Bulletin Winter 2013 by St. George's School

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St. George’s School P.O. Box 1910 Newport, RI 02840-0190

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S T. G E OR G E ’S 2013 St. George’s School

The making of a football player: Tyshon Henderson ’13 heads to D-1 BY SUZANNE L. MCGRADY Back on course: Sasha Tory ’14 makes the records fall in cross-country BY SUZANNE L. MCGRADY The way we learn: Exploring new models at the Merck-Horton Center In Memoriam: Roy Penny (1918-2012) BY SUZANNE

L. MCGRADY

Chapel talks: The things I carry BY BECKY CUTLER ’13 Remembering Poppi BY NICO DELUCA-VERLEY ’13 Divine inspiration BY JOSEPHINE CANNELL ’13 Connecting with nature BY LUCIEN WULSIN ’13

Post Hilltop: Alumni/ae in the news Class Notes Left: Ryan Conlogue ’13 and varsity swim teammates cheer as Michael McGinnis ’13 completes the 500 free for the first time in a meet Feb. 20— and breaks SG’s 12-year school record by more than 13 seconds. PHOTO BY L OUIS WALKER

2013 winter Bulletin

In this issue:

Inside: A world-premiere theater performance on the Hilltop

winter Bulletin

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St. George’s School Mission Statement In 1896, the Rev. John Byron Diman, founder of St. George’s School, wrote in his “Purposes of the School” that “the specific objectives of St. George’s are to give its students the opportunity of developing to the fullest extent possible the particular gifts that are theirs and to encourage in them the desire to do so. Their immediate job after leaving school is to handle successfully the demands of college; later it is hoped that their lives will be ones of constructive service to the world and to God.” In the 21st century, we continue to teach young women and men the value of learning and achievement, service to others, and respect for the individual. We believe that these goals can best be accomplished by exposing students to a wide range of ideas and choices in the context of a rigorous curriculum and a supportive residential community. Therefore, we welcome students and teachers of various talents and backgrounds, and we encourage their dedication to a multiplicity of pursuits—intellectual, spiritual, and physical—that will enable them to succeed in and contribute to a complex, changing world.

St. George’s Policy on Non-Discrimination St. George’s School admits male and female students of any religion, race, color, sexual orientation, and national or ethnic origin to all the programs and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of religion, gender, race, color, sexual orientation, or national or ethnic origin in the administration of its educational policies, scholarship and loan programs, or athletic and other school-administered programs. In addition, the school welcomes visits from disabled applicants.

St. George’s Bulletin The Alumni/ae Magazine of St. George’s School Newport, R.I.

Right: The St. George’s flag flies over the north athletic fields in autumn. PHOTO BY S UZANNE L. M C G RADY

On the cover: Charlotte Dulay ’14 (top), Bethany Fowler ’13 (center) and Lisbeily Mena ’13 (left) starred in the Theater Department’s world premiere of “Alice 2.0.” PHOTO BY J EREMY M OREAU

Contents

Suzanne L. McGrady, editor Dianne Reed, communications associate Melissa Flaherty, class notes manager Jeremy Moreau, web manager Copy editors: Members of the Alumni/ae Office Contributing photographers: Meredith Brower, Andrea Hansen, Kathryn Whitney Lucey, Jeremy Moreau, Louis Walker The St. George’s Bulletin is published bi-annually. Send correspondence to Bulletin_Editor@stgeorges.edu.

This magazine is printed on paper that is certified by SmartWood to meet the Forest Stewardship Council™ standards. FSC sets high standards that ensure forestry is practiced in an environmentally responsible, socially beneficial and economically viable way.

From the editor’s desk ........................................................................................................................................2 A note from the Head of School ......................................................................................................................4 The making of a football player BY SUZANNE L. MCGRADY ................................................................................5 Back on course BY SUZANNE L. MCGRADY ..........................................................................................................10 Chapel talks: The things I carry BY BECKY CUTLER ’13 ....................................................................................................13 Remembering Poppi BY NICO DELUCA -VERLEY ’13 ..................................................................................16 Divine inspiration BY JOSEPHINE C ANNELL ’13 ..........................................................................................18 Connecting with nature BY LUCIEN WULSIN ’13 ......................................................................................20 Convocation: A small step and a giant man BY ERIC PETERSON ................................................................22 SG Zone – Athletics ..........................................................................................................................................27 Parents Weekend: Leading edge BY ERIC PETERSON ......................................................................................33 Board notes..........................................................................................................................................................37 In memoriam: Roy W. Penny ............................................................................................................................38 Merck-Horton Center for Teaching and Learning: The way we learn BY SUZANNE L. MCGRADY ........40 Classrooms ..........................................................................................................................................................42 Arts ........................................................................................................................................................................44 Community service ............................................................................................................................................48 Highlights: Student achievements ................................................................................................................51 Campus happenings ..........................................................................................................................................55 Global outreach ..................................................................................................................................................59 Around campus ..................................................................................................................................................63 Faculty/staff notes ..........................................................................................................................................64 Reunion Weekend 2013....................................................................................................................................66 Geronimo ..............................................................................................................................................................67 Traditions ............................................................................................................................................................68 Hilltop archives ..................................................................................................................................................72 Development: News from the Alumni/ae office ......................................................................................73 Post Hilltop: Former community members, alumni/ae in the news ....................................................74 Bookstore..............................................................................................................................................................76 Class Notes ..........................................................................................................................................................77

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St. George’s From the editor’s desk “I

My 6-year-old son, Connor, and I in Malibu, Calif., last summer.

f only you could’ve been here …” That’s a phrase that runs through my mind often as I put together the Bulletin. I think about all the times when I walked away from an event—a performance in Madeira Hall, a great game, a chapel service—that ended up being another one of those moments that makes you want to go and tell somebody what you just saw, how amazing it was. I think about all the people spread throughout the world—the former faculty members, students and parents, many to whom have touched my life and so many others—who will still be intrigued by those moments, who still see a part of themselves in today’s St. George’s. As I look back at the last six months on the Hilltop, there have been so many sparkling occasions. From the electric atmosphere of SG’s first Friday Night Lights football game in October to the could’ve-been-Broadway performances of “Anything Goes” this month, we’ve enjoyed many events together that showed off our strengths and our solidarity. A lot of students realize a dream here on the Hilltop and the trend continues with the story of Tyshon Henderson ’13 (“The making of a football player,” p. 5). A native of Newark, N.J., Henderson never played football before St. George’s, but in three short seasons on the varsity squad he turned himself into a highly recruited offensive lineman who just recently signed his National Letter of

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Intent to play for the Division 1 University of Massachusetts Minutemen. We’ll be rooting for him. Also making a mark on the athletic fields this fall was Sasha Tory ’14, who set course records across the ISL and has become one of the best female cross-country runners ever to lace up her flats for St. George’s (“Back on course,” p. 10). The Theater Department wowed us twice with the fall play, “Alice 2.0,” and the winter musical, “Anything Goes” (“Original production marks a highlight for the Theater Department,” p. 45). Chapel talks in this edition reveal students’ inner thoughts about God (“Divine Inspiration, p. 18), the outdoors (“Connecting with nature,” p. 20), and the loss of a loved one (“The things I carry,” p.13 and “Remembering Poppi,” p. 16). In our “In Memoriam” feature, p. 38, we remember former English teacher Roy Penny, who gave his all to St. George’s, who was intimately connected to this place for nearly 20 years, and whose legacy remains. Big news came for the Hill Library, which was awarded LEED Gold certification by the U.S. Green Building Council in February. Inside, the MerckHorton Center, with its focus on breaking the onesize-fits-all paradigm for teaching and learning, has fast become a model of innovation for other schools (“The way we learn,” p. 40). When it comes down to it, I know that if you’re reading this, you love St. George’s. If only you could’ve been here these past few months … you sure would be proud. Sincerely,

Suzanne McGrady Bulletin Editor

RITT PHOTO BY F RANZ

Library awarded LEED Gold certification The Nathaniel P. Hill Library on Feb. 4, officially became the only K-12 school building in Rhode Island to earn the coveted LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. The library underwent an $8.2 million renovation, re-opening in the fall of 2011 with a number of innovative features worked into its environmentally-friendly design—including

locally-sourced building materials, energy-efficient heating and cooling systems, and landscaped gardens sited to benefit from rain run-off from the library roof. The renovation added 4,500 square feet to the now three-story structure. Overseeing the “green” construction was Boston-based Shawmut Design and Construction. The addition was designed by Boston-based Perry Dean Rogers/Partners Architects.

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St. George’s From the Head of School

he Head’s Study, as the office in which I work is known, is a remarkable physical space. With its high ceiling, oak paneling and booklined wall, it truly looks like something from a film set, an idealized imagining of a schoolmaster’s office. In practice, beyond serving as my office, the study is also my classroom, where my English class meets, and is the traditional meeting spot for the Board of Trustees and for faculty meetings. The room is also something of a mini-museum of St. George’s history, from the antique trestle table beneath the windows, to the collected books of headmasters gone by, to the postcards and artifacts from the school’s past that fill its shelves. And even though student legend has long rumored secret doorways or passages opening to and from the office, my favorite items in the room are much more pedestrian. On the mantel over the fireplace, I keep two sterling silver cups. The cups were awarded to the school as prizes in an essay contest between St. George’s and the Cloyne School. Though many have never heard of Cloyne, it was in fact St. George’s first rival school, preceding the relationships we have today with Middlesex and Portsmouth Abbey. Cloyne closed a long time ago, and today is mostly forgotten, except by the most ardent local history buffs. The cups are lovely, but I keep them on the mantel not for their beauty, but as a silent reminder to me of what can happen when a school fails to meet the evolving needs of its students and families. Though in many ways, St. George’s is in an enviably strong position, I am ever mindful of the need for us to continue to strive to provide our students with the best possible experience, in the classrooms and beyond.

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The other object I love is the silk American flag that hangs above the fireplace. Carried on Admiral Richard Byrd’s first airplane flight over the North Pole, the flag was given to the school by an Old Boy, on the occasion of Byrd’s visit to St. George’s. Beyond its historical importance, what I like best about the flag is the way in which it reflects qualities that help define St. George’s. As it was a gift from a longtime benefactor of the School, the flag reminds me of how much our success has always depended on the generosity and vision of parents, alumni and other supporters who give of their time, energy and resources to make our work here possible. The flag also represents for me a certain spirit of adventure that has long been present at St. George’s. This has been, and still remains, a school that is shaped and informed by a sense of great possibilities, a spirit of optimism, and a desire to reach for the far horizon. In this edition of the Bulletin, you will read stories that reflect these qualities in all facets of school life. From achieving athletic success, to classroom innovation, to new programs and opportunities for personal, professional and intellectual growth, the school continues to blend its historical strengths with a lively present, even as we look onward to an exciting and rapidly evolving future. Enjoy the Bulletin, and if you are on campus, please feel free to drop by the office and have a look around. Sincerely,

Eric F. Peterson Head of School

SUZANNE MCGRADY PHOTO BY

The making of a football player Tyshon Henderson ’13 never stepped foot on the gridiron until he came to St. George’s. … Now the star offensive lineman is headed to play Division 1 college football at UMass. BY SUZANNE MCGRADY

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SUZANNE MCGRADY PHOTO BY

I Previous page: Varsity football co-captain Tyshon Henderson ’13 kneels among his teammates and Athletic Director John Mackay, head coach, to say a prayer before a game against Rivers School Nov. 2, 2012. Above: Henderson addresses his teammates before they head out onto the field.

t’s 2:25 p.m. at an away game at Rivers School in Massachusetts and the St. George’s football team is huddled inside a clearing of trees behind the sidelines. The coaches stand on the perimeter. Solemnly, all on one knee, the players recite the Lord’s Prayer. It’s just the kind of routine that seems to suit Tyshon Henderson ’13, one of the co-captains, well. If inside Henderson is girding for the game, on the outside he emits little of the racing adrenaline and grimacing growl you’d associate with the harddriving, full-on contact sport of football. “Like Coach Mackay says, ‘We can do this,’” he tells the players, almost quietly. “We can do this.” As he lumbers to the field, Henderson—all 6foot-7-inches and 320 pounds of him—seems at peace—the kind of peace that comes, perhaps, with knowing he’s already reached a milestone: In just his fourth season in a football uniform, Henderson is headed to D-1.

Growing up in Newark, N.J., Henderson’s body may have been built for football, but his disposition

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wasn’t. Though he could have been a football coach’s dream in elementary school, his mother, Katherine Henderson said, “He wasn’t with the football thing at all … He didn’t want to get hit.” School was a priority. From fifth to eighth grade Henderson attended Team Academy, a member of the KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) charter school system, which serves more than 1,500 African American and Latino students from low-income communities in Newark. At Team, Henderson stayed after school—many nights until 8 or 9 p.m.—to serve as a homework assistant and play basketball. As a kid he lived with rules set to shelter him from the violence in the streets outside his home. “The only time I’d go outside in the summer was if I was going to a specific destination, or if I was going to the YMCA to work out or play basketball, or to my friend’s house,” he said. “Other than that, my mother wouldn’t let me go outside. She’d say, ‘You’ve got a bright future. I don’t want you to go out there and not make it back because some fool is having a bad day.’” The second youngest of four children (Tyshon’s older sister, Quyama Wheeler, 19, graduated from

SUZANNE MCGRADY

Phillips Exeter in 2011; his brother, Jaleel Wheeler, 18, graduated from St. George’s in 2012; and his younger brother, Yassan Henderson, is 6 and in kindergarten) Tyshon turned into a homebody. “He was quiet,” his mom, said. “Tyshon was the laid-back one. He’d rather stay home and watch a movie.” Coming to St. George’s, he said, took him out of an environment where he saw people shot lying on the ground and open gang warfare. “I don’t even know what would happen if I went to school in that kind of population,” he said. Henderson’s girlfriend, Lisbeily Mena ’13, whom he met in the New Jersey SEEDS program, said both of them “have seen a lot growing up.” “Where Tyshon and I are from, school wouldn’t be like this,” she said. “In Newark, even walking home at night is kind of dangerous. Being at a school where you can leave your phone in the locker room and then come back and it’s still there—that’s really different.”

PHOTO BY

When Henderson arrived at St. George’s his freshman year, he was 6-foot-3 and 260 pounds. “[He] was huge compared to other kids in his class from the moment he stepped onto campus,” said offensive line coach Stuart Titus. Athletic Director John Mackay, a decades-long head football coach, had his eye on him. “Oh, god yeah, from the get-go,” he admitted. “But you know it’s hard because the kids here have so many interests and I knew that in the beginning.” Making him into a football player would happen only if he wanted it—and, Titus added, “He was very young physically.” At the time Henderson, who thought of himself as a basketball player, agreed to play JV that first year—but it took some convincing to get him to agree to move up. He remembers coming in from one of the track meets one day and seeing the varsity team practicing. “It was intense,” he said, “and I was like, ‘Uh, I don’t know.’” The biggest issue with Henderson was coming to grips with pushing people around. “That was my biggest problem my freshman

year: I wasn’t physical enough,” he said. Off the field, Henderson is a softie—all smiles and ah shucks, a little boy playing with Hot Wheels inside a big man’s body. Sure, he sometimes listens to rap on his iPod, but more often than that it’s “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepson. The girls call him a “teddy bear.” One time at a recreational dodgeball game in the gym he accidentally hit a girl in the face with the ball. The next day, she said, he called and texted her repeatedly to make sure she was OK.

Going into sophomore year Henderson said he wasn’t even sure that he still wanted to play football. And even though he wasn’t really ready, Titus said the coaches included him on the varsity team that year “simply because he was too big to play in the junior varsity games anymore.” “But he was a real project as a sophomore,” he added. “He had trouble getting out of his stance and staying low enough to make a block. It was clear that he was still growing into his body.”

Tyshon Henderson

’13 watches the onfield action flanked by coaches Stuart Titus, Chris Richards and Athletic Director John Mackay.

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SUZANNE MCGRADY PHOTO BY

On the sidelines, Henderson consults with Coach Chris Richards.

So the coaches just kept working on him. “You teach him how to get in the stance,” Mackay explained. “You teach him how to come out of the stance and blocking technique. “The hardest thing to teach is to stay low. The lower you are, the more leverage you have when you make contact with somebody and you’re much less of a target when you’re low.” Titus said even early on Henderson’s footwork was one of his strengths. “Stepping to the right place and having your body aligned properly to make a block is a critical element of line play,” he said, “and Tyshon’s footwork puts him in a position to make a play even if the opposing player is quicker than he is.” It wasn’t too long before recruiters, seeing his stats and his size, started swarming. Boston College was the first. Then it was UConn, Alabama State and UMass. During track season, recruiters came to the Hilltop to watch him throw the shotput. Western Kentucky offered him a scholarship without even seeing him in person. “When colleges started talking to Mr. Mackay

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and Mr. Mackay told me, then I got serious,” Henderson admits. He knew it could change his life. He attended a football camp at Boston College and started watching more football on TV. Mackay said he saw something click when Henderson was a prefect in Wheeler Dormitory his junior year. “He was like the Pied Piper,” he said. “He would bring a bunch of the kids over every morning at 6:30 to work out.” The transition, though, required a lot of work— and though Henderson downplays it, learning the game and getting into top shape were grueling. These days he watches his weight and on any given morning he can be seen working out in the weight room, doing bootcamp-style drills on the beach or running 40 times up and down the front hill. “I used to try to get out of running,” he admits, “but now even if I’m hurt, I just do it because I always have in the back of my mind, whatever I’m doing ... it will only make me stronger. It will only make me better.” Titus recalls a play from the Friday night game against Nobles this past fall. Henderson pushed

through two different lineman and tackled the Nobles running back behind the line of scrimmage for a five-yard loss. “It was a decisive play that made it clear that Tyshon was the dominant lineman on the field that night,” he said.

As Henderson steps into his new role as a Division 1 football player, everything gets ratcheted up: the training, the demands. The biggest change for him is going to be coming in and “working with the D-1 strength and conditioning program and the year-round training just for football,” Waldron said. Mackay said Tyshon’s already worked hard to get to where he is today. “Now he’s going to have to work a heck of a lot harder,” Mackay said. “The jump he’s making is enormous. But he’s come so far already that I don’t doubt that he can do it.”

