Summer 2018
Building Philanthropy: A Look at the Past and a Vision for the Future
CONNECT WITH DURHAM ACADEMY View the magazine online at da.org/magazine The Durham Academy App is available in the Apple App Store
Photo courtesy of Ben Mark
#DAflashback Alumni, pull out those scrapbooks from your Cavalier years, and give us your best shot! We’ll feature Instagram photos with the #DAflashback hashtag (be sure to tag @DurhamAcademy, too) on our social media platforms, and we just might include your photo here in the next issue of Durham Academy Magazine!
Photo courtesy of Virginia Hall
Thanks to Ben Mark ’03 for sharing this great shot of the senior members of the 2003 varsity boys lacrosse team, which won the team’s second consecutive state championship.
Sisters Virginia Reves Hall ’91 and Christy Reves ’92 were all smiles in this prom pic, from either 1990 or 1991.
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/LinkedInDA Instagram: instagram.com/DurhamAcademy Flickr: flickr.com/DurhamAcademy
FEATURES 19 — FAREWELL TO THE CLASS OF 2018 With a commencement send-off from writer and humorist Roy Blount, Jr., 102 new graduates head off for adventures near and far.
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Building Philanthropy
Since Calvert Method School’s founding in 1933 by Ann and Watts Hill, Durham Academy families have stepped up to keep the school moving forward: opening a new campus on Academy Road, building the Upper School, moving the Preschool and Lower School to Ridge Road, and creating a new STEM and Humanities Center at the Upper School.
40 — TED LAB OFFERS A NEW WAY TO LEARN A computer lab that was filled with 20 desktop computers is now a flexible TED space where students in grades one through four experiment with technology, engineering and design. Fourth-graders used design-thinking to help create the dynamic new space.
46 — THE WONDER OF WISER Over the past decade, Upper School students have raised more than $30,000 to support WISER, a community development organization focused on the social empowerment of girls in Muhuru Bay, Kenya. Over spring break, 16 students and two teachers got a first-hand look at the school and community they have supported.
On the Cover: When the 2016–2017 school year drew to a close, the old Upper School physics building was demolished and work began immediately on a new STEM and Humanities Center. The STEM wing of the new building will open in August 2018, with the humanities wing slated for completion by summer 2019. Illustration by Sarah Jane Tart
Diane Uzzle ’75 breaks ground for the new Upper School in January 1973. Photo courtesy of the DA Archives
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Featured Contributors
Summer 2018 Vol. 45 // 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 // Multimedia Specialist
Carina Rockart ’21 Rockart has been drawing pretty much her entire life and has been journaling for about a year. Her journal is a place for creative expression and also for organization — she keeps her schedule in it. She journaled about her trip to Kenya to support WISER.
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Robert Wilson, Middle School Dean of Students; Jordan Adair, Upper School English; Fran Wittman, The Hill Center English; Michelle Rosen, Preschool and Lower School librarian; Karen Lovelace, retired Lower School teacher
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Boo Briggs ’21; Zoë Boggs ’18; Greg Murray, Upper School PE; Les Todd; Bobbie Hardaker, retired Upper School faculty; Jon Gardiner; Megan Mendenhall; Thomas Phu, Upper School history; Michael Barley; Francesca Simoni; Doug Austin; Jeffrey A. Camarati; Tim Cowie Photography; Izabel Medeiros, at Sopro Fotografía
CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATORS Carina Rockart ’21; Sarah Ransohoff ’07, The New Yorker
PRODUCTION Theo Davis // Printer
Michelle Rosen Preschool and Lower School Librarian Rosen was hooked when she attended her first EdCamp, a free event where motivated educators talk about exactly what they want to discuss. She brought EdCamp Bull City to Durham Academy in January, drawing teachers from near and far.
LEADERSHIP Michael Ulku-Steiner // Head of School Brendan Moylan ’85 // Chair, Board of Trustees Garrett Putman ’94 // President, Alumni Board
DEVELOPMENT AND ALUMNI AFFAIRS
development@da.org
Leslie Holdsworth // Director of Development and Alumni Affairs Tim McKenna // Associate Director of Alumni Affairs Special thanks to the Anne McNamara, DA archivist; The Durham Sun; Radcliffe Choral Society; UNC Athletic Communications; CNN; and Hampden-Sydney College
Karen Lovelace Retired Lower School teacher Lovelace spent 38 years working with children, including 25 years teaching in the Lower School. She retired from teaching at the end of the 2017 school year but is a frequent substitute teacher at DA.
CONTENTS Moral, Happy, Productive
6 — CAMI SIMPSON ’18 Cami Simpson has climbed peaks, hiked glaciers and competed in a triathlon to raise money for Romanian Children’s Relief.
Faculty Spotlight: Co-Director of College Counseling
11 — JAZMIN GARCIA SMITH Photo by Melody Guyton Butts
The first in her family to be born in the U.S. and the first to graduate from high school, Jazmin Garcia Smith knew college was expected of her. She navigated the admissions process mostly on her own, and now she helps DA students.
44 — THE TELLING PROJECT: PLANTING THE OAR A reading group brings together veterans and civilians in an extraordinary dialogue springing forth from some of the world’s oldest literature. Elijah Nambo ’22 performs at the Poetry Slam.
Finding Happiness at EdCamp
52 — CAMP ISN’T JUST FOR KIDS Teachers networked, met new colleagues, debated educational issues and learned from each other at EdCamp Bull City.
64 ALUMNI Combining Her Passions for Travel and Running
54 — VULNERABILITY TAKES CENTER STAGE The Poetry Slam is among the most highly anticipated events of the year for eighth-graders, and the process of writing the poems can be cathartic.
Faculty Spotlight: Learning Specialist
56 — DR. CINDY MOORE The DA learning specialist wants kids to be OK with the kind of learner they are, to advocate for themselves and to understand what they need.
F. Robertson Hershey Distinguished Faculty Award Honors Mike Spatola
66 — NICO BOLLERSLEV FOX ’06 68 — SPRING ALUMNI RECEPTION HONORS ‘BUILDERS’ Family Man Committed to Community
70 — SETH JERNIGAN ’96 Entrepreneur Extraordinaire
74 — JOSEPH WILLIAMS ’88 76 — CLASS NOTES
61 — THE EPITOME OF A LIFE-CHANGING TEACHER A master of the Socratic method, history teacher Mike Spatola embodies the notion that great teaching is all about asking great questions.
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Standing on the Shoulders
“A
hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depends on the labors of others, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the measure as I have received and am still receiving.” — Albert Einstein In his 2003 book Standing on the Shoulders of Giants, the late physicist Stephen Hawking describes the dramatic shifts in human understanding of the universe catalyzed by Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton and Einstein. We often imagine that revolutionary ideas spring fully formed from the brains of isolated geniuses or drop like apples on the heads of daydreaming scientists. But Hawking shows how each figure built upon the genius of his predecessors. Scientific progress, he argues, is cumulative; we can innovate today thanks to the trials, errors, creativity and sacrifices of our ancestors. As Newton himself said in 1675: “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
“ We have made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when we plant shade trees under which we know full well we will never sit.” — D. Elton Trueblood In similar ways, we at Durham Academy stand on the shoulders of visionary philanthropists and educators. In this magazine, you’ll read about many of them: the conditions they inherited, the improvements they envisioned and the obstacles they overcame to create the school we enjoy today — and might sometimes take for granted.
DA was founded and propelled by three extraordinary people. George Watts Hill, Ann McCulloch Hill and Frank Kenan saw what others could not: the immense potential for an excellent independent school in Durham. They invested their time and treasure in this institution because they knew that high academic expectations, a welcoming community spirit and a holistic focus on individual learners was a magical recipe for unlocking human potential. In the years since, hundreds of generous donors and master educators have invested themselves and their resources on our campuses to create the Durham Academy we enjoy today. Each of these investors cared about different aspects of the school, but all of them understood that education is the most potent, life-changing, world-improving gift we can offer. Now, as we prepare to teach and learn in our state-of-the-art Upper School STEM wing (the first phase of the most ambitious series of capital projects in Durham Academy’s 85-year history), we look back at the giants on whose shoulders we’ve been standing for decades. Because we are educators, we can’t help but look forward. Because our mission compels us to prepare children for moral, happy, productive adult lives, we can’t wait to see the things our students will create and discover in our new STEM and Humanities Center. Because we do not take for granted the opportunities made available by the philanthropists and educators before us, we are collaborating ambitiously with the next generation of Durham Academy giants to pay it forward for our children and the thousands more who will follow in their footsteps.
Michael Ulku-Steiner Head of School @MrUlkuSteiner
From the Blog Feb. 14, 2018
My Take on Kindness at DA By Robert Wilson
A Mission-Driven Life
THE DURHAM ACADEMY GRADUATE It’s teachers like Robert Wilson who help equip students to live moral, happy, productive lives — the framework for The Durham-Academy Graduate: A Mission-Driven Life. As he writes here, a desire to work in a setting that places an emphasis on kindness led him to the doors of DA Middle School, where he serves as dean of students. Living a moral, happy, productive life is Cami Simpson ’18, who has raised thousands of dollars for a Romanian children’s nonprofit by completing physical challenges over the past 10 years; read her story on page 6.
Learn more about the 15 character traits that comprise The DA Graduate: A Mission-Driven Life and read blog posts by Dr. Gerty Ward (on integrity) and Patti Donnelly (on creativity) at thedagraduate.org.
The concept of kindness is one that I have enjoyed contemplating throughout my personal and professional life, particularly with my students and advisees. Kindness is woven into many behaviors, actions and thoughts. A large portion of the humane side of being human is rooted in kindness. Here is a list of words/phrases that comes to mind when I think of kindness: caring, empathy, understanding, sympathy, respect, service, benevolence, supporting, humane, patience, noticing, choosing to act, merciful, love, having faith, favor, godsend, compassion, gratitude, non-judgmental, aware, forgiving, showing appreciation, optimistic, grace, compassionate, considerate. Throughout my life, I have placed great value on kindness and acting in a kindly manner. From an early age, I knew that I was going to try to do something with my life that would hopefully have a positive effect on others.
To continue reading, go to bit.ly/KindnessatDA.
MORAL HAPPY PRODUCTIVE
Photo courtesy of Cami Simpson
“ I was just a kid, and all I knew was they needed our help.” — Cami Simpson ’18 6
Durham Academy // Summer 2018
Cami Simpson ’18 Story by Melody Guyton Butts
For as long as she can remember, service to others has been a cornerstone of Cami Simpson’s life. “Without really realizing it, my fundraising adventure began when I was 3 years old,” recalls Simpson, who graduated from Durham Academy in May. Her mother routinely took her and her sister shopping for items on the wish list of a women’s and children’s shelter, “and instead of asking for presents for our birthdays, we asked for money to do the shopping.” She was just a preschooler when it occurred to her that there might be a more satisfying way to raise funds. “I felt like it needed to be earned in some way.” So Simpson began to participate in what she calls “challenges” — feats of physical endurance — each year to earn money to support the causes that were important to her and to reflect on why she values service. When she was just 5 years old, she ran a 5K, and she ran her first 10K as a 6-year-old to raise money for a shelter located in Austin, Texas, where she and her family lived at the time. The family moved to England when Simpson was in the second grade, and it was there that she came to know the organization that her challenges have supported ever since. One of the teachers at her new school had just returned from a trip to Romania, where she had worked with Romanian Children’s Relief — a nonprofit that works to improve the lives of children who have been abandoned, are at risk or who have special needs — and Simpson was intrigued. “From that day on, after learning about Romania and RCR, I decided I was going to raise money for them as long as I could,” she said. “I’ve continued to do this since I was 7 years old, and I do not plan on stopping.”
Challenges Benefiting Romanian Children’s Relief • 2008: Ran 8 miles around Virginia Water Lake in Surrey, England • 2009: Ran 11.5 miles around Virginia Water Lake • 2010: Ran 13.5 miles around Virginia Water Lake • 2011: Ran Raleigh’s City of Oaks Half Marathon • 2012: Ran Raleigh Rocks Half Marathon • 2013: Completed two-day hike of Mount Kinabalu, the tallest peak in the Malay Archipelago • 2014: Hiked New Zealand’s Fox Glacier • 2015: Completed six-day hike of a 72-mile stretch of the Appalachian Trail • 2016: Hiked down 5,000 feet of the Grand Canyon and back up in a single day • 2017: Completed the WinstonSalem Ramblin’ Rose Triathlon (with Ava Pacchiana ’18) • Next up — 2018: Hike of Romania’s highest mountain, Moldoveanu Peak
As a 7-year-old, she ran 8 miles around Virginia Water Lake, west of London, to raise funds for RCR. That same year, she, her parents and her sister went to see the work of the nonprofit at a hospital program in Bucharest, Romania, for themselves. “I didn’t realize the extent to which the child abandonment issues are affecting Romania,” Simpson recalled. “I was just a kid, and all I knew was they needed our help. It really was so much later, when I had
Photo courtesy of Cami Simpson Cami Simpson '18 (upper right) and Ava Pacchiana '18 (upper left) volunteered with Romanian Children’s Relief programs around Romania in the summer of 2017, including a school program in a Roma village outside Bistrița.
a better understanding of the history, that I realized how truly sad it was to see those conditions.” The problems that RCR works to address date to 1967 — the start of the reign of dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, who believed that the path to economic growth was through increased population. Over the course of his 22 years as Romania’s head of state, policies aimed at increasing birth rates, coupled with austerity measures, led to widespread poverty, hunger and child abandonment. When communism ended in 1989, an estimated 100,000 children were in orphanages, and the state had few resources to care for them. Needles were scarce, and thousands of children had been exposed to HIV-positive blood through blood transfusions, which were commonly used as a treatment for anemia or malnourishment. Romanian Children’s Relief was founded as a U.S.-based nonprofit in 1990 with the goal of providing better care for Romanian orphans and helping to combat the pediatric AIDS epidemic. In 1998, it was also incorporated as a Romanian charitable foundation, Fundația Inocenți. The organization now serves more
than 2,000 children through nearly 40 Romanian staff and more than 500 volunteers. “I’m very proud to be one of those volunteers,” Simpson said. “They work in hospitals, schools, placement centers and homes providing psychological and physical therapy, education, training and material assistance. The vision that the organization holds is to ensure all children, including those with special needs or disadvantages of any sort, receive the support that they need to achieve their potential.” On her first visit to Romania, Simpson shared something she had in abundance as an 8-year-old: love. Forever touched by the 23 orphaned babies she cuddled and helped care for over the course of a week, she made it her mission to raise at least $2,000 for RCR each year through her challenges. Through three roundthe-world family moves, Simpson’s commitment to the children of Romania has been a constant. Simpson returned to Romania in 2017 with DA classmate Ava Pacchiana, with whom she completed her yearly challenge the same year. Since Simpson’s first visit, RCR had
opened additional programs throughout the country, and they were able to volunteer in facilities in Bucharest, Cluj, Bruges and Bistrița. “We noticed that the Inocenți operation in Bistrița was able to make a big impact in the community, and it’s because their services were spread all throughout the community in different parts,” she said. “And, consequently, these diverse services for poor and handicapped children were making a large impact. The programs in Bistrița show a great example of the difference a program like Inocenți can make when given sufficient funds.” This summer, Simpson will make her third trip to Romania, where she will again volunteer with RCR and tackle her 11th annual challenge to benefit the organization: a hike of Romania’s highest mountain, Moldoveanu Peak. “The truth is, what we do for a charity and how hard we work won’t ever be enough. Not by a long shot — but that’s exactly it,” she said. “We must continue to help those who need it because although our individual efforts can never fully solve a problem, they can for sure help it reach its potential.”
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CONGRATULATIONS!
Jeff Burch
Fred Chang How do you get to Carnegie Hall? As DA junior Fred Chang can attest, the path is practice, practice, practice! Chang, an accomplished violinist, won two competitions in the American Fine Arts Festival and performed in the AFAF Winners Concert at Carnegie in December. Chang was also selected for violinist Tim Fain's master class when Fain visited Durham for his fall concert at the Carolina Performing Arts Center. Chang was leader of the Duke University String School (DUSS) Youth Symphony for the 2017–2018 season, and he served as concert master for the DUSS concert in November.
SportsCenter Top 10: Walker Benjamin ’21
Mukta Dharmapurikar Eighth-grader Mukta Dharmapurikar finished sixth in the North Carolina National Geographic Bee in April. Dharmapurikar was among 104 middle schoolers from around the state who qualified to compete in the state-level bee (after first winning their school-level bees and then taking a written test). Her finish is the second-best-ever for a DA student in the state bee; in 2016, Carlton zum Brunnen ’20 finished second.
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Durham Academy // Summer 2018
The DA junior varsity boys basketball team closed out the 2017–2018 season with a splash — a buzzer-beating shot that landed at No. 5 on SportsCenter’s Top 10 Plays. Ninth-grader Walker Benjamin sunk a 40-foot shot just before the buzzer to give the JV boys team a 39-36 win over North Raleigh Christian Academy on Feb. 10. With the victory, the Cavs finished the season 16-1 and extended their winning streak to 16. Watch the complete video, captured by fellow ninth-grader Boo Briggs and posted on the @DAathletics Twitter feed, at bit.ly/WalkerBenjamin.
Third-grade teacher Jeff Burch earned a Master of Education degree in literacy from UNC-Chapel Hill in May. Burch aspires to coach teachers. “In my graduate classes I find myself teaching other people all the time. It’s been throughout my life. I was leader of the youth group at church. I choreographed musicals and taught show choirs when I was in Indianapolis.” Burch said pursuing his master’s degree in literacy has been a journey. “I’ve learned a lot, and even more about myself.”
N.C. Governor’s School
Lyn Streck Science Scope published an article Lower School science teacher Lyn Streck wrote with Dr. Tom Sinclair of N.C. State University’s Crop and Soil Sciences Department in its March 2018 issue. Science Scope is the magazine of the National Science Teachers Association. The article — “Could ‘The Martian’ Really Have Grown Potatoes for Food?” — describes a spring 2017 series of exercises that Streck and Sinclair, a Durham Academy grandfather, did with DA third- and fourth-graders to demonstrate that plants need time to grow, light, soil volume, water and nutrients. Read the article at bit.ly/ScienceScope.
Seven DA juniors have been selected to attend Governor’s School of North Carolina’s 2018 program. The five-and-one-half-week program is the nation’s oldest statewide summer residential program for gifted and talented high school students. DA students and their respective areas of study at Governor’s School include the following: • Joseph Walston (Art) • Bella Kim (Art) • Eleanor Robb (French) • Emily Kohn (French) • Angel Knight (Natural Science) • Emily Holmes (Social Science) • Sarah Farrin (Theater) Governor’s School — which does not involve credit, tests or grades — integrates academic disciplines, the arts and unique courses on each of two campuses: Governor’s School West at Salem College in Winston-Salem and Governor’s School East at Meredith College in Raleigh. The 2018 program runs from mid June to late July. Governor’s School is administered by the Public Schools of North Carolina, the State Board of Education and the Department of Public Instruction through the Exceptional Children Division.
Karen Richardson Middle School chorus teacher Karen Richardson was awarded her Master of Music degree from Colorado State University in May. Richardson has been working toward the advanced degree for three years, spending several weeks in Colorado each summer and taking an online course each semester. She started working toward a master’s while living in Toronto and finished one course before she moved to the United States. “By the time I finish my degree, it will be 20 years from when I started that degree in Toronto,” she said. “It’s always been important to me.”
DARC SIDE The force was with the DARC SIDE, the Upper School robotics team, at the FIRST World Championships in Houston. The DARC SIDE — Durham Academy Robotics Club: Students In Design and Engineering — is only in its second year of existence, yet students have qualified for worlds both years. This year, the team finished as the 8th alliance captain and advanced to the semifinals of the playoffs. The performance capped an incredible second season — including a second-place finish and Innovation in Control Award at the state tournament, and a first-place finish at the Asheville district tournament.
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Ultimate Frisbee Passes it on The third annual Durham Nativity Fundraiser Tournament — an Ultimate Frisbee competition organized by Durham Academy junior Alex Hoffman — raised more than $2,500 in March. The sum is enough to purchase Chromebook laptops for the seventh-grade class at Durham Nativity School, a tuition-free independent middle school serving boys from financially challenged families. Each year of the tournament, Hoffman and the tournament participants have been able to raise enough funds to establish and expand a 1:1 laptop program to another grade level at DNS. Plans are to hold the tournament again in 2019 — Hoffman’s senior year at DA — with a goal of providing a laptop program for DNS’ eighth-grade class.
Thanks to our generous community, Parents Association’s first-ever online-only auction was an enormous success, netting $66,485.25! Auction proceeds provide 85 percent or more of Parents Association’s annual budget each year, which is used to support outstanding teaching and exceptional student experiences. Going forward, the auction will be online-only in even-numbered years, and we’ll host a gala event (with both a live auction and online bidding) in odd-numbered years.
Save the Date for the 2019 Auction April 6 at the Washington Duke Inn
Faculty Spotlight: Co-Director of College Counseling
Jazmin Garcia Smith Story by Kathy McPherson
Jazmin Garcia Smith was the first in her family to be born in the United States and the first to graduate high school, and there was no doubt “college was something that was expected of me.” She went to the University of Notre Dame, a school that “was the absolute right fit for me socially and academically,” and since 2015 she has helped students navigate the college admissions process as Durham Academy’s co-director of college counseling. And partly because of the college counseling program, DA students experience something vastly different than what Garcia Smith went through in applying to college. “I had to pretty much navigate a lot of that on my own because of the language barrier with my parents. I was usually the translator for them. I had to figure out how the process worked pretty much on my own because my parents had not been through it. Most of my surrounding community, where I spent most of my time, had not been through it either. I attended an all-girls Catholic high school where we had one college counselor for 800 girls. “The process was different then. It wasn’t nearly as complicated. I chose where I was going to apply entirely on my own and really had planned on only applying to schools in California that were close by. My parents were pretty insistent that they wanted me to stay close to home.” Garcia Smith’s parents had moved from Mexico to Los Angeles seeking better opportunities, and education was the cornerstone of opportunity. Garcia Smith’s mother, the eighth of 10 children and the youngest daughter, left school at fifth grade because her parents said it was time for her to learn a trade. Garcia Smith’s father, the youngest of 11 siblings, dropped out of high school, moved to the U.S. and worked rotating shifts alongside his brothers at a factory that made glass bottles. Her mother stayed home with Garcia Smith and her younger brother.
“ Spanish was my first language. I didn’t learn to speak English until I was in kindergarten, so I learned in school.” — Jazmin Garcia Smith
“They came over at a time when immigration was a much easier process, and they were able to become citizens just a few years later. It was challenging for them because my mom spoke very little English at the time and my dad spoke much more English. But it was still very culturally different. And thankfully, my dad’s two brothers were living in Los Angeles so they were really our community.” She grew up in an area of Los Angeles that was very diverse. It had a large percentage of Latino and Filipino families, and people from multicultural backgrounds. “Spanish was my first language. I didn’t learn to speak English until I was in kindergarten, so I learned in school. It was terrifying. I still have memories of going to kindergarten and having teachers ask me questions, knowing what they were asking but not knowing how to respond to them in English. And I think it’s just stuck. For some reason, it gets in my head that I had those experiences. But it’s fascinating how it all ends up working out in the end because now when I speak English most people don’t necessarily assume that I speak Spanish, and when I’m in Mexico speaking Spanish they don’t believe that I speak English.” A high school friend who graduated before Garcia Smith came back after her first year at Notre Dame and said she thought the school would be an amazing place for Garcia Smith. “My mom and I went to an information session that one of the [Notre Dame] admissions counselors gave. For me, it was life-changing because I learned about this place
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that I just felt was the absolute right fit for me socially and academically. And from that point forward, I think I just felt like that was the place I wanted to be. I was lucky enough to get in. … Notre Dame also offered a wonderful financial aid package.” Garcia Smith was able to fly out and visit the university through a special program that recruited multicultural students. “I got a chance to see the school over a weekend with other admitted students. That experience further defined to me that it was the right place for me. I came home and somehow, I don’t know how, convinced my parents that they should let me go off to college in the middle of nowhere in Indiana to a place that they had never seen. And that fall, my parents were able to fly out to Notre Dame and they dropped me off and I think they felt it, too. I think the minute they were there on the campus they thought this is really the right place for Jazmin.” Garcia Smith was attracted by the Notre Dame’s focus on social justice and helping others. She was active in student government — serving as president of her senior class — and did an internship with an attorney. When she
“ I love when students come into my office and show excitement about all of the possibilities before them.” — Jazmin Garcia Smith graduated, she knew she wanted to do something to help people, and in her mind that meant law or education. She spent two years as an admissions counselor at Notre Dame, recruiting students in Southern California, Hawaii, Alaska and Puerto Rico. “It felt to me like I was giving back because the admissions counselors who had come out to California to talk about Notre Dame had changed so much for me. I felt like I was able to do something similar for other students. The recruitment program that had given me the opportunity to see Notre Dame was now a program that I got to shape. I got to work and recruit students to Notre Dame. Those experiences for me were really rewarding, very rewarding. But in the back of my mind, I still thought I wanted to do something else.”
