The Exeter Bulletin, spring 2018

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The Exeter Bulletin

Principal Instructor Lisa MacFarlane ’66 (Hon.); P’09, P’13 Editor Karen Ingraham Associate Editor Genny Beckman Moriarty Contributing Editor Patrick Garrity Class Notes Editor Cathy Webber Creative Director/Design David Nelson, Nelson Design Communications Advisory Committee Daniel G. Brown ’82, Robert C. Burtman ’74, Dorinda Elliott ’76, Alison Freeland ’72, Keith Johnson ’52, Yvonne M. Lopez ’93 Trustees President John A. Downer ’75 Vice President Wole C. Coaxum ’88 Suzi Kwon Cohen ’88, Marc C. de La Bruyere ’77, Walter C. Donovan ’81, Mark A. Edwards ’78, Claudine Gay ’88, Peter A. Georgescu ’57, David E. Goel ’89, Jacqueline J. Hayes, Esq. ’85, Jennifer P. Holleran ’86, Lisa MacFarlane, Sally J. Michaels ’82, Deidre O’Byrne ’84, Dr. Nina D. Russell ’82, Peter M. Scocimara ’82, Serena Wille Sides ’89, J. Douglas Smith ’83, Morgan C. Sze ’83, Kristyn M. Van Ostern ’96 and Nancy H. Wilder ’75 The Exeter Bulletin (ISSN No. 0195-0207) is published four times each year: fall, winter, spring and summer,

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CHERYL SENTER

Copyright 2018 by the Trustees of Phillips Exeter Academy.

ISSN-0195-0207

“WE BROKE THE MOLD. NO ONE WAS DOING WHAT WE WERE.” —page 18

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IN THIS ISSUE

Volume CXXII, Issue no. 3

Features

18 Century Club

Exeter Summer celebrates its 100th year

By the Bulletin editors

26 The Art of Civil Discourse

Historian David Eisenhower ’66 makes room for respectful debate

By Katherine Towler

32 Fisher Theater

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Honoring the building that first elevated the arts

By Karen Ingraham

Departments 6

Around the Table: Letters to the Editor, Scene and Heard, Exeter Deconstructed and more

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Table Talk with Kathy Hannun ’05 and James Quazi ’98

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Inside the Writing Life: Maya Forbes ’86

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Sports: The Thompson Legacy Lives On. Plus, winter sports roundup

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Connections: News and Notes from the Alumni Community

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Profiles: Stephen Crabtree ’42, Ed Mills ’51, Cletus Lyman ’63 and Elisa Packard ’84

104 Finis Origine Pendet: Heartshot, by Claudia Putnam ’81, former George Bennett Fellow —Cover illustration by Olivia Chancellor S P R I N G

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AROUND THE TABLE

What’s new and notable at the Academy

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Harkness in Action

By Principal Lisa MacFarlane ’66 (Hon.); P’09, P’13

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hree bells rang at 11:15 a.m. on April 20. I watched

hundreds of students leave class in the middle of B format and gather on the Academy Building lawn four minutes later — at the time the shooting began at Columbine High School 19 years ago. Like other walkouts that occurred simultaneously across the country, Exeter’s was a student-driven event, organized by Exonians who added their voices to a national discussion.

The students recruited speakers, including a state legislator, and commissioned a performance from the Concert Choir. They worked respectfully and appreciatively with faculty and staff on the logistics of timing, sound systems, and how to minimize disruption to those who chose not to participate. They were willing — even eager — to accept an unexcused absence, to demonstrate that they understood the consequences of missing classes and were willing to accept them. Their commitment to civil discourse is Harkness in action: Rooted in careful listening and thoughtful dialogue, Harkness finds powerful expression in the actions of Exonians who learn to engage, thoughtfully, collaboratively, and courageously, on issues about which they care passionately.

In this issue’s feature profile (pg. 26), David Eisenhower ’66, grandson of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and a political historian, says, “The most important precondition for civil discourse is an agreement that an issue or problem exists. We have serious questions we have to address as a society. … If we can agree we have problems, we can start there.” David, who moderates a nonpartisan, issues-driven public TV show, adds, “I take topics as they come. I want the episodes to leave people thinking. I’m not pressing for any particular conclusion.”

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Many of the topics our students debate today reflect the broader cultural shifts occurring in the United States and around the world, from the #metoo movement to gun violence to climate change. In and out of the classroom, on the Exeter campus and at locations around the world, the Academy has always been committed to providing students with the experiences and education they need to create their own vision for a better world, and to have the skills and character to bring it into being.

A week after the walkout, neither students nor teachers were in their classrooms. On that day, the entire campus community participated in Climate Action Day, a daylong series of workshops designed by students and employees to provide real-world environmental education. Students and adults traveled by the busloads to plant dune grass on eroding shorelines, remove invasive species on local trail networks, and help restore oyster populations in the Great Bay Estuary. Others stayed on campus to learn from experts about hydroponics, climate change in New England, and the latest technologies for sequestering carbon dioxide.

Like David’s show, Climate Action Day got us thinking; and true to Harkness in action, it gave us opportunities to act in service of a shared goal.

At Exeter, we tussle with hard topics. We disagree, sometimes argue, occasionally we overstep. But we always come back to the table, literally and figuratively. We practice how to listen and how to learn from others so that we can recognize our differences, honor our individuality, and live out our shared values. This is and has always been the legacy of an Exeter education. E

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A Shared Experience

By Patrick Garrity

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admissions and financial aid, was constructed with one leading criterion: availability. No panelist was plucked from class. This deck is not stacked with aces. These eight are simply a cross section of the student body who just happen to have C Format free.

“What about Harkness?” asks a visitor.

Vinjai, the lone senior in the lineup, takes the microphone.

“One of the things that I really like about Harkness is

PATRICK GARRIT Y

opening day of Experience Exeter as eight Exonians sit before scores of newly accepted students in Grainger Auditorium.

The eight are assembled as a panel on a riser, fielding questions from would-be schoolmates (and those would-be schoolmates’ proud parents) who are contemplating a future at the Academy. Do you want to know what Exeter is really like? Ask the experts.

“What’s the best part about living in a dorm?” asks a visitor, and we’re off and running.

“For me, it’s always having somebody to talk to,” answers Ogechi, an upper from New York who lives in Wheelwright Hall.

Her fellow panelists nod.

Elizabeth, an upper from Massachusetts who lives in Bancroft Hall, adds, “My favorite part of living in the dorm is the upperclassmen.

They serve as amazing mentors.”

“It sounds kind of cheesy, but I kind of feel like Lamont is my family,” says Grace, an upper from Virginia.

More nods.

“How long did it take to feel comfortable?” a girl asks.

“I remember calling my mom after the first week and telling her it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made,” says Avery, a prep from Texas living in Wheelwright.

James, a prep from Illinois, says he kept to himself during those first days on campus, until a Webster Hall dorm proctor asked him to go for a run. “We basically just talked, the whole run. It was over an hour long. It was really nice, because I got to learn about the whole process of what Exeter is through the eyes of an upperclassman who had done it for so long.

