NON-PROFIT ORG. U.S. POSTAGE
PAID
NEW HAVEN, CT PERMIT #1090
333 Christian Street, Wallingford, CT 06492-3800
BULLETIN THE MAG A ZINE OF CHOATE ROSEMARY HALL
SPRING ’16
Change Service Requested
THE NEW NORMAL ALUMNI SEEK HAPPINESS, FULFILLMENT, AND MORAL PURPOSE IN THEIR WORK
The Choate Rosemary Hall Bulletin is printed using vegetable-based inks on FSC-certified, 100% post consumer recycled paper. This issue saved 101 trees, 42,000 gallons of wastewater, 291 lbs of waterborne waste, and 9,300 lbs of greenhouse gases from being emitted.
In this issue:
DEVELOPING MINDS: Helping Adolescents Navigate
SPRING 1976: When The Boss Rocked the PMAC
END NOTE: Waiting for New Beginnings
FRONT COVER: Yoga instructor Lauren
Taus ’00 at Santa Monica Pier.
p. 64 | Waiting for New Beginnings:
Aitran Doan ’13 gives a firsthand account of the unfolding Syrian refugee crisis in Leros, Greece. Here at a women's and children's shelter young children wait seeking asylum to northern Europe.
BULLETIN THE MAG A ZINE OF CHOATE ROSEMARY HALL
SPRING ’16
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. 1516-093/17.5M
Editorial Offices T: (203) 697-2252 F: (203) 697-2380 Email: alumline@choate.edu Website: www.choate.edu
Classnotes Editor Henry McNulty ’65
Illustration Peter Ryan
Communications Assistant Britney G. Cullinan
Director of Strategic Planning & Communications Alison J. Cady
Contributors Alison J. Cady Lorraine S. Connelly P ’03, ’05 Aitran Doan ’13 Charles Hopkins Courtney Jaser Jeffery Kurz Steven Lazarus P ’99, ’01, ’04 Katherine Marsh ’92 John Steinbreder ’74 Andrea Thompson Lindsay Whalen ’01
Photography Dan Burns Fin Costello/Redferns Sarah V. Gordon Jehangir Irani/American Express Alcyone Magana Todd L. Meagher Ross Mortensen Laura Morton Yale University Sports Publicity
Editor Lorraine S. Connelly Design and Production David C. Nesdale
CONTENTS | Spring 2016
d e p a r t m e n t s
2 3 4 32 36
12
Developing Minds Helping Adolescents Navigate a Digital World
Letters
features
Remarks from the Headmaster
16
On Christian & Elm News about the School
The New Normal Finding Happiness, Fulfillment, and Moral Purpose in New Careers
24
Springsteen 1976 When The Boss Rocked the PMAC
Alumni Association News
Classnotes Profiles of Ali MacGraw ’56, Cornelia Y. deSchepper ’66, Bill Rompf ’68 and John Foster, Chris Jennings ’00, and Brandon Sherrod ’11
54 56 60
In Memoriam Remembering Those We Have Lost
30
A Choate Rosemary Hall Reader: Dispatches from a War Zone by Katherine Marsh ’92
Scoreboard Winter Sports Wrap-up Bookshelf Reviews of works by Robert Lamb Hart ’46, Carrie McCully Brown ’77, Kristen Fiedler Kittscher ’92, and Chris Jennings ’00
64
End Note Waiting for New Beginnings by Aitran Doan ’13
Choate Rosemary Hall Board of Trustees 2015-2016 Kenneth G. Bartels ’69 P ’04 Samuel P. Bartlett ’91 Michael J. Carr ’76 George F. Colony ’72 Alex D. Curtis P ’17 Borje E. Ekholm P ’17 David R. Foster ’72 Robert B. Goergen, Jr. ’89 John F. Green ’77 Linda J. Hodge ’73, P ’12 Brett M. Johnson ’88 Vanessa Kong-Kerzner P ’16
Cecelia M. Kurzman ’87 Gretchen Cooper Leach ’57 James A. Lebovitz ’75, P ’06, ’10 Kewsong Lee ’82 Patrick J. McCurdy ’98 Robert A. Minicucci ’71 Tal H. Nazer P ’17 Peter B. Orthwein ’64, P ’94, ’06, ’11 Marshall S. Ruben P ’07, ’08, ’10 Anne Sa’adah Henry K. Snyder ’85
Life Trustees Charles F. Dey P ’78, ’81, ’83 Bruce S. Gelb ’45, P ’72, ’74, ’76, ’78 Edwin A. Goodman ’58 Herbert V. Kohler, Jr. ’57, P ’84 Cary L. Neiman ’64 Stephen J. Schulte ’56, P ’86 Edward J. Shanahan P ’92, ’95 William G. Spears ’56, P ’81, ’90
Editorial Advisory Board Judy Donald ’66 Howard R. Greene P ’82, ’05 Dorothy Heyl ’71, P ’07 Seth Hoyt ’61 Henry McNulty ’65 Michelle Judd Rittler ’98 John Steinbreder ’74 Monica St. James P ’06 Francesca Vietor ’82 Heather Zavod P ’87, ’90
Follow us! Like us! www.facebook.com/GoChoate Tweet us! twitter.com/gochoate
Watch us! www.youtube.com/gochoate Share! instagram.com/gochoate Pin! pinterest.com/choaterosemary
2
Letters SPECI
A L C O M BINE
D ISSUE
COMMON ROOTS/ SHARED PURPOSE :
Choate Rosemary Hall’s combined issue celebrating 125 years is now available in iTunes. You can go to the App Store and download the Choate Rosemary Hall Bulletin to your smartphone or tablet device. Subscribe; it’s free!
common roots / shared e purpos 125 Years of Celebrating mary Hall Choate Rose
frey by g. jef
macdona
CHOATE ROSEMARY HALL HISTORY
ld ’87
Crossword puzzle solution | Winter ’16 Bulletin Alum-inum Anniversary Puzzle by David Quarfoot 1
2
C
3
A
4
S
5
H
T
O
T
I
T
O
X
O
39
L
L 54
E L
S
X
80
T
S T
S
X
E L D
I E
114
115
S
T
I
V
A
A
T
G
L
E
N
H
T
A
T
110
V
E
I
L
117
118
T
T
E
C
L
O
S
126
O N
N 90
E
S
L
104
E
A
P
T
S
R
S
E
S
E
D
R
A B
L
Y
E
K S
119
A
100
U
C
E
G H
T
I
N
I
O N 120
P
S
E
A D
127
R
A 128
121
122
123
J
O B
129
S
I
N
E
N
Y
A
X
X
V
133
M A T
Thomas A. Yankus ‘52 Wallingford, Connecticut
106
L
E
E
E
136
John Jacobs ’72 of Weston, Mass., was the winner of the 125th Anniversary Crossword Puzzle. For successfully solving the puzzle, he won an Apple iWatch. Says John, “It’s terrific (blue is my ‘go to’ color). I’ll wear it proudly and with many good thoughts of my days at Choate more years ago than I want to count!”
P
92
99
S
105
A R
86
A 91
A
GOOD STUFF! I thought the Winter 2016 Bulletin was so full of good stuff. I read every page. Congratulations!
78 85
S
132
DRUM ROLL PLEASE…
E
S
112
M O
Y
E
O R
A M S
A 103
135
V
E
67
77
111
B A D
E
L
76
98
131
134
A
N
P
Barbara Taylor, Ph.D., P ’73, ’76, ’77, ’78 Choate Rosemary Hall Trustee (1972–78) Lake Forest, Illinois
61
O
A
A M S
125
130
E
L
K
97
116
124
T
84
C
H 109
T
I
I
46
N
N
83
96
108
X
45
E
E
T
E
107
44
V
V
75
102
A N
E
E
R
T
L S
E
U
A
L
E
E
89
S
V
66
74
E
T
O N
71
73 82
E
T S
E
R
N
A
L
E
S
E
E
V
K
K
I
E
60
70
E
E
E
52
65
101
A
59
N
N
A
51
I
E
L
A G
R
X
95
50
R
I
O
S E
A
Y
I
E
I
H
69
T
X
43
L
A
16
E
37
S
T
94
E S
T
58
88
O
U
36
X C
57
15
V
30
S
A
81
93
E
O M V
A D
S
87
113
T
64
T
A M
I
42
56
14
E
29 35
F
A M A
72
V
I
T
34
63
A 68
A
E
28
55
N O
13
L
25
49
I
62
J
E R
48
X
53
79
T E
I
G
12
21
41
47
X
I
H
40
A U
11
M B
A D
S
I 33
C
10
I
24
S 32
I A
I
27 31
P
X
9
N 20
23
26
38
8
L 19
A
22
X
7
X
18
O C A
6
X
17
The “history books” of Choate Rosemary Hall’s extraordinary lives are treasures. I wonder how many researchers contributed to these tomes? You have always turned out a magazine that towers over the many others I have received from other schools, but these commemorative issues take the cake. The lives of graduates (recent and long gone) are extremely interesting and these are my favorite reads. I also like the way you balance – truly balance – the girls’ and boys’ activities and accomplishments. When I served on the Mother’s Committee and the Choate Rosemary Hall Board of Trustees, the combined schools were still overwhelmed by the patriarchal culture. I live in a beautiful retirement community now in Lake Forest, Illinois. My best friend, Mary Louise Sunderland, graduated from Rosemary Hall (Class of 1939) and Vassar. We have lots to talk about. Thank you for your superb accomplishments.
E 137
C
FRIENDS AND FORGERIES I just received a copy of the Winter 2016 Bulletin and coincidentally talked to my Rosemary roommate of 66 years ago, Rosemary “Davy” Nelson the same day. I think it’s interesting that we both ended up in the same town on Cape Cod (for 30 years) and have grandsons in the same class. Three of my four sons also at went to Choate. I read the review of The Art of Forgery by Noah Charney ’98 and was intrigued. As my grandfather wrote on art forgeries, the topic interests me. Louise Govett Thayer ’52 Key West, Florida
BULLETIN | SPRING 2016 3
Remarks From The Headmaster
Dear Alumni and Friends of Choate Rosemary Hall, As the 2015-16 academic year draws to a close, we have cause to celebrate many accomplishments at Choate Rosemary Hall, including the conclusion of the School’s 125th year; the groundbreaking for the St. John Hall Student Center, which will provide a new hub for student life when it opens next spring, and the Commencement of our 232 members of the Class of 2016 in just a few short weeks. In my Convocation address to students and faculty last fall, I set the tone for the school year by reading a portion of the School’s Statement of Expectations, which affirms “At the heart of Choate Rosemary Hall is a culture defined by integrity, respect, and compassion.” I reminded students that any behavior that counters these expectations is not to be tolerated – and that if they ever become aware of conduct contrary to these values to let someone know. I underscored that Choate is a community in which “equity, respect, and integrity are words that we all live by.” In this issue of the Bulletin, we celebrate our committment to living these values to the fullest. Whether it is our two outstanding sixth formers who received the Princeton Prize in Race Relations for their leadership roles in helping make Choate a more inclusive and more accepting community (see p. 6), or the Board of Trustees’ intentional decision to hold down the rate of the tuition increase (see p. 9) – the principle of equity is leading the charge. Respect for one another in our community is a topic that has been brought home many times throughout the year. We remain proactive in our responsibility to provide a safe and supportive campus environment. Our Special Programs series has provided opportunities for students to learn about managing relationships in the age of social media, bystander intervention, and good digital citizenship. Moving forward, we remain committed to thoughtful education and training around healthy relationships, mandated reporting, and sexual health. In addition, we continue to review our policies, procedures, and communications to ensure best practices in all aspects of campus life. Significant student programming is scheduled throughout this year and next, and I invite you to read more about our ongoing work in this area (see p. 12) “Developing Minds: Helping Adolescents Navigate a Digital World.” Integrity, one of the hallmarks of our school motto, is exemplified by the accomplished lives of this year’s Alumni Award recipients, Dr. Laurie L. Patton ’79, President of Middlebury College, and D. Dodge Thompson ’66, Chief of Exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art (p. 23) and our courageous alumni in “The New Normal” (see p. 16). Through career triumphs and vicissitudes, these individuals have remained “whole” – true to themselves as they pursue happiness, fulfillment, and moral purpose with each new endeavor. Equity, respect, and integrity – words that we choose to live by. It is our duty to ponder them, know them fully, and live by them faithfully. As we go to press, Chairman of the Board Trustees Michael J. Carr ’76 and I just sent a letter to the Choate Rosemary Hall community, reiterating the School’s commitment to cultivating a safe and respectful campus culture based on these cherished values. It cannot be said often enough, Choate is a community where student safety and wellbeing are paramount and where inappropriate behaviors and boundary crossings will not be tolerated. We remain grateful for the generations of students and alumni who have emulated our values and we reaffirm our commitment to creating a community that honors your trust by upholding them. With all best wishes from campus,
Alex D. Curtis Headmaster
4
ON CHRISTIAN & ELM | NEWSWORTHY
St. John Hall Student Center Update
CHOATE ON THE MOVE:
The St. John Hall Student Center, opening in 2017, has been designed to fit comfortably into its central campus location on Hill House Circle. The 37,000-square-foot space designed by Bowie Gridley Architects of Washington, D.C., employs traditional Georgian materials and detailing drawn from existing historic campus architecture. The new student center will offer the Choate community a variety of activities in one location in the heart of the campus. Employing geothermal heating and cooling, the facility will be LEED Gold certified. Beyond the stately exterior of St. John Hall are soaring, open spaces that will draw the school community together and offer opportunities for work and play in a contemporary, light-filled environment. Spaces for small and large group gatherings, the School Store and Tuck Shop, Deans’ Offices, meeting rooms and student project rooms are placed throughout the building to promote interaction between faculty and students.
Dr. Curtis Gives Keynote Address at OESIS Shanghai
The first floor features the Tuck Shop and student lounge area. Since 1923, the Tuck Shop has been housed at five locations on campus: Darling House, Atwater House, Gables basement, new Atwater House, and since 1979, the Student Activities Center.
Off the main entrance on the first floor there will be small group meeting/gathering spaces, including designated spaces for student publications, media/viewing and club meetings, and a game room. First and second floor spaces will also house the Deans’ and Student Activities Offices.
Several Choate administrators and teachers are presenting on important topics that impact the future of independent secondary school education and reflect the leadership role Choate is taking with significant initiatives in redefining the landscape of education. In April, Dr. Alex Curtis gave the U.S. Schools keynote address to the Online Education Symposium for Independent Schools (OESIS) Shanghai. The conference highlighted progressive and innovative teaching in independent schools in the U.S. and around the world. Dr. Curtis spoke on the perspectives of a fully integrated curriculum as the school heads into its decennial curriculum review this year. Last year, Benjamin Small, science department head at Choate Rosemary Hall, was a speaker at OESIS Los Angeles. Small gave two half-hour presentations on his Reverse Engineering class. He guided a total of 40 teachers and administrators in attendance through an interactive tinkering and discovery exercise that he has used in his class, and shared some of his other projects as well. Also on the slate in Shanghai was Joel Backon, Choate’s Director of Academic Technology and history teacher, who presented a seminar “Doing World History Rather Than Reading About It”, and chaired panels on pedagogy and professional development. Mr. Backon also presented at OESIS London, and Boston, last year.
BULLETIN | SPRING 2016 5
CHOATE ROBOTICS ADVANCES TO WORLDS Choate Rosemary Hall fielded four robots at the VEX Southern New England Regional Championship in Worcester, Mass., on March 5–6. Three of the robots made it through qualifying rounds to the elimination rounds: 6016B and 6106D were quarterfinalists and 6106A was a semifinalist, thereby qualifying for the World Championship. Members of the team traveled to compete in the VEX Worlds tournament in Louisville, Ky. in April. In February, two of the robots competed in the University of New Haven VEX Regional Qualifier. Choate robot 6106A won the Programming Skills Challenge and 6106D won the Robot Skills Challenge, advancing all the way to the finals, with 6106D winning the Championship.
Choate Mentoring Takes Flight Dr. Kerri L. Cahoy ’96, Boeing Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, and Patrick Kage ’16 have their sights set on the moon. Last summer, Patrick worked at MIT, where he was mentored by Dr. Cahoy. In 2014, Patrick attended a talk by Kerri at his middle school, Talcott Mountain Science Academy. Said Patrick, “I thought the things that she was doing for NASA and at MIT’s STAR (Space Telecommunications, Astronomy, and Radiation) Lab, were really, really cool so I dropped her a line.” Besides Patrick, Dr. Cahoy has mentored Andrew “Max” Barg ’14 and Adham Meguid ’16, both students in Choate’s Science Research Program (SRP). While at MIT, Patrick became involved in a remote Jet Propulsion Laboratory project prototyping a tool to match potential technology instruments to existing models of satellites based on an array of key parameters that the mission clients and designers prioritize. Patrick was invited to apply for a 10-week onsite internship this summer at Caltech, academic home of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. During spring break he traveled to Pasadena for an orientation program where he became further acquainted with the program and his future summer co-workers. He was able to stay at the faculty guest house with Dr. Cahoy, who is presently on leave from MIT, and her family. Both are excited by future lunar missions and the prospect of sending data from the Moon to Earth using nanosatellites. Dr. Cahoy looks forward to working with more Choate students: “Mentoring reminds me again of how talented, motivated, and extremely productive these students are in the lab.” If you are an alumnus who would like to mentor a student in Choate’s Science Research Program, contact Program Director Dr. Christopher Hogue at chogue@choate.edu.
First row: Lindsay Ning ’17, Katrina Gonzalez ’17, and Elise Hummel ’18. Second row: Max Fine ’17, Ian Wolterstorff ’17, Brian McGlinchey ’18, Nikhil Davar ’18, Captain Adham Meguid ’16, George Wildridge ’17, Ausar Mundra ’17, and Nandini Erodula ’18.
Bulletin Readership Survey Now Online!
READERSHIP SURVEY
READERSHIP SURVEY
Choate Rosemary Hall has partnered with CASE (Council for Advancement and Support of Education) in a magazine readership survey to collect online information regarding how our alumni and parent constituencies view the Bulletin. The survey hopes to reveal key findings about reader preferences and engagement, and how we can better serve our readership. We'd like to hear from you. Log on to: www.choate.edu/bulletin-survey.
6
ON CHRISTIAN & ELM | NEWSWORTHY
Newly Appointed Director of Admission Amin Abdul-Malik Gonzalez has been appointed Director of Admission at Choate Rosemary Hall beginning July 1, 2016. He succeeds Ray Diffley, who is leaving Choate to become the first Director of the Association of Independent School Admission Professionals’ Center for Admission and Enrollment Management Leadership located in Madison, Conn. Mr. Gonzalez brings to Choate significant experience and expertise in higher education as an admission officer and adviser, and in independent secondary schools as a teacher, coach, adviser, and college counselor. Since 2008, Mr. Gonzalez has served as Associate Director of Undergraduate Admissions and CoDirector of Multicultural Recruitment at Yale University, where he has represented Yale College to those in the Middle East, North Africa, Turkey, Latin America, India, and Pakistan as well as California and New Haven. He has also served as a voting member on the international admissions committee and supervised Yale’s partnership with QuestBridge, which has admitted more than 800 high-achieving low-income students to Yale since 2007.
“I’m excited to champion Choate’s commitment to attracting and enrolling exceptional students, of widely divergent backgrounds and talents, who will enrich the life of the School.” –AMIN ABDUL-MALIK GONZALEZ Prior to his Yale experience, Mr. Gonzalez served as Associate Dean of Admission at Wesleyan University and Swarthmore College. At the secondary school level, Mr. Gonzalez served as Co-Director of College Counseling at McDonogh School in Owings Mills, Md., and taught history and coached football and wrestling at George School in Newtown, Penn., and Northfield Mount Hermon School in Northfield, Mass. Throughout his career, he has manifested a genuine commitment to academic excellence, innovative approaches, and institutional access. Mr. Gonzalez, who grew up in Spanish Harlem, was an Albert G. Oliver Scholar at Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor, Conn. He went from there to Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., where he earned a B.A. in history as a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow. As a result of his multicultural background, independent school education, and extensive international experience, he is both bilingual and cross-culturally competent, and brings to Choate a personal flexibility and breadth of experience. He is eager to return to a secondary school setting in a leadership role that will allow him to make a greater impact at an institutional level while moving the School's enrollment management objectives forward. On a personal level, he notes, “I am eager to immerse myself and my family in a dynamic and supportive residential community.”
Sixth Formers Win Princeton Prize in Race Relations
Two sixth formers, Uzo Biosah of Los Angeles, Calif., and Tomi Lawal, of Pinehurst, N.C., were named winners of the 10th annual Princeton Prize in Race Relations. The award identifies and recognizes “high school students who are doing something truly significant to improve race relations in their schools and neighborhoods.” Both Uzo and Tomi helped create the Choate Student Diversity Association (CSDA), a campus club devoted to hosting conversations about diversity-related issues, and were members of the planning committee for Choate’s Diversity Day program. “Our club meetings,” says Uzo, “are safe spaces for both students and faculty to speak openly about race and other cultural identifiers.” Uzo is a cabinet member of the Choate AfroLatino Student Alliance (CALSA), which engages students in discussions and activities about issues relevant to racial minorities. In conjunction with Choate’s Spiritual Life Program, she helped organize a candlelight vigil for the victims of the Charleston AME church shooting. Additionally, she has performed two race-related slam poems for the student body to spread awareness of issues affecting black communities. Tomi has also been a part of the Diversity Day Planning Committee since sophomore year. As the first black male president of the Student Council at Choate in the last 25 years, Tomi says, he is proud to have led one of the most diverse and one of the most active Student Councils that the School has seen. “I have had the opportunity to engage the community about the importance of being genuinely inclusive and to help foster a more open and accepting community.” Tomi and other members of the Diversity Education Committee were instrumental in Choate’s participation in the National Association of Independent Schools’ Assessment of Inclusivity and Multiculturalism survey.
