and bodies. It has been endorsed by model and activist Lily Cole, director Sarah Gavron, and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy.
’94 Erica Kraus went to Brazil in April with Abdi Nazemian, where he was a part of the Bienal do Livro Bahia — celebrating one of his (many) awardwinning novels! His newest book — Desert Echoes — is being released in September, and Abdi recently won the Lambda Literary Award (for the second time!) for his last book, Only This Beautiful Moment.
’95 Andrea Sims writes, “I have been promoted to the rank of Professor at The Ohio State University, Department of Linguistics, and will be on research sabbatical in 2024-25.”
’98 Noah Charney has been busy with various media projects. He released his 20th book, The Thefts of the Mona Lisa, and teaches online courses for Yale, the Smithsonian, and the National Gallery UK. You can take his video courses as part of the Great Courses series and listen for free to his BBC series, China’s Stolen Treasures. Aside from art history and art crime, in 2023 he was named Slovenia’s Ambassador of Tourism. He’s been promoting his adopted homeland for years now, hosting the official national podcast (Feel Slovenia) and appearing in videos. He happily lives in the Slovenian Alps with his two daughters, wife, and hairless dog, Hubert van Eyck.
’99 Sean Thomas is the Clinical Director of the Georgetown JAG Physical Therapy Clinic in Brooklyn, N.Y. He is also the Director of Community Engagement and Inclusion for over 145 offices. He was featured as a Power Player in the Spring edition of Industry magazine for 2024.
TOP Barclay Crenshaw ’90 and Rex Flodstrom ’90 at the Chicago stop on Barclay’s “Open Channel” tour.
BOTTOM Left to right: Jemima Talbot, Jill Santopietro Panall, and Julie Lippert – all Class of 1993 in Vermont on April 8, 2024.
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2 Sean Thomas, Matthew Lyn, Parag Shah, and Doug Chang (all class of 1999) linked up in Montego Bay, Jamaica, for their own version of their 25 year reunion.
3 Kate Wilson ’93 holding her debut novel, Prospects.
4 Random encounter at a Boston College hockey game. A few generations of Choate hockey captains. Left to right: Ben Darche ’24, Angela Ruggiero ’98, Mathieu Darche ’96, Ray Diffley, Liza Diffley ’19.
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Left to right: Neal James Sullesta ’99, Richard Farmer ’90, Nicole Miller, Lena Sullesta Jessen, Mary Abrams Beck, and Adrian Sullesta ’94.
Abdi Nazemian and Erica Kraus, both Class of 1994, in Brazil.
2000s
’01 Grace Koestner Clark writes, “In May, I graduated from NYU with my Ph.D. in Communicative Sciences and Disorders. It was a long road (six years!) but I’ve now settled into my job as an assistant professor at William Paterson University. Using participatory research methods, I plan to address the priorities of minimally speaking autistic children and adolescents and increase the acceptance of neurodivergent individuals in society.”
Jay Lanstein writes, “I recently attended the Council for Economic Education Diamond Gala in Manhattan. In CEE’s first year of their national Economics Challenge, Choate’s team took home the championship. Coached by Ted Hartsoe, my teammates included Steve Baldassarri, Tim Ganser, and Zack Martin ’02. I had the opportunity to talk about the experience with the event’s host and CNBC anchor Steve Leisman. Raj Agashiwala and I met in Massachusetts for the only weekend with enough snow to take our kids sledding, along with some offseason frisbee golf.”
’03 Lydia Hawkins writes, “After 24 years of living away from home, my wife and I and our two children (Oliver and Poppy) made the move to Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. We’re excited to be back on the east coast and looking forward to reconnecting!”
’05 Alex Zbrozek joined OpenAI as Senior Litigation Counsel in May.
’07 Jonny Allen writes, “I’m a member of Sandbox Percussion, which was recently awarded a 2024 Avery Fisher Career Grant, the first percussion ensemble to be given this honor. We joined our fellow awardees in the Jerome L. Greene Performance Space at WQXR studios.”
’08 Bledar “Blake” Zenuni (also known as “Blade” to his Choate class) is now a data scientist and adjunct lecturer at Georgetown. He married Frances McCarthy in 2021 at President Lincoln’s Cottage in DC. The couple attended the 15th reunion at Choate in May 2023. On April 12, 2024, which was also International Day of Human Space Flight, they welcomed their first child, Blake Robert Zenuni, also known as “Buzz” (a nod to Buzz Aldrin and Buzz Lightyear). Buzz’s traditional Albanian name is Bledar, meaning “light bringer,” and his traditional Luo Kenyan name is Otieno, meaning “born in the evening.”
2010s
’10 Max Firke recently felt nostalgic for his experiences with helping to found Choate’s interschool GSA gathering, as this year he launched a similar, semi-annual event open to all middle- and high-school students in Maryland’s largest school district. After spending four years teaching high school science in Montgomery County Public Schools, Max will be starting a new chapter teaching middle school at the Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Md. He continues to educate and advocate for LGBTQ+ students and families and is always looking for new collaborators in this work.
’12 Catherine McClure writes, “I recently defended my Ph.D. in Ecology at Utah State University studying predator-prey interactions in aquatic communities. I will start a position as a postdoctoral researcher at Colorado State University soon, researching the effects of flow management on riparian vegetation along the Green and Yampa rivers.”
2020s
’21 Sabrina Carlier writes, “Having graduated from Atlantic Acting School’s program for both primary and advanced actor training, I will be kicking off my final year at NYU with Tisch’s Playwriting in London Program. Outside of my studies, I was recently appointed Associate Artistic Director of The Elif Collective, a theater company that creates warm, saturated, and accessible performance spaces in NYC.”
Raj Agashiwala and Jay Lanstein (both Class of 2001) met in Massachusetts for the only weekend with enough snow to take their kids sledding, along with some off-season frisbee golf.
TOP Grace (Koestner) Clark ’01 with her husband, Kristopher Clark, in Washington Square Park after NYU’s Doctoral Convocation ceremony.
BOTTOM LEFT Lydia Hawkins ’03 and her family celebrating Poppy’s 4th birthday at their new home in Moncton, NB, Canada.
