Students, faculty, staff and parents have risen to the challenge of remote learning. Take a look at the first day of Durham E-cademy at bit.ly/e-cademyday1.
CONNECT WITH DURHAM ACADEMY Facebook: facebook.com/DurhamAcademy Alumni on Facebook: facebook.com/DACavsAlumni Twitter: twitter.com/DurhamAcademy Alumni on Twitter: twitter.com/DurhamAcademyAl Vimeo: bit.ly/DAcavsvimeo LinkedIn: bit.ly/LinkedInDAAlumni Instagram: instagram.com/DurhamAcademy Flickr: flickr.com/DurhamAcademy View the magazine online at da.org/magazine. The Durham Academy App is available in the Apple App Store.
FEATURES Car Parade Celebrations Give a Sense of Closure
12 — COMMENCEMENT, CLOSING EXERCISES MOVE ONLINE The 111 seniors in Durham Academy’s Class of 2020 experienced a commencement ceremony unlike any other. One-by-one, the soon-to-be graduates and their families pulled up to campus, stepped out of their cars and were awarded their diplomas.
24 — INDEPENDENT STUDY FUND, FLAGPOLE TO HONOR MEMORY OF JACK LINGER ’20 The fund will provide resources for students looking to create independent projects that could be characterized as unique, enriching and “outside of the box,” similar to Linger's cross-country bike trip in summer 2019.
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HOW DURHAM ACADEMY BECAME DURHAM E-CADEMY
When the coronavirus pandemic closed school in mid-March, Durham Academy quickly transitioned to remote learning. Moving school from the classroom to the family room unleashed amazing creativity among both teachers and students.
68 — MICHELLE MORGAN JOINS DA COMMUNITY AS PHILANTHROPY DIRECTOR As a first-generation college student, Morgan credits the opportunity to attend UNC-Chapel Hill with inspiring her to discover a career that became a life’s calling, and that eventually empowered her to create pathways for others to give back and create opportunity.
On the Cover (Left to Right): Austin King ’31; Mary-Katherine Bryant ’21; Letizia Haynie, Preschool and Lower School library assistant; Connor Powers ’32; Gabriella Marchese ’22; Robin McCain, Upper School math teacher; Arabella Flores ’27; Hudson Crunkleton ’29; Samantha Neppl ’26; Jeff Burch, third grade teacher; Bobby Rossilli ’24; Michael Ulku-Steiner, head of school; Josie Misuraca ’33; Charith Fernando ’23; Alice Haney ’27; Forrest Beck, network manager and Upper School robotics teacher; Leigh Bushey ’32; Cal Baker ’22; Emilyn Doan ’28; Nikki Graves, pre-kindergarten teacher; Sarah Parry, Middle School language arts teacher; Adrian Gutierrez-Gonzalez ’20; Lindsey Carpenter ’30; Jordan Babwah, Upper School fitness director; Merritt Schulz ’25
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Thank You!
Summer 2020 Vol. 47 // No. 2 EDITORIAL Kathy McPherson // Editor Sarah Jane Tart // Art Director
COMMUNICATIONS communications@da.org
Leslie King // Director of Communications Kathy McPherson // Associate Director of Communications Melody Guyton Butts // Assistant Director of Communications Sarah Jane Tart // Brand and Design Manager Jesse Paddock // Videographer
Office of Information Technology Forrest Beck, Anne Benson, Ryan Burton, Trevor Hoyt and Brandon Rosser worked around the clock to help make “Durham E-cademy” a success.
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Michael Ulku-Steiner, head of school; Michelle Rosen, Preschool/Lower School librarian; Gib Fitzpatrick, Middle School math teacher; Teresa Engebretsen, Middle School French teacher; Vikram Agrawal ’20; Sean Bilsborrow ’94, varsity boys tennis coach; Tim McKenna, Director of Alumni Engagement; Veronica Kim ’16; Cha'Mia Rothwell ’16; Hannah Lang ’16
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Kim Walker; Yueh Lee; Anne McNamara, Upper School community service coordinator; Andrea Caruso, Upper School science teacher; Michael Branscom; Catherine Angst; Carla Cerami; Mary Moore McLean; Liz Rossilli; John Linger; Dave Chandler, invention studio tech; Anna Savage ’27; Greg Murray, physical education academic leader; Veronica Kim ’16; Sideline Sports/The Ivy League
CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS Sophie Williamson-McLeod ’27, Sunaina Saxena ’31, Nolan Aery ’29, William Zhang ’31, Arden Perreault ’31, Mostafa Abdelbarr ’27, Noah Fine ’25, Claire Hong ’24, Olivia Rivers ’24, Brady Pollard ’26, Fiona Lawton ’26, Cammie Zehner ’21, Darren Bland ’23, Isabelle Nambo ’20, Miriam Holleran-Meyer ’22, Alex Hogue ’21, Mirella Kades ’22
PRODUCTION
Division Technology Coordinators Thanks are also in order for our hardworking division technology coordinators — Michele Gutierrez, Karl Schaefer and Julian Cochran — as well as Preschool/Lower School librarian Michelle Rosen and many others!
RR Donnelley // Printer
LEADERSHIP Michael Ulku-Steiner // Head of School Karen Rabenau // Chair, Board of Trustees Nick Livengood ’08 // President, Alumni Board
PHILANTHROPY AND ALUMNI AFFAIRS
development@da.org
Michelle Morgan // Director of Philanthropy Tim McKenna // Director of Alumni Engagement
Facilities and Security Teams Thank you to the facilities and security teams for taking care of Durham Academy’s campuses while students and teachers went online!
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CONTENTS Moral, Happy, Productive
10 — EMMA ROSSILLI ’21
Photo by Kim Walker
Rossilli has sewn and sold more than 250 cloth face masks, raising more than $2,500 and counting for organizations that are providing families support in the face of the pandemic.
Soccer, Lacrosse, Tennis, Track and Volleyball
20 — SEVEN STUDENT-ATHLETES TO COMPETE IN COLLEGE They will be taking their talents to UNC-Chapel Hill, Brown University, Stevens Institute of Technology, Wofford College, Tufts University, Sewanee and the University of Virginia.
70 ALUMNI Dr. Alison Rosenblitt ’95
22 — CLASS OF 2020 HONORED WITH CARE PACKAGES AND SOCIALLY DISTANCED VISITS ON SENIOR DAY
73 —REPAYING A DEBT TO HER ALMA MATER
Senior advisors delivered smiles, yearbooks, mortarboards, graduation gowns, DA stoles, baseball caps, T-shirts, diploma cases and yard signs.
Veronica Kim ’16
74 — NOT YET
60 — KEEPING A TEAM GOING WHEN THERE’S NO PRACTICE OR COMPETITION
76 — ALUMNI AWARDS TO HONOR WARD HORTON ’94, MOLLY SHAW ’98 AND VERLE REGNERUS
Coaches and student-athletes work to overcome the physical and emotional challenges of a canceled season.
Dr. Caitlin Finn ’10
61 — FOCUSING ON STUDENT WELLNESS DA sports medicine and counseling teams partner to support isolated students.
78 — CARING FOR COVID-19 PATIENTS IN NYC HOSPITALS Cha'Mia Rothwell ’16
80 — A REFLECTION ON A SENIOR SEASON LOST Hannah Lang ’16
64 — MAKING MUSIC TOGETHER, ALONE Being away from campus this spring hasn’t kept students and teachers from joining together to create some amazing music.
82— GONE TO GRADUATION IN MY MIND: LEAVING COLLEGE AMID A GLOBAL CRISIS 84 — ALUMNI REACH OUT TO HELP OTHERS DURING COVID-19 CRISIS
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Moving Through Fear and Fog with Love and Light
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hesitate to write this letter in ink. The world is changing so quickly, so unpredictably and so consequentially that my words will almost certainly be irrelevant in a month. As I write this in early June, I am acutely aware that when the majority of this magazine was completed just a couple of weeks ago, our world looked much different than it does even today. Looking a bit farther in the rearview mirror, in February, we would never have guessed that Durham Academy would move online for a quarter of the school year — joining 191 countries across the globe as they closed K–12 schools, leaving 1.6 billion children at home. Heroically and unsurprisingly, our life-changing faculty rose to the occasion — sustaining connections, learning and joy — despite the distance. In May, we would never have imagined that the murder of an unarmed Black man — a scene enacted with horrific frequency for the entirety of our nation’s history — would catalyze racial justice uprisings in every state. The young people who are protesting now have made clear that they do not intend to live in a world in which they are denied justice and equality like the generations before them. Harvard Professor Cornel West talks often about “love warriors.” As he puts it, “I come from a tradition of a people who have been traumatized and terrorized and stigmatized for 400 years. And what have we done? We have dished out the highest quality of human beings — tied to love.” West credits John Coltrane, Sarah Vaughan and James Baldwin for helping him understand human suffering, and how to transcend it. He points to other love warriors — Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Ella Baker — people who demonstrated “sustained compassion and creativity in the face of sustained catastrophe.” At this point in our school year, in this chapter of American history, West’s phrase resonates deeply. “Sustained compassion and creativity in the face of sustained catastrophe.” Last fall, we mourned the losses of three members of the DA community: senior Jack Linger and
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first-grader Nicky Abraham and his mother. This spring, while 100,000 Americans died of COVID19 — while we and our neighbors were separated, sickened, isolated or thrust into financial hardship — we kept our chins up, our minds open to the challenges of online learning, and our hearts fixed on the children in our charge. “Sustained compassion and creativity in the face of sustained catastrophe.” How did we do this? How can we move through the fear and the fog of the present moment with love and light? How will we navigate our volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous future? Observing the DA community this spring leaves me with three of the answers to those questions: • Mission — Founded during the Great Depression, our school weathered World War II. It was strengthened by the Civil Rights Movement and deepened by 9/11. For the last 50 years, our mission statement has remained steadfastly focused on preparing students for “moral, happy, productive lives.” The stronger the winds of uncertainty blow, the more we rely on the deepest roots of Durham Academy. Whether forced to stay at home or wearing masks on campus, our teachers work with missionary zeal toward long-term outcomes for whole human beings. • Community — Kindergarten parents have never appreciated their teachers more than they do now. Hearing high school students say how much they missed their campus and couldn’t wait to return was among the bittersweet fruits of this spring. We will never again take for granted the daily, easily overlooked blessings of living and learning in community. As we survived our quarantines, set new records for consecutive family dinners and reconnected with our old friends via Zoom, we reminded ourselves that personal connections and meaningful relationships matter most of all. • Learning — I love this quotation from Eric Hoffer: “In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” Those who thrived this spring showed
Photo by Kim Walker
agility, curiosity and a willingness to experiment. Those who will thrive in the future (on DA’s campus or in the world beyond) will need to become experts at listening to all perspectives, learning from all sources and building connections with all kinds of people. This summer, every school and every city in America has the opportunity to become more equitable and more just. Every organization in the world will be transformed by the COVD-19 pandemic. Each will emerge either stronger or weaker as a result, but none will be the same. By the time you read this letter, June of 2020 will be fixed in history. The uncertainty of the future,
however, appears to have no end. This challenging spring convinces me that the DA community will hold steadfast to our mission, take care of each other and be ready for the endless learning ahead.
Michael Ulku-Steiner Head of School @MrUlkuSteiner
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Durham Academy varsity girls soccer coach Susan Ellis will be honored in January 2021 when the North Carolina Soccer Hall of Fame recognizes Raleigh Wings players and coaches as the newest members of its National Champions Hall of Honor. Ellis was an assistant coach of the Raleigh Wings in 1998 and 1999 when the team won back-to-back national championships. The N.C. Soccer Hall of Fame established the National Champions Hall of Honor in 2012 to recognize North Carolina teams and programs that have won national championships. The Raleigh Wings won the United Soccer League (USL) W-league W-1 Division National Championship in the team’s first two years of existence. Ellis was inducted into the N.C. Soccer Hall of Fame in 2019 for her accomplishments and contributions to North Carolina soccer. She was a member of four national championship teams at UNC-Chapel Hill; she coached in the initial women’s professional league, the Women’s Soccer Association, with the Carolina Courage; she has won numerous conference titles as a coach at DA; and she played on five championship teams in the over-30 National Veterans Cup.
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Photo by Yueh Lee
Photo by Kathy McPherson
Susan Ellis Selected for N.C. Soccer’s National Champions Hall of Honor
Middle School Robotics Teams Compete in State Tournament Durham Academy’s three Middle School robotics teams — the Robonators, the Neo Dragons and the DA Cav Squad — had lots to be proud of in their competition in the 2019– 2020 First Lego League season. The Robonators and Cav Squad qualified for the state tournament held in January in Greensboro, where the Robonators won first place for the Presentation Award in recognition of team members' effectiveness in presenting their project. In addition, the Cav Squad placed second for the Inspiration Award, in recognition of team members' enthusiasm and spirit.
Volunteers Package 30,000 Meals to Combat Global Hunger
Photo by Anne McNamara
More than 170 volunteers from every division of Durham Academy helped pack 30,000 meals to help end global hunger at the school’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service meal-packaging event. The event marked the school’s 11th year partnering with Rise Against Hunger for DA's MLK Day of Service. The Jan. 22 event was organized by the Upper School’s Rise Against Hunger club, which is led by Claire Ridley ’20, Katie Hunter ’20, Anna Catherine Wilson ’21, Lucy Steiner ’21, Stacey Kang ’22 and faculty advisor Liliana Simón. Online donations made through Rise Against Hunger's website raised $1,400; donations at In The Pocket’s Rise Against Hunger benefit concert totaled $2,100; and the Rise Against Hunger Club raised almost $1,800 through events like waffle sales and car washes.
Fifth-Grader Garrett Zhou Wins DA Geo Bee
Photo by Michael Branscom
Photo by Kathy McPherson
It's not easy sitting on a stage in front of the entire Middle School to compete in what's essentially the most wide-ranging geography pop quiz. But that's exactly what students did for the final round of the Middle School's National Geographic Bee. Congratulations are in order to all of the finalist competitors, who first had to best their classmates to reach the school-wide round, and especially to fifth-grader Garrett Zhou, the Durham Academy school champion. This marked the first time since 2009 that a fifth-grader has won the DA Geo Bee. Thousands of students in fourth through eighth grades compete in the National Geographic Bee from all across the United States. Over more than three decades, 120 million students have participated in the Geo Bee.
Photo by Andrea Caruso
Impressive Showings for Science Olympiad Teams Kudos to Durham Academy’s three Science Olympiad teams for their impressive showings at the regional tournament held Feb. 1 in Raleigh. The Upper School varsity team placed first, the junior varsity team placed second and the Middle School team placed 11th. The Upper School varsity team placed first in a pool of 22 teams, and qualified for the state tournament, which was to have been held April 24–25 but was canceled due to COVID-19. The junior varsity team placed second in a field of eight teams, and the Middle School team placed 11th of 24 teams.
Four DA Upper Schoolers Selected for Governor’s School this Summer While Governor's School of North Carolina had to be canceled for this summer, congratulations to the four DA Upper Schoolers who were selected for the prestigious program: Caroline Aldridge ’21, French; Asia Crowley ’22, Dance; Elle Gross ’21, French; and Mira Pickus ’21, English.
Karen Richardson Completes World View Global Music Fellows Program Congratulations to Middle School chorus teacher Karen Richardson, who was selected for the 2019–2020 World View Global Music Fellows program at UNC-Chapel Hill. Richardson completed her immersive work as a Global Music Fellow in the spring and created these teaching materials that are now part of a resource for teachers: “Using ‘Water is Wide/ Wusuli Boat Song’ to Explore Lullabies” and “Triple Meter & Quadruple Meter: Comparing and Combining them in Musical Compositions.” World View programs are intended to equip K-12 and community college educators with global knowledge, best practices and resources to prepare students to engage in an interconnected and diverse world. Richardson, who has taught chorus at the Middle School since 2015, was destined to have a career in music. “My mother told me that when she was pregnant with me, she actually played the piano every day, hoping that she would have a child who would love music, and I guess it turned out,” she said.
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Artwork by Sophie Williamson-McLeod
Fifth-grader Sophie Williamson-McLeod was named runner-up in an international design thinking/3D design skills competition. Australiabased software company Makers Empire runs a monthly in-app competition that gives students an opportunity to test their skills against their peers from all over the world. The March competition asked students to design a mascot that stands up to bullies. “Sophie's design in the Bully Busters competition was very creative and innovative,” Mandi Dimitriadis of Makers Empire said in an email congratulating Sophie. “We loved her cheerful mascots with their strong anti-bullying and girl power message.”
Photo by Catherine Angst
Sophie WilliamsonMcLeod’s 3D Design Rises to the Top
Fabiola Salas Villalobos Contributes to Book on African Diaspora This spring marked two major milestones for Middle School Spanish teacher Fabiola Salas Villalobos. On April 30 she successfully defended her dissertation for her Ph.D. degree and she was awarded a doctorate in cultural studies and literacies from UNC-Chapel Hill. In addition, Salas Villalobos wrote a chapter in Engaging the African Diaspora in K-12 Education, a book published in April, that provides teachers with information and resources related to African diaspora communities in the United States, Europe and Latin America. Salas Villalobos’ chapter, “The Importance of Recognizing Afrodescendientes as Fundamental Members of Latin Countries: Using Costa Rica as an Example of How to Enrich Students’ Perspectives on the African Diaspora,” is based on her experience teaching on the topic at Durham Academy. The chapter is an outgrowth of Salas Villalobos’ participation in the African Diaspora Fellows Program at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2015 and 2016. She also has served as a presenter and program evaluator for the African Diaspora Fellows Program. Engaging the African Diaspora in K-12 Education combines the writings of scholars of the African diaspora with practical, hands-on tips and resources from middle and high school teachers and administrators.
DA Wins AP Computer Science Female Diversity Award Durham Academy has earned the College Board’s AP Computer Science Female Diversity Award in recognition of at least half of all AP Computer Science students in the 2018–2019 school year identifying as female. Out of the 20,000 schools that offer AP courses, DA is among a mere 143 to be recognized for AP Computer Science. For computer science teacher Julian Cochran, it’s been meaningful to see more of a gender balance in his classroom. “To have those avenues open up for all students, it’s great. There's always been a focus on getting those underserved populations to take classes,” he said, noting that he also strives to increase ethnic and racial diversity in DA’s computer science program. Read the full story at bit.ly/girlscomputerscience. Photo by Melody Guyton Butts
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Sarah Ridley ’22 Sarah Ridley '22 has been selected to serve on the 2019–2020 TechGirlz Teen Advisory Board. TechGirlz is a nonprofit offering free, open source technology courses for middle school girls to help foster a love for technology. The courses are designed to inspire curiosity, impart confidence and build community, and are taught by volunteer instructors in 10 states and four countries to tens of thousands of girls. The advisory board is made up of high school-aged girls who serve as advisors and mentors for the program at-large. Ridley is one of 19 members of the advisory board. For the first time, the board was divided into two regions because of the high number of competitive applicants. The board provides hands-on experiences, helping both younger TechGirlz participants and staff. They help design new workshops and raise awareness for the need to increase the number of tech programs serving young girls. TechGirlz has served 20,000 students through its programs.
As the COVID-19 pandemic was spreading across the globe, ninth-grader Sophia Hand was working hard to help make a public health campaign for The Gambia. About 18,000 copies of leaflets and posters for which she designed artwork were distributed throughout the West African country — to villages, health centers, hospitals, mosques, youth groups and more. Hand and her family lived in The Gambia last year. Her mother, Dr. Carla Cerami, a professor with UNC's Gillings School of Global Public Health, has worked in the country since 2016. View a PDF version of the leaflet Hand designed at bit.ly/SophiaHandArtwork.
Photo by Carla Cerami
Photo by Mary Moore McLean
Photo by Kathy McPherson
Sophia Hand ’23 Helps with Public Health Campaign for The Gambia
Benny Klein ’20 Benny Klein ’20 has been awarded a Morehead-Cain Scholarship to attend UNC-Chapel Hill. The scholarship covers all expenses for four years of undergraduate study, as well as summer enrichment experiences. Klein is one of 70 Morehead-Cain scholars chosen this spring from across North Carolina, the United States and around the world. Leadership, moral force of character, academic achievement and physical vigor are criteria for the award, which was founded in 1954 as the nation’s first merit scholarship program. In addition to serving as president of the Upper School student body, Klein is the founder of R.A.I.S.E., a club that promotes inclusivity and social equity through affinity groups for marginalized students, fundraises to support a diversity scholarship, events and other initiatives. He is also the founder of Bundle Up Durham, a nonprofit that organizes community coat drives for students in need, and he was a member of the varsity basketball and baseball teams.