BULLETIN | SPRING 2016 7
Choate
WALLINGFORD
Computer Donation to Local Organizations Choate Rosemary Hall is donating computers and equipment to local educational and service organizations. The recipients of the 88 iPads, 31 laptops, 16 iMacs include Wallingford Public Schools, Wallingford Public Library, Spanish Community of Wallingford (SCOW), Wallingford Senior Center, CT STEM, West Haven Public Schools, St. Mary Magdalen School, and Marc Community Resources, Inc., a private nonprofit corporation providing educational, therapeutic, rehabilitation, and social services to children and adults with disabilities. Since the fall of 2012, under the leadership of Dr. Curtis, Choate Rosemary Hall became a one-to-one iPad school. With more than 800 Choate students now bringing their own devices to class every day, this provided an opportunity to donate computers no longer in use to local organizations. As part of the
School’s commitment to sustainability there is a concern about adding additional e-waste to our landfills. “This is a wonderful opportunity to support our local public schools where many of our faculty children attend,” said Dr. Curtis. “We take very seriously our relationship with the Wallingford community. When we can find ways to work together in programming or if there are things we have on campus that don’t fit in our current needs, but are very useful elsewhere, we want to do that.” Last year Choate gave $35,000 worth of computers to Wallingford schools. Over the past several years, the School has donated computers to local nonprofits such as Work Vessels for Vets, public schools in the New Haven area, and projects in South America and Africa.
“This is a wonderful opportunity to support our local public schools where many of our faculty children attend.” –DR. ALEX D. CURTIS
Choate Hosts CT Export Week Breakfast
As reported in the New Haven Register, DeLauro noted that Wallingford is “fertile ground for companies to thrive.”
On March 14, Choate Rosemary Hall hosted the Connecticut Export Week Breakfast at Ruutz-Rees Commons. The event, sponsored by the Connecticut District Export Council, is a celebration of Wallingford businesses that export to the world and institutions that educate international students. Special guests included: Wallingford Mayor, William W. Dickinson Jr., Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro, and Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill. Connecticut exports over $15 billion of products annually. Of the more than 5,000 Connecticut companies that export, Wallingford has 167. Mayor Dickinson added, ”It says something about a community’s economy and the companies that manufacture there when you produce products that people want to buy.”
8
ON CHRISTIAN & ELM | NEWSWORTHY
Dr. Jordan Ellenberg: Mathematical Thinking Dr. Jordan Ellenberg, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, spoke to students and faculty on the topic of the power of mathematical thinking at an all-school Special Program on March 22. Dr. Ellenberg is the 2016 Charles Krause ’51 Fellow in Rhetoric. A gifted high school mathematician, Ellenberg competed for the U.S. in the International Mathematical Olympiad three times, winning two gold medals and a silver. He went to college at Harvard, received a master’s in fiction writing from Johns Hopkins, and then returned to Harvard for his Ph.D. in mathematics. After graduate school, he was a postdoc at Princeton. In 2004, he joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He is the author of two books: How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking and The Grasshopper King. In 2013, he was a member of the inaugural class of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society and, in 2015, he was named a Guggenheim Fellow. In his lecture, Dr. Ellenberg explored many of the themes in his book, including the practical uses of mathematics, in ways that are both simple to grasp and profound to understand. He emphasized how mathematics can help one move from uncertainty to certainty and back again and illustrated the contributions people can make when we seek clarity and elegance in observing the world around us. The Krause Fellowship is made possible by the Charles A. Krause ’51 Fund, which provides an academic department the opportunity to bring to campus an excellent public speaker who has made a distinguished contribution in his or her field.
“I think a lot of people are hungry for an honest conversation [on race], and they’re ready for it. If people feel safe and included, they’ll join in.” – DR. TRICIA ROSE
Dr. Tricia Rose on Making Black Lives Matter Dr. Tricia Rose, Professor of Africana Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University, gave the 2016 Ambassador S. Davis Phillips ’61 Family Lecture on January 26. Dr. Rose’s talk, entitled “Making Black Lives Matter,” explored the contentious and powerful issues provoked by the Black Lives Matter movement and connected them to the deeply impactful forms of structural racism that shape U.S. society today. Dr. Rose attended the Dalton School, graduated from Yale University with a BA in sociology (1984), and then received her Ph.D. from Brown University in American Studies (1993). She has taught at NYU and UC Santa Cruz and has, since 2006, been a Professor of Africana Studies at Brown. She is an internationally respected scholar of post-civil rights era black U.S. culture, popular music, social issues, gender and sexuality. She has received several scholarly fellowships including ones from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the American Association of University Women. She is most well known for her groundbreaking book on the emergence of hip hop culture, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, for which she won an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Her message resonated with faculty and students alike, with one student commenting, “This special program really encouraged me to get involved in social activism. Dr. Rose made me believe I could change things.” Another student noted: “I think she gave the closest depiction of race in America that I’ve heard so far.” Dr. Rose was introduced by her nephew, Jay Rose, Class of 2016. This is the 20th anniversary of the Phillips Lecture. Founded in 1996 by S. Davis Phillips ’61, the lecture series brings to Choate Rosemary Hall exceptionally prominent and distinguished decision makers from business, government, public life, education, and the arts for a major engagement with the Choate community.
BULLETIN | SPRING 2016 9
ON CHRISTIAN & ELM
with
SAMUEL P. BARTLETT ’91
c hoate ros emary ha l l board o f trustees f i nan c e c ommittee c ha ir In January, the Choate Rosemary Hall Board of Trustees approved the lowest tuition increase in the School’s recent history. This minimum increase, paired with the elimination of the student health fee for the 2016-2017 academic year, is indicative of a Board committed to a thoughtful and intentional approach to tuition. As Michael Carr, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, and Alex Curtis, Headmaster, noted in a letter to parents, “We are very conscious of the financial conditions around us and we feel strongly that we should do our part to hold down the cost of education.” To learn more about Choate’s efforts to manage tuition costs and the philosophy behind them, The Bulletin spent time with Sam Bartlett ’91, Board of Trustees Finance Committee Chair.
BULLETIN: How does the Board of Trustees set tuition
each year? MR. BARTLETT: The Board has made some modifi-
cations to our process recently, and we are focused on a “bottoms-up” approach that reflects a clear strategic objective. We aim to keep annual tuition increases in a range that is sustainable over a long period of time and that provides us opportunity to attract top students. As a practical matter, first we determine the cost to deliver the highest quality experience for students and to meet the School’s strategic goals each year. Once costs have been determined, we evaluate current economic conditions, and then look at revenue sources. We begin with the nontuition sources: endowment draw and Annual Fund projections principally. Last, we calculate tuition, which is, in essence, the revenue we need to balance the finances of the School. Finally, proposed tuition increases are evaluated against our own history and benchmarked against our peers. While we aim to be competitive with our increase, this process has actually allowed us to slow our rate of increase against these measures over the past three years. B: In January, the Board of Trustees approved a historically low tuition increase of 2.44 percent for boarding and 2.50 percent for day students. Why is this significant?
MR. BARTLETT: On the one hand, looking back at history isn’t all that instructive – economic conditions (for example, inflation) and, of course, the School’s priorities change over time. At any given time in our history, the School may have been investing in new programs or facilities that may have driven tuition costs. On the other hand, the historical increases represent a pretty good long-term reference point, and it is notable and purposeful that this increase is at a lower rate than we’ve seen in four decades. It’s hard to say that we will be able to keep increases under 3 percent every year. However, we do plan to keep increases in a band that is lower than we’ve done historically. B: What is the Board of Trustees’ long-term strategy for tuition? MR. BARTLETT: Board conversations on tuition focus not on one, or two years out but on where the School may be five, 10, or 15 years from now. The difference of 1 percent increase ($500) may not seem significant in any one year, but if we compound that over 10 years (say, for example, 4 percent vs. 3 percent growth) that’s a $7,500 difference. The compounding effect of any increase is potentially significant to future generations, so we are determined to hold increases to a minimum.
We also have a long-term focus on making Choate accessible to as many qualified students as possible. In addition to keeping tuition lower, we think it is strategically important to increase financial aid so students of all socio-economic backgrounds can attend Choate. B: How does this intentional approach to tuition move the School closer to its 2013 Strategic Plan goal “to enroll the most talented and accomplished individuals?” MR. BARTLETT: In order to continue to attract the best students we need to offer terrific academic programming and extracurriculars, and remain financially accessible. We think the approach we’re taking to tuition and financial aid fits into the broader picture by encouraging discipline on making investments consistent with our top strategic priorities and maintaining the explicit goal of keeping cost to families lower. This approach will ensure that the School can stay relevant and innovative without sacrificing the accessibility of the Choate experience.
by alison j. cady Alison J. Cady is Director of Strategic Planning & Communications.
10
ON CHRISTIAN & ELM | The Arts
CHOATE’S THEATER DEPARTMENT STAGED DON NIGRO’S ROBIN HOOD In February, sixth formers Bella Kasaba and Teddy Kennedy starred in the winter production, directed by theater teacher Deighna DeRiu. In this “green” retelling of the legend, Robin Hood, a dedicated environmentalist, surrenders himself to save Sherwood Forest from being turned into a tennis club development by the scheming Prince John (played by Eli Bickford ’16). Environmentalists win out, and good triumphs! Dr. Alex Curtis made a brief appearance as the ghost of Robin Hood’s father.
LEFT Top row, L to R: Teddy Kennedy ’16, Aiden Reiter ’16, Bella Kasaba ’16. Bottom of photo: Kaitlyn Dutchin ’17 RIGHT Teddy Kennedy ‘16
BULLETIN | SPRING 2016 11
TOP L to R: Eli Bickford ’16, Asha Merz ’16, and Nils Lovegren ’18 BOTTOM LEFT L to R: Jacob Meyers ’17, Lily Kops ’18, and Sophie Latham ’16 BOTTOM RIGHT L to R: Sophie Latham ’16 and Elle Rinaldi ‘17
12
illustration by peter ryan
BULLETIN | SPRING 2016 13
Feature [#EmpathyIntimacyTechnology]
Developing Minds Helping Students Navigate the Digital World by l o r r a i n e s. c o n n e l ly
Until recently, much of the science and literature on the teenage brain has portrayed a dark side of adolescence where immature brains and risky behaviors run rampant from the ages of 15 to 25, sometimes resulting in regrettable outcomes. But more recent research has pivoted toward an understanding of adolescence that offers educators and parents a more positive, optimistic view of the inner workings of the adolescent brain. In a National Geographic article, “Beautiful Brains,” author David Dobbs notes: “A few researchers [have begun] to view recent brain and genetic findings in a brighter, more flattering light, one distinctly colored by evolutionary theory. The resulting account of the adolescent brain – call it the adaptive-adolescent story – casts the teen less as a rough draft than as an exquisitely sensitive, highly adaptable creature wired almost perfectly for the job of moving from the safety of home into the complicated world outside.”
How does Choate Rosemary Hall support students on this evolutionary journey from the safety of home into an increasingly complex world? Director of Counseling Charlotte Davidson, who has observed a generation of adolescents at Choate, says, “Teenagers have not changed. The core of adolescence and the tasks of adolescence remain the same: leaving home, identity formation, creating a sense of self within the context of family and community, establishing relationships with peers – these are the constants of adolescence.” But what has changed, says Davidson, is the external culture that has trickled down to adolescence and has exposed areas of vulnerability – most notably, the shift of interpersonal relationships in the age of social media.
14
In her recent book, American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers, author Nancy Jo Sales posits that in the 12 years since the founding of Facebook, young people’s use of social media has impaired their ability to form meaningful friendships. Indeed, the hyper-sexualization of American youth culture that has dominated the headlines has made the topic of interpersonal relationships a difficult conversation to have, but one that cannot be avoided. While not painting as dire a portrait, researcher and Choate alumna Katie Davis ’96 observes distinct challenges associated with today’s culture of 24/7 connectivity. In their book, The App Generation: How Today’s Youth Navigate Identity, Intimacy, and Imagination in a Digital World, Davis and co-author Howard Gardner describe the pressures that accompany growing up in a networked world: the pressure to be always available to one’s peer group, to appear on social media like you’re having fun, like you’re popular, like you’ve generally got it together. That’s a lot to ask of teens, especially when this is the precise age when they don’t yet have things figured out. Add to these social pressures the ever-present academic pressures that students experience at a place like Choate. Says Davis, “Choate was challenging enough when I was a student in the nineties. I can’t imagine adding to that the challenge of keeping up with the social complexities that accompany a constant stream of text messages and social media updates.” To that end, the School is encouraging students to have these important conversations in multiple settings. For instance, there is the required Sophomore Seminar, where topics concerning students’ development are explored, including healthy relationships and issues related to sexual behaviors and respecting others, the importance of sleep and eating habits, as well as stress and time management. Students who may be more comfortable in a one-on-one setting may also seek guidance and support from the Prefect, Peer Educator, Assessment, and Spiritual Life teams. In advisee group meetings, students engage in broader conversations about values, including what it means to act with integrity, respect, and compassion, and how to live the values articulated in the School’s Statement on Character and Statement of Expectations.
In addition, these values are reinforced by a series of intentional Special Programs for students and professional development for faculty that feature national experts who have addressed the challenges teenagers face in developing healthy relationships in a world increasingly defined by electronic communications and constant media influence. Last September, the Dean of Students Office invited Rosalind Wiseman, a renowned educator and expert on teen culture, to speak to the community about a variety of topics, including teenage relationships and power dynamics. The following day, she also led a professional development workshop for faculty members. Wiseman is the author of Queen Bees & Wannabes and Masterminds & Wingmen. She has also written a curriculum for girls and boys called Owning Up, which is the basis for the training she does with middle school and high school educators and administrators. Her talk resonated with students and faculty alike. She sparked open discussion about the teenage hookup culture, emphasizing to students: “You do have power to change the culture. You are the ones who have control over this. Be mindful that the experiences you have matter, and these moments can effect change in a community.” Faculty workshops focused on the way in which teachers approach difficult conversations with students on topics ranging from personal issues to rule violations. In Masterminds & Wingmen, Wiseman notes that “kids inherently know the real meaning of respect, and far too often they see adults who don’t merit it – not only public figures, like hypocritical politicians and athletes, but the adults they interact with on a daily basis.” She challenged faculty to think about the cost of not “owning up” when they aren’t speaking and treating youngsters with dignity – something to ponder thoughtfully in a residential community where adults assume the role in loco parentis for their charges.
The teenage years have always been complicated, but social media and national trends that are shaping relationships and social norms create challenges for our students that their parents never have had to encounter. –@JamesStanleyDeanofStudents
BULLETIN | SPRING 2016 15
Over the next year we will work with a diverse group of faculty and students to address the issues we identify. This journey will probably be messy and uncomfortable at times but so is the adolescent experience – and it’s the only way to accomplish our goals with integrity. –@RosalindWiseman Wiseman will be returning to campus this May as the first of four more visits with her business partner, Charlie Kuhn, to conduct a health check, of sorts, of Choate’s social culture and to identify challenges and areas for improvement. The educators will spend two days on campus talking with various constituencies, analyzing the social norms of our diverse school community, and then begin to identify working groups whose input will inform the design of a student climate survey to be administered soon thereafter. The hope is that information gleaned from this survey will provide the underpinnings for the implementation of a schoolwide program for the 2016–17 academic year that will provide students the much-needed tools on their journey through adolescence. Says Wiseman, “When I met with students and faculty last September, it was clear from our respectful yet rigorous discussion that the Choate community is not only ready but eager to come together to examine the culture of interpersonal relationships on campus. However, this is a process. Over the next year, through campus visits and regular communication, we will work with a widespread and diverse group of faculty and students to comprehensively address the issues we identify. This journey will probably be messy and uncomfortable at times, but so is the adolescent experience – and it’s the only way to accomplish our goals with integrity.” “In working with Rosalind Wiseman,” says Dean of Students James Stanley, “we are being proactive. The teenage years have always been complicated, but social media and national trends that are shaping relationships and social norms create challenges for our students that their parents never have had to encounter.” School administrators are willing to go to new lengths to understand the new “teenage” normal. During spring break Dean Stanley, Associate Headmaster Kathleen Lyons Wallace, and Director of the Arts Kalya Yannatos traveled to New York City to see a production of SLUT: The Play
written by Katie Cappiello, and directed by Cappiello and Meg McInerney. Performed by teenage cast members, the play follows the journey of Joey Del Marco, a 16-year-old girl who is sexually assaulted by three friends during a night out. Audiences experience an emotional catharsis as the story unfolds and are then given the opportunity to engage in discussion with the cast around the issues of sexuality, shame, and rape. The play’s creators agree that while there has been a great deal of national attention being paid to sexual assault and the importance of consent education at the college level, the conversation needs to start much earlier. “Opening a door to dialogue with middle school and high school students is the key.” Don’t be surprised if a staging of SLUT: The Play and its male-oriented counterpart, Now That We’re Men, comes to the Paul Mellon Arts Center soon. Of course, student programming is only one portion of the effort to support the adaptive-adolescent experience. This effort is spearheaded by Choate’s new Director of Health Services, Dr. Christopher R. Diamond, who is supported by a robust staff at the Pratt Health Center including Associate Director Karen L. Klein, a staff of registered nurses, a counseling team, and a consulting psychiatrist. Parents can help too. Says “Beautiful Brains” author Dobbs, “Studies show that when parents engage and guide their teens with a light but steady hand, staying connected but allowing independence, their kids generally do much better in life. Adolescents want to learn primarily, but not entirely, from their friends. At some level and at some times, the teen recognizes that the parent can offer certain kernels of wisdom – knowledge valued not because it comes from parental authority but because it comes from the parent’s own struggles to learn how the world turns.” Faculty and staff are always at the ready to work with parents to support students as they navigate a world in which technology has dramatically shifted social norms and cultural expectations.
16
T H E
N E W
:)
N RMAL
Lauren Taus ’00, a writer, life coach, and yoga instructor, gave up a career as a hedge fund executive to devote herself to wellness.
BULLETIN | SPRING 2016 17
Feature
by
lindsay
whalen
’01
|
According to recent
data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 91 percent of Millennials (born between 1977 and 1997) expect to stay in a job for less than three years and most can expect to have 15 to 20 jobs over the course of their working lives. In the “new normal,” devoting even a third of a 30-year career to the corporate world is unlikely. For some, the exit sign comes sooner rather than later. Three alumni – two Millennials and one Baby Boomer – share their stories of finding happiness, fulfillment, and moral purpose in their new careers.
18
the slow road to a fast lunch Late afternoon provides a rare moment of calm at Untamed Sandwiches, where the midday crush often means double lines extending from the shop counter onto busy 39th Street. But for owner Andy Jacobi ’01, the workday is far from over. “I’ve been here every day for the last 14 days,” he says. “I’m working the same hours as I did in banking, if not more, but it’s so much more satisfying.” Andy’s career in New York began in 2005, when the recent Middlebury graduate arrived in the city, unsure of where he was headed. He spent the next year working for Deloitte, but consulting wasn’t the right match either. “I had a hard time feeling ownership over what I was doing,” he says. “Parachuting in and acting like an expert, and then moving onto the next thing always felt dissatisfying.” He was ready for a new challenge, which he found in banking. When the opportunity arose to move into private equity, Andy discovered an affinity for the kind of complicated deals that others backed away from. “My favorite deals were actually the worst ones – portfolio companies that needed to be restructured, where we were going in and doing hard work and focusing on operations,” he says. In 2010, he stepped away from finance to attend Columbia Business School. “I went back to school with the idea of doing something more operational, more entrepreneurial,” he says. “I really wanted to get my hands dirty.” His dream was for his new endeavor to somehow reflect his longstanding interest in food and hospitality. While at Middlebury, Andy had worked as a line cook at an area restaurant. The experience left a deep impression. “Restaurants in Vermont were farm-to-table before that was even a thing because it’s so easy to get local produce there,” he says. It was with this model in mind that he began to conceive of a new business, dedicated to connecting small-scale ranchers with urban consumers, increasingly sensitive to the question of where their meat comes from. In the summer after his first year at Columbia, Andy began working for the Wild Idea Buffalo Company, a grass-fed buffalo ranch in South Dakota that was looking to expand operations. “I was one of 11 employees, and the only one in the Northeast,” he says. His role was to build a wholesale business, and his days were spent pitching to grocery managers, butchers, and chefs. One customer was chef Ricky King, who had helped put downtown Manhattan’s Five Points and Hundred Acres on the map. King, a native of South Carolina, uses the low and slow cooking style typical of the South, and the two started to talk about beginning something together.
Andy Jacobi ’01, who shared a passion with business partner Ricky King for sustainably raised food, started Untamed Sandwiches in 2014.
The ambition from the start was to take the food and ambiance New Yorkers expect from downtown and bring it to the heart of midtown, where busy city workers are too often forced to rely on lackluster food chains. In January 2014, after a rigorous fundraising and development process, Untamed Sandwiches opened, on an unassuming block wedged between the hubs of Grand Central, Bryant Park, and Times Square. The response, from critics and consumers alike, was immediate. With its hand-lettered chalkboard menus and creative offerings, Untamed Sandwiches feels a world away from the Subway sandwich shop visible from the restaurant’s wide bay windows. Now, nearly two years after opening, Untamed Sandwiches has established a solid base of regulars, many of whom Andy knows by name – during the store’s busiest hours he regularly mans the second register. It’s a radical shift from his days (and nights) behind a desk, but the skills Andy learned while in finance come into use daily. His ability to build and understand financial models has helped secure their early success and now expansion is on the horizon, with plans for two more locations underway. “I’ve always had the vision that I’m not building something to be short-term profitable,” Andy says. “I’m building this to really build something and I want to make sure that every customer walks out of here feeling like they’ve had an experience that was great.”
RIGHT Andy Jacobi ’01 has made a conscious decision to step off the conventional food chain and do things in an artisanal and interesting way. His clients approve.