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Durham Academy // Summer 2018
Photo courtesy of Jazmin Garcia Smith
She was offered a scholarship to DePaul University College of Law in Chicago, and was in her first semester when her father became ill and was subsequently diagnosed with cancer. “First year of law school is pretty tough. I think this made it even tougher, and it shifted all of my priorities. It had been really all about me and what I needed to do. I now was realizing that that was the last thing on my mind, that I wanted to be home with my family. I wanted to make them a priority. I flew home as much as I could during that time. But shortly after, about a month after I had finished my first year of law school, my dad passed away. And that experience just changed everything for me. I think it made me realize just how little of a priority law was, how much I appreciated the fact that I had been able to help people in admissions, how important family was to me. I was encouraged by some of my law school teachers to rethink — do you want to finish, do you want to stay? And I was pretty determined to stay. I wanted to stay, I wanted to graduate.” Garcia Smith worked in DePaul’s law school admissions office her second and third year of law school “just to kind of keep my foot in the door.” She was offered a summer clerkship with a U.S. District Court judge in Charlotte. While the clerkship was “an amazing experience,” it also helped her realize she did not want to pursue law in the long term. She married the summer after law school graduation, moved to North Carolina “kind of on a whim,” took the N.C. Bar Exam and began working with a Latino-focused law firm. Still feeling the pull of admissions work, Garcia Smith reached out to Steve Farmer, director of admissions at UNC-Chapel Hill. She joined the UNC admissions office in June 2010. “I spent five of the most amazing years there. … I was able to again feel like I was doing something that was giving back to people and helping people through what is often a very confusing and stressful process.” She also served as chair of UNC’s Latina/o Faculty and Staff Caucus.
Garcia Smith rose to the position of UNC’s senior assistant director of admissions. “The longer I was in admissions, the more I realized that the farther up you go, your role becomes far more administrative — and that means you have less interaction with students. I had been really lucky to come to Durham Academy several times while I was working at UNC to do presentations. And each time I was really intrigued by the community, I was really impressed. I thought everyone was so kind and thoughtful and had intelligent questions. I was always very impressed with the community.” Realizing how much she missed working with students and families, Garcia Smith came to DA in 2015 as co-director of college counseling. Durham Academy has since become a family affair, with her son, Diego, a kindergartner this past year, and her daughter, Mikaela, headed to pre-k in the fall. “What I love most about my job, and it’s maybe taken this long for me to realize what my calling in life is, but I’m working with students and parents and helping them through this process, navigating the complexity of college admissions. Finding a place that feels like the right fit and hopefully helping students find a place that they’re as excited about as I was about Notre Dame when I finally found that right place.” Garcia Smith helped lead a book club for DA parents that focused on the book Where You Go is Not Who You Will
Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania by Frank Bruni. Garcia Smith, Co-Director of College Counseling Kathy Cleaver and Upper School counselor Dr. Lindsey Copeland teamed up to address the stress and anxiety that often accompanies the college admissions process. “The most selective schools are extremely unpredictable and obviously very difficult to get into oftentimes. But the message we want to get across is that you might find several colleges that really fit what you’re looking for. And just because it’s not the one the U.S. News and World Report rates the highest does not mean that you’re not going to be somebody great, that you’re not going to be able to achieve wonderful things and still be successful and happy.” Garcia Smith is passionate about getting to know the students she works with and helping them get into colleges that are a good academic fit and social match. “Every single student I work with is different and is looking for different things out of their college experience. I love brainstorming college list ideas and putting colleges on their radar that perhaps they had not thought of before. I love when students come into my office and show excitement about all of the possibilities before them. I am grateful to be able to be a part of this incredibly special time in their lives.”
Photo courtesy of Jazmin Garcia Smith
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Durham Academy // Summer 2018
PHOTO BY ZOË BOGGS ’ 18
A Fairy Tale Senior Zoë Boggs took this image as part of a project for photography teacher Harrison Haynes. “This project allowed us to have full control over the surroundings, lighting and subject of the photo. … I chose to take a photo of my friend Kristina [Kumpf ’ 19], and I wanted to use bright colors and natural light to accentuate her makeup and blonde hair. She’s very creative and loves to do makeup, so I felt that flowers would express her personality. I also just had fun making her look like a fairy.”
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Nine StudentAthletes to Compete in College Students Thank Family, Coaches, Teammates
For the nine Durham Academy Class of 2018 student-athletes who have committed to competing in college athletics, playing at the college level has long been a goal — achieved through dedication on the field and in the classroom. “But I hope that it’s not your dream to play a sport in college,” varsity girls soccer coach Susan Ellis said at one of three signing ceremonies held over the course of the spring semester, “but that your dream starts once you get to college.” Ellis — who won four national championships with UNC-Chapel Hill women’s soccer team — intimately understands the impact of college athletics, not just during a student’s time as an undergraduate, but well into adulthood. Before an enthusiastic audience of family members, friends, teachers and coaches, the seniors officially began that journey with the signing of documents and donning of team caps on the hardwood of Kirby Gym.
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Durham Academy // Summer 2018
Photography by Melody Guyton Butts, Greg Murray and Sarah Jane Tart
Story by Melody Guyton Butts
Austen Dellinger
Soccer University of Chicago Dellinger was named All-Conference in 2017 and was named to the NCSCA AllRegional second team in 2016. “I’m confident I’ve found a place where I can focus on my academics while continuing to play the sport I love with a great team and amazing coaches. I am so grateful to my dad (my first soccer coach) and my mom (who drove a lot farther and watched a lot more soccer over the last 15 years than I’m sure she ever anticipated) for helping me get to this place.”
Kenan Ulku-Steiner Soccer
Middlebury College
Ulku-Steiner, a four-year varsity letterman, has twice earned All-Conference honors and was named to the All-State team in 2017. He offered particular thanks to his DA soccer coach, Julian Cochran, and tennis coach, Sean Bilsborrow, “who have made my athletic experience an incredible one. “I am also very appreciative of my peers. Each student at DA is willing to supportively push those around them to succeed and fulfill their potential, and the athletic commitment ceremony today is evidence to the incredible atmosphere and student-athletes who I am grateful to call my good friends and to whom I wish the best of luck over the next four years.”
Alex Charles
Soccer Princeton University Charles has played with the North Carolina FC Academy (formerly Capital Area RailHawks Academy) throughout his Upper School years and is now part of the NCFC U19 team. He was awarded the Hamilton Sportsmanship Award in 2015. “Over the years I’ve had dozens of coaches, each of whom has made a special contribution to my soccer career,” Charles said. “But it’s really the members of my family who are the most responsible for helping me get to this point. No one has guided me as much as my father, encouraged me as much as my mother, or supported me as much as my sister.”
Wilson Hansen
Track University of Chicago Hansen and his 4x400-meter relay teammates were state runner-ups in 2017 and set the Triangle Independent Schools Athletic Conference and DA record for the event — just one of his many accomplishments with the Cavs. “I am really excited to be able to move on to the next level in track,” Hansen said. “I’ve always wanted to be a member of a collegiate athletic team, and I am really excited to be a part of the team at UChicago. They have a great atmosphere and besides the cold weather, I don’t see how it could be any better a fit for me.”
Kendall Bushick
Soccer Davidson College Bushick, a four-year member of DA’s varsity soccer program, was named AllState in 2017 and 2015 and has earned All-Conference honors each year. She was named to the N.C. Soccer Coaches Association All-Region team in 2015, 2016 and 2017, and to the NCSCA All-State team in 2016 and 2017. “I am beyond excited to be able to continue playing soccer at Davidson. I am most looking forward to meeting the team, especially the seven other girls in my class who I will be playing with for the next four years. The coaches there are great, and I cannot wait to officially become a part of the team,” Bushick said. “Every team that I have been a part of has helped me get to this level of success by pushing me to become a better player every single practice and game.”
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Izzy Strigel
Basketball Colorado College Strigel was twice named to the NCISAA 3A All-State team and twice earned AllConference Honors. With 1,424 points, Strigel stands at No. 3 on the DA girls basketball all-time scoring list. “I am really excited to play next year, and I’m really looking forward to playing basketball at a collegiate level with fellow teammates who have similar interests. I would like to thank all of my coaches, my grandparents and my mom. They have always stood by my side during the ups and downs of the recruiting process, and I am very thankful for that.”
Priyan de Silva
Tennis University of Mary Washington
De Silva, who has been a part of DA’s varsity tennis team since the 2015– 2016 season, has twice been named All-Conference and was named AllState in 2017. “I’m really excited to play tennis at Mary Washington next year,” he said. “Playing college tennis has always been a goal of mine, and after visiting six different schools, I was certain that Mary Washington was the school that I wanted to play at. I have had a lot of support from coaches outside of school and from my tennis coach at DA, Coach [Sean] Bilsborrow. Mary Washington is a great fit for me because I can continue to play high-level tennis and continue to study and learn at an academic setting that I can thrive at as well.”
Cam Brown
Baseball Carleton College Brown has played with DA’s varsity baseball team for three years. In both 2016 and 2017, he earned the America Baseball Coaches Association Team Academic Excellence Award. “Anyone who knows me knows how much I love the game, and to have the privilege to compete at the collegiate level is more than I could ever have hoped for. I’m looking forward to joining a great group of guys who are not only great athletes, but great students as well. Carleton Baseball has earned the ABCA Team Academic Excellence Award two years consecutively, so the bar is set high.”
Charlie Mendys
Basketball Roanoke College Included among Mendys’ honors is inclusion on the Panther Classic all-tournament team and being named MVP of the 17U Big Shots Raleigh AAU event. Named All-Conference his junior and senior years, he was the Cavs’ second-leading scorer two years in a row. “I am really excited to play at Roanoke. It feels really good to see all my hard work paying off,” Mendys said. “I’m excited to be playing with a friend and former teammate in Jorden Davis [DA ’17]. I have a lot of people to be grateful for, especially my parents, Coach [Tim] McKenna, Coach [Andy] Pogach, siblings and trainers I have had along the way.”
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Durham Academy // Summer 2018
Farewell to the Class of 2018 Story by Melody Guyton Butts // Photo by Sarah Jane Tart
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Durham Academy // Summer 2018
Photo by Les Todd
“If we had blinked, we wouldn’t have the ability to look ourselves in the mirror and remember that Dr. Thomas is the reason you love writing, or Mrs. Newman is the reason you love chemistry.” After so many shared experiences, the newest DA alumni’s paths are diverging. Life’s next chapter will take them to 49 different colleges and universities — from nearby schools like Duke University, UNC-Chapel Hill and Elon University, to those farther from home, like the University of Southern California, Spelman
College and Brown University — as well as gap-year adventures and post-graduate-year discoveries. “So now, as we once more leave the comfort of a familiar, safe balcony, and journey into the daunting depths of unknown environments, I challenge you to live your next four years with your eyes wide open,” Charles said. “As you move into the world beyond, stand steadfast and confident in the face of every challenge. Stand tall because each of you has a map explaining exactly who you are. Be bold and be brave, and most importantly,
Photo by Kathy McPherson
Alex Charles ’18 doesn’t recall much from Durham Academy’s start-ofyear convocation in August 2014. But — as he told the hundreds of family members, friends and teachers gathered at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Memorial Hall on May 25 to celebrate the 102 members of DA’s Class of 2018 — he does remember one piece of advice, or rather, a forewarning: “She, the speaker, said, on that first day, ‘Blink, and your high school experience will be over. It happens that fast.’” Charles couldn't help himself. He blinked, and found that he was, indeed, still seated in the balcony of Kenan Auditorium with the rest of his ninth-grade classmates. “But the funny thing is, I’m glad my years at Durham Academy weren’t condensed to one swift eye movement,” he said. “Now that I’ve made the journey with my eyes fully open, what would have happened had my blink immediately propelled me four years into the future?” There were the outdoor education trips during which the Class of 2018 cemented their bonds with survival skills and funny stories. There were assemblies about frogs, gardens and the like that were led by passionate classmates. There were nights spent screaming “at the top of our lungs” to cheer on classmates competing on the basketball court. And there were the many lessons imparted by their dedicated teachers. “Class of 2018, had we closed our eyes, had we chosen to blink for just a second, had we missed all these memories we’ve made together, we would be so incredibly lost,” Charles said. “We would have no recollection of the past years. No way to track how our freshman-year selves have evolved into the people we are today.
Photo by Les Todd
In the Blink of an Eye, Seniors’ DA Experience Concludes with Commencement
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Photo by Melody Guyton Butts
As Blount tried to get in touch with his editor to ask about making the change from “a” to “the,” Chamberlain and a few of his friends were growing agitated. And Blount knew that for a few reasons, it would be highly unlikely that the editor would agree to the change. A Sports Illustrated switchboard operator named Muriel — who “once said she doesn’t take anything off anybody” — connected Blount with his editor, who happened to be enjoying himself at a bar near the magazine’s offices. Blount didn’t make headway with the editor and put Chamberlain on the phone, who “gradually was mollified.” After hanging up, the hoops star had just one question: Who is Muriel? “My advice to you is just hang in there,” Blount told the graduates, “and eventually Muriel will come on.”
Photo by Kathy McPherson
intellectual tools to work toward your goals with passion and dedication.” Commencement speaker Roy Blount Jr., a humorist who has penned two dozen books and served as a regular panelist on NPR’s Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me, warned that he isn’t one to dole out advice — “I never have felt that I have that sort of authority,” he said — but he did offer one tip, by way of an anecdote about NBA legend Wilt Chamberlain. Blount had been assigned by Sports Illustrated to co-write a story with Chamberlain about his retirement, and before the story ran, he asked for the basketball star’s approval. “The headline was fine — ‘My impact will be everlasting.’ He approved that, thought it was commensurate with his stature,” Blount recalled. “But the subhead was ‘A dominant force in basketball announces his retirement from the game.’ He read that, and he said ‘A dominant force? The dominant force.’”
Photo by Kathy McPherson
don’t blink for a second because if you do, you might miss out on brilliant opportunities. It happens that fast.” Upper School Director Lanis Wilson opened DA’s 44th commencement exercises by reciting a line from Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata: With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful, strive to be happy. “The key word in that final stanza is not beautiful, or cheerful, nor is it happy. Those adjectives pale before the powerful verb ‘strive,’” Wilson said. “… Scholars often toil in solitude, the world is filled with broken dreams, and not all achievement will be recognized. But you must never cease to strive. “Vicissitudes and vagaries of fate can prevent us from being happy, but they cannot prevent you from giving your best effort,” he continued. “Success will not always be right at hand, but you have the character, you have the joyfulness, you have the
Photo by Melody Guyton Butts
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Durham Academy // Summer 2018
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Photo by Kathy McPherson
Seniors Reflect on DA
“Attending Durham Academy for the past four years has allowed me to experience a multitude of amazing experiences that I will never forget. Starting out at DA I never imagined that by the end of my time I would be a part of our nationally recognized speech and debate team, make some fantastic friends or take Acting Studio. These experiences have taught me to never shy away from trying new things, but to welcome them with open arms. Additionally, DA offers an amazing support group of peers, teachers, coaches and advisors that all care about your well-being and success. To anyone even remotely considering to attend DA, I say go for it. The vast amount of extracurricular opportunities and connections you can make here at DA are immense and are waiting to be taken advantage of!” — Hebron Daniel
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“Durham Academy has taught me so much and has given me many experiences that I am incredibly grateful for. I have attended DA since I was 5, and during my time here I have met many wonderful people and have received amazing opportunities that have helped me succeed. At Durham Academy, I have always felt welcomed and supported and I am forever thankful to be a part of the DA family. Most of all, I am looking forward to continuing my journey as a mission-driven student and person as I go on to the next step in my life.” — Mariana Rocha-Goldberg
“I’m a Wittman Whippet. My advisory and our advisor Ms. Wittman have become my family, my home. I’ve never loved or been loved by a teacher like Ms. Wittman. She pushed me, advised me, yelled at me and always loved me. She changed my life, but she isn’t alone. The smiles and hugs of Coach Gould on the baseball field, the sweaty early mornings with Coach B in the weight room, and the evenings swaggering around the stage with Mr. Bohanek and the cast of the musical have made me who I am. The long hours Dr. Thomas spent reading my writing and giving me feedback, asking more of me, changed the way I approached all of my classes and life in general. Durham Academy is a collection of adults to whom I can point and say, ‘they changed my life.’ They will change yours too, if you let them.” — Ian Layzer
“Success is not determined by luck. Durham Academy has taught me that ‘success’ takes many different forms and that ‘luck’ is simply being prepared for when the right opportunity presents itself. Yes, DA’s rigorous academic curriculum has prepared me to handle the daunting world of a college campus, but more importantly, the faculty at DA have taught me the importance of self-motivation and how to adapt to every individual situation that presents itself. Things don’t always go our way, but after my 13 years at DA, I feel confident that I am equipped with the tools to independently maneuver around life’s obstacles and achieve my personal goals.” — Sydney Lin
“The fondest memory I will take away from DA is all of the friendships I have made during my time here. When I arrived as a sophomore, I was unsure of how I would fit in. I now have many friends at DA. Additionally, each teacher I have had at DA has pushed me to work harder and apply myself in ways I never thought I would in high school. The close relationship between DA students and DA teachers is essential in the growth of the students academically and in life skills. To a student considering DA, the curriculum may seem intimidating, but if you are willing to put in the time and effort, you will learn and succeed.” — Matt Willis
“I enjoyed many successes at Durham Academy, but more importantly, I faced challenges which ultimately propelled me towards my fullest potential. In classes such as AP Chemistry and AP Calculus C, I learned that memorizing the facts was simply not enough, and I was forced to dig into the mechanics behind every concept. Meanwhile, in [the class] Mission Driven Life, I was asked ‘What is your purpose?’ for the first time in my life. Durham Academy unearthed my inner drive to be challenged. As I prepare to graduate, I look forward to all of the new challenges that lie ahead. And I feel confident that I can do anything.” — Ava Pacchiana
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BUILDING PHILANTHROPY
STORY BY LESLIE KING // ILLUSTRATION BY SARAH JANE TART
George Watts Hill and Frank Hawkins Kenan were businessmen, entrepreneurs and philanthropists whose names are synonymous with the development of Durham and Durham Academy. They invested in the future by investing in people, primarily by creating opportunity through education. The two men had one vision — to provide a school — to provide a school dedicated to excellence for Durham’s children. One may have planted the seed for what was to become Durham Academy, but they both made it grow. Without their dedication and generosity, Durham Academy simply would not exist.
George Watts Hill
Frank Kenan
Durham Academy’s co-founder wore many hats as a prominent Durham businessman, banker, lawyer and developer. But his favorite was a hard hat, especially when it came to education. “He was an architect at heart,” says former DA parent and board chair Fred Brooks. Former UNC President Bill Friday called Hill “one of the most constructive forces in the state of North Carolina … he contributes to virtually everything that has a public-spirited purpose.” Hill was a key founder of Research Triangle Park and Research Triangle Institute, was president and chairman of Central Carolina Bank & Trust, co-founder of what became Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina, and helped launch the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics and The Hill Center. Hill donated significant lands to his alma mater, UNC, and to N.C. State University, and he later donated $5 million to build UNC’s Alumni Center. In a 1974 interview with DA newspaper The Green & White, Hill reflected on the soon-to-be inaugural class of high school graduates. “I have great admiration for this generation. … There’s so much more for you all to learn and a much greater opportunity that you’ve got and a greater responsibility …,” he said. “And I think without question (we’ve) got probably as good a school, if not the best school of its character in the southeast.” His wife, Ann McCulloch Hill, provided the method, and Watts provided the means. Their relationship with DA lasted their entire lives.
Watts Hill and Frank Kenan had Carolina in common, but the similarities didn’t end there. Kenan was also a philanthropist, champion of education and entrepreneur. Kenan founded Kenan Oil Company, Tops Petroleum Corporation, Westfield Company and Kenan Transport Company. He served as chairman and CEO of Flagler System Companies and was a substantial real estate investor, serving as director of the original Research Triangle Park. He was a major benefactor of his alma mater, UNC, donating $10 million to UNC to build the KenanFlagler Business School and establishing the Kenan Institute for Private Enterprise. Durham Academy’s Kenan Auditorium is named for him. “The only thing that was better than having George Watts Hill or Frank Kenan actively engaged in your school was to have both of them involved,” says former Headmaster Rob Hershey, who knew both men. “They’d look across the table at each other and say ‘let’s make that happen.’” The vision and generosity that fueled Kenan’s desire to help DA build a college preparatory powerhouse was rooted in his own experience as a student at Woodberry Forest School. Kenan credited Woodberry for laying the groundwork for his future success and wanted the same for his children and the children of Durham. Mary Semans (former DA trustee) said, “Frank searches for unfilled gaps in education. … He is deeply interested in destinies.”
1901–1993
1912–1996
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1933 Calvert Method School: Duke Street to Durham Academy
In 1933, George Watts Hill and his wife, Ann McCulloch Hill, cofound the Calvert Method School with seven students and one teacher. Forest Hills Clubhouse, which Hill rents from his father, is the school’s first location. In 1937, Calvert School moves to Hill’s former family home at 815 S. Duke Street, which Hill remodels to accommodate 19 students and three teachers in grades K-5. In 1956, admissions demand prompts Hill to build a separate kindergarten facility and purchase the Williams House at 803 S. Duke Street as Calvert grows to more than 250 students in grades K-9.
• 1933: Calvert Method School opens in Forest Hills Clubhouse. • 1937: Calvert School moves to the Hill home at 815 S. Duke St. • 1956: A kindergarten building is added. • 1958: Williams House purchased at 803 S. Duke St. • 1959: School severs ties with Calvert School in Baltimore, becomes Durham Academy.
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Durham Academy // Summer 2018
Photo courtesy of the DA Archives
In a 1988 interview with The News & Observer, Hill described how his business philosophy applied to philanthropy — “you see something that needs to be done, you go ahead and do it.” Not only did Hill single-handedly subsidize the purchase of property and payroll necessary to launch one of Durham’s first independent schools, he underwrote its expenses — to the tune of thousands of dollars a year — for decades. “He just had this bigger-than-life sort of enthusiasm for trying to create opportunities for young people and an absolute love for Durham,” says former DA Headmaster Rob Hershey, who knew Hill well. “Not only did he provide the resources for the school, but he loved to spend time with the students. You could see the pride he took in the school and how committed to young people he was.” Co-founder Ann McCulloch Hill was raised in Glencoe, Maryland, by parents who believed the best thing you could give a child was a good education. Her 1974 obituary noted, “Her father saw to it that Mrs. Hill received the best possible education, first at Oldfields [the oldest girls’ prep school in the country, where he was a long-serving headmaster], then The Shipley School at Bryn Mawr and later the University of Grenoble in France.” Ann and Watts Hill both graduated from prestigious preparatory schools. After they married and moved to Durham, they wanted to provide that same strong educational foundation for their own children.
Photo courtesy of Tom Giduz ’75
Photo courtesy of The Durham Sun
“ My mom and dad both went to public school, so how they found Calvert Method School, I don’t know. They were amazing old houses! I have no idea how they put all the grades in there, but I remember for morning assemblies we all stood on the stairs in the foyer of the house and the headmaster stood in the middle. There was an annual competition memorizing poems like ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade ’ and reciting them in Pickard Hall. They had spelling bees and the book sale in there, too. A Trailways bus would pick about 20 of us up in the morning to take us from Chapel Hill to Durham.” — Tom Giduz ’75, parent of alumnae
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Photo courtesy of the DA Archives
1965 DA Builds a New Campus on Academy Road
In spring 1964, Durham Academy parents receive the plans to build a brand-new school on Academy Road. The estimated total cost is just under $600,000, and parents are asked to make a significant contribution. A parents capital fund drive raises $125,000. Combined with a loan for the remainder, DA breaks ground in May 1964. George Watts Hill pays for all of the grading and paving.
— Stephen Barringer ’81, former Middle School teacher, parent of alumnae
“
We had outgrown the space at Duke Street fundamentally. The outdoorness of it, the openness of it, the outdoor halls meant there was so much more intermingling of teachers and students [at Academy Road]. It was a brilliant design.” — Fred Brooks, former board chair, parent of alumni
“
I saw my dad’s drawings and he even had me make some models … . Being able to walk through something that a year before I was gluing together with Elmer’s glue — that, to me, was very cool.” — Alex Isley ’80
“
It was a really good thing we had Watts Hill and Frank Kenan on the board at that time. One day Watts said, ‘We need new drainage in the playing fields, it’s going to be $25,000. I told them go ahead. If y’all don’t vote for it, I’ll pay for it.’ His culture was go ahead. That was Watts all the way.” — Fred Brooks
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It was just amazing, 22 kids in a class in these little rooms, and we just didn’t care — we were well-behaved! As a child, there was like a ‘Murderer’s Row’ of really great teachers. Everybody ate lunch together. It was absolutely fantastic! The older kids were like gods … I can still remember all of their names. They were like … grownups! And we were just little people.”