Impressive Results on National French Test Senior French students at Durham Academy were among 3,969 students nationwide who participated in the Level 5 National French Contest (the Grand Concours) in March, and their results were impressive. Madeleine Genova ranked No. 1 in the North Carolina American Association of Teachers of French chapter, as well as No. 4 nationally and received a Gold Award. Hayden Goss ranked No. 2 in the state chapter, as well as No. 8 nationally and received a Silver Award. Annie Brooks ranked No. 5 in the chapter and No. 12 nationally, receiving a Bronze Award. In addition, former French and francophone literature students fared very well in their division (for advanced level students not currently enrolled in those classes). Annie Ma ranked No. 1 in the state chapter and No. 1 nationally, earning the highest score of her division and a Platinum Award. She is one of only 10 students of the 3,969 competing nationwide to receive a perfect score. Esme Longley ranked No. 2 in the state chapter and No. 2 nationally, earning a Gold Award.
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MORAL HAPPY PRODUCTIVE Finishing out her junior year of high school from home, with all of her activities canceled, Emma Rossilli found herself with quite a bit of time on her hands. At the same time, she struggled to process the grim news coming in: thousands of people dying of COVID-19, millions losing their jobs practically overnight, and the innumerable consequences of the public health and economic crisis on families. So, she pulled out her sewing machine and got to work. As of early June, Rossilli had sewn and sold more than 250 cloth face masks, raising more than $2,500 for organizations that are providing families support in the face of the pandemic. “My dad’s still working. I’m healthy. I’m still able to do school, and I don't have the responsibilities that a lot of other kids my age are having,” she said. “I just felt really lucky but also kind of useless that I was just sitting here.” Rossilli’s efforts serve up a double dose of good: Masks help reduce the risk of viral transmission for the wearer and those around them, and the funds she raises support those who are facing hardship. After researching nonprofits focused on helping children — “I just love kids and there are so many kids who need help,” she explained — she decided to donate the first $500 she raised to No Kid Hungry, which works to end childhood hunger. “I’m really lucky and I’ve never had any trouble getting food or anything,” Rossilli said. “But it makes me really sad that a lot of kids do. A lot of kids can’t get their school lunches right now because they’re not at school. No Kid Hungry helps kids with that, especially right now.” The second $500 went to Diaper Bank of North Carolina, which
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Emma Rossilli ’21 Story by Melody Guyton Butts
ensures that families living in poverty have access to diapers. “There’s a lot of people who can’t get diapers right now, which is so sad. I can’t imagine not having diapers for your baby,” she said. Rossilli also donated $500 to UNICEF; $300 to Doctors Without Borders; and $300 to Shining Light in Darkness, which works to support victims of domestic violence. “It is a very pressing issue at this time because people have been stuck at home with their abusive partners,” Rossilli explained. This isn’t the first time Rossilli has put her skills to work to help others.
“ It just makes me feel like I’m actually helping people. I feel really lucky to be able to do that.” — Emma Rossilli ’21
As a ninth-grader, she was inspired by then-senior Cami Simpson’s (’18) work to support abandoned children in Romania. That inspired the launch of Rossilli’s baking business — Cookies for Cause — and she raised more than $400 for Simpson’s efforts by baking and selling Valentine’s Day treats. She has also baked to raise funds for JUST TRYAN IT, a nonprofit that supports families of pediatric cancer patients. Before she started her mask-making project, Rossilli had a good bit of sewing experience — from making clothes for her dolls years ago, to making a pillow for her dad — and had taken a few sewing classes.
She made her first few masks for family members who are nurses in New York, and then she asked her mother to post about her masks on Facebook. “Right away I got an overwhelming number of orders,” Rossilli recalled. After making more than 250 masks, Rossilli has her “one-person assembly line” down to a science. She makes several masks at once — cutting the fabric, pinning them and then sewing them. When she was juggling school work and mask-making, she made about 12 masks every day or so, but she anticipates amping up production with her free time this summer. While she’s sewing, she does what many of us have done to pass the time during the pandemic — she catches up on Netflix. “As far as the sewing skills, it just shows how it’s great to be exposed to different things because you never know when they're going to come in handy,” she said. “And it’s also fun because I can make my friends cute masks. I think we're going to be wearing masks for a long time.” Rossilli is grateful to those who have helped her efforts: her mother, who has helped pay for materials to ensure that 100% of the funds raised are donated; everyone who has donated materials; her family members, who have surrendered their kitchen table to her sewing machine and ran errands; and fellow rising DA senior Katherine Lantzy and her family, who offered their home as a mask pickup location. “It just makes me feel like I’m making more of a difference because I’ve raised almost $2,000 dollars now, which is a lot of money,” Rossilli said. “So it’s not just a little bit of money — and it just makes me feel like I’m actually helping people. I feel really lucky to be able to do that.”
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Photo by Liz Rossilli
Car Parade Celebrations Give a Sense of Closure
Commencement, Closing Exercises Move Online
Commencement and closing exercises that would have been held at Duke University’s Page Auditorium and in Durham Academy performing arts buildings and gyms moved online on May 28 and 29. Families were able to tune in to a virtual version of each ceremony broadcast on Vimeo Live, and were then invited to visit campus for car parades to give their kindergartners, fourth-graders, eighth-graders and seniors a chance to celebrate as a class and have a sense of closure.
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Photography by Melody Guyton Butts
Preschool Closing Exercises
“You [kindergartners] embarked on a remarkable journey in August and over the course of these last 10 months, you have accomplished so many goals — you have published books, conducted experiments, crafted delectable dishes in cooking, solved innumerable math problems, produced breathtaking art and asked thousands of questions. You are experts in articulating your thinking, respectfully challenging your peers, making connections, trying new things and persisting through challenges. Each new day, exciting lesson and fun activity has added to our bank of precious moments.” — Christian Hairston-Randleman, Preschool Director
Watch the kindergarten closing exercises at da.org/psclosing.
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Lower School Closing Exercises “One of the most important things that you can do, fourth-graders, as you move up to the Middle School, is to be true to who you are. … You have been created a unique and special person — there’s no one else like you. You like some things that your friends don’t like, your friends are good at some things that you’re maybe not so good at doing. That’s OK. Be brave enough to be yourself and to speak what’s in your heart.”
Photography by Melody Guyton Butts
— Carolyn Ronco, Lower School Director
Watch the fourth grade closing exercises at da.org/lsclosing.
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“Perseverance. To me that word perfectly captures both the spirit of this [eighth-grade] class and my greatest wish for you as we send you off to high school and beyond. … Your teachers and I have always remarked at the closeness of this class. Sure, you have different groups of friends and a variety of interests, but there’s a kindness and accepting of difference that has been a hallmark of this grade throughout the years. Your closeness, combined with your abundant and usually appropriate sense of humor, have armed you with your own unique brand of perseverance. And boy, have you needed it for the last part of your eighth-grade year. … But in a way, this has been tremendous preparation for you as emerging adults. Even in non-pandemic times, the world is full of unexpected challenges and obstacles, and you are actually going to face them armed with more preparation than most eighth-graders have as they head to high school. So know that you have earned your strength.” — Jon Meredith, Middle School Director
Photography by Sarah Jane Tart
Middle School Closing Exercises
Eighth Grade Celebration The Middle School also enjoyed a video version of the Eighth Grade Celebration assembly, which typically precedes their graduation. Meredith delivered remarks from the steel beams of the new Arts & Languages building, performed a rap with lyrics for each member of the class and played their annual slideshow. Eighth-graders then “exited” the assembly through a virtual version of the tunnel of love, created in Minecraft!
Watch the eighth grade celebration at bit.ly/8thGradeCelebration2020.
Watch the eighth grade closing exercises at da.org/msclosing.
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A Group with Grit, Determination and Resilience, #DAClassof2020
Senior Commencement “What a journey you’ve had. … The adults you seniors are becoming are undoubtedly more resilient, more creative and more compassionate than those who might have sailed blissfully through an uneventful senior spring. The fire of this crisis is forging extraordinary traits in you. You and your generation — the global Class of 2020 — will solve problems, create beauty and build relationships like no generation before you.” — Michael Ulku-Steiner, Head of School
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“Together, we have faced challenges and victories, loss and moments of joyous celebration. We have witnessed the reshaping of the campus, the end of old traditions and the start of new ones. And you ended your Durham Academy career at home, without all the trappings and fare that should have been yours. … But it cannot diminish your accomplishments. This final chapter has not unfolded as we had imagined, but the journey was full of meaningful moments that will define your high school experience more than any ceremony. Moments of grief, moments of joy, moments of friendship, moments of loss, moments of learning and moments of growth. You have arrived here today with an education in life’s unpredictability and the tools to face the challenges that await you.” — Lanis Wilson, Upper School Director
Photography by Kim Walker
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“Keep the (Cavalier) family close. Over your time at Durham Academy, you have built amazing relationships with so many different types of people. I know first hand because I was a student there and some of those amazing people are still there today. They’re the teachers, the faculty, the staff members who taught you each and every day, who guided you on your academic journey and who maybe helped you with some life things along the way, too. But you also met some incredible, incredible peers who you’re going to be working with even beyond just your time at Durham Academy. … And in my experience, there’s been no better family than my Cavalier family. Keep your mission first. You’re about to embark on an exciting phase of life, I can promise you that. You’re going to be afforded so many unique and exciting opportunities, and you should take advantage of those! You should sign up for anything that sounds of interest to you. You should explore and reevaluate your hobbies often. It’s the only way that you can continue growing and finding out what skills you might be really good at and some things that you might want to shy away from. … What I will caution you about is not letting
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other noise get into your space. As you have grown during your time at Durham Academy, you’ve already discovered the things that really excite you and that you’re passionate about. For me, those were activities like the Nicaragua Club, that was tutoring on Sundays in Ms. Simón’s classroom with local youth. For me, those moments made not just my school experience special, they impacted my life. And it taught me that I wanted to live a life of service. So every opportunity that comes my way now, because I am a smart and capable Durham Academy graduate, I have to evaluate with a lens about my own mission. And my mission is to be of service to others, and I let that guide and steer every decision that I make. Say thank you. Expressing a little gratitude can go a long way. And I mean that for you personally. The truth of the matter is, gratitude yields happiness. And the key to life is not a job, or it’s not how much money you might be able to make or what you’ve done, it’s how grateful you are that things worked out such that you could be the best version of yourself.” — Derek Rhodes ’11, Commencement Speaker, Director, Business Strategy at Miami HEAT
“I’ve realized that the most important thing for the Class of 2020 and all of us to learn is that we shouldn’t depend on the ‘supposed to’s.’ Yes, it sounds like a cliché, but it also couldn’t be more true than it is today. We shouldn’t expect to get another day, another chance, because nothing is given. And we shouldn’t wait for something wonderful to be over and then appreciate it. I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about the message of our classmate, friend and teammate Jack Linger, who passed away in August. Jack’s message completely fits with our situation right now. He urged us to think as though we had a gold coin to use each day, which represented our ability to take advantage of our opportunities. I think Jack’s message just applies perfectly to our situation right now — that we need to live in the moment and engage with our community, our surroundings, our opportunities and be grateful for it all, because we never know when it will be taken away. … We are the class that survived online learning, we are the class of Jack Linger, we are the class that broke in and broke parts of the new STEM building, we are the class of COVID-19, we are the class of a new decade, we are the Class of 2020.” — Claire Middleton ’20, Senior Speaker
Watch the commencement exercises at da.org/commencement.
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Soccer, Lacrosse, Tennis, Track and Volleyball
Seven Student-Athletes to Compete in College
Left to right: Mark Alkins, Peyton Goldthwaite, Tanner Barry, Caroline Sapir, Ryan Kirschner, Madeline Towning, Millie Loehr and Director of Athletics Andy Pogach
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Virtually surrounded by coaches, teammates, teachers and friends — and with an abundance of hugs and high-fives from family members at home — six Durham Academy seniors committed to continue their athletic careers in college on April 22. In introducing them via video, Director of Athletics Andy Pogach said the student-athletes “represent the best of our school” who have excelled in the classroom and on athletic fields, courts and tracks. Mark Alkins will run track at UNCChapel Hill; Tanner Barry will play soccer at Brown University; Ryan Kirschner will play soccer at Stevens Institute of Technology; Millie Loehr will play volleyball at Wofford College; Caroline Sapir will play lacrosse at Tufts University; and Madeline Towning will play tennis at Sewanee: The University of the South. They join senior Peyton Goldthwaite, who last fall signed a national letter of intent to play soccer at the University of Virginia.
Mark Alkins
Track UNC-Chapel Hill Mark Alkins, who will run track at UNC-Chapel Hill, lettered in track and field all four years of his time at the Upper School. He was crowned NCISAA (N.C. Independent Schools Athletic Association) champion in the 800m event and 4x800m relay in 2019. Alkins was named TISAC (Triangle Independent Schools Athletic Conference) champion in the 400m, and 4x400 and 4x800 relays in 2019; in the 800m and 4x400 relay in 2018; and in the 4x400 relay in 2017.
Peyton Goldthwaite
Soccer University of Virginia
In a ceremony on campus last fall, Peyton Goldthwaite committed to play soccer at the University of Virginia. A midfielder with the U-19 NC Courage Academy team, she has played with the U-16 U.S. Girls’ National Team, the U.S. Youth Soccer Olympic Development Program regional and state teams, the U.S. Club Soccer iD2 National Identification and Development Program, the U-17 U.S. Soccer Development Academy and the U.S. Soccer Girls National Team training camps.
Tanner Barry
Soccer Brown University
Tanner Barry will play soccer at Brown University. He was a member of the DA varsity boys soccer team from 2016–2018 and earned the DA Soccer Coaches Award in 2018. In the 2019– 2020 season, he played with the North Carolina FC U-18/19 team.
Caroline Sapir
Lacrosse Tufts University
Caroline Sapir, who will play lacrosse at Tufts University, has been a member of DA’s varsity girls lacrosse team for the past five years. She was named to the NCISAA All-State team in 2018 and earned TISAC All-Conference honors in 2018 and 2019.
Ryan Kirschner
Soccer Stevens Institute of Technology Ryan Kirschner, who will play soccer at Stevens Institute of Technology, has lettered in soccer at DA from 2016–2019. In 2019, he was named to the NCISAA 4A All-State team, the TISAC All-Conference team and the N.C. Soccer Coaches Association AllRegion team.
Madeline Towning
Tennis Sewanee: The University of the South Madeline Towning will play tennis at Sewanee: The University of the South after earning varsity letters at DA for the last five years. She was named to the NCISAA 4A All-State team in 2018 and 2019 and to the TISAC AllConference team from 2016–2019. She was crowned TISAC Player of the Year in 2019. Towning helped the Cavaliers to back-to-back NCISAA state championships in 2017 and 2018 and, with 125 career wins, stands at No. 2 in the DA record book.
Millie Loehr
Volleyball Wofford College Millie Loehr, who will play volleyball at Wofford College, lettered in volleyball at DA from 2017–2019. She earned NCISAA 4A All-State honors in 2018 and 2019 and TISAC All-Conference honors in 2018 and 2019.
Watch the spring virtual signing day at bit.ly/athleticsigning20.
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Class of 2020 Honored with Care Packages and Socially Distanced Visits on Senior Day Story by Leslie King
The Durham Academy community celebrated the 111 members of the Class of 2020 on Senior Day, May 8, which kicked off with a video message from Head of School Michael Ulku-Steiner. “I’ll say now what I’ve been feeling a lot, which is all kinds of pride in your class, which has been through all kinds of trials and tribulations,” he reflected. “And we feel like we have walked through fire with you and that you have been through some unprecedented things. I want to say (privately) just how much you and this class means to me. … Today — congratulations, you have finished your high school academic career. … Celebrate this day, know that we’re thinking about you — we are mourning with you, we are celebrating with you, we are really proud of you.” Seniors had some extra-special, in-person, socially distanced visitors to help them start their morning — their advisors, who came bearing much-anticipated senior swag! Keeping with tradition, the seniors were the first class to receive their yearbooks, and advisors also delivered mortarboards, graduation gowns, DA stoles, baseball caps, T-shirts, diploma cases (seniors received their actual diplomas on May 29 and 30) and yard signs. The afternoon was marked by senior awards traditionally conferred during a senior assembly, but this year, award recipients were honored by their teachers in Microsoft Teams meetings with their families and advisors. Senior Day deliveries were just as special for advisors as they were for the seniors themselves. Upper School Chinese teacher and senior advisor Bonnie Wang's "Quarantine Wlog" recaps her sweet four-county journey to deliver Class of 2020 care packages, as well as a wonderful tribute to the "Cheerwang," her first-ever advisory group.
Watch Bonnie Wang’s Senior Day deliveries video at bit.ly/CheerwangDeliveries. View Michael Ulku-Steiner’s Senior Day message at bit.ly/SeniorDayMessage.
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Independent Study Fund, Flagpole to Honor Memory of Jack Linger ’20
On June 2, 2019, rising Durham Academy senior Jack Linger embarked on a journey to fulfill an inner wanderlust, driven by a sense of purpose. He hit the road after dipping his bike tires in the Pacific Ocean for a solo, 3,500-mile, cross-country bicycle trip from Anacortes, Washington, to Brunswick, Maine, traveling through 11 states and Canada. While Linger’s summer adventure was inspired by his love for nature and the outdoors, it was fueled by a deeper desire to become an informed, responsible citizen as he approached voting age and the opportunity to participate in a national election. “We have the right to vote,” Linger said in an interview shortly after completing his trip. “It’s an important duty to be an active member in our political environment and even cooler that every vote has the same weight — our political system is a lot fairer because of our right to vote.” The bike trip also provided the ideal framework for generating material for Linger’s fall independent study project. He conducted interviews with people at various stopping points along his cross-country journey, gaining insight and perspective into what mattered most to his fellow Americans as he formed his own political opinions. Linger shared dispatches from his journey through a blog titled “America Across the Divides.” In an interview with WRAL’s Amanda Lamb about a month into his travels, the 17-year-old explained,
Photo by John Linger
Story by Leslie King
“ We have something really special here at DA — the ability to start something on our own and find ourselves along the way… Follow up on something you really care about and make it happen.” — Jack Linger ’20
“The land and what’s done with the land around them seems to be at the center of any discussion and argument. I wanted to see my country, our country, before I voted and kind of understand what life is like elsewhere.” The trip pushed Linger outside of his own comfort zone, not only in terms of broadening his worldview through his interviews and interactions with people he met along the way; it was also a lesson in perseverance as he attempted to fulfill a carefully crafted travel plan that had him averaging 50 to 90 miles a day. After 52 days on the road, Linger ended his journey the way he started it, by dipping his bike tires into the Atlantic Ocean in Brunswick, Maine. He returned home with a new perspective on the world. Tragically, Linger died unexpectedly about three and a half weeks later, just before he would have joined his classmates on their first rite of passage together — Senior Challenge. In the weeks and months that followed, the DA community came together to support Linger’s family — his mother, Kathleen; his father, John; and his sister and DA eighth-grader Alison. The Lingers were overwhelmed by the kindness and support they received. After taking some time to reflect about how they wanted to honor Jack’s memory, the Lingers have generously established an endowment that will support students who share his adventurous spirit. In May, the Linger family created The Jack Linger Independent Study Fund to provide financial resources to rising junior and senior DA students looking to create their own independent projects that could be characterized as unique, enriching and “outside of the box.” An annual summer grant will afford one or more students the opportunity to expand their personal horizons and step outside of their own comfort zones through the pursuit of independent study projects. “While healing is still very much in process, we have made progress in
honoring Jack in a way that we feel he would be quite proud,” Kathleen and John Linger said in an email. “The goal of the fund is to encourage students to follow a passion and challenge themselves, just like Jack did while biking across the country and talking to everyday Americans about what matters most to them.” Student grant recipients will be selected based on the merit of their proposed project and its potential impact on the student and the world. Anyone can make a gift to help support the endowment. “The fund is a truly special way for our family to keep Jack’s memory alive,” the Lingers said. “We want to enable current and future generations of students to pursue an individual interest in new ways. In doing so, we believe that we will send more Durham Academy graduates into their next phase of education with a unique and powerful experience.” When DA resumes on-campus classes this fall, Upper School students and teachers will be able to enjoy a special oasis created in Jack’s honor. A flagpole and garden area are being installed on the Upper School campus at the bottom of the outdoor commons steps that lead down to the athletic fields. Cannon Architects — the firm that designed the new Upper School STEM & Humanities Center, K Family Outdoor Commons, Learning Commons and Kirby Gym — designed the space, which includes a flagpole for audiences at outdoor athletic events to face as they sing the national anthem, a small bench facing the athletic fields and a memorial plaque. Upper School student Sustainability Committee members helped the Lingers devise a plan and assisted in choosing native plants. “For our family, [the fund], the flagpole and garden are so much more than an honor to Jack,” Kathleen and John Linger said. “Durham Academy allowed Jack to think outside the box and pursue a dream.