“After that, I didn’t stay in my room anymore,” James says. “If you get out, and you participate in the community, it’s almost instantaneous how you turn over a new leaf.”

The panel, according to John Hutchins, director of

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Exonians answer questions of newly admitted students at Experience Exeter.

that you never quite master it. It’s an art that is learned over many years, like an art of discussion,” he says. He recounts the early days of his first term and a prep English class consisting of 13 boys.

“The Harkness table was kind of like a gladiator arena,” Vinjai says. “One person comes to the table like, ‘I think it was like this!’ And then someone else jumps in: ‘No, I think it was like blah, blah, blah!’ And then you realize later that they were saying the same thing.”

The audience laughs and the nods are joined this time by knowing smiles.

The session wraps with the panelists each offering one word to describe his or her Exeter experience.

“Community.”

“Harkness.”

“Opportunity.”

The panelists nod. E

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With more than 40 programs across five continents, Exeter’s Global Engagement office offers students abundant access to experiential travel opportunities. This March, scores of Exonians spent their spring breaks engaged in one of three facultyled immersive learning trips. Whether practicing leadership skills while backpacking across southern Utah; immersing themselves in the language, history and architecture of Rome; or learning about post-apartheid South Africa’s attempts at reconciliation and restorative justice, these travelers had a lot to write home about.

CAMPUS LIFE AT A GLANCE

UTAH The expedition stops to cook dinner as sunset falls in south central Utah. Students were segmented into cook groups and took turns preparing meals during the hike.

Students study the map to evaluate the route to the next camp.

Kai Lockwood ’21, Aiyana Brough ’18 and Gregory Zhu ’18 explore Long Canyon.

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ROME Inside the Temple of Hera at Paestum, built in approximately 590 B.C.

The group poses at Palatine Hill, one of the most ancient parts of the city.

SOUTH AFRICA Getting to know the students of St. Thomas Secondary School in Port Elizabeth.

Tara Weil ’19 makes a friend on safari.

Touring the Route 67 art exhibit at Port Elizabeth.

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Making Geothermal Heating Mainstream A C O N V E R S AT I O N W I T H K AT H Y H A N N U N ’0 5 A N D J A M E S Q UA Z I ’9 8

By Debbie Kane

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DARLENE MCELROY

eothermal energy is one “hot” renewable energy source. Just how hot may depend on the efforts of Kathy Hannun ’05 and James Quazi ’98 and their new venture, Dandelion, a New York-based company providing state-of-the-art geothermal heating and cooling systems to homeowners in New York State. Hannun is CEO and Quazi is chief technology officer of the company, which spun off last year from X, Alphabet’s famed innovation lab.

Hannun, who has bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Stanford University, was an X project manager when she learned about the potential of geothermal power. “A colleague in our New York office explained the problem of how to efficiently heat and cool homes and buildings, especially in the Northeast, where many people rely on heating oil,” Hannun says.

“There’s an abundant free resource of thermal energy if we can access it. People would be free of oil, have a better experience, and have predictable heating and cooling costs.” She drilled further into the problem, hiring Quazi, a Cornell-educated solar energy entrepreneur experienced in developing energy technologies. Two years later, backed with venture capital from Collaborative Fund, ZhenFund and Borealis Ventures, the duo launched Dandelion. “Our investors understand Dandelion’s potential to redefine a huge market — home heating and cooling — and use technology to provide a better solution than currently exists,” Hannun notes.

Geothermal power is an attractive alternative to traditional heating and cooling

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sources because it taps into the thermal energy underground where temperatures are a steady 50 to 60 degrees.

A residential geothermal system harnesses energy from the ground to heat and cool homes and produce hot water. Dandelion installs closed-loop systems that use a closed circuit of water running through piping to exchange heat between the earth and the home, pushing heat out in the summer and pulling heat in during the winter. Unlike heating systems that produce heat by combusting fuel oil, propane, or natural gas, geothermal heating uses electricity to harvest renewable thermal energy, producing no point-source emissions.

Two barriers to widespread residential use of geothermal energy, according to Hannun and Quazi, are cost and installation. Residential systems have usually cost $80,000 and up to install. “Very few people have the skill set to install geothermal systems,” Hannun says. “For years, the industry has had quality issues, which drove up costs.”

Installation of the underground pipes — called loops — that carry water in and out of the home is also daunting, typically requiring large drills and heavy equipment.

Dandelion’s solution: a smaller, simpler geothermal heat pump, powered by electricity. The pump is installed alongside a water heater and a monitoring system with a smart thermostat; the monitoring system flags problems for homeowners.

The company also developed a smaller drilling rig that enables the systems to be installed in densely populated areas; the smaller rig drills smaller holes, meaning less destruction to residential lawns. Dandelion works with existing heating and cooling companies in the Hudson River Valley and New York’s Capital District to install the systems. “New York has an existing geothermal industry,” Quazi says. “We started out working with experienced local contractors and, now that we’ve automated the installation process and have the right tools, we’re talking to other installers, training them, and supervising installation.” The company estimates its geothermal system, when tax incentives and federal tax credits are taken into account, costs New York consumers around $20,000 to install.

“This is an entirely new way of approaching the problem,” Hannun says. “We’re looking at a high-quality, low-maintenance solution that’s best for the homeowner over the long run.”

Dandelion is in discussions with the Village of Rhinebeck, New York, enabling the company to install and own ground loops on town property in front of homes. The loops will be installed at no upfront cost to

homeowners, who have the option to connect to them to switch over from fuel oil or propane heat. “The mayor is very progressive and excited about putting his town at the forefront of renewable energy,” Hannun says. “It really inspires us to work on how we can make geothermal even more affordable and easier to get. We hope to use it as an example for other towns.”

Although existing residential installation is currently Dandelion’s focus, Hannun and Quazi aren’t ruling out moving into the new home or commercial building markets. “We’re tackling the existing home market because we’re dramatically simplifying the installation process,” Hannun says. “We started with home retrofitting because you can largely standardize the process.”

They also hope to bring geothermal energy to other Northeastern states. “As a start-up, we’ve learned to

“HOW OFTEN DO YOU GET TO WORK ON AN OPPORTUNITY THAT OFFERS BETTER OPTIONS FOR HOMEOWNERS AND SOCIETY? IT’S VERY REWARDING.”

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be really deliberate about what we can take on,” Quazi notes. “We can’t solve all problems at once.”

Hannun and Quazi attended Exeter at different times, but similar experiences with the school’s math curriculum may have helped shape their career paths. For Hannun, Exeter’s cooperative learning gave her confidence to pursue engineering and computer science in college. “It let me learn at my own pace and develop an understanding of logic and the satisfaction of achieving an insight that allowed a difficult problem to be solved in an elegant way,” she says.

Quazi cherishes Exeter for teaching him to learn. “At other schools, you may be given a textbook and shown how to solve problems, and the outcome is that you now can perform that function,” he says. “When I got to Exeter, my first math class had no textbook, just a sheet of problems that you had to work through with your classmates. The goal was to work collaboratively to figure out how to problem-solve.