PHOTO BY

SUZANNE MCGRADY

When Shane Waldron, the recruiting coordinator at the University of Massachusetts, started talking to coaches around the league, he said, “Tyshon’s name came up repeatedly.” When Waldron came to the Hilltop to watch Henderson play basketball he was impressed by his athleticism. “That’s what really separates him from other people who are in that 6-foot-7, 300-plus pound range: his ability to move and be more of an athlete than just a big guy,” he said. UMass becomes a full member of the Division 1 Mid-America Conference this year and Waldron was looking for players who could make a difference. Tyshon was his man. “He’ll bring size, athleticism, toughness and that good charismatic personality,” he said. “As we’re getting better and improving as a football team, all those traits are things we’re looking for in an offensive lineman. They can just make us a bigger, better, stronger football team.” Last spring, Waldron was ready to make an offer: A full scholarship. Come here and who knows what’s next, he told Henderson. When Henderson got the call, he was coming out of chapel. He put his mom on the three-way to share the news. In the background he could hear her crying.

Waldron also acknowledged that character “is a major, major part of our recruiting.” “You could just tell being around the school … the way he interacted with the other students in the dorm … the way he was in class, the work he’s put in to meet the challenges of St. George’s … all those things you take into consideration. “And everything for Tyshon was going in the right direction.” For the past few summers, Henderson and Mena have served as counselors at Camp Ramleh, St. George’s camp for underprivileged children. Over spring break he’s volunteering for a Habitat for Humanity project in Santa Fe, N.M. Without apologies, Henderson admits, “People say I’m a mama’s boy.” It’s fine with him, he said. “She was really always there for me. A lot of the times I think without her I wouldn’t be here.” After the game at Rivers, he had two messages on his cell phone—one from his mother and one from Coach Waldron. “I called my mom back first,” he said.

Henderson, on the bus to a game, is already thinking toward his next season with the UMass Minutemen.

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Back on course BY SUZANNE MCGRADY

PHOTO BY LOUIS

WALKER PHOTOGRAPHY

She took a break from running for two years to play field hockey—but now Sasha Tory ’14 is back at cross-country … in a big way

I Sasha Tory ’14 takes the lead during a cross-country meet at St. George’s on Oct. 20. She finished in 19:34, setting a new course record.

t became a familiar sight this past fall: Sasha Tory ’14 triumphantly reaching the finish line at the end of the cross-country course well ahead of the competition—wins so decisive they often allowed time for the 5-foot-4-inch speedster to briefly collapse in exhaustion, get up, and then run back to the line to cheer on her teammates. The whole scene, said her coach Linda Evans, was a testament to the powerhouse athlete she is— and the supportive teammate. But the fact that Tory is back in the race this

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successfully is a feat of sheer determination and discipline—and it may just have been Tory’s break from running in her first two years of high school that have made all the difference …

As Sasha Tory kept running this past fall, the records kept falling. “She has something special, an inner drive,” said Evans, “plus a natural gait, a natural stride. And the speed that comes through—that’s just

Born in Canada and raised in England to a mother and father who ran marathons together, running is probably in Tory’s blood. And she experienced the thrill of winning early. At age 7, she was a pint-size Year 3 student at Thomas’s Kensington, a day school in London, when

SASHA TORY ’14 PHOTO COURTESY OF

exciting to watch.” Tory’s fall running reports had the sort of forward trajectory every athlete hopes for: Will she do it again? Can she go any faster? Other than at the New Englands, when she was so far ahead of the pack she took an unfortunate wrong turn and got lost, she came in first in every race she ran. On opening day of the season Sept. 22 at Middlesex she finished the race in 20:25 ahead of 50 other runners, setting a new course record. The next Saturday here on the Hilltop, she shattered the SG school record she herself set last year. On Oct. 5 at Nobles, she finished first in a time of 19:58, setting a new record for the Nobles course. The next two weekends at home, she broke the St. George’s course record twice. And on Oct. 27 at Thayer, she clocked her fastest time ever: 18:13. At the ISLs at Nobles Nov. 2, Tory was a sight to behold. “We’ve never in the history of girls crosscountry had an MVP and I knew there was a lot of pressure on her going into the race that Friday,” Evans recalled, “but she kept her head on well. And people were really after her.” Tory came off the line with three girls right there with her, but after about a mile, she broke away. Evans said she knew she was going to win, but close to the finish line, she and fellow coach Jim Connors played a polite trick on Tory: They told her another runner was on her heels. “I never look back, so I believed them,” Tory recalled. “Then at the end of the race I was so tired, and I’m sitting down on the ground and I look back, and I’m like, ‘Ms. Evans … the girl .. where is she?’ And she was like, ‘Oh, we just told you that.’ “But it was good,” Tory admitted. “I was so worried, but I guess it was a good technique. It was awesome that they did that.”

she first found out she could fly like the wind. At the school’s traditional annual fall race, she said she felt a competitive urge simply to run her heart out. “The first race, I won,” she recalled. “And from then on, I just wanted to keep winning.” She came in first all four years she was there. In Year 7 (grade 6), she transferred to the Latimer School, a private co-ed school in central London, where she was a member of the field hockey and net ball teams. To train she would run in the afternoons. At the time, the Tory family—mom, dad, her older sister, Julia, now 20, and younger brother, Marshall, 16, and sister, India, now 11—lived in South Kensington, near the Thames. “So I would run around Kensington Gardens, around Hyde Park,” Tory recalled. “I would run near Buckingham Palace, Green Park, and then sometimes I would run along the Thames all the way past Big Ben, Parliament, up through the parks, near Notting Hill and then back. “And sometimes my sister would rollerblade or bike next to me to keep me company.” When it came time to apply to boarding school, Tory’s natural choice was St. Paul’s in New Hampshire, where her sister went along with several cousins. But instead of joining the cross-country team that fall, she played field hockey. “I completely stopped running because my sister was field hockey captain so she wanted me to be on her team,” she said. She ran track in the spring at St. Paul’s, but early on broke her toe. “So for those two years I stopped running altogether. And I guess I was adjusting to the life of boarding school, and I saw my sister as guidance. And she had different interests, so I found myself not running.”

Sasha Tory ’14 began her running career early—as an elementary school student in England.

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WALKER PHOTOGRAPHY PHOTO BY LOUIS

Coming to St. George’s as a new sophomore, Tory said, she felt a spirit of independence and at the last minute decided she was going to start running again in the fall.

Sasha Tory ’14 lengthens her lead during a meet against Governor’s Academy. On this day, she improved her own personal best time by six seconds on SG’s 3.1 mile course.

From the first practice last fall, Evans knew Tory had talent. “Right away I could see there was definitely something special about her. Watching her run … She’s a beautiful runner,” Evans said. Tory had great times last year, but she said she knew she wasn’t hitting the marks she wanted to. Then she had her blood checked and found she had seriously low levels of iron. “And it explained a lot,” she said, “because I knew I could run faster than I was. I was training really, really hard and I wasn’t getting the results that I thought I could get, which was frustrating.” Now taking a daily iron supplement, she’s back in top shape. After attending the elite TeamPrep training camp in Crested Butte, Colo., the last two summers, she is now working with mega coach Trent Sanderson. She gets a daily email with her workout program and has access to a nutritionist. She talks on the phone with Sanderson periodically as she follows her program: an outside run oftentimes morning and afternoon, work in the weight room, and timed and regimented segments on the elliptical. In addition, she keeps a foam roller in her room to smooth and strengthen her muscles. Evans said it’s what it takes to be that good. “To be a runner at that level, you just don’t roll

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out of bed and say ‘I’m going to run,’” said Evans. “It takes time, it takes effort, it takes commitment. To see [Sasha’s] work ethic and her drive and motivation to accomplish these goals is remarkable. I don’t see that often.” On race day a cross-country runner puts about 8 miles on her legs. First she walks the 3.1 miles to get the lay of the land: the hills, the turns, the terrain. Then there’s the warm up, the actual run and a cool down. Evans, an accomplished swimmer and runner herself who’s completed 19 marathons, said running also has a big psychological component. “First of all, you have to want it,” she said. “Second, you have to learn to take all the negatives out of your head, meaning, you can’t say to yourself ‘I’m not going to do well today because it’s snowing.’ Or ‘I’m not going to do well today because two days ago I failed my math test.’ Any negative has to be out of your head.” Then once the gun goes off, she said, you have to have the confidence in yourself to know that “you can go out hard and hang on.” “And that’s what Sasha has.”

As Tory looks to the future, she has her sights on running in college. Now that she’s found her own niche in her own sport, she said she feels at home with SG and at home with herself. “I’m so thankful for this community. It’s such an awesome place,” she said. “I’m happy here, so I think that fosters a happy lifestyle.” Still, she keeps up the pressure on herself. “I guess I just really don’t want to lose,” she said. “And I don’t want to become complacent. I don’t want to not give my best and then say, ‘Oh that was so easy’—and be tempted to do that the next race.” She also has a kind of relationship with pain. “The first seven minutes of a race are absolutely miserable,” she admitted. “But the separation with great athletes is that they hurt more than everyone else. “People who are willing to be a little more tired are going to be successful.”

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C APT. MIKE DAWSON

The things I carry BY BECKY CUTLER ’13 Following is the transcript of a chapel talk delivered on Nov. 27, 2012.

or my chapel talk, I decided to tell you all a story—and the subject of my story is the silver piece of jewelry hanging around my neck. For those of you who know me well, you know about my slight obsession with the Red Sox, that I could live the rest of my life on Nutella, that I am way too competitive with anything I do, and that I’ve worn the same necklace for years, well generally, the same necklace.

Now, for you all to understand the history behind my bold fashion statement of always wearing the same piece of jewelry, we’re going to have to go back in time, to the years of elementary school and the days of fourth grade. On one particular day, my class had show-and-tell, and I decided to bring in a picture of my family. As I held up the frame displaying my mom, my dad and their six kids, I immediately saw eyes widen and hands shoot up to ask questions. I had seen the same look many times in my life, and I could predict the questions that were to follow. They went like this: “Why do your brothers

Seniors Becky Cutler, Reid Burns and Will Fleming share some time onshore in the Caribbean during the 2011 winter Geronimo cruise.

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and sisters look so much older than you? Are they even your real siblings? And is that your dad with the full head of white hair?” Yes, even in just my 10 years of life, I had heard a variation of these questions so frequently that even if no one said anything, I knew these thoughts were floating in their minds. It made me feel like my family was different, and at the time, well, we were. I was a 10-year-old aunt, had four siblings in their 20s and a sister in her late teens, and throughout elementary and middle school, whenever it came time to share my family with my class, it seemed that we became the subject of conversation for the rest of the day. Outside of school, I found myself running into the same types of situations that I never knew how to handle. Growing up, one of my favorite things to do with my dad was run errands around town. As the publisher of our town’s local newspaper, wherever we went, my dad was always guaranteed to run into someone he knew. Like clockwork, they would come over to say hi, glance down at me beside my father, and ask the same question, “So David, is this your granddaughter you’ve got here?” Instantly, I would give them that same glare I had perfected over the years, as my dad would laugh and proudly explain that I was his youngest daughter. When I was younger, I never understood how my dad could playfully brush off these judgmental comments, because it was something that had angered me my whole life. Flash forward to Christmas 2008. My sister and I had each just received a heart-shaped locket from my dad, hers gold and mine silver. As a huge tomboy at the time, it was my first real piece of jewelry and hesitantly, I put it on. My dad’s eyes lit up as he saw his gift dangling from my neck, and I decided to keep it on for the rest of the night. Even though I didn’t normally wear necklaces, I liked it just because it was a present from him. The next day, I decided to keep it on, and from then, I rarely took it off. Now jump to the summer of 2009, just a few months before I would enter my freshman year at SG. Though the specific date in July remains unclear, the events that happened I will never forget. I had come back from playing tennis with my dad and as I walked up the stairs to take a shower, I was stopped

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by my mom’s hand. “We need to talk about something,” she said. Instantly my heart sped up and a chill ran through my spine; I knew something was wrong. I would later learn that my dad was diagnosed with adnocarsonoma, a rare type of cancer that had the ability to devour its victims in a matter of weeks. Hearing the news, I clutched my locket, as I did whenever I felt stressed or nervous, and looked up at my dad and his tear-stained eyes as they were staring back at me. In a matter of minutes, my necklace had turned from a thoughtful Christmas gift into one of the final presents he would give me. As I entered my freshman year at SG, my dad began chemotherapy. As days blurred into the next, I continued to wear my locket as a constant reminder that my dad was with me. Once again, the Christmas season came upon us and like déjà vu, I saw a small jewelry box under the tree with my name on it. Noticing that my sisters had identical boxes, I walked over to my dad and opened it. I found a heart-shaped charm engraved on the back saying, “To my precious daughter, I love you today, tomorrow and always.” The room became silent as all eyes were on me and my two sisters, huddled together, as we read the engraved words over and over. It turned out that that charm would be the last present my dad gave to me, because a few months later, on Feb. 28, 2010, he passed away. However, my story doesn’t end there. During the months after my dad’s death, I found myself holding his necklace and reading the engraving dozens of times throughout the day. Even during softball games, I managed to keep him with me as I secretly taped the necklace to my neck underneath my uniform. Soon, freshman year became sophomore year, and before I knew it, I found myself living on a boat in the middle of the Caribbean. The date was February 28, 2011, the one-year anniversary of my dad’s death. The Geronimo crew and I spent most of the afternoon crafting a rope swing and plunging into the 70-degree water. As I climbed up the ladder onto the deck, I noticed that my locket, my first piece of real jewelry that my dad had given me, was gone, leaving my heart-shaped charm dangling alone on my neck. After telling my crew what I had lost, they

C APTAIN MIKE DAWSON PHOTO COURTESY OF

rushed to put on flippers and snorkel gear. I quietly sat down at the bow, staring off into the ocean, and clutching the remainder of my necklace. As I gazed into oblivion, Reid, Will and Captain Dawson dove into the ocean in search for something I knew they would never find. After an hour of feeling around the seaweed-covered floor, they apologetically explained for their empty hands. Exactly one year later, however, their hands did not remain empty. This time it was the second anniversary of my dad’s death; and instead of losing a locket, I gained one. After classes, I went into my room to see a small light blue bag placed on my bed. I opened it up to find a heart-shaped charm that my Geronimo crew had given me. Gratitude for their gift filled me as I slipped the charm onto my necklace, next to the one my dad had given me. Later that year from my mom I received another piece of my necklace—a charm engraved on the front with “dad” and

on the back with numbers displaying my dad’s birth and death dates. Since then, every day I have continued to wear my necklace as you all see it now. It connects me to my mom, sisters and family, my friends, and of course, my dad. It also reminds me of the confidence my dad showed whenever someone slipped a judgmental comment. It is a symbol of my differences and the pride I wear them with. Growing up as the girl who only wore sweatpants and who thought jeans were “too girly,” I never thought that a piece of jewelry would have so much significance in my life. It’s not necessarily the necklace, but the stories behind it that make it so special. It’s a part of my past, it’s a part of my present, and it’s a part of my future. Whether or not it’ll stay the same … that I cannot answer. Becky Cutler ’13, a school prefect from Duxbury, Mass., can be reached at Becky_Cutler@stgeorges.edu.

Capt. Mike Dawson

and Becky Cutler ’13 aboard Geronimo in 2011.

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DELUCA -VERLEY FAMILY

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE

A younger Nico DeLuca-Verley ’13 (center) and his brother, Thibaut, pose for a family photo with their grandfather, the noted pediatric surgeon Dr. Frank DeLuca.