Our goal is to continue to ignite individual creativity and enable enriching opportunities.” In the text written for an Upper School convocation speech that he was to deliver last August, Jack provided a glimpse into how Durham Academy had supported his dreams. "My past three years, I have come to realize how special the Upper School is at Durham Academy. And part of that has come from trying my best to be in the moment. Being in the moment is not necessarily something one comes by easily, but if we focus on the positive and take some initiative, it can come about more readily. … Each day we wake up healthy, we get a gold coin. And at the end of that day, it is spent, regardless of what we do with it. Our time is the most valuable thing we have, and it is important to get our best use of it. … We have something really special here at DA — the ability to start something on our own and find ourselves along the way. Start a club. Step out of our comfort zone. Follow up on something you really care about and make it happen.”
You can make a gift to help support the endowment at bit.ly/JackLingerFund.
Senior Reflections
Casey Carrow “Put simply, DA has allowed me to find myself, and it’s all thanks to the devoted faculty and staff that have supported me along the way.” It is nearly impossible to understand the sheer magnitude of the impact my 14 years at Durham Academy has had on me. Nonetheless, one thing I know for sure is that DA has shaped me into the person I am today. From traveling to Europe with my classmates and teachers, to getting to tutor children in the greater Durham community, to choreographing for my dance class and performing on the DA stage, I have had the opportunity to do things I never dreamed I would get to experience in school. However, to me, the greatest opportunity I’ve been afforded from my time
Senior portraits by Mary Moore McLean
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at DA has been the ability to find my own voice and follow my own path. Both the Preschool and Lower School allowed me to explore all of my different interests, including sports, art, drama, music and foreign language, as well as develop my academic abilities. The Middle School strengthened this foundation and pushed me to find what I was truly passionate about. The Upper School then gave me a platform to share my passions with others while allowing me to make my voice heard in the community. Put simply, DA has allowed me to find myself, and it’s all thanks to the devoted faculty and staff that have supported me along the way. Although this spring was not how I imagined it, the dedication and outpouring of support I felt from my teachers and classmates was even stronger than before. Whether I was pretending my backyard was a stage or my bedroom a classroom, I could see how much my teachers cared and wanted me to succeed despite the challenges of the circumstances. While I may always dream of experiencing a senior prom or a normal graduation, I know that I have already experienced the most important parts of my senior year. It was on the days when my biggest problem was trying to run across campus to be in English class on time or finishing my math homework before getting ready for fall formal. It was on the days when I was excited about presenting a project in Spanish, teaching my Augustine student, or even going to a basketball game after school. Those are the days when I truly experienced what makes DA special. It’s those days, the ones spent laughing with friends during lunch, participating in class discussions and performing on the stage, that I will cherish most about my senior year. I am so grateful to have been a part of a tightknit community that values learning, connection and support above all else. Regardless of being online or in person, that DA spirit is always consistent, bringing those in the community closer together and motivating them to be their best selves. I know part of that spirit will stay with me even as I move on from DA. I am forever thankful to everyone who has supported me over my 14 years, and I will always be proud to be a Cavalier!
Isaiah Caldwell “Everyone in the Durham Academy community seems to care for each other in a way that strongly resembles a family.” This senior spring has definitely not been what I expected, but it does not take away from all of the other memories and relationships I have made during my time at Durham Academy. I came to DA in kindergarten, making me a “lifer” at the school. Over these past 13 years, I have gotten the chance to meet some amazing people and have many unique experiences. Whenever I think about the things that separate Durham Academy from other schools, both public and private, the first thing that comes to mind is always our strong and supportive community. Being a relatively small school, you know
a good majority of your peers and teachers, and DA does an amazing job of making this a positive aspect of the school, rather than a negative one. Everyone in the Durham Academy community seems to care for each other in a way that strongly resembles a family. This is often shown by how we rally around one another during troubling times, and these uncertain times of the COVID19 pandemic are an excellent example. Students and faculty from all of the different campuses are connecting with one another and providing support for each other. I especially appreciate all that the school has done to make sure that the senior class feels loved and remembered. Our teachers understand that this is not how we wanted or expected our senior spring to go, and that we unfortunately missed out on a lot of anticipated events. As a result, they have put forth tons of effort to make sure that we could still try to have these events in a virtual setting, given our circumstances. Being a lifer, I have been fortunate to learn from many amazing teachers, many of which are still teaching at their respective grade levels. During these past few weeks, I have had many of these old and current teachers reach out to me and offer words of encouragement which is extremely uplifting and the ultimate example of the Durham Academy community. It would be wrong of me to talk about my experience at Durham Academy and not mention the amazing friendships I have built over the years. I am blessed to have an extremely tight-knit group of friends who I consider my family and would have my back through anything. We have already been through a ton while at DA, whether it was on the soccer field, during free time or in the classroom. All of these experiences, both good and bad, have only brought us closer together and I am truly grateful. There was a lot that we had planned over these last few months, but never got to experience due to the pandemic. However, being able to interact with everybody on social media has made the isolation significantly better. I want to thank everybody who has contributed to my Durham Academy experience in any way, because it would not have been the same without you. These last 13 years have been extremely memorable, and I cannot wait to come back and visit as a DA alum!
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Colin Mackay “I have learned what it means to be a good person and friend, how to be available for others when they need you and how to be a productive student.” My time at Durham Academy has been truly transformative. When I first came to DA, I came as one of only two new students that year, so naturally, I didn’t know anyone there. Despite that, the teachers and students alike were quick to integrate me into their communities. Since then, I’ve made many friends, some of whom I believe I will be lifelong friends with. As time passed and I got older, I began to learn more about myself and who I wanted to become. I think it’s reasonable to say that DA had a positive impact on my outlook on myself. I have learned what it means to be a
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good person and friend, how to be available for others when they need you and how to be a productive student, just to name a few things. Now that I am at the end of my high school career, I am able to look back on my time at DA and see how far I have come as a result of the people I have been working and playing with for the last 10 years. Throughout my time at DA, I have noticed that two main things have remained constant as the years have passed. The first is that the workload has always remained challenging, but engaging, and the second is that the teachers I have had have always been available for help whenever I needed it. Not once have I thought that the work we did in class was disconnected from the material that we were learning at the time. However, there have been times that I just didn’t understand what was happening in class, but I didn’t panic because I knew that my teachers would be happy to assist me. This is especially true in my Chinese class this year; I have sometimes been unable to understand what we are doing in class, and since there is only one other student in the class, it becomes pretty noticeable if someone doesn’t understand what’s going on. However, Mrs. Wang is always there to help, no matter what the topic is or how simple the question might be, and I’ve really appreciated that, which is why I am really going to miss being a part of the Wang advisory and Chinese class next year. The two facts I mentioned above, despite the drastic changes to our learning style, have remained unchanged this year. At the outset of this year, I don’t think anyone could have predicted that the school year would end with everyone being forced into their homes by a worldwide pandemic. Despite this unpredictable change, when the news came in that we wouldn’t be returning to school anytime soon, the faculty was quick to create a new plan to continue our learning, and I have to say, their plan worked extremely well. I have still been able to learn new materials in all of my classes through online learning, and each of my teachers has been readily available for help, which I really appreciated. While I do wish that our senior year could have had a traditional end, I am grateful that the faculty was able to continue our learning through the end of the year and that I was able to work alongside my friends for a while longer.
Julia Villani “I’ve learned so much in my classes, on the stage and on the field. My teachers, coaches and friends have helped me discover more about myself and how I can contribute to my communities.”
friends and faculty. My sophomore year, I auditioned for the fall play, Almost, Maine, and met so many new people through the cast and crew. Sophomore year, I also decided to double up in my science classes, taking chemistry in addition to the traditional sophomore physics course. Mrs. Newman was an incredible chemistry teacher, and for the second semester chemistry project encouraged me to research the intersection of chemistry and art in detecting art forgery. It’s because of Mrs. Newman and this project that I’m now planning to double major in chemistry and art history. Everyone always says that junior year is a crazy year, and for me that was no different. With a difficult course load I mainly focused on academics, but found release through weightlifting after school with Coach Babwah and playing my third year on the soccer team. My senior year was incredible. I took some of my favorite classes, such as AP Art History with Mr. Adair. I’ve always loved art, and in this class of six students I had the opportunity to learn about art more formally but also have days to just discuss and debate art. Senior year, I also went out on a whim and joined the pit band for the winter musical, The Addams Family, and played keyboard and an odd assortment of percussion instruments. Though the latter half of senior year was, of course, cut off, being able to talk with teachers and classmates through video calls provided some much needed structure and connection. I’m so grateful for my four years at Durham Academy. I’ve learned so much in my classes, on the stage and on the field. My teachers, coaches and friends have helped me discover more about myself and how I can contribute to my communities. Going into college next year is exciting and nerve-wracking, but I am confident that with all that I’ve learned at DA I will be ready for whatever the next four years will bring.
I came to Durham Academy in ninth grade, excited and nervous to start the next chapter in my life. At DA, I’ve been able to take advantage of the many opportunities offered to me in academics, the arts and athletics. Looking back, my freshman year really flew by. I was on the cross-country and soccer teams, took Mr. Bohanek’s acting studio class, and started developing relationships with
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STORY BY KATHY MCPHERSON
How Durham Academy Became Durham E-cademy It seemed almost like magic the way school transitioned from Durham Academy to Durham E-cademy — poof, from classroom instruction to online instruction in the blink of an eye — but that was far from reality. Head of School Michael Ulku-Steiner had been following reports of a new virus wreaking havoc in Wuhan, China, and spreading rapidly to other countries. On Feb. 28, he emailed parents that Middle School trips to France and Spain over spring break had been canceled, and said “We are also preparing for the potential that a coronavirus outbreak within our community may dictate a school closure for an extended period of time. … On Wednesday, our Administrative Team began preparing for remote instruction and the delivery of educational materials in case our normal school routine is disrupted.” On March 5, one day before students and faculty left for a week of spring break, Ulku-Steiner emailed parents, “Because the situation is changing rapidly, we want to prepare our community should circumstances require a school closure. In that event, we are working with faculty to plan for remote learning. DA has an abundance of technological tools available to support online instruction should a closure become necessary.” The email advised, “Students should take all necessary educational materials and devices (including chargers) home with them on Friday,
March 6. Faculty have been instructed to do the same, in the event that we may need to extend the break due to the directives of state or local public health officials, or due to our own health and safety precautions.” On March 11, midway through spring break, Ulku-Steiner emailed parents that DA’s spring break would be extended through March 17. His email alerted them, “Beginning Wednesday, March 18, we will move to online learning for all grades and subjects.” Faculty and staff returned to campus March 16 and 17 — meeting in small groups and keeping socially distanced — to refine plans for online learning. And on March 18 it happened. Teachers who had warmly welcomed students to their classrooms now enthusiastically welcomed them to remote learning. There was anxiety on both sides of the computer screen, but also excitement and optimism. Ulku-Steiner predicted the disruption of moving school from the classroom to the family room would “spark useful innovation and unleash all kinds of creativity among our teachers and students.” And did it ever! The pages that follow show how DA faculty, staff, students and parents made school and learning work in new and amazing ways and kept the Cavalier community connected.
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Pre-Kindergarten Lessons Go Viral Story by Kathy McPherson
Sheri-lyn Carrow began the school year with a full class of 18 pre-kindergarten students, but by February there were just 16. One student left on a long-planned sabbatical with her family to New Zealand and another was diagnosed with leukemia and could not risk returning to school. Ironically, when the coronavirus pandemic caused Durham Academy to move to online learning both were able to rejoin the class. Almost simultaneously, Carrow’s daily lessons were going viral as family members were passing them on to children in Georgia, Massachusetts and New Jersey. When schools closed around the country, one of Carrow’s colleagues from her former school in New Jersey texted her and asked “what’s the situation for you and what are you doing,” Carrow said. “I jokingly sent her one of my videos because I make a video every single morning, always in a DA T-shirt. She loved it and sent it to one of her grandchildren who was not having anything happen from his preschool. He enjoyed it and she asked if I would send it to her everyday and she would forward it to him.” Another of Carrow’s New Jersey colleagues heard about the videos and asked Carrow to send them to her, too, so she could share the lessons with her grandchildren. “Every day, after I’m done with my class, I send them the links for my video and any unit-themed videos,” Carrow said. “They won’t let me stop. The one in Massachusetts sent me a video of her grandson doing the nature walk in the bug unit and said how much he enjoyed it. Then I heard about Laura Magid, who was sending my videos to Georgia.” Magid’s daughter, Charlotte, had been learning online as part of
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Sheri-lyn Carrow's lessons were passed along to students in other parts of the country who were left without instruction when their schools closed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“ I never expected that I would be doing daily videos, or that anybody would want to see them, but it feels great.” — Sheri-lyn Carrow Carrow’s class, but her 5-year-old cousin in Georgia was home with no school. “My nephew is a leukemia survivor and is immunocompromised,” Magid explained. “The whole family shut down to protect him. They were locked down, with six kids out of school. They haven’t left the house in months. My mother-in-law, who is quarranting with them to help, was worried my niece would be falling behind.” She happily accepted when Magid’s husband, Dan, offered to pass along Carrow’s videos and worksheets. “Charlotte loves it, thinks it’s a lot of fun, and she thought it was fun to share with her cousin. She has loved
doing the lessons and, as a parent, it is a lot of fun to see how she learns and what she has engaged with.” Carrow, who has been teaching for 39 years, said she never expected to be teaching remotely. “I never expected that I would be doing daily videos, or that anybody would want to see them, but it feels great. It’s awesome to impact as many kids as you can as a teacher. It’s heartwarming, very heartwarming.”
Letizia Haynie Launches Weekly Facebook Storytime for Preschool and Lower School Preschool and Lower School students already know that library assistant Letizia Haynie is the storytime queen, but this spring Haynie enjoyed an even wider audience (and gave parents a bit of a break on the weekends) when she launched a fun Saturday tradition of virtual “Storytime with Mrs. Haynie,” complete with an animated introduction provided by Preschool/ Lower School librarian Michelle Rosen. Haynie’s Facebook audience was treated to Leo, A Ghost Story, by Mac Barnett; The Quickest Kid in Clarksville, by Pat Zietlow Miller; I Am A Baked Potato, by Elise Primavera with illustrations by Juana Medina; Polar Bear's Underwear, by Tupera Tupera; and more.
Are you ready for a story? Leo, A Ghost Story bit.ly/StorytimeLeo The Quickest Kid in Clarksville bit.ly/StorytimeQuickestKid I Am A Baked Potato bit.ly/StorytimePotato Polar Bear's Underwear bit.ly/StorytimePolarBear
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STORY BY LESLIE KING
Third-Graders Complete Yearlong State Projects Online Grandfriends Watch Via FaceTime and Zoom
Every year, Durham Academy third-graders embark on a journey to deepen their understanding of our 50 nifty United States. Each student chooses a state to research, learning key facts about the state’s economy, geography, demographics and notable residents. The project typically includes a PowerPoint presentation that consolidates their research, a physical display of a landmark from that state and a trifold board presentation. Students share their projects as part of the Third Grade Grandfriends Day celebration. Even though the in-person celebration had to be sidelined this year, students and teachers didn’t want all of that hard work to go unseen. This year, the audience for third-graders’ state projects expanded to include the entire Lower School! Beginning on May 1, third-graders’ extended family members could tune in online through FaceTime or Zoom and watch students’ research
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presentations. Students created videos about their states that Lower School teachers and students could watch on Seesaw, and thirdgrade students shared information about their states during live class meetings. Families, teachers and classmates were able to share feedback and post comments about their work on Seesaw. The third-grade team and Lower School Director Carolyn Ronco led each class through a virtual performance of “Fifty Nifty United States” during a celebratory lunch to mark the culmination of the projects. “This is always such a special event because it culminates an academic milestone for your child,” Ronco said in an email to families. “This is the first time our students have been assigned a long-term project with many different aspects that all come together in a beautiful presentation. Congratulations! We hope this will be a memorable moment in the academic life of your child.”
Zaki Rajkumar ’29
Emily Lai ’29
Graysen Black ’29
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Families Welcome Pandemic Pets Story by Michelle Rosen
If you spent any time perusing social media this spring, you most likely noticed the posts inviting you to “meet the newest addition to the family.” Inevitably what follows is an audible “awwww,” after viewing a photo of the cutest (insert animal here) you’ve ever seen! It became a national trend — pandemic pets — and Durham Academy Lower School families got in on the action. Lingaa Venkataraja, a fourth-grader in Chip Lupa’s class, counted down the days until he officially adopted “Bhairavi,” a Shepsky. The Shepard/Husky mix, with one brown eye and one blue eye, was set to join the family on May 9. Lingaa said he couldn’t wait to have more company around the house. But the best thing about having a dog? “Well, the best thing is being able to pet it. You definitely can’t pet snails, fish or lobsters, and if I try to pet the parakeets, they will try to fly out or go crazy!” For the Wootton family, the pet of choice was chickens. “We’ve been wanting new chicks because the other ones died,” said Kendall, a third-grader in Emily Walton’s class. “They are fun to chase and catch,” she said, but “hard to get in at night.” Kendall and her brother Conner, a first-grader in Rosemary Nye’s class, named the chickens Grady White, Sweet Potato, Lucky, Little Dude, Rascal and Snazzy. No matter the pet, DA families have shown a lot of love this spring. Here’s to the newest Cavaliers and all the students and parents who have given them forever homes.
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The Fitzpatrick household also has a new pet. Carrie Fitzpatrick, a fourth-grade teaching assistant, described the 8-weekold rescue, named Duck, as “sweet, curious, energetic, clumsy and fun!” Duck will be her son Michael’s dog when he moves back to college next year. For now, though, Michael ’17 is taking the time to bond and train the puppy. “Happy and chaotic” is how Fitzpatrick described her current family life with four dogs.
It’s not all about dogs! Fourth-grader Jackson Whaley and family rescued two adorable cats — Myrtle and Vergie. They join the rescue dogs who already live with them. “They were very skittish and wary of people, but we knew we had the love and time to give them a better life,” said Jackson’s mom, Morgan Edwards Whaley ’97. “We have had them less than a week now and they have started to warm up to us. They love being petted and playing with all their new toys, and even purr loudly when we walk into the room.”
Alex Shaikh, a fourth-grader, adopted Rolo and Angus. While acknowledging that taking care of pets is definitely a lot of work, Alex said it’s all worth it when he gets to hug them. Rose, a Cavalier King Charles spaniel, joined Mercedes Almodóvar and family on June 1. The Lower School Spanish teacher says the dog was supposed to be a college graduation present for her daughter, Natalia ’17, next year. “Because we do not know what our future will look like, we talked as a family and made the decision to welcome Rose into our humble home,” Almodóvar said.
Life is “a lot funner now,” reported second-grader Sybil Luddington, now the proud owner of her Reggie. Reggie traveled from South Carolina to join the Luddingtons on March 28. Sybil likes taking Reggie for long walks, but prefers not to have to deal with the outside bathroom trips.
“It was just the right time,” said Lilly Motsinger, describing why she and her family adopted Magnolia, whom they lovingly call Maggie. The third-grader said there’s “hardly nothing that’s bad” about having a pet except cleaning up after it. “We went walking one morning and I had to pick up three! She’s a pooper!”
Meet Dylan, who found a new home with third-grader Hunter Freedman. Hunter already had one dog at home when his family decided to adopt Dylan. He said it’s great to have another playmate, but “because she’s a puppy, it’s a lot more work. She is learning to potty train so sometimes she has accidents in the house and I have to clean them up.” Cuddling, however, is the best, Hunter said.
Fourth-grader Rem Frasher loves playing with his new pup, Rocky, whom he described as “energetic.” His family decided to adopt the dog because they now have time to train him. Rem said he’s really noticed how much Rocky has changed over the last month, but the biggest challenge is still “potty training.”
Fourth-grader Kayla Cloninger is excited about the latest addition to her family, a dog named Allison. “The best thing is how cute she is,” Kayla said. “The worst thing is how stubborn she can be.” Kayla’s parents thought Allison would keep Kayla busy as she spent more time at home. Their plan seems to be working. “I’ve been staying up really late since we got her!”