“This sort of view on problem solving, along with some risk tolerance, makes taking risks — like leaving Google to start your own company — feel less risky.”

Despite the inherent risk of a start-up, Hannun and Quazi are excited about Dandelion’s future. “How often do you get to work on an opportunity that offers better options for homeowners and society?” Hannun says. “It’s very rewarding.” E

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Letters A YEAR OF CHANGE Our Leap Year feature

in the winter issue triggered a strong response from readers.

A half-century later, it is clear 1968 remains a seminal time for the nation and an important period for the Academy — as the PEAN recognized in its foreword that year: This year has seen the initial realization of ideas discussed for over a decade. It is our hope that this book will reflect the tremendous changes now occurring at Exeter.

We are grateful for your comments. Your close readership has allowed us to update our records and plug some holes in our archives. Of note: •• Four Exeter graduates were killed in Vietnam

throughout the class of 1968’s senior year. Charles E. Ryberg ’63 died Sept. 7, 1967; William G. Gilger III ’63 on Dec. 7, 1967; Langdon G. Burrell ’62 on Feb. 4, 1968; and Richard W. Pershing ’61 on Feb. 17. One other alumnus was killed before 1968 ended: Armour David Wilcox III ’64 died Dec. 8, 1968.

•• At a faculty meeting Dec. 17, 1968, Principal Richard Day introduced changes in the “chapel schedule” that consisted of four gatherings a week.

At the same faculty meeting, “it was suggested that such school meetings would be more appropriately called assemblies rather than chapels.”

(Nevertheless, the faculty minutes continued to refer to these meetings as “chapels” for some time to come.)

•• Whether called “chapel” or “assembly,” those morning meetings were held in what is known today as Assembly Hall in the Academy Building, not at Phillips Church.

•• Jeff Gould ’68 and a team of editors worked to resurrect The New Liberator newspaper in spring of 1968, but the publication’s origins date to early 1962, when Donald Caplin ’63 and Murrough O’Brien ’63 launched the alternative paper.

EXCHANGE BLOG: THE PULSE OF EXETER Keep in touch with what’s happening at Exeter with our recently launched Exchange blog, your window into the sights, sounds, voices and views of the Academy.

Have you ever wondered how co-teaching is changing the Harkness dynamic? How the Exeter Physics team felt when they landed their first-place finish at the national tournament? What students say about evil in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian?

Why we chose Cape Town, South Africa, as our latest student travel/learning opportunity?

These are the sort of articles and interviews you’ll find on Exchange, written by faculty, students, administrators, alumni and parents.

Whether it’s Exeter seen through a new lens (check out our 360-degree views of campus locations and student-produced videos), coverage of campus events (assembly speakers, the latest campus craze, visiting guest artists), or hearing Academy voices discuss topics like teaching, leadership, inclusion, sustainability and non sibi, you’ll find a broad range of topics, posted several times a week.

Connect with Exeter at www.exeter.edu/exchange.

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REMEMBERING DOLORES KENDRICK

My 41-year relationship with [Emerita] English Instructor and D.C.

Poet Laureate Dolores Kendrick, who passed away at age 90 on Nov. 7, 2017, was intense. A formidable person, the very mention of her name makes many shudder in fear. Dolores Kendrick was my lower year English instructor in spring 1976. She had us, at age 15, read her own essays and poems, about slave women, the first female president and a female black pope. It was the time of Alex Haley’s epic “Roots” miniseries, so she had us all trace our own roots. I proudly got a “B.” She said, “Yes. You worked hard for that ‘B!’ ” Thirty-three years passed and we reconnected at the local Exeter alumni event in D.C., in April 2009.

Being a friend of Dolores was never easy, but she was touched by small gestures: fresh flowers, a Christmas gift with a religious sentiment, driving her home or helping her to her apartment during her frail, later years. I gave her birthday parties on September 7 in 2009, 2011 and 2014.

She was the first African-American instructor to join the Academy, in 1972; she refused to coach sports and instead told Exeter that — in lieu of coaching — she would found Poetry Troupe, “in order to exercise students’ minds and emotions.” She praised Sarah Ream ’75 for her leadership [in helping to] adapt and transform it into Poetry Stage. Dolores was a difficult woman of great Jim Figetakis ’79 reconnected faith: She attended the same church all her life, the Immaculate with Dolores Kendrick 30 years Conception Catholic Church in downtown D.C. As a young girl, she after his graduation. and her family were relegated to the back three pews. Later, she [was a Eucharistic minister] and gave me communion there in 2010, and [was a] VIP at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in D.C. I asked her daring questions like, “How do you respond to the fact that the very mention of your name can scare people?” She shot back, “That is their emotion, they must own their fear. That was never my intention. Nor was it to cuddle up to students in a touchy-feely way.

It was never my intention to intimidate students, nor to be their best friend. What I wanted was to get them beyond all the mind-numbing analytics — and feel ... yes, feel who they were, and own their emotions, the way that a poet does.”

At our last lunch at the Mandarin Oriental in D.C. in 2016, I asked her, “How would you like to be remembered?” She responded, “As a poet who gave slaves the voice they deserved. As an educator who made students ‘feel’ and not hide behind their analysis ... .”

Hallelujah!

James “Jim” Figetakis ’79 Alexandria, Virginia

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EXETER DECONSTRUCTED T H E S C H O O L W E L O V E I N D E TA I L

THE BOSWORTH BENCH

Tucked behind Peabody Hall, and perhaps most notable for its seclusion, rests a memorial to a fallen Exonian. A bronze plaque, greened by time, offers the only clue about its origin: Arthur Sewall Bosworth, Jr. Lieut. J.G. U.S.N.R. Exeter 1937 Who was Arthur Bosworth? And why was this monument built in his honor?

The answers can be found in The Exonian archives.

Arthur S. Bosworth was a four-year Exeter student from Cape Elizabeth, Maine. He was a record-setting swimmer and a stroke on the four-man crew. He was also on the Student Council, the track team and the cheerleading squad.

Bosworth continued his swimming career at Harvard, and in 1941, during his final year there, he trained to fly airplanes as part of the Civil Air Patrol.

He joined the U.S. Naval Reserve upon graduation and began training as a dive bomber as World War II engulfed the globe.

On April 22, 1944, while taking off from an aircraft carrier in the South Pacific, Bosworth’s plane was caught in a downdraft and plunged into the sea. He managed to escape the plane, rescue his navigator and reach a life raft, but he lost consciousness and later died.

The Exonian reported on April 11, 1945, a year after Bosworth’s death, that a memorial was to be erected behind Peabody Hall by his parents. “The monument is to be a semi-circular, cut-stone bench with a flagstone porch in front. Surrounding this will be a bed of lilacs, which were raised by Bosworth and his father.”

The lilacs were replaced long ago by a stand of star magnolias, but the bench remains in memoriam, 74 years after Bosworth’s death.