Durham Academy // Summer 2018
“ I’m most proud of Academy Road. It had to be built economically without sacrificing quality. My main priority was to create a ‘home away from home’ ambience, so that the little ones, especially, felt a sense of security entering their classroom from a landscaped ‘yard’ through a ‘front door.’” — Max Isley, architect for Academy Road and the Upper School, parent of alumni • May 1964: Ground breaks for Academy Road campus. • October 1965 to March 1966: All grades (preschool through grade 9) move from Duke Street to Academy Road.
“ I remember my father talking about really scrounging for the next dollar to put up cinder blocks. It couldn’t have been done without major benefactors, but at the same time, a lot of people were taking ownership, doing all they could. I have more of a sense now of what the adults had a sense of then, creating a place where teachers can build vision inside.” — Roger Brooks ’80, current parent
• 1973: New Upper School opens on Ridge Road. • 1975: First class of seniors (26 students) graduates.
“
We couldn’t borrow any more money from banks, and so we had to borrow from parents. We explained that this is the only way we can do it.” — Fred Brooks
“
I’ll never forget my dad explaining to me that we, as parents are all contributing to build this place so that you all can stay here for high school and get a good education.” — Mark Anderson ’81, parent of alumni, current parent
“
From the groundbreaking to the time it opened, it was a big deal. I remember being out there when they were pouring the concrete. There was a real sense of excitement — we’re going to be able to have a graduating class. I remember kids who were on campus for the first time running around and sitting in the gym and the auditorium that had the same sound system as the Grand Ole Opry. I learned more in my first nine years at DA than I have in any other school or college.”
Photo courtesy of the DA Archives
— Alex Isley ’80
“
Frank [Kenan] really particularly had an interest in the development of the high school. He graduated from Woodberry Forest. He wanted Durham to have a secondary school that could offer young people the sort of experiences he had had at Woodberry Forest.” — Rob Hershey, headmaster 1978–1988
1973 Creating an Upper School
In 1970, DA explores the possibility of adding a high school. In December 1971, DA announces plans to build a $1.1M Upper School on 42 acres at Ridge and Pickett roads. DA families purchase a $5,000 bond, redeemable upon their child’s graduation. In 1975, Frank Kenan makes a then-anonymous $1M gift to complete the campus with a science building, a library expansion and Kenan Auditorium. Watts Hill creates an endowment and discretionary fund to cover expenses.
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• Fall 1983: DA celebrates its 50th anniversary. • 1983: Frank Kenan and Watts Hill establish endowments to help support DA. • May 1984: Board approves library/art/science building construction on Academy Road and a $1.3M campaign. Kenan and Hill are named as DA’s only lifetime trustees. • August 1984: Ground breaks for library/art/science building.
“ In the 1980s, the prospect of a future Preschool/Lower School campus wasn’t even on our radar. We needed to separate classrooms for Middle School and Lower School because they were sharing everything. When I first came the ‘art room’ was a teacher with a cart.”
Photo by Bobbie Hardaker
— Tim Dahlgren, Middle School history teacher, Middle School director 1981–1999, parent of alumni
— Randy Bryson, sixth-grade science teacher, parent of alumni
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It wasn’t a given that this was going to happen. It was a leap of faith because creating a culture of capital gifts was a very new undertaking. I was a brand-new, 29-year-old headmaster, and most of the people picking up the challenge like David Ross, Anne Oliver and Sue Beischer stepped up because of our strong sense of responsibility, but we didn’t bring a whole lot of expertise or resources. There was ultimately this powerful sense of everyone doing their part, and it ended up happening. I think it really came down to how proud people were of this unique place called Durham Academy.” — Rob Hershey, headmaster 1978–1988
1984 New Construction on Academy Road
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“
We were really cramped and short on space. The science room was a small space that wasn’t really designed for any curriculum, much less a curriculum that was changing every year. That was really, really hard. We were trying to move from one-on-one experiments and demonstrations with an overhead projector to cooperative learning. Going from showing kids things to them doing things. And that requires space.”
Durham Academy // Summer 2018
In May 1984, DA’s board authorizes construction of a 20,000-squarefoot library/arts/science building on Academy Road and the school’s first capital campaign (Commitment to Excellence) with a goal of $1.3M. The first new construction on Academy Road since 1968 doubles the size of Middle and Lower School libraries, adds a dedicated Middle School science lab, doubles the size of computer facilities and creates three art rooms to expand the curriculum for Preschool/ Lower School/Middle School students. Watts Hill chairs DA’s 50th anniversary celebration in 1983.
“
1990s
The buildings mirrored a lot of the university-level labs at that time. We had equipment necessary to fully investigate the scientific question posed. And the physics innovation studio — that is why I got so excited about physics, engineering, mechanics, how things work and how to build solutions. It was an inspiring place not only because it fostered creativity through the tools and materials, but because Mr. [Lou] Parry and Dr. [Herb] Lamb posted meaningful quotes about grit and determination. There was an ongoing public record of the ‘champions’ of each design project, and it was exciting to see a name of an upper-classman you knew on that leaderboard and think, ‘I might be able to do that or even better than that.’”
The First "Science Center"
Severe space limitations in science facilities at the Upper School and performing arts facilities at the Middle School prompt a capital campaign to address both campuses. In December 1992, the Board of Trustees approves the $4.4M Expanding the Vision campaign. It creates a new Upper School physics building, expands and renovates the existing science building, renovates the “double-decker” building for humanities, creates a 6,000-square-foot Middle School performing arts building and renovates the former assembly space to create fifth- and eighth-grade science labs. 1995 marks the start of pivotal conversations about enrollment growth.
Photo courtesy of the DA Archives
— Leyf Peirce Starling ’99, Upper School physics teacher, current parent
“ Chemistry and biology space was so incredibly cramped that teachers had trouble developing safe, lab-based programs. They also didn’t have the equipment for state-of-the art experiments. It was a mess. Lou [Parry, Upper School physics teacher] had to do his annual physics egg drop project at South Square Mall off of the upper parking deck! Kids brought their own hand tools from home.” — Dr. Herb Lamb, former Upper School science chair, parent of alumni
• Fall 1992: Upper School opens the new F.M. Kirby Physics Building and renovated/ expanded Glaxo Science Building. • Feb. 1993: DA launches $4.4M Expanding the Vision capital campaign. • Spring 1994: New Scott Performing Arts Building (including Taylor Hall) opens.
“
e did our Parents Night in shifts because I couldn’t fit all the parents into W the space we had for assemblies and performances. For community meeting, I’d stand on a courtyard picnic table and the kids would stand outside, and that’s how we did it until Taylor Hall was finished. The [arts] programs definitely expanded because of Taylor Hall. Before that, chorus and band were in a trailer, so having a nicer facility is going to enhance the program.” — Tim Dahlgren
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2002
Photo by Jon Gardiner
Preschool/Lower School Moves to Ridge Road
Those intimately involved in the decision to build a separate and bigger Preschool/Lower School still describe it as DA’s biggest risk. In the mid- to late-’90s, DA recognizes the need to definitively address space shortages, overcrowding and rapidly aging facilities. In May 1997, DA decides to build a Preschool/ Lower School on Ridge Road, retrofit Academy Road for Middle School students only, and add arts classrooms to Kenan Auditorium. The $13M Cornerstone Campaign launches three weeks after 9/11.
“ When our son Will started Preschool [at Academy Road] he was taught science off a cart. The science was on a cart. And now he had his own dedicated [science] room, and it was just completely transformational in terms of what happened to our children and their experience.” — David Beischer ’85, former board chair, current parent, parent of alumni
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“
People had great ideas about what they thought would be a great learning environment. And the architects really listened. It was so much better than our wildest expectations! We were all so excited to have this new canvas, it was just spectacular. It really allowed you to be more creative and collaborative and do things in a way that you hadn’t thought about before. You could work in small groups, you had more materials in a more conducive space — it made it that much more exciting.” — Karen Lovelace, former second grade teacher, parent of alumna
• 2001: $13M Cornerstone Campaign launches to fund construction of Preschool/Lower School building on Ridge Road, Kenan Auditorium expansion/classroom additions, Middle School gym improvements. • Summer 2002: New Preschool/Lower School and retrofitted Middle School are ready for occupancy. • Fall 2008: DA celebrates its 75th anniversary.
Headmaster Don North (1988–1996) saw enrollment pressure compromising four priorities: DA’s ability to serve current families with siblings on wait lists, the ability to accommodate children of alumni, efforts to increase diversity and the ability to admit unaffiliated students “whom I characterize as the high average student who will not win National Merit recognition but who is just a great kid and would add immeasurably to the life of the school.”
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I couldn’t do what I do without dedicated space. What appealed to me when I was first applying for the job was the space was set up to be used in a whole bunch of different ways over the course of the day. We use it for practice sessions and rehearsals and breakout sessions in my classes. Music, drama and dance are close enough to each other that we can collaborate, especially during a production. Everyone in the Fine Arts Department has been able to use the space to help build their respective programs. At the end of the day, giving people the space they need changes the program, expands what we offer and makes things better for everybody.” — Michael Meyer, Upper School music teacher, current parent
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Photo courtesy of the DA Archives
There was a lot of concern about wow, we’re going to add 200 kids, I sure hope they show up! But everybody was all in — the board was in, the administration was in, the parents were in. There was a collective feel to that campaign. Our family has been involved since 1933 — my great-uncle Watts [Hill], my grandmother [whom the Preschool is named for] and my mother [the first annual fund chair] — so in a way the baton was being passed along to me to move it forward. I don’t think I’ve ever been around a more dedicated group of people all ready to do whatever they could.” — David Beischer
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2012 In 2010, DA launches the $9M Evergreen Campaign as the recession nears an end. It addresses urgent needs for an Upper School student population that increased 150 percent over 30 years. A Learning Commons takes shape — a new open, flexible space for students to socialize, learn and interact with teachers beyond class time, with a reinvented library serving as a central research and technology hub. The gym is updated for the first time in nearly 40 years, with a new floor, new bleachers, new lights and (finally) air conditioning. Plans also add a lobby, public restrooms, a concession stand, locker rooms, offices, a training room and fitness center.
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In the old gym, the only bathrooms in the building were inside the locker rooms. So at halftime of the basketball game, if someone wanted to go to the bathroom, we had to say no, there’s a team in there right now. We had a dark, dingy weight room in the same trailer as my office that a couple of teams used regularly but was not gender friendly.” — Steve Engebretsen, director of athletics, parent of alumni
• 2010: DA launches $9M Evergreen Campaign to fund construction of Upper School Learning Commons, renovate and expand the gym. • 2012: Learning Commons opens. • 2013: Kirby Gym opens.
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Photo by Megan Mendenhall
A New Heart of Campus: The Learning Commons and Kirby Gym
“ Everything was on the outskirts of campus because everything was outward-facing. We met in classes and advisory groups, but during down times and free periods there wasn’t much interaction. You didn’t have a place to be. The windowless student lounge was the worst lunch duty — no teacher wanted to be there. The library was insular, it had a fireplace and we basically told students to be quiet and stop setting things on fire. It was a much more isolated student-teacher environment.” — Michael Ulku-Steiner, former Upper School teacher/director, current head of school, current parent
“ We're traditionally a community that doesn't have huge corporate donors. We're a collection of parents chipping in our money to build a nice school for our kids.” — Mark Anderson ’81, parent of alumni, current parent
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We all put our oars in the water to make this campaign happen. We knew $9M would be a challenging amount to raise, especially in light of the economic environment, but we were confident the DA community would see these facilities impacted every single student and faculty member. One-hundred percent of the faculty and staff took part, it drew the attention of far-flung alumni and the generosity of so many parents made us so proud of the resulting legacy.” — Sara Pottenger, Evergreen Campaign co-chair, parent of alumnae
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There’s been an explosion of wellness and fitness because of the weight room. Now we have a place and a person to help our athletes train to be better athletes, but we’ve also seen a much larger and wider variety of our students get into the habit and joys of fitness. We had zero of that before. The training room improved a program that serves hundreds of kids through rehab, treatment and education in terms of injury and prevention. The gym had an effect on the whole atmosphere of school spirit. Our kids are proud of this building.” — Steve Engebretsen
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Parents Association was the second-largest donor, and in that sense everyone in the community had given — whatever time, whatever volunteering, or whatever you did for Parents Council, that was your contribution — to help fulfill the mission of the school. Not everybody could write a big check, but we had a common reason and a commitment for putting our children here in this school. The PA gift said we’re in this together.” — Demetra Kontos, fourth grade teaching assistant, former Parents Council president, parent of alumni
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You see the power of making those resources available to extraordinary kids. The ability to create extraordinary spaces has taken it to another level.”
Photo courtesy of the DA Archives
— Mark Anderson ’81
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The Learning Commons isn’t just a crossroads, it’s a destination. On a community-building level, the result is really profound. In one glance you can see the student body and the hive of activity going on. There’s so much more collaboration — between faculty members, between teachers and students — and there’s flexible classroom and meeting space that can change as the school changes.” — Michael Ulku-Steiner
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2015 STEM and Humanities Center
In 2015, Durham Academy’s Strategic Plan establishes the comprehensive construction, fundraising and financing plan to support the school’s financial and educational goals.
The DA Campus Plan calls for: • The renovation of the Middle School campus • The redesign and/or rebuild of Upper School science facilities • The expansion of available Extended Day/Aftercare facilities
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What makes Durham Academy special is the way that the faculty interact with the students and the way that the kids get inspired about what they learn because of those interactions. If teachers can’t reach the pinnacle of what they can do because the facility isn’t in a place that allows them to do the fullest work they can, then that key thing about Durham Academy can’t reach its fullest point either. It’s important for us to stay at the leading edge, because what we’re trying to do with our students is prepare them for the next stage of their lives.”
Photo by Sarah Jane Tart
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Most [engineering] makerspaces are traditionally just three 3D printers and some pliers and wires. Whereas — this with heavy machinery to work with, will be an even bigger step up. I know some of the kids on the robotics team this year have learned gear ratios, physics calculations and complex mechanical setups — things that are real engineering. That’s what you learn as a junior in college — actual machine skills.” — Nate Mela ’18
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— Lauren Whitehurst, Strategic Planning Committee chair, current parent
If you want students to come here … you need to offer better classes, you need to offer more relevant classes that will better prepare students for those fields, that will expose them to different processes earlier, and you need a space to do that … . I wanted to come here because of the opportunity to help really build that area. … I wanted to put it more in a socially relevant contextual setting of — you’re learning this to solve real-world problems, that’s the engineering/design process. You’re going to have to be able to learn to work with other people, how to communicate your ideas, how to time manage, plan and budget — so I was really excited coming back here, to be able to develop that piece.” — Leyf Peirce Starling ’99, Upper School physics/robotics teacher, current parent
“ From a teacher perspective, an alum perspective and a parent perspective … and an experiential standpoint of having taught middle school, high school and college freshman engineering … the bigger picture is the continuum of what is best for kids … providing a place that best prepares them and models what is going on at the college and university level and somewhat industry a bit, too. Provide a space that inspires them to potentially pursue a STEM career path and makes that STEM career path accessible to all students. … You’re providing a bigger door for students to walk through and maybe go down that path.” — Leyf Peirce Starling ’99
Photo by Sarah Jane Tart
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My kids won’t experience the new STEM building for that long … but it will be a better experience with these buildings because of what they enable. I wasn’t around [during the campaign that funded the Lower School], but my kids got that leading-edge experience and benefited because of those that came before me. Part of being in a private school community, an independent school community is paying it forward. … You’re investing in the future of the institution perhaps beyond where your own children will experience that future because someone did it for you. My kids can forever walk around and talk about the fact that they went to DA, and that means something, and it will continue to mean something of excellence in part because of the investment I make that won’t have anything to do with my own children.”
— Lauren Whitehurst
DA Campus Plan Timeline: • June 2018: Upper School STEM wing (biology, chemistry, physics, robotics, math) is completed. • April 2019: Upper School Humanities wing (2-story commons, English, history) is projected for completion. • Summer 2024: Middle School renovation and expansion are projected for completion.
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STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY KATHY MCPHERSON
TED Lab Offers a New Way to Learn Fourth-Graders Use Design-Thinking to Reimagine the Space What used to be a Lower School computer lab is now the Lower School TED lab, but far more has changed than the name. The TED lab — an abbreviation for technology, engineering and design — still has 20 desktop computers, but the focus has changed from learning how to use the computer to using the computer as a tool. The TED lab has evolved from a carpeted computer classroom — with a wall-sized white board and large tables that were heavy and awkward to rearrange — to a flexible space that can easily be reconfigured. Lower School technology teacher Michele Gutierrez led the transformation from computer lab to TED lab, and she went straight to the experts — the students — to determine what the room needed to be and how to get there. “What we were doing in this space changed from kids always being on computers, to kids being on computers most of the time, to kids sometimes
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needing computers and sometimes not because they really are a tool,” Gutierrez said. “I found that I didn’t have space in the room to do the things that we needed because you don’t want to make a mess on a table where the next class might be using a computer. We needed floor space, so we would frequently migrate out into the hallway for extra space. I knew we needed more, a different space. The room
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no longer fit what we were doing in the room.” Two years ago, Gutierrez challenged her fourth-grade students to help figure out what the room needed to function better and what was needed to make that change. As part of a design-thinking project, the fourth-graders focused on how students used the space. Gutierrez explained that in design-thinking,
one does not seek solutions but focuses on needs, which leads to solutions. “As students who have experienced this space, they were part of that process and came up with the different types of things that we do in this space,” Gutierrez said. “They identified that we definitely needed a hard floor surface to get rid of the friction of the rug and also to allow for some of the more messy things that were starting to take place. We identified that in this room there are basically three types of activities: instruction where we’re all together talking or having a discussion or learning something; times when we need to be on computers, although with all the iPads that’s less and less what we needed space for; and working on projects, which might mean tables for them to work on things like they do in art or science.” The fourth-graders designed a space for three very different types of activity, and they shifted the orientation of the room to make better use of the space. Classrooms in the Lower School have a horizontal orientation, and “changing the orientation of the redesigned lab to have a vertical axis made an incredible difference,” Gutierrez said. Much of what the fourth-graders designed has been put to use in the TED lab that welcomed students at the beginning of this school year. The 20 desktop computers sit on much smaller tables, freeing up space for students to work in groups at tables or on the floor, opening up space on an uncarpeted floor to test Lego cars and operate robots, and making room for four 3D printers. A room that offered little flexibility when it held 20 computers and one bookcase has added two cabinets, five big shelving units, wall shelves and more. “And there’s more space than there’s ever been,” Gutierrez said. “It’s kind of incredible. We have four large tables — they just fold up flat and I roll them out of the way because flexibility is the key.”
Even the storage cabinets are on wheels and can be moved, and the 25 desk chairs can be stacked. The wall-sized whiteboard is gone, replaced by two small whiteboards on wheels. A large flat-screen monitor can be seen throughout the TED lab so all students can easily refer to the day’s instructions. First-graders are learning about simple machines by making cars out of Legos. “They’re testing different configurations of how to make your wheel and axle on your car, which one gives you more steering control versus which one might be better if you’re just letting it glide straight,” Gutierrez said. “As students learn about them, build with them and experiment with them, that gives them the ability to create the things that they can envision. … The goal is for them to be understanding more of the building and engineering principles. How do I take this series of materials and create what I want? “It takes them slowing down, because we all know how to build with Legos. It’s taking the time to consider one way to build a wheel and axle versus another way. How do I change the design of my lever to accomplish different things? But in order to let them be in charge and fully creative, which is the goal in a maker space, they have to know why you make certain choices in your building.” Working with simple machines continues through second grade, then third- and fourth-graders start to be in a more independent phase of learning. Students work with programming and robotics at all four grade levels, testing their programming skills with Dot and Dash and Sphero robots. “Fourth grade, so far, is the only grade level that’s worked on 3D printing. Sometimes we’re making things, sometimes we’re creating with a 3D printer or exploring different concepts, and sometimes we’re using technology to work on other projects like the third-grade sea turtle project. They’re using the design-thinking
“ As students who have experienced this space, they were part of that process and came up with the different types of things that we do in this space.” — Michele Gutierrez process on their saving the sea turtle website.” The redesigned lab is getting rave reviews from current fourth-graders. “I like that there’s more space in the TED lab,” Charlie Whaley said. “You can do work in different places that you couldn’t do when it was the older computer lab.” “I like how in the TED lab you can do different programming and it’s like engineering a little too,” Shriya Dharmapurikar added. “We build buildings and stuff like that.” “I like that we have a lot more 3D printers now,” Max Albright said. “It doesn’t take as long to 3D print stuff. We can do a lot of 3D printing and working on those kind of projects.”
“I like that they removed the carpets,” Chris Hu chimed in. “We used to play with Spheros — they are little robots that roll — but with the carpet there was too much friction so they went a lot slower than right now.” “I love the environment because we can talk a lot, we can talk to people about what we’re doing, we can show people,” Caleb Arrick said. “I love the TV screen because it looks a lot more open than the smartboard. “I like the new chairs — they are comfier,” Cheikh-Abdou N’Diaye added. “I like that we have more space to do Dash and Dot and other things.” The TED lab is next door to a room that remains a computer lab, and Gutierrez said there is still a need for a computer classroom. And she’s thinking about ways to improve and enhance the TED lab — a Lego wall so students can build on the wall and clear paint that can transform any surface to a white board. “There are still some parts we want to add,” Gutierrez explained. “I mean that’s kind of the nature of what I do. There is no, there has never been, ‘I’m just going to do the same thing next year.’ That’s not how what I do works — that’s not what being in technology involves.”
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The Telling Project: Planting the Oar Story by Jordan Adair // Photo by Melody Guyton Butts
As I sat at the table in a room at the Chapel Hill Public Library the other night, I couldn’t have imagined that a meeting I had had four years earlier at an outdoor café in Durham would lead to this: a gathering of veterans and civilians sharing our experiences and learning from one another, all in an extraordinary dialogue springing forth from some of the world’s oldest literature. It all started because my colleague Edith Keene has a friend from many years ago who now teaches in the classics department at Dartmouth College. When she learned of an initiative her friend had championed of getting combat veterans together to read classical literature, she thought of me and the senior English elective I teach on the Literary and Artistic Response to War. Man, am I glad she did.
I’ve been teaching this elective in one form or another at DA for 17 years. The course explores a variety of artistic responses in different genres to the Vietnam War and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, I bring in local veterans who share their stories of service with my class. These visits and the exchanges that occur between the vets and my students allow me to match the veterans’ experiences with the works we read or the films we watch, all of which fosters a rich discussion in class about artistic creation and oral history (and its relative accuracy). It also satisfies one of the primary goals of the course — to give students a sense of what is it like to serve in the military. At no time, though, have I had the chance to sit down with veterans just to read books and share experiences. Edith’s friend, Roberta Stewart, has been facilitating a reading group made up of combat veterans from New Hampshire and Vermont for the past nine years with startlingly positive effects. She leads them in a reading of Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey, all borne out of the belief that these ancient texts can offer the veterans insight into the internal conflicts they collectively experience during both deployment and homecoming. Now, back to that meeting four years ago. My friend Hilary Lithgow, who teaches English at UNC-Chapel Hill, and I met with Roberta to talk about starting a veterans’ reading group in the Triangle. With our mutual interests in veteran’s issues and the literature of war, we hoped to pool our teaching resources and bring veterans together to talk about their mutually shared experiences. Roberta strongly encouraged us to start our own group. As life would have it, I was not able to commit the time to forming one, so Hilary struck out on her own. Soon thereafter, in the fall of 2014, the first reading group met. Vets for Words was first coordinated by Donovan McKnight and funded by the North Carolina Humanities Council. It was formed with a goal of providing a veteran-centered setting to connect
veterans with one another in order to build relationships through their shared experiences. The readings will generate discussions and “allow veterans to make connections between their own experiences and those of other people.” One of the most important goals beyond this overarching one was to create a dialogue between veterans and between veterans and civilians. And this is where I came in. Hilary has helped establish several Vets for Words reading groups over the past few years, the last one ending in the fall of 2017. She often co-led these groups with John Howell, an Army combat medic who served in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom from 2009–2010, and who is a former student of Hilary’s. I have always wanted to participate in one of these reading groups. Finally, this past winter, it happened. After responding to an email from John about a new group forming, this time under the aegis of The Telling Project: Planting the Oar, I began an eight-week reading group project in February. John was the leader of our group, which consisted of four veterans and two civilians. Hilary and I were the civilians. Among the veterans was Rob Jewett, who served one combat tour in Vietnam in the Army and who now teaches in the local area. Jim Caulfield also served in combat in Vietnam (with the Marines) before leaving and working in the civilian sector for the Department of Defense. He is now retired. Jesse Torres (who has visited my class twice before) served two combat tours in Vietnam in the Marines and was discharged in 1968. He is now retired but is still active in veterans’ organizations. The premise behind Planting the Oar comes from The Odyssey and the iconic symbol of the rowing oar. Odysseus returns from Troy and is told he must plant his “bladed, balanced oar in the earth,” where it will act as “an offering to the gods and as
a ritual ending to his wanderings.” It also comes to symbolize the burden of deployment and of the maritime dangers he endured on the return home. And it is at home where he will meet many who “know nothing of the sea” and with whom he must share his experiences. It is the dialogue that happens during this sharing that drives the storytelling experience for both veterans and civilians in the reading groups, and the catalyst for it comes from the works of literature we read: The Odyssey; Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried; Wilfred Owen’s World War I poems, Dulce et Decorum Est and Anthem for a Doomed Youth; Shakespeare’s Othello; and finally, a performance of The Telling Project, a live theater event meant to facilitate dialogue between veterans and civilians through the true stories of those who have experienced them. Over the course of our monthly meetings, the discussions were spirited and ranged far and wide over both the experiences of the veterans in combat and when they returned home after their deployments. The readings invariably catalyzed the conversation, and what I found most intriguing was the commonality of our experiences with the literature. On more than one occasion, all of us around the table were nodding in agreement. As civilians, Hilary and I listened and laughed, probed and cajoled, offered our opinions on what we thought the writers were trying to say to those who have not served in combat. Through the openness of the dialogue, we learned from the veterans and they learned from us. And what struck me most profoundly during our meetings was the extraordinary honesty with which we shared. We got to know each other on a more intimate level than we ever would have in ordinary circumstances, and the literature and our mutual respect for the lives of the others made that possible.