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Time and Space to Tinker
Taking the TED Lab to Lower School Homes Lower School students love their technology, engineering and design (TED) classes, where they learn to code, program robots and build with Legos. Technology teacher Michele Gutierrez wanted to make sure her students could experience the same type of learning during Durham E-cademy. Without all of the equipment and direct instruction, however, she had quite the challenge on her hands. Not one to miss an opportunity, she ultimately decided to capitalize on what students have now, that they don't have at school: lots of time and space. “Designing and building 70+ Rube Goldberg Machines within the confines of the TED Lab would have been impossible, but learning at home created the ideal conditions for just such an endeavor,” Gutierrez said. “With fewer constraints on time and space, students were free to imagine, create and tinker with their creations to their heart’s content.”
Check out some of the results at bit.ly/DARubeGoldberg.
Lower School Students Get Crafty During Quarantine
Nolan Aery's paper weaving
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William Zhang's circle art
Arden Perreault's paper tube self-portrait
DA Donates Extra Protective Gear for Health Care Workers
To help keep health care providers safe, Director of Security Jim Cleary and security officer Carey Britt scoured the Middle and Upper School science labs (with guidance from Durham Academy science teachers) for personal protective equipment that wouldn’t be used by students who were now learning at home. They rounded up approximately 30 boxes of unopened gloves, two boxes of masks and 100 disposable gowns. DA dad Dr. Chet Patel, a Duke cardiologist, transported them to Duke University Hospital where they could be put into use. First-grader Sunaina Saxena sent in a photo to help show DA’s overall gratitude for health care workers and other helpers in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.
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Lower School Students Share Reflections of Their Time in Isolation Story by Leslie King
It’s not often that an entire generation of children lives through a seminal, life-altering event. The global COVID-19 outbreak has affected every facet of children’s existence — the reinvention of school at home, their ability to socialize and see their friends, their dependence on devices for everyday connections to classmates and teachers, their newfound independence and creativity, and their sense of safety and security prompted by a national quarantine. Preschool/Lower School librarian Michelle Rosen and Lower School counselor Martha Baker wanted to capture Lower School students’ thoughts during this moment in time. To do that, they created a virtual time capsule project and asked students to fill it — with their thoughts and observations about their feelings, their families, their rituals and milestones — resulting in a historical artifact to be displayed in a living history museum that Rosen and Baker will construct on campus this fall. “First, it's often true that we learn the most about ourselves when we are challenged,” Rosen wrote in the project’s introduction. “Hopefully, we can take these lessons and make our lives happier, more moral and more productive. We hope you are able to learn something about yourself and your family that will make your lives better. Second, we want to give you something to look back on in the coming years. Imagine showing this book to your children or grandchildren 50 years from now. Can you picture that? You would be sharing history!” The 11-page booklet was shared with Lower School students during the week of May 18, which marked their last week of school. It was deliberately intended to be completed during a week when students wouldn’t be burdened by the responsibilities of school work and would feel more free to reflect. “This project was designed to bring closure and reflection to this unprecedented time in history,” said Lower School Director Carolyn Ronco in an email to parents. “We want our children to have time to record their ages, stages, thoughts and reflections during this time of remote learning.”
The Reflection Project booklet prompted students to complete various exercises through a theme each day, delivered through videos that Baker and Rosen posted on Seesaw. “Here We Are” was an overall snapshot of each student — their height, weight and shoe size, in addition to “cool things I like,” “my friends” and “who I want to grow up to be.” “Looking Within Ourselves” asked students to describe what they learned from this experience, what they were thankful for and what they were most excited to do when the quarantine ended. “It was important for the kids to be able to talk about all the emotions they had and are still having,” Rosen observed. “We could see that the students really needed to talk about this. It was a flood of emotions that ran the gamut — happy, sad, confused, frustrated — all the emotions we’ve all been feeling.” “Looking Outside Ourselves” had an educational focus on the sacrifices made by essential workers in the fight against COVID-19, and students shared in supporting them in the #OutThereForUs social media campaign by drafting their own tweets. “Focus on Our Families” prompted students to interview family members about their top three moments from the quarantine, new favorite household activities, the biggest change they experienced or favorite new food they cooked. "Celebrations" asked students to describe how they celebrated or reinvented milestones like religious holidays, birthdays or life events while they stayed home. In "What I've Learned/What I Will Remember," children were asked to write a letter to themselves about their experience and picked one object that was representative of their time at home during the pandemic. Those objects will be the centerpieces of the living history museum this fall. “We wanted children to realize that they are living through history,” Rosen said. “The Reflection Project gives them a way to become ‘historians’ — to document this stage of their lives and the things that are going on around them. We thought the booklet could help students and their families process this experience together.”
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Middle School Science Elective Monitors Construction Impact Via Drone Story by Melody Guyton Butts // Photo by Dave Chandler
In the time since Middle Schoolers last set foot on campus in mid-March, much progress has been made on the Arts and Languages Center — the first phase of the Middle School Campus Plan. And while school is closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, perhaps no one is watching more raptly from afar than the five students who make up the Science In Action class. Science In Action (SIA) is an elective course taught by longtime science teacher Barb Kanoy in which students find out how changes to campus will affect the ecology of the greater community in the short and long term. In
“ I think that SIA is a really great opportunity for kids who are really interested in science, or who have an interest in the environment or the construction side of things.” — Claire Orvis '24
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addition to learning about the procedures and planning that are in place to protect against negative impacts, students have had opportunities to make suggestions to further mitigate negative impacts. “I think that SIA is a really great opportunity for kids who are really interested in science, or who have an interest in the environment or the construction side of things,” eighth-grader Claire Orvis said. “You get a variety of perspectives from people who are on the business side, and the construction side and the environmental side.” Students have been able to stay updated on the progress of construction thanks to drone footage filmed regularly by Dave Chandler, who helped coach the robotics team, oversaw Open Invention Studio hours at the Upper School and is helping the Office of Information Technology. Using these aerial shots, the Science In Action students — the “SIA team,” as Kanoy calls them — shared the project’s progress with classmates at a community meeting. In reviewing the footage, they also spotted a drainage issue, which they flagged for the project manager. While students have been away from campus this spring, they have been able to keep tabs on the progress as Chandler has continued to collect footage. The SIA team used it to create a video showing the
progress of construction from May 30, 2019, to March 28, 2020. During the 2018–2019 school year, Kanoy was already thinking about how students might learn from the construction site when John McGowan, then a seventh-grader, mentioned to her that he was interested in measuring the impact of the project on trees at the Middle School campus. “He decided that he wanted to see how many trees would be taken down and what they were going to take down. He wanted to document how things were at that moment before the summer came and everything changed,” Kanoy recalled. “So he planted a seed in my head — and I was already sort of thinking about it — that this is something the kids would really, really enjoy.” The five students enrolled in the class — Orvis, McGowan, and seventh-graders Aayaz Husain, Luis Pastor-Valverde and Emily
University Drive is toward the top of the photo, the existing two-story seventh and eighth grade classroom building is at left and the Middle School athletic field is below.
Simmons — spent the 2019–2020 school year learning about the construction project’s impact on the greater ecological community from a range of perspectives. Students talked with Charlie Wilson ’89, president of C.T. Wilson Construction, about plans for the project; with officials at City Hall about stormwater regulations; with folks at Duke Gardens about how they deal with stormwater; and with engineers about landscaping as it relates to stormwater. “And the kids in their conversations, especially with City Hall and the stormwater engineers from McAdams Engineering, brought to light some issues that the kids wanted to focus on, those issues being the stormwater management and how much better we could make that stormwater management with a couple of changes to the plan,” Kanoy said. “… The kids were learning a lot about the balance of things — that if you put all of your
money over here, this is what happens over there.” The SIA team members put together a presentation with their suggestions that was to have been shared with the DA Board of Trustees, Duke Gardens and Charlotte Christian Academy. Charlotte Christian wanted to include the SIA team’s presentation in the school’s Earth Day assembly. While those in-person presentations were canceled due to COVID-19, SIA team members have shared what they've learned virtually. Their suggestions center around two ideas: to build a rain garden and to create a wetland. Simmons noted that the rain garden on the Middle School campus was a project spearheaded by Kanoy and students years ago to help prevent flooding. “There are a lot of pluses to rain gardens, like cleaning the water, which is our main one,” Simmons explained. “Also, they look nice and provide
homes for animals in our ecosystem that maybe wouldn’t have a home now that we’ve taken down the trees.” Husain and Orvis explained that they are interested in removing the dry pond and replacing it with a wetland. “The current dry pond we have right now is actually really only there to hold water. It’s not going to really filter the water, which is extremely important for downstream — we don’t want the trash from road waste and such to go downstream,” Orvis said. “It will help a little bit, but it won’t help as much as a wetland would. A wetland has plants in it, so it helps filter road waste and polluted water. It will help get rid of all of that, which creates a healthier environment.”
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Middle Schoolers Get Creative
Quarantine Self-Portraits
Mostafa Abdelbarr ’27
Claire Hong ’24
Brady Pollard ’26
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Noah Fine ’25
Olivia Rivers ’24
Fiona Lawton ’26
May 4, 2020
Missing School and Those ʻAha’ Moments Dear parents,
Y
ou have amazing children. I’m not exaggerating. Here we are, in a situation none of us has ever had to face, and your kids are killing it so far. For all the crap they take about the inanity of what entertains them (and seriously, have you seen the garbage they watch on TikTok and YouTube?), they are warriors right now. They have every excuse in the book not to do schoolwork, but they’re collectively knocking it out of the park in my classes. Can you imagine if we could’ve used “internet issues,” someone with a cough, babysitting siblings, etc. as an excuse to avoid math homework? About 75% of my friends would have watched M*A*S*H reruns all day and raised a figurative middle finger to our teachers in a situation like this. Here’s what’s happening right now, from my perspective. I’ve been recording math lessons and posting them. I’ve been suggesting “homework” assignments, but not collecting them. I’ve given multiple quizzes on that material. The vast majority of your kids have scored as well or BETTER than students in past years. Sure, there could be cheating — how hard is it to use other resources or compare answers with a buddy before submitting answers online? But even that takes more effort than most of us would have conjured in middle school. The mantra BEFORE all of this was that middle school grades don’t count. How about now that they’re not even getting grades? What your kids are doing right now gives me goosebumps. Seriously. I realize what some of you may be thinking. “This means these kids could be doing this on their own! There are so many online resources that are exactly the same as what you’re providing. Better, actually, because you’ve never had to deliver instructions like this before and you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re basically making the case that your job is expendable!” Sure, a lot of that is true. If what you care about is pure acquisition of skills and information, then traditional “school” is unnecessary. Students can get that for free online, and that’s been true for years now. But I’d urge you to ask your kids what they miss right now. They’re getting the skills/information stuff, but what VOID do they feel? Because to me, that void is the core part of learning. I can teach them with an animated video how to solve systems of equations word problems. But I can’t laugh with them about an example they find funny, or collaboratively create a new one on the spot. On the video I’ll edit out my own mistakes to avoid wasting their time, but then they don’t get to see me make those mistakes and own them. I can’t ask and answer questions in real time and help them achieve an “aha” moment. Maybe they’ll hit pause and go back 20 seconds to hear something again, but that’s not the
same as someone else (a teacher or a classmate) listening to what they don’t understand and then helping clear up their confusion while making connections and deepening their understanding at the same time. I think adults sometimes forget that kind of magic in the classroom. We’re more likely to remember our own experience as pain and drudgery. But as someone who has spent his last 30 years living for magical moments in the classroom, I can assure you that they’re real (and they’re spectacular, Seinfeld fans). I believe they’re actually what makes “school” meaningful and purposeful. I’m not foolish enough to think the kids understand that right now. But I am optimistic enough to believe they feel it, especially in its absence.
“ As someone who has spent his last 30 years living for magical moments in the classroom, I can assure you that they’re real.” I hope we can seize this unique moment to illuminate and celebrate what “school” really means. It’s not just a content-delivery and skill-building apparatus. It’s a connection-fest. Connecting content and skills, sure. But also ideas, friends, parents, teachers, coaches, mentors and relationships of all kinds. School is where kids and adults can be fully human together, and we need it back. We’re doing our best to keep delivering the brain part of school. That’s the info/knowledge stuff, and it’s undeniably important. But delivering the heart and soul part? The essential part? The memorable, magic part? We’re trying. But we need to be on campus with your kids to really do that. We can’t wait to get back there, I promise. It’s killing us not to be with them. We all complain about our day-to-day when we’re stuck in our routines. But when those are gone and you realize what you miss, and what the kids are missing? That’s the void, the absence of “school.” And the grief for that loss is visceral. Thanks for doing your part to help us get back to campus as soon as we can. I can’t wait for that day. Instruction isn’t why any of us wanted to become teachers. School is. And thank you for raising and supporting such terrific kids. Please take a moment to remind them how proud we all are of them right now.
— Gib Fitzpatrick, Middle School math teacher
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A Letter to My Students, April 26 Dear 2019–2020 Students,
A
s you can see from the photo, I am going out on a limb here, out of my comfort zone. That photo is your French teacher, taken during her senior year at Harris High School in Spruce Pine, NC. A group of us were named Outstanding Seniors by the faculty and we went to a local dentist’s house, way up on top of a mountain, to have our photos taken for the yearbook. Some of my best friends were in that group. In Spruce Pine, we all went to school together from first to 12th grade. A small town for you. I saw quite a few of them at our 40th reunion just a couple of years ago. I am friends with most of them on Facebook. I text with one of them regularly to discuss Hallmark movies and life in general. One was my roommate our freshman year at ASU. One was my seventh grade boyfriend (he was new to SP and my best friend’s cousin). One was my apartment mate my second year living in Chapel Hill and my second year teaching at Durham Academy. Many of us are thinking about our own senior year in high school because the Class of 2020 is missing out on the normal experiences of the second semester of high school. In light of all that is going on in the world around us right now in a way that seems trite and trivial. Prom, senior skip day, yearbook dedication and that walk across the stage to get the diploma. But rituals are a very important part of our lives. They are not trivial. Seniors, I wanted to sit in Page Auditorium and watch you go down that aisle, nervously looking down to make sure you don’t trip on the steps, and then an hour later strut back up the other aisle with huge grins on your faces. School was my refuge. I loved it even when I didn’t. Growing up in my family was not easy. Most of you have heard some of it … alcoholic father, not much money, so I won’t go into that. Mama Mildred and Daddy Tommy were proud of me. I knew that. Neither of them graduated from high school, joining the Army and eloping instead. Off I went to Appalachian, to France and then to Durham Academy. 44 years since that day in May 1976 when I graduated from HHS. No longer a Harris High Blue Devil, now a Mountaineer. 40 years since I walked across the stage in Boone, NC, to get that diploma. This is my 40th year of teaching. You are my 40th class. I wanted a party. Cupcakes, macarons, decorations, the whole thing. I wanted to celebrate with you. Eighth-graders, I wanted to sit in the audience in Taylor Hall and see your baby pictures flash across the screen and hear Mr. Meredith’s rap that includes all of your names. I wanted to sit in the front row at our closing ceremony and watch you go up the stairs, get a handshake from Mr. Ulku-Steiner and a piece of paper telling you that you had survived Middle School, going back down the stairs and walking right past me, maybe catching my eye, maybe not. I wanted to give all of you hugs while
we ate cookies and drank lemonade. A hug whether you wanted it or not. My first class of eighth grade advisees. I am grieving over the loss of all of that, as I know you are. It’s okay to feel sad. And mad. I have moments when I just have to let it wash over me and stop fighting it. And cry. One thing I know for sure, I will never take walking into my classroom in the mornings for granted again. I will never take you for granted. Even when you are grumpy and don’t want to answer my Question of the Day, advisees. Even when you are silly and I have to send you “The Look.” Even when you complain about being tired or that your lunch is lousy or that you have way too much homework. I will still nag about your stuff, cleaning off desks after lunch, getting to tutorial on time. I miss even that. A piece of advice, if I still have your attention — be kind to your parents. They didn’t sign up for homeschooling you. They trusted me to do that when they dropped you off every morning. I remember promising Son #1 that I would NEVER homeschool him. It wouldn’t have been pretty and he would be sorely lacking in math/science/tech skills if that had been the case. And I am pretty sure that Son #2 wouldn’t be working from home as an attorney if I had been responsible for his education, other than Middle School French. Help your parents. Ask to help cook a meal. Cook a meal yourself. Wash the dishes or load the dishwasher. Ask your parents about their middle school/high school days. And no eye-rolling. Ask to see their yearbooks. Okay, maybe a few eye-rolls there. Listen to music they loved in middle/high school. Son #2 has been sending me daily “homework”— YouTube videos of music he loves and musicians he knows I love — Fleetwood Mac, Phil Collins and Genesis, Michael McDonald and the Doobie Brothers, The Eagles, Dire Straits. Suggestion #2: Go out and play. It’s spring and we are seriously having the prettiest spring I can remember. It’s going to get hot and humid before this confinement is over, so enjoy it now. Get out that phone you can’t live without and take pictures of flowers. Your pets. The lizard that keeps running across the porch trying to hide from you. Your siblings. Ant hills. So, I’ve made myself feel better. I was pretty weepy at first. Really feeling sad. Today is lesson-planning day for next week. We have less than a month of remote learning left for the year. The best part of my week? Seeing you online during our class meet-ups. Seriously. So, hang in there and I will see you again on Tuesday from the comfort of my really uncomfortable chair in the office I have made for myself in Adorable Granddaughter’s room at Ma’s house. We will see this through virtually. We will be back together one of these days. — Teresa Engebretsen, Middle School French teacher
Photo courtesy of Teresa Engebretsen Teresa Ann Bell 1975–76 “… Appalachian State … French teacher … enjoys reading, sewing, music, dancing, concerts, singing … talkative”
In April, two Middle School efforts raised money to feed frontline health care workers, support local restaurants and help North Carolinians in the restaurant and hospitality industry who lost their jobs or income during the coronavirus pandemic. Story by Leslie King
Read-a-thon Supporting Feed the Fight Durham Sisters Riley ’24 and Graysie ’25 Auman launched a read-athon to support Feed The Fight Durham, and encouraged the entire Durham Academy community to join them. Feed The Fight Durham supports restaurants and health care workers by using donations to purchase 50 meals at a time from local restaurants, which are then delivered to a Duke Health or Durham VA Health Care System facility. “My sister and I have been feeling sad lately about not being able to go to school or see our friends,” Riley explained in an email to Head of School Michael Ulku-Steiner and Middle School Director Jon Meredith. “However, we have also been feeling extremely fortunate to be able to stay safe in our home and not have to worry about getting food or being close to people with the coronavirus, as our doctors and nurses do every day. “We have been discussing with our parents how we can help in this time when so many in our community are in need and so many are going above and beyond every day to help. A family friend of ours told us about a read-a-thon fundraising project that their friends helped put together through a Miami-based organization to help the Miami medical community. We thought that a student read-athon would be a fun way to raise funds to help here in our own community. We love this project because it helps both local restaurants and doctors and nurses in this time of need, with the added benefit of giving students like us
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Riley ’24 and Graysie ’25 Auman
Middle School Student Startup, Read-a-thon Support Health Care and Restaurant Workers
a great incentive to turn off our devices and spend more time reading.” Students asked family and friends to sponsor their reading, at a per-page rate for a week, with all proceeds directly benefiting Feed the Fight. Families participating in the read-a-thon raised more than $3,500.
U Learn, U Help Eighth-graders Krish Meta, Sarah Muir, Aarav Parekh, James Stuber, Matthew Sun and Kai Wong launched a peer tutoring start-up called U Learn, U Help to support restaurant and hospitality workers who lost their jobs or income. Under their social entrepreneurship model, the students offered math tutoring for students in grades 2–7 for a fee, conducting 30-minute tutoring sessions via Zoom or Skype, and donated the proceeds to the NC Restaurant Workers Relief Fund. The students created a website to support their outreach and registration efforts. “The COVID-19 pandemic has caused chaos around the world,” their site explains. “Everyone around the world is directly or indirectly impacted by this pandemic. So many people have already lost jobs and even more jobs will be lost. This pandemic is also affecting nearly every child in America. Students have had to stop going to school, putting a pause on their education. We need to help people who have lost jobs.” According to the NC Restaurant Workers Relief Fund, North Carolina restaurants and hotels provide jobs for more than 550,000 people, comprising 13% of the state’s workforce. The NC Restaurants Workers Relief Fund provides immediate financial assistance cooks, servers, dishwashers, housekeepers and others who often live paycheck-to-paycheck.
Watch the Aumans’ video at bit.ly/Read-a-thon and learn more about U Learn, U Help at bit.ly/ULearnUHelp.