BOTTOM RIGHT Octavio Sandoval ’06 started his career at Illumen Capital as Director of Investments in November 2021 and was recently promoted to Principal. He is now based in NYC and resides on the Upper West Side.
Max Firke recently felt nostalgic for his experiences with helping to found Choate’s interschool GSA gathering, as this year he launched a similar, semi-annual event open to all middleand high-school students in Maryland’s largest school district.
CLASSNOTES | New Beginnings
1 Caroline Potolicchio ’10 married Devin Drewyer on March 23, 2024 in Bethesda, Md. Choate guests in attendance included: Front row - left to right: Anna Graham, Katie Sundberg, Lindsay O’Brien ’10, Celia Landesberg, Maddy Norton, Caroline and Devin, Alex Spinnato, Admission/Head Football Coach LJ Spinnato, Rence Coassin ’06; Back row - left to right: Jamie Kirkpatrick ’66, Toby Armour.
2 Lauren Montgomery ’02 married Andrew McLendon in Corona del Mar, Calif., on April 13. Classmate Stefanie Fisher-Pinkert officiated and classmates Jos’lyn Vance, Charlotte Rocker, Barrie Kreinik ’03, and Sarah Rathbone were in attendance.
3 Mark Osborne ’02 married Katelyn Bourgoin on May 4, 2024 at the Belleview Inn in Florida. Classmate Bo Leland was in attendance.
4 Bledar Blake Zenuni ’08 and Frances McCarthy in Holy Matrimony at President Lincoln’s cottage, Washington, DC in June of 2021.
5 Wedding of Danielle Adler ’11 to Spencer Sherrill – Classmates in attendance from left to right: Sameer Patel, Halley Cruice, Zach Manasia, Nicole (Adler) Mas, Danielle, Spencer (a Hotchkiss grad), Christina (Montesi) Pusar, Alexandra Friedman, Morgan Ballengee, Will Tenney ’10, and Miranda Martini ’13.
1 Brian Borden ’07 and his wife, Margot, welcome Belinda Regina Borden to the Choate Community! Born on March 27, she is the first daughter in the Borden clan after 22 years and 14 boys in a row.
2 Alex Tenney ’11 and Max Katzenstein ’11 welcomed their second daughter, Lane Tenney Katzenstein, on March 28, 2024. Also pictured is older sister Grey Tenney Katzenstein (age 3).
3 Samuel Chao ’04 and his wife, Jee Eun Park, welcomed their fourth child, Aiden Chao, on April 6, 2024. Jamie, Serena, and Alexis are proud older sisters!
4 Danielle Ng ’11 and Tyler welcomed their bundle of joy, Elodie Emma McEwan, on April 4, 2024.
5 Tansy Peplau Tufts ’07 welcomed her second baby, William James, in mid-February. He’s already in 9 month clothing! Pictured are Amelia (3 years old) and William (3 months) cuddling together. Tansy will be starting an ABSN program in the fall to switch careers from computing to nursing! To be completed in early 2026.
6 Kashi Elliott ’09 and Rohan Sahai ’09 welcomed Hendrix Ziggy Elliott Sahai in January 2024.
7 Sara Shapiro Dishell ’06 welcomed Micah Charles Dishell on September 26, 2023. He was born six weeks early after a 7-week hospital stay and is now thriving!
8 Hilary Copp Kennedy ’07 and Kreagan Kennedy ’10 welcomed Jackson Moore Kennedy on April 22 in London.
IN MEMORIAM | Remembering Those We Have Lost
Alumni and Alumnae
’44 C Thomas U. Chace, 96, an executive of engineering firms, died March 24, 2024 in West Jordan, Utah. Born in New York City, Tom came to Choate in 1942; he was a Campus Cop and in the Band. During World War II, he was in the Navy V-12 program at Dartmouth, where he later earned two degrees. He worked for Great Northern Paper Co. in Maine, Wyman Gordon Co. in Grafton, Mass., and Martin Marietta in Torrance, Calif., where he was CEO. While at Wyman Gordon, he was part of the team that built the SR71 Blackbird reconnaissance jet. In retirement, he built his family’s homes and enjoyed carving duck decoys and owning classic automobiles. He leaves his wife, Lenell Chace; five children; nine grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
’45 C William D. Thompson, 96, a retired executive of metal manufacturing firms, died February 13, 2024 in Juno Beach, Fla. Born in New Haven, Bill came to Choate in 1943; he played club sports and was a Campus Cop. After military service in the Pacific, he earned a business degree from the University of Connecticut. Bill had a decades-long career in sales at Wallingford Steel, Allegheny Ludlum, and Plymouth Tube. He enjoyed sailing, reading, traveling, and watching UConn sports. He leaves five children, including William Thompson Jr. ’77; and six grandchildren. A brother-in-law, James Griffin ’51, also attended Choate.
’47 C Edgar G. M. Lansbury, 94, a film and Broadway producer, died May 2, 2024. Born in London, Edgar came to Choate in 1942; he won a School athletic award. His theatrical career included producing the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Subject Was Roses. In 2007, he received the John Houseman Award in recognition of his work that fostered classical actors. Among his productions was the 1974 revival of Gypsy, which starred his sister, Angela Lansbury. In his later years, Edgar turned to painting and sculpture,
studying drawing and painting at the Otis Art Institute and UCLA. He leaves his wife, Louise Peabody; and five children. His twin brother, the late Bruce Lansbury, also attended Choate.
’49 C Richard R. Warren, 93, president of an appraisal firm, died January 18, 2024. Born in White Plains, N.Y., Dick came to Choate in 1945; he lettered in squash and track. He attended Washington and Lee University but interrupted his studies to serve in the Army in the Korean War, finishing his degree in 1957. Dick was owner and President of Consolidated Appraisal, Inc., which performed more appraisals of residential contents for insurance purposes than any other firm in the country. He enjoyed hiking and tennis, and for years was on the Alumni Board of Directors of Washington and Lee. He leaves two daughters.
