Bulletin Winter 2018-19

ST. GEORGE’S T H E B U L L E T I N O F S T . G E O R G E ' S S C H O O L // W I N T E R 2 0 1 8 - 2 0 1 9

our year of Community

ST. GEORGE’S T HE BU L L ET I N OF ST. GEORGE'S SCHOOL

F E AT U R E S

10 Teaching and Learning Centers Grow and Evolve Leading the way with a visionary approach to education

26 This Reporter Rocks Well into his career in television journalism, Anthony Mason ’74 strikes a chord with music fans

34 Pushing Boundaries World traveler Philip Marshall ’71 embarks on a crusade for elder justice

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D E PA R T M E N T S 0 2 Letter from the

Head of School 0 3 Campus News 0 8 Faculty Essay 4 1 Class Notes 8 0 Student Essay 8 1 From the Archives

ON THE COVER "Our Year of Community" In 2018-19 St. George's is celebrating our collective pride, values — and joy.

P H OTO : J U L I A C U L L I VA N ’ 21, K AT I E K E E N A N ’21 A N D M A K A I M U R R AY ’21 O U T S I D E T H E ACADEMIC CENTER.

The St George's Bulletin is published biannually. It's printed on 8pt. Stirling Matte Cover and 70# Stirling Matte text by Lane Press, South Burlington, Vermont. Typefaces used are Antwerp, Bix Sans and Brix Slab. Please send correspondence to bulletin_editor@ stgeorges.edu. © 2018 St. George's School

The Bulletin of ST. GEORGE'S SCHOOL Jedd Whitlock Director of Advancement

OUR MISSION 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.” Today we continue to teach our students 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 help to enable students to succeed in, and contribute to, a complex, changing world.

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Cindy Martin Associate Director of Advancement Suzanne McGrady Director of Communications & Marketing Jeremy Moreau Web Manager Alex Silva Digital Communications Specialist Anna Beckman Designer

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A LETTER FROM THE HEAD OF SCHOOL

BY ALIXE CALLEN

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“ The most important work that we can do here at St. George’s is to help students learn how to be contributing citizens, good neighbors, and caring friends."

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From the Hilltop On a late summer evening a few months ago, the sixth form gathered for a formal dinner on the lawn of Merrick House. With Second Beach as a backdrop, we challenged them to think about the year ahead.

Noting that the senior class sets the tone for the entire school, we asked them to set forth a vision, to discuss what kind of “feel” they wanted for their school. Using words like inclusive, spirited, enthusiastic, joyous, friendly, and trusting, they began to talk about what their legacy as a class might be. Over the course of the evening, they brainstormed and collaborated, ultimately deciding that their work was to create a real community here on this Hilltop. In the weeks and months since, they have done just that. Led by the prefects, they have encouraged participation, engendered enthusiasm, and promoted inclusion.

To say that their efforts have warmed my heart would be an understatement. Indeed, community has been our rallying cry this fall, as we seek to make this Hilltop sing with common purpose, mutual respect, pride, and joy.

In this world where people are more divided and less engaged, more connected to their phones than to each other, I want our school to be a utopia – a place where students learn what’s possible. The most important work that we can do here at St. George’s is to help students learn how to be contributing citizens, good neighbors, and caring friends.

As a boarding school, our ability to achieve this vision far exceeds that of our day-school peers. We are engaged all day every day in helping students to understand how to be strong community members, how to live, work and thrive together.

We know from all sorts of research that the best way to prepare students for life after high school is to give them opportunities to authentically collaborate and interact with people different from themselves, to entrust them to make real decisions, to give them real and genuine opportunities to practice being adults. We also know that colleges and universities are explicitly looking for students who will contribute to their communities. Our intention to create a thriving, kind, diverse community is far from extraneous, it is central and critical to our work.

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Campus News

IN THIS SECTION

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SG Medal Winner Faculty Q&A Interfaith Chapel Dragons Leading Dragons

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Matt Toner '18 wins SG Medal

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If you don’t count the ‘A’ he got in his Food and Nutrition class (he missed a group presentation to attend a hockey tournament), Matt Toner ’18 earned all A-pluses in middle school.

It was a record of effort and success he kept up, he said, mostly because he wanted to come to St. George’s.

When Matt, of Portsmouth, Rhode Island, was honored with the St. George’s Medal on Prize Day, it was clear he had earned that rarest of designations: “scholar-athlete.” A standout in both hockey and lacrosse throughout his four years at SG, he also continually earned Head’s Commendations for Academic Excellence for receiving only A’s for his coursework.

“My mom really supported me in my academics and my dad really supported me as a coach,” he said, “but they really stressed that school is more important than hockey … and I always took that to heart.”

Reflecting on his SG career after graduation, he was grateful to his family, friends and coaches for helping him to achieve his goals.

“My motto has always been, ‘If you want to be the best you have to learn from the best,’” he said.

In hockey that was Frederic Gregoire

’16, now a Division 1 player at Harvard, whom he remembers worked very hard in practices. “I was better because I was looking at what Freddie was doing,” Matt said.

For academics, it was his daily study group. “I was always in the library during the middle of the day,” he said.

“I wasn't hanging out with my [athlete] friends, but my friends were the ones who went to the library with me. We always did homework together and they always helped me and we made quiz lists together, so it was kind of a tight group.”

Classmate Haley Baldwin, he said, in particular was his “go-to” for advice on academics. “If [the school] could have given me the [St. George’s Medal] and put in parentheses ‘Haley Baldwin,’ it would’ve been great.”

Tim Baumann, Matt acknowledged, was also “a great motivator.”

“He taught me a lot about morality,” he said. “Tim carried himself in such a way that I wanted to embody that as I became a senior.

“I wasn't the smartest, the brightest, the most athletic person when I came here, but I kept learning from all those leaders.”

“Try as many new things as possible. Go on as many trips as you can. Try as many new sports as you can because I don't think you'll ever have as many opportunities and potential experiences at any other school.”

—Matt Toner ’18

SHARK! A great white shark was seen around campus last summer, not in the waters off Second Beach, but on a trailer in the pool parking lot. Art students got a unique opportunity to restore a 26-foot-long great white shark made from foam and fiberglass after a local restaurant owner bought it at an auction and asked for St. George’s help fixing it up.

The “Shark Repair Crew” crafted 60 teeth, shaving them down down with a grinder and sander to get the right look, and replaced a right pectoral fin that was missing. Students then finished the rehabilitation by sanding the shark and painting it to match its original colors.

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What's your favorite work of classic literature?

I love “The Scarlet Letter” (By Nathaniel Hawthorne) -- it’s complex and lovely.

Who is a hero of yours?

My daughter is one of my heroes. She is the most generous person I know … She “sees” everyone she encounters every day and makes them feel valued in her life and important in what they do … It is an amazing thing to watch. My son is one, too. He is currently playing football for Bowdoin College, and they have not won a game for two years; yet, he still works hard each day on and off season ... on and off the field ... for the chance to contribute to the team’s success. He remains undaunted in pursuit of his and his team’s best. Like his sister, he teaches me how to be better.

What's your strategy for grading papers?

With analytical writing, I try to find the balance between genuine support and honest criticism so that the students are encouraged but also learning how to improve their skills.

With expressive writing, I work to identify lovely or interesting uses of language. By the time they turn their work in, we have usually had a conversation about it either

Do you have any favorite spots in Newport?

I love an early morning walk to Sachuest Point Wildlife Refuge.

What is something you look forward to when you visit family?

I look forward to any opportunity to spend time with my kids ... walking, discovering, sitting around, hanging out. I recently went kayaking in Monterey Bay with my daughter and I am definitely looking forward to doing that again.

What's your favorite genre to read?

I don’t know that I have a favorite genre ... but I am not a big fan of sci-fi. I tend to gravitate to American writers and American stories still.

What's your favorite film or television adaption of a book?

I have enjoyed re-encountering The Handmaid’s Tale - both the novel and the series. While the series is not an exact recreation of the novel, it’s evocation of the concerns of the novel is incredible ... different, but accurate, frightening and timely.

One way to get my students' attention is to … ... let them tell their own stories and know their voices are important.

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When did you first realize you wanted to be a teacher?

I always wanted to be a teacher - it never occurred to me to be anything else. I was blessed to have the best teachers in every grade level, and everyone I admired was a teacher. I was so lucky to have so many awesome individuals in my life who were the best kind of role models … and more, I believe that independent school education allowed me to explore my geometry and consequently has allowed my children and students the same.

face-to-face or through Google Docs. I encourage redrafting and reward a willingness to edit effectively.

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Melissa “Missy” Simonds joined the St. George’s faculty in fall 2017, where she teaches English and helps coach softball.

Missy grew up in New England and attended Yale University, majoring in American Studies with a concentration in Literature and Arts.

Before coming to the Hilltop, Missy was an English teacher and college counselor at John Burroughs School in St. Louis, Missouri.

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Faculty Q & A: Missy Simonds

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A CHANCE TO PAUSE, REFLECT AND BE INSPIRED Students take the lead on new interfaith chapel services.

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fter a full day of classes, afterschool activities, and study hall, students now have the opportunity to gather by candlelight in the chapel for a unique evening service of their own design to celebrate inclusivity.

Hopie Carlson ’18 and Charlotte Maerov ’19, who had been active in the optional Sunday chapel program the previous spring, took up School Chaplain Jackie Kirby on her offer to start a new St. George’s tradition at the beginning of the 2017-18 school year — and the new student-led Interfaith Chapel Service was born.

“I think the whole point was to do it differently … and to have it not be denominational, so everyone’s included,” Hopie said.

“On Sunday, it was a specific service from the Book of Common Prayer, so it was not like interfaith at all.”

The goal of interfaith chapel services is “to bring people together,” according to Charlotte, and the group began that mission with its first service held in October 2017.

Hopie and Charlotte even both got certified through the dioceses to lead worship.

The first service’s congregation was mostly made up of Hopie and Charlotte’s friends as well as a few people found in the library and checking back into the dorms, however the crowd grew more varied over the course of the year with students from all forms attending.

“You’d be surprised at how much we don’t use the word God or anything that’s technically related to the Episcopalian faith or Christian faith,” Charlotte said.

“People just get to share what they want to share and I think that’s really powerful.”

The services draw anywhere from 20 to 40 people on Tuesday nights nearly weekly throughout the year, with attendance sometimes exceeding the number of programs printed.

“They’re just incredibly moving to attend,” the Rev. Kirby said of the services. “They’re offering kids the opportunity to breathe at the end of a long day. To come together and to build community.”

Hopie said she was optimistic that the services would continue after her graduation in May 2018 and indeed they did. Charlotte continued leading the services the following year and was joined by other leaders Effie Blue ’19, Lindsay Meyer ’19, Riley Cochrane ’21, and Libby Meister ’21.

The evening services, which start at 10 p.m., are popular with students because it gives them something to do after study hall, according to Hopie.

“I think after study hall, people want to go out and do something. Because it gives you extra freedom, I think that’s incentive for people to go. It’s something new,” she said.

“It’s like a nice study break,” added Charlotte.

Students don’t sit in pews during this chapel service either, but sometimes sit in a circle on the floor. A typical service begins with an evening prayer or poem, then goes right into what students have submitted for someone to volunteer to read, which can be anything from a psalm to

an excerpt from the children’s book “Cold Tangerines.”