Photo by Anna Savage ’27
Middle School History Class Journals Serve as Coronavirus Time Capsules Fifth-graders have a long tradition of learning about the Lewis and Clark expedition and how they and the men who traveled west with them kept journals. “Since this moment in time with coronavirus is something we should be documenting, let's make our own journals!” history teacher Virginia Hall wrote to her students. She instructed students to create journals from whatever materials they found in their homes and fasten them any way that they wanted. “I am confident that you can come up with a journal that looks like it might have been from the early 1800s … and one that you will be able to add writings and drawings to.”
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Eighth-grade town hall with Dr. Ben Ranard, Dr. Lauren Ranard and Dr. Michael Murn (Columbia University Medical Center, New York).
Eighth-Grade History Teachers Design Online Seminar to Examine the Impact of COVID-19 on U.S. Health Care Story by Leslie King
“I suppose the idea for all of this originated from a dinner table conversation with my wife, Amanda,” explains eighthgrade history teacher Jeff Boyd. “She’s one of the chief residents for the internal medicine program at Duke. Like many of our students, I was struggling to stay motivated during those first few weeks of distance learning. Our material was still relevant, but there were obviously things happening in the world that seemed much more significant to the lives of our students and their families. Karen [Ruberg, eighth-grade history teacher] agreed that if we are teaching our students to think like historians, we have an obligation to acknowledge the tremendous impact this pandemic is having throughout society.” Boyd and Ruberg decided to take advantage of one of the few silver linings of the coronavirus outbreak and subsequent quarantine — that real-time access to subject matter expertise that might have been limited by geography was now erased. Thanks to online conferencing platforms that
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provide accessibility to anyone at any time, their eighthgrade students could talk to adults at the center of the fight against the virus. Boyd and Ruberg worked with Boyd’s wife, eighth-grade parents Dr. Aimee Zaas (director of Duke's Internal Medicine Residency program) and her husband, Dr. David Zaas (president of Duke Raleigh Hospital), and within a few weeks they had assembled a series of town hall-style conversations with medical professionals around the country. “Dr. Zaas was incredible,” Boyd said. “She connected us with current and past residents practicing medicine all over the country as a result of her efforts.” The town halls were held during the first two weeks in May, and guest speakers included: • Pulmonology and critical care fellows Dr. Joshua Lee (University of Washington Medicine, Seattle), Dr. Ben Ranard, Dr. Lauren Ranard and Dr. Michael Murn (Columbia University Medical Center, New York)
• Duke Raleigh Hospital president Dr. David Zaas • Duke University Hospital senior resident Dr. Kathleen Pollard and junior residents Dr. Margaret Salinger and Dr. Ahmad Mourad • Duke Human Vaccine Institute Chief Operating Officer and Duke University Medical Center professor Dr. Thomas Denny • Duke Internal Medicine Residency Program Chief Residents Dr. Amanda Boyd, Dr. Jared Lowe and Dr. Lara Kapp and Internal Medicine Residency Program Director Dr. Aimee Zaas “All of these medical professionals are feeling the impact of COVID-19, and they are interested in sharing their insights with you,” Ruberg wrote in an email to students. “So many aspects of life as we have known it are changing before our eyes, and it can feel overwhelming just trying to keep up. As practicing historians, however, we have an obligation to acknowledge the tremendous impact this pandemic is having throughout society.” Students heard about how quickly doctors in Seattle had to adapt and improvise to care for the overwhelming number of COVID-19 patients; how doctors in intensive care units in New York City played Kool & the Gang’s “Celebrate” every time a patient had their breathing tube removed and was able to breathe on their own successfully; how hospitals in Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh collaborated with each other and learned from colleagues across the country to plan for coronavirus’ potential impact on the Triangle; how vaccine development works; how doctors dealt with the challenges of treating COVID-19 patients from local prisons; and how physicians balanced managing their own stress, uncertainty and fear while caring for coronavirus patients. Eighth-grade students were instructed to attend at least four of the seven half-hour town hall conversations via Microsoft Teams over the course of two weeks. Students spent the third week writing a reflective essay about the experience, articulating what they learned from guest speakers about the ways the pandemic has challenged local/national/global health care systems and how their conversations with health care professionals impacted their outlook or perspective about the COVID-19 crisis. The Middle and Upper School history departments encouraged students to connect their research findings to the broader influences of demographics, culture, power, economics, geography, resources, government and values/beliefs, and how those impacted current or historical events. “I learned a lot about challenges frontline healthcare workers, researchers and hospital administrators are facing during this COVID-19 pandemic and how they can work together to overcome them,” eighth-grader Matthew Sun wrote in his essay. “Most importantly, having several town hall meetings with professionals from all over the medical spectrum allowed us to glean unique and diverse perspectives about how our nation is facing this global crisis. The idea of having medical professionals from all of these different fields unifying and working together to lift our nation
amidst this coronavirus pandemic really resonates with me because the sense of collaboration and teamwork gives us hope that we can ultimately make it through strong. … My outlook and perspective on this healthcare crisis has definitely changed because I appreciate all that the healthcare workers, researchers, administrators, and even the janitor who cleans the hospital each night has done because it all sheds light and hope amidst this dark COVID-19 pandemic.”
“ I learned a lot about challenges frontline healthcare workers, researchers and hospital administrators are facing during this COVID-19 pandemic and how they can work together to overcome them.” — Matthew Sun ’24 Eighth-grade parents also took advantage of the unique opportunity to gain insight into a world where history was being made in real time. “Charlotte and I have tuned into every session, and each one has been extremely high value in learning and gaining perspective,” eighth-grade parent Dr. Anne-Caroline Norman, an emergency medicine physician at Alamance Regional Medical Center, wrote in an email to Boyd. “I don't know what kind of magic you had to deploy to get 40–60 minutes of time from these leaders who are swamped with their work, so thank YOU! During the series with the ICU fellows in NYC, I cried during the extubation/discharge songs … TWICE … The eighth-graders have been blowing me away with their questions. I am in awe that they are considering ethics, and accessibility, and science, and that they are not scared to ask such personal questions of these leaders who are also human. It was so raw to hear what Dr. Zaas [who is in remission from leukemia] had to say about his risk of contracting coronavirus, and to hear the pulmonary fellows affirming that this experience would not change their commitment to medicine, but also allowing themselves to be vulnerable about feeling scared about the personal risks.”
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Upper School Invents a Virtual Version of Special Olympics to Honor Athletes Story by Leslie King
In the Upper School, it’s simply known as the best day of the year. The last Friday in April is a school day that typically begins with the roar of dozens of Durham Public Schools buses pulling into the Kirby Gym parking lot. Hundreds of Special Olympics student-athletes disembark, and make their way down to Durham Academy’s athletics fields with grins a mile wide, full of anticipation and excitement for the day they’ve trained for all year. Classes are suspended so Upper School students and teachers can dedicate the day to managing events and facilitating competition that has taken much of the school year to plan, working one-on-one with their Special Olympics buddies to celebrate their hard work and success during a day marked by pure joy. DA’s 34th Special Olympics didn’t have quite that same fanfare, but Upper School student and faculty organizers and their partners at Durham Parks and Recreation and
Durham County Special Olympics weren’t willing to let the athletes’ hard work go to waste. April 24 marked the reinvention of Special Olympics as a day designed to put the same smiles on athletes’ faces. Virtual Special Olympics let the athletes know that everyone involved in the event was still connected to them in spirit, even if they couldn’t connect with them in person. And this year, because school was closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, the entire DA community was able to participate. “Everyone who would have gone to Special Olympics is still there,” Special O's Committee member Ella Virkler ’20 explained in a preview video. “And they still deserve the motivation, the attention and the celebration they would have gotten otherwise.” The student Special O’s Committee kicked off the day with a video including the opening parade, welcome messages from Durham County
Special Olympics and Durham Parks and Recreation, and Special Olympics athlete Seth Cowden reciting the athlete’s oath. Retired DA varsity track and field/cross-country coach Dennis Cullen declared the games open, reprising the role he held for 33 years as a Special Olympics official. Participants were asked to complete a 1-mile walk or fun run honoring the athletes or create an in-home alternative movement challenge if they were unable to walk or run outside of their home while maintaining a safe social distance. Younger children were asked to color the Olympic rings and share their artwork.
Watch the preview video at bit.ly/SpecialOsPreview and the opening day video at bit.ly/SpecialOs2020.
DA Special Olympics Committee • Upper School dance teacher Laci McDonald, faculty coordinator • Upper School learning specialist Jennifer Rogers, assistant faculty coordinator • Jenifer Aguilar ’22 • Mark Alkins ’20 • Chloe Bayer ’22 • Anna BrentLevenstein ’21 • Mary-Katherine Bryant ’21 • Jackson Collie ’21 • Shynaci Freeman ’20 • Izzi Gershon ’22 • Hannah Grant ’20 • Miriam Holleran-Meyer ’22 • Katie Hunter ’20 • Molly Hunter ’22 • Katie Kerman ’22 • Kaitlyn Kushner ’22 • Eliza List ’20 • Gabriella Marchese ’22 • Claire Middleton ’20 • Lydia Norman ’21 • Andrew Owens ’23 • Edward Rogers ’22 • Abigail Smith ’21 • Sophia Smith ’20 • Jack Tendler ’20 • Nathaniel Turner ’21 • Rebecca Urato ’21 • Rachel Urato ’21 • Julia Villani ’20 • Ella Virkler ’20 • Xander Wilcox ’21 • Nicolas Willams ’22 • Crosby Williams ’20 • Cammie Zehner ’21
Despite Unfamiliarity of Competing from Home, DA Speech and Debate Team Excels in Online Tournaments Story by Melody Guyton Butts
When senior members of Durham Academy’s speech and debate team left campus for spring break, they weren’t sure if they’d ever compete again. With the cloud of the COVID19 pandemic hanging over them, it seemed unlikely that they’d be able to compete in culminating in-person tournaments, even if they could ultimately return to campus. “Before we went on spring break, we felt like we may lose everything,” recalled Crawford Leavoy, director of DA’s speech and debate program. “Especially with this senior class. The 2020 senior class is going to walk away the most decorated class possibly ever, as a group in speech and debate. … It was really disappointing.” But as the public health picture became clearer — making in-person competition an impossibility — organizers began working toward moving important end-of-year tournaments online. DA’s speakers and debaters competed in and earned a slew of honors at two virtual tournaments: the Tournament of Champions (typically hosted by the University of Kentucky) and the Tarheel East District Tournament (which would have been held in Fayetteville). Several members of the team also were preparing to compete virtually in the National
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Speech & Debate Tournament (originally planned for Albuquerque, New Mexico) in June. At their core, speech and debate events are conversations, Leavoy said — and just like conversations that typically happen in classrooms or board rooms but were forced to move online, speech and debate conversations are well-suited for the virtual world. “We have a great coaching staff that told the kids, ‘Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.’ You don’t just look at this and say, well, if I don't get to go to ‘blank,’ it’s not worth it,” he said. “Because the purpose of the activity is so much more than the ability to go to a different city. The purpose of the activity is to have scholarly conversations in a competitive atmosphere, to work on critical thinking and strategy and topic literature.” The threat that COVID-19 posed to the tournaments was “overwhelming,” said senior Esme Longley, who, along with her public forum debate partner Mac Hays, also a senior, was working toward the competitions for four years. “The Tournament of Champions is this tournament that you have to earn several bids to get to, and it was going to be the pinnacle of our debate career,” she said. “But as soon as we started debating [practice] rounds online … it was
actually really fun for us. It was a way to pass the time without falling into the boredom of everyday quarantine,” Hays added. “But it also showed me that the virtual format for these styles of debate worked much better than you would expect — much better than I expected, certainly. All was not lost. There was still a lot to salvage.” Instrumental in bringing the tournaments online was Leavoy, who serves as chair of the Tarheel East District and worked on the Tournament of Champions (TOC) tabulation team for Public Forum debate, which handled tabulation and logistics for the virtual tournament. The tournaments ran on specialized tabulation software and Zoom. More than 1,000 students competed in the TOC from nearly 40 states and four countries. While the shift to an online environment was challenging for organizers like Leavoy, it was also quite a transition for many of the competitors, as Wi-Fi woes and audibility issues could prove costly. Students competing in speech events had to cope with a huge change to the usual format; rather than live-performing every round, they submitted recorded performances. “They've had to struggle with how to adapt. And at the same time, it's been hard as a coach,” Leavoy said. “You know, debate is full of both glee
Qualifiers to the 2020 NSDA National Tournament • Emily Donaldson ’20 — Congressional Debate • Asia Crowley ’22 — Congressional Debate • Vikram Agrawal ’20 — Congressional Debate • Izzi Gershon ’22 — Congressional Debate • Bennett Dombcik ’20 — Lincoln-Douglas Debate • Chris Burkhard ’21 — Lincoln-Douglas Debate • Andrew Owens ’20 & Adriana Kim ’20 — Public Forum Debate • Mac Hays ’20 & Esme Longley ’20 — Public Forum Debate • Anna Brent-Levenstein ’21 & Emily Norry ’21 — Public Forum Debate • Madeleine Genova ’20 — Original Oratory • Annie Ma ’20 — Original Oratory • Mukta Dharmapurikar ’22 — International Extemporaneous Speaking
and pain. And it has been very hard to be on a video call and tell a senior this could be your last round of debate ever if you don't win. And suddenly you don't have the physical connection that we would have had, to reach out and just create that human connection by touching someone's shoulder or looking them dead in the eye.” Despite those challenges, the DA competitors found great success online. Three students placed in four events at the TOC. Competitors placed in 18 events at the Tarheel East District Tournament, where DA was recognized as winner of the Speech Sweepstakes, Debate Sweepstakes and Overall Tournament Sweepstakes. In addition, Longley was recognized as District Student of the Year (earning consideration for 2020 National Student of the Year) — partly in recognition of her commitment to inclusion in speech and debate. Also earning recognition were Leavoy, who was named Tarheel Forensic League Coach of the Year, and assistant coach Jeff Welty, who was recognized as Tarheel Forensic League Assistant Coach of the Year.
For many students, the social aspect of speech and debate is a huge part of the appeal — and it’s difficult to replicate that in an online environment. “There were a lot of people we haven’t been able to see, and probably won’t see again who are friends from around the nation that we’ve made in debate, who we’d really hoped to see in person,” Hays said. “But that’s OK, we still are in contact with them and still have been able to do practice debates online with them.” Longley said she missed spending time with younger DA team members, so she and fellow seniors hosted a movie night during which they all watched Netflix together. And they worked to pass the torch to the younger students by introducing them to team members at other schools and hosting a novice round robin so the underclassmen could continue practicing from home. Both Longley and Hays said they’re grateful to their coaches and organizers around the country for their work to hold the culminating tournaments in this unprecedented time. “Debate has been one of the most fun activities of my entire life. It is
so, so worth it on so many levels, not just education-wise, but it’s been one of the most fun things that I’ve done with my entire high school experience,” Hays said. “I really appreciate our coaches doing their best to keep us moving forward. It’s been such a community for me all through high school, to be able to debate and not be really shy about expressing myself,” Longley said. “I’ve been so appreciative that everyone cares and wants to keep it moving forward, too.” For Leavoy, there was never a question as to what was the right thing to do. “We all do this because we recognize that we champion student voice, and to not try is to just say student voices aren’t worth it. That seems to be antithetical to the overall theme of what we try to do, both at Durham Academy but also in speech and debate.”
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Upper School Art at Home
Cammie Zehner ’21
Isabelle Nambo ’20
Mirella Kades ’22
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Darren Bland ’23
Miriam Holleran-Meyer ’22
Alex Hogue ’21
STORY BY VIKRAM AGRAWAL ’20
Student Startup Moves Operations Online
The DA student TeraThought team.
TeraThought is a mobile app startup powered entirely by students. Our apps have more than 10,000 customers and span a variety of industries from stopwatch/timer apps to green screen solutions to fitness motivation platforms. I founded TeraThought three years ago in New Jersey, and brought the company to North Carolina when I moved here last summer. We have since provided a real-world startup opportunity to dozens of Durham Academy students. When the world locked down, we seamlessly transitioned to remote operations. Meetings shifted to Zoom, and with many other extracurricular activities impacted or canceled, we’ve had much more time to pour into this startup. And time spent productively! We recently entered our flagship product, Poundwise, into an entrepreneurial pitch competition called Quarter Zero (QØ). Competing against 970 other high school startups around the country, we advanced
through four rounds of elimination. We were one of only four winners, winning the award for “Best Pitch.” A few members of our team will receive a full scholarship ($4,000/person value) to the QØ Catapult Incubator, where we’ll spend nearly two months this summer growing Poundwise and learning from industry experts. As physical location matters less, we’ve also begun expanding to high school and college students across the country. Our core team remains DA students, and the new and diverse perspectives are enriching the experience for all of us. We are committed to continue providing an industry standard experience for our team, and creating products that will improve people’s lives.
Learn more at terathought.com.
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Senior Dancers Perform Remotely, Faculty Dedicate Dance to Class of 2020 Story by Leslie King
Durham Academy’s annual Upper School Spring Dance Concert and assembly, which would have been held on April 30, has two showcase pieces — the Senior Dance, choreographed entirely by students, and the Faculty Dance, a piece that’s a fan favorite because it prompts teachers to model what learning and vulnerability (or bravery) look like. “The Senior Dance has become a rite of passage,” explained Upper School dance teacher Laci McDonald. “Seniors in the program, regardless of how many years they've participated in the program, are showcased in the Spring Dance Concert. Typically we begin this piece after spring break, with each senior meeting individually with me, to choreograph their own sections of movement. Just before the show, we would gather as a group and connect individual phrases and
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come together for a unison phrase. All of this would be done outside of class time.” This year, because Durham Academy could not return to campus after spring break, seniors were given the option to continue working on their choreography with McDonald remotely. “Without hesitation, they all wanted to pursue this project,” she said. “The Senior Dance was always something I had looked forward to since coming to the Upper School,” Leah Short ’20 said. “To continue working on it has helped me to have some kind of closure to my time at the Upper School. Even though it wasn’t exactly how I imagined, we all deserve to have this special moment to dance together one last time.” “Since we aren’t able to be physically on stage with each other for
our senior dance,” Casey Carrow ’20 explained, “this piece was a way for all of us to dance together and really celebrate what we, as a group, have accomplished at DA.” “For me, the Senior Dance is something I’ve always looked forward to, ever since freshman year,” Chandler Riley ’20 said. “I know this isn’t necessarily the way any of us seniors were hoping our senior year would end, but I think still having the Senior Dance makes it a little easier to cope.” Short, Carrow, Riley, Claire Ridley ’20, Julia Phu ’20, Marcelle Quiambao ’20 and Meredith Cohen ’20 recorded their performances in their backyards, on driveways and on front lawns and shared the videos with McDonald through Google Drive. “To me, this piece gave me the space to reflect on my time in high school and realize that there are a lot of
things that I will miss,” Ridley said. “This whole year I’ve focused mostly on moving forward and leaving DA, but this piece has balanced me in the present of both looking back and looking forward. I’ve watched the seniors of previous years do their senior dances, and to finally be here myself makes it feel much more real.” “It’s been hard for me to wrap my head around what's happening,” Phu said, “and I wanted to take this dance to connect with my fellow seniors in the DA dance program and have some sort of normalcy with the process of this dance, together. I took this opportunity to really reflect on my past years at DA, and express all of the feelings with the movement I created. I hope that this dance can give some sort of hope or closure for all of us, and even the seniors who watch it.” “Despite living in these times of uncertainty, I am glad that I could find some direction in this piece as I and the others try to navigate what our past was and how our future will look like after we graduate,” Quiambao said. “Because this dance has elements of both, I found some closure to what my senior year was.” McDonald told her dancers she would edit their performances together somehow into a complete video, but as a surprise, she enlisted the talents of DA videographer Jesse Paddock so that their performance could be preserved as a keepsake. “I’m so proud of their determination and resilience,” McDonald said. “My gratitude and love for this group of seniors is what inspired my movement above all else,” Carrow said. “I think this dance truly speaks to our talents both individually and as a group, as well as how we’ve come together in this trying time. I’m so thankful for this group of girls and the opportunity to dance together one last time as seniors!” “DA dance has given me unforgettable memories and amazing performance experiences. I’m so grateful for the four years I’ve spent dancing at the Upper School,” Cohen said.