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Blending Humor and Heartbreak A C O N V E R S AT I O N W I T H S C R E E N W R I T E R M AYA F O R B E S ’ 8 6

By Daneet Steffens ’82

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aya Forbes ’86 kicked off her professional career at 23 on the then-brand-new HBO comedy The Larry Sanders Show. Moving into filmmaking, the screenwriter (she’s one half of a dynamic writing duo with her husband, Wally Wolodarsky), producer and director has worked on an eclectic range of movies, including the animated Monsters vs. Aliens, the sweet-bitter-sweet canine chronicle A Dog’s Purpose and Jack Black’s The Polka King. She also wrote for the 10-episode television series The People vs. O.J. Simpson:

WA L LY WO LO DA R S K Y

American Crime Story. In 2014, Infinitely Polar Bear premiered at Sundance, sharing part of Forbes’ childhood story: While their mom attended grad school, Forbes and her sister, China ’88 (now a vocalist with the band Pink Martini), were primarily the responsibility of their father, who had bipolar disorder. It’s a deeply honest, deeply affecting love letter, driven by a palpable sense of empathy and compassion.

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Q: How did you land at Garry Shandling’s The Larry Sanders Show?

Forbes: At Harvard, I was on the Lampoon, which is kind of a breeding ground for comedy writers. I actually wanted to be a playwright or to write movies. When I graduated, I was accepted into a screenplay program at Disney, so that got me to California. In those days, there were lots of network comedies that were very popular, so I wrote some spec scripts. I had a lot of people who had worked with me at the Lampoon who were able to say, “Oh yes, she’s funny, she’s good,” so that helped me get an agent.

I met with Garry Shandling — a friend from college was already working there — and I really clicked with Garry. He liked my writing and he taught me well, too. He’d say, “I really like this joke, but you’ve buried it. You have to make sure that people understand what’s funny here; you have to bring it out into the open.”

Q: Looking at cast and credit lists, there’s a sense of friends-and-family to your work. Do you draw your writing strength from those people?

Forbes: I don’t know about my writing strength.

Definitely, when you work with really talented people and you like them, it’s nice to work with them again. I learned that from Wes Anderson, who has a troupe of people he works with all the time. But for me, that’s more about the directing side. In the writing — I mean with my husband; we co-write all the time — I try to clear my head of real people. You’re trying to create something, and you don’t want to get boxed in to certain rhythms. You want to create new rhythms and voices and connections and relationships. Writing is more of a solitary act so I can focus on creating something fresh and new and different.

Q: So how does co-writing work with your husband?

Forbes: It’s always different. We both had solo writing careers, but we were always [reading] each other’s stuff

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the world differently. My dad had a tremendous and working on it together, and eventually it just compassion that came from his troubles. made sense to co-write. He’s very good at keeping things in his head: He can just sit on the sofa and talk Q: Do your storytelling abilities come from him? through a scene. I have to be looking at the screen Forbes: My father was a good storyteller, and my or I don’t know where I am, so we collaborate that grandmother was a wonderful storyteller; my mom’s way, talking together. Sometimes we split things a really good storyteller, too. I feel really lucky that I up: We both take a chunk of scenes, work on them was surrounded with that. The great thing about my separately and then go through them together. It’s father was that he was very self-deprecating, often an interesting process because telling a story about some foolish you have an idea that you are thing he’d done. One thing I loved passionate about and compelled about him in terms of me going into by — you don’t usually come comedy is that he was very funny, up with the spark of an idea but he was not cruel or mean-spir“THAT’S WHAT’S ited. His comedy came from silly together, right? Those things happen when you’re, say, on things he’d done, his own foibles; INTERESTING your own, walking your dog, he wasn’t trying to take other and then you have this person people down. That’s something — ALL THE you’re going to work on it with. that I really appreciate. It’s very So you’re already in the mode easy to be funny at other people’s MESSINESS AND expense; it takes a different kind of trying to communicate your passion for something. It’s a of grace to be funny at your own good way to begin, to try to bring PEOPLE MAKING expense, and at the universe and someone else in. how absurd it is.

When I wrote Infinitely Polar Q: Do you and your sister DECISIONS Bear, it was great to have Wally exchange writing tips? help me filter my memories, Forbes: We do! She often sends YOU DON’T express them in ways that other me her lyrics, and occasionally people would understand and we’ve written songs together.

NECESSARILY connect to. I’d been trying to And she’s always got some funny write the story for years; when I great line for a script. I used to AGREE WITH.” finally understood how to do it, it tell her, “You only speak in usable took six weeks to write the actual dialogue.” She is like our dad in a script. I’d been trying to make way: She’s a good storyteller of her everything likable and neat, own misadventures. thinking that maybe the parents Q: Finally, was there anything in should get divorced because people understand that. particular at Exeter that impacted your work?

[It] makes sense. Our situation didn’t make sense; it Forbes: When I got to Exeter, I didn’t take myself was weird. But then I realized, “No, no, no. I’m just seriously as a writer. I thought I was just a silly going to go toward the truth of it all,” because that’s bubblehead, a flibbertigibbet, which was one of my what’s interesting — all the messiness and people dad’s favorite words — he had great words! Then, in making decisions you don’t necessarily agree with.

11th grade I wrote an essay about my father — the If you’ve been working in Hollywood, you’re always beginning of my trying to figure out how to write trying to buck that idea that things need to be likable about him — and my teacher, Mr. [Peter] Greer, and relatable. It’s funny because all that likability said, “This is fantastic. You have to submit this to makes people boring, bland and unlikable. the Prize Papers [the English Department’s annual awards for best student writing].” And then I won! I Q: In Infinitely Polar Bear, the messiness and felt like, “Oh! Maybe I can do this!” The next year, I heartbreak were the charm. had Fred Tremallo, another wonderful teacher. He Forbes: I wanted it to feel like life happening. I’m gave great notes and was an early advocate of writreally proud of it. I missed my dad and I loved my ing on a computer because you could be very free dad and I feel like in our culture we’re always trying and follow your stream of thought and edit easily to stigmatize mental illness. But there are mentally and get into more interesting areas. From Exeter on, ill people whom we all know, so many people we I was always writing. E love who are wonderful people because they see

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I N S I DEEX T OH N EI AWN RS I TI N I N RGE L V II FE EW

Alumni are encouraged to advise the Bulletin editor (bulletin@exeter.edu) of their own publications, recordings, films, etc., in any field, and those of classmates, for inclusion in future Exonians in Review columns. Please send a review copy of your published work to the editor to be considered for an extended profile or review in future issues. Works can be sent to: Bulletin Editor, Phillips Exeter Academy, 20 Main Street, Exeter, NH 03833-2460.

ALUMNI 1951—Edward “Ed” K. Mills II. Beautiful Sabre: A USAF Pilot’s Memoir of Gunnery School and Flying the Storied F-86 F. (Hellgate Press, 2017) 1962—Brian B. Kelley.

Mother Russian.

(CreateSpace, 2017)

1976—Frank Daykin.

What Cannot Be Erased: New Poems: 2016/2017.

(CreateSpace, 2018) 1976—Jane E. Pollock.

The i5 Approach: Lesson Planning that Teaches Thinking and Fosters Innovation. (ASCD, 2017) 1984—Evan R. Goldfischer.