Sometimes students also share quotes they like or sing and play guitar.

“Even though people are reading other people’s words, everyone who speaks during interfaith texts or emails us whatever they want to say, so it’s kind of like this opportunity for people to say whatever they want,” Hopie said. “And it’s interesting that you can kind of follow the mood of the school with the inspirational things people are saying. It’s interesting to see what people are saying during exam week as opposed to what they’re saying as graduation is getting near and it’s cool to be able to read how people are feeling in those moments.”

Once the service is over, everyone quietly leaves the chapel for peaceful reflection.

“We end the service after everyone has said what they wanted to say and we ask them to leave in silence, which I think is the nicest part,” Charlotte said.

“I think it’s a nice way to end the day, for sure,” added Hopie. ■

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When jars of Hilltop Honey hit the shelves in the campus bookstore, they usually don’t last long.

Whose idea was it originally to start an apiary on campus?

George Mencoff ‘11 and Zachary Mastrodicasa ‘11 were the guys who wanted to expand things and sell honey in the bookstore. They made beekeeping t-shirts and raised enough money and interest to establish eight hives. They also built a platform down in the lower field to keep the hives elevated and protected from the weeds.

They really got things going and expanding.

How many beehives are on the Hilltop?

Right now, we have eight, but it fluctuates We’ve had as many as 12, but it is hard to keep that many healthy.

About how many bees are in all the hives?

During summer they grow to have about 60 thousand bees in each hive. During the winter it dwindles down to 10 thousand in each.

How much honey is produced each year?

Usually about 400 pounds per year.

How many students help out with the apiary each school year?

About 10 each year will help with equipment.

Have you ever been stung while working on the Hilltop apiary?

Yes, I get stung a few times each year. This usually happens because I’m careless – we have really nice suits that keep you from being stung if you use them properly.

How many beekeeping suits do you have for the apiary?

We have eight good suits, so guests are welcome to come down and observe!

What are the typical first impressions students have of the apiary?

Usually students are very careful and it takes a little time for them to become relaxed. Once they see how I am able to work with the bees, they are able to gain some confidence. When you are going in to accomplish a task, you tend to forget about the risk of getting stung. Believe it or not, you get used to the sound of the bees flying all around you.

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When did Hilltop Honey begin?

I brought three hives with me when I arrived in the summer of 1992, so there have been beehives in that location overlooking Second Beach since then. We didn’t start calling it Hilltop Honey until 2010 when some students decided to establish the Beekeeping Club.

What’s the benefit of having an apiary on campus?

Honey bees are an important part of the ecosystem. Without them, many flowers would not bloom and a third of the food we eat would not be pollinated. Honey is just a bonus result of all the work they do for the plants on campus.

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Thousands of bees pollinate flowers and plants around Aquidneck Island to make the honey, but it’s the work of volunteer students each year that collect it for Dragon consumption. The group of beehives on campus have been tended to by Art Department Chair Mike Hansel ’76 since their beginning and, as the advisor to the Beekeeping Club on campus, we asked him some questions about Hilltop Honey.

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Hilltop Honey is all the buzzzzzzz...

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BY D E A N O F AC A D E M I C S C H R I STO P H E R S H AW

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“ If Gen-Z’s distinguishing attribute is anxiety, then, I believe, an essential tool to mitigate that anxiety is listening."

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To Listen

W

orking in boarding schools always has amused my friends: “OK, the teaching I understand, but you live with all those teenagers?” “Yes,” I have replied for 35 years, “… Happily.”

Well, mostly. A major challenge in 21st century education is the increase in stress, anxiety, depression, and related health concerns among kids, writes Stephan Collishaw in his article “Secular Trends in Child and Adolescent Mental Health,” published by the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry in March 2015.

Last winter, at a conference of academic deans from across the country, a speaker asked, “How many of you currently have one or more students on a medical leave due to anxiety?” All hands rose. The session then explored “Social and Emotional Learning” curricula, a growing K-12 trend.

Brain scientists believe that adolescence now extends from age 10 to 25. The adolescent brain enters a second dynamic period of plasticity, the biochemical process wherein neuropathways extend, expand and re-network.

With every perception, emotion and choice, teenagers are mapping connections that will define their adult selves. The white matter — fatty “myelin” sheaths surrounding a neuron’s branches or “axons” — grows quickly, from the brain stem forward, enwrapping the amygdala (the reward and pleasure center) before the prefrontal cortex (where reason informs decision-making). Every parent and high school teacher recognizes the impact: Our kids often prioritize risk-taking and building social capital over what we adults would have them do. None of this is new; we are just learning more about it. It is all pre-wired. (Be patient – it will change.)

So why the new levels of anxiety? In the United States, no generation of young people has ever been safer, wealthier, healthier (at least at upper-income levels), or

better shielded from war, want, and adversity. Is it social networking? Information overload? Helicopter parents?

College? School shootings? Some pundits point to 9-11, an event our kids read about in history books, and the constant thrum of wars waged or engaged in by our military since 2003.

Yes … And. The “why” is ultimately less important than the “what” we should do. Each year, at St. George’s we create opportunities for students to learn about and practice mindfulness. We lead “choice discussions” on stress reduction, and bring in experts on opioids, nicotine and alcohol. We teach our kids that Juuling and vaping deliver nicotine and THC that can be 2000 percent stronger than what a typical cigarette provides.

Our approach stresses metacognition — knowing the facts may deter our kids from engaging in the behavior.

Unless it does not.

Students and faculty alike speak proudly about how effective our emphasis is at SG to “know” one another.

A robust relationship with a non-parental adult, founded on trust and mutual respect, is essential to a teenager’s becoming a strong adult. If Gen-Z’s distinguishing attribute is anxiety, then, I believe, an essential tool to mitigate that anxiety is listening. Julie LythcottHaims, former freshman dean at Stanford, writes in “How to Raise an Adult” that adolescents must be allowed to find their own way, to make their own decisions, take risks, and live with the consequences, good and bad. What, then, is our role as adults? Clearly, not to chide or shield or step away – but rather, research shows, to listen – actively, compassionately, and with love.

Faculty are fortunate at St. George’s to play multiple roles, to work within low student-teacher ratios, and to operate in the 24/7 schedule, that together provide the chance to listen. If we take that opportunity, our students – and we – will all be better humans. ■

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After spending 16 years traveling between New York and Tokyo as an investment banker and eight years as the CFO of a manufacturing company in Boston, Bill Salmons has come home again.

To the Hilltop, that is.

A member of the class of 1973, Bill joined the St. George’s Finance Department as Controller last June. “I now have a 20-minute commute to the most beautiful campus in the world,” he said.

In fact, St. George’s now employs 10 alumni who bring not only memories of their student days, but also a unique ability to bring the story of today’s St. George’s back to their classmates around the globe.

“There's such a wonderful sense of enthusiasm here that [St. George’s] can accomplish pretty much everything we set our minds to,” Bill said. “So giving my classmates the feeling that this is a very positive environment and that the school is really on track hopefully will help them think about supporting the school — and coming back and visiting.”

Since taking on the role of Director of Advancement this past summer, Jedd Whitlock ’94 has been reaching out to classmates he hasn’t spoken to since graduation. Jedd, who will be celebrating his 25th reunion in May, says one of the advantages he has as an alumnus raising money for the school, is that he already has established relationships and that he can share memories. “No matter who you're speaking to — whether it’s someone from the class of 1968 or the class of 1994 — there are a lot of things that you have in common,” he said. “While the times were

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DRAGONS LEADING DRAGONS

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different, some of the experiences were very much the same.”

Mervan Osborne ’86 joined the faculty this past summer as St. George’s Associate Head for Student Life. “I’m thrilled to be returning to the Hilltop — a place that was absolutely transformative for me,” he told the community upon his appointment. Arriving on the Hilltop directly from Beacon Academy in Boston, where he was a founding faculty member, Mervan is able to bring his expertise as an educator right back to the place that changed his own life.

Ted Sturtevant ’96 is doing the same.

Ted, who first worked at St. George’s part time in 2003 and then returned full time in 2010, became chair of the newly formed Creative and Performing Arts Department this year. He brings years of experience in in three-dimensional design, photography, digital media, set design, and business studies to the students, and along with teaching now serves as Technical Theater Director and Maker Space Coordinator.

He sees great promise in our students being able to explore their ideas, particularly with 3D printing. “[These students] will be the generation that steers those technologies and solutions, so that’s something that I think is particularly beneficial with respect to how we introduce the students to

this type of work,” he said. “It’s a way of utilizing the technology to be able to explore something in a way that was previously impossible.”

Of course, some alumni who come back also find themselves back in the midst of their own mentors.

Justin Cerenzia ’01, who has been teaching history at St. George’s since 2012, this school year became Director of the Merck Center for Teaching. “To think that I'd be here 17 years now after I graduated from here is the most incredible thing I could ever consider,” Justin told fellow teachers at a faculty meeting. “I'm here in large part because of the work of many people in this room who may have taught me ... or helped me get to this point in my professional career — so that's a heartfelt thanks.”

Other alumni faculty and staff members currently employed by St. George’s are English teacher Cory Cramer ’00, art teacher Mike Hansel ’76, Network Manager Carleton Hennion ’94, Director of Admission Ryan Mulhern ’91, and art teacher Ray Woishek ’89.

“I am delighted and honored to work with these proud Dragons every day,” said Head of School Alixe Callen. “Their strong intellects and incredible professionalism are a testament to the quality of a St. George's education. And, without a doubt, their love and dedication for the school is truly inspiring." ■

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TEACHING & LEARNING CENTERS

Evolve

& Grow Since its inception in 2011, St. George’s Merck-Horton Center for Teaching & Learning has been not only a model for other schools, but a distinguishing element of both our professional development and academic coaching programs. Now, in an effort to expand its impact inside and outside the St. George’s community, the center is evolving into two distinct, yet collaborative entities.

History teacher Justin Cerenzia ’01 has been appointed Director of the Merck Center for Teaching and Chair of Instructional Services Joe Lang has been appointed Director of the Horton Center for Learning.

a digital storytelling app.

“If we can illuminate unknown elements of teaching and learning, then we might become better teachers. That’s a theme of shifting educational research and theory into educational practice,” Mr. Cerenzia wrote in his blog. “Knowing who we teach, where they're from, what motivates them, and what they dream of … is a powerful set of questions.” Other posts have addressed educational psychologist John Sweller’s Cognitive Load Theory and psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan’s "Self-Determination Theory" as it relates to student motivation.

In the fall, Mr. Cerenzia also began to offer optional drop-in sessions to the Merck Center he’s calling “Walk-in Wednesdays,” and he has arranged for education scholars to

“If we can illuminate unknown elements of teaching and learning, then we might become better teachers.”

J U S T I N C E R E N Z I A ’0 0 D I R E C TO R O F T H E M E R C K C E N T E R F O R T E A C H I N G In his new role, Mr. Cerenzia has been demonstrating his enthusiasm for the craft of teaching along with championing and encouraging his fellow faculty members through a series of blog posts he creates with Sway,

give talks throughout the year that he’s dubbed “Merckshops.” (Mr. Cerenzia, also an active Twitter user, appreciates creative wordplay.) Pooja K. Agarwal, Ph.D., an assistant professor at the Berklee College of Music

in Boston and an adjunct professor at Vanderbilt University's Peabody College, was on campus in October to discuss “retrieval practice.”