BULLETIN | SPRING 2016 19
“I’ve been here every day for the last 14 days. I’m working the same hours as I did in banking, if not more, but it’s so much more satisfying.” –ANDY JACOBI ’01
photo credit: left/right page - Jehangir Irani for American Express® OPEN Forum
20
teaching flexibility, on and off the mat The Bryant Park Equinox Fitness Club is a constant stream of activity, and never more so than in the hours before and after the work day, when hundreds of men and women exchange one uniform for another, slipping out of suits and heels into Spandex and sneakers. Tuesday evening at 6:45 the traffic is headed in one direction: toward the expansive, glass-walled room, where the vinyasa class run by Lauren Taus ’00 is about to begin. Mats are lined edge to edge, and the fight for real estate is fierce. But the atmosphere remains convivial and relaxed, with Lauren greeting many regular students with a hug and a friendly exchange. The class begins with Lauren instructing everyone to lie on their backs, and immediately the energy level shifts and settles. Over the course of the next 90 minutes – as Lauren guides the class to move, to breathe, to think about the connection between their bodies and their minds – the worries and frustrations of the day slip away. It wasn’t so long ago that she was just like them, rushing from her prestigious position at a Manhattan hedge fund, hoping to make it to class with her favorite teacher. Lauren moved to New York in 2000, as a Barnard College freshman. Yoga was already a part of her life, but it was far from a career consideration. “I got certified to teach yoga the summer after I graduated from Choate,” she says. “I taught at Columbia all through college, and I taught in the summers in California. I always loved teaching, but being a yoga teacher didn’t really match my expectations – I thought I was too educated for that.” Lauren pursued a more traditional path after graduating from Barnard in 2005. “I was a pretty Type A kid,” she says. Her first job was a coveted position at the advertising firm Saatchi & Saatchi, as an account executive. A born questioner, and a religion major at Barnard, Lauren struggled to find significance in her work. “I was working on a billion-dollar account, and anybody who wanted to be in that field would have been thrilled, but I couldn’t help but ask myself: why do I care about Crest versus Colgate?” After a brief stint at MTV, she began working in marketing at a hedge fund. She enjoyed the work, but once again, she found herself up against a wall. When the market crashed, Lauren lost her job, an event that prompted a deeper kind of reevaluation. She had become a more devoted yoga student and teacher in the years since her first certification in 2000, and she was ready to take her passion more seriously. While on a soul-searching trip to Israel, she made the decision to leave the corporate world behind and apply to graduate school in social work. “I wanted to be of service,” she says.
Lauren Taus ’00 on one of her many retreats. Here she is in Ubud, Bali. In addition to yoga, there are daily classes in meditation and journeying.
BULLETIN | SPRING 2016 21
“I don’t think that we can move our way through every problem, and I don’t think that we can talk our way through every problem, but I think the combination of those two things really works.” –LAUREN TAUS ’00
She began her master’s in social work at NYU with the intention of opening a private practice, but while she found her clinical hours at Riverdale Mental Health, a community mental health clinic in the Bronx, incredibly rewarding, it was in her outside work as a yoga teacher and life coach that she found herself best able to impact the lives of her clients. “For me, movement is meaningful,” she says. “We uncover information in our bodies. I don’t think that we can move our way through every problem, and I don’t think that we can talk our way through every problem, but I think the combination of those two things really works.” The next step, as Lauren sees it, is to broaden her reach. In the summer of 2015, she led her first retreat in Costa Rica, a sold-out event that included fellow Choate graduates Alicia Forry ’00 and Catherine Tarasoff ’03 as students. “I love to explore and adventure, and I love to build communities,” she says. She uses social media as a means of connection; her popular feed features yogic wisdom and personal stories. “I’ve experienced a lot of loss in my life, which informs my practice and my teaching,” she says. “I lost my mom last summer, and I lost my sister when I was 20. I think that when you realize that it’s not forever, you’re more likely to make choices that are aligned with the kind of life that you want.”
Costa Rica retreat with fellow Choate graduates Catherine Tarasoff ’03 (left), Lauren (center), and Alicia Forry ’00 (right).
22 LEFT Jim Ansara ’76 founded
Shawmut Construction in 1982. The company quickly set itself apart as one of New England’s most successful start-ups. RIGHT Jim Ansara ’76 served as Shawmut’s President/ Chief Executive Officer for
“Involvement in the community and social justice had always been a big part of my adult life.” –JIM ANSARA ’76
18 years before assuming the position as Chairman of Build Health International in 2010. Three years after Haiti’s devastating earthquake, his team opened the doors to Hôpital Universitaire de Mirebalais.
“a m o r a l i m p e r a t i v e ” Jim Ansara ’76 has made a career of defying expectations. While a student at Amherst, he moved off-campus to Boston and began working as a carpenter. Instead of returning to Amherst the next semester, he continued to focus on building, eventually founding Shawmut Construction in 1982, at the age many of his peers were just beginning their postcollegiate careers. The company developed a special niche, taking on complicated projects for private colleges and restaurants, such as Harvard and the Legal Sea Foods chain. The road to success was not a straight line, however. Shawmut narrowly escaped bankruptcy before experiencing exponential growth, and in 1989, revenue jumped from $12 million to $32 million. But as the company he built continued to skyrocket, Jim began to feel that his personal input was unsustainable. “I had started Shawmut when I was still in college,” Jim says. “That’s all I had been doing since very early on, and I was really burnt out.” He made the decision to appoint a president and took on more of an executive chairman role himself, which allowed him to take a step back and spend more time with his wife and young children. He had already sold 30 percent of Shawmut to its employees in 1997, but in early 2006 he made the decision to make the company entirely employee-owned. Jim would continue as chairman of the board until 2012, but he became less involved in day-to-day operations. At the same time, Jim and his wife, Karen, became more deeply invested in philanthropy. Though it was the 2006 Shawmut sale that had allowed them to grow their family foundation, the roots of their giving already ran deep. “Involvement in the community and social justice had always been a big part of my adult life,” Jim says. It
BULLETIN | SPRING 2016 23
was an ethos he incorporated into the Shawmut corporate identity. “We did a lot of projects at cost, or below cost, for nonprofits,” Jim explained. “As the company got bigger, we got more and more Shawmut employees involved in volunteering.” He started taking groups of Shawmut staff overseas in the late ’90s to serve, traveling to Nicaragua to work on water projects with a nongovernmental organization. Jim and Karen’s philanthropy became increasingly international, with a particular focus on Latin America, where three of their five adopted children were born. Through their work, they were introduced to Dr. Paul Farmer, founder of the Haiti-based health care nonprofit, Partners in Health (PIH). The relationship would prove to be life-changing. In the summer of 2009, Jim, who had returned briefly to work at Shawmut to help the firm rebound after the recession, received a call from Dr. David Walton. Walton had begun his work with PIH as a Harvard Medical School student, working as Paul Farmer’s research assistant, and continues to split his time between Boston and Haiti. “He asked me to help him build a new hospital in Mirebalais, Haiti,” Jim says. Together with a volunteer architect from Chicago, they began to develop the project, traveling frequently to Haiti. They were working on plans in Boston when news of Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake reached them. The next day, Dr. Walton flew to the Dominican Republic; two days later, Jim flew to south Florida to organize the first group of physician volunteers from PIH. “I was planning on staying in Florida to coordinate but then David called and asked me to come,” Jim remembers. “I was there for six weeks.” As his work in Haiti continued in the aftermath of the disaster, Jim came to recognize the value of his unorthodox path. “I have an unusual background for someone to run a very large construction company. I’m not an engineer, I didn’t study anything like that in college, I never worked for big companies,” he says. “But my particular skill set was very well suited to Haiti. I started as an electrician and a carpenter and also did a lot of plumbing. I had that hands-on trade experience, and I was also very good at figuring out how to get around obstacles and develop systems where there are a lot of constraints.” He assembled a team of Americans and Haitians to build the Mirebalais Hospital.
Jim himself kept a grueling schedule, often flying to Haiti from Boston before dawn on Tuesday, and returning home to his family Friday. “I did that every week for about 20 months,” he says. At the same time, Karen Ansara spearheaded fundraising for the Haiti Fund at the Boston Foundation. Their work was fueled by a sense of purpose. “There was such a tremendous need in Haiti,” Jim says. “I saw this as a moral imperative.” The hospital opened in April 2013, and after a brief break Jim was quickly immersed in new projects. In the summer of 2013 he began building a maternal health clinic, in partnership with the St. Boniface Foundation. Projects, for PIH and others, continued to come in and Jim realized he needed to build a more permanent team; he founded Build Health International in December of 2013. They currently have 25 ongoing projects, and Jim is hungry to take on more. “For PIH, we’re not only doing all kinds of projects in Haiti, we’re also working in Malawi and Rwanda, and now West Africa,” he says. Build Health International is currently planning a teaching hospital in Liberia, where 30 percent of the country’s nurses and doctors were lost to Ebola. “A lot of the team that I worked with in Haiti are there now and we’re taking what we learned from the Mirebalais Hospital and bringing it to Liberia,” Jim says. “That’s really exciting for me.” In May of 2015, more than 30 years after he walked away from Amherst, Jim was awarded an honorary degree from the college, in recognition of his work as an entrepreneur and humanitarian. It’s been a remarkable journey, one Jim could have never imagined. “Shawmut was a great experience, it gave me the financial means to do all kinds of things,” he says. “But I never thought I would have another chance to do something of significance. I never thought I’d have the chance to impact so many people.”
Visit Untamed Sandwiches at 43 W. 39th Street or online at: www.untamedsandwiches.com For more information about Lauren Taus, visit www.laurentaus.com or Instagram @lauren.taus To learn about the ongoing work at Build Health International: www.buildhealthinternational.org
24
Bruce Springsteen performing on stage Chicken Scratch tour at the Civic Center on August 22, 1976. (Photo by Fin Costello/Redferns)
BULLETIN | SPRING 2016 25
Feature
SPRINGSTEEN
1976
“HELLO JOHN? THIS IS MARY HARROWER… My school is looking for a band for their spring concert, and I was wondering if Bruce Springsteen was available?” This innocent, and rather naïve, question set into motion events that led to the concert we are now reminiscing about 40 years later. Of course, that was not the beginning… Being a theater geek, I was hanging around the lower level of the Paul Mellon Arts Center, and overheard a conversation between faculty members. They were looking for a band and had $4,000 to spend. I piped up that I had a friend who knew Bruce Springsteen, and that I would ask if he was available. I was able to call John Hammond Sr., Vice President of Columbia Artists, because I had met him through a close family friend, and had spent time with him. He was a wonderful man, and a grandfatherly figure to me. He had an incredible smile, and made everyone feel warm and welcomed into his world. We had attended a Burt Bacharach concert, and John brought us backstage to meet Mr. Bacharach and his wife at the time, Angie Dickinson. I knew John’s reputation as a master of finding talent and bringing them to national prominence, from Billie Holiday, to Bob Dylan to Aretha Franklin, to name a few. I knew he also discovered Bruce Springsteen, of whom I was already a big fan, having been introduced to his music by a Choate upperclassman.
26 Bruce Springsteen performing on stage Chicken Scratch tour at the Civic Center on August 22, 1976. (Photo by Fin Costello/Redferns)
I REMEMBER
AN
AMAZING CONCERT;
BULLETIN | SPRING 2016 27
What I didn’t know is that John would ask a favor of his friend, Bruce Springsteen, to bring him to Choate Rosemary Hall, at a greatly reduced price, and if I remember correctly, to change his schedule to perform for us! I still shake my head in wonder that he was so kind as to make it all happen, but very thrilled that he did. I got to meet Bruce and the band backstage in the Green Room. I sat with John Hammond at the concert. I remember someone coming to ask him if he wanted earplugs, as it was going to be LOUD! I remember an amazing concert; I was enthralled. I also remember Bruce Springsteen changing the lyrics to “Rosalita,” to state that he had just been on the covers of Time and Newsweek. I am forever grateful to John Hammond for his enormous kindness, which was totally in character for him. I will never forget that concert – what a show it was. –M A RY HA R ROWER WHYTE ’76 I sat in the middle of the second or third row of the balcony, just behind the “lighting guy.” He had a colossal array of switches, dials, and sliding dimmers in front of him. This, of course, was before computers, and this fellow knew the concert to the note – his hands flew over that control board as he changed the lights with practically every measure of music. It was awesome. —GORDON A RM OUR ’7 6
I have two vivid memories: ”Raise your hand, little pret ties!” during Tenth Avenue Freeze-out ... Second, I was a day student at Choate and hung out in McCook after the concert waiting for my dad to come pick me up. When his car pulled up in the parking lot between McCook and PMAC, there was only one other car in the lot. As I was getting into our family car, I looked into the windows of the car parked next to us and, lo and behold, there was The Boss sprawled out in the backseat. I excitedly in formed my father, ”Dad, that’s Bruce Springsteen!” My dad replied, ”That’s nice. Get in the car!” Not many years later I became a fan, friend, and follower of John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band. While an undergrad at Yale, I traveled up and down the north Atlantic coast following the band. One night at The Fast Lane in Asbury Park, I was behind stage with my friend Terry, now John Cafferty’s wife, and we were dancing to the music when Terry poked me to turn around. Bruce Springsteen was standing right behind me getting ready to hop on stage and join JC and the Beaver Brown Band. It wasn’t the first time Bruce Springsteen had done that. I understand he was helpful in promoting many great bands and artists, including locals Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, Patty Smyth and the Beaves. I still have my priceless collection of bootleg Bruce bought in Greenwich Village in the late 70s with such great B sides as ”Thundercrack,” ”It’s My Life” by The Animals and even ”And Then He Kissed Me” by the 60s Motown girls group, The Crystals. His music carried me through my Yale and New Haven days (two very separate experiences) and introduced me to life on the B Side in Manhattan: “It’s midnight in Manhattan, this is no time to get cute. It’s a mad dog’s promenade ... So walk tall, or baby, don’t walk at all.” — MIMI FALSEY ’77
I WAS ENTHRALLED. WHAT A SHOW IT WAS. – MA RY H A R ROW E R WHY T E ’76
28
AND THEN THE PUNCHLINE: HE CHANGED THE LYRICS OF “ROSALITA” FROM “THE RECORD COMPANY GAVE ME A BIG ADVANCE” TO “I GOT ON THE COVERS OF TIME AND NEWSWEEK.” — ROS A N N A E . T UFT S ’78
The Springsteen concert was a signature event of my time at Choate. I hosted more people from outside of school than anyone else on campus (although many students had visitors that weekend). I had nine friends stay with me the night of the concert, sleeping on the floors of Edsall house where I lived (for the boys) and at the Rosemary dorms (for the girls). They came from Deerfield, Hotchkiss, Andover, and Spence. We slept very little that night after the concert, reflecting on how different Springsteen’s music was from others of his time. One friend reminisced about his “incredible charismatic presence” and his “animal energy on the stage and the originality of his music.” It was an event like no other at the Arts Center. Forty years later, I can still hear “Born to Run” from that night. We all knew we were in the presence of greatness. — J AMES COTT ’77
SPRINGSTEEN
ROCKED AND
ROLLED AND WRITHED
FOR NEARLY THREE HOURS IN A RARE PRIVATE PERFORMANCE TO AN AUDIENCE OF SOME 800 PREPPIES. HIS MUSICAL AND PHYSICAL DYNAMISM HAD HIS LISTENERS TO THEIR FEET STOMPING AND CHEERING AND BEGGING FOR MORE. —RE CORD- JOUR NA L, 04/17/76
BULLETIN | SPRING 2016 29
The night Bruce rocked the house! How privileged we were, to see him right at the start of his meteoric rise, but before he was “too big” to play smaller halls like ours. I’d led such a sheltered life – would you believe, this was the first rock concert I ever saw? And it spoiled me. No other rock concert since then ever was as good. Going in, I only knew one of his songs, “Born to Run.” But I was one of the first people to get into the hall when the doors opened, and scored a 1st row balcony seat. Through 2-½ hours including 3 encores, he swept us all along with his musical stories of romance and survival on New Jersey streets. And then the punchline: he changed the lyrics of “Rosalita” from “the record company gave me a big advance” to “I got on the covers of Time and Newsweek.” In the 40 years since, he has been a model for how to stay grounded while being famous. He never got “weirded-out” on fame, as so many other stars do. —ROSA N N A E . T UFT S ’7 8
I remember the night well. Fifteen years old and curious about rock music, I didn't want to pass up the chance and hey I had the six bucks needed to get in. Not a big Bruce fan at the time but what the hell … My oldest brother, John ’74, said, “You won't like that music.” I went anyway. Nestled in the balcony of the Arts Center we could see just fine. Bruce comes out and the cool begins. He was much knarlier and raw in those days. Scruffy clothes and facial hair everywhere. Classic band kind of look and awesome! Some memories of the show are 40 years faded, but I have clear and carnal recollection of the intro to “Thunder Road.” That riff stuck with me imprinted in my brain and sparked a lifelong passion for the man from Freehold. Yes, I've been to his childhood home at 39 ½ Institute Street and the other on South Road next to the gas station. Even visited the high school he writes about in “No Surrender.” Well, over those 40 years I have seen The Boss nearly 50 times and in over 10 different states. I reminisce often about my $6 experience back in 1976. That show propelled a passion that is embedded amongst my life’s most fun times. Called “Billy Springsteen” in college for introducing Bruce to my southern brethren at Vanderbilt, I still carry the Springsteen enthusiasm as strong as ever – last month in Atlanta – and just days until my next viewing in Greensboro. So, I guess my brother was wrong and that's OK. Bruce in the Mellon Arts Center was unreal and everlasting. Let's bring him back (old ticket stub to be honored…). Thanks to CRH for taking on this iconic show! —B I LL C A R RO Z Z E L L A ‘78
PAUL MELLON ARTS CENTER SET LIST 4/10/76 1.
NIGHT
2.
TENTH AVENUE FREEZE-OUT
3.
SPIRIT IN THE NIGHT
4.
IT'S MY LIFE
5.
THUNDER ROAD
6.
SHE'S THE ONE
7.
BORN TO RUN
8.
PRETTY FLAMINGO
9.
INCIDENT ON 57TH STREET
10. FRANKIE 11. BACKSTREETS 12. GROWIN' UP 13. IT'S HARD TO BE A SAINT IN THE CITY 14. JUNGLELAND 15. ROSALITA (COME OUT TONIGHT)
ENCORE: RAISE YOUR HAND 4TH OF JULY, ASBURY PARK (SANDY) DETROIT MEDLEY
30
CHOATE
READER
On the occasion of Choate’s 125th celebration, we asked Choate Rosemary Hall authors from across the decades to write a tribute or recollection of their time at school.
Dispatches from a
war zone. katherine marsh ’92
Katherine Marsh ’92 is an award-winning author of books for young readers, including The Door By the Staircase. She lives in Brussels, Belgium with her husband and two children.
Before I started writing fiction for kids and teens, I spent a decade as a journalist. Among the highlights, I was a reporter for Rolling Stone and an editor at The New Republic. But I still think my finest hour of journalism took place in Moscow in 1991 reporting for The Choate News. A year earlier, I had come to Choate as a new junior, specifically to study Russian. Few American high schools offered the language and even fewer offered students the opportunity to study in the then Soviet Union. After a year of Russian with a wonderful teacher named Matt Lenoe, I was all set to spend my fall trimester at a Moscow high school with Matt and seven other Choate students. But a few weeks before we were set to leave, there was a little problem – or actually a pretty big one. That August, a group of hardline members of the Communist Party launched a coup. In short order, they placed Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev under house arrest in his Crimean dacha, and sent tanks rolling through Moscow. Thanks to Matt, I knew enough Russian to order a Soviet tank to back off but no one at Choate seemed eager to give me this particular educational opportunity. Luckily, there were actual Soviet citizens thinking along the same lines. Within days, they had erected barricades in front of the Russian parliament and after Boris Yeltsin famously mounted a tank to denounce the hardliners, the coup collapsed. But a couple of weeks later, when I arrived at Choate with my Moscow-or-bust suitcase, the State
BULLETIN | SPRING 2016 31
Department was still getting comfortable with the idea of Americans traveling to the Soviet Union. It was touch and go before we were finally given the green light to spend two months in a country that, by year’s end, would no longer exist. Although I had written for the News a couple of times, in the taxonomy of writerly high school types I was more of a Lit person. But I also knew a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity when I saw it. And so before I left, I talked my friend Catharine Bufalino, the paper’s editor, into bestowing upon me the lofty title of “Russia Correspondent.” Like any 16-year-old correspondent, I took my job incredibly seriously (at least in the enthusiasm department, renowned Russia scribe Hedrick Smith ’51 had nothing on me). Days after we arrived, I was at the barricades – still up in memory of the three young men who had died defending the Russian parliament. After taking notes and interviewing a few bystanders, I wrote up my dispatch by hand. Then came the fun part (sadly lost to subsequent Internet generations) – the adrenalin-filled race to find a working fax machine in Moscow. The readers of the News were waiting! Pulitzer-worthy my columns were not (one particular struggle involved correctly spelling the word Muscovite). But they gave me an excuse to interview everyone from my Soviet geography teacher to the school cleaning lady. Like any groundbreaking journalist, I would never have
gotten the big story without my colleagues. In addition to Matt, a future Russian history professor who talked over the incredible moment we were witnessing as if I were an adult, my fellow Choate students were always up for going native. We explored Moscow by bus and metro, stood with Russians on the blocks-long lines at the newly opened McDonald’s, hung out with students at Moscow State University – and in doing so, became the best of friends. Nearly a quarter of a century later, the Soviet Union is long gone, replaced by a country that has become even more of an enigma to the West. My 40-year-old self now chuckles at those yellowed news clippings – with their flowery descriptions and grandiose proclamations – stored in my attic. But I also realize that my 16-year-old self came to understand something deeper about Russia. In an October 1991 column titled “Three Days in August,” about the West’s certainty that the coup’s failure was the beginning of a revolution, I wrote, “It will take more than three days to unravel the Soviet system, a dream more than seventy years in the making.” While my other reporting may not look quite as sharp today, that insight has clearly proven itself to be true in recent months. As tensions with Russia have dominated the headlines, I’ve found myself thinking back to that fall in Moscow. On that other Choate campus, 4,586 miles from Wallingford, I had the best autumn of my teenage life. And I also picked up a little wisdom on the way.
Within days, they had erected barricades in front of the Russian parliament and after Boris Yeltsin famously mounted a tank to denounce the hardliners, the coup collapsed.