Even Urologists Get Kidney Stones: An Essential Guide to Kidney Stone Treatment and Prevention. (ERG Urology, 2017)

1970—Nick Baran [editor, with John Bellamy Foster].

The Age of Monopoly Capital: Selected Correspondence of Paul M. Sweezy and Paul A. Baran, 1949-1964. (Monthly Review Press, 2017)

FAC U LT Y Todd Hearon. “un/bodying/s” [poem, set to music by Greg Brown ’93]. IN The Common, www.thecommononline. org/february-2018-poetryfeature. (Feb. 23, 2018)

1974—Richard Hoeg [photographer, with author Susan Larson Kidd]. But That is Not Me! (Happy Endings Publishing, 2017)

1990—Katherine Reynolds Lewis. The Good News About Bad Behavior: Why Kids Are Less Disciplined than Ever—And What to Do About It. (PublicAffairs, 2018)

Alex Myers. “By Any Other Name” [essay]. IN Cutthroat, a Journal of the Arts. (v. 23)

1996—Jasmine Dreame Wagner. On a Clear Day. (Ahsahta Press, 2017)

—“To the Grocery Clerk Whose Nametag Read Alice” [essay]. IN Fugue. (v.

54, winter/spring 2018)

2005—Caitlyn “Cate” Iovanni [writing as I.O. Jones]. Leeway. (Kindle Edition, 2018)

—“Why We Need More Queer Identity Labels, Not Fewer.” IN Slate, slate.com/ human-interest/2018/01/ lgbtq-people-need-morelabels-not-fewer.html. (Jan. 16, 2018)

B R I E F LY N OT E D 1988—Rebecca Emeny [co-author]. “Anxiety Associated Increased CpG Methylation in the Promoter of Asb1: A Translational Approach Evidenced

by Epidemiological and Clinical Studies and a Murine Model.” IN Neuropsychopharmacology. (May 25, 2017)

Willie Perdomo. “At the Preparación” [poem]. IN 2 Bridges Review. (v. 7)

1996—Jasmine Dreame Wagner. “A Draft” and “Snow is Ample and Frank.”

IN Colorado Review. (v. 44. no. 3, fall/winter 2017) —“American Pedigree” [poem]. IN Fence. (summer 2017)

1972—Eben Alexander.

Living in a Mindful Universe: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Heart of Consciousness. (Rodale, 2017)

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1991—Jeff Kreisler [with Dan Ariely]. Dollars and Sense: How We Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter. (Harper Collins, 2017)

—“How to Draw a Tyrant” [collected writings]. IN Brooklyn Wayfarers Annual Members Show. (2017)

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—“Crazy Bunch Couplets” and “Sonia’s Sweet 16” [poems]. IN Green Mountain Review. (v. 30, no. 10) Sue Repko. “The Gun Show” [named a notable essay]. IN The Best American Essays 2017.

(Mariner Books, 2017).

Originally published in The Southeast Review. (v. 34. no. 2, 2016) —”What A Bullet Can Do” [essay]. IN Hazlitt (March 2018).

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new crop of Exeter Summer students will arrive on campus July 1. Check-in lasts all day, but most will line up before registration opens, eager to begin their crash course in Harkness learning, independent living and broad cultural exchange that will, for some, change their life’s trajectory.

Like the Academy’s regular session, Exeter’s summer program, now entering its 100th year, is brimming with opportunity and promise. About 750 students, in grades 7 through 12, attend the five-week program, recharging campus when it would otherwise doze. Nearly half of the attendees come from outside the U.S. and 30 percent receive financial aid. All are curious, motivated learners seeking new challenges and designing their own courses of study, sport and recreation.

Rewind. In the Class of 1945 Library archives is a narrow booklet wearing an ornate Academy seal. The Phillips Exeter Academy “Announcement of Summer Session of 1919” declares an “experiment will be undertaken as a contribution to the problem of the wastage in American education.” Anticipated advantages include keeping buildings and equipment in use through idle summer months, providing remedial Exeter’s summer session instruction for certain boys, and generally counteracting the scourge of teachers opened its doors on July 100 years later: summer brain drain.

8, 1919. It is the longestScratch notions of listless students in overheated classrooms. The program operating summer quickly expanded to admit students from other schools, and the compulsory proeducation experience in gramming (five levels of Latin filled the curriculum in 1919) has evolved into the United States. today’s model of abundant academic enrichment.

Don Dunbar ’45, ’59, ’62 (Hon.) was assistant director for three years before taking over as director from 1966 to 1969. With a Rockefeller Foundation grant, Dunbar began an urban outreach program, recruiting 50 students and 10 teachers from major

E X E T E R S U M M E R C E L E B R AT E S I T S 100TH YEAR BY MAKING SURE NOTHING EVER By the Bulletin editorial team GETS OLD U.S. cities. During his involvement, the program swelled from 235 students to nearly 500. “It was an exciting time for summer education, and we broke the mold, so to speak.

No one was doing what we were. ... We added courses in art, music, drama. People enjoyed it.”

This summer, the program will offer more than 100 courses to its UPPER SCHOOL students, ranging from Observational Astronomy to Writing the College Essay. Middleschoolers will choose from eight academic clusters in ACCESS EXETER that foster curiosity and collaboration and a love for learning.

Exeter Summer Director Elena Gosalvez-Blanco, a modern languages instructor and the first woman to lead the program, says summer session has functioned as a kind of academic incubator for the Academy. The program has piloted innovative curriculum (like 2014’s design thinking course complete with a maker lab) and routinely raps on the doors of tradition. Exeter Sixty-five boys, from 13 Summer, for example, dipped a states and Mexico, were toe in the water of coeducation as A summer class from the enrolled in the inaugural early as 1961, nine years before 1930s (top) and a group of summer session of 1919. Last girls first were admitted to PEA. It UPPER SCHOOL attendees summer, 764 students from has excelled at being first on the (bottom) in 2016.

44 states and 53 countries attended the 99th session.

ALL PHOTOS BY CHERYL SENTER UNLESS NOTED

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scene with classes in not-yet-mainstream areas, offering computer programming in the 1960s and psychology in the late 1980s. More recently it has organized its offerings into interdisciplinary clusters and empowered participants to plan their experience.

New programming on deck for the 100th summer includes a songwriting and production class, plus repeats of last year’s popular courses in clothing design, college essay writing, mindfulness and cryptography.

“We are always thinking ahead and adjusting to fulLeslie and Jim Tufts have been part of 43 summer sessions.

fill the changing needs of teenagers,” says GosalvezBlanco about Exeter Summer’s century-long staying power. “It is amazing that people who are my age, half my age and almost double my age keep telling me their best summer was an Exeter summer. It is even more special how many of our students will say that on closing day in 2018.”

– Karen Stewart

MAKING MAGIC SINCE 1975

The first shared summertime experience at Exeter for Leslie and Jim Tufts ’70 was their wedding at Phillips Church on a sweaty August day in 1974.

Forty-four years later, the love affair — with each other, the Academy and Exeter Summer — endures.

The Tufts are a summer session institution: Jim, the athletic director and a physical education instructor, and Leslie, the intern coordinator. When the 100th summer dawns in July, the couple will be back at their posts, where they’ve been every July since 1975.