It is the dialogue that happens during
this sharing that drives the storytelling
experience for both
veterans and civilians
in the reading groups.
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The Wonder of WISER Story by Fran Wittman // Illustrations by Carina Rockart ’21 // Photography by Thomas Phu
In 2007, Kelly Teagarden ’04, came to Kenan Auditorium to talk about the research she had been doing for Dr. Sheryl Broverman and Duke University about the challenges facing girls in the area of Muhuru Bay, Kenya. Based on the research gathered by Kelly and a few other Duke students, Dr. Broverman, along with community partners in Muhuru, intended to build a girls boarding school, and were looking for partner schools in the U.S. I quickly volunteered, and the Durham Academy WISER Club was formed. WISER stands for Women’s Institute for Education for Research, and its mission is to “work with girls to transcend poverty, HIV/AIDS, and gender-based violence by creating environments that empower young women to drive change in their communities.” What began that day more than 10 years ago is one of the most meaningful partnerships of my career. Over the years, Durham Academy’s commitment and passion for supporting such a worthy endeavor has only increased, allowing the WISER Club to maintain a consistent presence at the Upper School. Its partnership with XIV Hours and music teacher Michael Meyer through the WISER A Cappella Jam has enabled the club to raise over $30,000 for the school in Kenya. It seemed only logical that the next step for this partnership between the two institutions would be for a group of us to embark on a journey to Muhuru Bay, Kenya, to see first-hand the school we’ve been helping to support over the years. Sixteen Durham Academy students, along with history teacher Thomas Phu and me, boarded a plane in Raleigh on March 7 on our way to Nairobi. We had a packed itinerary, and we were going to make the most of our time in Kenya. Every stop we made on the way to WISER had a purpose — from
the elephant orphanage that was a sad reminder of the consequences of poaching and the ivory trade, to the giraffe breeding center that was helping to repopulate specific breeds of giraffe that were endangered on the African continent, to the Kazuri bead factory that began in 1975 with the idea of supporting disadvantaged populations of Kenyan society, mainly single mothers. Although each of our stops was planned with thought and intention, it was often what we saw in between our stops that was equally as powerful. We drove past the monument honoring Kenyan independence, which prompted an informal history lesson with our guides. We noticed the large area of shanties directly on the other side of the road from one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Nairobi and learned that this was the second-largest “urban slum” in all of Africa, where residents lived on less than one dollar a day. One stop that was not on our original itinerary but was added to our journey was a stop in Kisii Town. At one of our meetings, junior Mong’ina Omundi — Julia Phu ’20 mentioned that her mother and father were from the Kisii area. After speaking with the company in charge of our transportation, we realized we were driving right through Kisii. We decided we had to plan a stop there so Mong’ina could see her grandparents, and I’m so glad we did, because it was not only grandparents, but extended family that came from miles for a chance to see Mong’ina, however brief. Our time at the WISER school was just as busy and just as meaningful. The welcome to the school that the students and faculty had planned for us was like nothing we had ever experienced before. Each of the four levels of students sang and danced for us and welcomed us like long-lost relatives. Sophomore Chandler Riley said the welcome
“I came away from the trip with a realization of how different two societies can be, but also how similar they can be.”
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“ All the girls at WISER were some of the smartest and hard working people that I think I’ll ever meet. They were all very dedicated to their education and they helped motivate me to work even harder in school.” — Isabelle Nambo ’20 ceremony was her favorite experience. “The ceremony was so lovely and full of life and beautiful to watch. The girls were so kind to open their campus to us, and especially to make us feel right at home.” A warmer greeting was never felt, and by the end of the program, our students were dancing right along with the WISER girls. And the celebration continued. It was a Saturday night, a night off for the WISER girls, and the students capitalized on their time off from studying with a dance party. The next morning began with a student-led church service, and then our students had what many felt was the most powerful experience of our time there: the home visit. Each DA student had the chance to visit the home of a WISER girl in Muhuru. For junior Jenny Drury, “This was such an amazing experience because I got to realize how important it is to really embrace every little thing in life. These WISER girls come
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from homes with no electricity, no running water, and their homes are held up with mud or clay and sheltered with a tin roof. They walk miles to fetch water from the contaminated Lake Victoria, no matter the conditions outside. It was life-changing to see how much pride they have in their homes and their families.” Mong’ina also mentioned the home visit. During her time, she “learned about Lucy’s family’s experiences and how they sacrificed a lot just for Lucy to be able to go to the WISER school. They were welcoming hosts and offered what little they had. The experience allowed me to have a greater appreciation for what I have and how privileged I am to be in the situation that I’m in. I was surprised about how much people were happy despite their situation. Everyone had a gratitude for life that I’ve never seen before.” This same sentiment was echoed by all of the students, and it was a wonderful way to begin our time with the WISER community. The next four days were a whirlwind of activity: We visited clinics and met with tribal leaders. We listened to the water commission talk of the need for clean water. The irony of listening about the illnesses that struck the community due to the lack of safe water while gazing out on Lake Victoria was not lost on any of us. The students spent two mornings experiencing the education system in rural Kenya first-hand as they paired up for four hours each morning to teach in a seventh-grade class. Although that wouldn’t seem so daunting for us here in Durham,
many students faced classes upward of 40 students, and many of the Kenyan students were older than the Durham Academy students teaching them. The week ended with a friendly DA vs. WISER football game and a heartwarming farewell celebration that was even more meaningful than the day we arrived. And this time it was us presenting and teaching the student body how to do “the Wobble.” We ended our time in Kenya spending two days on safari in the Masai Mara Game Preserve. The game drives were exciting, and we got to see every animal you could think of except the elusive rhino. Although we were staying at a wonderful hotel with amazing food and views, the one comment I
heard most from the students was, “I miss WISER,” or, “I miss the girls at WISER.” WISER is truly a magical place, and I feel absolutely honored that my time at Durham Academy has included supporting, and finally, sharing this amazing endeavor with Thomas Phu and 16 intrepid Durham Academy students.
“ It was meaningful to see how much pride the people in Kenya had for themselves and their lives, and I found that incredibly powerful.” — Alex Moore ’19
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STORY BY MICHELLE ROSEN // PHOTOGRAPHY BY LESLIE KING
Finding Happiness at EdCamp
Camp isn’t Just for Kids I was lonely. That’s how it all started. I needed someone to talk to. I needed some companionship. No, you are not reading a new “Personals” section of the DA Magazine. What follows is neither provocative or risqué. (I hope that’s not too disappointing.) Rather, this is the story of an educational journey taken by one independent school librarian. Turns out, what started as a solitary trek through the world of books and teaching, turned into a delightful adventure full of new colleagues, fresh challenges, bright ideas and a little thing called EdCamp. The life of an independent school librarian is, well, independent. Of course, this freedom is extremely attractive in many ways. Being able to implement the programs and curriculum you want without having to jump through hoops is one of the things I like most about my job. On the other hand, not being in a school district with other librarians leaves you no one with whom to discuss the latest technology trends, best practices in school libraries or collection development. After a few years as the Preschool/Lower School librarian, I realized that I needed to reach out. I needed to “find my tribe.” Enter EdCamp. I first learned about this new type of professional development while fretting about my isolation to a Wake County Schools colleague. She replied, “Why don’t you go to an EdCamp?” After which I replied, “What’s an EdCamp?” She immediately invited me to an upcoming one at The Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at N.C. State University. I went. I felt the energy. I was hooked. I absolutely loved the format — a free event where lots of motivated educators got together to talk about exactly what they wanted to discuss. The agenda was set the morning of the event by the people who showed up. Everyone submitted their ideas, and a couple of
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folks culled these down into major topics, which become the day’s sessions. Teachers then chose what they wanted to learn. If you were in a session and you weren’t getting what you wanted out of it, you simply got up and went to another one — dubbed the “law of two feet.” Teachers networked, met new colleagues, debated educational issues and learned from each other. The whole thing was brilliant!
Teachers networked, met new colleagues, debated educational issues and learned from each other. The whole thing was brilliant! Fast forward to April 2017 and my next EdCamp experience, this one in Wilmington. I came armed with several Durham Academy Lower School colleagues who were also hungry to learn. Not surprisingly, technology coordinator Michele Gutierrez and second-grade teachers Abby Butler and Ashley Hinton loved it too! On the drive back, we all realized this was an experience we had to bring to Durham Academy. So, less than a year after my first EdCamp experience, EdCamp Bull City was born. Luckily, Durham Academy administrators quickly gave us the go-ahead to host the event in January
2018. Soon after, we formed a planning committee. Others at DA had since caught the EdCamp bug, and we were able to form a group full of EdCamp alumnae. Abby Butler, Michele Gutierrez, Preschool Director Christian Hairston-Randleman, librarian Letizia Haynie, Ashley Hinton, math specialist Nataki McClain and first-grade teacher Debbie Suggs all agreed to help with our inaugural event. We were later aided by many others, including Elon University professor and EdCamp enthusiast Jeff Carpenter, Spanish teacher Mercedes Almodóvar, Director of Technology Trevor Hoyt, technology specialist Ryan Burton, Director of Communications Leslie King and our wonderful DA maintenance and security crews. We contacted the EdCamp Foundation, the national organization that oversees individual EdCamps, to get things started. Then, after endless hours of finding sponsors, collecting door prizes, setting up registration, designing a T-shirt (with the help of Lower School art teacher Pamela McKenney), hiring a caterer, making signs, testing technology and myriad other duties, the big day arrived. We crossed our fingers that we had done enough to attract a good crowd. At 8 a.m. on Jan. 27, teachers started streaming through the door. They came from everywhere — public schools, private schools; big schools, small schools; schools near the mountains and those at the coast. We even had one teacher from Miami, Florida! Across the room, I could see that Head of School Michael UlkuSteiner was all smiles. “What a treat to feel the crowded buzz in Brumley on a Saturday morning, with teachers — young and older,
from public and private schools — coming from near and far to learn from each other,” he said. “Sometimes it’s best to chase our strategic goals with targeted, school-driven professional development activities. EdCamp confirms that it’s sometimes best for the administrators to get out of the way of our curious, generous, connective teachers.” When the session board was complete, it was clear the participants were in for a day of incredible learning. Among the topics: “Tech for Littles,” “Makerspaces,” “Empathy, Equity and Culturally-Responsive Teaching,” “Student Agency and Classroom Culture,” “Readers and Writers Workshop” and “Project-Based Learning.” As the day progressed I knew we had achieved our mission. Peeking into the various sessions, I heard teachers deep in conversation and debate. I saw folks writing down ideas to take back to their classrooms. I saw heads nodding and smiles breaking out as educators felt the camaraderie of being with others who had the same privilege and responsibility of teaching today’s youth. In retrospect, all I can say is the day was magical. It took a lot of hard work by a lot of people, but in the end, it was worth it. Giving teachers the opportunity to connect and grow on their own terms is what EdCamp is all about. And now, on to next year!
Read Elon University professor Dr. Jeffrey Carpenter’s examination of Edcamps at bit.ly/EdCampImpact.
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Vulnerability Takes Center Stage DA Teams Up with Rogers-Herr Middle School for Poetry Slam Story and Photo by Melody Guyton Butts
One after the other, they funneled their emotions — frustration, hope, grief, anger, love, disappointment — into the microphone. A bright spotlight cast upon the students on stage obscured the fact, at least for a few minutes, that Durham Academy Middle School’s Taylor Hall was packed with a couple hundred fellow middle schoolers who were hanging on their every word. This marked the third annual DA/ Rogers-Herr Poetry Slam, which started as a way to teach poetic devices in a dramatic way while connecting with the broader community. It is now among the most highly anticipated events of the year for eighth-graders. Alternating between 11 DA students and 10 from nearby Rogers-Herr Middle School, the poets took on a variety of personal topics as they performed their original works, from the sting of unfair stereotypes and the challenges of growing up in a nontraditional family, to gender identity and anxiety. “It’s clear that there are threads throughout — common insecurities and common struggles,” language arts teacher Ben Michelman said. “But it’s also clear how people have very different experiences. And that’s not necessarily Rogers-Herr vs. Durham Academy being different, but we see that kids have their own individual battles and could be labeled in very different ways.” Michelman and fellow DA language arts teacher Jeff Boyd have partnered with Rogers-Herr language arts teacher Keaundra Robinson on the poetry slam since 2016. Robinson described the collaboration as beneficial in a number of
ways: from an opportunity for the teachers involved to learn from one another, to teaching subject matter in a way that feels true to her while aligning with a Common Core standard, to a chance for all of the students involved to be heard and to appreciate a range of perspectives. “What the poetry slam allows our children to see right away is, whether I don’t have the same background as somebody or I do share the same background as someone, our opinions and perspectives may vary, or our opinions and perspectives may be the same — and it’s OK,” Robinson said. “We can still show tact, we can still show respect and we can still be open-minded. And more importantly, we’re still learning and growing.” For all three of the teachers involved, the slam — with poets’ raw emotions and experiences on display — serves as an opportunity to demonstrate the power that comes with vulnerability. DA eighth-grader Asia Crowley’s poem, “Cliques and Solid Bricks,” addressed her frustration with navigating complicated friend groups. “I was really scared about talking about this, especially when I was chosen to perform it in front of the whole grade,” she said. “I was scared that people wouldn’t like it and would be rude about it because it is a sensitive topic, but the results were overwhelmingly positive. … A lot of people came up to me afterward and said, hey I really liked your poem. That really needed to be said.” Each DA eighth-grader writes slam poems — which aren’t intended to be read off a page but instead are memorized and performed with great
effect — in language arts class. The process of writing the poems can be cathartic for students. After revisions are complete, each student performs their poem for their individual class, and then the classmates all vote on which poems should be included in the slam with Rogers-Herr. The slam is attended by a few dozen Rogers-Herr students, all DA seventh- and eighth-graders and several faculty members. “I’ve never done any large public speaking before, and I don’t really like doing that kind of stuff,” explained DA student Matthew Woodard, whose poem focused on his grief after his grandmother’s passing. “But when I was voted to do this, I just realized that I could be one of eighth-graders to inspire seventh-graders, like what happened to me. So I decided I wanted to take this opportunity and perform.” And lessons aren’t only learned by the students who are chosen to present their work at the slam. “I actually think one of my favorite things is the response from the rest of the group when they are given the privilege of hearing someone's story that they would never otherwise ask for,” Boyd said. “I think it has just a significant impact on the audience as it does the actual poet.
Watch a sampling of the performances at bit.ly/MSPoetrySlam.
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Faculty Spotlight: Learning Specialist
Dr. Cindy Moore Story by Kathy McPherson
Cindy Moore never doubted that she wanted to work with kids. “I was always a babysitter. I was always the person that the adults in my life left in charge of kids. I always have loved kids, even when I was a kid. I knew that I wanted to do something related to kids. I think I actually knew that it was either a psychologist or a pediatrician, and I was afraid of medical school.” Moore’s apprehension about going to medical school was medicine’s loss and Durham Academy’s gain. She pursued a career in psychology, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees from N.C. Central University and a doctorate in school psychology from UNC-Chapel Hill, and came to Durham Academy in 2007 as the school’s first full-time learning specialist. “The only thing I knew about Durham Academy at that time was that my godson [Xavier Nonez ’17] went to Durham Academy.” Moore attended college with Nonez’s mother, Kemi, who serves as DA’s director of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs and assistant director of Enrollment Management and Admissions, and “we’ve been friends since that time.” It was Kemi Nonez, who began working at DA in 2009, who encouraged Moore to talk with then-Headmaster Ed Costello about working at DA. For years, the school had contracted with learning specialists at The Hill Center, with several Hill faculty members spending about 10 percent of their time at Durham Academy. But the number of DA students needing services was increasing, and Costello told Moore the school needed a full-time learning specialist. “He said to me when we were talking about it, that basically we would be flying the plane and building the plane all at the same time because there had never been a learning specialist here, and I was totally fine with that.” Moore served the entire school until 2014, when Jennifer Rogers was hired to work with Middle Schoolers and Upper Schoolers as a learning specialist. Moore began her psychology career in Durham, doing assessments of children from birth to age 5 for the state of North Carolina. “It was probably the smartest job for me to have at that point in my life because I was a part of a team. I worked with speech language therapists, an occupational therapist, physical therapist, social worker, pediatrician and psychologist, and we did interdisciplinary assessments. I learned so much about the whole child.
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And my mentor there was the person who told me that I needed to go back to school, that I needed to get my Ph.D.” After completing coursework for her doctoral degree, Moore did a year-long internship with the Superior Court Child Guidance Clinic in the District of Columbia. “I did all court-appointed assessments — psych assessments, child custody assessments, therapy. I went into juvenile detention centers and did assessments on girls and boys. It was a lot of work, and it was really hard.” She came back to North Carolina, finished her dissertation and worked with the Chapel Hill nonprofit All Kinds of Minds and at UNC-Chapel Hill before joining DA. Moore had attended public schools in the D.C. suburbs of Maryland’s Prince George’s County and “never thought about being at a private school in any way.” She considered working as a psychologist in the public schools, but thought she likely would be assigned to three public schools. “I really wanted to be in one place and feel a part of one place, and so in that way, Durham Academy was very, very appealing. I was nervous, obviously, because I knew in my mind what I thought DA was. The thought that they needed a learning specialist, I didn’t know what that really meant. It took me a couple of years to kind of figure that out.” Moore embraces her job as learning specialist for Preschool through Middle School. “My whole goal is to get kids to be OK with who they are and be OK with the kind of learner they are, to be able to advocate for themselves and understand what they need, and to be OK if they don’t do well on a test or if something’s
really hard. That’s just what it is, and it doesn’t define the kind of person that you are. And so that really, really is my goal, and to normalize it. I think that the [DA] culture doesn’t feel like it did when I got here. I think that we have moved from that whatever-you-call-it and that makes me proud. I feel good about the fact that kids leave here [Middle School] and go to the Upper School and know that asking to be in a separate location for testing is something that benefits them. And I like that kids see this as a source of support for kids who have [learning] accommodations and for kids who don’t have accommodations. “The other thing that I really, really like about my job is that I get to watch a kid, who has been on my radar screen since they were in the first grade, go all the way through here. And that is what makes me cry when I go to an In The Pocket concert, stuff like that, and I see these kids. I know the path that they have come through, and then I see them on stage. It takes me down every time. “I got a text from a girl who sat right here and cried many a day. I got a text from her not long ago with her college acceptance letter. And so that is why I love my job, and that is why I do it. She was just so shocked, and I remember she said, ‘I am going to college.’ To know that journey and to have been a part of it, it is an honor to watch them get to the other side.” Moore also serves as Middle School diversity coordinator and is equally enthusiastic about that role. Moore is biracial, and she attended schools where the student body was about 70 percent African American. She grew up in a diverse community that “leaned probably more towards African-Americans.” Moore’s parents divorced when she was 4. She is close with her mother and father, who both had careers as Washington, D.C., police officers, but lived with her dad and stepmother, a D.C. school teacher, for most of her childhood. Moore’s brothers are nine and 13 years younger. Being biracial was challenging. “It took me a long time to figure out what that meant. As a youngster, I went through elementary school for two years being called a ‘zebra,’ and so that was hard because I didn’t know, I needed somebody to tell me what was I?” Moore’s AfricanAmerican stepmother, whom she refers to as “mom,” “helped me figure it out because I was in this place of am I white, am I black, do I say both? “I certainly felt more comfortable in a black environment. And I don’t know why that was, but I felt at home. I felt like I had to do more work or I couldn’t be my authentic self — whatever that was as a pre-teen — with my white family. And so the more conversations I had about that, I learned that on a piece of paper I can put whatever I want, but in the world people would not see me as white. If I chose that label or if I identify that for myself, that was fine, but she just wanted to make sure that I knew that was not how society would view me. And so that was very helpful, and I very much identified with being black.
That just kind of sealed my deal, and then when I went to Central. … I needed that.” For Moore, “growing up with two families that were very different, I lived it and it was hard. And then going to Central and then going to UNC, that was hard. And I didn’t feel like I had to prove myself at Central. Nobody questioned who I was or where I came from. But it felt like that at Carolina. And so my dissertation was based on multicultural education, and if teachers were prepared for what their classrooms were getting ready to look like, and I worked on a research project called Walking the Walk. It was all based on diversity work. And so that’s where all — besides my real life — that’s where the meat in the research, in the important pieces, I realized kind of all wove together.” She believes the diversity work she does at Durham Academy “is challenging because it affects everybody, but everybody’s not comfortable with it affecting everybody. People are in different places with their ability to have a conversation about it, their ability to see themselves in it, and so that piece is hard because I think it’s really important.
“ My whole goal is to get kids to be OK with who they are and be OK with the kind of learner they are, to be able to advocate for themselves and understand what they need.” — Dr. Cindy Moore “Kids have to leave here knowing how to do an algebraic equation, but they also have to leave here knowing why can’t you say the ‘N word.’ I mean, that’s really important. But the thing they have to know is what privilege means, everyone, not just white. Every day, these are really important pieces of who we are and who they are. And if our job is to prepare them to be happy, moral and productive
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Photo courtesy of Dr. Cindy Moore
citizens, then that’s a big piece of what we have to do. But not everybody is willing or able or comfortable, so the hard part is helping people on that journey.” Moore is a single mom to Ceci, an eighth-grader, and Camille, a sixth-grader. “I spend a lot of time with my kids. Right now, I like them a lot and they like me a lot, so I’m enjoying this ride, knowing that it can change at any moment. I love watching them play sports. … We love watching TV together. Right now, we’re obsessed with This is Us, and we just finished Stranger Things. Those are things that we like to do together. I love crafts, so they indulge me and sometimes they’re more excited than others. We bake a lot. We make a lot of cookies and a lot of cupcakes together. And now they’re big shoppers, so they have become a little bit more expensive than they were a couple years ago. I’m very close to my kids and we do a lot of stuff together and we talk about a lot of stuff, a lot of topics. Right now, I’m just honored that they will let me in that way. Who knows when it will go away?” She is a strong believer in girl power and is involved with StrongHER TogetHER, a Durham-based nonprofit that aims to bring together girls who share a heart for forward progress, acceptance and most of all, each other. Moore serves on the organization’s board, led a StrongHER
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“ I'm very close to my kids and we do a lot of stuff together and we talk about a lot of stuff … I'm just honored that they will let me in that way.” — Dr. Cindy Moore TogetHER camp at DA Summer Programs, and believes in “enforcing how important women and girls’ relationships are to each other.” Female friendships are a huge part of Moore’s life. “I have really good girlfriends, and I TREASURE — and I say that with capital letters — my time with them. If I were to offer any advice … it is to make sure you have yourself some good girlfriends. It helps me be a better person, a better mom, a better everything. You need good, authentic girlfriends.”
New Faculty and Staff Chrissie Bushey, Middle School, counselor
Kelly Kilgore, school store manager
Bushey earned a B.S. in psychology, magna cum laude, from James Madison University and an M.Ed. in school counseling from Shippensburg University. She taught in eastern North Carolina with Teach for America, was national recruitment director for Teach for America, and most recently served as counselor at Maureen Joy Charter School in Durham.
Kilgore graduated from Samford University with a degree in education and taught middle school math for three years. She has 15 years of general retail experience and two years as owner and manager of Run In Our Tribe, a running specialty retail company in Southern Pines. She has served as council director for Girls on the Run in Moore County.
Shelley Danser, Upper School, counselor
Kristen Klein, assistant head of school
Danser earned her undergraduate degree from UNC-Chapel Hill and a master’s degree from Boston College Graduate School of Social Work. She has 15 years of experience, including work as a therapist, as a mental health specialist with the Bridge Program in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Schools, and as program coordinator with Pro Bono Counseling Network.