Remembering Poppi BY NICO DELUCA-VERLEY ’13 Following is the transcript of a chapel talk delivered on Oct. 23, 2012.

o, I decided to start off my speech with a couple of rhetorical questions. All I need is just a nod to know if you are listening or not, but try not to doze off because what I’m about to say may hold some importance to you. Do you remember what you had for breakfast this morning? Or what time you woke up? How about we go further back to last week? Do you remember what sports team you played against last Wednesday? Or even the meal

you ate with your friends at King Hall that night? Well about 12 years ago, my grandfather began forgetting those types of things. He would rummage around trying to find his keys to the car, only to find that he put them in his pocket just a couple of minutes before. He wasn’t some cranky old man who began forgetting things because he was old though, but a genius of his time. Let me tell you just a little bit about my grandfather before I develop my talk. Dr. Frank DeLuca (Poppi, as his grandchildren called him) was a man whose sole purpose in life, just like his wife, Joyce DeLuca, was

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helping children. He was a world-renowned pediatric surgeon whose career had saved hundreds of thousands of lives all over the world, and continues to do so to this day. He developed an operation that saved premature babies’ lives and then traveled to teach this operation to other, younger, pediatric surgeons all over the world. He was also known as the surgeon who wore bow ties, not by choice, but for more of a comical reason. When he wore long neckties, the babies would pee all over them because they hung down, so he decided to switch to bow ties instead. He wore them

every day of his life and they became part of who he was. The action of tying them was committed to memory. My uncle once told me a story about when Poppi would drive him to school in the morning. Poppi was able to drive the car, smoke a cigar, and tie his bow tie at the same time. This guy was good. In fact, right now I am wearing one of his favorite bow ties from his vast collection. Now back to the story … After about seven years or so, Poppi had gotten a bit worse, and everyone, especially my grandmother, could see it. He would get frustrated and angry that he couldn’t think and remember like he used to, and he let out all of that frustration on my grandmother and my family. But he held on. A couple of years later, we knew that he had developed some form of dementia, which is a brain degenerative disease. So, we acted upon this knowledge and searched for a place where people with this disease can be cared for, and we found it. That incredible place is called Atria and is located about 10 minutes from my house in a peaceful part of the island. This is where one of my first interactions with St. George’s happened. One day, my piano teacher, Ms. Lois Vaughn, who also teaches here at SG, decided that it would be a good opportunity for me to play piano at Atria, and one of her students was Amanda Hansel. So, the day came when I played the piece that I had written for my grandfather at Atria, and sitting next to my father was Mr. Hansel. Sure enough, they hit it off. So my dad, of course, told Mr. Hansel that SG was at the top of my list for high schools and he got Mr. Hansel’s number and email and all that jazz and it was a really a great coincidence. At this point, finding Atria was a big relief for my family. My grandfather had found a place where he felt safe and comfortable, and my grandmother finally had time to just breathe and relax for once. As a

matter of fact, my grandfather got so accustomed to his new surroundings that he began thinking that he was the head “doctor” at Atria and he would check on all the other patients in “his” wing of the home. Unfortunately good things didn’t last; he began losing memories of people and places, and began replacing them with things that didn’t happen. I have too many memories of my grandfather telling me the most ridiculous stories from his youth, like when his parents dropped him off in Africa at age 7 and others of the same genre. I was so lucky to have been able to learn who my grandfather was before, well, you get the point. My sophomore year at SG the disease began developing faster and faster. He began forgetting the names and faces of even those who were closest to him. I remember one day when I went to visit him, he looked up at me, and said to my mother, with faint recognition in his eyes, “Who is this young man you’ve brought me?” My mother replied, “It’s Nico, your grandson, Poppi,” and his face burst into a smile and he said, “My grandson!” in a very proud way. I don’t think I went to visit him after that day. I just heard he was “getting tired” and I knew what that meant, so I cherished that great image of a happy old man. After visiting my grandfather every day that he was at Atria, my grandmother created a saying. She would say, “Let’s just take one day at a time.” But soon that became, “Let’s take one moment at a time,” and then “one memory at a time.” What I’m getting at is that you should heed my grandmother’s words. My time at SG has been the best in my entire life. I have learned lessons and experienced things that I had never dreamt of five years ago. But the most important lessons that I have learned from both my grandparents and my time here at SG is that 1) moti-

vation can get you wherever you want to be; and 2) enjoy and cherish every bit of that process, even the hard times. Part of my being at SG I owe to my grandfather, without whom I wouldn’t have played at Atria, and wouldn’t have met Mr. Hansel. At St. George’s, you can’t let life pass you by without noticing and appreciating every moment of it. I know how easy it is for time to just slip by. Look at me, I’m a senior who feels (and frankly looks) like he is still a freshman. But I have learned to enjoy every second of studying and working just as much as I enjoy every second with all of you. These memories we create at the beginning of our lives will stick with us until the very end. Up until the last couple of days of his incredible life, my grandfather remembered how to tie a bow tie. I will never forget the smell of my grandfather’s wool sweater, Old Spice deodorant and pipe tobacco. And I will never forget the pinch I always got on my cheek every time I passed him when I was young. I also will never forget the time I’ve spent vigorously studying in the MCR with friends during lunch before a test. Or the time spent singing with the Hilltoppers, or playing in the jazz band. So please, I beg of you, never forget that what happened here at SG. St. George’s is the reason I was able to keep positive even when life at home was a little bit drearier. Imprint SG into who you are; make it a part of you. This place and the people here have helped me through one of the toughest times in my life. So I encourage you to just take one day at a time, one moment at a time, and soon, for the class of 2013, we will take SG one memory at a time. Nico Deluca-Verley ’13 of Portsmouth, R.I., can be reached at Nico_DeLucaVerley@stgeorges.edu.

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PHOTO BY J EREMY

MOREAU

Divine inspiration BY JOSEPHINE CANNELL ’13 Josephine Cannell

’13 (center) poses after her chapel talk with her father, Jim Cannell; her grandmothers, Getty Ann Cannell and Vera Gibbons; her grandfather, Jack Cannell; her mother, Joanella Cannell; and her brother, Alex Cannell ’15.

Following is the transcript of a chapel talk delivered on Dec. 4, 2012. I believe in God. I am standing on the foredeck of the Elizabeth Hall after sunset, when a star falls, shooting through the sky, cutting it vertically with a bright red tail. I am frozen, awestruck. … I am enveloped in the sunset, at the helm of the

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SSV Geronimo, steering a course of 064. The only crewmember on deck, I see only the ocean around me; the wind is on my cheeks, Caribbean warmth is in the air. … I am sitting on a blue inflatable raft floating along the Colorado River, craning my neck back as I soak in the red layers of the Grand Canyon, bracing myself for the approaching rapids. … I am coming back into the Mattapoisett Harbor

at dusk on our boat with my dad, the summer before fourth grade, five months after my grandfather, Johnny, died. The whole scene was so regular to me: The fish didn’t bite, but we had a good time. The ocean breeze licked through my hair, and the sky was tinged its usual sunset pink in the west. Suddenly, the sameness changed, leaving the memory with me, all thanks to my dad’s next few words. The yellow clouds shifted around the setting sun, funneling its rays through an open patch, so breathtaking that we slowed down so we could really appreciate it. Besides, we were in no rush. It was then that my dad, without taking his eyes off of our surroundings, commented, perhaps more to himself than to me, “It is times like this when I believe there is a heaven, and that Johnny is up there watching us.” … I am in Florida, 8 years old, playing mermaids in the pool with two sisters my aunt had just introduced me to. I ate lunch with them that day. They sang a little grace before beginning their meal, as I, mute, watched them, not knowing the words or how to react. I had never met anyone who expressed their religion like these sisters did. That same week, we had a sleepover where, before we turned the lights out, they knelt beside their beds with their father to pray. Out loud, they expressed their thanks, concerns and hopes as I sat and listened, feeling like an intruder. “You don’t pray before bed?” they asked me, amazed. “No.” I couldn’t help but feel a little ashamed. … I am at home two months later, worried about kidnappers from the circus, mad cow disease and sharks, well, “Jaws” to be exact, so in my head, I began copying the sisters, which gave me some peace of mind before falling asleep. “God, I pray that nothing bad will happen. I pray that no one will break in. I pray no one in my family will get mad cow or bird flu. I pray I will have something good to think about and dream good dreams. Amen.” … I am sitting on my parents’ bed one cold night that March, looking out the window with my

younger brother and sister, watching the red, white and blue ambulance lights flash from next door, my maternal grandparents’ house. Mommy is over there, daddy is away on business, and we are scared and alone. Our eyes can only stare transfixed out the window, uncertain, and fearful of the unspoken, which was beginning to feel inevitable. I tuck myself in, leaving my brother and sister, and chant over and over again in my head: “Please God, don’t let Johnny die. Please don’t let Johnny die.” I am discovering the harsh realities of life, but they only reaffirm what I already believe. … I am sitting in Centerboard, a camp cabin, two summers ago reading some version of this belief statement to my Junior CT leaders, Melissa and Whitney. Every Junior CT must address the group this way, and that Sunday it was my turn. I almost cried while reading it to them. I got up to read it in front of the entire camp that night and halfway through the second sentence I did cry, although I can’t say exactly why. I think I was scared, because I’d never really told anyone about believing in God before, and I was afraid that my belief might be a little outdated. The response indicated otherwise, and I began to own my words, own my experiences, own my belief. I’m giving this talk for myself. ... In my world, there is something out there— maybe not always omnipresent in my life, maybe not influencing my every decision, but I do think there is something. I see it every day outside, in the people around me, in rain. This “something” links all living things, links all things in this world, and my God reminds me of what it means to be human. That is the rhythm of life that engages all things, not the Bible, but real beings, right here and right now— every sunset, every thunderstorm, every star in the night sky, every tear, every smile, every one of us. ... This I believe. Josephine Cannell ’13 of Mattapoisett, Mass., can be reached at Josephine_Cannell@stgeorges.edu.

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Connecting with nature

PHOTO COURTESY OF BLOG . SEATTLEPI . COM

PHOTO COURTESY OF MRSAMMY 2. WORDPRESS . COM

BY LUCIEN WULSIN ’13 Above: Mount Rainier, near Lucien’s home in Seattle, Wash. Inset: As a Boy Scout, Lucien volunteers at a community event in Seattle in 2010.

Following is the transcript of a chapel talk delivered on Dec. 4, 2012.

oday I want to talk to you about myself, my life and nature. As many of you know, I was born and raised in Seattle. I lived there for 15

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years before deciding to apply and attend St. George’s. When I received a call from my dad on Aug. 15 saying that I had been accepted to St. George’s, my life changed. My move to SG would be the seventh school I had attended. I thought to myself, “What’s the big deal? I moved schools a lot. Adapting to a new school

shouldn’t be difficult right? My sister did it, so can’t I?” It didn’t really hit me that this time was different and would mark the end of my time spent living at home. In a sense I would be moving out of my house, only spending around three months of my year there until I graduated college. Sophomore year my life, independent of home, started. SG changed my lifestyle; a two-day weekend suddenly became a break. I was no longer able to go backpacking or skiing every weekend. My once-flourishing relationship with the outdoors suffered. As a middleand elementary-school student I had taken part in regular outdoor activates. I joined Boy Scouts at age 10, and immediately began going on outings almost twice a month. Whether it is snow caving around Mount Rainier, a 14,000-foot active volcano in Washington; going for 100-mile canoe trips in northern British Columbia; or 10-day backpacking trips in the Sangre de Christo, a subset of the Colorado Rockies in northern New Mexico; I have done it. The smell of clean mountain air in the morning scented by 100year-old cedars is awesome. It was a hard adjustment to put down my backpack and come East. Personally, I choose to put myself in nature for the joy it brings me, and the revitalization of spirit I receive from it. In a sense nature is everyone’s religion. We come from it in birth and go back to it in death. I bring this up because I believe nature has an ability to change our priorities in a very healthy way. Spending time in the outdoors requires you to either respect nature or suffer the consequences. Respect for nature is something that is not prevalent in our everyday life at St. George’s, or in the city life most of us are used to. We get too caught up in the demanding activities around SG to really get involved in the world around us. I see this as a problem, for why would someone care about preserving nature if they have no relationship with it and haven’t experienced the wonders it beholds? Over this past weekend, I read an article talking about carbon emissions in the year 2012. It appears that again we have set a record high in greenhouse emissions, increasing them by 2.9 percent from 2011. If immediate action is not taken, that snow-caving trip I took on Mount Rainier will no longer be possi-

ble. The unique alpine and aspen forests that survive in the Sangre de Christos that taught me to love hiking will perish. And desert will take over where beautiful wildlife once was. I don’t know about you, but I believe that future generations deserve to have a planet that is habitable. As a Scout I was taught to be friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent. I encourage all of you to apply those values to the way you treat the planet. Little things like shutting off the lights in your room, taking shorter showers, using a reusable water bottle instead of one of those Poland Spring plastic things, and actively recycling can help to save our planet and protect our future in the process. I encourage each and every one of you to go out and appreciate the beautiful wild that our country has protected while it is still here. Even if you have a miserable time, get rained on the whole trip or get sick, I promise you will come back better in touch with yourself and with a new level of respect for the wilderness around you. The lessons I learned in Scouts have saved my life. For example when I broke my left femur skiing, the tranquil, surreal nature of the backcountry in twilight along with the first-aid training I had kept me lucid and from going into shock for the three hours it took ski patrol to get me off the mountain. Nature changes us for the better. Theodore Roosevelt said, “It is an incalculable added pleasure to anyone’s sum of happiness if he or she grows to know, even slightly and imperfectly, how to read and enjoy the wonder-book of nature.” Even though I don’t live at home anymore and seldom have the opportunity to go into the wild, that same familiar grounded feeling comes to me whenever I get there. Connecting with yourself through nature is something that I want to share with the St. George’s community. If you’re having a rough day and you have a little extra time, go take a walk to the beach. I guarantee you will be more relaxed, and better able to approach what’s stressing you when you return—for nature is our nature. Lucien Wulsin ’13 of Seattle, Wash., can be reached at Lucien_Wulsin@stgeorges.edu.

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EVANS PHOTO BY TOM

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A small step and a giant man BY ERIC PETERSON

Following is the Convocation address delivered by the head of school on Sept. 4, 2012.

ow that introductions have been properly made, I would like to ask each of you to take a moment and look around this chapel at the friends, colleagues and schoolmates who are gathered here today. We have come together from across the nation and from around the world. There are more than 400 of us here, including students, faculty, emeriti and staff, and we represent more than 30 American states and nearly 20 different nations. We come from a wide range of family circumstances, religious faiths and personal beliefs, but across all of our different qualities, we share the common purpose and experience of choosing to be part of a community dedicated to the most heroic aspects of our human nature. We are a school, and we are therefore dedicated to the ideals of truth and knowledge, kindness and creativity, courage and faith in one another. In a world that seems to grow more complicated and confusing with every passing hour, these qualities are sometimes scorned as dated or antiquated, out of step with the fast-paced,

cynical, and hard-edged aspects of our times, but I want to suggest to you tonight that it is these heroic qualities that matter most, not just in theory, but in practice here at St. George’s. I admit that the heroic has been on my mind of late for a couple of reasons. The first, and more pedestrian reason is that I love superhero movies, and this summer has had such movies in abundance. I liked the remake of “Spiderman” quite a lot, enjoyed the wit and visual spectacle of “The Avengers,” and found the political subtexts of “The Dark Knight Rises” to be brilliant. But of late, the more substantive reason I’ve been thinking about heroes is because Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon and one of my childhood heroes, died about 10 days ago. In fairness, I never met Neil Armstrong, so that all that I know about him comes from learning about his work and his life through books and movies and articles, and from a handful of conversations with several astronauts who did know him. Nevertheless, for me, Armstrong and his achievements represent a genuinely heroic record, one that merits both our acknowledgement and emulation.

Since none of you students were alive during the days of the space race, let me assure you that in the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was nothing cooler than the Apollo program. Though the United States had already launched astronauts into space and near Earth orbit, in 1961, in a speech to Congress, President John F. Kennedy announced the goal of putting a man on the moon within the decade. It was a bold and visionary statement, especially since the equipment, technology and expertise to achieve the goal simply did not exist at the time. In response to Kennedy’s challenge, NASA and the Apollo program invented and developed the rockets, lunar landers, computers and astronauts they needed, and barely eight years later, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface, becoming the first human being to set foot on a celestial body other than Earth. It was a landmark achievement in the history of mankind, one that represented another dramatic step forward in human beings’ innate desire to explore and understand the universe and our place in it. As a kid, I thought everything about the space program was cool. There was danger,

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adventure, mystery, and science all rolled into one exciting package. Plus it involved giant, fire-spewing rockets, and what could be cooler than that for an 8-year-old boy? Though I don’t recall seeing the Apollo 11 moon landing itself, I do recall watching a TV shot of one of the subsequent lunar missions, live from the moon. Even to a kid, it was genuinely awe inspiring to think that we had been able to fly men nearly a quarter million miles across space, land on the moon, and then bring them home safely. As an adult, the more I learned, the cooler it got. I once had the chance to talk for a bit with Fred Haise, one of the astronauts on Apollo 13, the mission that survived an explosion in space that nearly destroyed the spacecraft. He pointed out to me that when he flew to the moon, the onboard computer of Apollo 13 had 64k of hard-wired memory, and 2k of working memory. Meanwhile, the mainframe computer back at Mission Control in Houston was at the time among the most powerful computers on Earth. It was a marvel of technology, and it boasted a total of 6 MB of memory. In other words, the graphing calculators and cell phones we all use are vastly more powerful than the computers that took men to the moon. They did it almost literally with pencil and paper and guts. In short, the Apollo program was totally cool, and its success represented a triumph of imagination, invention and creativity—all qualities that should inform our work in school, albeit at a far less risky level. In this way, all of the astronauts who were flying the missions were fundamentally heroic. Some of this was perhaps the result of modern mythmaking by a media that was far less cynical and negative than today, but most of it was genuine. After all, the astronauts were willing to risk their lives on a great adventure, one where success was far from guaranteed, and people everywhere admired their daring and their skill. That was what brought me to admiring Arm-

strong as a kid, but as an adult, I’ve come to see even more clearly how unique a man Neil Armstrong was. The details of his biography are easily found online and elsewhere, so I won’t review them tonight. Rather, it is certain demonstrated personal qualities that I think most important for us to consider as we look toward our work together in the year ahead. First and foremost, Armstrong demonstrated an unusual degree of skill and courage. Twice in his career as an astronaut, he had to make independent decisions in critical emergency situations. The first time was during a Project Gemini flight, when a stuck thruster caused his spacecraft to spin out of control. Armstrong devised a solution that stopped the spinning, saving the crew from serious danger, even though it cut the mission short. The second, and now legendary episode was when, during the descent to the lunar surface, he took manual control of the lander, ignoring a series of faulty but serious alarms and flew it by hand and by sight to a landing site that was safer than the initially planned location. When he touched down, Armstrong had just over 30 seconds of fuel remaining. Demonstrating just how tense the moment was, doctors at Mission Control back on Earth measured Armstrong’s heart rate during the landing at over 150 beats per minute, a rate akin to that of a sprinter running a race. It was a far riskier moment than its ultimate success might have suggested, and Armstrong’s elevated heart rate told the true measure of the danger. Though our work in schools is less obviously dangerous, I submit that in our own way, each of us is called on to demonstrate skill and courage in all sorts of ways, be it in a creative solution to a tricky problem, to taking on a challenging idea. Our principal skills may be ones of inquiry, analysis, and of community building, but they still require careful cultivation and deliberate practice, no different in their own way than the hours of practice and repeti-

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tion that allowed Armstrong to succeed. The specifics may be different, but the general principle is the same. Beyond his obvious and exceptional skill as a pilot and engineer, Neil Armstrong was also a man of uncommon dignity. Following the moon landing, he was in many ways the most famous man on Earth. He could have earned millions in endorsements, run any business he desired, or been elected to virtually any public office in the land. In fact, both American political parties tried hard to enlist him as a candidate. Instead of agreeing, Armstrong rebuffed all comers and in a move that is all but unimaginable today, he declined virtually all opportunities to profit from his celebrity either financially or personally. He rarely made public appearances, preferring instead the private life of a common man. How uncommon and different this is from so many examples in our culture today, where reality TV stars are famous for no real reason at all, and the goal for many people is not to do something meaningful, but simply to be famous, to be known, to be talked about. My grandfather used to say, “An empty wagon rattles loudest,” meaning that the loudest boasters of the world are generally those empty of real achievement. Armstrong never had to boast, and was even reluctant to talk about what he’d done, in part perhaps because the moment itself was so grand that it spoke for itself. We would each do well to pursue goals and achieve successes that speak for themselves. Let others “like” and tweet and retweet about our efforts; none of us should need to. In our work this year, we would each do well to emulate Neil Armstrong’s personal dignity, both in our own actions and toward one another. Let’s keep in mind that being talked about is less important than doing the right thing, and that success and celebrity are two very different things. Personal dignity aside, it is also clear that Armstrong had a sense of the greater