’51 C Benjamin C. Fortson, 91, an oil company executive, died May 19, 2024. Born in Fort Worth, Texas, Ben was at Choate for one year; he was in the Western Club. After serving in the Army, he earned a business degree at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. Ben formed the Fortson Oil Co. in the early 1960s and drilled wells all over the country. He was active in the community, heading the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. He leaves his wife, Kay Fortson; three daughters; 11 grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
’53 C Thomas Harris, 89, an engineer, died December 12, 2023 in Edgewater, Md. Born in Providence, Tom came to Choate in 1948; he lettered in wrestling and was Vice President of the Weather Bureau. He was with Bell Helicopter Co. in Fort Worth, Texas, for many years. Tom was an avid boatsman (on water or ice), woodworker, reader, and handyman. He leaves his wife, Irene Harris; four children; four stepchildren; 10 grandchildren; nine stepgrandchildren; one great-grandchild; and 12 step-great-grandchildren.
’53 RH Winifred Schaefer Chesley, 89, active in the community, died February 28, 2024. Born in New York City, Winkie, as she was known, came to Rosemary Hall in 1949; she was head of the Dance Committee and a goalie on the hockey team. Winkie was the longtime bookkeeper for the Wilton (Conn.) Community Assistance Fund and volunteered with Fairfield County Hospice, Meals on Wheels, and the Wilton Ambulance Corps. She enjoyed sailing and fishing. She leaves six children, 11 grandchildren, two step-grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.
’54 C John J. Selig, 87, a real estate executive, died April 11, 2024. Born in New York City, Jack came to Choate in 1952. He played clarinet in the Orchestra and Band, and was in the Chess, Bridge, Glee, and Choral clubs. Jack spent more than 40 years in the real estate industry, first in commercial leasing and then in commercial sales. An active environmentalist, he was involved in nonprofits to protect rivers and streams. He leaves two children, Kathryn Brown ’83 and John Selig ’86; and five grandchildren.
’55 C Henry J. Tosi Jr., 87, a retired teacher, died April 26, 2024 in Scarborough, Maine. Born in Montreal, Henry came to Choate in 1952; he was Business Manager of the Press Club and was in St. Andrew’s Cabinet. After graduating from Bowdoin, he was a science and computer teacher at South Portland (Maine) High School; he also coached football. Henry later became a lobsterman and volunteered at Portland International Jetport. He leaves several cousins.
’56 C Robert M. Shields Jr., 85, a geologist, died February 22, 2024 in Palm Beach, Fla. Born in New York City, Bob came to Choate in 1953; he lettered in hockey and was in the Cum Laude Society, the Glee Club, and the Mineral Club. After earning degrees from Dartmouth and MIT, he joined the Army’s Engineer Corps in San Francisco and earned an MBS from Stanford. After working as an analyst for Paine Webber and Morgan Stanley, he established the Piedmont
Mining Co., one of the first gold mining companies in the East. A Mason, he enjoyed playing the piano, fishing, and ice hockey. He leaves two daughters, two grandchildren, and two siblings. Edwin Ward Smith, 86, a commercial banker, died May 11, 2024. Born in Camden, NJ, Ward came to Choate in 1953; he was in the Cum Laude Society, the Glee Club, and the Maiyeros, and won School prizes in debate, public speaking, and public affairs. After earning degrees from Harvard, he had a 44-year career in banking, at First National City Bank and the Bank of New York. Ward also had a lengthy career tutoring immigrant high school students in New York and as an auctioneer. He also was on the board of trustees of Bates College. A lover of poetry, he organized poetry readings and collected first editions of 20th century poets. He leaves his wife, Carolyn Smith; two sons; and four grandchildren.
’57 C Daniel Burke II, 85, the owner of two heavy-industry firms, died February 24, 2024 in Cleveland, Ohio. Born in New York City, Dan came to Choate in 1955; he lettered in hockey and won a School award for practical mechanics. After graduating from Hamilton College, where he was captain of the hockey team, he served in the Army, then moved to Cleveland. There, he started two companies that focused on repairing heavy industry electric motors: B&P and Burke Electric. Dan enjoyed skating, golf, music, and innovative technology. He leaves his wife, Pamela Burke; three children; three stepdaughters; eight grandchildren; three stepgrandchildren; and a great-grandson. His brother, the late Coleman Burke ’55, also attended Choate.
’58 C J. Gardiner Dodd, 83, an educator, died February 25, 2024 in Charleston, S.C. Born in New York City, Gardiner came to Choate in 1954; he was in the Cum Laude Society and the Altar Guild, and was on the Sixth Form Tutoring Committee. After earning degrees from Princeton and Wesleyan, he was the Headmaster of King School in Stamford, Conn., followed by heading the O’Neal
An enthusiastic and prolific amateur photographer, Mike Harris traveled worldwide making photos that were published in a coffee-table book. He was also active in the community, and he and his wife, Sally, were named Citizens of the Year by the Greenwich Rotary Club.
’59
School in Pinehurst, N.C., and serving as Associate Headmaster of PorterGaud School in Charleston. He enjoyed tennis, golf, and keeping up with current events. He leaves his wife, Christina Dodd; a daughter; and a brother.
’59 C Wilmot L. “Mike” Harris, 83, an attorney, died June 6, 2024, in Greenwich, Conn. Born in Wheeling, W. Va., Mike came to Choate in 1956; he was Sports Editor of The Choate News. After earning degrees from Washington and Lee University and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, he was a trusts and estates attorney with Ivey, Barnum & O’Mara in Greenwich for 51 years. An enthusiastic and prolific amateur photographer, Mike traveled worldwide making photos that were published in a coffee-table book. He was also active in the community, and he and his wife, Sally, were named Citizens of the Year by the Greenwich Rotary Club. Besides Sally, he leaves two daughters and two siblings.
Colby Stilson Jr., 83, a retired banker, died May 9, 2024 in St. Marys, Ga. Born in New York City, Colby came to Choate in 1955; he was in the Current History Club and the Altar Guild. After graduating from St. Lawrence University, he was a Vice President for Chemical Bank (later JP Morgan Chase) for 38 years. Colby volunteered for many community organizations, including the board of St. Mary’s Hospital. He leaves two
children, five grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. His father, the late Colby Stilson 1921 and an uncle, the late Judson Stilson 1922, also attended Choate.