32
ALUMNI ASSOCIATION CHOATE ROSEMARY HALL ALUMNI ASSOCIATION MISSION
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 Patrick McCurdy ’98 President
New York
Parisa Jaffer ’89
Rosemary Hall
Vice President
Volunteer Needed
STANDING COMMITTEE CHAIRS
San Francisco
Admission
Kevin Kassover ’87
Gunther Hamm ’98
Tara Elwell Henning ’99
Sheila Adams ’01 Jason Kasper ’05
Colm Rafferty ’94 Washington, D.C. Annual Fund
Dan Carucci ’76
David Hang ’94
Tillie Fowler ’92 Olivia Bee ’10
Communications Michelle Judd Rittler ’98
Beijing
Kathrin Schwesinger ’02
Gunther Hamm ’98
Nominating/Prize
Hong Kong
Chris Hodgson ’78
Sandy Wan ’90 Lambert Lau ’97
Regional Clubs
Jennifer Yu ’99
John Smyth ’83 Carolyn Kim ’96
Seoul
SIXTH FORM-ALUMNI DINNER Class of 2016 begins journey to becoming alumni
Ryan Hong ’89 Student Relations/Campus Programming
Thailand
Mike Furgueson ’80
Pirapol Sethbhakdi ’85
Shantell Richardson ’99
Isa Chirathivat ’96
REGIONAL CLUB LEADERSHIP
ADDITIONAL EXECUTIVE
Boston
Dan Courcey ’86
Patrick Clendenen ’84
Executive Director of Development
Lovey Oliff ’97
and Alumni Relations
Chicago
Mari Jones
Margaux Harrold ’06
Director of Development and
Shanti Mathew ’05
Alumni Relations
Connecticut
Monica St. James
David Aversa ’91
Director of Alumni Relations
COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Katie Vitali Childs ’95 Leigh Dingwall ’84 London
Faculty Representative
Kate Aquila ’92 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION Los Angeles
PAST PRESIDENTS
Tom Nieman ’88
Susan Barclay ’85
Stan Savage ’92
Chris Hodgson ’78 Woody Laikind ’53
On April 5, the Class of 2016 gathered in Hill House Dining Hall for the Sixth Form-Alumni Dinner, the first milestone of Senior Spring. Joined by Headmaster Alex Curtis, members of the faculty, alumni volunteers and parents, and the 2016 Alumni Award recipients, the Class of 2016 celebrated their friendships and their march toward graduation. Patrick McCurdy ’98, President of the Alumni Association, told seniors that Commencement is the beginning of a new chapter in their relationship with this great institution and that they are about to join an incredible network of distinguished alumni. He urged them to remain connected to their classmates and their School. He closed by sharing the many ways the Alumni Association helps graduates stay connected, including regional club gatherings, networking opportunities, social media presence, and volunteer roles. In addition, members of the Senior Gift Committee presented a $2,085 check to Dr. Curtis in support of the Students for Students Scholarship Fund. More than 70 percent of the Class of 2016 participated in this important initiative. The evening concluded with students receiving their Alumni Association vests as a symbol of their new relationship with the School and, of course, an opportunity for selfies. The Alumni Association looks forward to officially welcoming the Class of 2016 to its ranks on May 29!
1 Alumni Associate Presi-
dent Patrick McCurdy ’98 shares words of wisdom with the senior class. 2 Alumni Award winner and President of Middlebury College Laurie Patton ’79 speaking with a senior who will attend Middlebury in the fall. 3 Patrick McCurdy chats with Alumni Award winner and Chief of Exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art Dodge Thompson ’66.
BULLETIN | SPRING 2016 33
2016
ALUMNI AWARDS EDUCATION & ARTS
Dodge Thompson ’66, Laurie Patton ’79, and Headmaster Alex Curtis
D. DODGE THOMPSON ’66 AND LAURIE L. PATTON ’79 The Choate Rosemary Hall Alumni Award honors distinguished alumni for outstanding accomplishments in their profession – the highest award the School bestows upon its alumni. The 2016 Alumni Awards were presented at School Meeting on April 6. The two honorees recognized for their respective contributions in the fields of education and the arts were Laurie L. Patton ‘79, President of Middlebury College, and D. Dodge Thompson ‘66, Chief of Exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art. Laurie Patton ‘79 is completing her first year as President of Middlebury College; she is the first Choate graduate to head a college or university. Laurie previously served as Dean of Arts and Sciences at Duke University. She is a distinguished religion scholar and translator of classic Indian Sanskrit texts. In a question and answer format, Dr. Patton and Choate alumna Claire Abbadi ‘12, Middlebury ‘16, Editor-in-Chief of The Middlebury Campus, discussed the unique combination of rigor and possibility that defines a Choate Rosemary Hall education. Dr. Patton gave the following advice to students: “Make sure you remain as rigorous with yourself and the world as you have been trained to be at Choate, but at the same time, be open to possibilities for your life that you have yet to imagine. You have no idea what your life will become, and that is the really wonderful combination that Choate gives you.” She further described the new model for leadership and the three characteristics that define leaders of today and tomorrow – accessibility, authenticity, and vision.
Dodge Thompson ‘66 is Chief of Exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art, a post he has held for more than 30 years. Prior to joining the National Gallery, Dodge oversaw the administration and exhibition planning at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He is a member of the Bizot Group, an association of the directors of the world‘s 60 largest fine arts museums. In addition, Dodge is the founding president of America SCORES, an after-school soccer and literacy program with chapters in 14 major cities. Dodge has been honored by the Republic of France with the Chevalier of Arts and Letters and by the Republic of Italy with the Order of Merit, among other recognitions. In his presentation to students and faculty, Mr. Thompson spoke of his passion for preservation, which extends beyond the works entrusted to his care at the National Gallery and into his personal pursuits. In 1974, he began efforts to restore the renowned Fairmont Waterworks in Philadelphia, work he continues to this day. He has also helped to preserve the South Street Seaport in New York City as well as the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. In 2005, he closely advised his brother, architect Mark Thompson, when he restored the Seymour St. John Chapel at Choate. Mr. Thompson closed his remarks saying, “Thank you and thanks to Choate and its inspirational teachers, present, past, and future, for an eye-opening education.”
34
ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
2016
DISTINGUISHED
SERVICE AWARD Erin Brennan Allan ’93 is the owner of Toto Knits, a line of organic cotton knitwear ethically made by a group of single mothers in Kenya.
”Erin is amazing! By the time I
ERIN BRENNAN ALLAN ’93
send her our first list of students
Each year, the Alumni Association recognizes the alumnus or alumna who has enhanced the School through outstanding service by honoring him or her with the Distinguished Service Award. This year’s honoree, Erin Brennan Allan ’93, was chosen for her dedicated work in Kenya on behalf of the Admission Office. Erin has worked tirelessly to expand opportunities for international students to attend Choate, particularly those from Kenya. Year after year, she has been a champion for the School and particularly the Gakio-Walton International Scholars Program. From interviewing candidates to hosting receptions for students and parents, and from meeting with heads of schools and guidance counselors to escorting new students from Nairobi to campus, Erin has demonstrated a deep commitment to her alma mater. For her exemplary service to Choate Rosemary Hall, we are honored and humbled to present her with this year’s Distinguished Service Award.
them. She makes sure students
to be interviewed in Nairobi, Erin has already met with many of
fully complete the application process. We couldn’t attract such terrific students from Africa if it weren’t for her enthusiastic work.” – JULIE ROGERS, CO O RDI NATO R, CHOATE’S V OLU NTE E R A DMI S S I O NS NETWORK
BULLETIN | SPRING 2016 35
C H O AT E R O S E M A R Y H A L L
AT H L E T I C S H A L L FA M E OF
2016
Each year the Alumni Association recognizes outstanding athletes whose contributions and achievements left an indelible mark on the School. The following alumni will be inducted into the Athletics Hall of Fame on Friday, May 13. A standout athlete in soccer, ice hockey, and baseball, Thomas Lenahan ’74 was a leader on and off the field. Captain of both soccer and ice hockey, his coach wrote “to Lenny, the team came first.” He was awarded the Hemenway Trophy for Excellence in Hockey in 1974 and went on to play at Trinity College. Barbara Riefler Hammond ’79 was a tri-varsity captain in squash, track, and field hockey, which she co-captained with her twin sister, Linda. In addition, she received an award for excellence in field hockey, and the coach’s award in squash and track. After graduating from Choate, she continued to play field hockey at Williams College. Former Choate Rosemary Hall Trustee Linda Riefler ’79 was also a tri-varsity captain, in field hockey, basketball, and tennis, and she won excellence awards in all three sports. Perhaps her highest accolade was receiving the Greatest Contribution to Athletics Award for two consecutive years. While at Princeton, she captained the undefeated field hockey team, which won an Ivy League Championship in 1982. Four-year letterman in hockey Donald Tansill ’75 was captain of both soccer and ice hockey. With 20 seconds remaining, Don scored the winning goal to complete a come-from-behind victory (4-3) against Deerfield, and in December 1974 at the Lawrenceville tournament, Don led Choate to its first championship in that tournament in 22 years, scoring all five goals in the game against Belmont Hill. Not surprisingly, Don won the Pudvah Hockey Trophy in 1974 and the Hemenway Trophy for Excellence in Hockey in 1975. He continued to dominate on the ice when he played at Brown University.
Ognjenka “Goga” Vukmirovic ’96 excelled at both water polo and basketball during her time at Choate. Goga was honored with the School Seal Prize upon graduation. At Princeton, she became a founding member of the water polo team and was named All-American Goalie in 1999 and the Ivy League and ECAC MVP that same year. In 2015, she was inducted into the Collegiate Water Polo Hall of Fame. During her time at Choate, Pamela Novia Williams ’86 earned an astounding 11 varsity letters in soccer, ice hockey, and lacrosse and was captain of ice hockey and lacrosse. Pam earned excellence awards in ice hockey and lacrosse. She played varsity lacrosse at Brown for four years and now coaches youth leagues in the Boston area. At Choate, David Williams ’86 excelled on both the ice hockey and baseball teams and was named captain of both. He earned All-New England Baseball honors and won the Hemenway Trophy for Excellence in Hockey in 1985 and 1986. At Dartmouth, he captained the ice hockey team and was named All-American in the sport. Drafted by the New Jersey Devils in 1985, he played in 173 regular season games for the San Jose Sharks and the Anaheim Ducks. Williams was the first New Jersey-raised player to participate in an NHL game.
36
CLASSNOTES | News from our Alumni
from the Archives
BULLETIN | SPRING 2016 37
The Haircuts
A Doo Wop faculty group, performs at the PMAC during school meeting, 1986. From left, math teacher Lou Young, history teacher Tom Generous, Director of Athletics Rufus Little, Dean of Faculty Ed Maddox, history teacher John Connelly, and English teacher Tom Yankus ’52.
’86 Send Us Your Notes! We welcome your submission of classnotes or photos electronically in a .jpg format to alumline@choate.edu. When submitting photos, please make sure the resolution is high enough for print publication – 300 dpi preferred. If your note or photograph does not appear in this issue, it may appear in a subsequent issue, or be posted online to Alumni News on www.choate.edu. To update your alumni records, email: alumnirelations@choate.edu or contact Christine Bennett at (203) 697-2228.
1940s ’42 C
Herman F. Froeb M.D. writes, “I just finished my autobiography, It Took More Than a Village to Raise Me. The chapter on Choate was fun to recall. In Mr. Wilfong’s biology class and after reading Devil, Drugs and Doctors, Microbe Hunters and Arrowsmith in Messrs. Taylor’s and Tinker’s English courses, I decided that medicine was the field for me. The beginning of WWII sent me rapidly through pre-med at Princeton and landed me in Duke University School of Medicine at age 19. The rigors of academia – along with athletics and religious education – were the pillars of my future life. The motto of the School’s crest, Quaesivi Bona Tibi certainly worked for me.”
’46 C
Tom Wachtell writes that there is another generation of the Wachtell family at Choate. Grandson Bryce Wachtell is a fifth former as is Tom’s grandnephew, Michael Wachtell ’17, from Denmark. Grandson Tommy Wachtell is in the third form. Last year, Michael’s sister, Caroline Wachtell ’15, completed a postgraduate year and is now a freshman at Georgetown.
38 CLASSNOTES
’47 C Walter Blass was invited by classmate Put Westerfield to have lunch at his retirement community in Silicon Valley on his way back to New Jersey from Mexico, albeit with a torn foot tendon. Delightful luncheon, and Blass then flew home to surgery and six weeks off his right leg: “I still hope to make the May 2016 Reunion and surely our 70th next year.”
’51
’48 C
’52 C
Arthur Rosenberg is enjoying his retirement from Berlitz Language Institute and now lives with his wife, Caroline, in Palm Beach, Fla. Art would enjoy hearing from former Choate friends.
’48 RH Edie Thurlow Keasbey writes, “I am living in Patterson, NY., in a farm house built in 1790! Yes, it is a money pit, but I love it as did my Tom, who died in 2007 and who attended Choate. I recently reconnected with classmate Dotty Holbrook. I am the oldest founder and board member of Friends of the Great Swamp, known to be the second largest fresh water wetland in New York State. We celebrated our 25th anniversary. Is there anyone else around from 1948?”
’49 C
Dr. Lynn Parry celebrated his 85th birthday on a cruise to St. Croix.
1950s ’50 C Tom Ryan reports that he met Fritz Trapnell in Houston for book signing for Fritz’s book about his father, Admiral Frederick Trapnell, entitled Harnessing the Sky. It is a fascinating history of U.S. Naval aviation from 1925 (when Adm. Trapnell first started flying and testing aircraft) to the early 1950s when he became the founder and first Commandant of the Naval Air Testing Center at Patuxent River, Md.
Pete Elebash ’55 at World Leaders Conference West Palm Beach with Doris Kearns Goodwin and General Martin Dempsey.
RH Diana McGhie writes, “Lissie Evans Hamilton invited me down to Warrenton, Va., last spring for a visit. We had a marvelous time. Lissie and Barry are such gracious hosts. I keep up with Margaret Hart Rodger. Joanie Stilman Gilbert and I continue to have adventures and see great movies. I always felt that the Class of 51 has a really fine group of women.”
Art Gibbs retired from coaching high school tennis last September. He fills up his free time by teaching and playing pickleball five days a week.
’55 C Pete Elebash writes, “I am retired, living in West Palm Beach. My wife, Jane, and I spend the summers in Newport, R.I. I devote most of my time to working with Urban Youth Impact. Our mission is to create more productive citizens in the inner city communities in Palm Beach County.” ’57 C
Herb Kohler, Life Trustee and former Chairman of the Choate Rosemary Hall Board of Trustees and Executive Chairman of Kohler Co., was recently named the recipient of the 2016 Old Tom Morris Award from the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America. The award has been presented annually since 1983. Past recipients include Arnold Palmer, Ben Crenshaw, Pete Dye, and Jack Nicklaus. “I am particularly honored,” said Herb. ”Old Tom was an entrepreneur, an influence in the creation of the Open Championship, a designer of golf products and some of the best courses in the world to this day. He nurtured the environment as the first official keeper of the greens and was the creator of organic golf.” Malcolm Manson writes, “I am interim rector of St. Stephen’s Church in Belvedere, Calif. It is a parish full of really nice people, and I am amazed every morning that at my age anyone would hire me.”
Herb Kohler ’57, Life Trustee and Chairman Emeritus of the Choate Rosemary Hall Board of Trustees (2005–2011), and Executive Chairman of Kohler Co., was recently named the recipient of the 2016 Old Tom Morris Award from the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (GCSAA).
’58 C
Archie Delmarsh writes, “Twenty of us began our Choate careers in Memorial House in the fall of 1952. Choate was followed by four years at Princeton, nine years with State Mutual Life Insurance Co., and then the purchase of our family summer resort business in upstate New York in 1972. We stayed with the resort until its sale in 1987. That was followed by 24 years of retirement. I am back to work 10 hours a day seven days a week, albeit only during the summer, in our general clothing and jewelry store in the Adirondack mountains, the ADK Shirt Factory in N.Y.” Bob Knisely writes, “After 30 years in the Federal government (14 agencies and departments, 19 positions) I’ve been retired for almost 16 years. I keep busy with civic activities, grandchildren, and travel to and from West Virginia. My wife, the former Susan Bell, and I share five children and 10 grandchildren! Last May I gave a seminar presentation at George Washington University on “‘The Design of Government.’” The seminar is available on YouTube.
’59 C Ashton Edwards writes, “We’ve now resided in Madison, Conn., for 39 years. Both of our girls, Dana and Brooke, have happy marriages in New Jersey and Connecticut respectively. Dana’s oldest, Brianna, is a sophomore at Fairfield University, and there’s one from each family college-bound next fall. Jonnie has expanded her horseback riding business, and now in addition to teaching at High Hopes Therapeutic Riding in Old Lyme she’s added a new business, ’Next Step,’ while I’m still continuing my marketing consulting business refocused on private secondary schools. Both of us are in pretty good shape.”
Ashton Edwards ’59, daughter Brooke, and wife Jonnie celebrated Brooke’s 50th birthday.
James Fullerton ’59 and Douglass Barnes ’59 met up last summer at the Chatham Bars Inn during Jame‘s visit to Chatham, Mass. The classmates meet at football and hockey games, principally involving Brown and Cornell.
BULLETIN | SPRING 2016 39
Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw ’56 in A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters.
“I fell into the brook,” which separated the stage from the audience, “with a great clatter of tin.”
’56 An Accidental Actor Ali MacGraw ’56 “I plan to drive up to the front gate of Calhoun College in my new red Chrysler convertible, and sit there stark naked, honking my horn and drinking champagne and flashing at all the freshmen.” So declares Melissa Gardner, the wealthy young woman whose epistolary friendship with Andrew Makepeace Ladd III is the focus of Love Letters, A.R. Gurney’s 1988 play. It’s a moment that encapsulates Melissa’s personality: brash, provocative, impulsive. And Ali MacGraw ’56, the current incarnation of Melissa in a touring production of the play, offers it up with all the bravado and thinly veiled insecurity it deserves. “Love Letters is so well written, about a time I know so well, that I did almost no prep,” says Ali. “The language, the behavior, the slang was all really familiar. I believed it, I heard it, I said it.” The play’s milieu – from prep school to the Ivy League to the art enclaves of Manhattan – was Ali’s own, from her upbringing as a child of two artists in Westchester to her four years at Rosemary Hall, a college career at Wellesley (replete with Harvard socialization), and a post-college career as a stylist and photographer’s assistant. Ali always expected to live a life infused by the arts, but acting was never her focus. At Rosemary Hall, she mainly took part in theater because, as she puts it, “I’m a terrible athlete, and that was the alternative.” She remembers her parts as less than memorable – “I was things like spear carrier in Julius Caesar” – until she was an understudy in Henry IV and found herself called up for the lead when “a terrifically talented girl did something naughty.” Her
experience wasn’t a theatrical triumph: “I fell into the brook,” which separated the stage from the audience, “with a great clatter of tin.” Nor did it spark a yearning to tread the boards. “It wasn’t the start of a career,” she says. “It was just because I couldn’t play tennis.” Ali had to fake those racquet skills for her first big film role, as the tennis-loving Brenda Patimkin in Goodbye, Columbus. A year later, she starred as the sarcastic, doomed Jenny in Love Story. (Ali thought, after reading that script for the first time: “’I am flattened by it, and I don’t understand, because I’m not a sentimental fool.”) Love Story catapulted Ali to mega-stardom, and cemented her and her co-star, Ryan O’Neal (who now plays opposite her in Love Letters) among the most romantic cinematic couples of all time. After two marriages (to producer Robert Evans and actor Steve McQueen), Ali took on more roles, to mixed reviews; went to rehab for alcohol and sex addiction and wrote a best-selling book about it; took up yoga and made a best-selling video about it; moved to Santa Fe and worked quietly but assiduously – “a mouse among mice,” she says – on causes such as animal rights and abortion rights. “I’m an accidental actor,” she says of her stardom. “It was absolutely shocking.” What she doesn’t downplay is her respect for the craft and her commitment to hard work. “It’s been a job and a job I take seriously,” she says. “I’m a real pro. That certainly comes from my parents and Rosemary Hall. They taught me a ton of stuff that I think is rarer and rarer. Things like responsibility, respect for what we’re doing, manners, aspiration – I got all that.” Love Letters allows Ali to display her warm sensitivity, as she inhabits a character by turns combative and vulnerable, mischievous and angry, haughty and needy. Ostensibly the actors in Love Letters could be of any age, because the characters move from childhood into late middle age, but the roles are typically cast with older actors (memorable pairs include Elizabeth Taylor and James Earl Jones, Colleen Dewhurst and Jason Robards, and Mia Farrow and Brian Dennehy), in part because so much of the play requires a sense of perspective. While the Love Letters tour may keep her from her 60th Rosemary Hall reunion this spring – the show is currently scheduled to play in Buffalo, N.Y., that weekend – she looks forward to the occasion with disbelief. “When I used to go to the school, I remember seeing people there for their 60th reunion,” she says. “I thought, Nobody is that old.” andrea thompson Andrea Thompson is the co-author, with Jacob Lief, of the book I Am Because You Are.
40 CLASSNOTES
1960s ’61 C
Dave Cook will be the first tee and 18th green announcer for PGA TOUR’s Deutsche Bank Championship. He is currently featured in a national TV Titleist golf commercial. He will also be reprising his role as Alfred, Batman’s butler, later this year in Caped Crusader-Gotham Underground. Seth Hoyt writes, ”Dick Stasney and I were snail-mailing back and forth this spring. ’Stas’ reports that he’s looking forward to next January 1, when he no longer will be president of a 2,200 member medical staff in Houston. Grandpa Stas says it’s ’more fun watching 7 grandkids growing up.’” Howard J. Morrison, Jr. reports that he had his first Choate talk with grandson Hamilton Moore (age 18 months)! Michael Palmer writes, “My wife, architect Cathy Simon, and I recently returned from a two-month residency at the splendid American Academy in Rome. There, she delivered a paper on urban waterfront restoration while working on a book on the same topic. In our last two weeks we were joined by our daughter Sarah, her husband Dillon DeWaters, and our grandson Nico. The five of us wandered around Rome and took a side trip to Naples and Pompeii, the latter much transformed since I first visited in 1965. During my stay in Rome I prepared a talk for a poetics awards celebration in St. Petersburg in late November. While there I was able to connect with old friends in the poetry world and meet many young writers. A new book of my poetry, The Laughter of the Sphinx, will be published by New Directions in June, and I continue my now 40-some years’ collaboration with the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company based in San Francisco, where I serve as artistic advisor and often produce texts to integrate with the music accompanying the work.”
’62 C
TOP Mid October 2015 at an ATO fraternity Reunion Weekend
at UNC Chapel Hill were several Choate alums pictured from left, Gary Gischel ’60, Gil White ’62, and Wade Logan ’62. Not pictured: Tim Werbe ’61. The weekend honors past ATO members and helps finance current chapter scholarship awards. MIDDLE Deaver Brown ’62, (right), visited Preston Tyree ’62 in Austin in early March. The posed in front of the Willie Nelson statue that graces the front of the building that houses the Austin City Limits show. The statue is just across the street from the Austin City Hall. BOTTOM Rob Snyder ’69 and his brother Phil ’68 presented their film, The Bag, an environmental horror comedy at the Winter Film Awards Independent Film Festival 2016.