When Mr. Cerenzia presented some of his ideas for the center to fellow faculty members at the start of the school year, he projected the image of a pencil, saying it was to serve as a metaphor. “We're going to be scribbling. We're going to be drawing. We're going to be erasing,” he said. “We're going to be always trying to be different things ... seeking to push the envelope in terms of how we think about teaching at St. George's.”

As the re-imagined Merck Center evolves, Mr. Cerenzia also hopes to share knowledge among educators – both on the Hilltop and beyond.

“Good teaching is happening here and I just want to lower the fences a bit and have us see it with one another — and have others see it,” he said.

A new home for Horton The Horton Center for Learning, which now operates mostly in the area adjacent to the Merck Center in the lower level of the Hill Library, eventually will find a new home in the former Study Hall in Memorial Schoolhouse. Efforts are now underway to raise the $9.5 million needed to restore and renovate that building.

As Mr. Lang and his colleague in Instructional Services, Sarah Mason, continue to ponder what the new space will become, “One thing is that it will certainly be a collaborative space,” Mr. Lang said, “somewhere where students can come to study together, students can come to relax, students can come to meet with teachers — just a really comfortable space that's hopefully populated by kids who are interested in helping themselves and helping others.”

Under the umbrella of the Horton

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we see.”

Overall, Mr. Lang said he wants academic coaching at St. George’s “to touch every demographic of the student body, whether that’s a third-form student coming in not knowing what to expect and what to do — or a sixth-form, third-trimester, very talented student already admitted to college. What can they do either for themselves or to give back to younger students based on their own experience?” he said.

Mr. Lang’s hope is that by exposing St. George’s students to the idea of examining their own learning, they’ll be even better prepared for their future education. “[The Horton Center] could very well springboard them to take advantage of resources and services that will exist in their next endeavor at college,” he said. “If they didn't hear

Sarah Mason works with a student in the Horton Center.

students would be able to learn on their own terms and teachers would be continuously reinvigorated with new methods and the ability to use new technology.

At the center’s opening in the fall of 2011, Mrs. Horton remarked, “The center’s flexible learning spaces, the personal engagement, the collegial exchange, the cutting-edge innovation — it’s the dream come true.” ■

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Center will be not only academic coaching — Mr. Lang and Mrs. Mason working one-on-one with students — but also peer tutoring and collaborative learning efforts. Mr. Lang also wants to bring parents into the loop, particularly around assessment periods, to update them on current research about learning. And he wants to share our findings and initiatives with our peer schools. “The fun part of what we’re doing now is that we can be on the front lines,” he said. “We can take what student support and centers for learning look like … a step ahead.”

Currently one of the key aspects of SG’s academic coaching program is ACES, which stands for “Academics plus Commitment plus Effort equals Success.” Every new student takes part in ACES, which meets once a week the first five weeks of school and aims to help students adjust to the academics and community at St. George’s. Topics discussed include how to develop a productive nightly routine to complete homework and review material, and how to best make use of on-campus academic resources, such as peer tutoring offered in the Writing, Science, Language and Math Labs.

Mr. Lang and Mrs. Mason this year will also begin further examining the student experience by conducting

about it, if we didn't have it, if they're not exposed to it, if they didn't benefit from it, it might be an opportunity that passes them by.”

In expanding both the Merck and Horton Centers’ efforts and reach, the school continues to embrace a philosophy held strong by the centers’ namesakes: the late Albert Merck ’39, P’76 — who served the school as a trustee from 1967-76 and as an honorary trustee from 2006-2014 — and Beth Horton P’79, ’85 — who became the school’s first director of instructional services in 1975, retired in 1999, and remains an emerita faculty member whom many alumni credit for her academic support and compassionate counsel.

Throughout his adult life Mr. Merck imagined a future in which more

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J O E L A N G , D I R E C TO R O F T H E H O R TO N CENTER FOR LEARNING

what they’re calling “course ride-alongs.”

Each of them will attend a course session once or twice a week for the trimester, following along with assignments, tests and quizzes. “We want to be able to report back on what our students are doing in class and how they're feeling, based on our experience and when we talk to them afterwards,” Mr. Lang said. “We want to be able to report back on the challenges the kids go through, the questions that they ask — and the breakthroughs that

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“The fun part of what we’re doing now is that we can be on the front lines. We can take what student support and centers for learning look like a step ahead.”

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IN MEMORIAM

“He served St. George's for over six decades and his st. george’s school

support of our School over the years has been truly inspirational. He will be greatly missed on the Hilltop.”

F R A N C I S “ S K I P ” B R A N I N ’ 65

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Peter Ward '43 1924-2018 We’re sad to share news of the passing of Honorary Trustee and devoted alumnus Peter Ward ’43, who died on Sunday, June 3, 2018, at the age of 93.

Mr. Ward actively served on the Board of Trustees for 50 years, acting as its chair from 1972 to 1978 and as an Honorary Trustee since being elected in 1980. He chaired the board during the school’s transition to coeducation and also helped establish a planned giving effort at the school.

“Peter was always a consummate gentleman,” former Chair of the Board of Trustees Francis ‘Skip’ Branin ’65 said. “He served St. George's for over six decades and his support of our School over the years has been truly inspirational. He will be greatly missed on the Hilltop.”

Having served as class agent, vice president of the alumni association, class correspondent, and chair of the Trustee Memorial Committee, Mr. Ward received the Howard B. Dean Award in 2004 for his devotion and service to SG. Former Chair of the Board of Trustees Betsy Michel P’85, ’89, who served from 19891999, said all of the board chairs had a special camaraderie.

“We could share experiences, ask advice, talk through issues – all in a way that was different from conversations we might have with others,” she said. “Early on, Peter was there to help me through some of the personalities, the various constituencies, the history, the culture. Peter was a safe and understanding space for me – a wise friend.”

Mr. Ward, she noted, always kept informed about what was happening at school and the issues the board faced. “There was no more active emeritus trustee. I valued his counsel,” she said. “Even after I stepped down, we stayed in touch, and never ran out of conversation. We’ll miss him for sure, but I’d rather give him a cheer for a life well led – with thanks for

his friendship and for all that he did over so many years to enhance life on the Hilltop.”

Mr. Ward is survived by his wife Audrey of 60 years and by their children, Peter, Susan, Pamelia and husband Paul, (grandsons Morgan and Brendan White), Douglas and wife Cecilia (and granddaughters Alexandra and Caitlin). He is also survived by his brother Larry and was predeceased by his brothers Philip ‘34 and Thomas.

After graduating from SG, Mr. Ward left Princeton to join the Navy and was commissioned as an Ensign in the U.S. Naval Reserve in 1945, serving for a year on small ships to support seaplane operations in the Pacific theater until he was discharged as a Lt. (J.G.) in 1946.

Mr. Ward was recently featured in a Spring 2018 Bulletin article on the Class of 1943 and what it was like on the Hilltop during America’s entry into World War II. Once he completed his service, Mr. Ward returned to school and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1947 and received his Bachelor of Laws degree from Penn Law School in 1949, where he served as Associate Editor of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review and, after coming to New York, President of the New York Alumni Society.

Mr. Ward went on to become a partner at New York City law firm Chadbourne & Parke for 35 years, which merged with Norton Rose Fulbright in 2017.

During his professional career in New York, he served on committees of the New York City and New York State Bar Associations and of the American Bar Association. He also served as a Director, Vice President, and member of the Executive Committee of the Legal Aid Society of New York and as a Director of the New York Lawyers for the Public Interest.

IN MEMORIAM

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“The warmth of Charlie and Nancy was shared a few words about his experience on the Hilltop and his love for SG was evident."

We’re sad to report the passing of Honorary Trustee and committed alumnus Charles Watson ’50, who died peacefully at his Vero Beach home in Florida on July 26, 2018, at the age of 87.

Mr. Watson gave back to the Hilltop in many ways, serving on the St. George’s Board of Trustees twice from 1972 to 1978 and from 1997 to 2011 before becoming an honorary member in 2011.

He chaired the Trustee Awards Committee, sat on the Development, Finance, Investment, and Operations Committees, and included SG in his estate planning as a member of the Ogden Nash Society.

“Charlie was a great Dragon who truly loved St. George's,” said former Chair of the Board of Trustees Francis “Skip” Branin ’65. “During his two terms as a trustee, his enthusiastic willingness to support our school set an example for all who served with him, and he was the ultimate ambassador for SG.” Branin presented the Howard B. Dean Service Award to Mr. Watson in 2012 and, during his remarks, called him a “true friend” of St. George’s who was committed to move the school’s 2006 Strategic Plan forward with a generous contribution despite the economic recession in 2008.

Mr. Watson and his wife Nancy hosted a number of Admission receptions at their home in New Canaan, Connecticut, for prospective students, giving potential applicants a warm first look at the SG community.

“Prospective families would come for snacks, refreshments, and a slide show of the offerings here at St. George's.

One of the highlights of the reception was that Mrs. Watson would always prepare a home-cooked meal for the admission group to enjoy,” SG Director of Admission Ryan Mulhern ’91 said. “The warmth of Charlie and Nancy was shared with all prospective families. Charlie always said a few words about his experience on the Hilltop and his love for SG was evident.”

After graduating from St. George’s, Mr. Watson attended Yale University and later served in the U.S. Army as an Artillery Officer in the 11th Airborne Division, in Munich, Germany. In 1996, he retired as a managing partner of Brundage, Story & Rose, which at the time was one of the country’s oldest investment advisory firms before eventually being sold to Bessemer Trust and Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette.

He is survived by his wife of 54 years, Nancy McCall Watson, a daughter Wendy Watson Porter (Christopher) of Vero Beach, Florida, and a son, Charles Ewart Watson (Anne), of New Canaan, Connecticut. He is also survived by his five grandsons: Charles McCall Watson, William Gunnar Watson and August Briggs Watson of New Canaan, Connecticut, and Christopher Todd Porter Jr. and Cooper Eagles Porter of Vero Beach, Florida.

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Charles Watson '50 1931-2018

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D I R E C TO R O F A D M I S S I O N RYA N M U L H E R N '91 on admission receptions at the Watsons' home in Connecticut

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with all prospective families. Charlie always said

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d n a l e Ic //

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y a w r o N

Costa Rica

South Africa

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Spain

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Paris

Global opportunities for our students continue to abound. Along with existing programs — trips aboard Geronimo, the Global Cultural Initiatives Program (GCIP) internship programs in Paris and Madrid, and visits to our partner schools in Iceland and Shanghai — science-minded students traveled to Costa Rica for the second year in a row. And this past year, for the first time, 15 students traveled to Addo, South Africa to take part in a Universal Promise program — an effort to support the people there, improve living conditions and create educational opportunities.

“I’ve been on many volunteer trips in Thailand and Korea — and this trip was by far the most humbling experience in my life,” said Ryan Lee ’18 upon his return to campus.

Other participants described the conditions in Addo – children often eating just one meal a day with broken pens or rulers for utensils, classes with 50-60 students.

During a writing assignment for sixth-grade students at the Academic Centre, Corinne O’Loughlin ’20 said she was taken aback by some of the students’ life stories: “’I saved my mom from a fire … ‘I stopped a girl from being [assaulted],’” she reported them revealing.