’60 C William M. Heyn, 81, the owner of a plastics firm, died February 18, 2024. Born in Chicago, Bill came to Choate in 1957; he lettered in football, basketball, and lacrosse and was Business Manager of The Brief and Manager of the Golden Blues. After earning degrees from Stanford and Northwestern, he joined the Navy and served in Vietnam, retiring as a Lieutenant. Bill worked for Continental Can Co. in Stamford, Conn., before starting his own plastics firm, Polystar Packaging. He was awarded several patents for plastic packaging and manufacture. An avid sportsman, he founded New Canaan Winter Club Girls Hockey; he also enjoyed sailing. He leaves his wife, Jodie Heyn; eight grandchildren, and three sisters, including Susan Billipp ’64.
Whipple Van Ness Jones Jr., 81, active in Florida government, died March 6, 2024, in Tallahassee. Born in St. Louis, Mo., Van came to Choate in 1956; he was in the Current History Club and on the board of The Brief. After earning degrees from the University of Miami, he held several positions in Florida, including in the Department of State and the Division of Corporations. He later ran the state office of U.S. Sen. Richard Stone and was Director of Florida’s Division of
Pari-Mutuel Wagering. Van served on the boards of the YMCA, United Way, and the Board of Accountancy. He leaves his wife, Maryann Jones; four children; 11 grandchildren; and a great-grandchild. An uncle, the late Frank Jones 1931, attended Choate, as did a nephew, James Oakes ’73, and three cousins, Linda McCulloch ’75, Sheila McCullough ’81, and the late Robert McCulloch ’54.
’63 C Charles Anthony “Tony” Moraff, 78, a clothing manufacturer, died March 8, 2024. Born in New York City, Tony came to Choate in 1959; he was in the Art Club and played drums in the Band and the Intruders rock band. After earning degrees from Penn, he was a clothing manufacturer, owning a business for many years, where he was a mentor to children in the neighborhood. Besides drumming, which he enjoyed for his lifetime, Tony liked cooking, swimming in the ocean, and jazz.
’64 RH Lucina Johnson “Tina” Lewis, 77, died September 29, 2023, in Durham, N.C. Born in Greenwich, Tina came to Rosemary Hall in 1959; she was Captain of the badminton team; in the Shakespeare and Nativity plays; on the grounds committee; and a marshal. After attending Endicott College in Beverly, Mass., she spent some time in New York City as a model and actress. Her homes over the years included New York City; Sausalito, Calif.; Atlanta; Princeton; Falmouth,
Mass.; Boulder, Colo.; and Newport, R.I. Tina was an enthusiastic collector of American folk art. She leaves three sons; four grandsons; and five siblings, including Leigh Johnson Yarbrough ’66. Her mother, the late Audrey Johnson ’43, and an aunt, the late Helen Haskell 1935, also attended Rosemary Hall.
Sally Thompson Steele, 77, a textbook publisher, died December 22, 2023. Born in Washington, D.C., Sally came to Rosemary Hall in 1964; she served on the Student Council and was in the Glee and Outing clubs; was a marshal; and was on the Grounds Committee. She then graduated from Boston University. As founder and CEO of Thompson Steele Production services, she ran a textbook production company in Harvard, Mass. An accomplished watercolor artist, Sally studied in Florence and enjoyed painting during her travels. She was a member of Unitarian Universalist churches. She leaves her husband, Richard Steele; two sons; four grandchildren; and two siblings. A cousin, the late Jean Becton ’62, also attended Rosemary Hall.
’69 C George Patterson Crandall III, 72, a teacher, died November 15, 2023 in Jacksonville, Fla. Born in Ridgefield, N.J., Pat was the son of Choate math teacher George Crandall and grew up on the Choate campus; he lettered in track, winning two School trophies in the sport. After earning degrees from Stanford and Jacksonville University, he was a Naval flight officer for 20
years. Pat then taught English and psychology at the Episcopal School of Jacksonville, where he also coached varsity soccer and track. He leaves his wife, Jackie Ann Crandall; three children; 10 grandchildren; and a sister. An uncle, the late Peter Crandall ’42, also attended Choate.
Peter D. Fuller, 74, an entrepreneur, died April 28, 2024. Born in Allentown, Pa., he came to Choate in 1965, where he lettered in football, was co-captain of wrestling (earning a trophy in the sport) and captain of the skeet team. He was also President of the Rod and Gun Club and Vice President of the Art Club, winning a School prize in drawing. After graduating from Lehigh, Peter founded Alternative House for emotionally disturbed children and was active in several groups serving at-risk young people. He and a friend co-founded Automotive Import Recycling. He also was an active environmentalist. He leaves three children and two sisters.
James C. Stover, 72, a broker, died April 23, 2024 in Morristown, N.J. Born in Grand Rapids, Mich., Jim came to Choate in 1966; he lettered in football and hockey, was in the Gold Key Society, and was on the Dance Committee. After graduating from New York University, he was a lumber broker for Plunkett Webster Inc. and worked for Euro Brokers and J. P. Morgan Chase. An avid hockey player, Jim was a coach for youth hockey teams and started a hockey league for girls in Peapack, N.J. He also enjoyed fly fishing, hiking, and skiing. He leaves two children, five grandchildren, and two sisters.
’69 RH Alison Byers Norton, 72, active in the community, died May 18, 2024. Born in Sewickley, Pa., Alison, known as “Mia” at School, came to Rosemary Hall in 1966; she was on the board of the Answer Book, in Hospites, and on the squash team. After graduating from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, she married and lived in
Goochland, Va. She enjoyed cooking, gardening, and skeet shooting. She leaves her husband, Marshall Norton; two children; and two grandchildren. A niece, Brooke Byers ’81, attended Choate Rosemary Hall.