Deaver Brown traveled to Austin from his home in Lincoln, Mass., to attend a conference. While there he stayed with Walter “Preston” Tyree ’62 who is a longtime resident of Austin and an advocate for transportation and active living. He writes: “We had a lot of catching up to do. One of the stories that we remembered was the time the wrestling team went to Mount Hermon and because the wrestling and chess teams overlapped, we held the chess match in the bleachers of the gym. Choate dominated both matches.” Deaver was co-captain of the wrestling team with John Bowman.
’62 RH Davyne Verstandig writes, “I continue to live one of my passions, teaching creative writing and literature at UConn, to give weekend writing workshops, and to give poetry readings, and I have begun to take on individual clients who want a writing teacher - some for a novel and some for memoir. To teach is to learn.”
’63 C
Bruce Fenton writes, “I am now the executive vice president and general counsel of Business Credentialing Services, Inc., as well as a board member. We correct third-party insurance and documents to comply with contractual requirements and are the only provider of effective insurance compliance management, having created and defined the industry. Our clients are top companies in the world and include six in the Fortune 500.”
’63 RH Margo Heun Bradford has bought a house in Kittery, Maine, and will move there (from Bethesda, Md.) this summer. She and Margo Melton Nutt vacationed in England (the Cotswolds) for two weeks in April, and got together with Donna Dickenson. Tina Close is moving to Bozeman, Mont. Donna Dickenson and her husband, Chris, spent Christmas in New Mexico with daughter Pip. The highlight was snowshoeing in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, followed by a Japanese-style hot tub in the pinewoods outside Santa Fe. Penny Griffith Dix has been doing lots of docent work at the New Britain (Conn.) Museum of American Art, and loving it. Her 10-year-old grandson flew by himself from Omaha at the end of March to visit her for his spring break. Alice Chaffee Freeman visited Holly Smith in Florida in March. Anne Carroll Furman writes, “I am in Delray Beach, Fla. It has been quite the travel year. Thanksgiving in Santa Monica, Des Moines, Iowa for Christmas, back to Santa Monica in January for my granddaughter Leia’s third birthday. Drove down to Florida in February, visiting friends on the way, then heading to Ireland until the first of May.” Margo Melton Nutt went to a friend’s timeshare in Westbrook, Conn., for a week in January. In seven days, they went to five art museums, two historic homes, and even managed some shopping at consignment and antique stores. Reeve Lindbergh Tripp writes, “In February, I visited my daughter in California and celebrated her son’s second birthday. My Vermont daughter and her seven-year-old came with me, which was wonderful fun. I’m doing a bit of writing, as always, and some work with the Vermont Arts Council and other organizations here and there.” Reeve will speak about her father and the Spirit of St. Louis on May 4 in Montpelier, Vt., as part of the Vermont Humanities Council lecture series.
’64 C
Jeff Gould and his wife Laurie moved to St. Petersburg, Fla., but returned for the Thanksgiving Day holidays in Essex, Conn., to celebrate with their four grandchildren.
BULLETIN | SPRING 2016 41
Robin Read became a grandfather for the first time last July when his daughter, Marion McLane Read, welcomed Malcolm Read Saltman. Marion is a lawyer in the San Francisco office of the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers. Her husband, Alexander Saltman, is a physicist who works for a weather satellite company. Marion graduated from Georgetown and Georgetown Law School. Alex graduated from Harvard and received his doctorate from Stanford University. Marion and Alex met when they were both working in Washington for members of Congress.
’68
’65 RH Classmates Wesley Cullen Davidson, Lesley Starbuck, and Kathleen Ketcham Wikowitz plan to dine in Manhattan on June 7 to celebrate the release date of Wesley’s co-authored book When Your Child Is Gay: What You Need to Know by Sterling Publishing.
’67 C
Rick Rosenthal was an executive producer on the Academy Award-nominated feature documentary Cartel Land while also continuing on as a supervising producer on Season 3 of the Emmywinning Amazon series Transparent. Dick Terry writes, “I’ve begun to study ballet at age 67. What fun. It keeps you in great shape even if you don’t make the Bolshoi.” David B. Winder writes, “I retired as of October 31, 2014 after 39 years in what used to be called the newspaper business. My final employer of the past almost 13 years was GateHouse Media/New Media which is now the largest multi-media publishing group in the U.S. I’ve kept pretty active since then with sailing, skiing, traveling, extraneous projects and, oh yes, grandchildren. But ’keeping busy’ only goes so far. After being used to 50-to-60 hour weeks for years, I’ve decided to go back to work and have several opportunities in the works right now – one in publishing and two others in digital media. I live in Marblehead, Mass., with my wife, Carolyn. Our son Bartlett (Bow) and daughter-in-law Emily live in Castle Pines, Colo. Grandchildren, Griffin (3) and Declan (1), keep them very busy and we visit regularly.”
’67 RH Helen Truss Kweskin writes, “After 45 years of teaching high school English and working in several administrative positions, I will retire this year from King School, Stamford, Conn. My husband, Ed, and I are looking forward to splitting time between our new pied-a-terre in Burlington, Vt. (with the lure of three grandchildren) and our long-time home in Rowayton, Conn. (with the lure of the newest grandson). I stay in touch with Valerie Patrono, Parry Dobson, and Maisie McAdoo; we can hardly believe our 50th reunion is only a year away!”
A Friendship Still Serves Bill Rompf ’68 and John Foster, who taught at Choate from 1959 to 1969 and headed the French Department from 1964 to 1969, are ongoing proof that Choate fosters lifelong friendships. In 2012, the entire 1967 and 1968 Choate tennis teams were inducted into the Athletics Hall of Fame – including John as head varsity tennis coach and Bill, captain and No. 1 player of the ’67 and ’68 tennis teams. Several team members returned for the induction, including Bill Brock ’67, Rick Rosenthal ’67, Art Brisbane ’68, Peter Hess ’68, Greg Petersmeyer ’68, Brian McDermott ’70, and Choate teacher and assistant coach Bill Ewen. The 1967 team finished with an 11–1 record with one loss to Andover (5–4). They delivered five 9–0 shutouts against the Amherst and Harvard freshman teams, Taft, Loomis, and Deerfield. At the New England Interscholastic Championships, Bill ’68 and Jon ’69 Rompf won the doubles in a 10–8, third set tie-break, clinching the Championship for Choate. The 1968 team began the season with a narrow 5½–3½ win against the Amherst freshmen. Their only loss (5–4) was to the Harvard freshman team, which included former Choate players Brock and Rosenthal. The team rolled through their competition, concluding the season with a 7–2 win against Andover and a 9–0 victory over Deerfield. Choate finished second at the New Englands, with a 12–1 record. Bill Rompf, who played varsity tennis at Stanford and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1972, went on to graduate study at the University of Chicago. But his true passion was always in the sport of tennis. He owned and operated several tennis clubs and academies in Oklahoma City, producing more than 85 sectional and 35 national junior champions. Most recently he was the Director of Tennis and Vice President of the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, R.I. In retirement he volunteers for a local tennis magazine. After Choate, John Foster went on to become the chair of languages at Emma Willard, where he organized student exchange programs with schools in France. In retirement, he became a certified bridge instructor and has since introduced the game to more than 1,000 residents in his Florida community. He and his wife of 55 years, Lorraine, now live at Freedom Plaza in Sun City Center, Fla., coincidentally 20 minutes away from the Rompfs. For more than 45 years, the friendship between Bill and John, which started at Choate, is still growing strong. If any alumni are in the Sarasota area, they would love to have you stop by and say hello. Email Bill at billrompf@aol.com and John at lojofoster@gmail.com. – BILL ROMPF ’68
’66
Cornelia Yssel de Schepper
The Power of Education E DU C AT I ON HAS ALWAYS BE E N IMPORTAN T TO MY FA MI LY . When it came time to determine where I would attend high school, my parents searched for a school with a superior academic reputation – that was Rosemary Hall in Greenwich. As a student at Rosemary in the 1960s, I found the academic environment a challenge. Studying was a full time business for me but, as a result, college was a breeze. My brother, Marten, who was two years younger than me, attended The Choate School. I received my master’s degree from Boston University and had my first teaching position in the Boston area. After traveling to The Netherlands on spring break I decided to apply for a teaching job there. I was delighted to be offered a position with The International School of The Hague, where I worked for two years. I enjoyed the opportunity to get to know my Dutch relatives and to learn about the country of my parents’ origin. In the years since, my teaching career has taken me to positions in Iran and Israel as well. A quite different experience was my work as a logistics analyst for the Space Shuttle Program at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Some years ago I moved to San Francisco and have pursued a career in residential real estate. My Rosemary Hall education prepared me well for this varied career path; adapting to new environments came easily.
After my brother passed away in 1977, my grandmother established a scholarship in his memory at the school. Each year, I receive a letter from that year’s recipient of my brother’s scholarship. I’ve been most impressed by these students and their accomplishments at such a young age. It gives me great satisfaction to know that my brother’s legacy is being carried on in this way. About a year ago, I created a Charitable Remainder Trust with Choate Rosemary Hall as one of the beneficiaries. My initial interest in setting up a trust was the attractive tax incentives it offers. It made sense from a financial perspective and when considering beneficiaries, Choate Rosemary Hall was an obvious choice. I’m proud to carry on our family tradition of belief in the power of education. The sacrifice my parents made for us to attend private school has been a significant influence on our lives. Few people can afford full tuition at a school like Choate Rosemary Hall. These vehicles are a way to help make a Choate Rosemary Hall education possible for deserving students who would not otherwise be able to afford an education at such a fine institution.
What will your legacy be?
Join the Choate Society. For more information about Charitable Remainder Trusts and other Planned Giving vehicles, contact Barry Tomlinson at btomlinson@choate.edu or (203) 697-2071.
BULLETIN | SPRING 2016 43
’68 C David Healy writes, “In 2011 I thought I had retired from 38 years in higher education and 28 years as CFO for four institutions; the last two in the Boston area. I then semi-retired by teaching and volunteer consulting … only to have the headhunters come calling in January 2015. Since then I have been CFO at Jacksonville University in Florida, which I very much enjoy. I think I will re-retire in the next one to three years, but who knows? In any event, my wife, Denise, and I have relocated permanently to Florida. Three kids … all in their 30s spread around North and South America and doing well. Walt Harris ’68 and I have been in regular touch for the past 35 years and occasionally remind each other that our 50th Reunion approaches … time does fly.” Jedediah Wheeler writes, “On January 18, 2016, at the annual conference in New York City of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, I received The William Dawson Award for Programming Excellence in recognition of my ’enduring commitment to producing and touring work in dance, music, theater, opera and performance art for almost 40 years.’ Among the brilliant artists in that span of time, I have worked with Philip Glass, Spalding Gray, Karen Finley, and Twyla Tharp, and recently with innovators such as Robert Wilson, Liz Gerring and Romeo Castelucci. Also I have had the very good fortune to have worked with three amazing Choate Rosemary Hall graduates: Paul Zaloom ’70, Christopher Janney ’68, and Andrea Miller ’00. Each is re-imagining theater, music and dance respectively for the benefit of our vibrant contemporary culture.” ’68 RH Susan Kraus Nakamura returned from living and raising three children in Japan. With the children grown, Susan switched gears and is currently living in North Salem, N.Y., where, under the name of Suzu Vizslas, she hunts, shows, breeds, and raises champion Vizslas.
’69 C
Dan Kelly has retired from Davis Polk & Wardwell after 16 years in Silicon Valley. He was one of five founding partners of the Menlo Park office. Davis Polk lawyers are a mainstay for underwriters and financial institutions. Over the course of 2015, Davis Polk represented underwriters on four of the 10 largest California initial public offerings.
’69 RH Wyncia (Winkie) Thenebe Clute writes, “My husband, Larry Kinney, and I are still in Boulder, Colo. I spend a good deal of time learning to paint. I am now working in oils, which I really enjoy. Daughter Maggie lives on Kauai, with her cat Kala, where she teaches yoga, does massage, and is a naturalist tour guide (which includes some wild rides, too). Son Gardner is an architect working in Denver, living in Arvada with his wife Jenn. I most enjoy trips arranged around plein-air painting, though good cuisine is high on the list and uses a grand share of the budget.” Ann Singleton Davis writes, “I took a cruise with three friends on the Celestyal Crystal ship for eight days. Our first stop was Santiago de Cuba, then on to Havana for two days, then a day at the beach at Maria a la Gord, with our last stop in Cienfuegos before heading back to Montego Bay. As Americans, we were required to participate in the People to People cultural exchange program. We had two young professors from the University of Havana who provided lectures on the cultural arts and history. We enjoyed a talk by the former First Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs as well as an open discussion with the current charge d’affaires of the U.S. embassy in Havana. The entire trip was an extraordinary assault on the senses. Beautiful, colorful old buildings decaying because of lack of maintenance; loud, throbbing music and energetic dancers; pristine American cars from the 50s; horse-drawn carts; the smell of cigars everywhere. My son Read is now a project manager at Crowd Surf in Nashville, his wife, Kristin, graduated from Belmont University’s School of Nursing and is now a licensed family nurse practitioner. They built a lovely home in Nolensville a couple of years ago and have added a large black lab/mix to the family.”
Connie Terry Ferguson writes, “Bob and I are very much enjoying being Florida residents and missing the miserable winter weather in Vermont. We enjoy all that Vero Beach has to offer, and there’s no shortage of that. Pete loves his new-to-him Steven’s ’47 Cutter and is planning to sail it to Bermuda on his vacation from Salesforce.com this summer. Abby and husband Jeff are doing the weekend commute from San Francisco to Truckee, where they have recently purchased a home. My only sad news is that my mother passed away in January. She was a few months shy of 96 and had lived a wonderful life.” Susan Gannon is a career guide with Momentum for Growth. Check out her website - www.momentumforgrowth.com. Baba Bartholomew Keiser writes, “I am finally working toward full retirement. I have parted company with my most time-consuming client and I just do some special project work for another. I hope to travel more – off to Florida to see Amanda Griggs Miles. Mac broke his collar bone this past fall – surgery the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. He is mending, but not fast enough for him. My new hip is operating beautifully. I would recommend the surgery to anyone who is hobbling around in pain. It makes a world of difference. Because we don’t have any children, we are pretty focused on all our nieces and nephews (19 of them) and now the grandnieces and nephews (nine of them.) I get to see pictures of a few of them every morning on Tinybeans, which is a great way to see them grow up…not as big a surprise when we see them over the summer in real life. One nephew is very involved in the new ABC drama The Family, which we hope is a big success so he has work next fall. Anyone interested in getting together to celebrate our 65th year?” Mia Byers Norton writes, “Marshall and I are just fine and enjoying retirement. We are expecting our second grandchild in August. The first one will be four in March. He is a hoot and so much fun to be with – very verbal, too. Our youngest, Alison, turns 30 in May.”
’68 I have had the very good fortune to have worked with three amazing Choate Rosemary Hall graduates: Paul Zaloom ’70, Christopher Janney ’68, and Andrea Miller ’00. Each is re-imagining theater, music and dance respectively for the benefit of our vibrant contemporary culture.”–JEDEDIAH WHEELER ’68
44 CLASSNOTES
I am playing in an acoustic duo and gigging at farmers markets, fund raisers, etc. (thanks to George Colony for teaching me some early guitar licks on Hall 2!). –TIM BURDITT ’72
’72 Kiki Murray Schneider writes, “Dan and I just got back from our annual winter escape – Hawaii this year. We had a good visit with our son Ned, who lives in San Francisco with his girlfriend Amanda. No engagement news yet. Our daughter (also Amanda – Ned has no imagination!) and granddaughter Nina, who is just over 2, live in NYC. We try to get down there every few months, and wish they were closer. I’m very active with our local land trust. Each year, I organize a series of outings to visit newly protected properties.” Vicki Spang writes, “I saw Helen Halpin in San Francisco at a baby shower for her daughter; Helen flew in for a visit from France. I am still the CMO of a 750-attorney international law firm and spend a lot of time at our LA headquarters. To amuse myself, I go to award shows, get red carpet access, and get selfies with stars.” Sara Woodhull writes, “I have been married to Clyde Esch for eight years. Christina (my daughter) Moreno and her husband, Mark, just had a baby, Ellie Moreno. This is a miracle baby, as they had several mishaps with rare genetic issues - we are thrilled. Both of us are still working: I am at Wright State University (home of the first presidential debate on September 26), director of development for the College of Liberal Arts and love it. My territory includes New York City and LA – not bad work if you can get it. We are going to Spain in the fall for 2 weeks and this is a first for us so fun too. ”
1970s ’70 C
John Burditt reports that he will retire from Choate Rosemary Hall this summer after 19 years, first as the school’s VP for Finance and Administration, and subsequently as the school’s first Chief Investment Officer. He and his wife, Terri, (former college counselor and admission officer at Choate) will retire to their home in New Haven. Their daughter, Emilia ’02, works at the non-for-profit DonorsChoose nearby in NYC.
Chip Clowney writes, “I thought I’d give a little report about the Class of 1970’s 45th Reunion last year. Some classmates could not make it to campus so we had an off campus meet-up on Friday at Jim Berrien’s home in Fairfield, Conn. Jim, Charlie Miner, Bill McMahon, Bruce MacDougall, Chip Ryan and myself played golf and had dinner at Jim’s house, where Worthy Johnson made a surprise visit for dinner. My thanks to Jim, his wife MJ and Charlie Miner for their hospitality. Chip Ryan and I drove to campus on Saturday for the Reunion, where we met up with Tom Turnbull, John Faber, John Burditt, Todd Staub, John Ayres and Eliot Clauss. John Ayres told the epic story of how he and a crew hung the Mickey Mouse clock on the chapel. I saw Jay Moorhead a few weeks before the Reunion when he visited San Diego. He is doing well with his venture capital business. Jay was in Europe during the Reunion.” S. Christopher Scott has been executive director of the Martha’s Vineyard Preservation Trust for the past 23 years. In 2015, the Board of Trustees elected him president. The Preservation Trust owns and manages more than 20 landmark properties on the Island of Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. Robert C. Graham, Jr. ’59 was elected the trust’s chairman. Geoff Smith has spent the past 40-plus years as a teacher at the elementary and high school levels (1974-1980), as a college admissions officer and admissions dean at University of Vermont, Middlebury College, Vermont Law School, Golden Gate University, and Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center (1980-2004), and most recently as a dean of college and gap-year advising (2004-2016). He will retire in summer 2016, will continue to live in San Francisco, and hopes to do some traveling with his wife, Crystal Gromer, and may pursue some flexible, part-time work at the college or high school level. Peter Talbert played golf in Scottsdale with Jay Moorhead while he was on vacation.
’71
C Hans Farnstrom writes, “Next year will be my 30th year at The Landon School in Bethesda, where I am assistant head of the Upper School, teach English, and coach the varsity hockey team. I have been off the grid for many years now but I have been in contact recently with both Sid Gottlieb and Frank Gerold, and have kept up regularly with John Avery over the years, all from the class of 1971.” Bill Fuller published his eighth book of poems, Playtime (Flood Editions) last June. In his spare time he is chief fiduciary officer of The Northern Trust Company in Chicago. Bruce Mosbacher writes, “My wife, Nancy, and I spent the fall watching our daughter, Emily, play her final collegiate soccer season for Harvard, and visiting with our son, Jack, who is a performer living in New York. The highlight of our fall travels was a spectacular evening with Rob Minicucci and Tess at their home on the water in Darien.”
’72 C
Tim Burditt writes, “After being CFO for various start-up and middle market companies over the years, and getting the kids off into the world (all three working in NYC), I made the ’retirement’ decision in 2014. Lisa and I moved to Saunderstown, R.I., where we rehabbed a small 1925 summer cottage. Now I’m busy as ever doing what I have always wanted to but didn’t have the time, including advising and assisting three nonprofits: Rhode Island Historical Society, Greater Providence YMCA, and Social Enterprise Greenhouse (SEG). SEG has been the most fun so far, where I am teaching financial leadership to entrepreneurs in two incubator programs, all of whom have a positive social impact embeded in their business plan. On top of that, I am playing in an acoustic duo and gigging at farmers markets, fund raisers, etc. (thanks to George Colony for teaching me some early guitar licks on Hall 2!). Have not caught up with any other alums (other than my brothers) but hope to make the next big reunion.”
BULLETIN | SPRING 2016 45
’72 RH Jane Hoyt-Oliver Ph.D., is the lead author of a recently published book designed to assist parents interested in transracial adoption think through many issues that commonly arise when parenting a child of a different race. Entitled Parenting in Transracial Adoption: Real Questions and Real Answers (ABC-Clio/ Praeger), the book is grounded in a qualitative research study of transracially adopting parents’ understanding of race and culture. The book provides information that parents as well as adoption professionals may find helpful. Three adults who were transracially adopted contributed their voices to the work. Jane is the chair of social work and psychology at Malone University in Canton, Ohio.
’73 C
Stephen Davis writes, “In 1972, while in fifth form, Andrew Cohen and I first visited New Hampshire to work on the McGovern campaign in advance of the primary. Ever since then, I have led a tour to the primary on the Saturday before the vote, and Andrew has often joined. This year was no exception. Andrew’s son, Alex, came too. Stephen’s son, Gabriel Davis ’14, couldn’t make it out from the University of Chicago, but he qualified as an election official to monitor the Illinois primary in March. Andrew spoke at Choate in May 2015 about his book on JFK. My book, What They Do with Your Money: How the Financial System Fails Us and How to Fix It (Yale University Press), is due out May 24, 2016.”
1 2
3 4
1 Mike Paris ’73 brought his dog, Fergus,
2 Bill Fuller ’71 published his eighth book
3 Hans Kaiser ’76 and his daughter Audrey
to a girls’ lacrosse game where Fergus befriended some Choate students.
of poems, Playtime (Flood Editions) in June 2015. (Photo credit belongs to Anna Fuller, Bill’s daughter, a freshman at Kenyon College.)
in Florida after playing a game in a downpour during the 2016 Florida Lax Classic. 4 Shelley Burtt ‘76 and husband, Donald Meltzer, with their four children, ages 28 through 11, from a family reunion last summer.