“Magical,” Leslie calls her relationships with the

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summer school’s longtime faculty and staff and with the thousands of students who have come through on her watch.

“When you’re here 43 summers, the people will come and go, but we’ve loved every one of them who has been here, and we feel so attached to them,” she says. “It’s a magical thing when everyone shows up on campus to start a new session and you just pick up where you left off.”

The Tufts have deep roots at Exeter. Jim’s great-grandfather was class of 1874 and went on to teach English at the Academy for 50 years. Three uncles, three cousins and a brother also graduated from Exeter. One of the couple’s sons did a postgraduate year in 2005-06.

As newlyweds, they shared a fourth-floor apartment in Langdell Hall that first summer of ’75, and both say the collegiality that quickly formed among the teachers was like family.

“We’ve watched their kids grow, or they’ve gotten married and had kids,” Jim says of their colleagues. “And we’ve felt that we’ve grown with them.”

Leslie and Jim have watched Exeter Summer evolve, too. When the Tufts started, the academic session was held simultaneously with but independently from a series of sports camps on South Campus. The entire operation was run out of a basement office in Phillips Hall, with half as many students as today. Several of the buildings and spaces that host the summer session’s classes, music, art and student activities were little more than good ideas in 1975.

Both call the opportunity to meet and learn along with people from across the country and around the world “life-changing” for everyone.

“It’s really diverse and interesting for the kids, but just as much so for us,” says Jim, a longtime teacher and legendary soccer and hockey coach at Exeter High School. “We have friends from around the world who we’ve taught with. We have friends in Sweden and Scotland and France who taught with us in the summer. We’ve learned from all of them.”

– Patrick Garrity

THE CIGARROAS OF LAREDO

For most extended families, traditions might include gathering for a major holiday or spending a week sharing a crowded beach house. But for the Cigarroa clan of Laredo, Texas, the tradition that has spanned two generations and counting is Exeter Summer. More than two dozen family members have attended since Patricia Cigarroa came east in the early 1970s.

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Exeter Summer courses employ the Harkness method, Exeter’s signature collaborative approach to problem solving and learning.

“No boy should be entered for the Summer Session unless he can be depended upon to give himself diligently to his studies, and to satisfy, without undue supervision, the requirements of good order and correct conduct.”

– Requirement for admission to 1919 summer session

PEA ARCHIVES

John Knowles ’45 was inspired by his time spent at summer session in 1943 to write A Separate Peace. “It was that summer that I realized I had fallen in love with Exeter,” Knowles said.

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Thirteen girls were among the 187 students enrolled at Exeter Summer in 1961, the first year girls were admitted and nine years before the Academy went coeducational.

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“There was no sickness during the summer; no student was dismissed; and there was no serious neglect of work or misconduct. The students had forgone their vacation for a definite purpose and undertook seriously to accomplish that purpose.”

– from Announcement of Summer Session, 1920

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or another Russian-speaking country.

Francisco Cigarroa, who credits Exeter Summer with teaching him to be a better student by exposing him to intense writing courses while getting him out of his Texas comfort zone, says he’s confident that Cigarroas yet to come will continue the tradition his big sister started nearly 50 years ago.

– Sarah Zobel

ALL GOOD THINGS ...

Most of the students emerging from the physics classroom of Science Instructor Scott Saltman P’18, P’21 on the last day of winter term seem slightly dazed,

COURTESY ISABELA CIGARROA

“Every family member who has gone to Exeter has had a wonderful summer, not only because of the great teachers, but because you meet people from throughout the world and establish friendships with them,” says Francisco Cigarroa, M.D., division head of liver and pediatric transplantation surgery at UT Health San Antonio and former chancellor of the University of Texas system.

Cigarroa is one of 10 siblings, eight of whom spent a summer on the Exeter campus, thanks to their father’s insistence that they be exposed to life outside Texas. His turn came in 1973; it was his first time traveling to the East Coast. The same has been true for many members of the family, including Cigarroa’s niece Claudia Heymach, currently a junior at Stanford University and a student researcher at the Huntington’s Outreach Project for Education. The decision to apply to Exeter Summer was hers, but she says it was a no-brainer after having heard countless glowing reports from family members who had gone.

For Heymach, the chance to exercise both her artistic and her scientific sides outside the regular school year was enticing, and she enrolled in classes in photography and genetic engineering.

“I got to do a lot of lab techniques that my school didn’t offer,” she recalls of the summer of 2013.

“There were things I’d learned about before in textbooks, but I’d never gotten to actually try them out.”

If academics were the draw, the extracurricular activities were a bonus: Heymach shivers happily at the memory of participating in a “polar bear plunge,” an organized dawn swim in the Atlantic Ocean that is an Exeter Summer ritual. And all of it took place alongside students from not only different states but different countries, something she’d heard plenty about in those conversations with her older cousins and aunts and uncles.

Heymach’s first cousin Isabela Cigarroa never anticipated the effect of the program on her longterm academic trajectory after attending in the summers of 2006 and ’07. Cigarroa enrolled in a course cluster titled Global Communities, which focused on world literature and languages and introduced her to the Russian language.

“From that point on, I told myself that when I went to college, I would study Russian,” she says.

She followed her undergraduate studies at Notre Dame with a master’s in Russian and Eurasian Studies at European University at St. Petersburg, in Russia. Cigarroa is working on a degree in international affairs from George Washington University and awaits security clearance on a position as a consular fellow with the U.S. State Department in Russia

Isabela Cigarroa (right) continued a long family tradition at Exeter Summer in 2006 and ’07.

the sting of a final exam still fresh. But when Smaiyl Makyshov ’20 rounds a corner in Phelps Science Center, his smile arrives a few steps ahead of him.

“I think I did well,” he says, beaming.

Makyshov is a first-year lower from Kazakhstan.

He says he was hooked on Exeter the first time he saw the campus as a visiting 11-year-old. He hopes the school will help hone his talent for math and his interest in web development.

Like thousands before him, Makyshov’s Exeter experience began in the summertime.

“I was applying to a bunch of different schools ahead of my freshman year, and Exeter was my favorite choice,” he recalls. “But I didn’t get in.”

From the start, Exeter Summer has been a steppingstone for students hoping to get into the Academy. Forty-two of the 65 boys in the first summer session of 1919 subsequently enrolled at PEA that fall. While guarantees of regular-session admission no longer come from attending Exeter Summer, generations of students have gone through a summer session ahead of entering the Academy full

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CHRISTIAN HARRISON

was kind of feeling shaky, but then I was like, ‘This time. One hundred forty-five current PEA students should happen.’ ” attended Exeter Summer.

Two days before the 2017 summer session Makyshov was undeterred by the rejection. He applied to ACCESS EXETER in 2016, hoping it might ended, it happened. Makyshov was just finishing cross-country practice when he got a call asking him prepare him for another round of applications. He to drop by the Admissions Office. When he walked found a lot more than he bargained for. through the door to Bissell House, he was given the “It was an amazing experience. I never knew news: He was the newest member of the class of anything about environmental science before, and 2020, two sessions of Exeter Summer under his belt. after taking the course I’m inspired to become an – Patrick Garrity activist in that area,” he says. He credits exposure to Harkness learning that summer with making him a “clearer speaker and clearer thinker.”