’70 C Peter J. Mixter, 72, an investment banker, died May 10, 2024 in New York City. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Peter came to Choate in 1967; he was in the Glee Club and the Maiyeros. After earning degrees from the University of Vermont and Columbia, he joined Manufacturers Hanover Trust. For 20 years, Peter worked in investments and acquisitions at Lehman Brothers. He leaves three sons, two grandchildren, and two siblings.
’74 RH Sara L. MacAllaster, 67, active in the community, died April 1, 2024 in Southport, Conn. Born in Alexandria Bay, N.Y., Sara came to Rosemary Hall in 1971; she was on the staff of the Question Mark. After graduating from Wheaton College in Norton, Mass., she moved to Southport, where she volunteered for many organizations. Among them were Meals on Wheels, the Fairfield Women’s Exchange, and the Fairfield Birdcraft Museum. Sara enjoyed biking, swimming, and reading. She leaves her former husband, John Brooks, and a daughter.
’75 C Paul M. Canelli , 68, a commercial banker, died May 1, 2024 in Hamden, Conn. Born in New Haven, Paul was at Choate for one year following his graduation from East Haven High School. He lettered in basketball. After graduating from Connecticut College, he was an executive with Connecticut Bank and Trust, Fleet Bank, Citizens Bank, and ended his career as Vice President and Senior Relationship Manager for Bank of America. Paul enjoyed sports and music. He leaves his wife, Connie Rogers; three daughters; and a grandson.
’77 RH Elizabeth “Lili” Ruane, 64, an artist, died February 23, 2024, in Shelburne, Vt. Born in New York City, Lili came to Rosemary Hall in 1977; she was in the French Club. She attended the University of Vermont before earning two fine arts degrees from the San Francisco Art Institute. Lili specialized in large-format oil paintings, but also produced sculpture, stained glass art, and jewelry. She was a generous supporter of the arts and a yoga teacher. She leaves her husband, Win Smith; four daughters; five stepchildren; three grandchildren; nine step-grandchildren; and a sister.
’80 Jonathan M. Muse, 61, a film editor, died April 9, 2024 in Chicago. Born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Jon came to Choate Rosemary Hall in 1978; he was Editor of The Socratic. After graduating from the University of California at Los Angeles, he worked in the film industry in Chicago. Jon specialized in promotional videos and cable TV shows. He leaves his parents and sister.
’82 John T. Dillon III, 59, a software engineer, died February 24, 2024. Born in Meriden, John came to Choate Rosemary Hall in 1978; he was in the Festival Chorus and was on the staff of Spectrum, the sci-fi publication. After graduating from Lehigh, he was a software engineer for Raytheon and Pratt & Whitney for many years. John enjoyed cooking, tentmaking, gardening, and wood carving. He leaves his wife, Miela Gruber; five stepchildren; two grandchildren, and his father. An uncle, John McGuire ’56, attended Choate.
’84 David A. Stansel, 59, a marine mechanic, died February 15, 2024. Born in Bridgeport, Conn., David came to Choate in 1981; he was in the United Nations Club. After attending Hampshire College and the University of Tampa, he moved to Arizona and competed semiprofessionally in motorcycle racing. Relocating to
Florida, he was a boat mechanic in St. Petersburg and owned the Jet Ski Store in Seminole. David enjoyed collecting German sportscars, rare guitars, and fine watches. He leaves two sisters.
Our sympathy to the friends and family of the following, whose death is reported with sorrow:
Craig J. McSherry ’72 November 18, 2023
During the spring season, the Wild Boars achieved numerous team and individual accomplishments. The Girls Varsity Tennis Team claimed the Founders League title; the Girls Varsity Water Polo Team qualified for the New England Playoffs, and finished runner-up; the Varsity Baseball Team defeated Kingswood-Oxford to advance to its first-ever Founders League Championship game, while for the third straight year the Varsity Softball Team made it to the Division A Western New England Championship game. The Girls Varsity Crew program scored the most points at the Founders League Regatta and the Co-Ed Varsity Ultimate squad was awarded the “Spirit of the Game” Award at the New England Championships. Individually, Jordan Wallace ’24 was named the NEPSAC Softball Player of the Year, Ian Wirtz ’24 earned Founders League Baseball Player of the Year honors, and his coach, Andrew Dickson, Founders League Coach of the Year. Last, senior Girls Golf captain Cassatt Boatwright received the prestigious Izzy Marley Award at the NEPSAC Championships.
BASEBALL
Varsity Record: 12-7
Captains: James Levien ’24, Ian Wirtz ’24
Highlights: The Varsity Baseball Team achieved one of its best springs in program history, with a 12-7 season and defeat of Kingswood-Oxford in the Founders League semifinals to advance to the Founders League Championship game for the first time in School history. Captain Ian Wirtz ’24 was named Founders League Player of the Year while Head Coach Andrew Dickson was named Coach of the Year.
BOYS CREW
Captains: Wesley Walker ’24, Julian Paul ’25
Highlights: The Wild Boars worked hard, dedicating considerable time traveling to the water, setting up and launching boats, and rowing in all conditions. They competed at the Founders Regatta, Lower Boats Championships, and the New England Championships.
GIRLS CREW
Captains: Brecken Cullinan ’24, Suzie Kim ’24, Ella Shafman ’24
Highlights: The Girls Varsity Crew Team became the best program in the Founders League by scoring the most points at the Founders Regatta and finishing 4th overall at the New England Championships. The regular season records: 1st boat 17-3, 2nd boat 19-3, 3rd boat 16-1, and 4th boat 11-3.
Highlights: The Varsity Boys Golf Team enjoyed an exceptional season, earning a 15-3-1 regular season record, and a total record of 43-15-1 when including tournament play. The Wild Boars finished in 1st place at the Suffield Invitational Tournament.
GIRLS GOLF
Varsity Record: 11-3
Captain: Cassatt Boatwright ’24
Highlights: The Varsity Girls Golf Team posted an 11-3 record while finishing 4th place at the Founders League Championships, and 5th overall at the New Englands. Adding to the memorable season, senior captain Cassatt Boatwright received the Izzy Marley Award, given to a senior for character and sportsmanship at the NEPSAC Championships.