Associate Director of Global Programs Devon Ducharme, one of the co-organizers of the trip, said students who participated realized “the little stuff is really not a crisis anymore.”

“We’ve seen what a real crisis is,” she said. ■

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Learning Across the Globe

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FIELDS FIT FOR DR AGONS Dragon athletes are competing on a whole new playing field after the completion of SG’s two new turf fields.

Crocker Field has been completely reconstructed and the new Montgomery Field was built on the former location of Elliott Field, which is being relocated to the northwest corner of campus for spring 2019.

The new Crocker and Montgomery Fields provide dramatically improved playing surfaces for our field hockey, football, and lacrosse teams as well as remedy drainage and scheduling issues for sports teams playing on campus.

“The turf field has helped change the expectations of the field hockey team this fall. The team has been able to focus on improving their stick skills because the surface is fast and smooth, which has forced the team to play at a higher level. The girls love it,” said varsity field hockey coach Blair Ingraham. “They’re proud to see their work come to

fruition because the turf promotes higher level skill and faster development. It's critical for continuing to build the field hockey program and will serve players well when they choose to continue their careers at the collegiate level.”

The St. George’s Board of Trustees voted to approve the project in February 2018 and construction began one month later, finishing in time for the 2018-19 school year.

The Turf Fundraising Committee raised over $3 million for the project.

The new turf fields help SG better compete with other prep schools that have turf facilities while simultaneously preparing our athletes to compete at the collegiate level.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony for the fields took place on Sept. 22, 2018, and Montgomery Field was officially dedicated at a ceremony with lacrosse coach Arch Montgomery in attendance, the field’s namesake, on Nov. 10, 2018. ■

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n Nov. 10, the new turf field behind the chapel was dedicated to Arch Montgomery, a faculty member at St. George’s from 1985-1992 who coached the 1990 boys’ varsity lacrosse team to victory in the ISL Championship.

It was a season none of his players would ever forget – and those memories helped to make one of last year’s unique fundraising efforts so successful.

For two of Coach Montgomery’s former standout players — Stanton McLean ’90, now a trustee, and his friend Billy Bush ’90, the team’s former captain and highest goal scorer — the school’s desire to raise more than $3 million to construct two new turf fields posed an opportunity: In helping to make the project a reality they could both give back to the school they love and honor a man who they say indelibly influenced their lives.

And so, Stanton and Billy, with the approval of the Board of Trustees, issued a challenge to their long-ago teammates: If they could raise $500,000 for the turf project, they would secure naming rights for one of the fields — and “Montgomery Field” it would be. Not long after the two reached out, the gifts started rolling in.

“The reason why it worked is because there was so much camaraderie and so much respect for one another and so many great memories about what we did,” Stanton said.

“I think people kind of looked back with a little bit of nostalgia and said ‘[Wow], remember what we did? We won the ISL and this was the team that did it.’ That's what brought people out of the woodwork. People I haven't spoken to in years.

People who haven't given in years. It was a pretty incredible thing.”

What he and Billy helped bring back in their teammates’ minds was the euphoria of their victories, but also the sometimes-agonizing practices that eventually served them well. “[Coach Montgomery] was massively passionate, uber-competitive. … He wasn't from this sort of age of every kid wins and every kid gets a trophy. He was old school,” Stanton said. “We practiced in the sun, the rain, the sleet, the snow and we were disciplined. We'd go out on the field every game, whether it was home or away, and we'd line up like soldiers and we'd intimidate our competition before the game even started. He built us into young men who felt a sense of pride as a team.”

“The ways he coached us are ways that help you in life,” Billy said. “I’ve had to rely on resilience in the last two years of my life ... and I’ll tell you what: sometimes I can hear Arch’s voice in my head.

“This is the kind of stuff that lasts a lifetime.” ■

Twenty-Eight Years Later, A Team Honors Its Coach

Top photo: The team in 1990. / Bottom photo: The team at the field dedication , left to right: Brent McLean '91, David Cumming '90, Billy Bush '90, David Forbes '90, Arch Montgomery, Per von Zelowitz '90, Parker Wise '90, Tyson Goodridge '90, Stanton McLean '90, Sam Nichols '91, Scott Laton '90, Ethan Davis '91, Brett Smith '90, Kristian Mariaca '90, Jeff Mason '90.

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To view the full citations for each inductee, visit our website: https://www.stgeorges.edu/uploaded/ Documents/Athletics/2018- 19/ SHOF_2018_Program_Pages.pdf

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Facing page: Inducted as a team: 1990 boys’ varsity lacrosse. / This page, left to right, top to bottom: Coach Tom Evans; Athletes Suzanne Stengel Bohn ’83, Jason Monroe ’95, Elizabeth Wheeler Scanlon ’97, R. Stewart Strawbridge ’94, and Anika Leerssen Marriott ’96 (who was unable to attend). / Below: the ceremony in the field house.

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The ranks of legendary Hilltop athletes have grown after a new round of members was inducted into the St. George’s Sports Hall of Fame.

Originally established in 1995 to honor alumni, coaches, teams, and friends who’ve made significant contributions to the SG athletics program, new inductees were welcomed at the November 9 ceremony.

Current Dragon athletes gathered for the ceremony, which was kicked off by a welcome from Head of School Alixe Callen and introductions by Sports Hall of Fame Nominating Committee Chair John Mackay and committee member Ryan Mulhern ’91.

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2018 SPORTS HALL OF FA ME INDUCTEES

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Alumni

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back in the

Class Nearly 250 alumni returned to the Hilltop for Alumni Weekend this past May to reconnect with classmates, reminisce about old times, and catch up.

But for some of them, the weekend was also a chance to share what they’ve learned since graduating high school with the next generation of Dragons.

A group of 11 alumni took some time out of the weekend for a program where they met with students all around campus in settings as diverse as their careers.

From class and conference rooms to common areas and the Madeira Hall stage, these Dragon alumni shared their own professional experiences and the insights they’ve gained from them. Some also delved into what their time at St. George’s was like and their journey through life after Prize Day. Discussions were held on everything from the oil industry to Hollywood productions as students got the opportunity to speak with experts in a wide array of fields such as entrepreneurship, law, social work, technology analysis, and capital investments.

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room

Clockwise from facing page top left: Rob Larkin '98 / Charles Barzun '93 / Rohan Gopaldas '98 / Melina Martin '99 / Theater teacher Sarah Ploskina with Adi Shankar '03. / Susanne Leath Wright '98 with students Morgan Hill-Edgar '19 and Madeline Colbert-Muetterties '19 / Brooks Hagan '93 with Fine Art Photography students Juliana Di Napoli '21, Hopie Carlson '19, and Tristan Edwards '18. / Theresa Salud '13 / Andy Buckingham '98 / Chris McNally '98 / Anissa Roberts '00.

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Recipients of the Howard B. Dean Service Award ( clockwise fom top left): Natalie Dyer ’83, Stuart Danforth ’84, Richard Sayer ’65, P’96, ’98, ’03.

(continued...) Thirty members of the Class of 1968 made the trip back to SG for Alumni Weekend to celebrate their 50th reunion, even managing to schedule a conference call with classmate Stephen Schmidt who lives in Germany and wasn’t able to attend.

Other classes spanning decades had gatherings on campus and around Newport as well.

At the Alumni Weekend ceremony, CBS News correspondent Anthony Mason ’74 received the 2018 Diman Award (see page 26 of The Bulletin).

The Howard B. Dean Service Award was presented to Natalie Dyer ’83, Richard Sayer ’65, P’96, ’98, ’03 and Stuart Danforth ’84. The Philip Murray Reynolds Award was presented to Elena Thornton Kissel ’77 (see page 25). ■

DRAGON NAMED ATHLETE OF THE YEAR Congrats to Emily Kallfelz '15 on receiving the 2018 USRowing U23 Female Athlete of the Year Award at the 2018 Golden Oars Gala!

Emily was a member of the soccer, sailing, and swim teams at SG.

P H OTO S C O U RT E S Y O F U S R O W I N G.

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Giving News

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Paying it Forward

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From 19751979, John Holder attended St. George’s as a recipient of the Vincent Astor Scholarship — and he never forgot what a truly valuable gift that was. So last June, Mr. Holder established the Angela Roddey Holder Scholarship. Over three years, Mr. Holder will donate a total of $200,000 to St. George’s, explicitly for financial aid.

“I went to St. George’s on a scholarship, … and that made a lot of things possible for me,” Mr. Holder said.

“When I came into some money a few years ago I decided that I wanted to give something back — and this was the best way to do it.”

The scholarship is named in honor of Mr. Holder’s mother, a longtime professor at Yale University and a noted authority on health care law, who died in 2009 and whom he says was responsible for sending him to boarding school.

Angela Roddey Holder was a trailblazer. Born in Rock Hill, South Carolina, in 1938, she wished to follow in the footsteps of her father, a lawyer. “But because she was a girl in a small town in the South in the 1950s who had professional ambition, she didn’t really fit in,” Mr. Holder said.

Eager to meet like-minded young women, Ms. Holder attended the National Cathedral School for Girls in Washington, D.C. “She described that as the transformative experience of her life ... that in terms of the formation of her life, boarding school was a bigger deal than college,” Mr. Holder said.

John was 12 when Ms. Holder received a fellowship to Yale and the two moved to New Haven, Connecticut, in 1974. A graduate of the Sophie Newcomb Memorial College of Tulane University, and

Tulane Law School, Ms. Holder thought she would be staying at Yale for just two years to complete her master’s degree. If John was to stay at his high school for four years, boarding school was the best option, the two decided. Ms. Holder chose to inquire about St. George’s since her cousin and close friend, Philip Post ’57, was an alumnus.

“It was January in Newport and the wind was blowing off the beach and George Wheeler was the most intimidating person I’ve ever met in my life,” Mr. Holder recalled of his first visit to the Hilltop. “But it seemed like something that I wanted to do, so I did.” Coincidentally, Yale ended up hiring Ms. Holder to teach health law at both the medical school and the law school — and she ended up staying in New Haven for 27 years before concluding her career at Duke University.

“She’s pretty much why I became an educator,” said Mr. Holder, who is now an adjunct professor of political science at Winthrop University, where his mother also taught before attending Yale.

The university is in Rock Hill, South Carolina, where John lived as a child. In fact, he recently purchased the home his grandparents built there in 1950.

After St. George’s Mr. Holder went on to earn a bachelor’s degree at Haverford College, two master’s degrees at George Washington and a Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. For 10 years prior to his teaching career he lived in Washington, D.C., and worked as a Congressional aide before graduate school. These days his research is mostly on elections and voting.

Why I included SG in my estate...

“Recent events in our lives, including both our daughters earning MBAs, caused my wife and I to take a hard look at our current estate plans. Previous complications like trusts were both cumbersome and now unnecessary.

In her new will Al See ’68 my wife decided to include a bequest to our church and that caused me to ask myself: If I were to do a bequest, who would I want to remember?

As soon as I asked myself that question the answer was both obvious and compelling: St George’s.

SG had a tremendous positive effect on my life. I loved the school while I was there and I still do — and so do my classmates, 28 of 45 of whom were back on campus for our 50th reunion. One more called in.