Andy Greenspan writes, “I have begun DocYOUmentary.com, drawing on my experience as a Peabody-award winning documentary producer. I produce documentaries for individuals who wish to share their life stories with friends, family and future generations.” Basil Hero writes, “I have taken over as the Executive Director of Positive Directions, The Center for Prevention & Counseling. The state of Connecticut awarded a five-year contract to Positive Directions to carry out drug prevention education programs in the school system to combat the growing epidemic.” www.positivedirections.org/ourteam.html
’76 C Hans Kaiser writes, “I continue to play in old man lacrosse tournaments around the country with my Hobart alumni team, the Elder Statesmen, (or Eldest Statesmen, depending on which age division we are playing in). I caught up with Fritz Mitchell in Vail and Lake Placid last summer while playing in those tournaments. Fritz was in Vail watching his son in the high school division, but he stopped by to watch one of our “over 50” games, and then we enjoyed a few beers around his hotel pool. Later in the summer, he came by the Lake Placid tournament to watch a game and take me fly fishing. He is now officially our team’s good luck charm, as we took the championship in both tourneys. Alas, he wasn’t in Florida in January for the nationals, when severe weather cancelled the tournament after the first day of games. Looking forward to catching up with classmates in May.” Michael Lerner, who co-wrote the acclaimed Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy, will adapt the script for On the Brinks, the best-selling memoir by Samuel Ignatius Millar. Millar was a member of the Irish Republican Army who spent eight years in tough Irish prisons during the late 1970s and 1980s. He came to America under a different identity, reinventing himself as a family man and comic book shop owner, and then helped pull off an armored truck heist, stealing more than $7 million from a Brink’s truck and executing one of the most successful heists in U.S. history. Millar was eventually pardoned by President Bill Clinton and sent back to Ireland, where he reinvented himself once again, this time as a best-selling author of crime books. ’76 RH Shelley Burtt writes, “I am sorry not to be able to attend our reunion this year, as I will be delivering a paper in California that combines my passion for disability policy and professional interest in philosophy: ’Ideas of Autonomy in Current Disability Policy.’ For the past five years, I have been executive director for Camphill Foundation, an organization that supports a network of communities in North America and worldwide where people with and without developmental disabilities live, work and celebrate life together.“
46
CLASSNOTES | Profile
Michael Breed
’81
RARE BREED Most lists of the best golf instructors contain consensus choices. Butch Harmon and his son Claude Harmon III are invariably included. David Leadbetter, Suzy Whaley, and Jim McLean, too. Another regular on those rosters is Michael Breed, and understandably so, for the 1981 Choate Rosemary Hall graduate is among the most talented teachers in golf today. It is fairly easy to discern who the best professional golfers in the world are because they are the ones who win the most tour events. Such as Jordan Spieth and Jason Day last year. And Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson for much of the 2000s. Selecting the finest golf professionals, however, is a different matter, as determining who teaches the royal and ancient game better than anyone else – or who runs the finest golf program at a club or resort – can be subjective and imprecise. Is it about a deep knowledge of swing mechanics, or the ability to stage a topnotch tournament? Is someone considered great because he or she coaches a leading tour professional? Or is it the person who can turn a weekend hacker into a single-digit handicapper?
Consider that the Greenwich native hosts the most popular golf instruction show on television, The Golf Fix, punctuating his many suggestions for better play with the exhortation, “Let’s Do This!” Breed also has a radio show on Sirius XM, A New Breed of Golf, and serves as a commentator and analyst for tour events for the Golf Channel and PGA.com. A former head professional at the Sunningdale Country Club in Scarsdale, N.Y., and an assistant at the Augusta National Golf Club, Breed is celebrated for his successes as a personal instructor. The PGA of America honored him in 2012 as its national Teacher of the Year. Not long after receiving that award, the 54-year-old father of two founded the Michael Breed Golf Academy, at the Manhattan Woods Golf Club in West Nyack, N.Y. After two years there, he moved his operations to the Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point in New York City, where his boss is the golf-obsessed Republican candidate for President, Donald Trump. “I love being able to help people have a better experience on the golf course,” says Breed, “and when I think about my work, I see it not as what I have to do, but what I get to do.” Breed entered Choate Rosemary Hall as a freshman in the fall of 1977 and participated in a number of sports during his time there. He played golf, to be sure, but also soccer, hockey, squash, and baseball. After graduation, Breed headed to Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Va., and it was at that Division III that he began to direct his athletic concentration on golf, lettering on the team there for four years and serving as its captain as a senior. He aspired to make a living on the PGA Tour after receiving a degree in psychology in 1985 and played in some mini-tour events. But Breed soon determined that he was not good enough to become a professional golfer. So, he chose instead to be a golf professional, and it was in that line of work that he has made a name for himself. Relocating his Golf Academy to the Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point was the latest affirmation of his success. Opened in 2015, it is links-style, Jack Nicklaus-designed layout constructed within view of the Manhattan skyline. While the high-end, daily-fee course is owned by the city of New York, it is operated by Trump. “It is great to be involved with a public facility in New York City, and to be working with Mr. Trump,” says Breed, who somehow finds time in his busy schedule to give motivational speeches around the country, and to get in a couple of rounds of golf each month with his wife, Kerri. “Local New Yorkers come to the Academy all the time, and we have people flying in from all over the country, and all over the world. Some book lessons with me while they are in town for business, and others visit specifically to work on their games. “ Breed says that the Ferry Point gig is working out better than he could have possibly hoped. But it would be hard not to say that about his entire career as a golf professional. By any measure, he is one of the best.
john steinbreder ’74 John Steinbreder ’74 is a staff writer for Global Golf Post. His 20th book, From Turnberry to Tasmania: Adventures of a Traveling Golfer, was reviewed in the Fall 2015 Bulletin.
’78
Joe Choti is president and CEO of Tickets. com, a company focused on sports and live entertainment. Headquartered in Costa Mesa, Calif., Tickets.com has regional offices across the U.S. and around the world, including Europe, Australia, and Asia. The company also sells tickets directly to consumers at www.tickets.com. Kerry D. Solomon, M.D., has been elected president of the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery for 2016. Kerry is an internationally recognized leader in cataract and laser vision correction surgery. He is a partner at Carolina Eyecare Physicians and is director of the Carolina Eyecare Research Institute, which tests and improves technologies and procedures for various eye care conditions.
1980s ’80
Kenny Tung writes, “Together with a co-founder, I have launched In-Gear Legalytics. The company (iglegalytics.com) is dedicated to facilitate transformation in the legal service industry and helps existing players (mostly lawyers) and new players (new lawyers and non-lawyers) to bring efficiency and efficacy to legal services through better process, data driven risk and opportunity management while keeping most people in tow through changes.”
’81
Condolences to Kelly Ann Ortwein Meyer whose mother, Joanne Ortwein, widow of former PMAC director and theater teacher Terrence Ortwein, died in February. Miles Spencer recently traveled to Havana to meet with U.S. Ambassador to Cuba Jeffrey DeLaurentis to advance a summer internship program that last year brought four Cuban innovators to Grand Central Tech, a midtown Manhattan tech incubator, where they worked alongside U.S. technology start-ups. That effort has led Miles, with support from career diplomat John Caulfield, to
found the newly rebranded Innovadores Foundation, a nonprofit based in Greenwich. “Cuba is changing quickly, and our intention is to help Cuban young people jump start their understanding of technology in order to extend and enhance Cuba’s traditional commitment to the arts and culture,” says Miles. He conceived of the idea for Innovadores a year ago. To learn more about Innovadores, visit the website at www.caafoundation.org/innovadores-program/.
1
’82
Maria-Elena Carrion writes, “I run my own mergers and acquisitions boutique from San Juan. My husband, Pedro Pierluisi, is Puerto Rico’s resident commissioner, representing PR in the U.S. Congress. We also have a place in Washington, D.C. Moreover, he is running for Governor this year. Life is definitely hectic, to say the least!” Sheila Baker Gujral writes, “I spent a week in San Francisco and in Bolinas with Francesca Vietor. We have been lucky enough to be able to see each other once or twice a year, in NYC and in San Francisco. It was great to be able to spend more time with her and her lovely daughter, Chiara, this time. I then met up with Andy Lipsky ’83 and his wife, Holly Lipsky, and David Lazerwitz ’84, as well as my husband, Gautam (Northfield Mount Hermon ’83, who just saw John Panzera ’83 the previous weekend in Vermont). Andy, Dave, and I and our spouses then went on to see the Grateful Dead shows in Santa Clara, which was just a massive reunion of people from all walks of life. Andy and I met up the following week in Chicago with more friends and saw the Dead perform there for three nights as well. Pretty exhausting, but a lot of fun.” Anne T. Madden writes, “On February 13, at the Annual Gold Racquet Ball at The Tuxedo Club in Tuxedo Park, N.Y., Kim Solow Kilgore ’82 and Robert Coakley ’82 and I had an impromptu reunion. Anne and Kim have homes in Tuxedo Park and play court tennis together from time to time, but neither had seen Rob Coakley since graduation from Choate. None of us has aged a bit!”
2
3 4
1 Choate English teacher Ed McCatty, Rev. Rob Hirschfeld ’79, Bishop
of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire, and former Principal and Head of School Charley Dey, at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Walpole, New Hampshire, last February. The occasion was the Bishop’s annual visit for confirmations. 2 Joe Choti ’78 is President & CEO of Tickets.com headquartered in Costa Mesa, California. 3 John Lowry ’80 and wife, Meleda, relocated to Chicago, where John has joined Egon Zehnder. They spent last summer diving along the Great Barrier Reef. 4 Justin Dorazio ’83 (né Dortsch), Andy Lipsky ’83, and Sheila Baker Gujral ’82 attended a Phil Lesh and Friends show in Central Park.
SUMMER
Choate it all begins here… WWW.CHOATE.EDU/SUMMER
48 CLASSNOTES
Keith (Sauer) Wilding and Heather Wilding-White ’89 with their children Abigail (14) and Cameron (11). They have been spending the winter candidate-watching during the N.H. first-in-the-nation primary.
Joanna Hershon Buckner ’90 and her husband welcomed their daughter, Allegra Mattie Buckner, on December 1, 2014. Life is busy with 10-year old twins and Joanna is working (slowly) on her fifth novel.
Todd Bergland ’88 and wife Glenna welcomed a son, Stuart Eiger Bergland, on January 21, 2016. Todd celebrates the Super Bowl with Stuart and daughters Ginger (age 5) and Susie (age 6). Todd is a family doctor in Whitefish, Mont.
’83 Condolences to Michael T. Ortwein, whose mother, Joanne Ortwein, widow of former PMAC director and theater teacher Terrence Ortwein, died in February. Catharine Slusar writes, “I won a Barrymore Award for Outstanding Leading Actress for my work as Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf at Theatre Exile in Philadelphia, and accepted a tenure-track position in the theater department at Bryn Mawr College. I have just returned from Iceland, where I appeared as Lear in an all-female production of King Lear. My twin daughters are 14 and in their first year at Germantown Friends in Philadelphia and my husband is the artistic director of an experimental theater in Philadelphia, New Paradise Laboratories.”
Richard Tencza writes, “I have now been at PNC Bank for five years and was recently promoted to vice president. I plan to celebrate my promotion in such a way as to likely get fired.”
’89 Keith (Sauer) Wilding and Heather WildingWhite spent the winter candidate-watching during the New Hampshire first-in-the-nation presidential primary. Starting in January, Keith became the department head for the paramedic emergency medicine program at NHTI - Concord’s Community College. Heather continues to work for PC Connection as a senior business systems analyst.
’84
Emile G. Westergaard writes, “I live in Lefferts Garden, Brooklyn, with my partner Audrey. I have five terrific children, aged 6 to 21. I left Wall Street in 2013 and last year joined Click Therapeutics as Chief Business Officer. We are a health-tech company launching our first product with our partner, Magellan Health, soon. I perform my songs around New York City and will put out a follow-up to my CD Necessary Rain (on Spotify). I have been in touch with Peter Ausnit, Norman Gholson, John Weeden, David Mills, Nici Byrd, and Chris Vlasto, among others.”
’85
Will Polese writes, “I am very proud of my daughter, Samantha, who as a junior at the Barstow School in Kansas City was inducted into the Chinese Honors Society. The society’s goal is to promote enthusiasm for Chinese language learning and culture, commitment to advanced study, and greater cross-cultural understanding.”
’87 Paul Grabowski writes, “I have been appointed to the Board of Directors and Executive Committee for Child Advocates, Inc. I am also serving as the marketing committee chair for the organization. Child Advocates, Inc. is a private nonprofit organization that is Harris County’s (Texas) Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) program. We mobilize court appointed advocate volunteers to break the cycle of child abuse. We speak up for abused children who are lost in the system and guide them into safe environments where they can thrive.” ’88 Merrill Collins writes, “Hard to believe that it has been 10 years since I began work at Connecticut College. I love seeing the Choate gear on our students! Nothing much is new; my boys are growing. Birch is 9 and enjoying travel soccer and Denali is 11 and pursuing rec sports in basketball and soccer.” Brett Johnson was recently named president and co-chairman of the Arizona United Soccer Club. Established in 2014, Arizona United is the state’s only professional soccer franchise. As president, Brett will spearhead efforts to launch a capital campaign that will fund the club’s continued growth and success, building upon their early momentum in the United Soccer League. Brett is the founder and CEO of Benevolent Capital and Managing Director of Zealot Networks, and a Choate Rosemary Hall Trustee.
1990s ’90
Stephanie Taylor Copelin writes, “I’ve been able to catch up with Matt Kraus, as he was commuting right by my house in Wilton, Conn., for a period of time. My daughter Dahlia (8) and I spent a long weekend in Florida with Suzanne Darmory celebrating my birthday and Suzanne’s son’s 8th birthday. I see Suzanne regularly, especially now that she lives in Connecticut.” Mike Minadeo is a game designer in Los Angeles, Calif. Mike is also a consultant for the Survivor TV reality show, and his immunity challenge design “Rice Race” was filmed for the third episode, which aired in March. His games have twice been official selections at the IndieCade Game Festival in Culver City, and that led to an introduction to a key member of the Survivor production team. Mike writes, “It’s been a thrill to contribute to a show on prime-time television that has had such a tremendous impact on popular culture. Since the show has been on for 15 years, they’ve amassed a huge library of ideas for challenges. It’s not easy to come up with something new, so I’m honored to have my idea selected.” He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children. He can be reached on Twitter at @ MikeMinadeo.
BULLETIN | SPRING 2016 49
’92
“It’s been a thrill to contribute to a show on primetime television that has had such a tremendous impact on popular culture.” –MIKE MINADEO
’90
Katherine Marsh writes, “Last summer, I moved to Brussels with my husband, Julian, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and our two children. After many years covering defense in Washington, including several wars, Julian figured we’d kick back and eat waffles for a few years while he wrote about European security and the kids learned French. But after the lockdown and terror attacks, massive refugee crisis, and new Cold War later, our lives have turned out to be slightly less calm and leisurely than we imagined. On the bright side, the waffles are good, and after eight months in a Belgian school, Sasha, 8, and Natalia, 5, have started correcting our lousy French. In domestic news, I’m thrilled to report the publication of my fourth book for children, The Door By the Staircase (Disney). It’s a fairytale adventure with a witch, kids, magic and cooking, perfect for ages 8 and up.”
’93
Charlie Dixon joined 21st Century Fox in August of this year as the executive vice president of content for cable networks Fox Sports 1 and Fox Sports 2. He oversees all content, development and production for the two networks. Prior to taking on his role at Fox Sports, Charlie most recently was the senior vice president of development for NBC News and MSNBC.
Jill Santopietro Panall writes, ”Last April, I started my own HR consulting firm called 21Oak HR Consulting, specializing in outsourced HR services for small businesses. I’m looking forward to helping any Choaties who can use some HR assistance. I was also lucky and excited to appear on the long-running quiz game show Jeopardy! in February 2016. It was a great opportunity to reconnect with classmate Dr. Neville Anderson ’93 who was able to attend my J! taping. I won a total of $28,400 over two days and will forever get to say that I’m a Jeopardy! Champion.”
’94
Serena Torrey Roosevelt and her family recently moved from New York City to the Bay Area where she and her husband, Ted, are both studying at Stanford. They and their three children are thoroughly enjoying the area’s beautiful weather and entrepreneurial spirit, and they love having a back yard for the first time in any of their lives. They would love to connect with other Bay Area Choaties.
’95 James Kaiser writes, “In celebration of the National Park Service Centennial, I’ve published updates of my national park guidebooks. These include Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Joshua Tree, and Acadia national parks. Five percent of the profits of my Acadia book will be donated to the Friends of Acadia (the nonprofit partner of the park).” jameskaiser.com LEFT Mike Minadeo ’90 is a
BOTTOM RIGHT 2015 Annual
game designer and consultant for the Survivor TV reality show. RIGHT Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek and Jill Santopietro Panall ’93, contestant and champion who won a total of $28,400 over two days on the show. BOTTOM LEFT James Kaiser ’95 kayaking on Jackson Lake in Teton National Park in Wyoming.
Hong Kong Christmas Gathering. Top row, from left, Jason Lo ’95, Lambert Lau ’97, Henry Lau ’02, and Geoffrey Kao ’96. Second row, from left, Janet Lee ’95, Sandy Wan ’90, Derek Yu ’94, Angela Fan ’98, Davina Chang ’92, Cheline Yau ’98, Maria Cheng ’96, Grace Kao ’94, Angela Wu ’92, Jennifer Yu ’99, Roland Yau ’00, Douglas Lam ’94, and Jada Lam ’92. Front row, from left, Simone Chao ’00, Betty Hu ’06, and Anne Cheng ’07.
50 CLASSNOTES
’96 Julia McCarthy Leeming and husband Paul Leeming ’95 report, “After 10-plus years in Brooklyn, in 2013 we moved to Stonington, Conn., Paul’s childhood home. We had progressively been spending more and more of our free time here, so the move felt very natural. Paul continues to work for UBS and splits his time between New York City and New London. I have my own architectural practice in Stonington and have focused on residential work since the move. We bought an old house with good bones but that needed a lot of work, so we’ve kept up a steady stream of projects, some of which we do ourselves and others that we leave to the professionals. Paul has rekindled his woodworking skills, which has come in handy. In January 2015 we welcomed our second child, David Brana Leeming, to the family. He now loves chasing after his big sister Emilia, so no one is ever sitting for very long.” Jed Williams and Emily Rappold were married in northern Virginia July 18, 2015, attended by classmates Ryan Williams, Alex Ullman, Matt Kaye, Nathan Egan, and Pete Mayer. Jed and and Emily are living in Centreville, Va.
1 Elizabeth Carey ’97 and
3 Miriam Diwan ’00 married
Cynthia Wides are the proud mamas of a baby girl. MaeMarie ”Mimi” Amo Carey-Wides arrived on December 7, 2015. 2 Lauren Frank ’97 and her husband, Adam Frapart, welcomed a daughter, Cameron Rose Frank-Frapart, on February 17, 2016.
Reddhi Mitra in December 2015 at Hotel Bel Air in Los Angeles. She had some Choaties help celebrate, with Elissa Gaw ’00 and John Snyder ’00. 4 Anthea Jay Kamalnath ’02 was sworn into the State Bar of California on March 9, 2016, by her boss, U.S. Ambassador to
the United Nations Samantha Power. 5 Regan Schubel LaFontaine ’97 and her husband, Nick, welcomed a daughter, Sawyer Mae LaFontaine, on May 23, 2015. 6 Natalie Wolff Cashman ’03 and husband, Matthew, welcomed a daughter, Shayla Michele, on February 23, 2016.
2 5
’98
Will Gilyard has been promoted to be the Dean of Students at Kingswood Oxford.
2000s ’02
’03 Reiko Okazaki, who holds a LL.B. from Waseda University in Tokyo, and a LL.M. from UCLA School of Law, was admitted as an attorney in New York State in 2011 and as an Australian lawyer last year. In October 2015 she became a barrister, and on February 1, 2016, represented the Victorian Bar at the Opening of the Legal Year.
Gee Grandonico ’98 welcomed a son, Stefan Maxwell Chiavaroli, on April 28, 2015. 8 Barrister Reiko Okazaki ’03 represented the Victorian Bar at the Opening of the Legal Year.
1
’97 Alison Vasan writes, “I will graduate from Duke University School of Medicine with my MD in May. In July, I will begin a medicine internship at Duke before starting on my radiology residency, also at Duke, in 2017.”
Anthea Jay Kamalnath was sworn into the State Bar of California on March 9 by her boss, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power. Currently, Anthea serves as an advisor to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations and is a Franklin Fellow with the U.S. Department of State. Mark Osborne, assistant general counsel at Grow Financial Federal Credit Union in Tampa, was elected secretary of the Association of Corporate Counsel WCFL Chapter. The Association of Corporate Counsel is a global bar association of in-house counsel who work for corporations, associations, and other private-sector organizations.
7 John Chiavaroli ’98 and wife
3
4 7
6
8
BULLETIN | SPRING 2016 51
CLASSNOTES | Profile
Chris Jennings
Forgotten Utopias
’00
WHAT IMAGE DOES THE WORD ’COMMUNE’ CONJURE? PEACE SIGNS? BELL-BOTTOMS? PERHAPS. But before there
were hippie communes, there were the Shakers, the Owenites, the Fourierists, the Icarians, and the Oneida Perfectionists – all members of communes. In Paradise Now, Chris Jennings ’00 tells their story, revealing how now largely forgotten utopias were thriving oases of free love, communal property, and women’s rights in the decades leading to the Civil War. (See review on p. 62) It was Chris’s interest in the communal living experiments of the 1960s and 1970s that led him to discover their 19th century predecessors. “The Jacksonian era is generally talked about in terms of individualism, the development of free market capitalism, and Victorian prudery,” Chris says. “It was shocking to find a parallel history to that – a bunch of Americans with very different priorities. I stumbled on to these people, and then became completely fixated on them.” The stories are as colorful as they are informative, with appearances from Emerson and Margaret Fuller, explorations of Shaker design theory, and eye-widening insight into Oneida’s radical “complex marriages.” Chris spent his first years after Choate at Deep Springs, the two-year college located on a remote California cattle ranch, before continuing his undergraduate education at Wesleyan. He graduated with a major in philosophy and returned to his hometown of New York City. After a brief tenure with the New York Parks Department, Chris spent nearly a year living in India with Choate classmate Julia Glanternik ’00. It was when he returned to New York that Chris’s career in publishing began, first as an intern at The Paris Review, and later as a fact-checker at The New Yorker. His four-year experience with the latter magazine allowed him to develop the skills necessary to approach his ambitious first book project. Though he now lives in Northern California, I met with Chris in the Random House offices in New York, while he was in town for the Paradise Now book launch in January. In a follow-up email, I asked him about the most difficult challenge of being a firsttime author. “Sort of letting go a bit, in terms of style,” he replied. “Not obsessing all day about each sentence. And also trying to figure out how to create momentum and a sense of story out of a collection of facts and ideas that don’t really contain their own overarching narrative.”