BOYS LACROSSE
Varsity Record: 9-5
Captain: Ethan Opdenaker ’24
Highlights: The Boys Varsity Lacrosse team ended the season with a 9-5 record, qualifying for the Founders League Championship bracket, and finishing 3rd overall. The Wild Boars defeated nationally ranked Salisbury on the road for their biggest win of the season.
GIRLS LACROSSE
Varsity Record: 7-8
Captains: Sophia Berdon ’24, Emilee Degrand ’24, Tatum Kent ’24, Sophie Sharko ’24
Highlights: The Girls Varsity Lacrosse Team finished 7-7 during the regular season and qualifed for the Founders League Championships bracket, with a 4th place finish.
CO-ED SAILING
Varsity Record: 3-3
Captains: Wolfgang Louchheim ’24, Kipling Pearce ’24, Cecilia Priest ’24
Highlights: The Varsity Co-ed Sailing Team went 3-3 during their regular season, 4th overall at the Connecticut League “Spring Fever” Fleet Championships, and 11th at the Connecticut State Championships.
SOFTBALL
Varsity Record: 14-4
Captains: Bella Hassett ’24, Jordan Wallace ’24, Gioia Segui ’25
Highlights: The Varsity Softball program continued its tradition of being a premiere New England program by finishing 14-4 and advancing to the Division A Western New England Championship game for the third straight year. Nat Draghi ’27 threw a No-Hitter against Hopkins, while senior captain Jordan Wallace was named the NEPSAC Player of the Year.
BOYS TENNIS
Varsity Record: 7-6
Captain: William Henderson ’24
Highlights: The Varsity Boys Tennis team had a solid season on the courts, finishing the spring with a winning 7-6 record during regular season play. The Wild Boars also finished 3rd overall at the KingswoodOxford Invitational.
GIRLS TENNIS
Varsity Record: 7-6
Captains: Portia Chung ’24, Regan Colton ’24 Highlight: The Girls Varsity Tennis Team posted a sparkling 5-1 record during Founders League play en route to winning the league title!
BOYS TRACK & FIELD
Varsity Record: 1-5-2
Captain: Nick Malcolm ’25
Highlights: During the regular season, the Wild Boars defeated Hopkins, while tying Hotchkiss and St. Paul’s. Choate also finished 6th overall at the Founders League Championships and 9th out of 16 teams at the New Englands.
GIRLS TRACK & FIELD
Varsity Record: 2-6
Captains: Amanda Benneh ’24, Alexa Scarlett ’24
Highlights: The Wild Boars finished 5th overall at the Founders League Championships 4 x 400-meter relay and 10th out of 16 teams at the New Englands. The relay team of Amanda Benneh ’24, Mia Bratti ’25, Maelle Davenport ’27, and Taliah Buckney-Small ’27 set a new School record.
CO-ED ULTIMATE FRISBEE
Varsity Record: 11-6
Captains: Ethan Wu ’24, Ethan Zhang ’24, Elizabeth Zhao ’24, Sophie Park ’25
Highlights: Choate finished 6th at the Connecticut State Championships and 9th at the New England Prep Championships. The Wild Boars also won the coveted “Spirit of the Game” Trophy at the New Englands.
BOYS VOLLEYBALL
Varsity Record: 0-8
Captains: Sven Torrison ’24, Owen Holbrook ’25
Highlights: The Boys Varsity Volleyball Team improved in every aspect of their game, and the results of their matches reflected that as their season progressed. The Wild Boars regularly competed against Exeter, Andover, and NMH, and made it to the semifinals of the New England Playoffs.
GIRLS WATER POLO
Varsity Record: 9-3
Captains: Andrea Ionescu ’24, Ava McClatchie ’24, Yuki Zhang ’24
Highlights: The Girls Varsity Water Polo Team finished with 9 wins and only one loss for the season. The team advanced to the New England Championships and finished runner-up for the first time in 10 years. Choate made it to the championship game after defeating Deerfield 4-3 in overtime in the semifinals.
1 The Varsity Ultimate Team brought home the coveted “Spirit of the Game” Award at the New England Championships.
2 Kankan Adekoya ’27 (front) and Mia Bratti ’25 (back) head to the finish line during regular season.
3 Wes Walker ’24 (front) and Tanner Raymond ’26 (back) lead the charge in Boys Varsity Crew.
4 Boys Varsity Lacrosse member Gus Markley ’27 (#24) during Choate’s game against Deerfield
5 Baseball captain Ian Wirtz ’24 (#4) was named the Founders League Player of the Year after serving as an excellent catcher and dominant closer.
6 The Girls Varsity Tennis Team brought home the Founders League Championship title.
7 Senior Girls Varsity Golf captain Cassatt Boatwright poses with the Izzy Marley Award.
2 Boys Varsity Tennis member Rodrigo Chon Him ’25 prepares to serve an ace.
3 Varsity Sailing captain Cici Priest ’24 after a successful race on the water
4 Boys Varsity Golf Team captain Phil Harris ’24 keeps his eye on the ball.
5 Boys Track & Field runner Andrew Fazzone-Chettiar ’26 sprints past his opponent.
6 The Girls Varsity Crew Team’s First Boat of Suzie Kim ’24, Brecken Cullinan ’24, Cait Ahn ’25, Saylen Blake ’26, and Rose Lightfoot ’26
7 Alex Wang ’25 (#12) and Richard Wang ’26 (#21) jump high to block their opponent’s shot.
8 The Girls Varsity Water Polo Team shows off its trophy as New England Runner-Up for the first time since 2014.
9 Softball captain Jordan Wallace ’24 (#33) was named the NEPSAC Player of the Year.
4 2 7 1 3 5 6 8 9
In this issue, a historical thriller from the points of view of two young reporters explores the difficulties of navigating a foreign country in political unrest; a book weaves ecology, history, sociology and other aspects to examine reforestation as a natural climate solution; and a novel filled with psychological suspense shows why it was a Fallon Book Club pick.