Which begs two additional questions: “Why did I not think of this sooner?” and “How can I challenge my ‘68 classmates to do the same?”

Mr. Holder, who has attended all of his St. George’s reunions and is a member of the Alumni Board of Visitors, said it’s very gratifying “to be so firmly plugged into” his alma mater — and to give back.

“I already have [a big house]. I’m single. I don’t have any kids,” he said.

“I don’t have to provide for a family member’s education — so I’m sending somebody else to school.” ■

BEQUESTS: L e w M a deir a' 39 a nd P e t er F reem a n

The Philip Murray Reynolds Award for the Annual Giving Volunteer of the Year was presented to Elena Kissel ’77 during Alumni Weekend in May 2018.

Thanks in large part to Elena’s efforts, the Class of 1977 set a new record for dollars raised in a 40th reunion year, donating a total of $85,700 to the school.

And they had a great reunion — because in addition to her fundraising efforts, Elena arranged lodging and meals in her home for her classmates and organized special events throughout the weekend.

Elena is just the second individual to be presented with the Volunteer of the Year award twice. For her 35th reunion in 2012, she famously

promised a champagne toast in the chapel tower as an incentive to participate in the St. George’s Fund and help raise $50,000. The class met her challenge and celebrated high above campus with the Head of School offering words of thanks.

Elena was also a recipient of the Howard B. Dean Service Award in 2005 for her extraordinary efforts on behalf of St. George’s. A previous member of the Board of Trustees from 1986-1998, she served on the Admission Committee, the Committee on Trustees, the LongRange Planning Committee, and the Marine Committee. In 2017, Elena accepted a position on the school’s Alumni Board of Visitors. ■

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Class of ’77 sets fundraising record

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“St. George’s was an integral part of his life and he was always vitally interested in everything about the school through the years.”

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T

he success of St. George’s School is made possible established his 20-year $1 million charitable remainder each year through the support it receives from the trust in 1997 as The G. Danforth Hollins Teaching Chair, SG community at-large. Whether it’s by hosting which came to the school in Dec. 2017. Freeman made a local reception or donating to the general endowment the bequest in the name of his friend, former SG English fund, each contribution goes toward providing student teacher Danforth Hollins, with a goal of rewarding the experiences that can change the world. Some acts of genhard work of new young teachers at the school. erosity, like bequests, go beyond “The intent was to simply say to the present and look to support the these new, young, hardworking school in the future as well. teachers, we thank you for all that Bequests, such as the two you’re doing, to work so hard to SG recently received from Lew make our school better,” Hollins Madeira ’39 and Peter Freeman said. Hollins and Freeman first GP’00, can be tailored by donors met as counselors at St. Mark’s to impact areas they’re most pasBrantwood Camp in 1958, but sionate about and are designed to their lives became “entwined” help students and faculty into the because of St. George’s, Hollins years beyond the initial gift. said.

- Joan Madeira Lew Madeira established his “Well obviously I was exhila$3.5 million charitable remainder trust in 1993 with rated for the school and I have to say, I was proud and two-thirds ($2.4 million) designated for the current proincredibly grateful that he did it because he didn’t discuss grams and salaries endowment and the final third ($1.1 it with me,” Hollins said of when he first learned about the million) earmarked for financial aid. trust in his name. “I was overwhelmed with gratitude that “St. George’s was an integral part of his life and he was my great friend Pete Freeman… thought this all out on his always vitally interested in everything about the school own and did all the wording on his own.” through the years,” Joan Madeira, Lew’s wife, said of Hollins said gifts like this are important because “it him in a 2015 letter to the school. Madeira’s trust came makes a better school and it makes better teachers.” to the school after his death in Sept. 2009 and the death “What in the world can make St. George’s better, but of his wife Joan Madeira in Nov. 2017. hardworking teachers who create successful and hardPeter Freeman, an SG trustee from 1979-1984, working students.” ■

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Anthony Mason '74 (right) with singer, songwriter and producer Pharrell Williams.

T his R EPORTER

Rocks Well into his career in television journalism, Anthony Mason ’74 strikes a chord with music fans Anthony Mason ’74 has worked for CBS News for 32 years, reported from 40 countries around the globe, interviewed presidents and covered elections worldwide — but it may just be his interviews with world-famous musicians that have made him one of the nation’s best and beloved reporters.

Those interviews — with dozens of disparate singers and musical artists from the likes of Keith Richards and Aretha Franklin to Sam Smith and Kesha — have connected him most with his audience – and, he says, become some of the most meaningful work of his life.

“I can’t tell you how many times people have come up to me and said, ‘I love your work, but I

really love your music pieces,’” he said.

Now the co-host of “CBS This Morning: Saturday” and CBS News’ senior national correspondent, the multiple-Emmy-award-winning Mason has worked in the network’s London bureau, served as chief Moscow correspondent, a business correspondent, and even for a time interim weekday anchor for “CBS Evening News.” His foray into music journalism began with a random assignment in 2005 that Mason said he “raised his hand for” one day in the newsroom — a story about Bruce Springsteen’s “Devils & Dust” solo tour.

Never particularly interested in doing celebrity profiles, Mason said working with musicians

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was different. “Music had always meant a lot to me and I’d never really seen it covered the way I wanted to see it covered — at least not in television,” he said. “In magazines you could read great profiles in the New Yorker and in Rolling Stone, but television never seemed to want to take music seriously — and I took music really seriously. It’s had an incredibly important role at various times in my life.”

Venturing into new reporting territory, however, wasn’t easy. “People had a certain perception of who I was and I had a hard time shaking that image,” he said. “I’d been doing business and had to walk around in suits all the time. People just couldn’t process the business guy interviewing rock stars.”

Still, the joy and job satisfaction he had gotten from those first musician interviews was unlike anything he’d ever experienced. “People really responded to them,” he said.

“I also saw a side of myself come out that I hadn’t been able to show anywhere else. I felt more and more myself doing them, so I said I’m going to ride this as far as I can.”

Mason could get people who poured their hearts out in their songs, but not often to reporters, to talk. He created an intimacy in the reporting process that seemed to make the lights, the microphones, cameras and crew disappear — and he believes that came about because of what was going on inside himself.

In 2008, Mason’s parents died within a month of each other. “It was sort of this inward-looking period and … figuring out where I was and what all this meant,” he said. “What I realized in talking to musicians was that I was starting to process my own life.”

Mason said he’d also reached a point in his career where he was re-evaluating. “I was like, I’ve been telling everyone else’s stories for decades now. Where do I fit into all of this? Do I have a voice in any of this and if so, what is it?”

At that time, Mason said he began

Anthony Mason ’74 with the late Aretha Franklin in her hometown, Detroit, in 2011. Lasalle Park is dedicated to the memory of Aretha's father.

to see the arch of life very clearly.

“I’m like OK, here’s the end — and here’s where you are in relationship to the end. All of a sudden time became [a] very concrete thing to me.”

“So, all these things were working together and suddenly I was like ... why did I just ask that question [in that interview]? I was getting very intimate answers from people and I realized what I was really doing was asking questions of myself.

“It became this really personal thing and it created a texture in these stories that I had never been able to put in anything else ... and people felt it even if they couldn’t necessarily identify what it was.”

Mason soon began to reach an audience that appreciated music as much as he did — and who may have been surprised and awed at his ability to, in a respectful way, draw some of the most intimate personal details from his subjects. Keith Richards talked about the death of his child; Dave Grohl revealed what it was like continuing his career after the suicide of Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain.

L

ooking back on the last 13 years, Mason says he’s come to learn a lot about himself through his interactions with musicians: that he has an artistic side.

Mason’s mother was an interior

designer and his father was an investment banker, though the two separated early in Mason’s life. Mason grew up with his mother and his stepfather, an artist, in an art-filled home in Manhattan.

“I can identify … with musicians, even though I’m not musical at all,” Mason said. “I’m tone-deaf. But I understand the creative process,” he said, “and I’ve always loved the magic — that a song becomes something that people can’t get out of their heads and lives with them through the rest of their lives. In some cases, it also helps them through crises and it’s how they define themselves and understand themselves.

“And all of that, you know, when you’re doing a business story, just isn’t there.”

When we spoke with Mason in the spring, it was the week before he was heading back to the Hilltop to receive the John B. Diman Award, the school’s highest alumni honor.

He was getting ready to interview Billy Joel about his 100th concert at Madison Square Garden and had just completed a story on Kesha that was to air that Sunday.

“Artists by and large are pretty vulnerable people and a lot of them think of themselves as outsiders,” he said. "Even if they’ve been successful, they still perceive themselves to be outsiders and they can’t believe they’re as successful as they are.”

Kesha, he said, is a classic example.

“This is a woman who completely feels like she’s from another planet ... and who’s beaten herself up and is incredibly vulnerable and wears it, unlike some people, right up on the surface, which is part of what her appeal is to an enormous section of her fans — people who feel the same way.”

In his dozens of interviews with musicians over the years, many of which have aired on “CBS Sunday Morning,” Mason said he wants to produce stories “where you feel like you’re really seeing somebody.” And that takes a lot of work and investment. “I had coffee with Norah Jones three times before we even sat down for an interview,” he said.

When Aretha Franklin died in August, CBS rebroadcast Mason’s 2011 interview with the Queen of Soul and Mason posted a picture of himself with Aretha on his Twitter account.

Mason recalled the day, when, at the end of a long interview, Aretha said she wanted to go to the park in her hometown of Detroit. “I was going to say, ‘no we don’t really need the park, we’re great’ ... but I had asked a photographer who’d worked with her what’s it like working with Aretha and he said, ‘Well the first thing you have to remember is that Aretha is the queen, and she’s going to behave like the queen — but she will give you something.’”

Mason went along. “And we’re just crossing this open street and I say to Aretha, ‘When did they name the park after your father?’ and she doesn’t answer and then I look over at her and I realize it’s because she’s crying. ‘I’m really glad they named the park after him,’ she said.”

“It was one of those little things where it’s nothing and it’s everything. You see how much her father means to her in that moment. That’s what she showed you — and how powerful his memory is and that just this little thing — having a sign with her father’s name on it — can get her to tears.”

Mason lives for those moments.

“You need to put yourself in the position to receive that stuff. When those moments occur, you need to be ready and understand what they are and what you’re being given, and know how to handle them,” he said. “But when they come, they will literally change the dimension of the story.”

The day that Aretha died, Mason received over 300 likes and 22 comments on his Twitter post.

“Great segment Anthony. Your smooth approach to interviewing people brings out the true person,” one said.

Another wrote: “Anthony Mason, you’re the coolest man on television who knows good music and has interviewed some of the greats.”

T

hese days Mason continues to land some of the best veteran and up-and-coming musicians in the nation. He recently interviewed John Prine and Lindsey Buckingham.

And “CBS This Morning: Saturday” now features a segment in which musicians perform called “Saturday Sessions.” The Boston band Tall Heights, who just released their second album, and model-turned-musician Karen Elson were recent guests.

Still there are a few musicians Mason would love to sit down with: Bob Dylan and Bobbie Gentry.

“Bob Dylan for the obvious reasons,” he said, “and Bobbie Gentry because she hasn’t talked to anybody in something like 35 years — and she was an enormously influential singer for a whole class of great female singers.”

Gentry disappeared from the public eye in the late 1970s.