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human achievement the Apollo landing represented. Given that the landing took place against the backdrop of deep Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, it is especially telling that Armstrong and his crewmate, Buzz Aldrin, paused on the surface of the moon to place a small memorial packet bearing the names of five astronauts, three American and two Soviet, who had died in their respective nations’ space efforts. This small but humane gesture, along with words on the plaque left behind at the landing site, suggests that the crew understood the larger significance of the moment for all humanity, not just for the United States. The plaque left at the landing site reads in part, “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. We came in peace for all mankind.” In our efforts throughout this year, I hope we remember that the ultimate goal of our mission as a community lies over the near horizon of the academic year, or even the college experience that lies beyond. The St. George’s mission statement hopes ultimately that our graduates will lead lives of constructive service to the world and to God—the whole world, not just our corner of it. This is why we must continue to incorporate service opportunities in our program, and this is why global engagement matters. I suspect that Armstrong and fellow astronauts would understand this better than most. Finally, it’s clear from his life’s work that Neil Armstrong grasped the fundamental importance of learning in general and science in particular. As noted earlier, he could have pursued any professional path he wished when he came home from the moon. What he chose to be was a teacher. For eight years after leaving NASA, Armstrong taught engineering at the University of Cincinnati, near his home in Ohio. Outside of his work in academia, Armstrong remained a passionate supporter of manned

space exploration, and of the sciences in general. It is clear to me, as it must have been clear to Armstrong, that science and technology are tools to advance our understanding not just of the universe, but also of ourselves as human beings. As we look ahead to the construction of an expanded science and math center here at St. George’s, it is vital that we keep in mind the larger impact that science and scientific learning have on all of us. Great teaching creates real learning, and a science facility that promotes both will help to ensure a more promising future not just for the school and its students, but for the larger world we hope to serve.

hat larger world, the one that surrounds this little Hilltop, is not one that treats its heroes especially well. Too often, we build people up only to tear them down. Too often, we learn that our earthly heroes are as flawed and fictitious as the ones in our comic books and movies. Too often, our heroes turn out to be less than what we’ve imagined, not larger than life. What has always inspired me about Neil Armstrong is that his real life story is in many ways better than fiction. After all, his heroic qualities endured throughout his life, and in so doing inspired greatness in many others. As remarkable as his steps onto the moon

were, that inspired greatness is a gift of great measure, and as we stand on the doorstep of a new year, I hope we will reflect on one of history’s heroes, and follow where we can the footsteps he left behind on the moon and here on Earth. Last weekend, a memorial service was held for Neil Armstrong. That same day, in the predawn glow of a beautiful late summer morning, I walked our dog to the salt marsh near our house on Cape Cod. The horizon was showing the first signs of daybreak, and the marsh itself was tinged purple with the shadows of the departing dark. In the western sky, pearl bright above the horizon, hung a full moon. By grand coincidence, it was the second full moon of August—a so called “blue moon.” Looking at that moon, I thought of Neil Armstrong, I thought of our school, and I thought of how the qualities of skill and courage and dignity can be as present in our work as they were in his. I thought of the power of imagination and learning, and how they fuel our dreams. So as we begin our year together, let us all embrace our most heroic qualities, and when you see the moon, give some thought to the man who walked there first for all of us. Eric F. Peterson was appointed head of school in 2004. He can be reached at Eric_Peterson@stgeorges.edu.

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Convocation Near left: Margaret Elizabeth Schroeder ’14 was awarded the Class of 1904 Prize, for the highest scholarship in the Fourth Form, along with the Evans Spanish Prize for excellence in advanced Spanish. Far left: Joseph Omar Grimeh ’13

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was a co-winner with Daniel Perry III of the Pell Medal for U.S. History.

Other prizes awarded during Convocation went to: Han (Joanna) Xu ’13, who received the honor for Highest Scholarship in the Fifth Form, The King Medal, for excellence in advanced Latin, and the Rensselaer Prize, for outstanding achievement in mathematics and science; Jieun (Claire) Yoon ’14, who was the winner of the Howe Prize for excellence in graphic arts; Erin Marie Keating, ’15 winner of the Prescott Bible and Theology Prize; Sophia Elisabeth DenUyl ’13, who was the recipient of the Americas Society Prize, for excellence in intermediate Spanish; Chloe Amelia Farrick ’15, who won the Alliance Francaise Prize, for excellence in intermediate French; Lily Joy Sanford ’14, who received the McCagg Prize, for excellence in intermediate Latin; and Bethany Lynn Fowler ’13, winner of both the Robinson Chemistry Prize and the Yale Prize, for excellence in scholarship and character.

Near right: Yimin (Betty) Xie ’15 was awarded the prize for Highest Scholarship in the Third Form. Far right: The Camera Prize went to Nicholas King Larson ’13.

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Galvin Cross Country Award . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bobby Mey Cross Country Coaches’ Cup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Andrew Lynch Cross Country Most Improved . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Peter Carrellas All-ISL, honorable mention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bobby Mey Captains elect . . . . . . . . Will Hill, Andrew Lynch, Peter Carrellas

Soccer Most Valuable Player Award . Juan Carlos De La Guardia Soccer Coaches’ Cup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Alexander Gates McElhinny Most Improved Award . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michael Reed NEPSSA Senior All-Star Game . . . . . . Juan Carlos De La Guardia, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Alexander Gates All-ISL, first team . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Juan Carlos De La Guardia All-ISL, honorable mention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michael Reed ProJo All-State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Juan Carlos De La Guardia Captains elect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Johnny Kim, TBA

GIRLS’ CROSS COUNTRY Galvin Cross Country Award . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sasha Tory Cross Country Coaches’ Cup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tori Cunningham Cross Country Most Improved . . . . . . . . Natasha Zobel de Ayala ISL MVP/Globe All-Scholastic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sasha Tory All-ISL, first team . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sasha Tory All-New England, Division III . . . . . . . . . Natasha Zobel de Ayala ProJo All-State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sasha Tory Captains elect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Margaret Schroeder, Sasha Tory

FIELD HOCKEY Walsh Field Hockey Bowl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Caroline Thompson Field Hockey Coaches’ Cup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Colby Burdick Field Hockey Most Improved Player . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lane Davis All-ISL, first team . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Caroline Thompson ISL (Dolly Howard) Sportsmanship Award . . St. George’s School ProJo All-State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Caroline Thompson Captains elect . . . Camilla Cabot, Lexi LaShelle, Cecilia Masiello

GIRLS’ SOCCER Soccer Most Valuable Player Award . . . . . . . . . Shannon Leonard Soccer Coaches’ Cup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Oona Pritchard Soccer Most Improved Player . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Carly Mey All-ISL, first team . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Shannon Leonard All-ISL, honorable mention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kelsey Norrgard ISL Team Sportsmanship Award . . . . . . . . . . . St. George’s School ProJo All-State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Shannon Leonard Captains elect . . . . . . . . . Gigi Moylan, Carly Mey, Emily Kallfelz

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Thayer Football Cup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tyshon Henderson Claggett Football Award . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Will Fleming Mackay Most Improved Cup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cory Davis All-NEPSFCA, Class C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tyshon Henderson All-ISL, first team . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tyshon Henderson All-ISL, honorable mention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Will Fleming, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ryan Conlogue, Sage Hill ProJo All-State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tyshon Henderson Captains elect . . . . Sage Hill, Joe Esposito, Christian Anderson, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . George Melendez

Juan Carlos De La Guardia ’13 was voted Most Valuable Player for boys varsity soccer. S T. G E O R G E ’ S 2 0 1 3 W I N T E R B U L L E T I N

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OK, so we didn’t win, but in all things school spirit, St. George’s first “Friday Night Lights” game was a huge success. Under temporary lights and drizzling rain on Crocker Field, the varsity football played a valiant game vs. Nobles, Sept. 28, 7 p.m.—the fans were just as hyped as the players. Body paint, anyone?

Feb. 11 was “Abbey Monday”—and a very good day to be a Dragon as all seven of our winter-season teams to compete with the Ravens notched a victory. We are on track to win the Diman Cup for the 15th consecutive year. Multisport athlete Timmy Doherty ’14 had the Boston media abuzz this fall for his performance on the gridiron. The junior back rushed for 254 yards and a touchdown, and threw for 74 more yards (11of-20 passing, for a TD and a conversion pass) Oct. 20 in a game against St. Paul’s. He also made five tackles on defense, and was the long snapper on punts and extra points. The Boston Globe named him one of its Players of the Week. Standout SG runners Sasha Tory ’14, Bobby Mey ’13 and Josiah Adams ’14, turned in outstanding performances at the indoor Andover Invitational track meet Feb. 4. Sasha came in with a first-place finish in the mile (5:26), Bobby took first place in

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the 600 (yards) (1:22), and Josiah had a strong fifthplace finish in a field of 35 runners in the 300 (yards) (40 seconds). Whoosh! The chapel service on Nov. 6 was dedicated to boosting Dragon pride before the athletic contests against rival Middlesex School the following Saturday. Speaking on behalf of the teams were Juan De La Guardia ’13 (varsity boys soccer), Kelly Duggan ’13, Colby Burdick ’13, Josephine Cannell ’13, Hikari Hasegawa ’13, Caroline Thompson ’13, Gigi Flynn ’13 and Alana McMahon ’13 (field hockey) and Tyshon Henderson ’13 (varsity football). Fall season MVPs Sasha Tory ’14 (cross-country), and sixth formers Caroline Thompson (field hockey), Tyshon Henderson (football), Juan Carlos de la Guardia (soccer) and Shannon Leonard (soccer) were named Providence Journal Independent AllStates in December.

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Three of our basketball teams got a visit from Down Under when the Thunder of Logan College in Brisbane, Australia, visited campus Jan. 5 for games as part of a winter tour of independent schools.

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Beating out two girls who had just been trying out for the Olympics, Cornell University rower Leigh Archer ’09 won a gold medal at the 2012 Royal Canadian Henley Regatta in August. Now a senior, she has been named co-captain of the Big Red women’s rowing team. Following a junior season in which she was one of just two underclassmen rowing in the varsity eight, Archer was named Mid-Atlantic Region firstteam and second-team All-Ivy.

MARY O’CONNOR

A senior at Trinity College, Megan Leonhard ’09, is helping the women’s lacrosse team turn up the heat on the competition. The Bantams notched the school’s first NCAA championship in 2012 and enter the 2013 season this spring with a strong starting line. Leonhard moves into a defensive midfielder role this year after scoring 46 goals in 2012.

On Nov. 9, students attended the SG Sports Hall of Fame Ceremony and Middlesex Rally in the Field House. The Pep Rally afterward was followed by the traditional zebra-roasting bonfire on Cliff Field (above).

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Michael “Buddy” Reed ’13 heads to the University of Florida this summer to play outfield for the Division 1 Gators. With him on “Signing Day” for baseball recruits in November (right) were his dad, Michael Reed, and mom, Yvette Briscoe.

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On “Signing Day” for NCAA soccer and football recruits Feb. 6 we celebrated two amazing Dragon athletes: Varsity girls soccer standout Shannon Leonard ’13 (far left) heads to D-1 Marist College this fall—and football star Tyshon Henderson ’13 (near left) will play on the offensive line for the D-1 University of Massachusetts Minutemen.

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The girls varsity basketball team traveled to Walt Disney World for the KSA Tourney in December. Standing in the back row are: Coach Ashley Dockery ’07, Irene Luperon ’15, Sloan Buhse ’15, Julia Goins ’15, Caroline Thompson ’13, Lane Davis ’15, Kemi Richardson ’13, Eleanor Crudgington ’16, Coach Katie Titus and Coach Julie Butler. In the front row kneeling are: Amira Gomez ’15, Logan Amaral ’16, Theresa Salud ’13, Oona Pritchard ’13, Jessica Hom ’13 and Meg O’Connor ’14.

Inducted into the St. George’s Sports Hall of Fame this year were: Sailing coach Stephen B. Leslie; 1984-85 National Sailing Champions Julia W. Carlson ’86, Gregory G. Ferguson ’85, Linda Dunn Garnett ’85, Peter L. Johnstone ’84, Amanda C. Kelly ’84, Virginia Verney Lucarelli ’87, William C. Shoemaker ’85, Bradford C. Swett ’85, Hannah M. Swett ’87 and Carol C. Whitaker ’85; Andrew R. Vermilye ’74 (football, hockey, tennis), Theodorick B. Bland ’86 (soccer, basketball, lacrosse), Kirtley Horton Cameron ’91 (field hockey, ice hockey, lacrosse) and Tobin T. Dominick ’92 (field hockey, ice hockey, lacrosse). Photos and citations are viewable on our Flickr site at www.flickr.com/stgeorgesschool/collections.

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Above: Both the boys and girls varsity swim teams won ISL Invitational titles at UMass Boston Feb. 16. Pictured above are (girls in alphabetical order): Sam Ayvazian-Hancock ’15, Eliot Caple ’14, Tori Cunningham ’13, Annabella Doyle ’14, Katie Heim ’16, Emily Kallfelz ’15, Anders McLeod ’15, Alana McMahon ’13, Anna Millar ’13, Elizabeth Millar ’15, Gigi Moylan ’14, Lily Sanford ’14, Liza Scholle ’13 and Caroline Yerkes ’14, along with (boys in alphabetical order) Teddy Carter ’14, Addy Cheng ’14, Cameron Cluff ’14, Ryan Conlogue ’13, Cam Crowley ’15, Chris Fleming ’15, Nomikos Klonaris ’14, Peter Kohler ’13, Jack Lathrop ’13, Michael McGinnis ’13, Tyler Pesek ’13, Aubrey Salmon ’14, Austin Scheerer ’13 and Lucien Wulsin ’13.

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Parents Weekend

Leading edge BY ERIC F. PETERSON Following is the address delivered by the Head of School during the Parents Weekend evening dinner on Oct. 19, 2012. Not long ago, I asked a friend who is a long-serving head of school, at what point he ceased being described as the “new headmaster.” He smiled and replied, “Well, that happens at one of two times— either after 10 years, or when they hire your successor, whichever comes first.” Now that my family and I are entering our ninth year at St. George’s, it is a pleasure to be addressing you tonight as an almostno-longer-new headmaster. In truth, over the course of those nine years, this weekend, and especially this

Friday night gathering, has become one of my favorite events of the year. It is the one time that our entire school family—students, faculty, parents and siblings all gather together in one spot, to spend time together over a good meal, to enjoy the performances and showcase the talents of our students, and to share in the collective mission and successes of St. George’s. I am deeply honored and privileged to be a part of leading this school, and to have the chance to participate in the lives of so many talented students and colleagues. As each of you in the room knows, this is a singularly distinctive institution, and I have come to love the particular qualities that I think define St. George’s. For

Fifth formers Miles Matule, Sage Hill and Carter Haley with Head of School Eric Peterson before the Parents Weekend festivities in October.

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Parents Weekend

At Parents Weekend, Robert and Janette Macaulay join their daughters, Caroline ’16 and Hannah ’14.

example, I love our conscious emphasis on balance and breadth in our students’ experience. I love that we blend tradition with a willingness to evolve to meet the needs of today’s students. In a world that is simultaneously riven by religious strife and drawn forward by scientific inquiry, I love that we teach an elective in DNA science even as we continue to require religion courses for graduation. In a world that increasingly demands specialization of all sorts: intellectual, artistic, athletic, earlier and earlier in children’s lives, I love that we are committed to providing a broad range of experiences inside and outside the classroom because we know that students are best led to lives of real success by exposure to a wide range of experiences and ideas. Finally, in a world where human relationships have become fragmented, virtual, or nonexistent in a meaningful way, I love that we are a school that develops, nurtures, and defends community and values character, honor and courage. As I think of the ways in which the work of the past nine years has built on and blended with the efforts of the years and decades before, I see St. George’s becoming more and more the leading small boarding school in the world. Admittedly, this is a lofty and perhaps unprovable goal. Nevertheless, it is where I see our school going, and so I want to speak briefly tonight on the qualities and approaches that will allow us to get there. As a school, part of our mission is to produce leaders,