Strawberry Fields: A Sing & Shout Thriller
By Patrick D. Joyce ’85 | Reviewed by D. Gam Bepko
A young reporter on her first assignment abroad in her ancestral homeland of Czechoslovakia encounters an anonymous man with a cryptic message that she must decipher and deliver before the Soviets take over the country. A young man who longs to prove his worth as a reporter gets more than he bargained for when seeking the truth. Strawberry Fields: A Sing & Shout Thriller explores the difficulties of navigating a foreign country shrouded in a web of political unrest, deception, and conspiracy from the viewpoints of two young reporters.
The Prague Spring took place over the first eight months of 1968, beginning when reformist Alexander Dubček was elected First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. He made several sweeping changes that the Soviet Union did not approve of, ultimately resulting in the Soviets’ invading Czechoslovakia on August 21, 1968, when this novella takes place.
Josie Brouk is a reporter for the Toronto Post looking to make a splash with her first big assignment, hoping that her Czech background will give her an advantage over the other reporters. As the story opens, she awaits the arrival of a mysterious person for an arranged meeting on the Charles Bridge at the break of dawn. This person, known only as The Shrouded Man, gives her a brief message that she is to pass on to a person known only as The Playwright: “I am the walrus.”
As the police quickly approach them, he jumps into the Vltava River to avoid detainment, while Josie
is brought in for questioning. En route to the police station, they encounter a parade of tanks and realize the world they knew is about to change.
At the station, Josie meets Laurent Akobo, an Ethiopian man who reports for the Paris Flash Though she no longer has possession of her press card and passport, she rejects Laurent’s offers of help. After parting ways, they find themselves running into each other in a series of coincidences. Josie finally accepts Laurent’s assistance while still wondering if he can be trusted. From there, it’s a race against time to find the truth and flee the country before it’s too late.
There’s a lot packed into this slim volume, which is a prequel to Joyce’s previous novel Back in the USSR. One can’t help but think of the modern-day Russian invasion of Ukraine while reading this — the confusion of the soldiers who arrive in another country with orders to carry out without being told why they are doing this, and the citizens who do what they can to protect their freedoms.
The use of The Beatles’ music as a central plot point is an essential theme to this book. The message for The Playwright and The Shrouded Man’s plea to listen to the nonsensical lyrics of “I Am the Walrus” are key to unraveling the layers of deception swirling over the city of Prague and quickly spreading throughout the country. Their music seemingly follows Josie everywhere, from the Magical Mystery Tour to the Strawberry Fields of her babička’s farm and provides a perfect bridge to the next book in the series.
Author: Patrick D. Joyce ’85
Publisher: Spy Pond Press
About the Reviewer: D. Gam Bepko works in the Financial Office at Choate Rosemary Hall.
STRAWBERRY FIELDS:
A SING & SHOUT THRILLER
Reforesting the Earth: The Human Drivers of Forest Conservation, Restoration, and Expansion
By Thomas K. Rudel ’64 | Reviewed by Joe Scanio P ’18
Choate has made a strong commitment to reduce its environmental footprint dramatically by developing a comprehensive plan to incorporate proven technology in its campus infrastructure and operations.
While this type of approach is essential, Thomas K. Rudel ’64 reminds us in Reforesting the Earth: The Human Drivers of Forest Conservation, Restoration, and Expansion that forests are “natural climate solutions” and are critical, cost-efficient carbon sinks that help to offset past, current, and future carbon emissions. Furthermore, forests are instrumental in maintaining biodiversity and they provide a suite of ecosystem services.
Rudel skillfully weaves ecology, economics, political science, history, and sociology together as he explores deforestation, what led to reforesting in some areas, and how we can learn from these examples to promote further regeneration of forest biomes. He starts by orienting the reader with a clearly articulated historical and theoretical framework.
He describes basic biogeography, carbon sequestration by forests, the “Great Transformation” of some societies in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the “Great Acceleration” of the effects of this transformation on forest biomes post-World War II, and countermovements that developed to protect people and natural resources. Perhaps most helpful to a person with a STEM background is Rudel’s description of societal corporatism and how corporatist political processes can lead to forest regeneration.
Rudel introduces a set of case studies, which allow him to conduct a qualitative comparative analysis of natural climate solutions and the role of corporatist processes in the expansion of forests. These diverse case studies illustrate the differing regional and sometimes global dynamics that influence changes in forest cover.
We learn of multiple scenarios involving variable patterns of forestation associated with silvopastoral practices in the Lower Amazon region and the Sahel, forest cover loss in plantations in Indonesia and Congo, and forest cover gains due to pasture reforestation in Costa Rica and expanding secondary forests in North America. Choate graduates in general, and those who participated in the EIP at the Kohler Environmental Center in particular, should be familiar with the secondary forests on our school’s campus.
Rudel’s treatment of the relationship between intensified agriculture and forests when he describes the historical and current situation of production systems involving rubber, cacao, oil palm, and coffee is of great interest to many of us as consumers of these commodities. Though variation exists, data indicate that ecocertification programs and various forms of agroforestry for some of these products can foster increased carbon sequestration and provide benefits to human communities. Additionally, throughout many decades Indigenous peoples and smallholders whose livelihoods are strongly linked to trees have been effective forest defenders. Rudel’s analysis leads us to recognize that fundamentally, forests are social and ecological configurations, and their potential as a natural climate solution can be more fully realized when a global social movement aligns with government institutions that strengthen corporatist processes in enabling forest conservation, restoration, and expansion.
A highlight of the book is the chapter in which Rudel pulls together his theory and case studies and describes the results of his qualitative comparative analysis. He restates and summarizes key points from the previous chapters and clearly describes potential causal factors for carbon sequestering reforestation. He then suggests political strategies that could be used to conserve forests and to promote reforesting in eight regional landscapes. While implementation of these strategies would be challenging, these potential paths provide some hope for climate stabilization. I look forward to using this chapter in class to inspire discussion of solutions to complex problems.