The emotional piece is set to “All My Life” by WILD. The Faculty Dance, which had its origins as an experiment in adult vulnerability, faculty bonding and student entertainment in 2016, is always a surprise —typically unveiled at an assembly as a preview before being performed at the evening concert. This year, with no way to rehearse in person, McDonald recorded sections of the choreography on her iPhone and sent them to participating faculty each week. “There is nothing more humbling than recording yourself dancing, in a less-than-ideal space, while hiding from your children so you can record and then watching it. Whew … vulnerability at it's finest, y’all! Have at it, enjoy some cardio, and just have fun!” she wrote in an email. This year, McDonald’s faculty dance troupe included Upper School library assistant Katherine Spruill, Upper School Chinese teacher Bonnie Wang and Upper School English teacher Harry Thomas. “In normal times, Faculty Dance is one of my favorite faculty bonding experiences —it’s goofy and usually a little bit outside of everyone's comfort zone,” Spruill said. “Being able to continue it has been a welcome bit of routine and normalcy, and I hope students feel some of that normalcy in it, too (likely in the form of shaking their heads at how silly we look!)”
“As a teacher, I tell my students all the time that they should push themselves, that they should get out of their comfort zones, that they should take intellectual risks and do things they are not comfortable with,” Thomas said. “I tell them that that's how we learn and grow. So it's only fair that at least every so often I practice what I preach. And since I’m the world's least physically coordinated person, learning choreography and performing it in front of people definitely pushes me well outside my comfort zone! Doing the faculty dance (three times now!) helps my own teaching because it reminds me how it feels to be a student in a class where literally everything feels scary and impossible at first.” “Despite our distance, continuing the tradition of choreographing the Faculty Dance has allowed me to feel a sense of normalcy in this current state, to allow us as teachers and humans to come together to commiserate and celebrate the challenges and success of this new learning environment, to honor our Class of 2020 —the class of kindness, resilience and hope. I will miss these seniors more than words!” McDonald said. The energetic piece, set to Fitz & the Tantrums’ “Handclap,” is dedicated to the Class of 2020.
Watch the dances at bit.ly/dancingremotely.
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Keeping a Team Going When There’s No Practice or Competition Story by Sean Bilsborrow ’94
When coronavirus cut the spring season short, Cavalier coaches were presented with the unprecedented challenge of keeping student-athletes motivated, engaged and active — without the benefit of the in-person interaction and attention that are critical during a typical season. Losing the season left a significant void in our daily lives — one with physical and emotional implications. All that hard work put in during the offseason and all those goals our teams set to work toward were seemingly nullified, with the health risks and uncertainties of the world around us adding another layer of potential anxiety. Coping with adversity is a cornerstone of one’s athletic experience. Whether dealing with a loss, battling for playing time or rehabbing an injury, DA athletes are well-versed in addressing conflict, and it would be those character traits which would be so important in handling such an impactful, wide-reaching challenge. The speed and intensity with which our administration and athletic department rallied to provide us with resources and assistance was inspiring, as was the ability to communicate with my fellow coaches and to hear and learn from their efforts when creating a plan for the varsity boys tennis team. Several things were important from the offset: • In order to maintain motivation over multiple months, we needed to decide on a course of action as a team. If my players bought in, they would be more likely to hold each other accountable. • It was important to set the bar high, both in terms of frequency and variety of team activities. Akin to following a workout routine — the more one does, the more results one sees and the more one wants to do. Minimal communication would make it easier to cut corners or check out altogether. • Our plan needed to address both the physical and emotional aspects of the season having been cancelled. On the tennis court, we often discuss the relationship between physical and mental fatigue, where the former is often more noticeable, but is actually created by the latter. For our team to avoid complacency as the quarantine wore on, we needed to engage both the body and the mind. • Lastly, this plan needed to be FUN. There were enough stressors in the world around us as it is; time spent with teammates and coaches needed to be a welcome distraction rather than an added obligation. With these pillars in mind, we came up with the following program — one that I’m pleased to report our team
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followed in mid-May with the same steadfastness that they did in mid-March: • A 20–25 minute, tennis-centric workout that all 15 of us (13 players plus two coaches) would complete, seven days a week. Upon completing the workout, we would post the brilliant #cavstogether to our team group text. If we had 100% participation for a certain number of days by the end of the school year, I would spring for a team outing to Dave and Buster’s. As of writing this, we were two days away!
“ The guys deserve so much credit for their dedication to the team and to each other — something that should only make us stronger next season!” • Weekly team video calls, which were a cathartic means of seeing everyone together. We ended each of these calls with some laughs by playing an online party game from JackBox (highly recommended for fun with your families and friends). Often I would leave the meeting open and the guys would hang out longer afterward. • Weekly individual video calls — it was great to have this time to have “empty slate” conversations. In the process, I learned more about each of my players than I probably would have during a normal season. I hope they got as much out of these calls as I did! At the beginning of the season, we stole a page from Carolina basketball by starting each day with an inspirational/meaningful quote and interpreting it on an individual basis. We decided to keep this new tradition going during the distance learning period. Anyone from famous athletes and musicians to historical figures and animated characters found their way in. Comprehensively, this plan has served the varsity boys tennis team well. We did have a built-in advantage of a smaller roster size compared to many of the spring programs, which undoubtedly made communication easier. But the guys deserve so much credit for their dedication to the team and to each other — something that should only make us stronger next season!
Focusing on Student Wellness Story by Leslie King
The Upper School wellness dream team — including counselor Shelley Danser, fitness Director Jordan Babwah, athletic trainers Meghan Fulton, Jackie Lauricella, Ricardo Morales and learning specialist Jen Rogers — was squarely focused on student wellness when Durham E-cademy launched in March. Babwah launched “Swole la Tengo,” a riff on Upper School Director Lanis Wilson’s weekly Yo La Tengo email, with customized workouts and at-home yoga flows from Rogers, who is a certified yoga instructor. Durham Academy’s sports medicine team hosted visits on Microsoft Teams in an effort to keep student-athletes connected to their training routines, their fitness regimens and each other. Danser and the athletic trainers collaborated to produce “Wellness Wednesdays” through a digital wellness hub and DA Athletics’ Instagram, sharing tips on everything from how to maintain physical mobility and flexibility, how to stay active during time away from school, ways to incorporate breaks from screen time or relieve stress, fitness challenges, tips for nutrition and healthy sleep habits. In early May, as part of Mental Health Month, Lauricella talked about her own struggles before and during the quarantine and shared some wisdom about forming healthy habits during hard times. She included an extra dose of her own awesome sense of humor. We’re so grateful to have such brave and dedicated staff who care for our students and families!
For more wellness information visit wellness.sites.da.org.
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DA’s First Virtual Spirit Day Members of the Durham Academy community may have been physically separated this spring, but they connected across the miles during the first-ever virtual all-school spirit day on April 3!
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Making Music Together, Alone Watch the Lower School’s rendition of “Make New Friends” at bit.ly/LSMakeNewFriends.
Watch Middle School Musical Theatre students perform “Wait for It” from Hamilton at bit.ly/DAWaitForIt.
Karen Richardson and Ellen Brown’s Musical Theatre elective students were only two weeks away from their final showcase of duets and ensemble performances from popular contemporary Broadway shows when the COVID-19 outbreak forced DA’s campuses to close. They decided to create a music video of the song that would have been their opening number: “Wait for It,” one of Aaron Burr’s show-stopping numbers from the musical Hamilton. Students filmed their visual and audio performances at home, and Richardson and Brown edited them together. “As you'll see, we were so lucky to work with this group of amazing students,” the two teachers wrote in an email to parents.
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In May, Lower School music teacher Luke Hoffman offered his after school chorus group the opportunity to tackle a virtual production of a children’s classic, “Make New Friends.” Their beautiful rendition of the campfire/Girl Scout song features group sings, solos and a round, but more importantly, honors the value of friendships and our ability to nurture them with the help of technology during a time of separation. As Hoffman said in an email to Lower School families and faculty, “We hope this puts a song in your heart and a smile on your face!”
In The Pocket recorded “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” by Elton John. Listen at bit.ly/ITPEltonJohn. Listen to Music Ensemble II's recording of “If the World Was Ending” by JP Saxe and Julia Michaels at bit.ly/DAEnsemble. See how Michael Meyer weaves it all together at bit.ly/MeyerEditing.
Upper School student members of In The Pocket and music teacher Michael Meyer’s other ensembles found their opportunities to rehearse and record sidelined by the quarantine, took to GarageBand to complete virtual performances. Meyer explained in a Facebook post how he took the recording process online: “I create a guide track which the kids record their parts to in GarageBand — fortunately they have MacBooks, but the input is still earbud microphones for most of them. Then they send their ʻstems’ back to me and I’ve been compiling, editing and mixing in Logic Pro. It’s been a long go and a huge learning curve, but two of the songs are finally done!”
Watch Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Called to Say I Love You,” featuring Owen Bryant on lead vocals, Meyer on backing vocals and Meyer playing all instruments at bit.ly/DAStevieWonder.
On April 24, Meyer sent an email to Upper School students that revealed a surprise: “[Upper School history teacher] Mr. Bryant and I have been working on a special project to let you, the students, know how much we miss you and how much we’re thinking of you while we must be apart from each other. On this [Special Olympics] day of celebrating community and our DA family’s spirit, we thought it would be great to share it with you now! And how serendipitous that when I was doing some of the recording for this, I was wearing my Special O’s t-shirt! Anyway, we just wanted to call … to say … we love you.” — Mr. Bryant and Mr. Meyer
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In addition to advisors surprising seniors with at-home visits, Senior Day included a surprise that honored a faculty member who is oh-so-beloved by seniors! This year's yearbook was dedicated to Dean of College Counseling Kathy Cleaver, who retired in June after having helped Upper Schoolers find their perfect-fit colleges for 28 years. Yearbook advisor Greg Murray surprised Mrs. Cleaver at home with the happy news. “At first she was just surprised that I would show up on her doorstep” Murray said. “When I told her to open her gift, she said, ‘It's not my birthday and you are not giving me a Mother's Day gift, so what in the world?!’ When she pulled the yearbook out of the gift bag, she still didn't seem to realize what was happening — until I told her to turn to page 5. She immediately teared up and was so honored. It was a wonderful moment!”
Can You Guess the Identity of These ‘Seniors’? In mid-April, you might have seen your social media feed turn into a non-stop #tbt of sorts as a viral show of solidarity for the Class of 2020 gained popularity. To support Durham Academy’s amazing Class of 2020, DA faculty and staff from all school divisions and spanning the decades shared photos from their senior year of high school as part of the #SeniorPhotoChallenge. Their participation inspired smiles for days! As one DA alum put it, “Probably the best Durham Academy post of all time,” and we agree, so we’ll let you join in the fun! Can you guess who these high school seniors are? The answers are on the bottom of page 69.
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Photo by Greg Murray
2020 Yearbook Dedicated to Retiring College Counselor Kathy Cleaver
Farewell to Departing Faculty and Staff
Kathy Cleaver
Cary Gentry
Haley Helvey
Courtney Hexter
Upper School dean of college counseling 28 YEARS
Third-grade teaching assistant 3 YEARS
Upper School history 2 YEARS
Fourth-grade teaching assistant 3 YEARS
Chris Mark
Kari Newman
Josh Ross
Director of the Durham Academy Fund 18 YEARS
Upper School science 20 YEARS
Upper School math 5 YEARS
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Michelle Morgan Joins DA Community as Philanthropy Director Story by Leslie King // Photo by Melody Guyton Butts
Michelle Morgan, Durham Academy's new director of philanthropy, has experienced the transformational power of education firsthand. The North Carolina native credits the influence of her stepfather, who came into her life at age 12, with inspiring an academic work ethic and an appreciation of education that now drives her philanthropic work. “Neither of my parents or two older siblings attended college. While my stepfather didn't attend college either, he recognized and valued the importance of education,” Morgan says. “He encouraged me to join an IB [International Baccalaureate] program, which had just launched in our public school system. And to have someone in my life who pushed me to achieve more than other generations made all the difference.” As a first-generation college student, Morgan credits the opportunity to attend UNC-Chapel Hill with inspiring her to discover a career that became a life’s calling, and that eventually empowered her to create pathways for others to give back and create opportunity. It’s why she has spent the majority of her fundraising career in higher education institutions like UNC and Harvard University. “For me, college was a huge awakening and opened up doors I never even knew existed. I appreciated the experience while I was in the moment, but with time and distance, I have come to value it even more.” And now, with a family of her own, including 3-year-old daughter Charlotte and husband Matt Dedmon, Morgan looks forward to opening up doors of educational opportunity at DA. “I view philanthropy as a way to facilitate opportunities for people to
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give back and improve the world,” she says. “And what better kind of organization to be involved in than a system of education? I am not simply asking for gifts, but rather creating pathways for members of our community to be engaged and have a meaningful impact. That’s particularly true for our parents, whose children benefit every day from the work we're doing. … I feel empowered to do it on behalf of our students and faculty.” Morgan’s career path, which has been marked by record-breaking campaigns raising millions for the United
“ I view philanthropy as a way to facilitate opportunities for people to give back and improve the world.” — Michelle Morgan Way, UNC and Harvard, was indirectly influenced by a decision to enroll in a classical music appreciation class to fulfill an arts requirement during the first semester of her freshman year of college. It’s where she met her future husband, who was a classical music fan. After college, shared wanderlust took them on a backpacking trip through Europe, and they stayed overseas for Dedmon’s Ph.D. program at Cambridge University, putting Morgan’s intent to attend law school on hold. During their time in England, she indulged her creative
side working in interior design, but by the time they returned, Morgan's desire to explore a career with more personal meaning had taken hold. “At the end of the day, I needed to feel a deeper sense of connection to my work and how it impacts others. Philanthropy was the perfect Venn diagram, offering me the chance to work with a variety of interesting and accomplished people, be part of a professional environment and create positive change in the world.” Morgan took a temporary summer job at the United Way, which eventually turned into a full-time position and marked her first in a series of successes, helping the organization surpass its fundraising goal of $2 million in two years. She realized she loved development work, but wanted to move in a direction that was less transactional and more relationship-oriented. UNC’s Arts and Sciences Foundation provided the perfect fit for that focus, where Morgan oversaw all development activities for the College of Arts and Sciences’ Honors Program and six departments in the natural sciences. She designed and implemented shortand long-term fundraising goals and managed a portfolio of more than 250 households, spending one-onone time with alumni, parents and faculty to raise more than $1 million each year. Dedmon’s medical residency at Harvard took them to Boston, where Morgan spent the next eight years as the Associate Director of the Harvard College Fund, then Regional Director and ultimately Senior Regional Director of Capital Giving for Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. In her roles at Harvard, Morgan personally raised millions of
COVID-19 DA Family Support Fund
dollars to benefit students and faculty, while organizing teams of volunteers that included alumni, parents, faculty and administrators. She was so successful in her role that Harvard allowed her to work remotely when her family moved back to Chapel Hill in 2018 for Dedmon to begin a position as an assistant professor of otolaryngology at UNC’s School of Medicine. Morgan joined DA in February just before the school moved to remote instruction, but she is looking forward to getting to know the community better in the fall. “While I loved my work at Harvard, I am excited for the opportunity to embed myself in this community and interact daily with the students, faculty and families impacted by my efforts. Durham Academy’s academic excellence is impressive, and it's right in my own backyard. But beyond academic rigor, I was moved by the culture and philosophy of the school, as well.” Morgan and Dedmon spend their free time parenting Charlotte, who — prior to the pandemic shifting their family routine — loved visiting the library and the Museum of Life and Science and playing outdoors. Morgan’s interest in photography comes in handy when documenting Charlotte’s adventures, and she looks forward to her own family becoming a part of the larger DA community. “Families have made a choice to be at Durham Academy, which naturally
creates a community with shared values. Even from my first interviews, it was clear that members are invested in a way you just don’t find at other schools.” Morgan joins DA at a time when her talents will be immediately put to work as the school prepares for the launch of a campaign, already in its nucleus phase. Among other things, the campaign will support capital projects, such as the recent construction of the Upper School’s STEM & Humanities Center and transformed spaces already underway on the Middle School campus. “It is clear we are in desperate need of new facilities. If nothing else, this pandemic has illustrated the importance of place and physical connectedness. Buildings are definitely not just bricks and mortar. They are the infrastructure that supports and enhances the entire Durham Academy experience for each and every student and faculty member. “Although I was only on campus for five weeks before we shifted to Durham E-cademy, I have been welcomed and embraced by this community in ways both large and small. My confidence in the Cavalier community has only been strengthened by the incredible care and concern I’ve witnessed over the past several months. Despite the distance — or perhaps because of it — the ties that bind us together are stronger than ever.”
Many members of the DA community have asked how they can help during this uncertain time. In addition to the challenges facing our entire community, some DA families are now facing the added burden of financial stress. DA is committed to supporting families who are most affected by the economic consequences of the pandemic. The Board of Trustees approved a significant increase in the school's financial aid budget for 2020–2021 to address COVIDrelated financial hardships. The school hopes to offset some of the cost through the generous donations of community members who understand the value of a DA education in a child’s life and want to ensure the school remains strong. DA is committed to keeping families enrolled and keeping students connected to their learning, social and emotional communities. To date, the fund has raised 158 gifts, totaling $83,532!
To support the COVID-19 DA Family Support Fund, visit: da.org/covidsupport.
From page 66–67, Left to Right: Ashu Saxena, Allison Schenck, Marianne Green, Lanis Wilson and Michele Gutierrez
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Pandemic Has Brought Changes to Alumni Program Dear alumni,
I
have always known that Durham Academy alumni were special, but after reading and hearing about all that DA graduates are doing to help their communities during these tough times, it makes me especially proud to be a part of this family. We are going through so many changes in our daily lives and those are also occurring within the alumni program. The spring is usually a time where Michael Ulku-Steiner and I travel the country reconnecting with our alumni. Now we are hosting events virtually and finding new ways to stay connected. I hope you will consider joining us at a future gathering. Our plans for the fall have changed as well. Unfortunately we are going to postpone Reunion Weekend. We will host a virtual get-together in late September to celebrate the members of classes ending in 0s and 5s. Our plan is to celebrate the classes ending in 0s, 1s, 5s and 6s in the fall of 2021. There will also be new leadership on the Alumni Board, as Sterling Mah Ingui ’97 will take over as president. I am very excited to have Sterling onboard and know that she will help with the growth of our alumni program.
Photo by Sarah Jane Tart Tim McKenna, Marlee McKenna '20, Holly McKenna and Drew McKenna '24
Although there are many changes occurring, one thing that remains the same is our mission to keep our alumni informed, connected and proud to be part of the Durham Academy family. Stay well, Tim McKenna Director of Alumni Engagement
tim.mckenna@da.org
2020–2021 Alumni Board Sterling Mah Ingui ’97 President Lee Patterson ’00 Vice President Steed Rollins ’78 Kirsten Vollmer ’87 Brian Vick ’90 Torsie Judkins ’91 Millie Long Barritt ’94 Adam Lang ’98 Bradley Hardy ’98
Zoom Hangouts Replace Alumni Networking Socials While Cavaliers weren’t able to gather in person for what is typically a busy spring of Alumni Networking Socials, alumni enjoyed the opportunity to catch up with one another and faculty virtually! Steve and Teresa Engebretsen, Michael UlkuSteiner and Verle Regnerus all hosted Zoom hangouts, and the Class of 1988 got together for a virtual happy hour.
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Amelia Ashton Thorn ’01 Katye Proctor Freelon ’03 Kent Cheesborough ’05 Margie Gudaitis ’07 Rob Kirkland ’07 Margaret Anderson ’09 David Peters ’13 Joia Freeman ’14
Dr. Alison Rosenblitt ’95 Master Class of E. E. Cummings
Repaying a Debt to Her Alma Mater Story by Leslie King
One of the few silver linings of the pandemic has been a renewed ability to connect with anyone, anywhere, at any time — unrestricted by traditional boundaries of geography or availability. In late April, Durham Academy alumna and University of Oxford classics professor Dr. Alison Rosenblitt ’95 reached out with a unique proposal: a trans-Atlantic Zoom master class on E. E. Cummings for Upper School English students and teachers. Rosenblitt, who is also a writer, had just finished her biography of E. E. Cummings, The Beauty of Living: E. E. Cummings in the Great War (W.W. Norton & Company, July 2020) and was eager to share her work, but her deeper motivation was to repay an inspirational debt of sorts to her alma mater. “For my part, I remember encountering E. E. Cummings for the first time at DA in ninth grade English and you can see that it has become a lifelong passion,” she wrote in an email. “I also remember how fabulous and creative the DA assemblies always were, and I remember extra enrichment activities such a seminar day with the writer Tim O’Brien.” O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is a collection of interconnected short stories about a platoon of American soldiers fighting in Vietnam, based on his own experiences. Upper School English teacher Jordan Adair often incorporates O’Brien’s work in his Literary and Artistic Responses to War course. And more than 25 years later, Rosenblitt remembered the impact of getting to meet and interact with a writer. “So a small number of us were selected to spend the day, excused from normal classes, in a seminar with him plus he spoke to the whole school
at normal assembly,” she wrote. “It was amazing to meet a ‘real’ writer. I mean, as a kid, it takes a bit of effort to understand that writers are ‘real’ people — unless, I suppose, for a small number of kids, you happen to grow up in that world … it would be nice to feel that at the same time as publicizing my own book, I was somewhat repaying a very old favour.” Twenty-two students and four teachers signed up for two hour-long sessions offered by Rosenblitt on a Friday morning and Saturday afternoon in early May. As homework, she asked them to read “the bigness of cannon” beforehand. Rosenblitt, who was born in Durham, explained that she went to the University of Oxford to earn her undergraduate degree in ancient and modern history, and she’s been there ever since. She teaches Roman history and E. E. Cummings as a Senior College Lecturer in Ancient History, and she also serves as Director of Studies in Classics at Regent’s Park College (University of Oxford). “I like
the way that Cummings responds to Classical verse: ambitious, provocative, and disobedient,” Rosenblitt explains in her writer’s bio. The Beauty of Living: E. E. Cummings in the Great War examines the early years of Cummings’ life — his childhood, his time at Harvard where he began to write poetry, his time in France during World War I as a volunteer ambulance driver, his first love and his three-month imprisonment in a French military detention camp.