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and whether you realize it or not, each of you students in the room tonight is being so trained. This is what we are talking about in the school mission statement when we declare that as graduates of St. George’s you are expected to “…lead lives of constructive service to the world.” You will lead in ways both small and large, in roles that are public and private, that serve many or are noticed by only a few, but you will all lead somehow. And, in the same way that faculty members model all sorts of values and behaviors for you, I hope that the school as an institution demonstrates certain leadership values from which you can shape your own roles now and in the future. With that in mind, I want to offer four elements that have and will continue to inform our leadership as a school, and that are equally applicable to your personal leadership development in this community. First, we needn’t be afraid to be different. Leading schools, organizations or individuals have in common a strong measure of uniqueness. It is this very distinctiveness that allows us to be leaders in the first place. By definition, if we were just like everyone else, we could not possibly be leading. In the case of St. George’s, we must embrace the particular qualities and attributes that distinguish this school from any other. We need to continue to seek new and innovative approaches to our work, and provided that we believe an idea or approach to be a

sound solution to a problem, we should not worry about what other schools, or conventional wisdom declares to be correct. Keep in mind that conventional wisdom in its day insisted that heavier-than-air flight was impossible, that no one would ever need a computer in their home, and that the Beatles would not succeed because “guitar groups are on the way out.” As students, don’t be afraid to think differently. There is rarely just one right answer to a problem, and even when only one answer exists, there are often multiple ways by which to reach it. I recognize that it’s hard enough as a community of adults to embrace change or different thinking, so it’s surely no easy thing for adolescents, whose natural instinct is to try to fit in with everyone else. But remember that this is a community that does and should value original thinking and new approaches to complex issues. As young leaders, you need to develop a measure of confidence in your own ideas, and not worry too much about what critics, classmates, or “the group” will think. Second, we need to be creative in our solutions. We live in a world that is changing more rapidly than any time in recorded human history. In order to find answers to challenges faced by the school or by each of us as individuals, more of the same thinking is unlikely to offer us useful answers. Albert Einstein once remarked that, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” I love this quote partly because it reminds me that most of our problems are ones of our own creation, but more because it points out concisely the need for new and creative thinking in solving them. We cannot simply keep running the same systems, the same models, the same numbers again and again and expect different results. We need to be creative and we need to develop a tolerance for constructive risk taking and new ideas. As young leaders, the same holds true for each of you students. As the rush to the future accelerates, the need for new and creative solutions will increase proportionately. For proof of this accelerating pace and the parallel drive for answers, consider for a moment that in 2004, when my family and I first came to St. George’s, Facebook did not yet exist, the iPhone and the iPad hadn’t been invented, the Great Recession was inconceivable, the governments of the Middle East were longstanding and

stable, and “text” was still just a noun. For good or for ill, you will be the generation of leaders who invent, discover or identify the new solutions that will serve our world. It will take your best creative thinking to do so. Third, we need to be disciplined. As a school, there are always more demands on our time, our resources and our budgets than we can fully meet. This is a function of the best of our nature as teachers. Teachers are hard workers, but we are also dreamers and visionaries. We always want to do more with and for our students, our players, our colleagues. So while St. George’s is financially strong, there are inherent limits to our resources, and there are clear limits on the time we have each day. In order to continue to move to a position of leadership on behalf of our students, we need to force ourselves to continue to exhibit the sort of fiscal and programmatic discipline that has served us well for more than 100 years. Since this discipline can sometimes work at crosspurposes with innovation and creative thinking, we must continue to apply our best critical thinking in consistent and focused ways in order to move forward effectively. We cannot simply wing it, any more than you students can wing it in preparing for a test, a class or an athletic season. Disciplined, steady, ongoing efforts breed success, both as a school and as individuals. Finally, we need to be our own best critics. While we do a great many things well, and while there have been a great many successes as a community over the last nine years, (or the last 116 years for that matter) there are always things we can do better. In this way we need to continue to be relentlessly, but constructively, self-critical. One of the greatest advantages of being an independent school is something that we can occasionally forget—we have the freedom to pursue nearly any course of action we think best for our students. That is tremendously powerful, and the sheer power of that freedom requires that we apply a strong measure of self-critical thinking to what we do as a school. For each of you as students, the same principle holds true. You need to become comfortable not with negative, cynical or self-defeating criticism, but rather with a clear eyed, cool viewpoint that allows for your success in a situation even while recognizing and identifying the things you could have done better. This relentless desire to be better, to be unsatisfied by “good enough” lies at the heart of the school’s institutional

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Parents Weekend leadership and, ideally, in each of yours personally. The great thing about this point in the school’s history is that these leadership elements are more than just theory. We can look around and see their presence in the work we do and the school that we are. We can know that we are leading successfully in part because others have begun to follow us. For example, we were the first boarding school to partner with medical researchers to measure whether a later start time to the class day would benefit students and faculty. Our data showed it would, we made the change, and now a host of other schools have used our data or example to move their start times later. We founded the Merck-Horton Center for Teaching and Learning, which provides a powerful engine for academic support, faculty professional development, and university research on education, and now at least two other boarding schools are seeking to do the same and have asked for our guidance in doing so. Several weeks ago, Harvard University invited our faculty to present to them our work and approach to university/high school research partnerships. Just this week, the director of a leading industry group visited campus and remarked to me that St. George’s is “miles ahead of everyone” in the scope and impact of our global programs and curriculum, and until we partnered with them three years ago, the Institute Curie in Paris had never allowed high school students to work with their researchers. We have built a library that is a model for 21st-century learning, developed an honor code that fully informs our lives as a community, boldly stepped away from the College Board’s efforts to collect and resell data on our students, and we have become a launching pad for leaders of other schools, either as heads of school or otherwise. We have developed new courses, new teaching approaches, new classroom materials and new professional programs, all directed at improving the experience of the students. The list goes on and on, but it should be clear that we are leading in action, not just in theory. At the same time, challenges remain. Among a long list of goals for the years ahead, we need to renovate and expand the DuPont science building in order to bring it up to a physical standard that will allow our science students to have a 21st-century scientific experience. We need to continue to address the challenges of affordability and access to a St. George’s education both through

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cost control and by expanding the reach of our financial aid programs, and we need to find new and expanded ways to ensure that our faculty are well compensated and well cared for. We have deferred maintenance that must be addressed, and the endowment must be grown in order to support future generations of students, and we must continue to evolve our curriculum and our pedagogy while avoiding falling victim to faddish, fashionable but ultimately distracting trends in education. Nevertheless, this is a community that is up to the task. We have come together from all over the world, from myriad backgrounds, histories and traditions, but we share certain common goals. Beyond the course catalog and the college list, beyond the number of AP’s or league championships, beyond the specific successes of any one student, this is a community that leads. We lead as an institution, we cultivate leadership now and in the future for our students, and we ultimately seek to develop thinking, feeling, contributing citizens of the world, living lives that matter. I want to close with a quote that I read long ago, but rediscovered over the summer. I’ve shared it with the faculty and the Board, and I offer it to you as a companion version of much of what I’ve described in the mission and work of St. George’s. It comes from the author and essayist Robert Heinlein, who is reflecting on what it means to be fully human. He writes: “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” Ladies and gentlemen, we are not insects. We are not here to train or mentor or raise insects. We are instead living, breathing, thinking human beings and we are each a part of St. George’s, a school that leads and a school that builds leaders. Let us go forward together with that in mind. I thank you all once more for being here tonight, and for being a part of this school. Eric F. Peterson was appointed head of school in 2004. He can be reached at Eric_Peterson@stgeorges.edu.

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Members of the St. George’s Board of Trustees gathered for this photo in the Chapel during their November meeting: (Front row) Al Merck ’39, Bambi Putnam, Eric Peterson, Skip Branin ’65, The Rt. Rev. Dr. Hays Rockwell and Bob Ducommun ’69. (Middle row): David Halwig ’68, Bill Dean ’73, Laura Pedrick, Chris Elia ’92, Bill Prescott ’53, Foxy Parker ’43, Anne McCormack and Leslie Bathgate Heaney ’92. (Back row): Dana Schmaltz ’85, Tad Van Norden ’84, Clyde Dorsey ’70, Port Draper ’61, Joe Hoopes ’62, Drayton Virkler ’92, Betts Murray and David McElhinny ’71.

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Nearly 2,000 Episcopalians and guests gathered Nov. 17 on the Hilltop for the ordination of the Very Rev. W. Nicholas Knisely Jr. (right) as 13th bishop of the Diocese of Rhode Island. The service took place in the Dorrance Field House. Knisely, 52, succeeds the Rt. Rev. Geralyn Wolf, who served as Rhode Island’s 12th bishop since February 1996. Knisely is the former dean of the Phoenix, Ariz., Cathedral, a position he assumed in 2006. Prior to that call, he was rector of St. Trinity Episcopal Church in Bethlehem, Pa., and St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Brackenridge, Pa. He holds degrees in physics and astronomy from Franklin and Marshall College and the University of Delaware, as well as a Master of Divinity degree from Yale/Berkeley Divinity School. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1992 and has become known for his adept communication skills. He was the first chair of the Episcopal Church’s Standing Commission on Communications. He maintains a personal blog called Entangled States and a Twitter account, @wnknisely. Bishop Knisely’s ordination also means he is now ex officio honorary board chair of the St.

EPISCOPAL DIOCESE OF RI

Rhode Island Bishop ordained at St. George’s

George’s Board of Trustees. The bishop had dinner with the board on Dec. 7 and he and his wife, Karen, attended the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols that evening. The next day he attended a full meeting of the board, which looks forward to his enthusiastic participation.

Now retired Bishop Wolfe passes the crozier to Bishop Knisely. An image of the chapel window served as a backdrop during the service. Retired Bishop George Hunt is on the right.

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In memoriam R E M E M B E R A N C E S

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GILBERT Y. TAVERNER ARCHIVES

Roy W. Penny, English teacher, ‘outstanding professional,’ dies at 94 Penny—a faculty member at St. George’s from 1966-1985—was the Paul T. Christie Chair and Head of the English Department, Emeritus

oy W. Penny, the beloved English teacher, World War II veteran and lifelong farmer who impressed upon two decades of students at St. George’s the importance of hard work—and proper grammar—died in Denver, Colo., Sept. 18, 2012. He was 94. Colleagues and former students remember Penny as a demanding yet compassionate teacher, impeccably prepared for each class and always ready with a word of encouragement or humor when needed. “I had great admiration and affection for him,” said former headmaster Tony M. Zane. “He worked very hard for the students and always gave them the best he could.” During his nearly 20-year career on the Hilltop, Penny served as a coach, an advisor and a dorm parent—but first and foremost he was a lover of words: a teacher who became head of the English Department, and a man who spent a lifetime tinkering with

the ever-present novel in his head. Certainly his life experiences seemed to lend themselves to storytelling; his success a testament to the power of perseverance and fortitude. Born March 26, 1918, Penny, part Cherokee, grew up the second-youngest of nine children in a four-room house with no electricity or running water on a farm in Shawnee, Okla. His father died when he was just 3. Penny would go on to travel the world and live in a number of places across the United States, but the Oklahoma farm where he and his siblings worked the fields and tended to the animals to feed the family, never strayed far from his mind. Even at St. George’s, Penny worked the land; he maintained a garden for many years across from Twenty House and is pictured in several archival photographs holding a pitchfork.

It was World War II that first plucked Penny from his home in the West, and he went on to serve as a major in the U.S. Army

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in the Pacific Theater. Zane recalls him recounting one particular story from those years: standing on a beach in the Philippines in 1944 watching General Douglas MacArthur wade onto shore—the general’s valiant return to the country after having been driven out by the Japanese years before. Later, when Penny was stationed in Tripoli, Libya, in 1953, he met his wife, Isabelle—visiting a cousin in the Foreign Service—through a matchmaking service. The two were married there on Aug. 7, 1954. Following the war, Penny began his indepth study of literature at U.C.L.A, where he earned a bachelor’s degree. Later he earned a master’s degree in English from Columbia. Penny’s first teaching job was at the Peck School in Morristown, N.J.—at the time led by former St. George’s Headmaster Archer Harman. He moved on to Tabor Academy for three years, and then at the request of Harman, who had since taken the job at St. George’s, Penny joined the faculty here in 1966. By that time, Penny and Isabelle had two sons in tow—Roy W. Penny Jr. ’76 and Christopher G. Penny ’80. Veteran faculty member Steve Leslie,

Penny (left) talks with Bill Schenck, former college advisor and head of the History Department. who worked alongside Penny for many years as head of the Science Department and director of marine affairs, called his friend and colleague “a true gentleman, scholar and model boarding school teacher.” “In every moment,” Leslie said, “Roy maintained a gentle demeanor, a wry smile, a warm greeting, and the highest of standards— in scholarship, sportsmanship and citizenship. He taught his children and his students and his colleagues the value of hard work, focus and discipline.” Students recall Penny as a teacher who could at once be rigorous and compassionate. Upon his retirement in 1985, an editor for the yearbook, The Lance, wrote, “He shows his interest in and concern for his students by encouraging them to realize their potential. He will be remembered … for this, as well as for his sensitivity, unique kindness and manner.” Former student Andrew Packard ’82 said, “Roy Penny will be remembered by all who were fortunate enough to be his students for the way he could, with a few gentle questions, guide wide-ranging literary discussions to a few well-chosen endpoints. Demanding, but always charmingly optimistic, he was capable of seeing the humor in even the most dire of situations, and inspired his students with an exemplary sense of humility.” Zane admired Penny’s loyalty. “You could always rely on him—for anything, really,” he said. “And he was very good company.” A number of people recalled his wry sense of humor, evident in his own quotation in the 1985 Lance: “Some days I find teaching

Penny delivers a classroom lecture during the 1960s.

Portsmouth that was re-named in her honor so enjoyable that I smile to myself to think in 1993. “He had very high standards,” she that I am getting paid in addition to having said. He renovated the whole property fun,” he wrote. “Of course there are other almost entirely by himself. Zane recalled he days too.” suffered from back pain after wrestling a calf. One of Penny’s most popular classes was Hollins said living back on a farm meant in public speaking, during which he doled a lot to Penny. “He wanted his sons to have out useful pieces of advice to those appalled the farm experience,” he said. at the thought of talking to a large audience. Into his late years Penny continued to “I remember he would always tell his students, ‘Roll up a little piece of paper and stick it under your tongue to keep your mouth from drying up,’” Zane recalled. Former colleague Dan Hollins said he was relentless in his efforts to make sure students wrote and spoke properly. “I knew many great —Dan Hollins, Prince Chair in History, Assistant teachers at St. George’s Headmaster, Dean of Faculty, Dean of Students, over 36 years, but not one and English and History Teacher, Emeritus 1970-2006 was as thoroughly dedicated to teaching English and grammar as was Roy,” work on his two novels—one set in Africa Hollins said. and the other set in a boarding school, He gave one chapel talk during his according to Isabelle Penny, who now resides tenure, Hollins noted—and it was on gramin Denver near both sons. mar. “Students were a bit surprised,” Hollins The latter novel, she reports, is called added, “those listening.” “’Till We Meet Again” and has just been selfAfter Penny retired from St. George’s, he published. and his family moved to a 38-acre property Mrs. Penny said her husband would have with chickens and cattle across town on wanted to be remembered “for his honesty Mitchell’s Lane in Middletown they called and his hard work.” Pennfield Farm. Penny was still putting in On his gravestone at Fort Logan long days of hard labor, as Isabelle Penny, National Cemetery in Denver is engraved, taught English and was Assistant Head of “Our character is our fate.” School at Pennfield, the K-8 school in

“Roy was one of those rare teachers who seemed to be always gentle, focused and thoroughly prepared. He expected excellence from his students—and got it.”

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PHOTO COURTESY OF HARVESTBOOKS . COM

The way we learn In the Merck-Horton Center for Teaching and Learning, students find a new menu of study aids and offerings The renovated Hill Library, which houses the cutting-edge Merck-Horton Center for Teaching and Learning—a model for other high schools of innovative teaching practices and instructional services—is now at the center of the school’s academic core. Students flock to the library at night for all its varying opportunities to help them advance their studies, finding a place where all types of learners are nurtured. The building features flexible classrooms, a multimedia conferencing facility and individual and group-study spaces—along with a wealth of research and study assets, and a growing collection of books and multimedia materials. Following the opening of the new space, all academic departments began to revamp their student services and move to a peer-to-peer tutoring model. Now touting names such as the Writing Lab, the Math Lab, Chinese Corner, the Science Squad, Spanish Table, etc., teachers and proficient students are setting aside time devoted to increasing the learning opportunities for those seeking extra help and study time. In fact, Instructional Services was completely overhauled at St. George’s last year. “[Now] it more directly addresses our students’ needs,” Director of the Merck-Horton Center Tom Callahan said. In the new model, the academic departments

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handle all content-based tutoring, and when students’ needs are more than a content problem, they can be referred to the Instructional Services office, where one of three full-time faculty members will assess their needs. “Usually, it is organization, planning, learning strategies, or test-taking skills,” according to Callahan. “We then make a plan for a student to work on that skill that is impeding his or her progress with the goal of making that student self-sufficient as soon as possible.” In fact the system has become so prized that even some high-achieving students will request meetings with IS “just to help them do a little better.” Seventeen new families signed up for 5-15 sessions, pre-paid, before school even started this year, Callahan reported. “And now other independent boarding schools are interested in implementing this model at their schools,” he said. In addition to the new learning offering, teachers are finding Merck-Horton a friendly environment to try out new teaching methodologies, such as self-paced learning; online math reviewing sessions; and the “flipped classroom,” which inverts the lecture in class/homework at night model by allowing students to listen to lectures online and use class periods for activities.

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MERCK-HORTON CENTER FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING

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Right: Toni Woods Maignan ’16, Catherine Farmer ’15 (background) and Emily Kallfelz ’15 work in groups in Linda Evans’ Algebra 2 Honors class.

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KATHRYN WHITNEY LUCEY

Above: The entire sixth-form took part in a whitewaterrafting trip in Maine in September. Meanwhile (inset), the juniors offered up their communityservice talents and bonded during a trip to Camp Fuller in Wakefield, R.I.

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KATHRYN WHITNEY LUCEY PHOTO BY

Above: Bob Wein meets with his AP Physics students: (in the front row) Lucien Wulsin ’13, Max Simmons ’13, Becky Cutler ’13 and Ian Chun ’14; and (in the back row)

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Josephine Cannell

’13, Will Fleming ’13, Alana McMahon ’13 and Oona Pritchard ’13. Left: Juniors Julian Turner and Natalie Sullivan peruse the textbook in James Stevens’ Chemistry class.

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The cast of “Alice 2.0”: Norah Hogan ’14, John DeLuca ’14, Kate Hamrick ’13, Reid Burns ’13, Bethany Fowler ’13, Sophie DenUyl ’13, (in the front row sitting) Lisbeily Mena ’13, Charlotte Dulay ’14, Sydney Jarrett ’16 and Dominique Samuel ’13, (in the middle row sitting) Joe Grimeh ’13, Nikki Young ’13 and Ziye Hu ’13; and (in the back row standing) Ito Orobator ’14 and Caroline Dunn-Packer ’15.

Original production marks a highlight for the Theater Department Hats off to the St. George’s Theater Department for forging new territory this fall by staging an original production—an edgy new version of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland,” written by playwright Jonathan Yukich. The cast and crew presented the world premiere of Yukich’s show, “Alice 2.0,” on Nov. 10 and 11. Yukich collaborated on the project with Noah Tuleja, a longtime colleague and head of the SG Theater Department. Together the two founded the Trembling Stage Theater Co. in 2007. Yukich and Tuleja met as graduate students at Indiana University and began their work together as playwright/director with the world premier of Yukich’s play “The Alien From Cincinnati.” Yukich is the recipient of a number of awards and honors, including the 2003 Paula Vogel Award for Playwriting and his plays have been produced across the United States and in Canada, Australia and Europe. He currently lives in Connecticut and teaches in New York. Last summer Yukich and Tuleja brought their 2010 collaboration, “American Midget,” to the New York International Film Festival. The New York Times called the show “a cheerfully absurdist satire,” and praised the production, calling the show “a little psychological gem.”