Klein is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Trinity College with a B.A. in Comparative Religion and earned an M.A.T. in English Education from Brown University. She has been associated with Winchester Thurston School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, since 2004, most recently as director of the upper school and chair of the English department.
Haley Gfeller, Upper School, history
Scott Orvis, Upper School, college counseling
A Phi Beta Kappa graduate with a B.A. in history and political science from UNC-Chapel Hill, Gfeller earned a master’s degree in Global, International and Comparative History from Georgetown University. She has been a research associate and analyst with the Education Advisory Board and served as a long-term substitute teacher at Maret School in Washington, D.C.
Orvis is a 1991 graduate of the University of New Hampshire, where he worked in admissions and served as associate director of admission. Since 2006, he has been director of college counseling at Saint Mary’s School in Raleigh, where he also served as a faculty advisor and was interim dean of teaching and learning.
Catherine Hayward, Middle School, Latin Hayward earned a B.A. in classics from Truman State University and an M.A. in classical studies from Indiana University. She was an associate instructor at Indiana University and for the last six years has been a Latin and French teacher at Shattuck-St. Mary’s School, a boarding school in Faribault, Minnesota. Amber Kelley-Scott, human resources manager Kelley-Scott is a graduate of N.C. Central University, where she earned a B.A. in psychology and an M.A. in public administration. She has worked in human resources at Wake Forest Baptist Hospital, Solstas Lab Partners and Aramark, and most recently was senior human resources representative at Highwoods Properties, Raleigh.
Andrew Prudhom, Upper School, mathematics Prudhom graduated from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse with a dual major in mathematics and physics. He is a candidate for a Ph.D. in mathematics at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he has been the primary instructor for 12 courses and was the Senior Teaching Fellow for Carolina Mathematics for 2016–2017. Karen Ruberg, Middle School, history Ruberg earned a B.A. in international studies from the University of Arkansas, an M.A. in international affairs from Ohio University and a B.S. in secondary education from Urbana University. She taught for 14 years at St. Stephen’s and St. Agnes Middle School in Alexandria, Virginia, where she was twice recognized for “exemplary and outstanding performance.” Most recently she has taught at The Storm King School in Cornwall-onHudson, New York.
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Departing Faculty and Staff Durham Academy bids farewell and best wishes to departing faculty and staff who have given a cumulative 237 years of service to the school.
Naa-Norley Adom
Kate Cadwallader
Lindsey Copeland
Bobbie Dahlgren
Tim Dahlgren
Upper School English 6 YEARS
School store manager 30 YEARS
Upper School counselor 5 YEARS
Pre-k teaching assistant 26 YEARS
Middle School history 42 YEARS
Jerry Davis
Angela Duty
Teri Epsten
Sarah Goldstein
Lee Hark
Athletic trainer 11 YEARS
Second-grade teaching assistant 6 YEARS
Second-grade teaching assistant 13 YEARS
Pre-k teaching assistant and Extended Day 7 YEARS
Associate head of school 10 YEARS
Demetra Kontos
Janet Long
Asha Patel
Jeff Parkin
Mike Spatola
Fourth-grade teaching assistant 14 YEARS
Middle School Latin 24 YEARS
Pre-k teaching assistant 1 YEAR
Middle School counselor 31 YEARS
Upper School history 11 YEARS
F. Robertson Hershey Distinguished Faculty Award Honors Mike Spatola
The Epitome of a Life-Changing Teacher Story by Karen Lovelace // Photo by Michael Barley
Life-changing teachers foster students’ passions and inspire their futures. They are genuine, curious, passionate, striving, generous and accountable teachers/learners who nurture, inspire, engage and challenge students and model the path to moral, happy, productive lives. Mike Spatola is the epitome of a life-changing teacher, so it is fitting that he is honored with the 2018 Hershey Award. Mike brought 30 years of teaching excellence to Durham Academy when he joined the Upper School history faculty in 2007. His teaching career has included significant stints as a teacher and coach at Trinity Preparatory School, Lawrence Academy and Friends Academy. Mike is an inspirational role model not only for his students, but also for his fellow teachers. A master of the Socratic method, he embodies the notion that great teaching is all about asking great questions. For each issue or point, he begins with factual questions and advances to interpretive ones, all the while prompting his students to make connections and to see how the details shed light on the larger historical picture. This happens without pauses. Mike doesn’t just ask questions — he asks follow-up questions. A lot of magic happens in those extemporaneous moments: He uses a student’s comment as an impetus for a deeper, probing question that prompts them to really think — to go beyond the text and beyond the objective facts. Those follow-up questions make the students pause (but not for long — the pace never slackens!). When they work it out and provide an answer that meets Mike’s expectations, the whole class seems to arrive at a deeper understanding. His students hang on his every word. It's hard to imagine a class in which students are more intellectually active and engaged. Many are literally on the edges of their seats. Hands are flying up the whole time. The pace of Mike’s class is impressive. He moves so quickly over such complex material while also getting the students to dive deep enough into the material to arrive at and appreciate equivocal nuances and historical ironies. When the name Mike Spatola is mentioned, everyone immediately begins to talk about his “unfailing positivity and
passion for teaching.” As one colleague puts it, “He has the reputation for being a great listener who offers wise counsel, while always remaining optimistic. He looks for the best in his students and colleagues. He has high standards, and while he demands excellence, he manages to balance his lofty expectations with empathy and support, which allow his students to feel stretched, but not snapped.” Another colleague, whose three children had Mike as a teacher, says, “Over the course of their sophomore years, they went from scared, to intimidated, to confident and then to energized. The gleam in his eye became more and more apparent to them as they got to know him better. I am extremely grateful that all of my kids got to experience his class.” Students have been affected by his love and affection, character, competence and moral commitment. “Mr. Spatola is the most passionate man about his profession. He made me want to learn history, which I never imagined I would want to do. His class is so interactive, you can’t zone out. You can’t get lost. It has made the material so much easier, and it’s made me want to work so much harder.” “I think everyone has a teacher they can count on. For me, that’s Mr. Spatola. I know I have him to learn from — not only about school, but also about life. He always seems to be there for everyone. Those kinds of teachers make you comfortable going to class, actually excited to go to class.” “Mr. Spatola affected me more than any other teacher. I had him in 10th grade and again in AP Government. Every day he really loved the material, and his passion for the topic was contagious. He comes to school at 5 a.m. every day to prepare. He has high demands for himself and for his students, too.” Mike is retiring from teaching this year, and it is only fitting that Mike earn this recognition at the conclusion of his illustrious 41-year teaching and coaching career. With his passion for history and “larger-than-life personality,” he has inspired and touched the lives of thousands of lucky colleagues and students.
Editor’s Note: Karen Lovelace was the 2017 recipient of the F. Robertson Hershey Distinguished Faculty Award. She retired in June 2017 after a 25-year career at Durham Academy.
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New Trustees The Durham Academy Board of Trustees Welcomes Five New Members
Lee Barnes ’86 is president of Family Fare Convenience Stores. He is secretary of the board of trustees at Appalachian State University and has served on the board of visitors at the N. C. Central University School of Business. A graduate of Appalachian State University, he earned an M.B.A. from Duke University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Fielding Graduate University. He is the father of Trey ’17; Matthew, a rising 11th-grader; and Michael, a rising ninth-grader.
Roger Brooks ’80 practiced law with Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York City. He took early retirement to pursue an interest in First Amendment law that was first kindled reading early Supreme Court opinions in a history class at Durham Academy. While living in New York, he served on the board of trustees at the Hackley School. He is a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Virginia School of Law and earned an M.A. from the University of Virginia and an M.Div. from Regent College, Vancouver, B.C. He is the father of five children, three of whom graduated from Hackley School, as well as DA students Ann ’20 and Roger ’23.
Cynthia King practiced law for 11 years in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Maryland. She is a graduate of the University of Florida and Duke University School of Law. She has been an active Durham Academy volunteer, including serving as secretary of Parents Council, and will join the Board of Trustees in an ex officio capacity as president of Parents Council. She is the mother of Isabella, a former DA student, and Julia ’19.
Kavita Nayar is an investment manager at DUMAC Inc. She worked for 11 years at Goldman Sachs in London and New York and was a vice president in Goldman Sachs Asset Management in New York. She is a graduate of Stanford University and earned a master’s degree from Yale University. She serves on Durham Academy’s Finance Committee. She is the mother of Arav Goldstein ’27 and Maya Goldstein ’27.
Lauren Whitehurst has worked with Boston Consulting Group in Chicago and Atlanta and has been executive director of the Center for Consulting Excellence at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. She is a graduate of Amherst College and earned an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. She has previously served as a DA trustee, led the committee that produced the school’s 2015 Strategic Plan and served on DA’s Finance, Diversity and Trusteeship committees. She is the mother of Emma ’20 and Jack ’20.
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Thank you! Thank you to everyone — parents, faculty, staff, alumni, grandparents and students — who made Durham Academy Giving Day 2018 such a success!
$130,353 in donations
24 hours
922 gifts
Alumni Results
27 states represented
Most gifts
30
Class of 1994
Young alumni participation
100% Class of 2017
Most money raised
$3,800 Class of 1987
To dive more into the Giving Day results, go to bit.ly/DAGivingDay2018.
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Alumni Spotlight
Nico Bollerslev Fox ’06
Combining Her Passions for Travel and Running Q — What have you been up to since graduating from DA? A — After four lovely years at Duke, I moved to Copenhagen for a year to work at the Danish Institute for Study Abroad in a medical program. After deciding medicine was not the track for me, I took an advertising analytics role in NYC — kind of on a whim. Fortunately, it was the right decision, as I have never really left the field. I spent almost five years at Omnicom Media Group in programmatic analytics, and joined Facebook in early 2017. On the non-work front, I met my husband, Justin, in 2012. He came to my housewarming party, as he was a coworker of my roommate. The rest is history. We married in Copenhagen in July 2016, and currently live in Tribeca. We travel as much as we can, a passion of both of ours, and enjoy seeing family often. Luckily, my sister lives in NYC, and my parents and brother visit often! Q — What are you doing now? A — At Facebook, I am a Client Solutions Manager for Travel Advertisers. I recommend Facebook and Instagram products/solutions for Travel Suppliers to use to drive their business growth. Q — Why do you do what you do? A — I have loved the field of advertising analytics ever since getting into it, and being at Facebook offers the opportunity to work at a company with a global mission. Although times are tough at the moment, I truly feel that Facebook is building communities and bringing the world closer together. With a mission as new and scaled as Facebook’s, anticipating negative effects is becoming increasingly difficult. The role is challenging, fast-paced and gives the opportunity to work on cutting-edge technology and initiatives.
Durham Academy taught Nico Bollerslev Fox to always try to do her best. She took that lesson to heart, vowing “good things come to people that work hard.” That has led her professionally to a career in advertising analytics in New York City and personally to complete the six Abbott World Marathon Majors — running New York, Chicago, Boston, Berlin, Tokyo and London — before turning 30. “It was the hottest London marathon day on record," she said of her last race, on April 22. “But the feeling of elation upon crossing the finish line could not have been sweeter,” Fox said. Now she’s set her sights on the Seven Continent Challenge, running a marathon on every continent.
Q — What DA experiences influenced you or helped you get where you are today? A — DA taught me to always try my best. Good things come to people that work hard. Through challenging courses and exotic opportunities, like studying abroad in Japan and Australia, I learned to appreciate culture and worldly perspectives. DA taught me to try new things, to push myself out of my comfort zone. The best successes only come after many failures, so if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Q — What are your interests away from work? A — Two of my biggest passions outside of work are travel and running, and I’m particularly fond of coupling the two. I set a dream in 2016 to finish the six Abbott World Marathon Majors before turning 30: NYC, Chicago, Boston, Berlin, Tokyo, London. On April 22, 2018, a few months before my 30th birthday, I completed all six in London. It was the hottest London marathon day on record, but the feeling of elation upon crossing the finish line could not have been sweeter. Q — What’s on the horizon for you? A — Now that I have finished the six Abbott majors, I’ve officially begun to pursue the “Seven Continent Challenge” — running a marathon on every continent. Three down, four to go. Antarctica will be the biggest challenge. Other than running, I look forward to continuing to enjoy NYC and travel with my husband, family and friends.
Photo courtesy of Nico Bollerslev Fox
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Spring Alumni Reception Honors ‘Builders’ Durham Academy alumni Charlie Wilson and David Ravin — both members of the Class of 1989 — and Associate Head of School Lee Hark were honored with DA’s Distinguished Alumni Award and Faculty and Staff Legacy Award, respectively. The awards were presented by the DA Alumni Association at the April 13 Spring Alumni Reception. In opening the ceremony, Alumni Board President Garrett Putman ’94 described the three honorees as “successful builders.” In the case of Wilson and Ravin, that description can be taken literally; Wilson is president of C.T. Wilson Construction Company, and Ravin is president and CEO of real estate development company Northwood Ravin. “And while Lee doesn’t work with concrete and steel like David and Charlie, he’s no less a builder in our community, especially here at Durham Academy,” Putman said of Hark. “For more than a decade, Lee has supported and shaped and strengthened our school with his leadership, his love of teaching, his insightful intellect, his sharp wit, and, yes, his uncommon rap skills.”
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Lee Hark, left, was introduced by James Bohanek. Photo by Melody Guyton Butts
Alumni Faculty and Staff Legacy Award: Lee Hark Lee Hark — who holds a Bachelor of Arts from UNC-Chapel Hill and a Master of Arts in Education from the University of Georgia — has served in a variety of roles at DA over the past decade, including as Upper School director, coordinator of faculty recruitment and Upper School English teacher. Since 2013, he has served as associate head of school; in that role, he spearheaded The DA Graduate: A Mission-Driven Life project and the faculty’s curriculum-mapping work. In July, Hark will become head of school at Greenhill School in Dallas, Texas. Before presenting him with the Legacy Award, Upper School theater teacher James Bohanek reflected on Hark’s legacy at DA. Among Hark’s many admirable qualities, Bohanek said, are three traits and skills that he tries to instill in his own students: his commitment to preparation, his ability to listen to others and his willingness “to make a fool of himself.” “Lee conducts himself how we want all of our students to conduct themselves — with a zeal for life, a willingness to take risks and the courage to stand up and say, ‘I care about this,’” Bohanek said. In accepting the honor, Hark expressed his gratitude to the two heads of school who have led DA during his tenure: Ed Costello, who served as headmaster until 2013, and current Head of School Michael Ulku-Steiner. “I hope I am remembered at DA as someone who supported all of our families and all of our teachers,” Hark said, “who pushed the school to be a better school, who pushed for honest and open dialogue, who viewed himself with humility and a healthy sense of humor, and as someone who saw himself, in his heart, as a teacher.”
Fran Wilson, Charlie Wilson ’89, Mandy Turvey Ravin ’89 and David Ravin ’89 smile for the camera after the awards presentation. Photo by Kathy McPherson
Distinguished Alumni Award: Charlie Wilson ’89 and David Ravin ’89 Charlie Wilson holds a Bachelor of Science in civil engineering from N.C. State University and a Master of Science in civil engineering from the University of Texas, Austin. He leads C.T. Wilson Construction Company, which at 66 years old is the largest family-owned construction company in North Carolina. In recent years, the company has built and renovated a variety of structures in central and eastern North Carolina; projects in Durham include Golden Belt, Venable Center, Durham Co-op Market and the N.C. Museum of Life and Science’s Magic Wings Butterfly House. David Ravin holds a Bachelor of Architecture from UNC-Charlotte, a Master of Architecture from the University of Michigan and a Master of Science in real estate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Recently named one of Charlotte’s “Most Admired CEOs” by the Charlotte Business Journal, Ravin serves as the head of Northwood Ravin, a real estate development firm that has grown from 43 employees in 2011 to more than 250 employees today. The company is the fourth-largest commercial developer in Charlotte and the second largest in the Raleigh-Durham area.
Among Northwood Ravin’s 19 projects in the Triangle is Carolina Square, a mixed-use development on Chapel Hill’s Franklin Street that is anchored by the first urban Target in the state, and Van Alen, a $158-million mixed-use development adjacent to the Durham Bulls Athletic Park. Prior to the evening reception — in which Wilson and Ravin presented one another with the Distinguished Alumni Award — the two spoke at an Upper School assembly. “I realize now how lucky I was,” Wilson said. “I was born into a family that had enough money to send me to Durham Academy and owned a construction company. I never had to want anything, need anything. I was lucky. I know plenty of people in this world who may be judged as less successful than I am and they’re a whole lot smarter, and maybe a whole lot better person than I am, but I was born lucky.” With such good fortune comes a responsibility to help others and to respect people who weren’t born so lucky, Wilson said. For example, he has made it a priority to narrow the pay gap between the highest-paid and lowest-paid employees, and C.T. Wilson recently became one of just a few
construction companies to be certified by the Durham Living Wage Project. Wilson said the teachers at Durham Academy were the best he ever had and the people he met at DA were the best. “What this school has done for me, and now is doing for my children, is an amazing thing,” he said at the evening reception. Wilson and Ravin have remained close with one another and with many of their classmates in the nearly three decades since they graduated from DA, and they encouraged students to make the most of their high school years by getting to know as many of their classmates as possible. “I don’t think you know what you have here until it’s over. I know you’re in different social circles, I know you have different interests … but you’ve grown up with these 100 or so kids,” Ravin said during the student assembly. “You’ve gone from being children to adults, and then your world is really going to explode when you get out of here and everyone gets pulled in their own way. But take a minute to appreciate who you have, take a minute to say goodbye before it’s all over because you’ll always have that bond of being together here, and then it’s over.”
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Alumni Spotlight
Seth Jernigan ’96
Family Man Committed to Community Q — What have you been up to since graduating from DA? A — I attended N.C. State University, where I was initially enrolled in their forestry school. Since I’m an avid outdoorsman, a career in forestry seemed appealing. After one semester, I quickly decided that as much as I enjoyed “playing” in the woods, I didn’t want a career working in the woods. Therefore, I switched my major to business and graduated from State’s College of Management in 2000. Immediately upon graduation, I accepted a consulting job with the Financial Services Division of Accenture in Charlotte. I spent most of my three years at Accenture working on the First Union/Wachovia bank merger. This was a great experience, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Accenture. The analytical and project management skills I learned could be applied to any job. I left Accenture in 2003 to move back to Durham and join the family business, Real Estate Associates. I also married my wife, Kelly, while living in Charlotte. She’s from Chapel Hill, so she was excited to be moving home. Q — What are you doing now? A — I’m still at Real Estate Associates, where I lead a team of commercial real estate professionals. We’re focused on helping individuals and companies with their commercial real estate and property management needs. We are headquartered in Durham, where we were founded, and next year we will celebrate our 50th year in business. I’m also heavily involved in civic and community work, serving on several nonprofit boards, and currently serving as president of the Rotary Club of Durham. Q — Why do you do what you do? A — As far as work, I do what I do because I enjoy it, it allows me to meet my family’s needs and it affords me the freedom to do other things I enjoy. My civic activities allow me to help those who need it the most. Rotary’s motto is “Service Above Self,” and I try to live that through civic engagement.
A love of the outdoors and a commitment to serving others are trademarks of Seth Jernigan ’96. He began his business career in consulting, then returned to Durham to help lead a family-owned business that’s about to celebrate its 50th anniversary. He attended Durham Academy from Preschool through Upper School, served as president of the DA Alumni Board from 2014 to 2016 and is the parent of two DA students.
Q — What DA experiences influenced you or helped you get where you are today? A — Playing lacrosse for three years under Coach Joey Seivold is certainly at the top of the list. The bonds and friendships formed, and the experience playing for such a phenomenal coach has served me well. My English teachers at DA taught me to write well, including Mr. Ulku-Steiner, my freshman year English teacher and one of my favorites. This is a skill that I appreciate every day, and one that is not as common as we might think, coming out of DA. Overall, looking back, the combination of a caring and challenging environment helped prepare me well for the next stages of life. Q — What are your interests away from work? A — I’m a huge outdoorsman. I love to hunt — deer, ducks, turkey … most everything. I killed my second wild turkey this past spring, and that has been one of the highlights of my sporting career. My dad and I hunt together, and now my son, Wyatt, has started hunting, and it is truly a joy to spend time doing what I love with family. I also enjoy the shooting sports, backpacking, fishing and F3 workouts. Q — What’s on the horizon for you? A — I hope to spend as much time with my kids and family as possible. I turned 40 this past August, and Wyatt is 10 and Stella is 7. I know in the blink of an eye, they’ll be grown and out on their own. I don’t want to miss out on this time together. I also hope to continue leading and growing Real Estate Associates. I enjoy what I do, and there is so much opportunity in our area. I’m excited to lead the company into its next 50 years of business.
Photo courtesy of Seth Jernigan
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Photo by UNC Athletic Communications
Katie Vincent ’15 & Olivia Hall ’17 Prepare for goosebumps as you listen to the Harvard University Radcliffe Choral Society's beautiful rendition of “Hymn to the Eternal Flame.” Katie Vincent ’15 is society president and Olivia Hall ’17 is a member of the society, which toured the San Francisco Bay Area this winter.
Photo by Francesca Simoni/Radcliffe Choral Society
Daniel Raimi ’99 Columbia University Press recently published The Fracking Debate by Daniel Raimi ’99. Kirkus Review described Raimi’s book as a deft, fair analysis that clarifies the issues for both the general public and concerned policymakers. Raimi has been traveling extensively — including an appearance at Duke — to speak about topics covered in the book. Raimi is a senior research associate at Resources for the Future, focusing on energy and climate issues. He teaches energy policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan and is a faculty affiliate with the University of Michigan Energy Institute.
Listen at bit.ly/HymnToTheEternalFlame.
Naomi Lerner ’14 Naomi Lerner ’14 is the 2018 recipient of the UNC women's lacrosse program's Kellie Thompson Shiley Award. The honor is given each year to a player who excels in the classroom and on the field, displays outstanding leadership, sets a positive example for younger players and exhibits a passion for the game. In addition, Lerner was among 27 UNC student-athletes who were named 2017–2018 Athletic Director ScholarAthletes in March.
Amy Gage Wright ’89 Amy Gage Wright ’89 was named CNN's 2017 Hero of the Year for her advocacy for people with developmental and intellectual disabilities. In January 2016, Wright opened Bitty & Beau's Coffee in Wilmington, named for two of her children who were born with Down syndrome. Bitty & Beau's employs 40 people with developmental and intellectual disabilities in Wilmington, and she has opened a second location in Charleston, South Carolina. CNN's Hero of the Year award is determined by online voters who selected Wright from among the top 10 CNN Heroes finalists. In addition to the title, Wright received $100,000 to assist her efforts. Read more about Wright and watch her acceptance speech at bit.ly/AmyWright. Photo courtesy of CNN
Cha’Mia Rothwell ’16 Cha'Mia Rothwell ’16 has been on fire with Dartmouth College's track and field team, having won six conference championships in just two years. Among her latest accomplishments: setting a new Ivy League meet record for the 100-meter outdoor hurdles and breaking the Ivy League and New England records for the 60-meter indoor hurdles. The New Photo by Doug Austin
England 60-meter hurdles record was set in 1981 by Boston University runner and British Olympian Sharon Colyear. Rothwell also holds the Dartmouth record in the indoor 60meter and indoor long jump.
Photo courtesy of Hampden-Sydney College
Alex Bassil ’15 Alex Bassil ’15, a goalkeeper with the UNC men's lacrosse team, was named the ACC Defensive Player of the Week for April 16– 22. Alex's 14 saves in the Tar Heels' April 21 game vs. Notre Dame powered the team to an upset over the No. 14-ranked Irish on UNC's Senior Day.
Allen Smith ’17
Photo by Jeffrey A. Camarati/ UNC Athletic Communications
Quade Lukes ’17 Elon University golfer Quade Lukes ’17 was rewarded for his outstanding first season with an All-CAA First Team selection for the Colonial Athletic Association. Lukes earned his first AllCAA selection after posting a team-best 72.10 stroke average over 21 rounds of action, which is the lowest scoring average for a single season in the Elon program's Division I era. His stroke average was the lowest among CAA first-year students and tied for the second-lowest total in the league this year.
Hampden-Sydney golfer Allen Smith ’17 was named Co-Rookie of the Year for the Old Dominion Athletic Conference, sharing the award with two teammates. Smith also earned Second Team All-ODAC honors. He has the 10th-best stroke average in the league, shooting 75.3 per-round in 16 rounds of play this year.