You can learn more about Rosenblitt and her career on her website: alisonrosenblitt.com.
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Not Yet
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STORY BY VERONICA KIM ’16
MARCH 21, 2020
We wander at night, hand-in-hand. The campus is quiet, as are the seven of us, bleached pale in the streetlights, revisiting every important building, every frequented study spot. We drink, but not enough to forget. We do not want to forget anything. I look up, though the stars are invisible. Inhale. I hold Sun’s hand tighter, as if that will anchor me to this place, to this moment in time — as if that will keep the minutes and hours from tumbling forward ever faster toward an ending I am not yet ready to face. ** You’ve been my dream for years — a decade, maybe more. In fifth grade, I told my friends that I wanted to go to Stanford someday. When my family went to California, my dad and I would run the now-familiar campus loop, and he would always make me stop and take a picture in front of the little Escondido Village apartment where I was raised for the first 10 months of my life. Today, that tiny complex is the only one left standing, the rest torn down to make way for the new, shiny, high-rise residences now towering over east campus. My parents never fail to point it out when they visit me — how lucky they are, that they can still drive by and see the beige, brown-roofed building that they used to call home. I remember getting in, four years and three months ago. I opened the acceptance letter from my car while parked in front of my house, too nervous to have an audience. I remember reading that fateful first line — stumbling over the words — it is with very great pleasure … I think I screamed, maybe, flung myself out of my car and ran up the front steps, pounded on the door — I was crying, and laughing — my whole family was in hysterics. I don’t think I stopped smiling that whole night. It was unreal. I couldn’t believe it. In some ways, I still can’t. It feels too good to be true. Just over a week ago — two or three days before I left — I put in my headphones and went for a walk. It was a hot day, sunny. I wandered the sidewalks. I took pictures. I memorized. The proud red roofs, the yellow bricks and arches, the ardent green of spring around every corner. Looking at you then, as I have in every moment since I arrived, I couldn’t help but marvel. How was it that I deserved this? How was it that I deserved you? ** You have been — at times, so difficult. You have torn down many of the things I believed about myself. Straight-A student. Academically excellent. Always happy. You have
made me unbelievably sad — so depressed that I still have trouble getting out of bed in the morning, sometimes. You have challenged me in ways I did not believe I could overcome, the late nights and tears and hatred seeping their way into my skin. You have taught me to fail, a hundred times over. Tests, projects, friendships. I have lost control over my own time; I have learned what it means to have only 24 hours in a day, seven days in a week. I have reached my breaking point, fallen apart on benches and outside classrooms. I have forgotten about balance, forgotten that I am just one girl, two hands, one head, one heart. I have given myself wholly to people who dismantled me, who took everything away and still demanded more. But that isn’t who you are, or who you have been, to me. I know I write a lot about the bad things. I know that I complain. But it’s easier, I think, than admitting all that has been overwhelmingly good. All that has changed me for the better. All that I lose, in losing you. ** You are — how do I even begin to describe? You are springtime after the rains stop, when everyone moves outside at once, gathering in the sunniest places to revel in the new warmth. You are the late nights spent in library study rooms, work unfinished, sides hurting with laughter. You are snacks invented from leftovers and shredded cheese in the kitchen at two a.m.; eight-mile runs in the cold; a circle of friends on my bedroom floor. You are board games played atop a dresser-turned-table, you are impromptu dance parties and sleepovers. You are every beautiful memory that I have, carefully folded and tucked away, untarnished in the corners of my mind. You have turned my world upside down, shaken me inside out. You have filled me with sadness, fear, anxiety — but you have also taught me what it means to be happy. And you have taken me halfway around the globe to remind me of that feeling — of joy, pure contentment — of peace. When I returned, it was as if you had lifted me into your arms and placed me gently, upright, back onto the earth. The missing parts of me restored. The broken bits whole once more. With you, I become a person more deeply able to care for others. I become more fully capable of love, of kindness. I become, in some ways, the best version of myself. I do not know what it means to say goodbye to you. **
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Photo by Veronica Kim ’16
I keep crying, yet every time it surprises me. I’ll lie in my room at home, and it’ll hit me all at once — the crushing sense of loss, of something gone that I cannot get back. I hold a pillow to my chest to keep myself from spilling over. I try to make sense of this insanity — of the events over the past three weeks that have led to this — to here, in my childhood bedroom, instead of there, with you. I don’t understand it. I can’t understand it. Just a month ago, I was sitting at my desk trying to motivate myself to work. I was making dinner for my friends on a Sunday evening. I was running around the lake, the sun rising in the sky. I miss you. So much. I miss running into people between classes, eating meals outside. I miss the last-minute plans to go off campus, the familiarity of my morning routine, the surprisingly delicious dining hall breakfasts. I even miss my lectures. What hurts the most, I think, is the finality of it all. I will never again live within a mile of my friends. Never again curl my fingers around a warm cup of tea at the writing center while talking to a student about the paper she’s finishing for tomorrow. Never again raid the snack shelf for dried mango and potato chips. It keeps repeating in my head, waiting to be absorbed, believed — this is the end, the end, the end. ** Maybe the worst part — I held out hope. Even when they told us to leave, even when I boarded the plane, even when the news kept saying it was getting worse, everything was getting worse — I still hoped. I hoped that I would see you again — be a student again, walking those familiar streets to
class and back home. I hoped that they’d tell us all to return, and the front lawns would overflow with joy, relief — I’d get in the taxi from the airport, impatient — I’d watch the hills blur by on the highway, each passing mile bringing me closer to normalcy, closer to you. I hoped that I would throw my arms around you, one last time; drink it all in; tell you how much I had missed you. Instead, we’re left with this: a goodbye on the tip of my tongue, three months ripped from my hands. My last memories with you are sad, stumbling — each one hasty, made before its time. I am lucky, yes, that they are full of love. That they will not be easily forgotten. ** Thank you. There might not be anything else to say. Thank you for every single one of these memories, these moments. For this perfect, chaotic, unforgettable way of life. You were my dream. Living you was beyond what I could have imagined. Thank you.
Originally published on veronicakim.org.
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Alumni Awards Honor Ward Horton ’94, Molly Shaw ’98 and Verle Regnerus The Durham Academy Alumni Board has selected two accomplished alumni and a beloved faculty member to honor with awards. The board has chosen to recognize Ward Horton ’94 as this year’s Distinguished Alumni Award recipient; Molly Shaw ’98 as the Alumni Service Award recipient; and Verle Regnerus as the Faculty and Staff Legacy Award recipient. Typically, the entire DA community would be invited to celebrate these award winners at a ceremony in April, but health and safety restrictions prohibit a gathering due to the coronavirus pandemic. Director of Alumni Engagement Tim McKenna will share information about a date for celebrating the three award recipients as soon as a date is determined.
supernatural thriller Annabelle. Horton was a series regular on the CBS drama Pure Genius. He made his Broadway debut in the Tony-nominated revival of Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song in 2018. Horton has had the fortune of working alongside some of the industry’s great directors and actors over the last 15 years. He continues to study his craft with weekly classes and private coaching, and is currently preparing for his role in a yet-to-be announced project for HBO. Horton and his wife, Alexa, live in Fairfield, Connecticut, with their two children. The couple serve on the Leadership Council of the medical relief organization Americares. When he’s not working, Horton and his family love to travel. He is still applying lessons from DA basketball coaches Verle Regnerus and Steve Engebretsen on local courts.
Alumni Service Award: Molly Shaw ’98
Distinguished Alumni Award: Ward Horton ’94 Ward Horton’s career as an actor began at Durham Academy with theatre teacher Bob Singdahlsen. The Wake Forest University alumnus originally worked in finance, but the Sept. 11 terror attacks spurred him to reevaluate his career and pursue his true passion. After moving to New York City, Horton studied at acting studios, performed in Off-Off Broadway productions and made student films to produce a résumé of on-camera work. He did background work in movies and television, and worked as a model to support his growing family. Small roles on television and film led to a guest appearance on Law & Order, leading to his breakout role in the
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Molly Shaw serves as president and CEO of Communities In Schools of Charlotte-Mecklenburg, a student support organization that empowers and supports more than 30,000 students and case-manages roughly 6,000 students in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School district. Shaw, a Davidson College graduate, earned a Master of Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2008. Prior to joining Communities In Schools, she led the Charlotte Teachers Institute (CTI), an initiative designed to strengthen teaching in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. Shaw also worked at Davidson College, including as director of parent programs and capital gifts officer. She has served on community boards to support organizations that promote early childhood learning, literacy, youth development, supportive housing, the arts and women’s collective giving. At the start of the coronavirus crisis, Shaw put plans in place to continue operations in order to support at-risk students, families and team members throughout mandatory school closures. By early April, Communities In Schools had coordinated the delivery of more than 7,000 meals to 470 students and families who were in transitional housing in hotels and motels across Mecklenburg County. CIS also partnered with the school district, the Mecklenburg
development, academics, initiatives and policies. As the Upper School’s registrar for the last 20 years, Regnerus creates and maintains the Upper School course catalogue, working with the academic advisors and college deans, and counseling students and parents on course planning and selection. He currently teaches AP Calculus AB and has served as a lead class advisor since 2011. He also served as varsity baseball coach 1991–2015. Regnerus received the F. Robertson Hershey Award Distinguished Faculty Award in 2005. He holds a Master of Arts in Teaching in mathematics education from UNCChapel Hill and a B.A. in mathematics from Northwestern College. He and his wife, Connie, are the parents of DA alumni Brandon ’13 and Austin Elizabeth ’15. Regnerus will be the ninth recipient of the Faculty and Staff Legacy Award.
County Sheriff’s Office, nonprofits and faith communities to deliver meals from school-based food distribution sites, as well as hygiene kits, cleaning supplies and educational materials. Shaw has published op-eds and delivered talks locally and nationally on topics including economic mobility, national educational trends and local solutions, cradle-to-career success, social capital and leadership. She is married to David Webb, and in her free time she enjoys cooking, traveling, reading, spending time with friends and giggling with their two children, Max (5) and Kate (3).
Faculty and Staff Legacy Award: Verle Regnerus, Assistant Upper School Director, Upper School registrar, Upper School math teacher This school year marks Verle Regnerus’ 33rd year at Durham Academy. He joined the Upper School faculty in 1987 as a math and technology teacher. “I knew that Durham Academy was a special place of learning. Not only were the academics among the finest in the area, the students appeared extra energetic, enthusiastic and curious. The faculty was friendly, encouraging and displayed a heartfelt desire to see their students succeed.” Regnerus has served as assistant Upper School director since 2012, working on Upper School curriculum
View the full list of past alumni award recipients at da.org/alumniawards.
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STORY BY KATHY MCPHERSON
Dr. Caitlin Finn ’10
Caring for COVID-19 Patients in NYC Hospitals
As a second year surgery resident at New York City’s Weill Cornell Medicine, Dr. Caitlin Finn ’10 knew she would spend a lot of time caring for patients in surgical intensive care units. It’s an expected part of the second year training for surgery residents. What Finn couldn’t know was that her surgical residency would be upended as New York City became a hotspot for the coronavirus pandemic and she would be on the front lines of treating patients with COVID-19. “In mid-March our [surgery residency] program was reorganized and redeployed to fill the needs to take care of COVID patients,” Finn said. “We stopped doing all the elective surgeries that we had scheduled.” Finn spent the first month of the pandemic at Jamaica Hospital in Queens, a community hospital in an area pummeled by the coronavirus. “Queens was really the worst hit area of New York, or one of the worst hit, so that hospital was really overwhelmed by COVID patients. They were overflowing the emergency departments, the ICU. We converted our whole surgical ICU to a COVID ICU so we were taking care of those patients there.” When she went back to Weill Cornell Medicine, an academic medical center in Manhattan, the surgical ICU there had become a COVID ICU. “They converted some of the operating rooms and some of the other floors to ICUs as well. Recovery rooms for after surgery also were converted to ICU beds. The hospital over-doubled its capacity for critically ill patients.” Finn said every one of the hospital’s residency training programs was reassigned to take care of patients in all the intensive care units. “We had orthopaedic residents and anesthesiologists and oral maxillofacial and dental residents all taking care of ICU patients. Nurses, too. Operating room nurses became ICU nurses. It was pretty incredible to see everybody come together as a hospital community.” Caring for patients at the outset of the pandemic was especially scary “because at that time a lot of my co-residents and colleagues and nurses were getting sick. We didn't know exactly how it spread and how contagious it was. … You didn’t know which patients had it because testing was so limited. We were finding that even patients who
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Photo courtesy of Caitlin Finn ’10
were coming in for a totally unrelated reason — like people who were in a car accident came to the hospital — they would test positive even though they hadn’t had symptoms yet. So we just had to kind of work under the assumption that everybody had it. That was scary, not knowing who you could get infected from. But I really do think that the protective measures worked and are keeping people safe.” Both hospitals were short initially on protective equipment and materials. “We were very much in conservation mode for most of the first part of the pandemic. A lot of the
“ We had orthopaedic residents and anesthesiologists and oral maxillofacial and dental residents all taking care of ICU patients. Nurses, too. Operating room nurses became ICU nurses. It was pretty incredible to see everybody come together as a hospital community.” — Dr. Caitlin Finn ’10
PPE [personal protective equipment], we were bringing in from home or relying on donations from families and friends to give us respirator masks and gowns, gloves and things like that. Thanks to that, I never went without protection, but it was definitely the sort of situation where we had to be careful and conserve our resources. “In the hospital in Queens, they never ran out of ventilators but used the emergency ventilators that were supplied. At Cornell, they used the anesthesia machines as ventilators. Fortunately we never had to ration ventilators but there were definitely times when materials were running low, dialysis supplies and different medications that we needed to take care of critically ill patients.” Finn has treated patients of all different ages. “The youngest patient I’ve had was in their mid-20s. That was really heartbreaking.” And not being able to talk with a patient’s family members has made caring for COVID-19 patients particularly challenging. “It’s very hard because usually — for patients who are critically ill in the ICU — we are used to talking to patients’ families at the bedside, families are seeing what’s going on every day. One of the hardest parts is the families aren’t here, they are not visiting, so we call them on the phone every day to give them updates. But it’s not the same and I think it’s been hard for us and the families to adjust to that new normal. … Sometimes that means giving really bad news over the phone, which is something that’s not easy to do. It’s not easy to do in person when you are sitting with somebody and it’s even harder over the phone when you can't really see what’s going on and interact with people.”
Finn is seeing a decrease in the number of new patients with COVID-19. “And the patients who are still in the ICU, for the most part, are getting better and moving to the step down floors and eventually out of the hospital to rehab facilities.” But their recovery isn't necessarily over. “We’ve seen some really bad complications, so a lot of the patients who have survived COVID are still coming out of it with a lot of very chronic medical problems that they will have to deal with for the rest of their lives. People will be on dialysis forever, will need oxygen forever. … Kidneys have been majorly affected in a lot of patients, a lot of patients have blood clots in their arms or legs or have strokes because of COVID. A lot of people will survive with major disabilities. We are seeing people survive — and we are seeing people get better and go home — so it’s pretty encouraging and inspiring, too.” Finn has three years remaining in her five-year surgical residency, and she’s thankful she has that much time ahead of her. “It’s hard being a surgical resident and not doing any surgeries. … I still have three years, so I have some more time to kind of learn how to operate.”
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Photo by Sideline Sports/The Ivy League
A Reflection on a Senior Season Lost It's Hard to Imagine Never Putting on a Dartmouth Uniform Again Story by Cha'Mia Rothwell ’16
One of the most painful things to experience as a senior is losing your season prematurely. The irony of the situation is that my teammates and I received this news in the middle of practice. Looking back, I have to laugh a little as we were so shocked that we continued to train in the moment, completely disregarding the gravity of what we just heard. I distinctly remember reading the email repeatedly after practice in a state of denial, confusion and frustration. "Wait, what do you mean the season is canceled?"
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April 3, 2020
This was the question that circled through my mind in the days and weeks that followed the initial moment of utter shock. Even though I've mostly come to terms with this life-changing news, it's still hard to imagine that I will never put on a Dartmouth uniform again. While I'm disappointed by this new reality, I've had a tremendous amount of time to reflect on my athletic career at Dartmouth and the great times that I've spent with my teammates.
“ If there's one thing that I've learned from this, it's to treat every moment on the track like it may be my last.” — Cha'Mia Rothwell ’16 As a team, we experienced so many ups and downs this year from both an individual and collective perspective, especially after losing coach Sandy, who was the heartbeat of our program. [Veteran track and field coach Sandy Ford-Centonze died in December after battling cancer.] During this period of grief, we truly grew closer as a family through leaning on one another in the midst of tough times and for that I am forever grateful. I found so much joy in coming to practice every day and seeing myself and my teammates
get better. Track and field had become my place of refuge and I'm sure other student-athletes can relate in a similar fashion. Many of us consider our sport to be an intrinsic part of us, a part that when taken away makes us feel incomplete. I knew that my farewell to Dartmouth track and field was approaching, so the disappointing aspect was not the "goodbye" itself. Rather, it was the manner in which everything unfolded — completely abrupt and unexpected — that makes this a tough pill to swallow. If there's one thing that I've learned from this, it's to treat every moment on the track like it may be my last. As student-athletes, it can be easy to take our sports for granted, not knowing that at any moment a part of our lives that we love so much can be ripped away from us due to circumstances completely out of our control. With that said: thank you, Dartmouth track and field, for making the last three-and-a-half years so incredibly special. The sense of camaraderie that this team embodies will stick with me forever.
Rothwell Joins Duke Track and Field Team as Graduate Transfer Cha'Mia Rothwell ’16 will bring her athletic talents to Duke University next year, joining the Blue Devil track and field team as a graduate transfer while attending Duke’s Fuqua School of Business. At Dartmouth, Rothwell won back-to-back Ivy League Outstanding Female Field Performer honors at the 2017 and 2018 Heptagonal Championships. She set personal best times in the 60m hurdles (8.20 seconds) and 200m (23.90 seconds) at the 2018 Ivy League Indoor Championships, winning gold and silver, respectively. She claimed gold again in the indoor 60m hurdles this past season with a finish of 8.31 seconds. In her first year at Dartmouth, she set the Ivy League
record in 60m hurdles with a time of 8.30 at indoor Heptagonal Championships. She also set school records in the 100m hurdles with a time of 13.23 at outdoor Heps and in the long jump with a 6.17 meter (20’03”) leap at indoor Heps. Rothwell was named Dartmouth’s top senior student-athlete, and the Dartmouth athletics department twice recognized Rothwell as the most outstanding female athlete of the year. At Durham Academy, Rothwell held the 200m North Carolina Independent School Athletic Association champion title for three consecutive years and the 100m and high jump state champion title for a year.
Originally published on dartmouthsports.com.