“I think that imagining the perfected society is a way of expressing your disgust with the current state of affairs.” To read Paradise Now is to know that Chris more than overcame every obstacle. In Paradise Now, we come to understand how the 19th century belief in progress motivated the utopian move toward perfection, and how that was shattered by the devastation of the Civil War. Much more than a history of five distinct communities, Paradise Now is a finely drawn portrait of a very different America, with relevance today. A precondition of utopia is a feeling of dissatisfaction with the world as is. In the conclusion to Paradise Now, Chris makes the troubling observation that though dissatisfaction abounds in our current moment, we no longer seem able to imagine a more perfect future. Instead, we have begun to identify the past as a model of achievement, a disturbing shift, given that our history is deeply flawed and cannot be relived. Paradise Now is a reminder that the future is ours to shape, and that utopia, in its best form, is a powerful means of protest. “Some people just think utopians are idiots who are imagining rivers of candy and not really engaging with the world’s ills, and sometimes that’s surely the case,” Chris says. “But I think that imagining the perfected society is a way of expressing your disgust with the current state of affairs.”
lindsay whalen ’01 Lindsay Whalen ’01 is a writer and editor based in New York City.
52
CLASSNOTES | Profile
Brandon Sherrod
’11
HARMONIES & HARDWOOD Brandon Sherrod ’11 is on the phone from LAX, where he is waiting for his flight to Newark. His Yale Bulldogs lost the day before. “It was a valiant effort; we just couldn’t get over the hump,” he says. The 6-foot, 6-inch, 235-pound starting power forward is in his senior year at Yale. A year earlier, with the Bulldogs eyeing potential postseason play, Brandon sat out the season in favor of touring with Yale’s a cappella all-male singing group the Whiffenpoofs. A decision in which the arts trump sports has a way of grabbing headlines, and in this case there were stories by ESPN, CBS, and The New York Times, which noted in its headline that Brandon had traded the playbook for the songbook. But managing harmonies and hardwood is nothing new for Brandon. During the year he spent at Choate Rosemary Hall, he was not only preparing for Ivy League academics but playing basketball and singing with the Maiyeros as well.
Brandon describes taking the year off as “an amazing experience.” The Whiffenpoofs toured nationally, and followed with a threemonth summer tour of the world, performing in 24 countries. Growing up in Bridgeport, Conn., Brandon’s affinity for music came from his mother, who he says would “sing around the house.” His early vocal training was at church, the Jesus Saves Ministries, where he also learned to play the drums. He grew up in a household with three younger sisters, which came with responsibilities. “You learn a lot with little sisters,” he says. “‘Handle with care’ is the phrase.” His mother is a teacher for children with special needs, his father a postmaster in Milford. Before Choate, he helped lead his high school basketball team to the Class L state championship. He also sang in the choir, helped start an a cappella group, and acted. “I would have done musicals but they overlapped with basketball season,” he says. Attending Choate was a bit of a “culture shock,” he recalled. The school’s international culture was something he’d never experienced before. He was also challenged to think more critically about the world, and noted the curriculum was much more free-flowing, including courses like Popular Culture from the 1920s to 2000s. At Yale, Brandon is a political science major. As he nears the end of his senior year he’s thinking about his future and pondering a political career. That might include a run for the Connecticut Senate in the 22nd district, which includes Trumbull, parts of Bridgeport, and Monroe. And music. As well as singing and drums, Brandon plays piano and alto sax. He also writes his own music. There’s also basketball, as in playing the sport professionally overseas. “The idea of playing a sport you love for a living is unbelievable,” he says. One moment that he’ll never forget: Beating Columbia this past March to clinch Yale’s first NCAA tournament bid since 1962. Brandon and basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain both hold records for consecutive field goals. Chamberlain set the NBA record almost 50 years ago in February 1967 with 35. Brandon broke the NCAA record earlier this year with 30, going three weeks straight without missing a shot. But ultimately, Brandon figures he’ll head to politics. He feels “a lot of debating” at Yale has helped prepare him. And he’d like to bring what he’s learned back to where he grew up. Touring the world, Brandon says, he witnessed the great disparity of economics and opportunity, and finds similarities in Bridgeport and what he called the “cycle of mediocrity” there. “That’s the kind of thing I want to change,” he says. “I want people to come back to Bridgeport and say that’s my city and say it with pride.” In the meantime, it’s hoops and harmonies. “I can’t tell you how many lifelong friends I have because of basketball,” he says. “The same is true of music. It’s a universal language, just the way basketball is.” jeffery kurz Jeffery Kurz is editorial page editor and a columnist for the RecordJournal, in Meriden.
BULLETIN | SPRING 2016 53
1 Rachel Saltzman Tennis ’04 and her
3 Natalie Pentz ’05 is an English teacher
husband, Brad, welcomed a son, Stephen Andrew Tennis, on June 24, 2015. 2 John Gelb ’05 married Morgana Rosenberg in Woodside, Calif., in October 2015.
of 6th and 7th graders in the North Bronx. 4 Members of the Class of 2010 visiting with former dean and teacher Tommie Oppegaard in Carolina Beach, N.C. Front row, from left: Scott Hansen, Sam Craft, Jon Maddalone, Tony Perugini.
’04
Stephen Lattanzi’s most recent project is A Drowning Man. It’s “a short film that I wrote, directed, and starred in, opposite Tom Winter and Tiffany Dupont,” he writes. The film chronicles the life of Brian Ross, who, in the wake of his wife’s death, wrestles with the reality of living his life without her. Unable to find his footing, he turns to a gift she’d left him just days before her passing, leading him on a journey that will bring him closer to her than he could have imagined. View the film online at www.adrowningmanfilm.com.
Back row, from left: Olivia Bee, Sarah Kornacki, Tommie Oppegaard, Rick Bhattacharya, and Danielle L’Heureux. 5 Anthony Lukca ’05, married Elisabeth Jean on October 10, 2015 in Orford, Quebec, Canada.
6 Gabe Zanuttini-Frank and Noah Hast-
8 Daniel Marquardt ’07 and wife Nan
ings, Class of 2015, in New Jersey this February for a Yale/Princeton men’s basketball game. 7 Field Hockey Reunion from left, Ariana Branchini ’07, Alice Bearn ’07, Lauren Branchini ’04, and Cary Bearn ’04.
with Choate alums at their December 19, 2015 wedding in Charlottesville, Va. From left, Zach Remsen ’07, Catherine Sanger Wolcott ’05, Nan and Daniel Marquardt ’07, Matthew Sanger ’07, and Caroline Breed ’07.
1
2
3
4
’05
Natalie Pentz writes, “I’m a tenured English teacher in the North Bronx, educating 6th and 7th graders. I have been so happy inspiring students here to apply to specialized and private high schools like Choate. One of my favorite parts of the job is bringing pieces of classic literature that I read at Choate to my middle school classroom to add rigor to our curriculum. Additionally, I was married in 2014 to Sean Ellwanger, and we just moved into our first home in Fairfield, Conn.”
’06
Sydney Lapeyrolerie will obtain her MBA from the Wharton School on her birthday (May 15)! She will move to New York this fall to work as a consultant for Accenture Strategy.
’07
Peter Gault was recently named one of Forbes Magazine’s Top 30 Under 30 in the field of Education. Peter is the cofounder of Quill, a non-profit, open-source literary tool that provides personalized, interactive writing lessons for middle and high school students. The company’s mission is to create an active learning environment by presenting students with engaging problems to solve and allowing them to construct solutions. Quill has received support from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, BlackRock, AT&T Aspire Program, and Google.org, among others. Zach Remsen writes, “I will be enrolling at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth this fall, following three years of working at Edgewood Management in New York City.”
’08 Marian Homans-Turnbull moved to California in the fall to begin a PhD in English and Medieval Studies at UC Berkeley. ’15 Livia Domenig qualified with her 800-yard freestyle relay for Division III NCAA Swimming and Diving to represent Amherst College.
5
6 7
8
54
IN MEMORIAM | Remembering Those We Have Lost Alumni and Alumnae
’41 C
Vincent W. Jones Jr., 92, a retired financial adviser, died November 27, 2015 in North Pomfret, Vt. Born in Hartford, Conn., Vince came to Choate in 1937. He was President of his fifth form class, Secretary-Treasurer of his sixth form, Chairman of the Student Council, Chief of the Fire Department, an editor of the News, captain of varsity baseball and on the varsity football team. His classmates voted him “Most Generous,” and he was among those whom they named as “Done Most for Choate,” “Most To Be Admired,” “Most Respected,” and “Most Influential.” During World War II he served in the Navy in the Pacific, earning nine battle stars. After the war he graduated from Harvard and Harvard Business School. For many years, Vince was an investment counselor for firms including the Boston Management and Research Group. He leaves his wife, Cindy Jones, Maple Avenue Farm, P.O. Box 262, North Pomfret, VT 05053-0262; three children, including Christopher Jones ’81; five grandchildren; and a brother. Richard C. Whiting, 93, retired president of an oil company, died November 18, 2015 in Holyoke, Mass. Born in Holyoke, Dick came to Choate in 1938; he was a cheerleader and in the Glee Club. After graduating from Williams, he served in the Navy in the Pacific. He was the former president of the Whiting Oil Corp, a firm founded by his great-grandfather. Dick was also President of the New England Fuel Institute, Treasurer of the Holyoke Visiting Nurse Association, and President of the Forestdale Cemetery Association. He leaves his wife, Betsy Whiting, 67 Park Slope, Holyoke, MA 01040; three children, including Richard Whiting Jr. ’69; and six grandchildren.
’45 C
Robert M. Phelps, 88, a retired dentist, died February 6, 2016 in Warner, N.H. Born in Clifton Springs, N.Y., Bob was at Choate for one year. He lettered in basketball and was in the Press Club. He served in the Army, then graduated from Case Western Reserve University. Bob had a dental practice in Cleveland, Ohio, for more than 40 years, retiring in 1992. He was on the
Board of Directors of the Cleveland Dental Society and was a secretary of the Ohio Dental Association. He leaves two sons, including Robert Phelps, 7 Whitetail Ridge, Grantham, NH 03753; four grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
’45 RH Ann Taylor Boyd, 88, a retired television production assistant and caterer, died December 21, 2015 in Stamford, Conn. Ann came to Rosemary Hall in 1942; she was in the Choir and the Philomel Chorus; played basketball and field hockey; and was on the track squad. After graduating from Bard College, she was a production assistant at Dumont Studios in New York, working on the Jackie Gleason Show, among others. She was active in Greenwich, Conn., singing and acting in local shows, and working as Arts Editor of the Greenwich Time newspaper. She and her sister founded a catering business that, in 1992, catered the reception after the funeral of Dorothy Walker Bush. Ann was involved in church activities and was an accomplished singer. She leaves four children and 11 grandchildren.
’46 C David H. Aldeborgh, 87, retired chairman of a gauge manufacturing company, died January 15, 2016. Born in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., David came to Choate in 1944; he was in the Glee Club and Choral Club. After graduating from Trinity College, he served in the Coast Guard, then worked for many years alongside his father at the Standard Gage Company in Poughkeepsie. He designed and held patents for many of the company’s gauges, and in 1973 was named Chairman of the Board of the firm. Active in the community, he was Chairman of the Poughkeepsie Planning Board for 16 years and was also President of the Hudson Valley Philharmonic Society. In later life, David studied and wrote extensively on the 19th century Austrian composer Anton Bruckner. He leaves a brother. William D. Davies, 87, a retired pharmaceutical company executive, died January 5, 2016 in Stamford, Conn. Born in Greenwich, Conn., Bill came to Choate in 1943. He lettered in track and soccer, was President of St. Andrew’s Cabinet and the Glee
Club, was Advertising Manager of the Brief, and was a cheerleader, on the Student Council and the Dance Committee, and in the Cum Laude Society. He was among those voted by his peers as “Class Politician.” After graduating from Yale, he was with several pharmaceutical firms, including Squibb and Morton-Norwich, often overseas. He later was with the executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles. Bill was a former trustee of Camp Pasquaney, the New Hampshire summer camp with several Choate connections. His wife, Fifi Davies, died in 2009. He leaves four children; 10 grandchildren; a sister, Helen Simpson ’43, P.O. Box 7, New Hope, PA 18938; and a brother, Edward Davies ’49.
’49 RH Joan Stahl Miloradovitch, 84, a retired teacher and principal, died December 16, 2015 of a heart attack. Born in San Francisco, Joan, who was also known at School as “Gussy,” came to Rosemary Hall in 1947. She was in the Kindly Club, the Dramatic Club, the Music Club, Hospites, and the French Club; was on the Fire Squad; and was a Marshal. After graduating from Bennington College, she earned a master’s degree from Queens College in New York and for many years taught nursery school and kindergarten at St. Marks School in Jackson Heights, N.Y. She was later the school’s principal. Before retiring, she worked at Bloomingdale’s. Joan enjoyed world travel and art. She leaves a daughter, Leslie Chiapparelli, 14685 Oka Road #2, Los Gatos, CA 95032; and two sisters, Marie-Louise Stahl Crawford ’44 and Audrey Stahl Whiteman ’48. ’53 RH Elaine “Lainey” Patterson Allen, 80, a retired technical illustrator, died October 18, 2015 in Marietta, Ga. Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Lainey came to Rosemary Hall in 1951. She was a cheerleader, a Marshal, Secretary of the Fifth Form, and on the Dance Committee, the Diploma Committee, and the Kindly Club Council. After attending Bennett Junior College in Millbrook, N.Y., she was a technical illustrator at the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island and Cushing and Nevell Inc. in New York City. Lainey also worked many years in the advertising
department of the Darien (Conn.) News Review. She enjoyed swimming and tennis. She leaves three children, including Laird Almy, 2017 Westside Ln., Woodstock, GA 30189; seven grandchildren; and a sister.
’54 C Robert O. Lindig, 79, a retired banker, died February 1, 2016. Born in New York City, Bob came to Choate in 1950; he was in the Automobile Club and the Weather Bureau. He then earned degrees from Dartmouth and the Columbia School of Business. Bob worked with banks in Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and Colorado; in Denver, he started the Denver Westcore Colorado Tax Exempt Bond Fund at First Interstate Bank, and completed his banking career at Denver Investment Advisors. He was also the owner of a manufacturing company in Holland, Ohio that makes cash machines for car washes. He and his wife renovated a 19th century bakery in her home town of Mandeville, La., that is on the National Register of Historic Places. He also enjoyed world travel. He leaves his wife, Carolyn Lindig, 386 Madison St., Denver, CO 80206; a son; a stepson; four grandchildren; and a sister. Bob was a member of the Choate Society, those alumni and alumnae who have left a bequest to the School. ’60 RH Marjorie O’Keefe Londergan, 74, a retired realtor and antiques dealer, died November 21, 2015 in Providence, R.I. Born in Providence, Margie came to Rosemary Hall in 1958. She was Assistant Head Boarder Marshal, on the Fire Squad and Hockey Squad, and voted “Most Sociable” by her classmates. After Rosemary Hall, she studied literature at Oxford University and art in Geneva; she was also a graduate of the Master Gardener program at the University of Rhode Island. For 40 years Margie was a realtor and antiques dealer; she also was a painter. She was a supporter of the Women’s Resource Center of Rhode Island. She leaves her husband, M. Robert Kerr, 165 Prospect Ave., North Kingstown, RI 02852; three children; five grandchildren; and a brother.
BULLETIN | SPRING 2016 55
’61 RH Elizabeth Thompson LeGard, 73, a retired preschool teacher, died February 23, 2016 in New Canaan, Conn. Born in Wyandotte, Mich., Betsy came to Rosemary Hall in 1958. She was Head of the Chapel Committee, a Marshal, in the Kindly Club, Philomel, and the Grounds Committee, and voted “Most Thoughtful” by her classmates. After graduating from Mount Vernon College in Washington, D.C., she was a preschool teacher in New Canaan. Betsy excelled at golf, tennis, and other sports, and volunteered as a field hockey coach at New Canaan High School. She leaves her husband, Edwin LeGard Jr., 64 Canoe Hill Rd., New Canaan, CT 06840; two children; five grandchildren; a sister, and a brother.
’77 C William G. Nevins, 57, a financial analyst, died January 26, 2016. Bill came to Choate in 1974, where he was Advertising Manager of the News, lettered in hockey and lacrosse, and was in the Spanish Club. After graduating from Boston College, he worked for Lehman Brothers. Bill was an avid art collector. He leaves his brother, Theodore Nevins III ’76, 244 Fifth Ave. #T266, New York, NY 10001; a sister; and his mother. ’81
James B. Curtin, 51, a management consultant, died December 3, 2015 after a brief illness. Born in New Haven, Conn., Jim came to Choate in 1977. He was captain of varsity crew, winning a School award in the sport. He was also President of the Sociedad Honoraria Hispanica, circulation manager of the News, and in the Gold Key Society. After Choate, he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, where he lettered in crew. He then began as an underwriter for Travelers Insurance Co., then was a principal of the insurance underwriter A. Foster Higgins & Co. At the time of his death, he was Metro New York Leader of Health and Group Benefits at Towers Watson. Jim enjoyed car repair. He leaves his mother, a brother, and a sister, Cynthia Curtin ’87, 1267 Mount Carmel Ave., North Haven, CT 06473.
’82 Andrea Dodd Warble, 52, a former executive of an investment firm, died February 5, 2016. Born in New York City, Andrea came to Choate Rosemary Hall in 1979. She was in the Camera Club, the French Club, the Sailing Club, and the Gold Key Society. After graduating from Georgetown University, she worked for the investment firm Scudder, Stevens & Clark, where she was the relationship manager for several top clients. After her second son was born, she left Scudder to focus on her family. She leaves her husband, Larry Warble, 52 Birch Rd., Darien, CT 06820; three children; and her parents. ’83 Reginald H. Imamura, 50, a financier, died February 29, 2016 in Larchmont, N.Y., of pancreatic cancer. Born in Winston-Salem, N.C., Reggie came to Choate Rosemary Hall in 1980. He was in the Gold Key Society, the Camera Club, the United Nations Club, and was Vice President of the Student Political Union. He won a School prize in economics. After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he joined First Union National Bank in Charlotte, N.C., becoming Managing Director of the Capital Markets Group of First Union Securities. He then started his own firm, which was acquired by PNC Financial, where he was an Executive Vice President at the time of his death. He was also the founder and first Chairman of the Structured Finance Industry Group. Colleagues said Reggie earned “the respect and the acknowledgement of both colleagues and competitors.” He enjoyed sailing and snow skiing. He leaves his wife, Lisa Imamura, 56 Woodbine Ave., Larchmont, NY 10538; two daughters, including Sophie Imamura ’15; a brother, Anthony Imamura ’86; and his mother. .
Faculty, Trustees, and Spouses
’50 RH Phebe Alexander Bowditch, a former Trustee, died February 9, 2016 in New York City. She was 82. Reared in Atlanta and Rye, N.Y., Phebe was at Rosemary Hall for one year; she was in the Dramatic Club, the Kindly Club, and the Monotone Club, and was on the 1st hockey team. She graduated from Vassar, where she majored in political science, then worked with Merrill Lynch as a writer and editor of business publications. Starting in 1973, for nearly 40 years she was a realtor for Brown Harris Stevens in New York, specializing in high-end condominiums and co-ops, mostly on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. From 1968 to 1974, she was President of the Rosemarian Association, and was a key player in the move to relocate Rosemary Hall from Greenwich back to Wallingford, one of the most important times in the School’s history. From 1974 to 1976, she was a member of the first Board to merge Trustees from the two schools. Phebe was a member of the Cosmopolitan Club and the Essex Fox Hounds, and enjoyed horses, gardening, and her cat. She leaves two children, Phebe Lowell Bowditch ’79, of Creswell, Ore., and Richard L. Bowditch, and three granddaughters. Lueza T. Gelb, a retired teacher, wife of longtime Trustee Bruce Gelb ’45, died February 7, 2016 in New York City. She was 84. Born in Plainfield, N.J., Lueza graduated from Wells College, married Bruce, then raised her children at home before earning a doctorate in history from Columbia. She taught at Pace University and MarymountManhattan College, and lectured on European history to the United States diplomatic community when Bruce was ambassador to Belgium from 1991 to 1993. Lueza was the author of Schroon Lake, an award-winning memoir. She also enjoyed skiing and sailing. The track at Choate Rosemary Hall is named for her and Bruce. Besides her husband, Bruce S. Gelb, 1060 Fifth Ave., Apartment 10B, New York, NY 10128, she leaves four children, including Jody Gelb ’74, Richard Gelb ’76, and Connie Gelb ’78; five grandchildren, including Nathaniel Gelb ’04, John Gelb ’05, and Dora Jarkowski ’15; and a brother.