“For people [like] Roseanne Cash and her generation, [Bobbie Gentry] was like ... she kicked ass,” he said.

“This woman, you look at her and you see she wrote her own stuff, she’s beautiful, she managed her own career — and then she decided to go away.

“It’s just ... can you imagine doing that story?” ■ Above, top to bottom: Reminiscing with Beastie Boys Mike D and Ad-Rock / In Central Park with Noel Gallagher from Oasis / Riding the subway with Lorde / Getting to know the legendary Keith Richards.

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BEHIND THE GLASS Alumnus’ stained-glass creations still paint Hilltop.

A pair of stained-glass windows greets anyone walking into the John Nicholas Brown Center from Dragon Quad. One is a green dragon wrapped around the St. George’s shield against a backdrop of shining light. The other shows a tumultuous storm with gusts of wind sweeping across blue waves. Both were created by Chris Gregory ’80 in his dorm room when he was a sixth-former and they’ve adorned the Hilltop ever since.

“I hope people enjoy the colors and the brightness,” Gregory said of his creations. “That was really part of the effort that I had there. I just hope it gives them a little more interest in their environment, more than an empty window would.”

making a glow Gregory currently lives in Pennsylvania and is the Vice President of Research and Development at Valeritas Inc., a medical device company in central Massachusetts. He received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from Brown University and later got his doctorate in ceramic science at Rutgers University.

He first became interested in stained-glass windows when he was 13 years old and living in New York City, just before attending SG. After seeing some stainedglass, Gregory said one day he decided to visit a supply house in an old iron front loft building that had such a great variety of glass on display, the colors were divided by floor.

“I looked in the Yellow Pages and found a place, went down there and said, ‘Yeah, this is definitely something to do,’” Gregory recalled. “The colors just amazed me and the opportunity to make things, which essentially glowed, was pretty exciting.”

Although Gregory didn’t take any classes for stained-glass art at SG, he found some space at the top of the Auchincloss Dormitory and used his independent study time to pursue his passion.

“I just essentially did it on my own,” said Gregory.

“There was really nobody there at the time who knew anything about it or could do anything to support it.

I did, at one point, get a little space to do some of the work.”

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"The Storm," stained glass window by Chris Gregory '80 in the Brown Center stairwell.

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stantial quotes for a studio to put up scaffolding to do repair work on breaks done by baseballs off the field,” Gregory said. “I offered to do the repairs by rappelling down off the roof without the scaffolding for probably 1/10th the cost.”

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By senior year, Gregory had a large dorm room in Diman, which was a “really convenient spot” with a good amount of space for him to work.

Both “The Dragon” and “The Storm” stained-glass windows were made specifically for their locations and Gregory installed them himself. However, when he put them in place, he didn’t think they’d still be up 38 years later.

“I figured they’d come down eventually as things got refurbished and rebuilt,” said Gregory. “I actually expected when they moved the library out of that building that things would be more rearranged.”

Gregory was looking out on the dragon statue in the Dragon Quad when he got the inspiration for “The Dragon” stained-glass window above the door to the Brown Center.

“It had that long view down the hall to the dining room and it said to me that’s really a place that kind of screams dragon,” Gregory said. “I really liked that sort of continuation of the theme of the quadrangle and down into the sort of gothic hall of the dining room.”

Gregory said part of the inspiration for “The Storm” stained-glass window in the Brown Center stairwell came from the campus’ proximity to the ocean. It also seemed like a good fit for the more Hanging Out at the Chapel modern design of the building at the time, which was forWhile in graduate school at Brown merly the library.

University, Chris Gregory ’80 “The stairway, clearly it returned to the Hilltop to do repair was a much more modern work on some of the windows in space,” said Gregory. “It the chapel. Gregory was doing a lot screamed for a very different, of window work for places around much more dynamic, style.”

Newport and Providence at the time Gregory also said another and was contacted about the job by reason he made “The Storm” former SG business manager, Wes window was to honor the Hennion, who was also Gregory’s memory of another student. old mathematics teacher.

“It’s pretty personal,” he said.

“But there’s a little “I was a technical climber at the time more than just glass.” ■ and (Hennion) had gotten fairly sub-

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motivation for creation

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A VOW TO REMEMBER Seventeen years after the terrorist attacks on September 11, dedicated groups are still working to preserve the stories of the nearly 3,000 lives lost that day for the generations to come.

As Executive Director of the Friends of Flight 93 National Memorial, Henry Scully ’78 is one of two employees and hundreds of volunteers at the nonprofit devoted to honoring the 40 passengers and crew of United Airline Flight 93 at its memorial in Stoystown, Pennsylvania.

The memorial is located in a 2,200-acre National Park that encompasses the crash site of Flight 93, where passengers and crew charged the Boeing 757’s cockpit and ultimately sacrificed themselves in an effort to retake control of the plane from al Qaeda hijackers.

“These were some of the first warriors against terrorists. They got out of their seats, they had a vote, and they decided to boil water and most probably take knives out of their pockets and go fight these terrorists,” said Scully. “These are normal everyday people just going from Newark to San Francisco on a beautiful day 17 years ago, maybe for vacation, maybe to see their loved one at school, but all of a

sudden, they’re in the middle of a fight from 9:57 a.m. to 10:03 a.m. to try and take over this plane; to save their lives.”

BEYOND VOLUNTEERING For Scully, a Pittsburgh native who attended St. Lawrence University after the Hilltop, the connection to that fateful September day began at his job as a corporate insurance broker for Willis Investment Holding in Bermuda. Scully worked for 16 years at the firm, which was responsible for placing some of the insurance on the World Trade Center in New York City, and had many friends there who died on Sept. 11 when the Twin Towers collapsed.

In 2009, Scully left his job in Bermuda and returned to Pittsburgh to work for the firm Marsh & McLennan. Being so close to the Flight 93 crash site, he started volunteering at the memorial and when the executive director position became available, he applied for it and made the jump from the brokerage world in July 2014.

“It was just a wonderful opportunity to do something that I was really passionate about and felt very strongly about in terms of my past experiences with the World Trade Center insurance placements and friends I had in the towers,” Scully said. “I had been doing the brokerage business for 32 years and I felt

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that plane were all individuals, were all unique in their own ways, but those 40 passengers and crew, together as a team, took the cockpit over in hopes of saving their own lives and ultimately brought the plane down as it didn’t hit its intended target of the Capitol building in Washington D.C.” In addition to the structural components of the memorial, hundreds of volunteers have met annually to plant approximately 160,000 trees at the park, which is located on an abandoned coal mine.

“The architect wanted you to see the beautiful landscape of the trees healing the scarred earth, from the mine, from the crash of the plane, and also hear the 40 voices through the chimes of those 40 heroes, and then drive further in and see the Visitor’s Center and the Learning Center,” said Scully.

Visitors to the memorial are able to express their appreciation for the sacrifices made by Flight 93 on a bulletin board at the Visitors Plaza, which allows people to share notes and cards thanking the passengers and crew for standing up against terrorism and potentially saving thousands of lives in the Capitol.

“We have such great people in this country that do things for other people and I think that really hits you when you’re at a memorial like Flight 93 National Memorial … when you’re there, you really feel the gratitude,” Scully said. “While some people are sad and depressed when they come to Flight 93 or after they leave, we hope many of them leave with great feelings of hope and admiration of these people and that’s the story we try to tell. While it was tragic, these folks are heroes and they did some great things. A lot of people leave feeling very uplifted and great about their country.” ■

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this was a great opportunity at age 54 to make a real meaningful change and to do something that really meant a lot to me and others.”

KEEPING THE STORY ALIVE Raising funds, rallying volunteers, and promoting educational awareness are the main duties of the executive director for the Friends of Flight 93 National Memorial.

With a goal of bringing as many students to the memorial as possible, the Friends’ website offers grants to help schools with transportation costs, Scully said.

“A lot of schools don’t have it in their budget for school buses, so what we like to do is bring as many schools as we can,” said Scully. “We have different programming for different age groups to help them learn about what happened on that plane, which are things like honor, leadership, and teamwork.”

Veterans from post-9/11 wars sometimes accompany student groups visiting the memorial from Washington, D.C., too, according to Scully.

“That kind of interaction back and forth is just so unique and powerful,” Scully said. “The more students we can bring to let them know what happened on 9/11, the better, because most or all students who come weren’t born then. To make sure this story stays relevant, stays alive is, I think, our biggest mission as a Friend of Flight 93 employee.”

As a National Park Service site with a limited budget, the Flight 93 National Memorial relies on fundraising by groups like the Friends and its more than 500 volunteers to help with educational programs, tours, and park projects when there are not enough park rangers to handle all the visitors.

“We have some volunteers that have been volunteering since 9/11 ’01, so they’ve been here almost 17 years,” Scully said. “It’s about bringing on the next generation to come and volunteer as well.”

Consultants have collected more than 800 oral histories on Flight 93 and family members of the flight’s passengers and crew are still involved with the memorial, some even visiting to give talks in the learning center.

“The family members of Flight 93 passengers and crew are still very involved in the process,” said Scully. “They help us decide what kind of speakers should be there, what kind of trails to build. They want it to be a very peaceful, respectful type of experience when visitors come so they can reflect about what happened on that site.”

DESIGNING REMEMBRANCE Architect Paul Murdoch’s proposal for the Flight 93 National Memorial was chosen out of more than 1,000 submissions.

The Tower of Voices, a 93-foot tower with 40 wind chimes representing the voices of each victim, is the final major piece of the memorial. It was installed this year after a joint fundraising effort by the National Park Foundation and the Friends of Flight 93, raising $7 million for the project.

“They all strike a different chord, have a different tune to their chime, but all 40 together, it’s just really beautiful music,” Scully said. “Showing that those 40 heroes on

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PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES A OF AGE

s boats carried tourists south from the sleepy town of Houay Xai down the Mekong River in Laos, Philip Marshall ’71 piled into the back of a pickup to head north to the port of Ban Mom instead.

Although he’d visited Laos before, Marshall was hoping to cross an item off his bucket list this time.

He wanted to jump on a cargo boat and ride it up the Mekong as far north as possible into the beautiful and serene “Golden Triangle” – a 367,000-square mile area where the mountainous borders of Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar meet at the junction of the Ruak and Mekong Rivers.

In Ban Mom, men at the docks smiled and laughed at Marshall’s request, offering him some instant coffee as they put a message out to possible boats for him. A family with a cargo boat carrying about 30 Brahman cattle offered to take him up the river for the day on their way to China for 600 Thai baht or roughly $20, so he hopped on.

Marshall, a national advocate for the fair treatment of elders, believes the fundamental impediment to elder justice is ageism. So, at 65 years old, he set out on his trip determined to push his own boundaries and disprove the characterization of elders as people who don’t do much, if they can.

“The whole purpose of the trip was to reach further,” said Marshall. “It’s just to keep pushing way out in whatever you want, whether it’s geographically or in terms of challenging yourself with new things.”

“I kind of felt almost worried,” Marshall said about the lead-up to the trip. “And that just got me moving because if you say, ‘can you still do this trip,’ you’re going to be very still and that’s not good.”

A CRUSADE FOR ELDER JUSTICE Marshall has been fighting for elder justice ever since he took his father to court in 2006 over guardianship of his grandmother, New York City philanthropist and socialite Brooke Astor.