Reforesting the Earth is a valuable read, particularly for those who think about climate change, forests, social movements, or political strategies. While I was reading this book, multiple local heat records, an early fire season in California, and hundreds of heat-caused human deaths were reported in the news. Record-breaking global land and ocean temperatures as well as other data consistently remind us that climate change is affecting the biosphere now and that immediate actions are necessary to mitigate its effects. Rudel’s analysis of the forces influencing global forest cover provides a meaningful contribution to the collective effort to alleviate the climate crisis.
REFORESTING THE EARTH: THE HUMAN DRIVERS OF FOREST CONSERVATION, RESTORATION, AND EXPANSION
Author: Thomas K. Rudel ’64
Publisher: Columbia University Press
About the Reviewer: Joe Scanio is the program director at the Kohler Environmental Center.
NIGHTWATCHING
Author: Tracy Sierra ’99
Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books
About the Reviewer: Nicole Thomas is the office coordinator in the Communications department at Choate Rosemary Hall.
Nightwatching
By Tracy Sierra ’99 | Reviewed by Nicole Thomas
Tracy Sierra’s Nightwatching plunges readers straight into terror with its opening line: “There was someone in the house.” The tension continues to mount steadily, leaving a lingering sense of dread that persists until the final page.
Not to mention the terror the children feel when the comment “Mama, you said monsters didn’t exist” is met with the mother’s response. She lowered her head, feeling a great weight descend. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I lied.”
This Fallon Book Club pick commences with an unnamed mother checking on her children before turning in for the night. The snowbound home is completely isolated from the outside world as a blizzard rages outside. An unfamiliar sound causes her to hesitate. Unknown footsteps on the stairs. There is someone in the house. She must race to find safety for her children and herself before the intruder finds her. Can she trust her instincts? In the claustrophobic darkness of a hidden room the mother struggles to keep herself and her children calm while the intruder searches for them.
The stream of consciousness style of narration draws the reader into the moment of feeling as though you are locked in the tight dark space while an unknown man searches for you. The worry and guilt jump off the page as the narrator asks herself if she remembered to lock the doors, or if she has done something else to deserve this. Sierra blends the immediate horror with flashbacks that provide revelations about the mother’s past, offering both a deeper understanding of her character and a chance for the reader to catch their breath from the escalating tension inside the house.
The remote setting of the house in a storm intensifies the feelings of isolation and vulnerability. The old house, with its ominous creaks and groans, heightens the suspense, and Sierra’s descriptive prose vividly brings the eerie atmosphere to life, immersing readers in the mother’s harrowing ordeal.
Throughout the story, Sierra keeps readers on edge with unexpected twists that challenge assumptions about the mother’s reliability. Is she exaggerating her fears? Imagining things due to stress? These uncertainties are skillfully woven into the narrative, adding layers of depth, and a literary quality that isn’t always found in thrillers.
Nightwatching is not just a tale of survival; it’s a compelling debut that delves into primal fear. The novel is riveting and shocking, evoking visceral reactions while also leaving the reader feeling fear, frustration, and doubt on her behalf. Sierra navigates themes of bias, trauma, and misogyny with a deft touch, crafting a narrative that is as thoughtprovoking as it is thrilling while the twists zig and zag until the very end. Nightwatching is a gripping exploration of fear, resilience, and the lengths a mother will go to. It’s an engrossing and emotionally resonant thriller that lingers long after the final page.
CREATIVE SOUND PLAY FOR YOUNG LEARNERS: A TEACHER’S GUIDE TO ENHANCING TRANSITION TIMES, CLASSROOM COMMUNITIES, SEL, AND EXECUTIVE FUNCTION SKILLS
Author: Hayes Greenfield ’75
Publisher: Routledge
THE UNEXPECTED: NAVIGATING PREGNANCY DURING AND AFTER COMPLICATIONS (THE PARENT DATA SERIES)
Author: Emily Oster ’98 and Nathan Fox
Publisher: Penguin
PUNISHING PUTIN: INSIDE THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC WAR TO BRING DOWN RUSSIA
Author: Stephanie Baker ’85
Publisher: Scribner
PROSPECTS
Author: Kate Wilson ’85
Publisher: Cinnamon Press
A MAP OF FUTURE RUINS: ON BORDERS AND BELONGING
Author: Lauren Markham ’01
Publisher: Riverhead
THE OTHER OLYMPIANS: FASCISM, QUEERNESS, AND THE MAKING OF MODERN SPORTS
Author: Michael Waters ’16
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
A Student Perspective on GenAI in the Classroom
One of the world’s biggest challenges is the gap between the pace at which technology is evolving and how little society comprehends it. Unprecedented numbers use cutting-edge tools without questioning or understanding them; generative AI such as ChatGPT, for instance, has sparked passionate discussions worldwide, specifically about its potential impact on education. Many schools have adjusted their educational framework around this new technology, specifically focusing on anti-cheating rules for ChatGPT. The continual development of generative AI, particularly its customization capabilities, however, makes us question the viability of this “anti-cheating” approach. After all, a majority of educators are unfamiliar with the technical background of generative AI; it is impossible to determine whether ChatGPT is equivalent to a math textbook, a Google Search, or an essay writer because we simply do not know what it is capable of yet. Rather than trying to restrain the features of AI that can be utilized in education, educators should attempt a fundamental restructuring of education, tackling its essence. Choate, for instance, has been actively experimenting with AI in classrooms; U.S. history students created political cartoons using Adobe Firefly, and my computer science class heavily encouraged students to engineer detailed prompts that can help them learn a new language or a concept such as Python or machine learning. AI was not only a great teacher but also an astute debugger that could give constructive feedback throughout the class. Generative AI tools opened up a new realm in my application development class as well, specifically assisting me with designing user interfaces. Throughout the year, I not only cultivated an appreciation for my own learning but also gained perspective on utilizing AI as a tool to enhance my educational experience. In this way, AI may not be the greatest threat to education, but the greatest opportunity.
By Danny yoon ’24
Danny Yoon lives in Seoul and Chicago and will be enrolled as a freshman at Harvard in fall ’24, intending to major in Math and Computer Science.
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Physics Phlotilla 2024. Students build a boat with cardboard and masking tape to ferry across Archbold pond and back, demonstrating the physics principles of buoyancy.