Sarah Ransohoff ’07 Why would you need human resources when you have an office SodaStream? Alumna Sarah Ransohoff ’07 recently had two illustrations, including “Things a Startup Has Instead of H.R.,” in The New Yorker. Sarah is a full stack coding engineer in NYC and does improv comedy on the side. View her illustration at bit.ly/SarahRansohoff. Illustration by Sarah Ransohoff ’07, The New Yorker
Photo by Tim Cowie Photography
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Alumni Spotlight
Joseph Williams ’88
Entrepreneur Extraordinaire Q — What have you been up to since graduating from DA? A — The question of life after DA assumes that there is a life after this esteemed institution. Thankfully there is. Crazy to think that my Pickett Road experience is 30 years ago. I am unsure of the DA demographic now; however, it is safe to say I was one of the least traveled among my classmates at that time. In fact, my second plane flight was to college and my mom’s first flight was dropping me off at Stanford. (I remember this clearly as she held my hand so hard the whole flight that it was blue when we transferred flights in Chicago.) I share this to say that I was extremely motivated to see the world post Durham Academy. Post Durham Academy My first stop was Palo Alto, California, and Stanford University. As my mother mandated that I had to major in the sciences, I started off in engineering and briefly was in electrical engineering. To say I hated it would have been a severe understatement. However, during my first two years, I did a lot of experimentation and really found out who I was and who I was not. I learned I was an entrepreneur and started two small businesses on campus. I learned I was not an electrical engineer. I cashed out of one business and took time off from college. I took a train across the USA. When I went back to college six months later, I switched to industrial engineering with a minor in Japanese. Tokyo As my first two years in electrical engineering were brutal, I realized that to get into business school I had to do something special. I decided my first job would be in Japan, during my last quarter at Stanford. I was effectively homeless, had no room, slept on a friend’s floor for 10 weeks, and put all my stuff under a table in a dorm called Terra House. However, during this homeless period I was the tour guide at Stanford for all Japanese tourists and got a ton of contacts that would be very helpful as I later looked for a full-time job in Tokyo. My “homeless” situation was done to save my last quarter of financial aid to go to Stanford Japan Center in Kyoto, Japan. (There was no money to pay for this otherwise.) I studied there for 10 weeks, during which I had
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Heading west for his first year at Stanford was Joseph Williams’ second-ever time on an airplane, but he’s logged plenty of miles since then. From working as a production engineer in Japan, to earning an MBA at Harvard, to starting his own company in Brazil, Williams is a man on the move who wants to continue to make life an adventure.
a homestay with a Buddhist priest and his family, had an internship at a manufacturing company and got a full-time job as a production engineer at Konica Corporation. It was a life-altering experience as I did everything in a foreign language and was able to travel all over Japan and certain parts of China. “Fantastic experience” would not do this experience justice. Babies and Fools — Admission to the Harvard Business School The good Lord takes care of babies and fools. I started an East Asia master’s degree at Penn, dropped out, and miraculously got into the Harvard Business School. My prediction that my unique background as an American engineer for a Japanese company worked perfectly. HBS was awesome; I had an incredible time and learned a ton. The highlight was my parents’ visit. Harvard has lots of “big deal” people come to visit and my dad had breakfast with the president of Peru just randomly while staying at the Dean’s House. (HBS let parents stay in special quarters if you reserved on time.) After HBS, I decided it was time to go back to entrepreneurship again. While I learned a lot at HBS, the main thing I learned was that capital, or the lack thereof in my case, was not a barrier to my dreams and goals. Entrepreneurship: Chapter 1 After HBS, I applied for no jobs — I am realizing while writing this that perhaps I need to see a shrink — and moved home to Durham, where I started an investment firm called Wakefield James. This firm ended up becoming a roll up on consolidation of a fragmented sector of the residential building products supply chain. From 2002 to 2007, we grew from zero to $65 million in sales and a small office in downtown Durham to seven offices and over 500 employees (importantly, I was not the major shareholder but owned 15 percent of the common stock). I was president of the company. A highlight was my mom coming to visit, seeing this huge company, knowing that it had been created very rapidly, and asking very seriously, “Where did you get all this money to buy these companies? Is it legal?”
Photo by Izabel Medeiros, at Sopro Fotografía
It was a great run. Unfortunately, the housing crisis happened and worse yet my parents fell ill with cancer almost simultaneously. Luckily, during this time I had a well-developed management team (remember babies and fools) and was able to spend maximum time with my folks in their last years here on earth. I had maximum cash when I needed it and for that I am so, so thankful. Chapter 2 After my parents passed, I was in a tough spot. As an only child, it was quite a shock to lose both parents within six weeks. I decided if I was going to start over, I was going to really start over. I took some time off and traveled (18 months or so), sold my stake in the company, did Brazil’s Iron Man triathlon — 2.4-mile open ocean swim, 112-mile bike and full marathon. (By the way, I could not swim a lap well when I started training four months before the race.) I started using my fundraising skills in a new home of São Paulo, Brazil. Currently, I raise capital and help build large real estate platforms for Brazil Asset Managers. We focus on real estate and credit. I decided to try to make lemonade out of lemons and use my “only child” with no parents or family situation as an advantage to create a completely
new life in a new part of the world that I may not have done without this undesired new start. We have to deal with the deck of cards that we are given and make the most of it. Q — What are you doing now? A — I live in São Paulo, Brazil. My company, InDev Capital, has a small team of five people, but we do big deals. (When things work — we closed a $100M out of gate when we started.) My wife is from Spain (also the controller of the company) and I spend a ton of time there (Spain) and in eastern North Carolina visiting family. We have two delightful daughters. As I write this, we are on our way to Spain to see my in-laws. This summer, I plan to spend some quality time with the family at Wrightsville Beach within walking distance of the Oceanic Restaurant. Q — What’s on the horizon for you? A — My goal is to build the world’s most successful emerging market real estate merchant bank, continue to make life an adventure, love my family the way my folks loved me, and eventually be able to give back to DA in a big way as it has given to me. I hope this is 1/100 as interesting to read as it was to write.
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Class Notes Class of 1977 and Class of 1978 Erik Donald France efrance23@gmail.com Howard Barlow: “91-year-old Mom [Ann Barlow, beloved DA English teacher] remains glorious; personally, I’m still enjoying age 17, albeit with 40 years of added experience.” Mark E. Bozymski: “I am looking forward to our reunion this year. Hoping that many of our classmates will be able to make the trip in! We have a new puppy which pleases my wife, Mary, daughters Sarah and Abigail immensely! Mary and I have recently enjoyed fun times with David Carr and Denise, James McWhorter and Delaine, Howard Barlow, Grace Shelton ’80, Tom Shelton ’82 and Belo Shelton ’76, Malcolm Kendall ’79, Leigh Ann Carter
Tom Shelton ’82 and Mark Bozymski ’78
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’79 and husband, Betsy Boone and Eric Ashbaugh and Jimmy Parker and wives at Fridays on the Front Porch at the Carolina Inn! Cobras unite!! I have also enjoyed time with Jennifer Cobb Wells and Camille Izlar and their husbands recently as well!” Sherry Bartholomew Holtzclaw: “We are enjoying spring in Savannah after experiencing two hurricanes and extreme cold (for the South!) for too long. We have moved to a smaller house and are living over the garage while we renovate. The view out over the river at Isle of Hope makes it bearable. I thoroughly enjoyed my weekend in Durham last December for the Athletic Hall of Fame. It was fun to catch up with so many friends and faculty, see and experience a basketball game in the new gym and lunch with the girls — Camille Izlar, Jennifer Cobb Wells, Xandy Peete Jones, Meg Herbert and Patty Downey. We were sorry to miss Sally (Coonrad) Carroll.” Camille Izlar: “My husband and I built a house off Mt. Sinai Rd. and moved in last December. We have great access to hiking trails and are now closer to my horse so I can ride more often! I hope to start working part time in August at my current job at UNC. Gearing up for retirement!” Judith Krigman: “Working at Ohio State University microscopy department teaching multiphoton and confocal microscopy as well as developing projects for live animal imaging. Martin is still in Florida with the Air Force and Sam still making
Durham Academy // Summer 2018
glue. And I have an obsession with pawpaw trees.” [I asked her to elaborate:] “They are an indigenous fruit tree, large mango size fruit, custard banana mango taste. Founding fathers had them and they fed the Midwestern natives. Trying to bring back a lost fruit that has excellent nutritional value and because it is native does not need a lot of care.” Kenny Randall: “I imagine I have the youngest child out of the class of ’78? This past year Anne and I enjoyed taking Cameron (8) to Washington State to experience Seattle, then go tide pooling at Olympic National Park, and hiking at North Cascades National Park and Mt. Rainier National Park. This year we’ll take him to California to experience San Francisco, then hike at Yosemite National Park and see the trees and caves at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Cameron continues to excel at sports, which gives us great enjoyment to watch. In the past year he was invited to play for an all-star baseball team. He got bumped up to play soccer with 10-year-olds and led that team in scoring. He was also the quarterback for an undefeated football team. More importantly, he is first in his class academically.” As for yours truly, I am still living on Fort Worth, Texas. This past year on the annual history trip, traveled with Jamie France ’88, Evan Farris and a college compadre to American Civil War battlefields in and around Nashville. I also made it back to Amsterdam. Finally, we mourn the passing of Patty Downey and Mr. Wallace (Stuart Alan Wallace), and extend our deepest sympathies to Jennie Harris Wallace. Gone but never forgotten!
Class of 1986 Jonathan Avery averyj461@gmail.com As many of you will have already heard, Rob Everett has followed through on his resolution to step down from the position of class recorder after many years of dedicated service. Under his tutelage, our class notes have
grown from a sapling to a mighty redwood, enlivened by such gimmicks as the mysterious “fillin-the-blank” updates; a simple listing of each classmate’s name with one, puzzlingly, printed in green; and, everyone’s favorite, wholesale fiction. (I was always eager to hear what would be next. Connect the dots? Classmate crossword?) This year — miserabile dictu! — the editorial voice of the Class of ’86 notes will lack the pizazz of previous editions. Fortunately, ROE has agreed to come out of retirement for a pair of updates. Lisa Tulchin writes: “My son is finishing second grade @ Seawell and looking forward to a summer spent at the Farm at camp there. I ran my fourth Tar Heel 10 Miler this past month, and now that the weather is getting hotter am very glad I get to do my regular running on the trails through the woods of Carolina North. Our backyard flock is now up to seven chickens. The indoor menagerie is holding steady at two cats, a lizard and a snake. I continue working as a software trainer and instructional designer. In the last year I started training a new product that has led to some fun opportunities for international travel, and I’ve taken my family along for a few of them. Finally, I don’t know about everyone else, but I’m looking forward to turning 50 this summer. Isn’t life after 50 all about qualifying for the AARP discounts? The actual day will be spent on an RV vacation with my brothers and their families in New Mexico.” Rob Phay reports: “Since 2015 I have been working in Boston for Mercer, a consulting firm that also manages money for corporate clients and their pension plans. I am working as their compliance officer, which has been consistently challenging and all-consuming for more than three years. Siu is still living in NYC, so we take turns visiting each other on the weekends. Sofia is finishing up her junior year at Williams, after doing a semester abroad in Vietnam in the fall. I am excited about the fact that she has an internship in Boston this summer, which means I get to spend the
summer with her!” Anne Boat Waters’ exciting news: “After 20 years in Cincinnati (never thought I would be here this long!), I am moving to Chicago to take a position as the Associate Chief Medical Officer for Lurie Children’s Hospital, part of the Northwestern University Medical system. Come visit if you are ever in Chicago.” From Emma Fortner McCarty: “My husband Dave and I moved to Boulder, Colorado, three years ago and it was a good move for us. We have learned to snowshoe and have become better skiers. As my formative skiing years were with the DA Ski Club in Wintergreen and Snowshoe, I fear I have missed my chance to ever truly ‘shred’ the mountain. We have two teenage daughters who will start their freshman and junior years in high school this fall. Both my husband and I will be turning 50 this year and are planning a week-long camping trip in the San Juan mountains to serve as a distraction to how old we have become! We always welcome visitors in Colorado and I hope to see old friends when I visit my mom in Chapel Hill.” From the desk of Andrew King: “This summer I will celebrate my 10th anniversary with Big Boss Brewing (incidentally I’m writing this while participating in a beer festival). I also will celebrate my 22nd anniversary with IBM (Watson prevents me from discussing my work at IBM. I may have said too much already). My older son, Aaron, will turn 17 and has plans to attend college in Germany. He had to learn German first. My younger son, Brandon, will turn 14 this summer. He is actively involved with a club soccer team in the Charlotte area and plays soccer just about year round. Between IBM, Big Boss and soccer games, tournaments and practices, I keep pretty busy. We all are joining the Hawaii 5–0/ Half Century Club and that truly blows my mind. Never thought I’d get here. Ha! A number of DA alumni got together in May to celebrate turning 50 this year, remember Pat Eudy and raise a Dark & Stormy in his honor. They
gathered for a long weekend at Wrightsville Beach. Pictured: Chris Bennett, Geoff Lamb, Keith Brzenk, Andrew King, Fred Wilson.” From the retired compiler of notes: “Rob Everett continues to move around pieces in the jigsaw puzzle of life. This spring he enjoyed watching Charlie Wilson (’89) receive the Distinguished Alumni Award, which made Rob believe that just about anything is possible. In that spirit, he has started drinking White Russians again, and hopes to get really good at it. He also thought about trying golf again, but that still seems impossible.” ROE also provides this update: “Chris C. Bennett is a seasoned investor, professional connector and Lake Norman home collector. He travels extensively and has been recently spotted in exotic locations such as Dubai, Bermuda and He’s Not Here, to name a few. He enjoys good scotch, family and Duke football, in no particular order. Much like Jay Gatsby, Chris is living the American Dream.” (A literary note: Has a well-rhymed tricolon ever been followed by such a breathtaking example of anticlimax? Kudos, Rob!) Highlights of my year include celebrating my 50th in Brooklyn, catching up with Chris Bennett at the Duke-Miami game for the first time since the Senior Beach Trip, and the obligatory college visits to our almae matres and old stomping grounds. Pax nobiscum, Class of ’86!
Class of 1988 Joseph Williams joseph.williams @indevcapital.com Hello to the DA Class of 1988! My goodness, it is unbelievable that it has been 30 years and that Laura and I have been compiling these notes for about that long … well over half of our lives! It is an honor and pleasure. I want to provide heartfelt thanks to Laura, who as we will learn has recently had an extremely challenging time, for being the glue that keeps us together. Let’s get started! Disbelief is a common theme in this year’s notes. Shannon Griffin Blake cannot believe that her son Austin graduates from high school this year! She is excited that Austin heads to God’s Country of North Carolina to attend Campbell University. Husband Todd and Shannon will “burn up the highway” to see him play football for Campbell. The couple’s daughter, Andie, is a freshman in high school and Shannon enjoyed watching her play basketball, throw discus and shot put for her high school. A chip off the old block Shannon. Professionally, Shannon is still at the CDC in Atlanta and enjoys gardening and reading whenever possible. Shannon, I smiled as I wrote that, remembering spending time at the gym watching the girls basketball games and also our time with Mr. Cullen and track meets when you threw
discus. Let’s move from Atlanta to the Boston area, where we find Melissa Hanenberger Brodie is making the world a better place. Melissa and Frank have two kids in high school. Melissa works as a college counselor in a public high school with 2,000+ kids in Newton. The program Melissa manages focuses on first generation college students and matches those students with a mentor who guides them through the college application process. Melissa says the work is incredibly rewarding and the program has a 100 percent acceptance rate since its start five years ago. Melissa visits N.C. quite a bit to visit her mom and sees Henry Pye quite often as well. Evidently, Henry’s sons are masters of a video game called Fortnite and taught Melissa’s kids the game with great skill and enthusiasm. Speaking of Henry Pye, we find him in Chapel Hill. His full-time job as a bus driver for his children is rewarding. However, pay is low and the hours are long, six days a week currently. Son Kenneth uses Henry’s bus service, Pye Travel Co, to arrive at the rugby games of the Highlanders Rugby Club of Chapel Hill. Kenneth also catches the Pye bus service to cross country meets. Second son, passenger Jack Ross, uses the Pye bus service to go to swim practice and also catches rides to piano and tennis lessons. Henry, to avoid renting a car when I am in town, can I book a ride or two? Besides his full-time bus driver job (actually he is CEO of Pye Travel Co), he is a consultant in resident technology services for Real Page, a leading provider of on-demand software and services to the multifamily industry. I, too, am in the real estate industry and took some time to read some of his articles. How he does this level of detailed research into the “internet of things” in the multifamily housing industry and holds a full-time job as a bus driver company CEO is beyond me! One of the great pleasures of this job of writing these notes is saying to yourself, “that makes total
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sense” when you read about a person’s update. Ben Kalayjian works and teaches at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. I was on the site of the Esalen Institute and it is a place where people unite for “intellectual freedom to consider systems of thought and feeling that lie beyond the constraints of societal norms” and “to re-discover ancient wisdoms in the rhythms and tides of the body, and poetry in the pulsing of life itself.” In addition, the site states, “they come to rediscover the miracle of self-aware consciousness. Often they come away inspired by a fierce desire to learn and keep on learning through all of life, and beyond.” Ben was showcased in the New York Times this year and just returned from a two-week trek in the Himalayas with friends and family. The group climbed 18,000 feet and returned without incident. Ben and his wife “live simply in the coastal mountains of Big Sur.” Ben, as I write this in the Canary Islands of Spain, I smile from ear to ear saying “that makes total sense!” Gastonia is not Big Sur but is where we find Edwin Bryson half the week. He is in Charlotte the other half of the week as he works as an endodontist. His kids are 12 and 14 and are involved in many activities. Edwin would love to engage Pye Travel Co but it appears that the distance is much too far for Henry to pick up Edwin’s kids. To my knowledge, Edwin lives in Charlotte. Amy Balbirer Windham just did one of the most wonderful things that I believe a person can do. In August 2017, Amy and husband adopted a beautiful baby girl, Ryker Hardt Windham. Amy states that it is a dream come true. Her travel agency is thriving and she looks forward to teaching Ryker the business. Amy, my father was adopted and it is such a wonderful thing to do. It changed his life and, as a result, my life. Hats off to you! Where do you live by the way? Superstar Laura Zimmerman married another Zimmerman. Well, although her husband has the same name as
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her brother, there is no relation whatsoever! She was married on July 22, 2017. It was a DA mini reunion of sorts. DA legends such as Amy Crill Malone, Rob Christopher Strayhorn, Neal Ellis, Henry Pye, Ted Kalo, Shannon Griffin Blake, Kristen Stallings Jupena, John Ross, Chris Porter and DA alums Alida Zimmerman ’12 and Nicole Owens Ramsey were there (if we missed one of the attendees my apologies). Laura has been quite busy as a realtor at RE/Max Winning Edge in Chapel Hill, along with being the project manager for her step-dad’s custom building company, Village Building Company. Renovations and selling homes are two of her passions, so the combination of both has been wonderful professionally. Unfortunately, Laura’s wonderful daughter, LewLew, caught a stomach virus Dec. 1 and has not been able to drink or eat since. It’s been an extremely difficult time. It appears that a surgery is necessary and it has been very touch-and-go, nerve wracking and scary. Laura thanks the DA community and her close friends for the support provided during this extremely difficult time. Her son, Hayden, is 21 and finishing his junior year at Virginia Tech with a major in stats and a minor in business tech. A testament to Laura’s persistent optimism, even in this trying time Laura mentions that she has much to be grateful for and loves her DA family! Your humble class notes writer is writing you from the Canary Islands of Spain. I am here with my wife and her family. My wife is a native of the Canary Islands. We still live in the urban jungle of São Paulo, Brazil, where I continue to run our small real estate merchant banking practice. We have a “life changing” transaction that is close to the finish line that will be the largest deal that I have ever done on my own account (not working for others), almost there almost there. Our firm has started to focus on financing emerging market data centers, and I am actually about to invest in and lead the turnaround for a data center
company in São Paulo. My wife and I are planning to move to Madrid, Spain, in the next two years or so. We have two daughters, Helena is 2 1/2 years old and Melissa is 2 1/2 months old. I had no idea how much free time I had before becoming a parent. The Williams Martinez team is headed for some rest and relaxation in Stockholm, Sweden, for a week before I head back to São Paulo to wrap up the “Big Deal” (fingers crossed). If all goes according to plan, I will be in Wrightsville Beach and Long Island for a couple of weeks this summer to see as many of you as possible. As I started late as a father, I am keeping the same travel schedule with two babies but it is brutal. Yes, we are that couple that you hate on that long flight on the airplane that has two crying babies … Laura and I wish all of you the best, and we all pull for Laura’s LewLew and hope and pray to hear good news soon.
Class of 1990 Katie Moylan Little kathleen.little@duke.edu Hello from the class of 1990. It was great to hear from classmates and learn about new babies, soon to be graduating kids and exciting travel. All is well in my family. My husband Darin and I have two kids at DA, Lucas ’24 and Shelby ’26. They are lucky to be surrounded by family constantly and get to attend school with many cousins. I run into Brian Vick at school events. He and his wife have their daughter Harper ’27 at DA. Durward Williams is still living in Chapel Hill with his wife Megan and their two kids. He was hoping to have a DA reunion with John Crumbliss in Red Square during World Cup but “fortunately for my liver our paths will not cross.” Durward is always on the look out to run into Whitby Joyner at the gym to say hello. Whitby also reminds him that he has not been around lately. Les Evans is coaching soccer and getting back into trail running. Les gave
me the baby update and informs me that Mark Simpson and his wife Jess visited a few months back. They are living in Berkeley, California, and just had their second boy on April 21. John Wray and his wife Michele have recently moved to Wilmington. They have one baby girl. Scottie Amick is busy in Asheville, working for MAHEC which helps to train family practice providers to hopefully stay in the rural area. Hope Boykin is as wonderful as ever, still dancing, traveling and having fun. She shared that her bones do hurt a little bit more each year. She is amazing with all her accomplishments! When asked if she ran into any DA alumni recently — she met up with Leigh Kramer LaFalce and Tara Casseday Budd while touring — and of course is following Torsie Judkins ’91 on Instagram. Cyndy Allen is doing well and still living in Uptown Charlotte, consulting for Bank of America. If you go to a Carolina Panthers and/or Duke game, you will see Cyndy there. She and Jon (Frank) Hyland went to the Duke vs. Wake Forest basketball game this year — “just like good ole times.” I ran into Betsy Hage and her mom at a Durham Nativity School event. She is still in Raleigh but in a new house, well, new since last update. She lives close to brother Bill and his family and says “Aunt B is not as cool as I used to be perceived.” She is working down the road at EmergeOrtho, managing patients with total joint replacement. Betsy recently had dinner with Jennifer Hoog Nichols and Jennifer Webb Crowder. She shared the Jenn Crowder is doing well in Raleigh. Jenn is the St. David’s women’s tennis coach and did mention to Betsy that St. David’s beat Durham Academy this year in the season opening tourney in Greenville, South Carolina. Both schools went on to win their division state tournaments. Jen C. has three great kids who are busy and she drives them all over Raleigh for baseball, gymnastics or tennis. Jennifer Hoog Nichols continues to sell real estate in Durham. She is enjoying
traveling with her husband and having the kids home for a few more years. Both kids are still at DA: Will ’20 and Kate ’21. Jenn shares, “My daughter is in Mr. Cullen’s advisory. Mr. Cullen is always asking me to call him ‘Dennis,’ but after so many years of calling him Mr. Cullen, there’s just no hope I’ll ever call him ‘Dennis.’ It’s fun having both kids at the Upper School, brings back many memories and lots of laughs. They both enjoyed hearing Charlie Wilson ’89 and David Ravin ’89 recently talk at the Upper School.” Juan PérezFontan is still in Spain, working in an oil refinery (Health and Safety department), not married (yet) although his “girlfriend” has three teenagers (one of them is an AFS student in Portland right now) and he keeps playing soccer in his free time. I told Juan that we look forward to the engagement news on our next update. Lastly, I always enjoy hearing Guy Foulks’ update. He and his wife Deb went to New Zealand this past winter and had an awesome time looking at sperm whales and seeing two species of penguins as well as the southern brown kiwi (Stewart Island tokoeka). They are continuing to enjoy life in Alexandria, Virginia. Thanks everyone for your update. Look forward to hearing more great things next year!