After her third husband, Vincent Astor (SG Class of 1910), died, Brooke inherited half of his multimillion-dollar estate and as president of his charity, the Vincent Astor Foundation, she oversaw the distribution of hundreds of grants to various New York City nonprofits and institutions.

When Marshall learned his father – Brooke’s only child – was psychologically abusing and financially exploiting his

grandmother, who was at the onset of Alzheimer’s Disease, he petitioned the court for her guardianship.

“I acted because I couldn’t turn a blind eye … All I and my grandmother’s friends wanted to do was to respect my grandmother’s wishes to spend her last days in her country house.

Pretty simple,” Marshall said.

“My father by then had closed the house, fired all the staff, it was basically shuttered. That’s all it started out as. We didn’t realize how bad it was.”

Marshall was successful in having the court appoint guardianship of Brooke to one of her closest friends, but to his shock, the guardianship judge said ‘elder abuse was not substantiated’ during the proceedings — despite his father’s financial crimes, which were evidenced but as yet unsubstantiated until a six-month criminal trial in 2009.

“This is going to be open season on seniors. If this isn’t elder abuse, what is?” Marshall said. “And so that one clause catapulted us from case to cause. We went from my grandmother’s case to battling for elder justice at large.”

Mrs. Astor’s case revealed to Marshall that the most effective way to address elder abuse is through working with the financial industry, as exploitation is detectible and evidential while other forms of abuse may be more difficult to detect.

Marshall left his job as professor and director of historic preservation at Roger Williams University to dedicate his efforts, full-time, to elder justice in 2017. He founded a cause-based campaign BeyondBrooke.org and started traveling to speak at events about elder justice around the country.

“I’m trying to make sure that seniors, and all of us, are not isolated, but come together more,” said Marshall. “I

Mentors at St. George’s

After SG, he graduated from Brown University with a degree in art and geology, specializing in conservation of masonry and decorative finishes.

Marshall currently lives in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts, and first taught historic preservation at the University of Vermont, then Columbia University, and the former Southeastern Massachusetts University, now UMass Dartmouth, before becoming director of historic preservation at Roger Williams University.

Above: Cross-valley view, north, with Nam (Long Long River) — in Muang Long, Louangnamtha, Laos. Left to right: On a cargo boat 90 minutes upstream of Pak Mon. / Philip Marshall '71 with students in Chedi, a distance from Wat Loung Phakham along the banks of the Nam Long.

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“And Burnett ended up being the scientific stuff, sort of infusing me with that aspect,” added Marshall. “So when I got into preservation, I combined, in essence, art and science.”

//

“Richard Grosvenor and Gil Burnett both got me into this,” Marshall said of his career. “Grosvenor, he would just take us up to the steeple of Trinity Church, he would get us into the attics of the Breakers … He got us into community work and into amazing sites.”

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Two people Philip Marshall ’71 considered mentors during his time at SG were teachers Richard Grosvenor and Gilbert Burnett Jr., whose instruction in art and science “totally informed” Marshall’s career choice as a historic preservation teacher for the next 40 years.

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think one way we end ageism is to really engage.”

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PUSHING BOUNDARIES When Marshall debarked the cattle-filled cargo boat in northern Laos, he started biking, busing, and hitchhiking his way toward the country’s ancient capital, Luang Prabang. His goal was to use the peaceful setting to work on an elder justice keynote address he was to deliver at a conference in Houston upon his return to the U.S. “I rented a bike and just went off and got into villages. It’s killer exercise, but it makes you accessible. You’re not just blasting through, but struggling and people laugh because they know how far you’ve come from,” Marshall said. “Going into tribal villages by foot or by bike, I think is respectful. Otherwise I feel I am busting into somebody’s community.”

The first thing Marshall would do in any village he stopped at is try to find a wat, or a Buddhist temple, to meditate and where he’d usually run into kids who would take him to visit their school.

Marshall would bond with communities by helping teachers and their students practice conversational English, even giving an impromptu English lecture at one school.

“That’s my anchor,” Marshall said. “I found that the religious and the educational institutions were my gateway to meaningful relationships within that community.”

When Marshall reached Luang Prabang, the city was celebrating the country’s New Year’s Water Festival.

Residents lined the streets to douse passersby with water as a form of blessing and Buddha statues were taken out of temples and washed ceremoniously.

Marshall has used parallels between Buddhism and elder justice in his talks before, he said, such as how to deal with what scares people most, such as sickness, old age, and death.

“Elder abuse is the betrayal of trust and elder justice is the provision of trust through relationships and responsibility,” Marshall said, noting people and communities at large have to care for one another. “If we don’t deal with it, we’re basically impairing ourselves every day all along the way.” ■

remembering charlie dean '68 While traveling through Laos, Marshall left an offering of flowers at a local temple (pictured above) in memory of his friend Charlie Dean ’68, who had helped Marshall when he was a freshman at SG through a senior-freshman mentorship program.

Tragically, Dean and a friend were captured along the Mekong River by communist Pathet Laos guerillas while on a backpacking trip in 1974 and ultimately executed.

“Charlie Dean was amazing,” Marshall said. “He really had my back at school and he is such a sweet guy and here I am up in the same territory where he just vanished. It’s just such a sad story.”

Above: A flooded stream and rice fields along the path from Ban Housana south to Thong Dee. / Women in traditional dress. / Monks at the water festival in Luang Prabang. / Above right: An offering left in a temple to remember for Charlie Dean '68 who was killed in Laos.

“Here he was just reaching way out and here I am reaching way out, but I’m not in the middle of the Pathet Lao … in a war,” said Marshall. “So I kind of had him in my mind and thought it would be appropriate.”

Both of Leong’s parents were avid squash players, so she and her three siblings were introduced to the sport early in their lives with the whole family often playing together on weekends.

“I guess you could say our whole family, my siblings and myself, were pretty much born into squash,” said Leong, whose brother LeRoy Leong ’04 also played squash at St. George’s.

Growing up in Malaysia, squash was always an obvious path to unique opportunities, according to Leong, and the sport was

Becoming a Dragon

Because she traveled so much for squash when she was younger, Leong had to take two gap years in her high school education.

However, when Leong was 18, she decided to end her junior squash career and go back to high school so she could focus on attending college.

She came to the United States in 1999 to play some tournaments while also searching for potential schools.

St. George’s was the only school Lynn Leong '10 Leong visited in America before she made her decision to enroll at the Hilltop for 11th grade. With the help of her host family and supportive teachers during her first year, she overcame the culture shock that came with attending a boarding school in Newport.

“I was ecstatic. I thought St. George’s was the most beautiful campus I’d ever seen. I loved where I was,” Leong said.

“People were really nice, teachers especially were very helpful knowing what my situation was coming in.”

While at SG, Leong helped mentor the school’s young squash team for two seasons and was a two-time interscholastic squash individual champion. But one of her favorite memories at SG is her time traveling and helping the boys’ soccer team as its manager, which gave her a chance to get to know more students on campus.

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Born Into the Sport

a chance for her to get out into the world and try new things.

“I think squash became a lot more serious for me when I turned about 10. I started my first tournament when I was 9,” she said. “What I liked about squash, why I kept on going, was because of the travel. When I was growing up, like in most countries, sports were a great opportunity to meet people, travel, and go different places.”

//

When Lynn Leong ’01 first arrived on the Hilltop in 1999, she was already ranked the No. 2 junior squash player in the world.

Leong was only 4-years-old when she started playing squash with her father at a club near their home in Malaysia and by the age of 12, she represented her entire country on the Malaysian national team.

In 1996, she won the Asian Women’s Championship held in Jordan and rose to a world professional ranking of 41 at the age of 16.

“I wasn’t even geared to get to the semifinals and I ended up winning the entire women’s category. I was just about to turn 15 and I basically won the whole event, which came as a shock,” Leong said. “I just happened to be one of the team players from Malaysia that played in the individual event and got further than I ever had.”

Leong said what followed the surprise win was “probably the craziest time of my life,” where she went on to compete in the U19 British Junior Open in England in 1998 and later was a finalist representing Malaysia in the World Junior Championship in Belgium in 1999.

Now Leong is training a new generation of squash players as the senior assistant coach for Yale University’s women and men squash teams while also running her own academy out of Yale-Pinnacle Squash in Branford, Connecticut.

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Returning Success

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“That was when I felt really included in the community,” said Leong. “It was so nice to see that for once I was doing something that was non-squash, which I never saw myself doing.”

During the summers, Leong would help out with squash camps hosted on campus and had ample time to explore other subjects and hobbies, such as art.

Lawn Club in Connecticut.

During that time, Leong served as the U.S. Squash team’s assistant junior women’s coach and helped coach two runner-up U.S. junior women's squash teams at the World Junior Championship in 2013 and 2015.

Since college, Leong’s tried to combine both her passions of

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“What I enjoy most in coaching is introducing the kids that I mentored and coached, or even the adults I coached over the years, to this sport they’ve never seen before and seeing them fall in love with it..”

“I never grew up doing a lot of art, so I think St. George’s sort of gave me the opportunity to learn more about being an artist,” said Leong. “I was able to see a glimpse of everything that St. George’s had to offer and the summer gave me a lot of things to venture into.”

A New Passion Discovered

Leong’s interest in art carried over to her time at Trinity College, where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in photography in 2005.

Leong continued playing squash at Trinity College, becoming a three-time first team All-American and winning two national team championships, but said her college squash career was different from her junior career.

“It was very different when I went to college to play squash,” Leong said. “It was definitely more enjoyment as opposed to being a job.”

Although she had never coached before, Leong took a summer job coaching squash her freshman year as a way to earn money for the school year.

“It was a summer job, it was a great way to stay fit. I could still keep playing squash and still be able to kind of make money doing it,” said Leong. “That opened up the doors of possibly coaching for a career, but I didn’t really figure out coaching as my career until I really graduated from college.”

Coaching the Next Generation

After graduating from Trinity College, Leong traveled to California for a temporary coaching job at the San Francisco Bay Club and soon realized that coaching was something she could do as a career.

“When I was growing up, I never thought of myself as being a coach,” Leong said. “It just literally fell in my lap when I went to college and was figuring out exactly what I was going to do.”

Leong originally wanted to use her degree to become a photojournalist, but had trouble breaking in to the field.

“But one thing I had on my resume was really my squash,” said Leong. “I had a lot of experience in terms of traveling and knowing a lot about competition. So, I kind of put my heart into giving coaching a shot.”

Leong started coaching at the Apawamis Club in Rye, New York, before becoming the squash director at the New Haven

squash and photography.

“Throughout my coaching career, I would bring my camera everywhere I go and I would do stories,” Leong said. “I hope one day after squash, the next thing I’m going to do is go back into art. I want to be able to get back into photography again. I still do it on the side when I have time, but once I retire from squash, really stop coaching and mentoring, that will be my next career later in life.”

After becoming the senior assistant squash coach at Yale in 2017, Leong also started running a summer squash camp on campus, coaching kids ages 13 to 17 from all over country.

“What I enjoy most in coaching is introducing the kids that I mentored and coached, or even the adults I coached over the years, to this sport they’ve never seen before and seeing them fall in love with it,” Leong said. “It just fills my heart.”

But Leong said she approaches coaching differently than her own training as a young squash player living a semi-professional lifestyle.