EXETER OR BUST Makyshov was elected freshman class presiFifty-four years ago this summer, Wendell Knox and dent at Concord Academy the ensuing fall, but he three of his Louisiana buddies headed up North for a was convinced Exeter was the taste of adventure. place for him. So, he applied The four teenagers, classOne hundred forty-five current mates at an all-black, allPEA regular-session students — boys Catholic school in New including the 2017-18 Student Orleans, boarded a bus and Council co-presidents — wound their way through the attended at least one session of Deep South and up the coast Exeter Summer. into New England, with stops for sightseeing along the way.

Knox and one friend were bound for Exeter’s summer school on scholarships; the other two were heading to Andover.

It was 1964, the year Congress authorized war in Vietnam and first outlawed segregation in public places by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, against a backdrop of civil rights protests and race riots. For the boys’ parents, seeing their sons off on their own must have felt like a leap of faith. Knox can still picture their faces: “They were standing there outside that Greyhound bus in New Orleans, looking as though they would never see us again.”

If the journey ahead was daunting, it was also a thrilling prospect for the young friends. “We were Smaiyl Makyshov ’20 is a firstfour young dudes on our own! There were no adults, year lower at the Academy. and the bus stopped everywhere. We got to wander around the capital and New York City — I won’t tell all the stories! — but it was a great trip.” again last winter — and again, he didn’t get in, this Those two months away from home marked a sea time landing on the waitlist. He did his waiting at change in Knox, who marveled at the realization that Exeter Summer. open discussions, collaboration and debate could be “I still wanted to get in, but I also knew how healthy and constructive. “It blew away my notion much I got out of summer school the first summer,” of what a high school could look like,” he says. Knox, Makyshov says. He was accepted into the Charles who later graduated from Harvard and enjoyed a long J. Hamm ’55 Leadership Program, a two-course immersion in the UPPER SCHOOL that teaches eth- career in business, international development, and economic and public policy, kept an oval table in his ical leadership. He threw himself into the session, corporate boardroom to facilitate open discussions gaining an appreciation for emotional intelligence and mutual decision-making. “I have had the opporand diplomacy. tunity to participate in meetings, forums, conferences He kept his waitlist status on the back burner. and negotiations all over this world,” he says. “And “My parents, they were confident, like I should the most successful of those encounters reflected the never give up,” he says, “but I had mixed feelings. I

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to, even for regular-session students at the Academy. same basic principles of effective engagement and Applying the Harkness approach to eager seventhcollaboration [as Harkness.]” and eighth-graders at ACCESS EXETER — all within Just as important for Knox, having come of age a condensed, five-week window — is ambitious. in the racially segregated south of the ’60s, he says, “The biggest challenge is their energy,” says was the experience of seeing his assumptions about Science Instructor Andrew McTammany, who people disintegrate. A half-century later his grandknows Harkness well, not only as a full-time facdaughter, Veronika Knox — who hails from a small ulty member but also as an Exeter alumnus, class town in Alabama and attended Exeter Summer in of 2004. “Everyone’s talking all at once, and 2017 — echoes that sentiment: “The main thing that there’s a lot of talking over one another. But sorting stuck with me is that I can’t have any predispositions through that, you still have the core components of about anyone. At home, there’s a lot of negativity Harkness. You still have the work. They’re excited attached to branching out and making new friends, about learning, and the pasand a lot of stigmas. ... But I can’t sion is there. It’s just reining look at people the way my friends at ACCESS EXETER, for rising it all in. home are viewing them, and I can eighth- and ninth-graders, “It’s like a Jackson tell them, ‘I know that’s not true, opened in 2002 with 115 because my friend from Bangladesh students. More than 360 or Switzerland, he’s not like that.’ ” students will attend this While the elder Knox is officially summer. retired, he’s giving back to his community with Boston Basics, an organization that works to eliminate the achievement gap for low-income and minority children in Boston, where he has lived for 50 years. Co-founded by Knox and sponsored by the Black Philanthropy Fund, for which he serves as a trustee, Boston Basics partners with community-based institutions and organizations to teach five simple parenting strategies that are known to significantly improve a child’s readiness to learn. “We know there are simple things parents can integrate into everyday life to stem the onset of the achievement gap,” Knox says. “And it’s a moral imperative to share that knowledge with the Wendell Knox and his grandpeople who need it.” daughter Veronika attended – Genny Beckman Moriarty summer session 53 years apart.

LEARNING TO LEARN

Philip Mallinson spent more than 20 years teaching math at Exeter, taking the Harkness table’s best shots along the way. But the middle schoolers who filled his classroom one day last summer had him on the ropes.

Flip-flopped and tanned, the 13- and 14-year-olds buzzed in constant conversation even as Mallinson tried valiantly to focus them.

“Just think about it for a minute,” Mallinson suggests. “Without words.”

It is the substance of the chatter that keeps Mallinson a willing captive inside the Phelps Science Center on glorious July afternoons, two years past his retirement. These middle schoolers were going on about Möbius strips and tessellation. They were buzzing about math.

Collaborative learning takes some getting used

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Pollock painting, more than anything else,” he adds.

Sure, there’s chatter. But McTammany knows that’s a happy by-product of collaborative learning.

“You’re trying to develop the community that Harkness brings,” he says. “A lot of that is the sharing of ideas. You want them to learn from each other.”

On cue, McTammany is interrupted by a pair of students who have stayed after class to ask about growing crystals in a controlled environment. He says this sort of raw curiosity is what he loves about ACCESS EXETER students.

“There’s this uncontaminated enthusiasm for learning science,” he says. “It’s not so much the pressure of grades or college, so it just feels a lot more pure. They just want to understand what’s happening around them.” E – Patrick Garrity

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THE ART OF CIVIL DISCOURSE H I S T O R I A N D AV I D E I S E N H O W E R ’6 6 M A K E S R O O M O N T V F O R R E S P E C T F U L D E B AT E O F T O D AY ’ S I S S U E S

D

By Katherine Towler

avid Eisenhower ’66 is not ready to give up on civil discourse, scarce as it

may be in the public realm of today’s America. As host of the public television show “The Whole Truth with David Eisenhower,” he brings the perspective of a historian and the diplomacy of a seasoned political observer to a discussion of the pressing issues of our times. The program explicitly takes a different approach by avoiding punditry and argument, focusing instead on a nuanced examination of the question at hand.

Eisenhower describes the show’s objective as understanding a problem rather than reaching a resolution. “The most important precondition for civil discourse is an agreement that an issue or problem exists,” he says. “We have serious questions we have to address as a society. This is not so easy to accept. We establish this on the show. If we can agree we have problems, we can start there.”

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COURTESY OF WORLD AFFAIRS COUNCIL OF PHILADELPHIA

“The Whole Truth with David Eisenhower” debuted in 2016. It airs on more than 140 public stations nationwide.