In Yukich’s show, Alice is depicted as a modern-day teenager with a cell phone who takes a trip down the rabbit hole into a dream world, populated by a host of familiar characters: the White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, along with many others. Bethany Fowler ’13 played the lead role of Alice, and rounding out the talented cast were Norah Hogan ’14 (White Rabbit), Reid Burns ’13, Sophie DenUyl ’13, Ziye Hu ’13 and Dominique Samuel ’13 (Chorus), John Deluca ’14 (Caterpillar and the King of Hearts), Nicole Young ’16 (Cheshire Cat and Frog), Sydney Jarrett ’16 (Cheshire Cat and Fish), Charlotte Dulay ’14 (Mad Hatter), Joe Grimeh ’13 (March Hare), Lisbeily Mena ’13 (dormouse and Humpty-Dumpty), Caroline Dunn-Packer ’15 (Tweedledee), Ito Orobator ’14 (Tweedledum), and Kate Hamrick ’13 (Queen of Hearts). Producers called the show a marriage of “the old with the new using movement, music, media and bold design choices to create a playground for Alice as she makes her journey through her subconscious, eventually arriving home, unharmed but not unchanged.” That means the lighting and sound choices weren’t afterthoughts—and several audience members remarked after the show it would stay with them for some time to come.

Opposite page: The men of the SG theater program: Theater Technical Director Ted Sturtevant ’96, Director Noah Tuleja and Producer Heath Capello are the highoctane trio behind this year’s theater offerings. Together they oversaw an original production of the Alice in Wonderland story, “Alice 2.0,” this fall, and a rousing production of Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes” this winter.

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C ATHERINE FARMER ’15 ILLUSTRATION BY

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BETHANY FOWLER ’13

Overall 11 students came out winners in the Rhode Island Scholastic Art Competition this winter, with the top honor of the contest, “Best of Show,” going to Caroline Dunn-Packer ’15 for her stunning photograph, “High Society” (above). Also winning prestigious gold key awards were Bethany Fowler ’13, for her drawing “Glass” (below left); Jessica Hom ’13, for her drawing “Cherries and Leaves” (below center) and Catherine Farmer ’15, for her print “Bicycle” (below right). Visit our Facebook page for a gallery of all the winners’ works (www.facebook.com/stgeorgesschool).

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Joanna Xu ’12 (flute) and C.J. Park ’12 (violin) performed at a special recital Nov. 13 in Madeira Hall. The two took the stage during Parents Weekend and also at the Music Guild on Oct. 12.

SUZANNE MCGRADY

Below: The first Music Guild of the year was on Oct. 12 in Madeira Hall. A number of seasoned soloists, including Alexandra Medeiros ’14, Norah Hogan ’14, Ziye Hu ’13, Julian Turner ’14, and Lucas Campbell ’13, performed. The Chamber Orchestra, The Jazz Combo, the St. George’s Orchestra, and the St. George’s Jazz Ensemble, as well as several members of the Snapdragons and Hilltoppers a cappella groups also performed. A Music Guild Nov. 23 also featured some of our most talented soloists and musicians. Check out the videos on our YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/sgdragon372.

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Below: Avery Dodd ’14, Nico Deluca Verley ’13 and Up Punyagupta ’13 starred in the Jan. 6 Rock Guild. Also performing at the show were Austin Scheerer ’13, Julian Turner ’14 and Miriam Elhajli ’13.

The work of ceramicist Lee Segal was on display in the Hunter Gallery Jan. 18-Feb. 2.

At press time, the cast of the winter musical, “Anything Goes,” was basking in the glow of success after performing the show three times Feb 21-23. The show featured some elaborate choreography and, of course, those great Cole Porter songs. Bravo to the cast: Nicole Young ’13 (Reno), Avery Dodd ’14 (Billy), Norah Hogan ’14 (Bonnie) and Cory Davis ’14 (Bishop) (all pictured at left), along with Sophie DenUyl ’13 (Hope), Ziye Hu ’13 (Moonface), JackHenry Day ’15 (Evelyn), Maggie Maloy ’14 (Mrs. Harcourt), McKenzie Nagle ’13 (Whitney), Charlotte Dulay ’14, Amirah Keaton ’14, Sydney Jarrett ’16 and Laurie Germain ’15 (4 Angels), as well as chorus members Nico DeLuca-Verley ’13 (Steward), Katarina Wood ’15 (Captain), Toni Woods Maignan ’16 (Reporter), Chloe Lee ’15 (Cameraman), Amanda Warren ’15 (Convert 1), Lisa Friesen ’15 (Convert 2) and Jessica Park ’15 (sailor and passenger).

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The winner of our “Manuary” contest was Rahil Fazelbhoy ’13. Rahil got the most votes from the community for growing the most interesting beard in January. The contest raised $400 for prostate cancer research.

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The Community Service Council used the Winter Formal for a bit of altruism, selling boutonnieres and corsages to raise money for the Red Cross. Gigi Flynn ’13 took the lead on the project. Thirteen students and two faculty members were set to participate in Habitat for Humanity’s Collegiate Challenge over Spring Break in March. The youth program provides the opportunity for college and high school students to use their vacations to help build Habitat homes. SG participants—Avery Dodd ’14, Annabella Doyle ’14, Tyshon Henderson ’13, Sage Hill ’14, Hannah Macaulay ’14, Sammie Maltais ’14, Nick Mandor ’14, Lisbeily Mena ’13, Anna Millar ’13, Gigi Moylan ’14, Vivianne Reynoso ’13, Raleigh Silvia ’13 and Natalie Sullivan ’14 along with math teachers Abbie DiPalma and Director of Operations George Staples—will help build homes for residents of Santa Fe, N.M. This spring break, Habitat says more than 10,000 students will travel to 200 locations between Feb. 12 and April 1.

The Feed-a-Friend Food Drive Nov. 4 had dozens of students—including Scott Andrade ’16 and Quinn Sheridan ’16—volunteering their time to gather food donations for the Martin Luther King Jr. Center downtown.

A number of students who worked on community-service projects over the summer gave a special presentation in the Davenport Room of the Hill Library Nov. 5. Panelists Charlotte Dulay ’14, Kelly Duggan ’13, Gigi Flynn ’13, Tyshon Henderson ’13, Lisbeily Mena ’13, Colby Burdick ’13 and Will Hill ’14 all talked about a life-changing opportunity they had to help others, including fixing rice paddies in Xijiang, China (Dulay) trips to orphanages in Cambodia and Tanzania (Duggan and Flynn), serving as counselors at Camp Ramleh (Mena and Henderson), planting crops in La Paz, Costa Rica (Burdick) and working at a youth leadership church program in South Boston (Hill).

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SKIRTING THE DRE SS CODE Dress-down days have become a tradition here at St. George’s, and we raise thousands of dollars for a variety of noteworthy charities because of them. Students pay $3 for the privilege of coming to class dressed casually rather than in dress code. Most Dress-down days are held on Fridays. This year’s charity recipients include: City Squash, a not-for-profit after-school enrichment program that includes squash, tutoring, mentoring, community service, travel, culture, high school placement, employment training and college prep. The Jamestown (R.I.) Community Farm, a volunteer organization that grows food for those in need. Compassionate Care ALS, a nonprofit organization that offers individualized support to those currently living with ALS, their families and caregivers. Child & Family Services of Rhode Island (Newport County). The Episcopal Charities Fund, which supports new and existing nonprofit agencies in their effort to make a crucial difference in the lives of poor, oppressed and endangered individuals in need. New England Volunteer Optometric Services to Humanity, which supplies humanitarian eye and health care to a remote clinic in Panama. Cradles to Crayons, which provides homeless and poor children in the Philadelphia and Boston areas with clothing, books, toys and other necessities.

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Students help out in our annual fall cleanup of Second Beach in September. The event was organized by the Community Service Council, headed by seniors Whitney Thomson, Gigi Flynn and Alana McMahon.

Volunteers spend a Sunday afternoon at Newport’s Salvation Army soup kitchen cooking and serving dinner. (Front row) Agnes Enochs ’15, Zahra Arabzada ’15, Amanda Warren ’15 and Kari Anna Byrnes ’14. (Back row): Nick Flores ’14, Elizabeth Millar ’15, Serena Highley ’15, Merrill Scura ’15, Hannah Todd ’14, Sarah Braman ’15 and Jordan Hoffman ’15.

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High school students can be heroes. Case in point: After seeing the profile of our hockey star Timmy Doherty ’14 in the Newport Daily News, a father from Lincoln, R.I., Patrick Turcotte, called head coach Justin Cerenzia ’01 to see if his 8-yearold son could meet Timmy and the team. Seems Timmy’s story of playing hockey with Type 1 diabetes was a familiar one. Turcotte reported his son, little Nathan “NT” Turcotte, who plays for his local state league team, the Woonsocket Northstars, is also a great little hockey player—and NT also was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 5. NT met Timmy on Sunday, Jan. 27—and what a day he had!

THE NEWPORT DAILY NEWS

Connections with the community

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Academic Honors for First Semester 2012-13 Head of School Commendation for Academic Excellence The Head of School Commendation for Academic Excellence is St. George’s highest bi-annual honor. These students received no grade below an A- during the 2012-13 second semester: Edward Hill Carter Woo Won Chun John Garvoille Coaty Sophia Elisabeth DenUyl Hayley Elizabeth Lee Durudogan Laura Elizabeth Edson Bethany Lynn Fowler

Honor Roll

Jing Gao William Christopher Hill Erin Marie Keating John Jongmin Kim Taylor Anne Kirkpatrick Caroline Allen Macaulay

Jack-Henry Stockton Day Reed de Bruhl deHorsey Agnes Elizabeth Enochs III FORM Sterling Victoria Etheridge Logan Holly Amaral Catherine Bertrand Farmer Timothy John Baumann Chloe Amelia Farrick Ashlyn Brooks Buffum Camila Flores Lee Madison Cardwell Blaise C. Foley Dejania Cotton-Samuel Jing Gao Luke William Crimmins Jillian Reid Gates Laura Elizabeth Edson Laurie Naitha Germain Annabelle Blessing Fischer Julia C. Goins Connor J. Fitzgerald Oliver Ridgely Green Vivian K. Foley Annika Leigh Hedlund Patrick Burton Ford Serena deWees Highley Annabel Taylor Grunebaum Rebecca Grace Howe Evan Xavier Jackson Cynthia Janette Huyck Jee Seob Jung Hunter Johnson Ian Daniel Keller Emily Louise Kallfelz Charles Alexander Kilvert Jaewoo Kang Chaeyun Kim Erin Marie Keating Taylor Anne Kirkpatrick Yul Hee Kim David Hall Lamar You Jeong Lee Elizabeth Larcom Eddie J. Liu Audrey S. Lin Chenglin Lu William Lindsay Logue Irene C. Luperon Caroline Allen Macaulay John George Luttrell Elizabeth Bunting Olt Christina Rose Malin Luc Poirier Paruta Anders Cassoday McLeod Loomis Young Quillen Elizabeth Goodwin Millar Margaret Whitney Rogers Carter Young Morgan Henry Charles Shepherd Soravis Nawbhanich Olivia Lauren Soares William Nyamwange James Marshall Stevens Henry Stillman Ordway Jonathan C. Tesoro Ji Young Park Olivia Demary Vitton Alden Timothy Pexton Sophie Genevieve Williams Griffin Michael Prescott Toni Lynn Woods Maignan, Jr. Michael James Riordan, V Zhou Yan Robert Carter Rose Cameron Eugene Roy IV FORM Elizabeth Hale Scheibe Michaela Kathryn Ahern Merrill Avery Scura Giovanni Carlos Armonies-Assalone Margaret Muriel Small Joseph Burnett Asbel Paget Smith Samara Rebecca Ayvazian-Hancock Emma Louise Thompson Sophia Abby Barker Amanda Grace Warren Buckley Carlson Thomas Hunter Westerberg Sarah Stewart Carnwath Allison Vanier Williams Nicole Anne Cohen Katarina Leighton Wood Olivia Carson Consoli Yimin Xie Lan Zhang Lane Alexandra Davis Natasha S. Zobel de Ayala

Hannah Wise McCormack Robert Carter Rose Aubrey Miles Fitzhugh Salmon Elizabeth Hale Scheibe Margaret Elizabeth Schroeder Jae Young Shin

V FORM Samuel Frederick Alofsin Christian Robert Anderson William Kelly Kerr Anderson Timothy Glimme Archer Miranda Bakos Katherine Elizabeth Bauer Jonathan Golden Bayne Harrison Herbert Boehm Kari Anna Byrnes Camilla Pepperell Cabot Margaret Deane Cardwell Edward Hill Carter Yu Yao Cheng Jaeyoung Choi Woo Won Chun Cameron Roarke Cluff Kathryn Ann Coughlin Megan E. Daknis John Anthony DeLuca Elizabeth Dewey Desrosiers Avery Kramer Dodd Timothy Andrews Doherty Roger James Dorr Hayley Elizabeth Lee Durudogan Nicolas Flores Jeffrey Paul Fralick Allison Parks Fuller Alexander James Maher Goodrich Elizabeth Lipton Grace Alexandre Zvonimir Grahovac William Christopher Hill Norah Burke Hogan Quang Nguyen Viet Hong Timothy Michael Howe Qinwen Huang Katelyn Nicole Hutchinson Amirah Keaton Mary Olivia Keith Margaret Peyton Kilvert John Jongmin Kim Thomas Edward Kits van Heyningen Alexandra Ann LaShelle Edgar Z.H. Lee Samuel Thompson Loomis Andrew Sloane Lynch Hannah Marie Macaulay Margaret Tese Maloy Samantha D. Maltais Nicholas Broderick Mandor Cecilia Christiane Masiello

William Eberlein Simpson Sophie Genevieve Williams Toni Lynn Woods Maignan, Jr. Amanda Grace Warren Robert Loux Woodard Han Xu

Miles Foley Matule Sophia Douglass McDonald Margaret Anne Mead Jorge L. Melendez Virginia Casey Moylan Margaret Elizabeth O’Connor Itohan Teni Orobator Andie Fu Yisi Plumeri Grace Connors Polk Brooke Elizabeth Reis Wilson S. Rubinoff Aubrey Miles Fitzhugh Salmon Lily Joy Sanford Alexa Olin Santry Margaret Elizabeth Schroeder Seung Hyouk Shin William Eberlein Simpson Andrea Suarez Hannah Frances Todd Alexandra Anne Tory Dian-Jung Tsai Emily Owens Walsh Robert Loux Woodard Caroline Woodward Yerkes Jieun Yoon

VI FORM James Bruce Allan Ryan James Andrade Katherine Alice Bienkowski Colby O’Neil Burdick Terrence Reid Burns Josephine Rose Cannell Hanni Chen Bailey McKay Clement John Garvoille Coaty Richard Ryan Conlogue Carolyn Keely Conway Emma S. Coz Victoria Elizabeth Cunningham Rebecca Warren Cutler Juan Carlos De La Guardia Nico Cyril DeLuca-Verley Sophia Elisabeth DenUyl Kelly Frances Duggan Peter Erol Durudogan Rahil Karim Aliff Fazelbhoy William Russell Fleming Marianne Casey Foss-Skiftesvik Bethany Lynn Fowler Alexander Avery Gates Joseph Omar Grimeh

Kathleen Elizabeth Hamrick John Andrew Harris Hikari Hasegawa Jessica Leong Hom Ziye Hu Andrew Pierre Issa David Larimer Kehoe Rowon Kim Peter Kohler Edith Rose Kremer Efstathios Kyriakides Nicholas King Larson William Leatherman Shannon Marie Leonard Xingyan Li Hannah Wise McCormack Duncan A. McGaan Allison Armstrong McLane Alana Claire McMahon Lisbeily Mena Robert Walter Mey Andrew Barlett Michaelis Anna Elizabeth Millar Jeremy Monk Rosemary Elizabeth Mulholland McKenzie Reid Nagle Kelsey Erikson Norrgard Chanjoon Park Harrison Childress Parker Madeleine Emelia Parker Daniel Perry, III Katarina Pesa Tyler Andrew Pesek Oona Carolena Pritchard Callie Victoria Reis Vivianne Renee Reynoso Kemigisha Maria Richardson Samuel Benson Rickabaugh Theresa Anne Salud Daniel Austin Scheerer Elizabeth Parsons Scholle Kristofer Shelton Jae Young Shin William Isaac Silverstein Raleigh Sheehan Silvia Maxwell Bardsley Simmons Caroline Claire Thompson Whitney Haskell Thomson Sienna Warriner Turecamo Han Xu Nicole Elyse Young

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Based on their stellar academic achievements, seniors Josephine Cannell, Jack Coaty, Becky Cutler, Bethany Fowler, Hannah McCormack, Oona Pritchard and Joanna Xu were inducted into the prestigious Cum Laude Society during Convocation on Sept. 4.

Twenty-five students earned Head of School’s Commendations for receiving no grade lower than an A- during the first semester of the 2012-13 school year: Teddy Carter ’14, Woo Won (Ian) Chun ’14, Jack Coaty ’13, Sophie DenUyl ’13, Hayley Durudogan ’14, Laura Edson ’16, Bethany Fowler ’13, Jing (Ray) Gao ’15, William Hill ’14, Erin Keating ’15, Jongmin (Johnny) Kim ’14, Taylor Kirkpatrick ’16, Caroline Macaulay ’16, Hannah McCormack ’13, Carter Rose ’15, Aubrey Salmon ’14, Lilly Scheibe ’15, Margaret Schroeder ’13, Jae Shin ’13, William Simpson ’14, Sophie Williams ’16, Toni Woods Maignan ’16, Amanda Warren ’15, Luc Woodard ’14 and Han (Joanna) Xu ’13. Twenty students received Head of School’s Commendations at the Opening of School for receiving no grade lower than an A- during the second semester of the 2011-12 school year: Teddy Carter ’14,

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Bethany Fowler ’13, Alexandre (Sacha) Grahovac ’14, Ziye Hu ’13, Erin Keating ’15, Johnny Kim ’14, Eddie Liu ’15, Hannah McCormack ’13, Allison McLane ’13, Elizabeth Millar ’15, Callie Reis ’13, Cameron Roy ’15, Margaret Schroeder ’14, Jae Shin ’13, William Simpson ’14, Emma Thompson ’15, Dian-Jung (Veronica) Tsai ’14, Yimin (Betty) Xie ’15, Han (Joanna) Xu ’13 and Lan (Cindy) Zhang ’15. Photos from Convocation and

the First Day of classes are available at www.Flickr.com/stgeorgesschool/collections. Bethany Fowler ’13 was named a “commended” student in the 2013 National Merit Scholarship Program for her outstanding performance on the PSAT. That means she placed in the top 5 percent of the more than 1.5 million students who entered the competition.