Class of 1991 Torsie Judkins torsiejudkins@gmail.com Cory Johnston is still living in Hood River, Oregon, doing surgery. Two boys (Rocky, 4, and Bode, 2). Cory says he’s working, skiing, riding, running and doing a little bit of surfing. Andrea Banes Picon and her family are in the process of moving from Minneapolis to Pittsburgh. They have a rising freshman in high school and fifth grader. Andrea switched from her role as director, strategic marketing for a non-profit and now she’s working in biotech as director, new business development. She hopes the Steelers have a better
season than the Vikings. Allison McWilliams is assistant VP, mentoring and alumni personal and career development at Wake Forest University. In September 2017 her book, Five for Your First Five: Own Your Career and Life After College, was published and is now being used by young professionals across the country as they navigate those first uncertain years post-college. This summer she travels to Vancouver, Nashville, D.C., NYC and Pittsburgh, just to name a few spots. Life stays busy and fun. Nicole Epstein is still in Charlotte, working as in-house counsel for Belk. Her kids are in kindergarten and fourth grade in a full immersion Mandarin program. They are staying busy working and training for the June Make-A-Wish Trailblaze Challenge that she will be hiking with Kathy Oakes. Jessamy Selim is still in Greensboro with her family, working at a radio station, and her husband Dan is still working at the TV station. Her youngest, Jack, is going to Austria and Iceland this summer with his grandparents. Her oldest, Michael, was accepted into Early College at Guilford and will be starting there for high school in the fall. Laura Horton Virkler says that there is absolutely nothing new to report in the Virkler household other than her kids are still at DA and she’s still volunteering and serving on the board of trustees. Laura is chairing the Buildings and Grounds Committee which she says “is actually so much fun as we finish the first phase of the new Upper School STEM and Humanities building AND start designing the first phase of the new Middle School campus.” Ella (Virkler ’20) is now a sophomore and they are starting to go through the college visiting process. “Should be a very exciting next five years or so as we build new buildings each year! All three kids (10th, 7th and 4th grades) are very eager for the school year to be over — bring on summer!” Clint Acrey is still working and living with his wife and daughter in Winston Salem. He sees Allison McWilliams pretty
regularly and Kathy Oakes on occasion. Most of his free time is spent carrying a golf bag since his daughter, Ellie, started playing tournament golf a couple of years ago. Danielle Holland reports from New Zealand that they are heading into winter. She will be traveling the country, covering sporting events such as rugby and netball, and heading to San Francisco in July to cover the Rugby Sevens World Cup. If any DA people are on that side of the country, go watch some real rugby! Virginia Hall is “finishing up my 20th year at DA and was talked into coaching JV track this spring after a 15-year hiatus. Laura Horton Virkler’s son was on our team! Next year my girls will both be in Middle School. Help! Oh — and I reconnected with Kathy Sullivan who has moved back to the area.” Doug Dicconson, wife Kimberly, two boys Parker and Jackson and Pucci the hound are really enjoying living and working in Fairfield County, Connecticut. “It’s like Hillsborough, but different. After seven years at the helm of Cinelan, I am currently launching Theorem Studios. Really enjoying my work and of course spending time with Torsie Judkins, Charlie Shipman (’92), my sister Edith Dicconson (’89), Edward Olanow (’89) and other DA alums whenever the opportunity presents itself.” Torsie Judkins is still living outside of NYC with his wife Bria and twin girls. He is excited to be the director of admissions at the International School of Brooklyn. He frequently spends time with DA grads in the NYC area, including Doug Dicconson, Charlie Shipman ’92, Johnny Rosenthal ’90, Cam Brodie ’90, Tyler Brodie ’92, Bryson Brodie ’96, Hilary Carson ’92 and more.
Class of 1994 Beverley Foulks McGuire mcguireb@uncw.edu The class of ’94 continues to have exciting news to report. Ward Horton is going to Broadway this fall with a play
2018–2019
Alumni Calendar Sept. 5, 5:30 p.m. Business Networking Social
Sept. 18, 5:30 p.m. Alumni Board Meeting
Sept. 20, 6:30 p.m. Alumni Networking Social CHICAGO
Sept. 28, 5 p.m. Homecoming Barbecue
Sept. 29, 7 p.m. Reunion Party for classes ending in 3s and 8s WATTS GROCERY
Oct. 4, 6:30 p.m. Alumni Networking Social BOSTON
Oct. 11, 6 p.m. Alumni Networking Social DALLAS
Nov. 6, 5:30 p.m. Alumni Board Meeting
Jan. 9, 5:30 p.m. Alumni Board Meeting
Feb. 28, 6 p.m. Alumni Networking Social SAN FRANCISCO
March 21, 6 p.m. Alumni Networking Social WASHINGTON, D.C.
March 26, 5:30 p.m. Alumni Board Meeting
April 3, 6 p.m. Alumni Networking Social ATLANTA
April 4, 6 p.m. Alumni Networking Social CHARLOTTE
April 6, 6:30 p.m. Benefit Auction
April 26, 6 p.m. Spring Alumni Reception
May 9, 6:30 p.m. Alumni Networking Social NEW YORK CITY
called Torch Song. Alycia Levy Fortin and Fabrice (fifth grade math teacher at DA) welcomed their daughter, Alaina Sylvie, on April 1. She was born at UNC, weighing 7 pounds, 15 ounces. Her parents and big brother Avery are so excited to have her here. After a six-year break, Blake Teer Ellis is returning to teaching 2-year-olds at a preschool where her kids went to school, and they are growing up fast. Hamilton is 12 and Carter and Tyler are 7. Blake and Bret (Ellis ’92) have a niece and a cousin graduating from DA this year — Emma Ellis ’18 and Tatum Teer-Barutio ’18 — and they are looking forward to connecting with former teachers and colleagues at the graduation ceremony. I continue to teach Asian religions at UNC-Wilmington, and for the past two years I have directed the university’s general education program. I hope that all my classmates are doing well professionally and personally. Feel free to email me anytime with news.
Class of 1996 Kimberly Judge Sandridge kjsandridge@gmail.com For this round of class notes, in addition to the customary announcements, I asked classmates to answer the question, “What hobby have you kept up with or taken up since our time at DA?” Here’s what I learned. Mary Huber Cooley writes, “I’m still in Durham. Most of the time I’m pretty busy with work (still a pediatrician at Chapel Hill Peds) and kids (now 8 and 11, we spend a fair number of weekends at their lax games and dive meets). When I do find a lazy afternoon, I’ve been dabbling in a bit of soap making. It’s surprisingly fun and easy and takes me back to chemistry class!” Claire Barber Fenton writes, “My family and I are avid skiers and snowboarders. We have three skiers and three snowboarders in our family and spend as much time on the mountain as possible — last year
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we skied on the Fourth of July.” Heather Foulks Kolakowski writes, “This past year has been a busy one for me and my family. We moved to a new home near Ithaca and are lucky enough to have a stocked pond on the property. I get to practice my fly fishing, and I look forward to teaching my son, who is 3.5 years old, the art of fly tying. We also welcomed our second child, Madeleine, to our family on January 25, 2018. She was a whopping 12 pounds 9 ounces and 22 inches long at birth so I think she will be a tall girl! I am still teaching at the Hotel School at Cornell. One of my new elective classes addresses food insecurity and nonprofit food service management (focusing on school food access).” Amanda Teer Lloyd writes, “I am thrilled to announce the birth of our fourth child. Merritt Croft was born in June 2017. He joins big brothers Cooper and Truett and our daughter Reagan. It seems that I am in good company with a few other alumni also having children in the last year. Who know we would be turning 40 as well as having babies. It was a big year!” Doug MacIntyre writes, “The MacIntyre family has had a whirlwind of a year with a temporary move from St. Petersburg, Florida, to Lakeland, Florida, (home of NOAA’s new Aircraft Operations Center) where Doug flew in command of Gonzo, NOAA’s high altitude hurricane hunter aircraft, in and around hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Jose, Maria and Nate. He showcased the jet at the annual Hurricane Awareness Tour last May, which made a familiar stop at RDU. More recently he has taken an assignment at NOAA Operations headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, which will afford him more time at home with his wife, Kalyn, and their twins, Malcolm and Helen (now 3 years old). “For those who are following Mal’s Facebook page MalcolmStrong, know that he continues to inspire us all with his spirit as he makes progress on his road to recovery. Helen, of course, cheers him on at every moment
and never ceases to make us all smile.” Now that Doug has arrived in the DC metro area, he has taken up biking as a hobby to eliminate traffic headaches (and save on parking!) — a far cry from his days in the pool. As for me, Kimberly Judge Sandridge, I continue to live in Silver Spring, Maryland, with my husband, daughter and cat where we all enjoy gardening (except for our cat, who enjoys napping). This summer I will complete my Montessori primary teacher training (for ages 3–6) at the Institute for Advanced Montessori Studies and will begin a lead teacher position in the upcoming school year.
Class of 1997 Kadi Thompson
Durham Academy in December to be inducted into the Durham Academy Athletic Hall of Fame. He joined Brock Hilpert, who was inducted into the Athletic Hall of Fame in December 2015. Julia Hamner Cheatwood still lives in Charlotte with her husband and three children. Ashley Horton Freedman lives in Durham with her three kids, two of whom attend Durham Academy as rising second- and rising fifth-graders. She says having a child heading into Middle School at DA is crazy and brings back lots of fun memories. Ashley co-chaired the Durham Academy Benefit Auction this past year. Wildly enough, one of their fundraisers was a raffle to attend the Country Music Awards and Kendra Burlington Hobbs, who lives in Wilmington,
kadithompson@gmail.com Brooke Staton is back living in the U.S. She came to work on a master’s in early childhood education and has loved being back in Colorado. The program ends this summer and it seems likely that she will remain in the U.S. working. But she wouldn’t be surprised if she ends up abroad again somewhere down the line. Josh Lewis, his wife (Laurel), and daughter (Jordan) are currently living in Chapel Hill. Jordan ’30 is in kindergarten at DA and enjoying it. Laurel and Josh both work for a Danish pharmaceutical engineering company. He is the lead architect for U.S. projects and Laurel is an accountant. Meghan Hansing MacNabb recently shifted careers and is thrilled to now be working in Raleigh with a national IT services and cloud provider. Her 18-year-old stepdaughter has flown the coop this past year and they have Olivia, 7, left at home keeping them busy. Meghan is “looking forward to traveling some this year and enjoying our annual fishing trip to Canada.” Brett Winton is living in Venice, California, with his wife, two kids and dog. He reports that “Life is a circus with some time on the high wire and sometimes the juggling clown.” Hunter Henry, who lives in Dallas, came back to
Josh Lewis ’97 and family
sweetly bought a ticket and WON the raffle! Kendra had an exciting spring when she also had a baby girl, Charlotte Victoria Hobbs, in March. She had better find a sitter for the CMA’s in the fall! Also in fifth grade with Ashley’s daughter is Morgan Edwards Whaley’s son. Morgan works in the Development Office at Durham Academy. Morgan, Ashley and Sara Mayes Kaplan got to reunite with some fellow alumni at our 20-year reunion this past fall. Last summer, I, Kadi Thompson made a list of all the things I had wanted to do but never had the time due to the corporate grind.
Class of 2000 Robert Allen robertfallenii@gmail.com
Ioni and Akylas, children of Brett Winton ’97
So, I quit my job and spent nine months checking things off that list. I hiked across the Swiss Alps, did an eight-day silent meditation retreat, got my yoga certification and attempted to learn piano, to name just a few. I am now back at work doing project management for LinkedIn and am trying to squeeze in as many fun trips as I can throughout the summer.
Class of 1999 Nina Jacobi nina.jacobi@gmail.com Bobby Curnow is working as a writer and editor in San Diego. His graphic novel, Ward’s Valley, came out via Top Shelf Publishing in early April. Daniel Raimi has been traveling extensively to promote his new book, The Fracking Debate. He is excited to spend more time at home in Ann Arbor this summer, since he and his wife, Kaitlin, are expecting their first child (a boy!) in August. Whitney Goodman just moved down to Charleston, South Carolina, to go to school for physical therapy. She is still dancing quite a bit. Margaret Jones is out in Seattle, continuing her work at
the five-state trauma center at Harborview, where she provides medical care to patients with spinal cord injuries. Margaret is still traveling when she gets the chance — she just got back from an amazing trip to Patagonia and Torres del Paine National Park in Chile earlier this spring. Matt Crawford is finishing up his orthopedic surgery residency at Duke and will be moving to Vail with his wife, Julie, for a sports medicine fellowship. Most importantly, their son, Luke, was born in September 2017 and has been a true joy. Amar Goli is living in LA and working for CBRE in the downtown LA office. They focus on large retail centers and single-tenant retail and industrial properties nationwide. Amar and his wife just celebrated their first anniversary in February. They were married last year in Carmel, California, with many of our fellow DA classmates in attendance. As for me, my husband Peter and I welcomed our son, Thomas, in January. We are bleary-eyed but in love! I’m enjoying maternity leave before returning to my work in healthcare consulting. Thanks to all for your updates! Please keep them coming. Warm thoughts to each of you.
Big congrats goes out to Siobahn Grant, who got engaged in January and will be married to Brian Dobbins in Durham this December. Jessica Crowe Whilden’s daughter, Caroline, will join kids of Tyler Elkins-Williams, Ben Berchuck, Lee Patterson and Susan Knott Easterling next year in DA pre-kindergarten. Cavaliers 2032! It boggles the mind. Anna Allen is living in Raleigh, working for Miller-Motte College teaching in the veterinary technician program, and having an amazing time raising her 3½-year-old son Samuel! She is looking forward to visiting Leigh Quarles and her family over Memorial Day in Kansas City, Missouri. Clare Norwood recently bought a fixer upper and is living in the attic (by choice) while she rehabs the house. She will be running the Cincinnati Flying Pig May 6 and hoping to qualify for the Boston Marathon a second time, which is amazing! Jamie Krzyzewski Spatola informs me that Aden Darity is the athletics director at my grade school alma mater, Carolina Friends School. According to Jamie, he’s doing an awesome job and she runs into him a good bit. Cristina Bejan recently moved to Raleigh, where she is working in education and theater. Her play, Colombo Calling — a play from Sri Lanka, recently appeared at Imurj. She is producing Eclipsed by Danai Gurira in the Women’s Theater Festival this July and August, performing at the Durham Fruit and Produce Company. Alivia Sholtz Archer is still working at the Duke Clinical Research Institute — this May will be four years. This past Halloween Alivia and her husband, Greg, moved into their new home in Durham and their son, Ford, arrived six weeks later. She’s keeping busy between work and getting her family settled in their new home. Congrats on all fronts! Terri Ginsberg Jordan
has been in the D.C. area for the last 12 years, avoiding tourists and working as a corporate lawyer. Her children, Noah (4) and Avery (2), keep them on their proverbial toes and familiar with the local Arlington playground scene. Nate Solberg will be getting married to Sarah Swann this summer. His business, Nordic PC, is now 10 years old, and is doing really well. They’re moving into a new larger facility and they’ve hired a third employee. Elizabeth Lessey-Morillon had a daughter, Cossette Eloise Morillon, last spring. Last summer, she finished her postdoc at National institute of Cancer (Bethesda, Maryland) in the Laboratory of Pathology doing tumor microenvironment and immunotherapy research. She started working at the FDA in Silver Spring, doing cell therapy product review in division of cellular and gene therapies. Before that, she graduated with a Ph.D. in Cell and Developmental Biology from UNC in 2014. Tom Lind lives in Nashville with his wife, Carrie, and three kids: Lucy (4), Bo (2) and Jack (10 months). Carrie works at Vanderbilt University as a pediatrician and Tom is an anesthesiologist in a local private practice. To quote Tom, “Life is good!”
Class of 2001 Allison Kirkland allison.kirkland@gmail.com
Amelia Ashton Thorn amelia.a.thorn@gmail.com Amazingly, we have now been graduates for a little over 17 years — about the same age we were when we graduated. Whoa. Now that we have your (stunned) attention, here’s what our classmates have been up to lately. Misty Piekaar welcomed her first child, a girl, in January 2018. Her name is Kailee May McWilliams. Misty reports that she is reveling in the year of “firsts” — first baby smile, first Mother’s Day, etc. Life, she says, is good! Also enjoying life as a new mom is Amelia Ashton Thorn, who spends many of
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her days exploring her neighborhood in Alexandria, Virginia, with son Ashton (with a focus on spotting buses, planes and flowers, Ashton’s favorites). The pace of life has slowed a bit, but she and her husband still sometimes find time to try a new restaurant and see some good concerts in D.C. Amelia recently took a position as an assistant general counsel at the American Chemistry Council in D.C. and is enjoying the new role. It was a treat for Ashton (and Amelia) to meet Anne Lacy Gialanella’s new baby, Libby, whom the Gialanellas welcomed to their family on Nov. 3, 2017. Also welcoming a baby girl is Marion Penning, who reports that Alice Beverly, her second daughter, was born on March 20. Marion, congratulations to you and your husband on your growing family! Maggie McPherson Weir and her husband Chard are enjoying life in NYC with their new daughter, Kit, who was born July 26, 2017. Meredith Bradley Sharpe also gained a sweet addition to her family — baby Natalie. Along with big sister Samantha, 20 months old, and her husband Matt, they continue to enjoy their time in New Orleans, relaying that it is a wonderful city always with some kind of festival going! Meredith has a small music therapy practice that serves children with special needs, and she supervises music therapy interns from Loyola University. She really enjoys her work with the students. Meredith recently enjoyed a visit from Allison Kirkland and her husband Paul Golightly, who soaked up the New Orleans atmosphere and spent time with Meredith’s whole family! Allison and Paul got married in 2017 in the beautiful Duke Gardens and they live in Durham with their cat, Lyra. They love their Durham community, and feel so fortunate to be close to other alums such as Caroline Mage, Molly Kane Frommer and Orla Buckley O’Hannaidh. In the last year Molly has made the transition from DA student to alum to DA parent as their oldest, Lucy, started pre-k last fall.
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Molly reports that Lucy has had a wonderful year. She’s enjoyed reconnecting with the school as a family and seeing first-hand all the growth the school has undergone in the 17(!) years since we were students on campus. Otherwise, with two young kids at home, she and her husband are constantly on the move and keeping busy! Orla still works as a privacy/marketing attorney at Womble Bond Dickinson in RTP. This year their firm combined with a UK law firm so she finds herself in the UK for work and assisting many EU clients. It’s such a good fit for this international family, giving them opportunities to tack on visits to Ireland to see family. Conor (3) and Ronan (1) are growing quickly. Also nearby, Mike Munson bought a house in Chapel Hill, where he lives with his wife, Sophia, almost 2-year-old son Chase, mother-in-law Michele, and four pets. He’s currently working for the firm of Higgins, Frankstone, Graves & Morris, specializing in estate planning and small business work. Loving her time in N.C. is Jessica Streck Ortolano, who was thrilled to be reunited with her husband when he moved back to N.C. after being away for a year for work. Jessica was recently named Diversity and Inclusion co-chair at Ravenscroft. Jessica reports that she’s running a half marathon this year (and looking for some training buddies … any alum takers?), she recently enjoyed a Decemberists concert at DPAC and she and her husband are looking into home ownership, so please send good local realtors their way. Nick Lehman is also back in the South. Last summer he moved from New England to Georgia, and from athletics to admissions. He is now an admissions counselor at Berry College in Rome. Last fall, he visited DA on a recruiting trip and met with Mrs. Cleaver. He’s hoping to get a few DA kids coming to Berry soon! From the South to the North (and beyond!), Mary Blair married Hoang Thach, whom she met while doing fieldwork in Vietnam as a part of her job at the American
Museum of Natural History in New York. The marriage celebration was near Mary’s parents’ home in Arlington, Virginia, on February 11, 2018, and in attendance were Hannah Farber, Kat Higginbotham and Richie Bailey. Hannah, who is a professor of American history at Columbia University, wrote in to urge those living in North Carolina to fight the state legislature’s gerrymandering and voter suppression efforts. Democracy matters. In Los Angeles, Brendan Bradley reports that he built a spaceship in his Los Angeles apartment to make his latest film, SONA, which will release this summer at San Diego Comic Con.
Class of 2003 Andrea Fjeld andreafjeld@gmail.com Another year down. As we creep into the mid-30s, several members of the class of 2003 are moving up professionally and growing their families. (And the rest of us are doing just fine, too.) If you’re in the Houston area, hit up Steven Suggs! In June, he will be moving to Texas, where his wife, Amanda, is joining Paul Friedman’s practice for a yearlong cosmetic dermatologic surgery fellowship. After six years, they are very excited to get out of Cleveland, where Amanda is finishing up her dermatology residency at Case Western. Steven is an ER doctor — and loving the job. He has been a nocturnist (just working the night shift) for three years and will continue that when down in Houston. Their 18-month-old daughter, Emma, is already a world traveler, accompanying her parents on 30+ flights (and counting!) as they race marathons and triathlons. September 27 saw the arrival of Arthur Henry Knelson, born to Erik Knelson and his wife, Lauren. “He has brought indescribable joy to our lives,” Erik says. On the professional front, he is completing his first year of an oncology fellowship with fellow DA alumnus Jacob
Berchuck at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, where Lauren also works as the program manager for adult survivorship. It’s been an eventful year for Brienne Letourneau and her husband, Richard Bailey ’02. In December, they moved into a new home on Chicago’s North Side, and Brienne was elevated to the partnership of Jenner & Block a month later. This summer, they are welcoming their second child, and their 2-year-old Connor is very excited to become a big brother. Julia Lacy Gaylord and her husband are also growing their family, having welcomed their second daughter, Caroline, on Feb. 1. Her big sister, Lily, is enjoying the addition! Emily Luger Siegel just passed the four-year mark at GTB, where she leads a group responsible for content at Ford. Living in Detroit, she and her husband, Ed, are spending a lot of time fixing up their house and exploring everything Michigan has to offer. “The beaches are different than the ones back home, but they’re pretty beautiful,” she says. On March 11, she brought a baby boy into the world and is spending these months settling into motherhood before going back to work in June. Based in Carrboro, Will Halman is running the teleprompting and closed captioning business he bought in 2016. “And I still love it,” he says. After 15 years in D.C., Stuart Ramsey decided to up and make the cross-country move to San Francisco. She is still working for Edelman, a PR firm, focusing primarily on CEO ghostwriting, crisis/issues management and corporate reputation work. She says she’s “really leaning in to the West Coast lifestyle with lots of hiking, skiing in Tahoe and overpriced organic food.” Speaking of overpriced organic food, I crossed the 10-year point with New York last August. I’m still in Brooklyn — specifically, the BedStuy neighborhood, where I live with my fiancé and middle-aged cat. I am a copywriter and editor at a tech company called LivePerson. Thanks to everyone
who wrote in to take me on my annual trip down memory lane. I hope the year ahead is full of more wonderful things for you all — personally and professionally.
Class of 2005 Andrew Weinhold andrew.weinhold@gmail.com Checking in from across the pond, Whitney Zimmerman left BMW in December after 7.5 years to join McKinsey & Company as a consultant in their Munich office, starting in May. He’s just finished a four-month sabbatical, during which he traveled around the world in 100 days, visited six continents and 16 countries, kept his mouth shut at a silent meditation retreat in northern India for 10 days, and crewed a three-masted tall ship to the UK in hurricane force winds and 30 foot waves. He now splits his time between Munich and Edinburgh, Scotland, where his better half (his words, not mine!) recently moved. Jamihlia Johnson also recently moved — from Washington, D.C. to Chicago with her dog Honey and cat Teddy. She continues to work as an international tax consultant with PwC. As always, the teachers are also staying busy with the great work they do. MK Pope still lives and teaches 10th grade English in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, where by all accounts she is the most popular teacher among students. David Hutchings, who teaches Spanish at Ravenscroft, welcomed his new baby boy Courtland in November. He describes Courtland as “a happy little guy,” and looks forward to everything to come, especially taking him to the beach. Down the road in Fayetteville, Ben Chambers got married last March to his new wife Reston, and the two recently celebrated one year of marital bliss. Ben continues to make waves as a key figure in his community, as he currently serves as the president of the Fayetteville Technical Community College
Foundation Board and Methodist University Board of Visitors. His long-time family business (of which he is currently the general manager) was awarded the Business/Industry Award from the FayettevilleCumberland Human Relations Commission for assisting another local funeral home that sustained severe damage from Hurricane Matthew. Even farther down I-95, Andrew Weinhold is living south of the border in Charleston, South Carolina, with his girlfriend Genevieve as she finishes her medical residency at MUSC. He works in global health research for Duke, which gives him an excuse to visit Durham often. Last year, he started working on an exciting new project to improve the availability of mental health treatment for orphaned children in Kenya. Marshall Friedman has enjoyed living in New York City for a year after an exciting spring that saw him graduate from Fuqua and marry his former yoga teacher from his time in China, Xiu Xiu. He currently works in investment banking with a focus on Tech/Media and enjoys hanging out with Andrew Wooden frequently. Speaking of Woody, he works as an associate attorney at Freeborn & Peters LLP when he isn’t hanging out with Marshall and otherwise having fun living in Manhattan. He is looking forward to traveling more in 2018, including a trip to China this fall.