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April 17, 2020
Gone to Graduation in My Mind: Leaving College Amid a Global Crisis Story by Hannah Lang ’16
This is what my last few months of college were supposed to look like: Papers. Projects. Sunny days sitting on the quad between classes. Graduation day, complete with Carolina blue cap and gown. Family brunch at the Carolina Inn. Way too many pictures in the harsh lighting of the Carolina sun. Parties. Ceremonies. End of the road moments. It would be a tearful, traditional, goodbye to what — according to conventional wisdom — had been the best four years of my life. And here I am — in my pajamas at 11 a.m., sitting on my dad’s couch with a nearly finished bachelor’s degree and three half-finished applications for open positions at grocery stores. No graduation, no end of the road moments, no post-grad summer internship to jet off to when it’s all over. Here I am, living through a historic event. It’s tragic and traumatic and exhausting. Many people are suffering, and I’m enormously lucky to be healthy and safe. Still, I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on what I’d imagined this month would look like. I took for granted that it was all going to happen for me — the cap and gown, the sunny days, the pomp and circumstance of taking my first step into a seemingly bright future. But now the economy is tanking, the world is shut down and I turn on the news every morning to thousands of people sick and dying. It is, to say the very least, not what I expected for my senior spring. ** At first, I didn’t want to go to UNC. I grew up in Chapel Hill and I wanted to get out, if only to
signal that I had quite literally moved on to bigger and better things. The last thing I want to do, I told my guidance counselor, is move 10 minutes down the road. I applied because she told me I could get in, and I needed a safety option given all the selective colleges I had on my list. Fine, I told her, remembering the project I’d done in seventh grade when the class was assigned a research project on the university of our choice. One by one, my classmates had presented their homemade posters: UNC-Chapel Hill, East Carolina, Western Carolina, UNC-Charlotte. I probably scoffed, which is embarrassing to recount now. I was an elitist and rather arrogant 12-year-old. I walked up and slapped my light-blue poster board covered in glued-on pictures of grecian columns and manicured lawns onto the desk in front of me. “COLUMBIA,” I had scrawled in handwritten bubble letters across the top. Schools like Columbia, with their sky-high tuition and rock-bottom admissions rates, had to be the best, I thought. And I was going to be the best. Bigger and better things, I told myself. If I just worked hard enough, I’d get there. **
I was the kind of kid who read books during recess, so as you might imagine, I wasn’t popular in grade school. When things were hard or when I felt alone, I relied on the image of some far-off version of my life to get me through it. Still, I was frequently reminded that as much as I wanted to will something into existence, things were often more complicated. I wanted to be a brilliant ballet dancer, but I didn’t have the body for it. I wanted to be the top of my class at my private high school, but years in less rigorous schools left me playing catch-up. And when I applied to college — nine, including Tufts, Georgetown, Swarthmore, Duke, University of Chicago and Columbia — I was rejected by all of them, except for one. Thanks to my years spent shooting for the Ivy League, I had the scores and the grades to get into UNC-Chapel Hill. I remember grudgingly communicating with some higher power: Fine, God. You want me to go to UNC? I’ll go to UNC. And it wasn’t half bad. I wrote for the student paper and got a part-time job at a beloved burger joint. I saw Barack Obama speak and rushed Franklin Street after we won the NCAA basketball championship and danced in a student production of The Producers that governor-elect Roy Cooper came to see. And that was just my freshman year. I let loose and had fun and was still learning, all the time. And Chapel Hill, that sleepy Southern hometown that I told myself would soon be in my past, found a new, beloved place in my heart. A part of me couldn’t let go of the idea that if I just put my nose to the grindstone and focused on the right things, I could guarantee the distant future would look the way I’d always imagined it. That’s what I told myself as I sat in the library late at night, scrambling for good grades or agonizing over my latest story for The Daily Tar Heel. The harder I worked, I thought, the more certain that bright and beckoning future became. And at graduation, after a four-year delay, I’d still be on my way. ** The COVID-19 pandemic has turned the lives of every American on its head, and mine is no exception.
My summer internship has been deferred, my graduation is postponed and I’m looking for a temporary place to live in the Triangle. I’m applying to all the jobs I can: receptionist, grocery clerk, part-time copywriter. It is not the adulthood my seventh-grade self dreamed of. Looking back, there were so many times that I
“ You roll your eyes when people say it, but it’s true: all you have is right now. All that’s guaranteed is what’s in front of you.” let my investment in a glitzy future take me out of the present. It seems pretty stupid, now that I realize none of it was ever a given. If I could go back to my 12-year-old self — or my 16-year-old self, or my 20-year-old self for that matter — I would shake her by the shoulders and say this: Listen — look forward to it, but don’t bank on it. Don’t let it be all you have. Don’t put yourself in misery now because you think that somehow this self-directed suffering in the present will guarantee you something in the future. You roll your eyes when people say it, but it’s true: all you have is right now. All that’s guaranteed is what’s in front of you. You’re going to learn that many, many times over the course of your life. My only hope is that each time it sinks into your thick skull just a little more than the last. I’d like to think she’d listen to me. But I was a pretty arrogant seventh-grader. Editor’s Note: After penning this piece, Lang shared that she has been selected for an internship with the Wall Street Journal economics team in Washington, D.C., beginning in January 2021. This summer, she is serving as The Daily Tar Heel’s online managing editor.
Originally published on mediahub.unc.edu.
Alumni Reach Out to Help Others During Global Health Crisis Whether through the arts, education, health care or food drives, Durham Academy alumni reached out to help others as COVID-19 drastically changed life around the world. Below is a roundup of the ways alumni put their varied talents to work. Simon Curtis ’02, vice president of ambulatory services at Duke Health’s Private Diagnostic Clinic, was part of the Duke Health Care COVID-19 response team and the operational incident lead for the 105-plus Duke Faculty Practice Clinics and Duke Health Access Services. “In many ways this is a scary time for all of us, but in other ways it is bringing out the best of people and organizations in terms of creativity and innovation to meet the needs of our patients,” Curtis said via email. Curtis outlined Duke’s response over the four weeks before the coronavirus hit North Carolina: a new COVID hotline to answer questions from patients, a COVID nurse triage hub to support the management of infected patients, a video visit platform for more than 1,000 faculty to continue to care for their patients and drive-up sites where patients can have a COVID test done in their car to avoid coming into a clinic. “We have a long way to go to get through this, but I believe we will learn a lot and hope that many of these innovations that create a better system for our patients will stick long after the virus is gone.” Increasing the options for telehealth — which connects patients and caregivers by telephone or video — has been a long-term goal for Duke Health, and with the outbreak of COVID-19 and social distancing measures, Duke worked quickly to expand its ability to deliver care remotely. “Over the last five years we’ve had some level of telehealth, but it’s
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really been accelerated,” Curtis said in an article published April 15 in Working@Duke. Starting on March 17, patients with mild COVID-19 symptoms could consult with a Duke Urgent Care provider via telehealth to assess their symptoms and schedule a test. “A good thing that might come from this terrible situation is a new understanding of when and where telemedicine makes sense,” Curtis said.
Michael Ronco ’10
Michael Ronco ’10 is a fabricator at Beechwood Metalworks in Burlington. While most of the firm’s work is with metal, Beechwood Metalworks was contacted about producing plastic medical face shields for local hospitals in an attempt to keep up with the
demand as the coronavirus impacted the area. Ronco was excited to be an important part of this project. While he was at DA, Ronco took several art classes and was a founding member of DA’s robotics team. Family members said via email that Ronco “was always building stuff — it was what he loved then and it’s what he loves now!”
Hope Boykin ’90, a dancer with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, used her talents to help lift spirits. The Alvin Ailey troupe was not able to give live performances, but the group gathered to perform for the masses via Facebook. You can check out the performance at bit.ly/HopeBoykinPerformance and bit.ly/AileyforAll.
Peter Kasson ’95, an associate professor of molecular physiology and of biomedical engineering at the University of Virginia, usually studies influenza and antibiotic-resistant bacteria. He became part of a team working on a COVID-19 vaccine, and is also working on epidemiologic modeling. Kasson has been getting attention for this work, including an appearance in a virtual town hall for a Virginia representative to Congress. You can view the virtual town hall at bit.ly/PeterKasson.
Photo by WBTV Caroline Few Elliott ’10
Caroline Few Elliott ’10 had raised more than $91,000 as of May 27 toward her goal of $100,000 to provide meals for health care workers on the front lines in Charlotte. Her Instagrambased effort, which began on March 26, uses local restaurants to prepare boxed meals and snacks for health care professionals battling COVID-19 at Charlotte hospitals. “The idea is to keep it sanitary and easy with ‘grab and go’ boxes,” Elliott said via email. The “local helping local” campaign, called CLT STRONG, provides 100 meals a day to healthcare workers. In an Instagram post, Ellliott wrote, “As a former hospital nurse [in the pediatric oncology/hematology/ bone marrow transplant at Children's National in Washington, D.C.], it really means a lot to me to give back to my people — so please help us keep our favorite restaurants aloft and give our community a little extra love and energy.” Elliott was invited to the White House for National Nurses’ Day on May 6 to represent nurses and the CLT STRONG campaign. “I’m just
really really proud to represent nurses today,” Elliott said in an interview with Charlotte station WBTV. “I think what I’m doing is just such a small piece of what’s going on right now and it’s really nothing compared to what everyone on the front line is doing. But I feel very humbled and honored to be recognized, but also want to recognize everybody else and say that it takes a village. This isn’t just about me, it’s about everyone that’s helped me and everybody we’re benefiting.”
Bradley Hardy ’98 was co-author of an article for the Brookings Institute on the fiscal response to COVID19. The article, which was published March 24 on the Brookings website, recommended “a package of multiple direct stimulus payments of $1500 per adult and $500 per child, with a $4000 maximum per family. Median family income in 2018 was just over $78,000, and thus this transfer would cover about 60 percent of median monthly income. Importantly, policymakers should prepare to make as many as
four monthly payments, starting in April.” Hardy is a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and is an associate professor in the Department of Public Administration and Policy at American University. You can read the article at bit.ly/BradleyHardy.
Constance Leder ’14 teaches special education at a Title 1 school in South Carolina. “Working at a Title 1 school means food can be scarce for the students at my school and some may be unsure when their next meal will be,” Leder said via email. “Luckily, our school has a wonderful backpack food program where students receive a bag full of food each Friday before heading home for the weekend. However, with the closing of schools, my school and district wanted to ensure the students still received the bags of food.” Leder and other teachers loaded their cars with food and drove to each individual student's home to deliver the food.
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“It was so nice to put eyes on our students, show them our smiling faces, and assure them that we will get through together as a community and school. During this time of e-learning, it is easy to lose touch with our students, but this is the time they need us the most. … I am loading up my car again to visit my personal class of students to deliver some fun activities and again, see those smiling faces. I know these acts may be small, but for my students and school community, they are large. I can't imagine what some of these families are going through right now and if I can make any aspect of their life easier or more cheerful, I am so excited to do it.”
Jason Sholtz ’99 helped get food to public school students in Durham while schools were closed. Sholtz — a restauranteur with Maverick’s Smokehouse, James Joyce Irish Pub and SociaBull Coffee — put the word out on Facebook that he was collecting nonperishable food for students who rely heavily on supplemental school lunch. “People began dropping food off at our house and if they couldn’t, we picked it up,” Sholtz said via email. “The collection was huge. Myself and others drove all the food to schools and organizations in need.” Maverick’s Smokehouse and James Joyce Irish Pub offered free meals to children who were at high risk and provided meals at 50% off to industry workers who were now unemployed. “James Joyce Irish Pub and Maverick’s Smokehouse delivered food to emergency operations workers and came away feeling lucky to have so many dedicated individuals working tirelessly to help our community,” he said.
Emily Zoffer ’13 is director of international relations at the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants in Tel Aviv, Israel. “While Israeli citizens have healthcare, national insurance and unemployment benefits to fall back on in
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these difficult times, Israel's 30,000 asylum seekers do not and are hit particularly hard by this crisis,” Zoffer said via email. “My colleagues and I are working to assist the asylum-seeking community during this emergency by releasing immigration detainees who are at a much higher risk of infection in detention, ensuring that asylum seekers and migrant workers are not forced to go to in-person appointments to renew their visas, connecting asylum seekers who have been laid off to employers searching for emergency workers, and providing daily phone-based paralegal assistance.”
Photo courtesy of Jenny Glasson Hubert ’75
Lisa Getsinger Jones ’79 works with Southern Harvest Hospitality Group, which partnered with Families Moving Forward, Durham Public School Foundation and End Hunger Durham to connect with families in immediate need. Jones was part of an effort that raised $50,000 and provided meals for more than 30,000 people.
provided fabric to a neighbor and a Mother/Daughter team who sew and they complete a portion of the masks and I finish. My partner, Paul Hoffman, and my son, Macon Hubert [DA ’20], have been a part of this project and helped with portions of making the masks as able. As a team, we have been very productive and this keeps a steady supply going to local organizations until their needs are met.”
Jenny Glasson Hubert ’75 has kept hard at work sewing face masks. “So far, the number is 1,400 masks and still counting,” Hubert said in a May 27 email. “Switching gears briefly during first week of June, I am making 10 surgical/isolation gowns for Urban Ministries Open Door Clinic of Wake who serve uninsured, low income residents of Wake County. Each gown takes about 4 yards of fabric. (At this time, NC has a 0 day supply of surgical gowns.) I have bought supplies, made and donated masks to Emergency Medical Services of Durham, Durham County Sheriff's Office, Durham County Department of Public Health and Duke Regional Hospital among others since early March. This is a project that will continue as long as there is a need. EMS of Durham is distributing masks according to need through Durham County Social Services. They started with a request for 2,000 masks and have increased their request to 3,500 masks. I have
Katie Ballou Gardner ’01, an English as a second language teacher at an elementary school in Salisbury, made certain her students had food while school was closed. “My school in particular is a high-needs Title 1 school, meaning we have lots of poverty and students receive free breakfast and free lunch and book bags to take home on the weekends full of food,” Gardner said via email. “During these distance-learning days I have been given the opportunity to ride my student school bus route and pass out breakfast and lunch to the students (of course with gloves and the right amount of distance between us). Our students are also offered the opportunity to sign up for a free internet service for 60 days. Many of my students do not have internet access at home.” Her students use iPads at school and because school was closed they
were allowed to have the devices at home. Gardner, who was recognized as an Apple Distinguished Educator in 2017, hosted several webinars with organizations like the National Association for the Education of Young Children and International Society for Technology in Education’s Early Learning Network to share strategies, digital tools and creative learning tasks early learner teachers could use with their students during this challenging time.
Alumni & Faculty Weddings
Cathy Howe Sheafor ’84 runs a year-round swim club in Charleston, South Carolina. With practices canceled and social distancing, she has done amazing things to continue her team’s program: • Collecting 1,000 N95 masks for a local doctor. • Sewing masks for a nurse. • Working out via Google Hangouts. • Planning walks to clean up neighborhoods. Bradley Hardy ’98 and Bonita Robertson, March 7, 2020, New Orleans, LA
Jonathan McLeod and Elizabeth Lyle, Oct. 11, 2019, Chapel Hill, NC
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Alumni, Faculty and Staff Babies 1 — Riley, daughter of Kelly Teagarden ’04, Upper School history teacher, and Josh Klein, Upper School history teacher 2 — Elianna pictured with big sister Aviva, daughters of Ben Mark ’03 and Rebekah Brenner Mark ’03 3 — Charlee, daughter of Chris Kanoy ’07 4 — Hayes (3) and Jack, sons of Pamela McKenney, Lower School art teacher
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5 — Sam, son of Ben Michelman, Middle School language arts teacher 6 — Ellison, daughter of Melody Guyton Butts, assistant director of communications 7 — Ava, daughter of Paige Reeves Heard ’11 8 — Nell, daughter of Maggie McPherson Weir ’01
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In Memoriam Stephen Bishop McNutt ’91 died July 5, 2019, at his home in Iowa City, Iowa, where he was a lecturer in the Department of Rhetoric at the University of Iowa. A graduate of Bucknell University, he served in the Peace Corps in Gabon before moving to Iowa City to complete his M.F.A. and Ph.D. A writer and an occasional painter, he painted several murals as part of his work as a Peace Corps volunteer. His painting skills also came in handy after the 2016 election when he created a NOPE sign that adorned the fence in his yard that eventually became a T-shirt worn and loved by many. He loved the ocean, the outdoors and fishing. He spent most of last summer in Hawaii, and was planning to relocate there. He is survived by his partner, Jessica Garlock, of Honolulu, Hawaii; his mother, Mary Beth Bishop of Durham; and his father and stepmother, Gordon and Kay McNutt of Austin, Texas.
C L Kendall, former member of the Durham Academy Board of Trustees (1984–1990) died Dec. 3, 2019, in Chapel Hill. He believed he careened from one lucky experience to another, ending up as a professor in UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School where he taught marketing and international business. He enlisted in the Navy at age 17 and served on a World War II destroyer in the Pacific. He attended Washburn University on the GI Bill and earned an M.B.A. and doctorate from Harvard Business School. He worked on a Harvard team that founded a university in Central America and was director of research for a new university that Stanford Business School established in Lima, Peru. After 17 moves before arriving in Chapel Hill in 1968, he resolved to stop the world and get off, which he did, raising his four children in one spot. He is survived by his wife of 32 years, Mary Anne Kendall; sons, Malcolm Kendall ’79, Blair Kendall ’81, Logan Kendall ’86; and a daughter, Kathryn Kendall ’87.
R. Wensell Grabarek, former member of the Durham Academy Board of Trustees (1955–1957) and former mayor of Durham (1963–1971), died at age 100 at his Durham home on Dec. 15, 2019. He appreciated that Durham gave him the opportunity to lead the city in voluntary commercial desegregation prior to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. True to his independent character, he was self-employed as a certified public accountant until his retirement at age 98. He believed strongly in the transformative power of education, establishing scholarships at 10 academic institutions and supporting many more. He was preceded in death by his wife of 73 years, Marion Prichard Norris, and is survived by his four children: Robert Wensell Grabarek Jr. ’64, Louise Norris Grabarek ’67, John Carl Albert Grabarek ’72 and David Harrison Grabarek ’74.
Alex Gallis ’87 died Jan. 14, 2020, at his home in Chapel Hill. He graduated summa cum laude from Sierra Nevada College with a degree in ski business management, then changed his career direction to become a chef with a culinary arts degree from Johnson & Wales University. After tours as chef and chef de cuisine at Acme and Magnolia Grill, respectively, he opened his own restaurant, Cypress on the Hill, in Chapel Hill in 2009. Cypress was a culinary success receiving excellent reviews, but sadly closed in August 2012 at the height of the recession. He was a talented athlete in tennis, basketball, soccer, skiing and golf. During his time at Magnolia Grill, he developed cardiomyopathy and heart failure, ultimately resulting in a heart transplant in December 2016. Despite the excellent care he received from multiple physicians at Duke he was never able to return to a restaurant position. He is survived by his wife, Sasha Tucker Gallis; daughters, Lisa Taylor and Savannah Hope; a sister, Sara Gallis; and his parents, Susie and Harry Gallis of Durham.
Waldo Cory Melrose Johnston III ’91 died Feb. 25, 2020, in a skiing accident on Mount Hood, Oregon. He spent his early years in Colorado, where he learned to ski, and developed a passion for other activities when his family moved to North Carolina in 1980. He became North Carolina’s first AllAmerican lacrosse player and earned acceptance to Yale University, where he played varsity lacrosse. Following graduation, he heeded the call of the West, where he eventually joined the ski patrol. Everything changed one night when he and his colleagues tried to save the life of a young skier who had sustained a fatal injury. He decided to become a doctor and completed medical school at the University of Pittsburgh, residency at The University of Utah and became a surgeon at Providence Hood River Memorial Hospital. He is survived by his wife, Dr. Pippa Newell; sons, Rocky and Bode; his parents, Waldo and Caroline Johnston of Vero Beach, Florida; and a sister, Crickett Johnston Woloson ’89.
Sherry Townsend, who served as administrative assistant to headmasters Rob Hershey and Don North, died Feb. 29, 2020, in Durham of the recurrence of a cancer diagnosis she received in 1999 and was given a 5% chance of surviving. “With determination, faith and joie de vivre, she beat the 5% survival prognosis in late 2000 and remained non-symptomatic until this past November,” her children wrote in an obituary. “When a tumor was found on her liver this past December, she told the entire family, ‘I got a 20-year hall pass the last time. I promised I would make good on every minute of it and I have.’ If measured by one's ability to show and breed compassion, friendship, care, love and loyalty, with a quick sense of humor and a side of sass, our Mom was a Nobel Prize winner of the first order.” She is survived by her husband of 62 years, Bill Townsend; sons, Doug Townsend and Cab Townsend ’87; and daughter, Sheridan Townsend Van Wagenberg.
Nonprofit Organization U.S. Postage Paid Durham, NC 27701 Permit #1083
3601 Ridge Road Durham, NC 27705-5599
Photo by Sarah Jane Tart
Congratulations, Durham Academy Class of 2020 We wish you continued success in your future endeavors: American University Amherst College Boston College Brown University Case Western Reserve University Clemson University College of William and Mary Colorado College Cornell University Dartmouth College Davidson College Drew University Duke University Elon University Emory University Florida State University Furman University Gap Year George Washington University Georgetown University Georgia Institute of Technology
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