James R. Langlois, husband of former Director of the Andrew Mellon Library Dianne Langlois, died January 24 in Middletown, Conn. He was 70. Born in Melrose, Mass., Jim graduated from St. Lawrence University, where he lettered in hockey. He and Dianne married in 1969. For 47 years, Jim worked in the cement industry, and most recently was Executive Director of the Connecticut Concrete Promotion Council. For more than 30 years, he was an assistant men’s hockey coach at Wesleyan; he was also an assistant coach at Choate for three years, including 1978, when the hockey team had an undefeated season and was ranked No. 2 in the nation. He was also an avid golfer. Besides Dianne, of 13 Woodlot Lane, Middletown, CT 06457, he leaves a son and two grandchildren. Joanne E. Darling Ortwein, a retired nurse and widow of the late head of the Paul Mellon Arts Center and theater teacher Terrence Ortwein, died February 15, 2016 in West Lebanon, N.H. She was 83. Born in Woodsville, N.H., Joanne earned a degree in nursing from Boston University. She and Terry lived in Crawfordsville, Ind., where they raised their two children, and moved to Wallingford in 1976. They spent more than 20 years at Choate Rosemary Hall, where they lived in Faculty Square. They were both fond of their time in Wallingford, and remained friends with many former and present faculty members and staff as well as town residents after Terry’s retirement in 1997. They later moved back to New Hampshire, and Terry died in 2011. They were married 50 years. Joanne especially enjoyed gardening, playing bridge, and according to her family, “anything at all sung by Andrea Bocelli.” She leaves her children, Kelly Ann Ortwein Meyer ’81, 1754 Deer Creek Court, Valparaiso, IN 46385, and Michael T. Ortwein ’83; four grandchildren; and a sister.
Our sympathy to the family of the following alumnus, whose death is reported with sorrow: Frederic Marvin ’50 January 17, 2013
56
SCOREBOARD | Winter Sports Wrap-up
GO CHOATE!
Boys swimming Co-Captain Natt Chan ’16 was a member of two record-setting relay teams this season.
BULLETIN | SPRING 2016 57
4 0 0 – YARD FRE E STYLE RE LAY
FOUNDERS LEAGUE AND
C H OAT E R O S E M A RY H A L L
RECORD:
3:14.02 Boys’ and girls’ varsity swimming teams had successful seasons. The boys won the Founders League Championship, breaking Founders League and Choate records for the 200 Medley Relay and the 400 Free Relay. The girls’ squad finished strong as well finishing in 2nd place at the Founders. Freshman diver Kobe Tray ‘19 broke the school record in his first diving meet and continued his success by winning the Founders League title and the New England title. Varsity wrestling took home 2nd in Class A Championships. The Wild Boars had several top-five finishers, including Sam Blank ‘17 and Matt Cuomo ‘19. Girls’ varsity basketball finished as a No. 5 seed and lost a close game to Exeter in the first round of the Eight Schools Tournament. The varsity archery squad completed another undefeated season.
58
SCOREBOARD | Winter Sports Wrap-up
GO CHOATE!
Jocelyn Polansky ’19 (#11) earned All-New England honors this season as a freshman. Jocelyn was one of three girls' basketball players with All-New England recognition. Nicole Hiller ’17 and Captain Gabrielle Brooks ’16 were also selected.
BULLETIN | SPRING 2016 59
1. Kyle Gelzinis ’17, competing in the 160 lb.-event 2. Kristina Schuler ’17 looks to make a play in the offensive zone.
3 Colin Donovan ’17 passes the ball against Cheshire Academy. 4. Wesley Fang ’19 sends in a drop shot in a December match
against Loomis.
5. Piper Connelly ’19 was a strong contributor on a young and talented squad this year. 6. Boys Varsity goalie Kurt Moss ’16 defends the net during the game against Brunswick.
3
1
2
5 ARCHERY Varsity Season Record: 5–0 Captains: Jianming Xu ’16 & Adham O. Meguid ’16 Highlight: Second consecutive undefeated season BASKETBALL Boys Varsity Season Record: 6–18 Captains: Theodore Murren ’16 & James Gibson ’16 Highlight: Big wins over Exeter and Deerfield Girls Varsity Season Record: 12–10 Captains: Emma Blair ’16 & Gabrielle Brooks ’16 Highlight: 5th seed in Eight Schools Tournament ICE HOCKEY Boys Varsity Season Record: 9–12–4 Captains: Henry L. Marshall ’16 & Brendan Murphy ’16 Highlight: Tied Avon; Wins over Trinity Pawling & Deerfield
6 Girls Varsity Season Record: 9–12 Captains: Amanda R. Reisman ’16 & Olivia C. Podos ’16 Highlight: Win over Deerfield SQUASH Boys Varsity Season Record: 9–18 Captains: Robert W. Van Allen ’16 & Dylan P. Muldoon ’17 Highlight: Strong start to season 4–0 Girls Varsity Season Record: 17–5 Captains: Engy M. El Mandouh ’16 & Cecilia J. Katzenstein ’16 Highlight: Finished 11th at New England Class A tournament
photo credit: Dan Burns
4
SWIMMING Boys Varsity Season Record: 6–3 Captain: Natt C. Chan ’16 & Albert Y. Zhang ’16 Highlight: Won Founders League; Finished 5th out of 11 teams at New England Championships Girls Varsity Season Record: 5–3 Captains: Venus Law ’16 & Navasinee Maleenont ’16 Highlight: 2nd place Founders League; Finished 7th out of 13 teams at New England Championships WRESTLING Boys Varsity Season Record: 15–6 Captains: Nicholas D. Bradley ’17 & Samuel Madden ’17 Highlight: Finished 2nd out of 13 teams at New England Class A tournament
60
BOOKSHELF
In this issue, an exploration of “isms” – an architect looks at creating “a memorable habitat” through the lens of humanism; an author examines 19th century utopian communities and their common desire to imagine better words; a novelist reimagines the lives of real-life astronomer-siblings, and a young adult novelist continues the adventures of her 8th grade heroines.
The Stargazer’s Sister By Carrie McCully Brown ’77 | Reviewed by Andrea Thompson
THE STARGAZER’S SISTER Author: Carrie Brown ’77 Publisher: Scribner About the Reviewer: Andrea Thompson is the co-author, with Jacob Lief, of the book I Am Because You Are.
When Lina, a young woman whose tiny body infantilizes her throughout her life, embarks from the ship that has borne her from a wretched life in Hanover to an intellectually stimulating future in England with her beloved older brother, a man, mistaking her for a child, hoists her over his shoulder to help her through the surf to shore. That touch – matter of fact, warm, exhilarating – lingers in her senses for years to come as Lina, stunted and scarred from illness, resigns herself to a life of labor and chastity. Yet the body, as a source of both pain and pleasure, cannot be so easily renounced. In this exquisitely observed novel, Carrie Brown ’77 draws on the real-life siblings William and Caroline Herschel. William was a composer and the astronomer who discovered Uranus and catalogued thousands of celestial objects, using a massive telescope of his own design. Caroline, 11 years his junior, acted as his housekeeper and his assistant, along the way becoming an astronomer in her own right. Brown imagines their relationship as both loftily intellectual and uncomfortably intimate. Most meaningfully, William frees Caroline – here called Lina – from the stifling home in Hanover, where their mother treats Lina with barely repressed disdain. Sickly, largely housebound, Lina thinks plaintively, “A girl was not taught anything she could use to save herself in the larger world.” After William establishes himself in England, she writes to him for rescue.
William is both a genius and a benign tyrant; Lina worships him and also deplores his thoughtlessness. Child-like, he depends on her to feed him, to write up his discoveries, to spend night after night with him gazing at the stars. She struggles to imagine herself his equal. “Her mind – it is like a little satellite star to his mind, and his mind is a planet, a sun.” Over time she absorbs his work, and tentatively begins to pursue her own. Soon she spots a comet, then another. Her life with William is one of fervor and fatigue, relentlessly pursuing the knowledge that will expand not only the scope of the known universe but also the scope of her own vision. “In a way, William has given her herself. Anything else, any other life, she realizes, would be a small life, a narrow life, compared to the one she has now.” Brown draws Lina sensitively and vividly: her selfreproach, her thwarted desire, her thrill at discovery. Most tellingly, she creates a robustly sensual world, filled with the rustling of embers in a banked fire, the scent of smoke on a pair of mittens, the vibration of bees in their hive. Lina may chafe against the physical world, but the joys of it pervade her life.
BULLETIN | SPRING 2016 61
The Tiara on the Terrace By Kristen Fiedler Kittscher ’92 | Reviewed by Courtney Jaser
THE TIARA ON THE TERRACE Author: Kristen Kittscher ’92 Publisher: Harper Collins About the Reviewer: Courtney Jaser is a librarian at the Andrew Mellon Library.
The fierce and witty Sophie Young and Grace Yang are back for more adventures in The Tiara on the Terrace, Kristen Kittscher’s sequel to her beloved young adult mystery Wig in the Window (reviewed in the Winter 2015 Bulletin). Like its predecessor, The Tiara on the Terrace is a story of twists and turns, as well as another page turner with a great sense of humor. Sophie and Grace are strong, independent eighth graders who have become local town heroes for solving a murder mystery a few months earlier. The Tiara on the Terrace takes place during the 125th annual Winter Sun Festival in the girls’ hometown in Luna Vista, Calif., a fictional portrayal of the Rose Parade. The festival is an important town tradition that has countless floats and a Royal Court of glamorous high school girls that Sophie, Grace, and their friend Trista are mystified by. The girls’ curiosity, courage, and inability to go with the flow set the stage for their exciting adventures. When the death of the Festival President Mr. Steptoe occurs (by s’more float) at the beginning of the festival, they find it hard to believe that it was an accident and feel a duty to fully investigate. Sophie, Grace, and Trista develop a plan to go undercover to find what really happened to Mr. Steptoe. Even though they know it is a longshot, they try out to be royal pages, which will allow them the opportunity to do some serious spying. Despite the odds, they are accepted as royal pages through the stiff competition of their middle school peers, who are more obvious choices given their focus on their appearance and making it up the chain to become a Royal Court princess or queen someday. The role of page comes at the price of waiting on the Royal Court of high-maintenance high school girls for a long weekend in a local mansion. Along with their royal duties, Sophie, Grace, and Trista use their spying skills to investigate those who may have potential motives for wanting Mr. Steptoe gone, and in the end discover a true surprise.
Kittscher has a gift for portraying the middle school experience, notably the awkwardness and anxiety that come with the transition from childhood to adulthood. She insightfully describes the challenges that arise from creating a positive identity as a smart, strong girl in a sea of girls who are primarily concerned with their hair and makeup. Important aspects of friendship and middle school crushes are played out in this story with keen perspective. The girls are always trying to do the right thing and are often misunderstood by their parents and other adults in their lives, though they end up smarter and stronger in the end. The Tiara on the Terrace is ideal for girls and boys between the ages of 8 and 12 who enjoy a page turning mystery with relatable and fun characters. It is an exciting, yet safe mystery for young readers. Fans of Kittscher’s series will keep a hopeful eye out for a third installment!
62 BOOKSHELF
Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism By Chris Jennings ’00 | Reviewed by Charles Hopkins
PARADISE NOW Author: Chris Jennings ’00 Publisher: Random House About the Reviewer: Charles Hopkins is a member of Choate’s History, Philosophy, Religion and Social Sciences Department, where he teaches World and U.S. History.
My students often treat as curiosities the utopian communities that sprang up in the United States in the first half of the 19th century. They spend a few minutes fascinated by the sexual permissiveness of the followers of Charles Fourier, making a connection between Shaker furniture and the followers of Mother Ann Lee, or recognizing that their silverware at home bears the name of John Humphrey Noyes’ Oneida Community. But then they move on, swept up in the excitement of the individualistic, industrializing mainstream of Jacksonian America, rife with competition, inequality, and organized religiously around a growing Protestant religious consensus. In his thoroughly researched book, Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism, Chris Jennings invites his readers to pause and consider five early 19th century utopian communities: The Shakers, founded by “Mother” Ann Lee, named for their ecstatic dancing, moved from England to America to avoid persecution and built communities that abolished property, family, and sex. The Scottish industrialist Robert Owen used his textile fortune to build a community at New Harmony, Indiana, that he hoped would bring prosperity and a new moral order through careful planning and design. Followers of the French social theorist Charles Fourier built exactingly designed communities whose residents believed they would usher humanity into a future where mosquitos would obligingly disappear, the oceans would taste like lemonade, and complete sexual libertinism would be acceptable. The followers of Étienne Cabet emigrated from France to Texas, where they attempted (and quickly failed) to build a community that celebrated Jesus Christ as the first Communist. In upstate New York, John Humphrey Noyes put his Ivy League education to work constructing the Oneida Community, which sought perfection by discarding practices that its members saw as anti-Christian, such as monogamy and private property. Each of these communities studied those that had come before; many had members that moved from one to another. These communities all called their members to live apart from the mainstream of America, in small, communistic settlements; they had religious and social practices that would have puzzled or even shocked their contemporaries; and all shared a conviction that by their very existence they could bring about a new, perfect world.
Jennings traces the intellectual context of American utopianism and his gift for finding the pithy quotation allows him to cover plenty of ground without becoming tedious or dense. The breadth of Jennings’ reading is truly impressive; he is equally at home discussing the roots of American utopianism in the Judeo-Christian tradition and European Enlightenment thinking, its growth and reinterpretation by Marx and Engels, and its offspring in the form of hippie communes of the 1960s and 1970s. Through carefully observed characters and evocatively rendered scenes, this is history as it should be written. Jennings’ book argues that these utopian communities are part of a number of larger stories in American history. Their communitarianism is a response to the industrial revolution, their interpretations of religion have roots in the Second Great Awakening, and their radical equality, especially among genders, can be seen as presaging later feminist movements. Most of all, though, Jennings argues with a touch of nostalgia that utopian thinking represented a certain audacity of imagination that we have since lost. He writes that today, The prevailing view [in America] is that the current state of affairs, while far from ideal, is better than the hazards inherent in trying to make things too much better. Not long before his death, the historian Tony Judt wrote that the task of today’s intellectuals and political philosophers “is not to imagine better words but rather to think how to prevent worse ones.” At best, American politics … is concerned with finding the least bad version of the status quo…. In writing about utopianism, Jennings invites us to consider another time, when many thinkers were indeed trying to “imagine better worlds”; he invites us to imagine American utopias once again.
BULLETIN | SPRING 2016 63
A New Look at Humanism By Robert Lamb Hart ’46 | Reviewed by Steven Lazarus This book is a rare find. Robert Lamb Hart ’46 is a practicing architect who has written a highly readable book about an important contemporary issue in society. Inspired by Paul Goldberger, former New York Times architectural critic, who noted that “scientific research might determine wise design decisions” Hart challenges architects and students to integrate the study of evolution, ecology, and neuroscience into their design process. Melding real-world experience and insatiable curiosity, Hart writes about the history of architecture to provide successful examples of enlightened and informed design outcomes. The format of the book exemplifies the work of a truly talented designer: beautifully written, each page composed of insightful sidebar comments enhancing the body of text and charming hand-drawn illustrations. Hart is a scholar and synthesizer of knowledge, inspiring us with memorable directives from those outside of the traditional field of architecture: Henry David Thoreau, “To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of the arts,” and Winston Churchill, “We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.” Most importantly of all, Hart brings his own often poetic analysis to bear, reminding us that “Experiencing the places we build is as integral to our lives as encounters with people.” Currently, the field of architecture incorporates advances in building and computer modeling technology. It is increasingly attuned to conservation as a necessary design consideration as well. However, Hart forges new ground by encouraging the search for “some deeper order of things – some level of objective laws underlying the development of all human cultures and the diverse languages of our architecture, landscapes and settlements.” Is there a universal understanding of how people positively observe and experience spaces?
A NEW LOOK AT HUMANISM Author: Robert Lamb Hart ’46 Publisher: Meadowlark About the Reviewer: Steven Lazarus P ’99, ’01 ,’04, is an architect with a practice in Wallingford. He teaches Choate’s Architectural Design class and has been an active participant in Wallingford community planning organizations.
NOEL, TALLULAH, COLE, AND ME Author: John C. Wilson ’33 Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Hart’s own architectural practice is interested in the psycho-social environment as well as the physical. The architect is the guide on a journey with his client to explore not only practicalities but also possibilities. In a distinguished career as a designer and chairman (now emeritus) of the architectural firm Hart Howerton, he manages a multidisciplinary team whose goals are to create “a memorable habitat.” Their diverse and significant work ranges from conservation plans for Tanzania’s Serengeti and Zimbabwe’s National Park at Victoria Falls to environmentally-sensitive resorts in Morocco and Costa Rica. His belief in the concept of “New Urbanism” has resulted in the creation of several communities that are energy efficient, walkable, and neighborhood friendly across the United States. The author’s commitment to the importance of a humanistic perspective in the design process inspired him to establish the annual Hart Howerton Fellowship Summer Internship Program, for students enrolled in architecture, planning, and landscape design programs. This educational initiative seeks to sensitize young professionals to the importance of “designing complete environments and designing for healthy living.” Hart’s book educates us about how to better understand our natural and built environments. The more we can protect, enhance, and perhaps most importantly, enjoy them, the better global citizens we will become.
THE DOOR BY THE STAIRCASE Author: Katherine Marsh ’92 Publisher: Disney/Hyperion
FIRST DADS Author: Joshua Kendall ’77 Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
64
END NOTE |
Waiting for New Beginnings MY NAME IS AITRAN DOAN. I immigrated to the United States in 2000; my aunt escaped war-torn Vietnam in 1979; my grandfather fled China during the SinoJapanese War in the 1930s. We are three generations of immigrants and we are part of the global migration story. When I saw the masses of Syrians waiting outside the Syrian embassy in Amman, Jordan, in the hot, sweltering heat of Summer 2015, I could not turn the other way. Back on Stanford’s campus in September, I kept digesting article after article about Germany’s borders opening to welcome refugees, as well as articles about refugees drowning on the dangerous plastic dinghy ride from Turkey to Greece, en route to northern Europe. The images of traumatized survivors mourning their dead loved ones after their boats capsized at sea made me sick. I think of family friends who were the famous “Vietnamese boat-people” of the 70s; I remember the way they described the sea – a scary monster that would gobble them up during storms; how scared they were during those endless days and nights; how they can no longer enjoy family trips to the beach or big bodies of water. I could no longer fully enjoy life in sunny Palo Alto, nestled under the protection of Stanford and Silicon Valley. So I filed a leave-of-absence and flew to Greece on December 28. For two months, I volunteered at a refugee camp in Leros, Greece – an island located a few miles from the Turkish coast – and hence, a major transit stop for asylum-seekers. In the first few weeks, the average stay for the asylum-seekers was two to three days. In that short timespan, volunteers from various NGOs, in collaboration with UNHCR, MercyCorps, and Samaritan’s Purse, provide the newcomers with necessary clothing for the journey to northern Europe; housing;
aitran doan ’13
food; medical care; legal consultation for asylum-seeking; and other necessary services. As I witnessed the quick turnover of these thousands of faces every few days, I was humbled by the sheer resilience that each and every person embodied; I know that they were all hurting inside but they continued to laugh, joke, and be “normal,” as best as they could. I wanted to share their optimism. I wanted to whole-heartedly believe that when we volunteers waved them off at the port, the ferry taking them to Athens would also take them a step closer to safer futures. I did not want to think about culture shock, the difficulty of assimilation, the racism and Islamophobia, the psychological trauma: the bitter feeling of knowing you will never truly belong, no matter how hard you try. I have since returned to Stanford. As I watch the events of the refugee crisis unfold and the European Union’s and the United States’ responses, I cannot help but feel disappointed. The population of Syria is only 22.85 million people. The majority of them are ordinary civilians, living in fear for their lives. Those who manage to flee are using all of their savings and placing the lives of their loved ones – young children, spouse, mother, father – at risk as the family journeys from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan by boat, bus, and foot to northern Europe: a journey that should take only a couple of hours on a plane is a multi-week trek of cold, sleepless, dehumanizing days and nights. They are just trying to find a better “new normal.” So as a fellow human, a fellow American, and a fellow migrant, I humbly ask of the readers of this reflection: try to see this migration wave as a phase of the global migration phenomenon that has occurred all throughout human history. Aitran Doan ’13 is a sophmore at Stanford University.
A young Syrian girl awaits resettlement at a women's and children's shelter in Leros, Greece.
Choate Rosemary Hall
Annual Fund
FRONT COVER: Yoga instructor Lauren
Taus ’00 at Santa Monica Pier.
The Heart of the Matter TEACHING AT CHOATE IS MORE THAN JUST A JOB – IT’S A WAY OF LIFE.
p. 64 | Waiting for New Beginnings:
Aitran Doan ’13 gives a firsthand account of the unfolding Syrian refugee crisis in Leros, Greece. Here at a women's and children's shelter young children wait seeking asylum to northern Europe.
BULLETIN THE MAG A ZINE OF CHOATE ROSEMARY HALL
SPRING ’16
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. 1516-093/17.5M
Editorial Offices T: (203) 697-2252 F: (203) 697-2380 Email: alumline@choate.edu Website: www.choate.edu
Classnotes Editor Henry McNulty ’65
Illustration Peter Ryan
Communications Assistant Britney G. Cullinan
Director of Strategic Planning & Communications Alison J. Cady
Contributors Alison J. Cady Lorraine S. Connelly P ’03, ’05 Aitran Doan ’13 Charles Hopkins Courtney Jaser Jeffery Kurz Steven Lazarus P ’99, ’01, ’04 Katherine Marsh ’92 John Steinbreder ’74 Andrea Thompson Lindsay Whalen ’01
Photography Dan Burns Fin Costello/Redferns Sarah V. Gordon Jehangir Irani/American Express Alcyone Magana Todd L. Meagher Ross Mortensen Laura Morton Yale University Sports Publicity
Editor Lorraine S. Connelly Design and Production David C. Nesdale
Choate faculty members are committed to teaching our students in the classroom and beyond. Their dedication takes our students from the realm of opportunity to the reality of transformation each and every day. Your support of the Annual Fund helps us attract and retain the best faculty for our students. Every gift matters, especially yours. Make your gift today. www.choate.edu/donate
20 16
NON-PROFIT ORG. U.S. POSTAGE
PAID
NEW HAVEN, CT PERMIT #1090
333 Christian Street, Wallingford, CT 06492-3800
BULLETIN THE MAG A ZINE OF CHOATE ROSEMARY HALL
SPRING ’16
Change Service Requested
THE NEW NORMAL ALUMNI SEEK HAPPINESS, FULFILLMENT, AND MORAL PURPOSE IN THEIR WORK
The Choate Rosemary Hall Bulletin is printed using vegetable-based inks on FSC-certified, 100% post consumer recycled paper. This issue saved 101 trees, 42,000 gallons of wastewater, 291 lbs of waterborne waste, and 9,300 lbs of greenhouse gases from being emitted.
In this issue:
DEVELOPING MINDS: Helping Adolescents Navigate
SPRING 1976: When The Boss Rocked the PMAC
END NOTE: Waiting for New Beginnings