Class of 2006 Imani Hamilton imani.hamilton@gmail.com With each visit home, it’s becoming clear that Durham is evolving rapidly. The new wing of DA’s building, new apartments being built everywhere, and even the trendiest of rooftop hotels … Even if that isn’t the Durham I know anymore, I’m still so proud to be a Durhamite and Durham Academy alum, and happy to use the opportunity each year to connect with classmates and find out how their lives are going. Here’s what
they shared: In early 2017, Nico Bollerslev Fox joined Facebook as a client solutions manager for travel advertisers. Two of her biggest passions outside of work are travel and running, and she’s particularly fond of coupling the two. She set a dream in 2016 to finish the six Abbott World Marathon Majors before turning 30: NYC, Chicago, Boston, Berlin, Tokyo, London. “On April 22, 2018, a few months before my 30th birthday, I completed all six in London. It was the hottest London marathon day on record, but the feeling of elation upon crossing the finish line could not have been sweeter. Now that I have finished the six Abbott majors, I’ve officially begun to pursue the Seven Continent Challenge — running a marathon on every continent. Three down, four to go. Antarctica will be the biggest challenge, but I’m ready for it!” Heather Hoffman and her husband are due to welcome baby boy Zane Maxwell Hakim to their family on July 3! They will be moving to Boston for her husband’s TMJ arthroscopic surgery fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. Heather will plan to find a pediatric dental job there. Drew Sutton is still living and working in commercial real estate in Charlotte. He has a son, John, who was born in April last year, and “it has been a joy to watch him develop!” Brittney Nettles moved to Fort Worth, Texas, last year for work and reports “I absolutely love it! There’s always something to do out here. Working for a government contractor gets stressful sometimes, but it’s really cool to walk outside and see fighter jets takeoff and land.” Erin Landis is experiencing a busy year, getting married in May, finishing residency in June, followed by taking boards and then moving to Virginia to start work at a private practice this fall in dermatology. “It’s a lot of change at once, but all good things, and I am so excited!” I was lucky enough to see Nick Gallo again this year a few times as he travels to the Bay Area for work. He wrote “I married Madeline Schrunk last September, we
got a dog named Heidi and I’m enjoying living in OKC, and my sister Natalie is living about 10 minutes away. I’m continuing to have a blast traveling all over the country and getting to catch up with friends and family while working as a TV/digital reporter for the Oklahoma City Thunder!” In summer 2017, Cameron Oddone Hom defended her dissertation and graduated from the School Psychology Ph.D. program at UGA. She now works as a school psychologist in Cobb County School District in Atlanta. She does psychological evaluations and provides recommendations for preschool and elementary school students who are at-risk or have disabilities. “I also got married in June 2017 and went on an amazing
2018–2019 Alumni Board Jenny Glasson Hubert ’75 Chris Cole ’86 Torsie Judkins ’91 Millie Long Barritt ’94 Jonathan Evans ’94 Garrett Putman ’94 Sterling Mah Ingui ’97 Adam Lang ’98 Anna Hall Quarles ’98 Sarah Graham Motsinger ’00 Molly Kane Frommer ’01 Ben Harris ’03 Ben Mark ’03 Caroline Paul Stutts ’04 Margie Gudaitis ’07 Nick Livengood ’08 Margaret Anderson ’09 Kyle Mumma ’09
honeymoon with my husband to Thailand, Cambodia and Singapore!” Shoshana Furth Haag shared that she and her husband Jonathan welcomed their second child, Quentin, on April 24. Their daughter Valerie Haag, who turns three this summer, is now a big sister. Michael Hutchings will
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graduate from UPenn’s Wharton School of Business in May and will be getting married later that month. It sounds as though the class of 2006 should be well represented at the wedding. I (Imani Hamilton) also enjoyed bringing several of our class together for my wedding last October, including LaQuesa Gaillard, Eliza Sholtz, Christine Sailer, Kyle Sloate Kirkland and Rob Kirkland ’07, and my local Bay Areans Tarun Wadhwa and Jordan Schiff, who were both also married since last year’s installment. It’s been a fulfilling year for me of planning and enjoying our wedding in an abandoned train station in Oakland, California, and learning a lot of responsibility in a job at the intersection of architecture and sustainable product design for Google. LaQuesa Gaillard is continuing her work in broadcast PR as she celebrates completing her first year in Atlanta and learning to really love it. “I split my time between exploring this new film and television culture (officially termed Yallywood), exploring rugged coffee shops and … still traveling around the US and elsewhere! For our 30th year of life celebration, I visited Paris, Berlin and Amsterdam with Anna Hosford Brady.” It was LaQuesa’s and my personal pleasure to watch Eliza Sholtz conquer her fear of heights climbing pyramids and jumping into cenotes in Tulum for my bachelorette. Eliza was promoted to clinical director at Veritas Collaborative, a specialty hospital system for the treatment of eating disorders, last October. She is living in Raleigh, yet staying busy driving back and forth to see her nieces and nephews! Christine Sailer will do a second year as a hospitalist (internal medicine) attending at Hopkins and then will start her cardiology fellowship at a to be determined location! Let’s leave it at that. Life is left to be determined, but we’re all doing our best to be well or keep working our way there! I hope the same for anyone who is
Class of 2007 Becki Feinglos Planchard rebecca.planchard@gmail.com It was a joy seeing so many members of the Class of 2007 gathering together to celebrate our 10-year reunion back in October! Want to know what some of our classmates are up to? Read on to find out! There are quite a few ’07 alumni who have started families in the past year, or who are about to begin. Robby Burroughs and his wife, Katie, are expecting their first child, a baby girl, this spring. Chloe Rousseau and her husband just welcomed their son, Lucas, to the world. Soon, Chloe will return to finish up medical school and begin her career as a doctor. Taylor Diamond Anthony and her husband were married last April 2017, and are now expecting their first child together this fall. The couple has also added a dog, Frank, to the mix! Three other classmates shared news of marriages over the past year. Beth Browning was married shortly after our reunion, and now she and her husband are in the process of renovating their new house in Richmond, Virginia. Jack Hill married his wife, Lenore, this spring. Jack and his wife both work for Duke, Jack in the libraries system, and his wife
in the Office of Information Technology. Michelle Sutton Armenteros was married in Chapel Hill in October 2017. She and her husband are former MBA classmates and live in Dallas. Michelle has been an associate brand manager at Dr. Pepper Snapple Group for nearly two years, and is now working on a national launch of new beverage products. Rob Brazer is marrying his longtime girlfriend, Sabrina, this spring, where many Durham Academy classmates will be in attendance. Rob graduated with his MBA from the Wharton School of Business at UPenn, and moved to Seattle in July to work as a technical product manager for Amazon Web Services. He, Sabrina and Teddy, his 1.5-year-old mini goldendoodle, all love Seattle. Christine Hardman Broad was married last summer, and has recently moved to D.C. after two years in New York City. She and her husband have added a new puppy, a golden retriever named Banks, to the family. Speaking of dogs (I’m always speaking of dogs, honestly), Kendall Bradley welcomed a new puppy, Harper, into her busy life as a third-year orthopedic surgery resident at Duke. She will soon apply to sports medicine fellowships, and promised me her puppy will have playdates with my dogs (read on for more discussion of that). Stephani Tindall recently got an English bulldog puppy
named Brisket who is very, very cute. They live in Charlotte, where Stephani works in marketing at Lowe’s Home Improvement headquarters. Tara Gilboa loves spending time with her three-year-old dog and her partner, Jordan, out in the mountains of Boulder, Colorado. She recently joined Noodle Partners, a company that works in online and hybrid higher education. Tara also made it back to NC to visit Wake Forest, working with faculty to redesign their MSBA for an online environment. Alex Hearsey Barker will begin taking classes for her master’s this fall. She lives in Durham with her husband and daughter, and she has recently pivoted from teaching in the classroom to serving as a research assistant at UNC. Jamie Gutter and his wife are new homeowners in Nashville. Jamie is the principal of a charter middle school, supporting about 500 students, and his wife works for an education non-profit. Margaret Russell is a teacher and college prep coordinator at a program called Space of Mind in south Florida. She supports students through an academic coaching and project-based learning model, and could not be happier both with work and the amazing grilling and beach weather! Evan Donahue made it to our reunion all the way from [drumroll] … Durham! He continues his work as a graduate student at
reading. Have a great summer! Beth Browning ’07 and Charley Raintree were married Oct. 28, 2017, in Richmond, Virginia.
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Duke studying artificial intelligence. Margie Gudaitis was a joy to work with as we connected with our classmates inviting them to join us at our reunion. She recently moved to Tucson to work at the University of Arizona College of Science, and where she is enjoying exploring the beauty of desert life. She welcomes DA visitors out west anytime! Elisabeth Sloan also welcomes DA visitors, but she’s on the east coast. Elisabeth currently works in Washington, D.C., for JLL, a commercial real estate firm. Her focus is on the United States Postal Service account that revolves around tenant representation. She is an active volunteer in the city as a member of the Junior League. Andrew Liebelt lives in New York City, working for a software tech start up that supports city governments as they bring their services online. He enjoys writing, film and performance, and takes advantage of all that NYC has to offer. Barney Wang also lives in New York, but travels back and forth often to Beijing, where he has started a youth basketball training company. His company seeks to bridge China and the US through basketball, bringing kids from China to the US to train, sightsee and meet NBA players. Terry Hsieh lives in Beijing, where he founded and directed the first Blue Note Beijing Jazz Orchestra. He also teaches and leads the jazz program at the International School of Beijing. Terry has become active in the pop music scene, too, and has been producing, writing, and arranging for Chinese pop singers, and playing in the house bands on Chinese music television shows. Cora Lavin has moved to Bogotá, Colombia, after spending four years teaching English in Venezuela. Cora will continue her international journey when she moves to Brisbane, Australia, at the end of the year to begin her Master’s in Peace and Conflict Resolution. Gracelee Lawrence has been on the move, too! Over the last year she’s traveled to 13 countries, lived in six cities and been an artist-in-residence
at five different organizations. Gracelee is also a part of the feminist collective, Material Girls, and is looking to become a professor of sculpture in the U.S. Rounding out our international ’07s, Brooke Hartley Moy will be just missing Cora, as she is leaving Melbourne, Australia, after two years. Brooke and her husband are quitting their jobs to travel around the country and Southeast Asia for two months before they move back to Durham. Brooke will be entering Duke’s Fuqua School of Business to study for her MBA as a Forté Fellow. I, Becki Feinglos Planchard, was lucky enough to travel to Australia with my husband, Sean, to visit Brooke and her husband this past Christmas. In our two-week-long double-date, we serendipitously met up with Tricia Chesson in Melbourne, and had our own little Aussie-style ’07 reunion. After working in early childhood policy for the Chicago Mayor’s Office for nearly two years, I have happily moved back to North Carolina to work in education policy. My husband will join me this summer when he graduates from law school at the University of Chicago, and we will gleefully never experience another Chicago winter ever again. Our dogs, Daisy and Ralphie, are overjoyed, and can’t wait for their playdates with Kendall’s pup.
Class of 2008 Samantha Leder leder.samantha@gmail.com Wow — where has 10 years gone!? The Class of 2008 continues to be happy, healthy and productive, and it is always a pleasure collecting these updates every year. Daniel Goldstein is living in Basalt, Colorado, which is a 15-minute drive down valley from Aspen. He is a designer and project captain for CCY Architects. He mostly focuses on high end residential projects, as well as some resort/hospitality work. Currently, he has one house under construction and another
in schematic design (the first phase of the design process). Zac Allison is still living in Raleigh and dominating in tech sales. Over the past year he has been busy with work, his golf game and getting a new English Golden puppy to replace his old roommate. He looks forward to building on the early successes of his career and continuing to live the American dream. Ashley Brasier is in her second year in the MBA program at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. She plans to move back to San Francisco after graduation to continue working with early-stage startups. John Lindsey continues his work with Lindsey Self Storage Group, which was recently ranked Top 50 Self Storage Operators in the USA. He launched their international consultation platform and is doing work in both Asia and Europe. John is living in Durham. Amadeo Deluca-Westrate is active duty U.S. Navy, working as the medical officer for an Marine Corps infantry battalion (Battalion Surgeon, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines). He is currently on deployment and will be starting residency in internal medicine in 2019. Justin Rose will be graduating from the Harvard Graduate School of Design in May with a master’s in urban planning. During the summer he will be living in Baltimore, Maryland, working for the Mayor’s Office of Sustainable Solutions on a new violence reduction initiative, and more broadly improving cross-silo collaboration in the public sector in relation to neighborhood revitalization. In the near future he hopes to continue working either in Baltimore or New England, but he also has his eye on returning to North Carolina. Leslie Ogden is moving to Charleston, South Carolina, after six years in D.C. and finishing Georgetown’ evening MBA program. In Charleston, Leslie will continue to work in environmental risk communications. Alexandra Davidson-Palmer enjoyed two years working at The Hill Center and is now pursuing a Master’s in Counseling at
UNC-G. She hopes to become a school counselor after she graduates next spring. Peter Larson became a front desk associate at the Orlando World Center Marriott in September 2017, the world’s largest Marriott property. He absolutely loves his job and truly feels that he has found his calling. He and his wife, Hillary Rosen ’09, celebrated 11 years together this year. They have picked up ballroom dancing and are currently bronze 1 ballroom dancers. Ben Hattem moved to California last fall with his partner, Eva Dorrough, after three years of working as a journalist in New York. In California, he started law school at Stanford and this summer he will be in Washington, D.C., helping with disability rights litigation at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. Harrison Lee is working as the program coordinator for a Catholic education institute in Raleigh called the Thomas International Center. He will be starting a Ph.D. in philosophy at Baylor University in the fall. Mary Elizabeth Lovelace is celebrating her fiveyear anniversary at New Kind, a branding agency in Raleigh where she is the director of relationship management. She is getting married in fall 2019, to Eric Davis, who graduated from dental school in May 2018. They will be spending the next year in Chapel Hill while he completes a residency at UNC. They love spending time on the N.C. coast and with their black lab, Natty. Lauren Bronec is finishing up her final year at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Her favorite memories from this last year include founding the first MIT Sloan Retail & Consumer Goods Conference, running her first (and second!) 200 mile Ragnar relay race, traveling to India, Malaysia and Singapore for January term and getting engaged! Lauren is looking forward to moving to Portland, Oregon, after graduation to start her dream job at Nike Inc., and returning home to N.C. next fall to marry her fiancé Alex Fraser. Gabrielle LaForce is graduating from UNC Kenan-Flagler
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Business School MBA program in May 2018 and moving to Charlotte to begin work as an operations manager for Amazon in August. Brennan Vail is currently a pediatric resident at the University of California San Francisco. She is getting married June 16 to Christopher Higgins, who is finishing his service as a captain in the U.S. Army Ranger Regiment and then planning to join her in SF. Isaac Uhlenberg is still living in Los Angeles, continuing a dance career. He signed with the dance agency named Go 2 Talent Agency (GTA). He specializes in hip hop, popping, locking, house, salsa and recently joined a samba dance company. He performs at events across the country, as well as making appearances in music videos, commercials, live performances and on stage with various artists. He also teaches hip hop dance classes around the country to all ages and skill levels and has worked with choreographers who have choreographed for Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Usher, Britney Spears, P. Diddy, Cheyenne and more. Wyche Carr is living in Baltimore, Maryland, working at the Under Armour World HQ as a materials development manager as part of the innovation team. He is approaching
his five-year anniversary there. Grant and Pier Bynum Fowler are expecting their first puppy in July and are looking forward to all the new challenges and experiences this will bring. Pier is currently working for a golf apparel company in RTP and Grant’s software development company, Fugitive Labs, continues to thrive in downtown Durham. This summer they are traveling to Russia for the 2018 World Cup and can’t wait to support team USA! (What do you mean they didn’t make it?) They are very excited for the 10-year reunion coming up this fall and are hoping to find some potential play-dates for the new puppy and to reconnect with old friends. Rachel Hodges Davison graduated with an MBA from UT-Austin’s McCombs School of Business in May 2017. She got married to Sam Davison in June 2017, moved to Dallas, bought a house, rescued a dog and started working for PepsiCo/Frito-Lay as a strategic finance manager. She is looking forward to a year without as many life changes. Gavin Mitchell returned to North Carolina in August after earning his masters in counseling psychology from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology (Washington, D.C., campus). He is now working at
Save the Date
Homecoming 2018 Friday, Sept. 28
Homecoming Varsity Athletic Events 5 p.m. Alumni Pregame Social and Barbecue (Sponsored by Big Boss Brewery)
Saturday, Sept. 29, 7 p.m. Reunion Parties for Classes Ending in 3s and 8s Watts Grocery
For more information and to register for the reunion party, visit www.da.org/homecoming.
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UNC-G as the assistant director for counseling services with the federal TRiO program, Student Support Services. He works primarily with first-generation college students, assisting them with their personal, academic, financial and career counseling needs as they navigate their undergraduate careers. Jenny Denton Bodnar, her husband Nick and two boys, Stone and Ford, have moved to the Bay Area where they are lucky to see Brennan Vail and Ashley Brasier often! They are grateful for this family adventure and soaking up all the beautiful places near them. They also miss Durham lots and hope to be back before too long! Finally, I (Samantha Leder) recently graduated from Duke Nursing School and will begin working at Duke Hospital in Adult Hematology/Oncology. I look forward to seeing everyone at our reunion this fall!
Class of 2009 Collin Burks collin.burks@gmail.com Hi from the Class of ’09! In the area, Sarah Sessoms is now back on a college campus working on her master’s degree in sport administration at UNC. Starting in May, and throughout her second year of study, she will be writing a thesis and working as a graduate fellow in the athletic director’s office assisting Bubba Cunningham and the executive staff at Carolina. She is also working on publication of her paper about the NCAA and trademarks and hopes that it is accepted soon! Kyle Mumma completed his MBA at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business and will be taking most of 2018 off to travel internationally and work on side projects. He will be starting work full-time in October in a human capital consultant role for Deloitte, working primarily on culture change and leadership development for sports clients. Kyle has remained in Durham since graduating from DA and will continue to be based in Durham while working for Deloitte. Also at Duke, Margaret
Anderson is graduating from Duke Law School in May and will be moving to Jackson, Mississippi, in August to complete a one-year clerkship on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Collin Burks is graduating from UNC School of Medicine in May and will be staying at UNC for a residency in family medicine. Heading up the east coast, Laurel (Burke) Burkbauer lives in Philadelphia with her wife, Laura, a medical student at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. Laurel is having a blast teaching Middle School English at Friends’ Central School, a K-12 Quaker independent school. Her eighth grade girls’ basketball team ran the table in the Friends’ League this season. Carmen Augustine is still living and working in NYC, writing haikus in her spare time. Gargi Bansal, also in NYC, is working and studying at NYU Stern School of Business. Outside of work and school, she loves checking out shows around the city! Meanwhile, Alexis Nelson is graduating with her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering this semester, and then she is off to work as a research engineer at Georgia Tech in biomechanics. Outside of work, she enjoys hanging out with her pets (one chameleon, two kittens and a dog), kayaking down the river, caving in the Tennessee mountains and starting up a makerspace in Roswell, Georgia. Down in Charleston, Adrianne Soo is currently finishing up her first year of emergency medicine residency at MUSC. She enjoys surfing and rock climbing in her free time. In San Francisco, Noah Katz is living with fellow DA classmates Deniz Aydemir, Bryan Jadot and John Fate Faherty. In late 2017, Noah started a hardware business, building desktop super-computers that specialize in cryptocurrency mining and cloud computing. Artesian Future Technology has now grown into one of the nation’s largest mining hardware providers and shipped equipment all over the world. His team is excited to expand
Caitlin Cleaver ’10 and Greg Clary were married Oct. 8, 2017, in Leesburg, Virginia. Pictured with them are Kathy Cleaver, DA co-director of College Counseling, Larry Cleaver and Shannon Cleaver ’12.
into research computing and design/modeling applications in 2018, and already have a team of half a dozen people working for them. It’s another Thursday in San Francisco and Deniz Aydemir shuffles up the stairs. Dropping his coat and himself onto the bed, he recalls how resiliently time passes. Kevin Ji, also pondering time, is realizing this year that all of his current (and future) students were (and will be born) after the year 2000. He remembers learning what the world “ephemeral” meant in his studies with Mrs. Throop almost a decade ago. Those abstract concepts are suddenly more real than the chair he sits in now. Across the ocean, Claire Burridge is in the third year of her Ph.D and still loving life in Cambridge. This year included several research trips to Rome to study manuscripts held in the Vatican Library — while she didn’t run into any Dan Brown-esque dramas, it was an incredible experience and hopefully to be continued!
Class of 2010 Caitlin Cleaver caitlinhcleaver@gmail.com Caitlin Cleaver is with the same digital advertising company she’s been with since graduating from Duke. She and Greg Clary were married in October 2017 in Virginia, and had an incredible
honeymoon in Southeast Asia. They also bought a house just outside of D.C. This year will bring more travel and lots of work as midterm elections approach. Steve Benson is still working in high tech in RTP (NetApp). He recently adopted a dog and has been enjoying going mountain biking with him! During this last year, Maeve Cook-Deegan moved away from sunny San Diego, where she was working in the health sector and surfing, to Germany, where she is studying, working and exploring. In Munich, Maeve is pursuing her MSc. in health sciences and alongside that is working at the Center for International Health. So far, she is loving the new city, exploring the Alps, pretzels and getting reacquainted with the German language. JT Derian is working with a technology startup in Boston, Massachusetts, where he spends his free time with friends and family. He recently accepted a position in the class of 2020 at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, where he will pursue his MBA. Currently based in London, Abby Schoenfeld is completing her second year in a dual master’s program between Columbia University and the London School of Economics. She spent last summer in Turkey and Azerbaijan doing archival research for her master’s thesis. Tatum Pottenger is working in fundraising for her alma mater,
Davidson College. She lives happily in Davidson, just minutes from Lake Norman and a short drive from Charlotte. She was particularly excited to see the success of DA’s Giving Day earlier this spring. Ben Preston is living in Colorado with his fiancée Shannon. He is working as an orbital analyst on GPSIII for Lockheed Martin and is starting an MBA program at the University of Colorado in June. If you’re ever in Colorado Springs, hit him up because he misses his North Carolinians. Last year, the pseudo-acronym for IBM — “I’ve Been Moved” — lived up to its name for Michelle Corea, whose department was sold to another company. Shortly thereafter she contracted appendicitis and underwent an emergency appendectomy surgery, forcing her to cancel a trip to Peru. She did get to Cuba last year. Life in Shanghai has been great for Ansilta DeLuca-Westrate. She works as a manager at an English school for adults aspiring to improve their careers through English learning. Life in China is fast paced and exciting, and she’s looking forward to her making a life in China.
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Alumni and Faculty Babies
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Ford, son of Alivia Sholtz Archer ’00
Caroline, daughter of Julia Lacy Gaylord ’03
Tristan, son of Hadley Long Fox ’00
Eli, son of Kelly Teagarden ’04, Upper School faculty, and Josh Klein, Upper School dean of students
Madeleine, daughter of Heather Foulks Kolakowski ’96
Logan and Libby, children of Anne Lacy Gialanella ’01
Noa, daughter of Jeff Boyd, Middle School language arts
Arden and Silas, children of Lauren Garrett, Upper School English
Palmer, daughter of Tyler Elkins-Williams ’00
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Alumni Parents and Their Seniors
Nine alumni had seniors graduating in the Class of 2018: (rows one and two, left to right) Mike Larson ’90 and Lillia, Neal Ellis ’88 and Emma, Hampton Dellinger ’85 and Austen, Geoff Lamb ’86 and Sydney, Jenny Wainwright ’82 and Gwen Caudle, (rows three and four, left to right) Robert Hallyburton ’82 (not pictured) and Scott, Scott Bradford ’83 and Dalton, Mike Moylan ’84 and Finn, and Jon Peter ’81 and Dylan. Congratulations to you all! Photo by Sarah Jane Tart
In Memoriam Albert William Kennon ’58 died April 7, 2018. A graduate of Duke University, he served as an officer in the U.S. Navy and graduated with honors from UNC School of Law. He practiced law in Durham; served as corporate counsel for the American Football Coaches Association; and wrote and lectured extensively on subjects pertaining to federal taxation, estate and trust planning and administration. He served two terms as a member of the Vestry of St. Stephens Episcopal Church in Durham, and also as its senior warden. He was a trustee of the St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church Foundation, as well as a board member of the Fox Family Foundation. He is survived by his wife, Martha Collins Kennon; two sons, William Scott Kennon of Waxhaw and James Kirkwood Kennon of Lafayette, Colorado; and four grandchildren.
Patricia Ann Downey ’77 passed away April 23, 2018, at her Durham home. She discovered her immense painting talents in her early teens and went on to study art at The Ringling College of Art + Design, Mount Vernon College and Corcoran School of the Arts & Design, finishing her studies at Duke University with a degree in interior and space design. Her artistry exceeded painting, as she and her sister began the Heirloom Goodness Applesauce Company. She is survived by her son, David Charles Johnson; her mother, Patricia Downey Joklik; brother, John Robert Downey II; sisters, Mary Downey Goodwin and Frances Downey Magruder ’83; stepbrother, Dr. Richard Gunther Joklik ’75; stepsister, Vivian Helene Joklik ’77; many nieces and nephews; and her beloved animals, Marshmallow, Finnegan and Laddie.
Nonprofit Organization U.S. Postage Paid Durham, NC 27701 Permit #1083
3601 Ridge Road Durham, NC 27705-5599
Photo by Les Todd
Congratulations, Durham Academy Class of 2018 We wish you continued success in your future endeavors: Barnard College Boston College Brandeis University Brown University Carleton College College of William and Mary Colorado College Cornell University Dartmouth College Davidson College Duke University East Carolina University Elon University Emory University Gap Year George Washington University Georgetown University High Point University
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