Thirteen high-achieving language students were inducted into the National Spanish Honor Society

MIKE AND PATT Y HOEFT P’11 PHOTO COURTESY OF

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Seeking to encourage self-confidence in their peers, Anna Millar ’13 and Keely Conway ’13 (above), along with Hayley Durudogan ’14, issued a challenge to the girls on campus to give up their cosmetics and curling irons (and other styling equipment) Oct. 16-18. The Dove Beauty Challenge is a national campaign and one of her favorite times of the year, said Conway, who has made it a personal passion to encourage female empowerment. Oct. 18. Miranda Bakos ’14, Katherine Bauer ’14, Camilla Cabot ’14, Margaret Cardwell ’14, Sophia DeNuyl ’13, Timothy Howe ’14, Hannah Macaulay ’14, Allison McLane ’13, Alana McMahon ’13, Callie Reis ’13, Andrea Suarez ’14, Hannah Todd ’14 and Nicolas Flores ’14 were honored during an evening ceremony in the library.

Jack Coaty ’13

Griffin Prescott ’15

Longtime U.S. Sen. John Kerry spent his first day as the new U.S. Secretary of State recently—but back in 2004, he was up to some other important business: During a campaign stop in Wisconsin, he met with our own Dakota Hill ’16, Sage Hill ’14 and Olivia Hoeft ’11. Cute!

votes; President Obama (Democrat) 113 votes; Gary Johnson (Libertarian) 17 votes.) Charleen Martins-Lopes ’15, Erick Lu ’15, Ito Orobator ’14 and Irene Luperon ’15 attended the

Jack Coaty ’13 and Griffin Prescott ’15 were declared

2012 National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) People of Color Conference and the Student Diversity Leadership Conference in Houston Dec. 68. They represented SG among 1,000 other high school students from across the U.S.

the winners of the AllSchool Debate held Nov. 5. Organized by the History Department, this year’s debate paralleled the 2012 Presidential Election and had each participant represent Barack Obama or Mitt Romney. Luc Woodard ’14 and Jack-Henry Day ’15 were semifinalists. (BTW, you might be interested to know that a large sampling of our students, in a mock election, voted this way: Governor Romney (Republican) 118

Following in a long line of illustrious Hilltop journalists, Thomas Kits van Heyningen ’14 (editorin-chief), Kate Hamrick ’13 (managing editor), Margaret Schroeder ’13 (news editor), Teddy Carter ’14 and Aubrey Salmon ’14 (opinions editors), Katherine Bienkowski ’13 (sports editor), Will Simpson ’14 (arts & lifestyle editor), Miranda Bakos ’14 (layout editor) and Ray Gao ’15 and Hayley Durudogan ’14 (photography editors) took the reins this year as Editorial Board members of the students newspaper, The Red & White.

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College Acceptances (as of Feb. 19, 2013) In all, 85 our of 96 seniors have received 167 early acceptances from the following 85 colleges and universities Babson College Bates College Berklee College of Music Bryant University Bucknell University Carleton University (Can.) Catholic University of America Chapman University Claremont McKenna Clark University College of Charleston College of the Holy Cross Colorado College Connecticut College Davidson College Dickinson College Dillard University Eckerd College Elon University Embry-Riddle Aero University Fairfield University Fordham University Franklin & Marshall College George Washington University High Point University Indiana University Bloomington Ithaca College Jacksonville University Johns Hopkins University

Juniata College Kalamazoo College Kenyon College Lehigh University Lewis and Clark College LIM College Louisiana State University Loyola University, New Orleans Marist College Marquette University MA College of Art & Design Middlebury College Michigan State University New York University Northeastern University Norwich University Ohio Wesleyan University Pitzer College Quinnipiac University Reed College Rhodes College Rutgers University St. Anselm College St. Johnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Univ. - Queens Salve Regina University Sarah Lawrence College Savannah Coll. of Art & Design Seton Hall University Southern Methodist University

Texas A&M University Trinity College US Coast Guard Academy Univ of British Columbia (Can.) University of Cincinnati University of Colorado University of Edinburgh (Scot.) University of Florida University of Maine University of MA, Amherst University of Miami University of New Hampshire University of Notre Dame University of the Pacific University of Puget Sound University of Redlands University of Rhode Island University of St. Andrews (Scot.) University of Southern CA University of Texas, Austin University of Vermont University of Virginia Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison Western University (Can.) Willamette University Worcester Polytechnic Institute Xavier University, LA

39 of those students are now settled and plan to enroll at the following institutions: Bates College (2) Berklee College of Music Bucknell University (3) Claremont McKenna College (2) Colorado College Connecticut College Davidson College (2) Duke University Elon University (2) Franklin & Marshall College

George Washington Univ. (3) Johns Hopkins University Kenyon College Lehigh University Marist College Middlebury College New York University (2) Pitzer College Reed College Rice University

Seton Hall University Sarah Lawrence College Trinity College (2) U.S. Coast Guard Academy University of Florida University of Massachusetts University of Puget Sound University of St. Andrews (Scot. ) University of Vermont University of Virginia

College decisions will continue to come in through the regular round in April 54

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Campus happenings

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MARY O’CONNOR

At an announcement in Assembly in September, politically-minded students Teddy Carter ’14, Keely Conway ’13 and Duncan McGaan ’13 of the Young Republicans Club, and Jeremy Monk ’13, Nick Larson ’13 and Sage Hill ’14 of the Young Democrats Club get the students energized about the 2012 presidential election.

Allison Williams ’15, Chloe Farrick ’15, Natasha Zobel de Ayala ’15 and Kathryn Coughlin ’14 at St. George’s first-ever (we think) masquerade

dance, which took place Dec. 8.

An all-school lecture Oct. 11 featured school leadership expert Mike Weber (on stage above), who gave a spirited, humorous talk about bouncing back from adversity and waking up with a good attitude.

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Campus happenings

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Lucas ’85 returns to deliver MLK address Beyond the musical performances, a number of students played key roles in the service. Tyshon Henderson ’13 and Lisbeily Mena ’13, co-heads of Insight, welcomed the community to the event. McKenzie Nagle ’13 and Dominique Samuel ’13, also co-heads of Insight, offered their perspective on “The Meaning of the Day.” Andrea Suarez ’14 introduced the guest speaker. Toni Woods Maignan ’16 explained the history of the hymn “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” And Vivian Reynoso ’13 offered closing remarks. Photos of the ceremony are on our Flickr.com site. Video of Lucas’ talk is at www.stgeorges.edu/podium.

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Anchored by a rousing, moving speech by alumnus Albert Lucas ’85, SG’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day chapel service also included some stunning musical selections by our female singers. The Snapdragons a cappella group featuring Miriam Elhajli ’13 sang U2’s “MLK.” Laurie Germain ’15, Sydney Jarrett ’16, Dominique Samuel ’13 and Charlotte Dulay ’14 performed “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” now featured on our YouTube channel. And Miriam and Maggie Maloy ’14 teamed up for a specially arranged version of “Motherless Child.”

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Soverel ’59 honored with 2012 Diman Award

MARY O’CONNOR

Peter Soverel ’59 (above right) accepted the 2012 Diman Award, the school’s highest alumni/ae honor, from Head of School Eric F. Peterson on Veteran’s Day, Nov. 11. Soverel, a Navy veteran awarded the Silver Star for “gallantry and intrepidity in action on 16 August 1968,” is now the director and founder of The Wild Salmon Center and a noted wildlife conservationist. The text of his acceptance speech is on the web at www.stgeorges.edu/DimanAward2012.

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Lunchtime t alk s focus on science issues The Science Department this year continues its program of Brown Bag Lunches, tapping into the community’s expertise and expanding students’ interest in science. Talks so far this year have featured Art Department Chair Mike Hansel ’76, also an accomplished beekeeper (above); NBC10-TV Chief Meteorologist Mark Searles, Geriatrician Dr. Dan Oates ’93; and University of Rhode Island Engineering Professor Manbir Sodhi and Government Affairs Consultant David Anderson Todd ’77, P’14.

The International Chapel Service Oct. 21 featured nine students reading psalms and lessons in their native languages of Chinese (Hanni Chen ’13), Thai (Soravis “Bing” Nawbhanich ’15), French (Catherine Farmer ’15), Spanish (Juan de la Guardia ’13), Portuguese (Lucas Campbell ’13), Tagalog (Charlotte Dulay ’14), Italian (Antonio Di Lorenzo ’14), Japanese (Hikari Hasegawa ’13) and Korean (Johnny Kim ’14). This year students, teachers and staff members from 25 countries live and work on the Hilltop. As one student said at the service, “We are like a mini United Nations.”

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Campus happenings

Subject of iconic photo visits St. George’s

Phan Thi Kim Phúc, best known as the child depicted in this Pulitzer Prizewinning photograph taken during the Vietnam War, was the featured speaker at the Annual Richard H. Dent Forum on March 4. 58

The photo of Phan Thi Kim Phúc (above) taken by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut on June 8, 1972, remains one of the most haunting images of the Vietnam War. Nine years old at the time, Phúc’s skin is ablaze after a napalm attack. Helmeted soldiers are behind her. Her face is taut with pain. Today Kim Phúc is nearly 50 years old and has a compelling life story—one of perseverance and triumph. She was the featured speaker at St. George’s Annual Richard H. Dent Forum on March 4. Phúc was born and raised in a village near Saigon, according to her official biography. In 1972, Americans and the South Vietnamese Airforce dropped napalm bombs near her home. Phúc fled from a Buddhist pagoda, where she and her family were hiding. Two of her infant cousins did not survive the attack, and Phúc was badly burned. She was not expected to live. After two years, however, with the care of a group of committed doctors, she eventually healed and was able to return to her village.

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During the following years, however, she said the government subjected her to endless interviews and officials summoned her to Ho Chi Minh City to be used in propaganda films. “Phúc was forced to quit school and move back to her province, where she was supervised daily as a ‘national symbol of war,’” her biography states. When Phúc was 23 she was sent to study in Cuba and eventually settled in Canada. When Vietnam veterans invited her to participate at a service in Washington, as part of a Veteran’s Day observance, Phúc shared her experience to help others heal from the pain of war. While there, she spoke face-to-face with a veteran involved in dropping the bombs on that day in 1972, and forgave him. Phúc’s story was turned into a book called, “The Girl in the Picture” and a documentary called “Kim’s Story: The Road from Vietnam.” In May 2010, Phúc was reunited by the BBC with ITN correspondent Christopher Wain, who helped to save her life. Today, Phúc leads a foundation she established to fund programs to heal children in war-torn areas around the world.

Global outreach O M M U N I T Y

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C H I N E S E D E PA R T M E N T L A U N C H E S SUMMER IMMERSION PROGR AM Eight students will spend nearly a month in China this summer as part of a first-time language immersion program offered by the Chinese Department. Will Hill ’14, Emily Kallfelz ’15, Irene Luperon ’15, Lilly Schopp ’15, Michaela Ahern ’15, Amanda Warren ’15, Katelyn Hutchinson ’14 and Andie Plumeri ’14 will leave the States June 14 headed for an adventurepacked excursion to China aimed at not only building language skills, but leadership skills as well. “This will be the experience of a lifetime for students who are eager to explore Chinese language and culture,” writes Chinese Department Chair Mike Wang, who designed the program. Accompanying him on the trip with the students will be fellow Chinese teacher Xiaoyu Chen. According to Wang, the program will allow participants to discover the diversity of China within the rapidly growing cities of Shanghai and Beijing, the coastal city of Hangzhou, the ancient capital city of Xi’an, “Asia’s World City” of Hong Kong and the

vibrant city of Shenzhen located in the Special Economic Zone. Beyond the cultural component, however, students will also focus on leadership, teamwork, environmental sustainability, social trends and issues, culture and community service. They will participate in hiking and rock-climbing trips as well as take classes, go on cultural excursions, and visit both government agencies and private businesses. Another planned component of the trip will be interacting with the underserved population in China, Wang said. Engagement with the local community will be a priority. “The SG summer program in China is an opportunity for the students to discover what it means to become a leader,” Wang said. He hopes students will realize the joy of supporting others while examining their own and shared definitions “of what it means to contribute to the common good.” The group will return home July 12.

Back Row: Head of the Chinese Department Mike Wang, Will Hill ’15, Emily Kallfelz ’15, Irene Luperon ’15, Lilly Schopp ’15 and Chinese teacher Xiaoyu Chen. Front row, l-r: Michaela Ahern ’15, Amanda Warren ’15, Katelyn Hutchinson ’14 and Andie Plumeri ’14.

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF

ZAHRA ARABZADA ’15

Becoming a feminist in Afghanistan BY ZAHRA ARABZADA ’15 Editor’s note: A native of Imam Sahib in the Kunduz Province of Afghanistan, Zahra Arabzada ’15 joined the community this year as a fourth-former. Zahra comes to the United States from the School of Leadership in Afghanistan (SOLA), founded in October 2008 “to expand educational and leadership opportunities for the new generation of Afghan women.” Director of Development & U.S. Operations for SOLA is Rian Smith ’76.

Zahra, wearing the traditional burqa, poses with a family friend near her home in Afghanistan.

grew up in a family where I was treated the same as my brothers, and sometimes even better. My dad, my hero, always wanted the best things for my siblings and me. But I also live in a society in Kunduz, in northeastern Afghanistan, that does not

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even accept me, and where I cannot even talk about being treated and becoming equal—the dream of every woman in my land. It was really hard for me to be a typical good Afghan girl because I couldn’t follow the rules within our society: for instance, wearing the burqa, remaining at home and doing the housework, or missing school because of a party or guests. I was encouraged to be outspoken in the family, but I had to be different in public. While I was at school in Afghanistan, I was punished for saying what I knew was right. When I was in 11th grade, my math teacher used to tell us that women should always be sad and not laugh because if women laugh then men can hear it and it is a big sin.

He always used to tell us how we should walk in the street: girls who go to school should not laugh on the way to school. They should always look at the ground. They shouldn’t wear bright colors because doing so will catch men’s attention, and they should never ever wear make-up. Without any doubt, he had Taliban ideas. There was no one to explain to him that wearing make-up or bright colors is in women’s nature. Even I could not be that person: he already did not like me at all because my sisters were active in the society. He, as a teacher, did not believe that women are equal with men. His idea about equality bothered me the most. I could not tolerate to hear that from my teacher. He used to look at me and say, “Give yourself some value; don’t talk with the boys.” He thought that girls should not talk with boys because boys can’t control themselves. I always wanted to tell him that I am not responsible for boys’ emotions. They have to learn that they are not animals and they shouldn’t attack a girl, if they see uncovered hair, hands, legs or any part of the body. There was always something holding me back and not allowing me to speak: it was fear. It was fear of failing in that subject and losing my position. I was tired of listening to his speeches about women in math class. I had cried so many times when he humiliated me and considered me to be a “bad girl” just for talking and working on different projects with boys outside the school. One day while he was giving his speech instead of teaching, I raised my hand. I asked a question about the position of women in Islam and also where in the holy Quran is it written that women are considered to be a second-class gender? I knew the answer and I knew what his answer would be as well. I just wanted to open a conversation although I knew that the conversation would not have a good ending and neither would I have a good grade. When he started to repeat the same story as always, suddenly, I stopped answering him. I nodded my head and said that he was right. Now, I wish I had told him that he was wrong and I knew that he was wrong, but…. I failed that class and the thing that hurt the most was I failed the class just by the

difference of one number. It was hard to play by two sets of rules in my life: first, to be outspoken in my family and second, to force my mouth shut in society. I still did not learn how to be a “good Afghan girl” and I think I will never be able to. Every small thing and every day in that society made me a feminist. I became a feminist because I could not see my neighbor beat his wife, I could not listen to my teacher call me a “bad girl” for speaking to /working with boys, I could not see injustice to women. I could not see women stoned for choosing their future and, I could not see the man who raped a young girl walk freely in the street and not be ashamed. I could not see friends stop coming to school just because their brothers didn’t want them to attend. I could not tolerate seeing men touch women in the street while the women were walking. I could not see my old grandma wear a burqa and fall down because she can’t see from under it. I am a feminist and I am proud of being one. I want to change the history of women in Afghanistan. I want the next generation of Afghan women never to go through what I or any of my other Afghan sisters have gone through. I have a long way to go in order to achieve my dreams.

Zahra stands at the entrance to Twenty House, her home at St. George’s.

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PEGGY KILVERT ’14

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Peggy Kilvert ’14 and her family spent a day with Massai warriors.

From a Jeep driving through the water, Peggy caught this image of zebras with her Canon Rebel T3i.

Peggy worked with schoolchildren in Kenya’s Amboseli Community Village to help them learn English.

SCENES FROM A TRIP TO AFRIC A Peggy Kilvert ’14 worked with art teacher Ted Sturtevant ’96 on a special project this winter cata-

loging, editing and creating two books from photographs she took on a trip to Kenya this summer. Now she’s donating the proceeds from the books to the

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David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, an organization in Nairobi that cares for orphaned baby elephants and rhinos whose parents have been victims of poaching. The books are available online at http://www. blurb.com/user/store/peggykilvert.