“I’m much more compassionate when it comes to coaching because I’ve been through and done that,” said Leong. “I think having that kind of upbringing shaped me towards much more of a different type of teacher versus teaching things by the book.

I’m definitely more of the life experience type of mentor.”

Now, Leong’s 6-year-old daughter is also playing squash.

However, Leong won’t be pushing her daughter towards the sport the same way she was as a child because of the opportunities available to her in America without squash.

“I think [there] are really lots of opportunities to choose from,” Leong said. “If she wants to go in that direction, I’ll encourage it, but I’d probably do it differently.” ■

//

At 6-foot-2 and 185 pounds, Phillips is tall for a sprinter, but he makes up for a slower start with lightning speed in the middle and end of a race. In top shape, he also sees less of the monumental improvement he had when first starting out. “In any sport, especially track, as you get more experience, it’s kind of the law of diminishing returns,” he said. “But I’m still hoping to get a few milliseconds off here and there.”

Now Phillips has his eye on the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. By this summer, he hopes to have a better idea of where he’s at and the possibility of moving into higher levels of competition.

“But it’s definitely something that’s always in the back of my mind,” he said. ‘It’s absolutely the ultimate goal.” ■

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When it came time to choose between a job and a dream after graduating from college, Jeremy Phillips ’11 went for the dream.

An All-American sprinter on the Rhodes College track team, Phillips faced a big decision when he finished a five-year master’s degree program in accounting.

“I was kind of at a crossroads where I was done with college and collegiate track,” he said, “but I still wanted to run at a high level and be able to run at the big championship meets.”

With a job offer in hand, it was then that Phillips began to consider running outside the U.S. and his Irish heritage came into play. A dual citizen of the U.S. and Ireland through his father, Phillips, whose grandparents are from Athlone, joined the Irish National Track Team in 2017.

“You know you can only do this at this time in your life,” said Phillips, 25. “My feeling was that I didn’t want to look back 20 years from now and be like, oh, ‘I regret not doing that’ or ‘I wish I had gone.’”

In Ireland, Phillips is able to compete in events like the European Championships. “Whereas if I was running for the United States that process would be much more difficult and probably not as realistic,” he said.

He now travels all across Europe to compete.

And when he comes back to the U.S. to see his family — his parents and younger brother are huge supporters — he lands in Boston, close to where he grew up in Norwell, Massachusetts, and where he can easily get a direct flight back to Dublin.

Though he can now run with the best in the world, Phillips was primarily a basketball player throughout his youth. A four-year varsity basketball player for the Dragons, he joined the track team his senior year instead of playing baseball only because he learned his talent for dunking a basketball made him be a pretty good high jumper.

When he got to Rhodes, he walked on to the track team to continue to high-jump, but did a bit of running and discovered he liked that even more — at least the short runs. “The kind of more explosive events is where I leaned — where I had more natural talent. I just never had much interest in running long distance,” he said. “You’ll never catch me running a mile or anything over that.”

Phillips’ biggest moment on the world track stage so far came when he won the 100-meter at the Irish National Championships in July 2017 with a time of 10:40. That’s 10 seconds and 40 hundredths of a second.

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running with it

Jeremy Phillips ’11 finds he’s built for speed

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P H OTO BY S A M B A R N E S / S P O RT S F I L E

40 st. george’s school

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A Musical Evolution

WINTER 2018 - 2019

o '10

Peter Rug

Electronic dance music was just beginning to make waves in the United States when Peter Rugo ’10 was studying at the University of Southern California. Rugo didn’t play much music growing up besides drums in jazz band at his former high school in Chicago, but he was always an “avid music listener” with a love for “true, genuine music.” As artists like Skrillex and Avicii started becoming popular in America, Rugo began attending electronic dance concerts and fell in love with the genre, ultimately sparking a change in major and a new career path as an artist manager.

“I had listened to a little bit of dance music my senior year at St. George’s, but I hadn’t heard much. I probably knew five or six songs in the genre total,” Rugo said. “For me it’s always been about the energy and the live component of it. It sounded unlike any other kind of music I’d ever heard in my life.”

During sophomore year, Rugo switched majors to public relations with a minor in music industry and started an internship with a company doing digital marketing campaigns for artists like Mumford & Sons, The xx, HAIM, and Rusko.

“I landed on the PR major because of what I was seeing with

the convergence of PR and marketing at the time and with the internet becoming such a breaking force in the entertainment world,” said Rugo.

His junior year, Rugo started his own indie record label called “Prep School Recordings” and began releasing EP albums for up-and-coming musicians. It was through that label that Rugo connected with fellow artist manager Joey Papoutsis of Prospect Artist Management. The two would later join forces, merging their rosters of musicians, and cofound Keel, a new full-service management company in Los Angeles.

Starting Keel After graduating college in 2014, Rugo worked at Los Angeles media firm ROAR for two and a half years before deciding to leave and cofound Keel with Papoutsis in January 2018. Rugo said his previous digital marketing experience was “invaluable” and gave him a leg up on the competition, allowing Keel to get its artists off the ground quicker and employ advanced digital marketing tactics that were beyond many other artist managers.

As an artist manager, “You’re the direct conduit between the record label, the agent, their publisher and the artist. You’re kind of the one steering the ship,” Rugo said. “Your main goal at the end of the day is protecting the artist’s vision and helping them reach their goals, but you have a balancing job between keeping all the partners happy, keeping the artist happy, and making sure everything is moving forward in a meaningful way.”

Rugo and Papoutsis both grew up in Chicago and first met playing hockey together when they were 6 or 7 years old.

After falling out of touch for years, the two randomly reconnected in 2013 when Papoutsis reached out to Rugo and “Prep School Recordings” to release a debut EP for one of the artists he was managing.

“We both saw each other’s last names and thought it sounded kind of familiar and asked our parents and we realized we had actually known each other when we were much younger,” said Rugo. “But we had no idea when we reconnected.”

After merging their rosters to form Keel, Rugo and Papoutsis now have a dozen artists together like Louis the Child and Ekali in genres of music like electronic, dance, indie, pop, R&B, and hip hop. “We both wanted to be able to have a bigger operation and more leverage in the space,” Rugo said. “It also enables us to be more competitive and scale with our artists.”

An Industry Turned Upside Down Rugo said the music industry has been changing ever since the advent of music streaming service Napster 15 years ago.

From 2001 to 2014, it was very difficult to make substantial money from actual music unless you were a top tier artist, he said, until online music streaming became popular. Rugo said Keel is diversifying its roster of artists to be prepared for the “natural instability” of the music industry.

“The biggest challenge with artist management in general is this business is entirely what people are interested in consuming at any given time,” said Rugo. “You have to build robust businesses for your artists so they are still able to grow during down periods.”

Since the success of online music streaming, artists can remain independent longer and still make profits without having to get tied up in early deals with major labels.

“The biggest transition that’s happened in the last couple years is that music is finally now profitable again for new and developing artists,” Rugo said. “Artists have been able to take back the power and I think that’s a good thing for everyone involved. I think it’s a really exciting time for music.” ■

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S T U D E N T E S S AY

BY CAM ABEEL ’18

st. george’s school

// WINTER 2018 - 2019

Rust Bucket Reborn I only had a half a mile to go from the auto shop; I knew that I could make it back. The dirt roads were long and winding, with more potholes than there were dents in my car.

At the time, I had not a care in the world, except for the angry honking behind me, and the uncertainty of reaching my destination. I thought it was because they liked my ride. I drove down the dirt road with a smile, putting some more power in the engine.

Just as I hit 25 mph, my engine compartment erupted in smoke. I was only 400 feet away from my farm. The mechanics words echoed in my head, “Wow, this thing is a piece of junk. Sorry, kid, there is nothing I can do with this.” Even with all his experience, I decided to not listen. I got behind the car and pushed it back to the farm. An hour later, with the help of my tractor, I got the bucket of rust back to the toolshed.

My passion for mechanics all started with a lawnmower. My dad used to complain about the hunk of junk breaking down every day. So when I was 11, I snuck down to the barn late one night to fix it. My dad didn’t trust me with tools back then. I didn’t know the difference between a wrench and a screwdriver. But just as the sun was starting to come up, I had it working better than ever.

I loved tinkering with mechanical objects. When I got my car, I had the choice between a safe and reliable Toyota and a forgotten relic that spent the twilight of its life in a junkyard. I chose the latter; it was cheaper and had endless potential.

The hardest challenge for me was that I didn’t know anyone mechanically inclined. Growing up, it seemed by dad always had the answer: be it the history of 17th-century Native Americans, or how the Electoral College Cameron Abeel ’18 of Middleburg, Virginia, is now a freshman at George Washington University.

works; yet he did not have a clue what a carburetor was.

I lacked direction and went into the project blind, but I couldn’t happier with my decision.

I’ve never been the strongest student in school. Long assignments about subjects I have no passion for exhaust me. Yet after finding sources online, I spent countless hours researching and studying auto mechanics, all with the goal of making the thing run again.

Ever since the ride back from the auto shop, the car refused to start. On a hot afternoon, after spending hours working on it, she finally purred. It wasn’t a pretty sound, but it was the sound I had hoped to hear for the past few days. With it back and running, I began to fix it up more and more. Now I can proudly say that the car no longer explodes at 25 mph.

Spending my summer fixing it has been one of the toughest challenges I have faced, but I loved every minute of it. Looking back, I certainly did not know what I had gotten myself into. I recall that dirt road fondly, knowing all those bumps have led me to where I am today. That road was the first drive with my car and led to my future passion with all things mechanical.

Interestingly enough, my academic path has been full of bumps, bruises, and potholes. I’ve learned a valuable lesson from this experience: Don’t always take someone else’s word; make your own decision and then try it out.

If I had listened to the mechanic that day, my car would be sitting in a junkyard collecting rust and my summer wouldn’t have been nearly as exciting. ■

FROM THE ARCHIVES

c. 1919 On Prize Day in 1919, the official announcement was made: St. George’s intended to erect a school building as a memorial to those who lost their lives in World War I. Shortly afterward, then-headmaster Stephen P. Cabot and the trustees “started soliciting for the donations,” reported the Red & White at the time. “The final amount was not obtained until the early spring of 1922, three years of ever-raising prices in building material.”

St. George’s finds itself in a similar situation today. As we remain heartfelt about historic preservation of our hilltop campus, our attention is now drawn to Memorial Schoolhouse – its significance to our history and to our alumni clearly in mind. Fundraising is ongoing to raise the $9.5 million needed to restore and renew this landmark building, completed in 1923, and ever-present in the lives of all students since.

In memory of the original intention of the Schoolhouse, we bring you this magnificent illuminated “Roll of Honour” of those St. George’s alumni for whom the building is dedicated.

View this document, as well as past Archive exhibitions, on our website at www.stgeorges.edu/archives.

Missing from this work, by artist Violet Oakley, are: Caldwell Colt Robinson, Class of 1913, 2nd Lieutenant, 6th Regiment, U.S. Marines, killed at Belleau Wood, France, on June 6, 1918; and Norman Jesse Merrill, Faculty 1914-1917, 2nd Lieutenant, Infantry, who died at Fort Wayne, Michigan Military Hospital on February 7, 1919.

ST. GEORGE'S SCHOOL P.O. Box 1910 Newport, RI 02840-0190

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