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Clockwise from top: Students read The Red & White over lunch in King Hall on publication day; the Blizzard of 2013 hits the Hilltop Feb. 9; a ‘library dragon’ in snow. S T. G E O R G E ’ S 2 0 1 3 W I N T E R B U L L E T I N

Faculty/Staff notes

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‘On the Road’ A new role will bring Bob Weston back in front of his former students 64

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nown to many alums as an English teacher, coach of the varsity boys basketball team and Auchincloss dorm parent, longtime faculty member Bob Weston has now stepped into an expanded role as associate head of school overseeing the school’s institutional advancement efforts. “Given his excellent communication and strategic thinking skills, his long and distinguished tenure at St. George’s, and his many longstanding relationships with our families and graduates, Bob is uniquely well qualified to assist us in this vital aspect of our work,” Head of School Eric Peterson wrote to the community in February. Weston has served in a variety of roles at St. George’s, most recently as dean of faculty, a position he was appointed to by the late former headmaster Chuck Hamblet in 2001. He was director of the Summer School for four years and academic dean of the Summer School for three years. A longstanding member of the English Department, he once served as the third-form coordinator of the English program and designed the biography project. As dean of faculty, Weston said his mission was to recruit and hire new faculty and to support the current faculty “in a time when I think residential schools are fundamentally changing in terms of what faculty are capable of doing.” He said the last decade has been marked by notable shifts in what schools expect of faculty members in the areas of coaching, residential life and teaching. “I’d like to think that I paid attention to the challenges of balancing those responsibilities— with an eye toward the quality of life for our faculty,” he said. Hiring new faculty members gave him the chance to “talk about the school and all its wonderful programs and all its wonderful people”—something he said he’ll continue to do in his new role as he travels to alumni/ae receptions and meets face-toface with former students. “I have significant knowledge of the past 20 years of folks who came through the school—and great affection for the kids I’ve taught and the kids I’ve lived with and the kids I’ve coached,” he said, “so part of what I’m really excited about is having the opportunity to cultivate those relationships and getting to reconnect.”

Of particular interest to alums will be the many ways in which the school has progressed over the last 20 years. In particular, Weston says he’s seen the school make huge strides in both the residential and academic programs. Student life programs have helped the school “enhance the quality of the experience that the kids have residentially,” he said, and academic enhancements include the advent of the Chinese program, the initiation of the Global Studies Seminar, the expansion of the arts curriculum and the creation of the Merck-Horton Center. “We’re paying careful attention to teaching and learning and have made a lot of progress in understanding more about what the learner looks like and the particular needs of a learner. We’re also working with faculty to make sure we support every student and understand more about the learning process.” Alums, he said, will be excited to hear a balance between the school that they knew and the school they hope it becomes. “They want to take pride in the place in two directions,” he said. “They want to be able to look back and to recognize the school as ‘their’ school—or the school that they went to— while at the same time they take great pride in seeing all that the school has become. “Each generation helps the place progress,” he added. “If they’re proud of the school they see today, I want them to understand the role that they played in helping us become that school.” New programs and new facilities are the mark of meaningful progress, he noted. “The school is doing a great job if every class that comes back … the alums say, ‘Oh, that came in just after I left.’ Whether it’s a program or a building or a facility, I think that’s a mark of progress if every class can say, ‘Oh, we just missed out on that.’” Still, the school needs alumni/ae support to continue to evolve in meaningful ways—and the Development Office aims to get more alums engaged in the effort. “As exciting as it’s been in terms of all the change that has happened the needs remain many and I think the potential that’s here. … the possibilities and the ideas that are nascent here really need support. “I think the school is poised to do even better work, but it will need their (the alums) help to continue to evolve.”

GOLDSTEIN APPOINTED D E A N O F FAC U LT Y Fourth-Form Dean, English teacher and Director of Community Service Programs Lucy Goldstein (left) is St. George’s new dean of faculty. Goldstein assumes the role as former dean Bob Weston moves into an expanded role as associate head of school for external affairs. Goldstein is an honors graduate of Episcopal High School and the University of Virginia, and she holds two masters’ degrees, one from the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College and one from Teachers College at Columbia University, where she studied in the Klingenstein Leadership Academy, a program for independent school leaders. Prior to coming to St. George’s, Goldstein taught English for four years in North Carolina and then at Foxcroft School in Virginia. She arrived at St. George’s with her husband, Director of Global Programs Jeremy Goldstein, in 2005. As part of her master’s program at Columbia Goldstein worked closely with Bob Weston, shadowing him in various elements of the Dean of Faculty job, including assisting with the new faculty mentoring program and attending hiring events on behalf of the school. “I am excited for all of us that Lucy has agreed to take on this new role,” Head of School Eric Peterson wrote to the faculty. “As a consummate professional, a sensitive and devoted educator, and hard-working member of the community, I have every confidence that she will serve us all with dedication and resolve.” Goldstein said she is eager “to support the faculty in the hard work they put in every day, as well as to search for and bring in the best new teachers we can.” “We have a unique role and responsibility in a school like ours,” she said, “and I consider it a privilege every day that I am able to work with such talented, passionate and dedicated teachers, coaches and dorm parents. I feel honored to have the opportunity to work for the school in this capacity.” As Goldstein assumes her new role, science teacher James Stevens (right) will take over as fourth-form dean. A graduate of the University of Vermont, Stevens has been at St. George’s for six years, teaching chemistry, coaching, advising, and running a dorm. “So he has all of the background and skills needed for his new role,” Peterson said.

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Alumni/ae invited back May 17-19 REUNION CLASSES 1938 • 75th 1943 • 70th 1948 • 65th 1953 • 60th 1958 • 55th 1963 • 50th 1968 • 45th 1973 • 40th 1978 • 35th 1983 • 30th MEREDITH BROWER

1988 • 25th 1993 • 20th 1998 • 15th

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2003 • 10th 2008 • 5th

Mark your calendars for another great Reunion Weekend in May. Scheduled events begin Friday, May 17. The weekend kicks off that evening with the presentation of the St. George’s distinguished alumnus/a award, the Diman Award. This year, the award goes to Lucien Wulsin Jr. ’63, an attorney in Los Angeles and director of the Santa Monica-based Insure the Uninsured Project, where he is working on approaches to expand coverage for uninsured working Californians. A variety of evening events for individual reunion classes will follow the Diman Award ceremony, which is held in the Chapel. Saturday’s activities include a Chapel tour, class visits, a morning career-networking session, student and faculty panel discussions, and a picnic lunch on the front lawn. A special program for children ages

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4-12 is offered on Saturday. The Howard B. Dean Service Award, given annually by the Board of Trustees to recognize members of the St. George’ School community whose service to the school has been exceptional will be presented to Jay Johnston Jr. ’73, Rosie Gaynor Wiedenmayer ’93 and honorary trustee Phip Lee. In honor of all the reunion classes, a formal dinner with dancing will take place in the Stephen P. Cabot and Archer Harman Ice Center on Saturday night. Please visit our website at www.stgeorges.edu for Reunion Weekend registration, hotel information, the weekend schedule and a list of alumni/ae who have already registered. If you have any questions about the weekend, please contact Ann Weston at ann_weston@stgeorges.edu or 401-842-6730.

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The Winter Geronimo crew—Camilla Cabot ’14, Sacha Grahovac ’14, Bobby Mey ’13, Will Hill ’14, Margaret Schroeder ’14, Kelsey Norrgard ’13, Kathryn Coughlin ’14 and Rosie Mulholland ’13—arrived at the

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boat in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Feb. 2, for a fourweek adventure in the Bahamas. Captain Mike Dawson and the students headed to the North Eleuthera/Harbour Island area, where the crew spent time turtle-tagging, sailed down to the Exumas and the Exuma Land & Sea Park, and then headed off to Conception Island—a long-time Geronimo sea-turtle population study site. Along the way students were studying marine biology, mangrove and tropical reef ecology, and celestial navigation, along with keeping up on their homework from their classes back home on the Hilltop. The trip ended in Clarence Town, Long Island, on March 3.

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Alex Mederios ’14, Will Simpson ’14, Aubrey Salmon ’14, Sage Hill ’14, Carter Haley ’14, Harrison Paige ’15, Andrew Lynch ’14 and Charleen Martins Lopes ’15 served as

torchbearers for this year’s festivities.

Dominique Samuel

’13, Vivianne Reynoso ’13, Hikari Hasegawa ’13 played angels and Bobby Mey ’13 and Sienna Turecamo ’13 played Joseph and Mary for the Annual Christmas Festival.

The 101 st annual Christmas Festival

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MOREAU PHOTO BY J EREMY

The Service of Nine Lessons & Carols S T. G E O R G E ’ S 2 0 1 3 W I N T E R B U L L E T I N

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Traditions

All-School Photo Day Tradition has it that a few students will appear twice in the All School Photo, taken this year on Sept. 14. A couple of seniors have just enough time to run from one side of the bleachers to the other as the camera pans across the crowd. Alums: Remember the sound of the runners’ feet behind the bleachers?

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PHOTO BY J EREMY

Andrew Lynch ’14 (right) was the winner of the 54th annual Pie Race, which took place Nov. 12. Lynch, with a time of 6:08, finished just a few steps ahead of classmate Peter Carrellas ’14 (6:12) and freshman Rigby Knox (6:18, red shirt).

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The 54 th annual Pie Race

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Halloween

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The ghouls and goblins—and the Michael Jacksons (at all stages of his life, above) ... and the casts of various movies—came out Oct. 31 at St. George’s. Of course our students always come up with the most innovative costume ideas (check them out at www.flicker.com/stgeorgesschool/collections). Jellybelly anyone? Just ask Natasha Zobel de Ayala ’15 and Allison Williams ’15 (right).

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Junior Ski Weekend

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R AY GAO ’15

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EMMA REED

Edgar Lee ’14 and Emma Reed ’14 at Loon Mountain.

R AY GAO ’15

Spirit Week: Mismatch Day

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Aubrey Salmon ’14 has an intentional wardrobe malfunction on Mismatch Day during Spirit Week.

Winter Formal Elle Reynolds ’13, Bud Fralick ’14, Keely Conway ’13 and Will Fleming ’13 enjoy a special evening at the Hyatt Regency on Goat Island—the site of this year’s Winter Formal.

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Hilltop archives E M E M B E R

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GILBERT Y. TAVERNER ARCHIVES

Ice Hockey Team ~ 1934

Wingate Lloyd ’48 helped us further identify the boys in our Summer Bulletin “From the Archives” photo. “I am reasonably certain that the student on the right (with feet apart) is H. Gates Lloyd, ’19, my father,” he wrote. “And I believe that the student next to the left end is Sidney Keith ’20. So that would make this group the basketball team in the winter of 1918-1919.”

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Elena Kissel ’77 honored with 2012 Philip Murray Reynolds Award The 2012 Philip Murray Reynolds Award for the Annual Giving Volunteer of the Year was presented to Elena Thornton Kissel ’77. Kissel accepted the award on Dec. 7 during a ceremony at Merrick House. “Elena enthusiastically chaired the 35th Reunion Committee and led the class with both grace and poise,” said Chair of the Board of Trustees Francis “Skip” Branin ’65. “She rallied her classmates to return to the Hilltop and helped to raise $50,000—a new

class personal best—in honor of their 35th Reunion.” In fact, participation in the Annual Fund more than doubled over the previous year with a final rate of 46 percent, the second highest rate in the 1970s decade. Kissel rallied her classmates with gusto. As an incentive to “give big,” she promised a champagne toast during Reunion Weekend at the top of the Chapel Tower if they made it to the $50,000 goal. Head of School Eric Peterson was there to give the toast. Noted one St. George’s alum: “Elena

made you feel good about your gift and about St. George’s because she was upbeat, encouraging and so darn nice.” A longtime loyal supporter of St. George’s, Kissel was the first alumna to serve on the Board of Trustees, doing so from 1986 to 1998. In recognition of her efforts as class agent, a long-time Dragon Weeks volunteer, a trustee and a loyal supporter of the school’s funding priorities, she was presented the Howard B. Dean Award for service to the school in 2005.

IRA gift transfers tax-free until Dec. 31, 2013 Great news for SG alumni who graduated in 1961 or before and other friends of the school who are required by law to take a minimum distribution from their individual retirement accounts (IRAs): The recently passed American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 allows individuals age 70 1/2 or older (including those who will turn 70 1/2 in 2013), to make charitable donations directly from their IRAs to nonprofits like St.

George’s—and avoid paying taxes on the donated amounts. These gifts to St. George’s generate neither taxable income nor a tax deduction, so donors who do not itemize their deductions will receive the benefit. Donors may give up to $100,000 directly from their IRAs. Gifts must be made by Dec. 31, 2013, so please consider now the benefits of an IRA rollover (gift) to the charitable organiza-

tions you support. The new law may not apply to everyone and, as always, you should consult with your tax consultant and/or financial advisor. We can help you with the transaction paperwork to ensure that your gift is processed properly. IRA gifts may be directed to the Annual Fund or to any capital fund at St. George’s. For more information, please contact the Alumni/ae Office at 1-888-422-5574.

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California. He was elected to the Association of Yale Alumni’s (AYA’s) Board of Governors and was subsequently twice elected Secretary of the Board. In 1999, Yale asked Bill to chair the Yale Assembly on “The Internationalization of Yale,” and then in 2001, he cochaired Yale 300, Yale’s four-day Tercentennial event in Hong Kong for Yale alumni in Asia. In 2005 he produced, promoted and co-chaired the Class of ’62 Mini-Reunion in Hong Kong. More recently, since the inception of the Yale Day of Service, Bill has served as its Regional Director for Asia. A Fulbright scholar to India, an East-West Center Scholar to the East Asia Institute in Hawaii, and a Visiting Scholar to Cambridge University, Bill continues to serve as a fellow of Timothy Dwight College. He lives in Hong Kong with his lovely wife, Jasmine, and Wai-Wai the Wonder Dog.

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SEATTLE SEAHAWKS

After working as an academic for more than 20 years in Hong Kong, former faculty member Bill Stork (1965-1971) continues to be a resource for those interested in education in China. Stork made a presentation, “China Rising” last year at Yale University, where he is a member of Yale’s Class Council and was president of the Yale Club for seven years. He came to Hong Kong from Pasadena, and was president for three years of the Yale Club of Southern

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R AOUX, AP IMAGES

Former Dragon Cooper Helfet ’07 spent the last six months training as a rookie tight end with the Seattle Seahawks. The Hawks’ media office sent us this photo of a touchdown catch during the team’s preseason game against the Raiders Aug. 30. He comes to the Seahawks having been a standout at Duke, where the 6-foot-3-inch 240-pound Helfet had 43 receptions in his senior year for 375 yards. Helfet’s on the roster as a future reserve player and ended the season on the team’s practice squad. He was signed by the Seahawks on Jan. 15 to a contract for 2013.

Matt Plumb ’92 made local headlines after competing with his Rum Bum Racing team as a first-time entry at the Rolex 24 in Daytona, Fla. Plumb and three others— each typically taking 90-minute shifts behind the wheel—piloted the team’s Audi R8 car during the 24-hour race. The team was ahead for a time and ended up finishing in the Top 10.

PHOTO COURTESY OF J OHN

Seattle Seahawk Tight End Cooper Helfet ’07 celebrates a touchdown during a preseason game.

Car headlights streak through a horseshoe turn Jan. 26 during the Grand-Am Series Rolex 24 race at Daytona International Speedway. Matt Plumb ’92 competed in the race for the first time.

Former Director of Technology and math teacher Debra Saunders-White, who served on the St.

George’s faculty from 1994-1998, was recently elected the 11th chancellor at NC Central University by the UNC Board of Governors. She is the first woman to be permanently named to the chancellor’s role at the 8,100-student historically black university in Durham, N.C. Saunders-White is a former IBM systems engineer and technology administrator at both Hampton University and UNC Wilmington. In announcing her appointment, UNC President Tom Ross said Saunders-White will be “a forceful and effective leader” for NCCU. She will start the job June 1. Her St. George’s Spanish classes are coming in handy as Emily McGinnis ’07 spends long days working as a Peace Corps volunteer in the small, remote town of Cabanaconde, Peru. A 2011 graduate of Georgetown University, McGinnis is currently one of 31 undergraduate alumni serving as Peace Corps volunteers abroad. She teaches English to young children as a youth development volunteer. “The elementary school kids literally start screaming and cheering with excitement whenever I appear,” McGinnis told the Georgetown alumni magazine. “Some of them are picking up a bit of English and learning little tidbits about America … but I think it will definitely take more time to see the true long-term effect I’ll have on them.” McGinnis studied international politics at Georgetown and earned a certificate in Latin American studies. Jordan Macy ’92 is working to address critical environmental issues in communities in West Africa. A University of New Hampshire grad and former Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection official, Macy is now piloting a set of programs that promote conservation with more than 10,000 commercial-scale maize farmers in Northern Ghana. He’s also the managing director of Pure Home Water, an organization that provides ceramic water filtration systems to households in the region.

Several former students reunited for a surprise 70th birthday party for retired faculty member Dan Hollins (above, center): Peter Drakos ’74, Welles Orr ’78, Dana Schmaltz ’85, Alec Walsh ’74, Phil Ordway ’79, Henry Scully ’78 and Peter Lawson-Johnston ’75. The celebration was at Barraud House in Colonial Williamsburg in September.

Wearing a neon green dress, Julie Bowen ’87, who plays Claire Dunphy on the sitcom “Modern Family,” accepted her second consecutive Emmy Award for best supporting actress in a comedy in September. She called the award “an embarrassment of riches” and thanked her co-stars, her husband, the writers— and her babysitters. Bowen is the mother of boys Oliver, 5, and twins John and Gus, 3.

Oliver Fornell ’12 and sister Alison Fornell ’08 proudly display a St. George’s pennant on the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro on August 1, 2012.

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Show your school spirit with a purchase from the bookstore!

Under ArmourÂŽ Hooded Sweatshirt $59 Crimson or Charcoal S, M, L, XL

Smathers & Branson Key Fob $25

Classic Bar Hat $20 Campus View Crystal Paperweight $15.99

Call the bookstore at 1-401-842-6662 for these items and more, or visit our online store at www.stgeorges.edu.

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Non-Profit Organization U.S. Postage PAID St. George’s School

S T. G E OR G E ’S 2013 St. George’s School

L. MCGRADY

Chapel talks: The things I carry BY BECKY CUTLER ’13 Remembering Poppi BY NICO DELUCA-VERLEY ’13 Divine inspiration BY JOSEPHINE CANNELL ’13 Connecting with nature BY LUCIEN WULSIN ’13

2013 winter Bulletin

In this issue:

Inside: A world-premiere theater performance on the Hilltop

winter Bulletin