Launched in 2016 by the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia, a nonprofit, educational organization dedicated to creating an informed citizenry, the program takes aim at the pervasive notion that, as a promo puts it, “the American marketplace of ideas has become dysfunctional.” Originating at WHYY-TV in Philadelphia, “The Whole Truth with David Eisenhower” is currently launching its third season. It is distributed by American Public Television and shown on more than 140 stations nationwide.

Each half-hour episode brings together several guests who are experts in their fields to define and explore a given issue. In the first two seasons, shows have been devoted to such topics as income inequality, feminism in the age of Trump, the war in Iraq, poverty in the shadow of plenty, demographics and immigration, 21st-century Islam, and the state of American democracy. Guests have included Gen. Wesley Clark; former Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D.; former Congressman Tom Davis, R-Va.; MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and Joan Walsh; Bloomberg’s Al Hunt; and cable news host and commentator Greta van Susteren.

In designing the show, co-executive producers Craig Snyder and Brian O’Reilly have made a number of careful choices. Guests represent a range of

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political backgrounds and areas of expertise, and are asked to work toward a common understanding of the problem under discussion. The production team sees to this both in the preparation of participants prior to taping and in Eisenhower’s evenhanded direction of the discussion. The result is a refreshingly thoughtful look at the challenges facing our country and the world. No shouting, no talking over each other; just respectful debate and discussion.

The guests spend 45 minutes together before taping begins. “This is one dynamic that makes a difference,” Eisenhower says. “Our guests are not in a remote studio. We ask people not to comment on events that are happening currently, but to look at the topic in a broader perspective. This puts people in a different frame of mind.”

These factors are key to creating the show’s civil tone, Eisenhower believes. Each segment begins with an introduction from Eisenhower, in which he explains the program’s goals and outlines the topic of the day. The show concludes with a wrap-up from Eisenhower that gets at “the whole truth” of the subject.

Snyder, now president of the World Affairs Council, was former chief of staff for the late Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, and was intrigued by the challenge of bringing a truly nonpartisan

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discussion of the issues to television. He partnered with Brian O’Reilly, a seasoned television professional, and worked on producing a pilot for the show with Maryland Public Television in 2012 with Specter as host, but the project was put on hold when Specter became ill. When Snyder was appointed president of the World Affairs Council, they resurrected the idea and reached out to Eisenhower, someone they felt would be ideal for the role of host.

The grandson of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, David Eisenhower is an author, historian and academic. He has had a front-row seat to history in two White

leadership as supreme allied commander in Europe.

The book was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history in 1986 and named by Time magazine as one of the five best nonfiction books of the year. More recently, Eisenhower teamed up with Julie to write Going Home to Glory: A Memoir of Life with Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961-1969. The memoir chronicles the years after Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency, when he came to live on the family farm in Gettysburg where David and his family lived, during David’s adolescence. In a review, the Los Angeles Times describes Going Home to Glory as a “nostalgic tribute [that] could be seen as an implicit rebuke to those who reject [President Eisenhower’s] legacy of biparti-

HIVES PEA ARC

alks with senhower w t Dwight D. Ei en id es Pr wife, s er hi Form tall ’24 and m G. Saltons ia ill W 1962. l er pa ci ob Prin er in Oct a visit to Exet ng ri du , yn ar Kath

House administrations, as a boy during his grandfather’s presidency and as a son-in-law during the Nixon years. He and Julie Nixon were married 1968, a month before her father took office. These twin experiences have given him an enduring interest in the institution and history of the presidency.

After graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy, Eisenhower attended Amherst College, served in the Naval Reserve, and completed his J.D. at George Washington University Law School. Today he is director of the Institute for Public Service at the Annenberg Public Policy Center. He also serves as a senior research fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and is a fellow in the International Relations Department at the university.

Eisenhower’s book Eisenhower at War: 19431945 takes an in-depth look at his grandfather’s

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IKE OFTEN USED BOXING AS A METAPHOR FOR POLITICS. NOW, HIS GRANDSON UNDERSTOOD...

sanship and moderation.”

Eisenhower is currently completing a collection of essays on the 1950s and on significant decision points in Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency, under contract with Simon & Schuster. He is also continuing work on the larger project begun with Eisenhower at War of documenting a complete narrative of the Eisenhower presidency.

This, he notes, will probably occupy him for the rest of his life.

Of the many years he has devoted to writing about his grandfather, Eisenhower says, “My father and grandfather experienced his career together.

They were very close. I was outside it. This made me very curious about my grandfather and his times.”

Eisenhower recalls his grandfather as a man “of greatness” who both inspired and challenged him. In Going Home to Glory, he quotes from a letter Ike sent him when he was a prep at Exeter. Ike advised him to use shoe trees in his golf shoes so they would look decent, then ended the letter with a metaphor: “Well, if you’re learning to box, keep your left eye almost out

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...HE WAS USING IT FOR THE RIGORS OF BEING AWAY FROM HOME AT 14 AND MAKING HIS WAY AT EXETER.

He has also gained respect for the level of research necessary to properly prepare for each program’s topic. For a recent taping, he read the entire battery of Supreme Court decisions on Citizens United and completed exhaustive reading on income inequality and the impact of technological change on the American standard of living.

His research included the recently published The Rise and Fall of American Growth by Robert Gordon, which he describes as an 800-page “page turner.”

“Cable talk today is all about holding an audience. There’s no real possibility for interfaith dialogue,” Eisenhower says of the climate in which his show is being produced. “I take topics as they come.

I want the episodes to leave people thinking. I’m not pressing for any particular conclusion.”

Eisenhower describes the media today as a fragmented creator of distinct and separate communities. The media fosters solidarity among these communities by speaking only to them and for them. He recalls the heated debates of the 1960s, when he was a student at Exeter and Amherst. He

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had many conversations about the U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam with people of all viewpoints. “The idea behind these conversations was that we would disagree, but in the end be on the same page,” he says.

He sees the lack of civility in our public discourse today as a perhaps inevitable outcome of the end of the Cold War. “What accounted for civility in the Eisenhower years was a common sense of identity as Americans. In the 1960s, we could disagree, but we came back to some agreement that Vietnam was a difficult issue for the United States. There was argument, yes, but it was friendlier than the debates we are having today. I didn’t see friendships breaking up over these differences in the 1960s. Today you see friendships break up over political differences.”

At the Institute for Public Service, Eisenhower

PEA ARCHIVES

in front so that your jab would have the power of the shoulder behind it; the right fist close, the glove close to your chin and your weight so evenly distributed you can move rapidly in any direction.”

Ike often used boxing as a metaphor for politics.

Now, his grandson understood, he was using it for the rigors of being away from home at 14 and making his way at Exeter.

Becoming a television show host was an unexpected opportunity that came Eisenhower’s way when Craig Snyder contacted him. “Being on television is harder than it looks,” he says of the experience. “I have frequently been an interview subject, but I have not been someone who asks the questions.

I find it very challenging to keep a conversation going.

I have renewed respect for people who do this.”

administers the academic concentration in political communications and supervises his students’ honors thesis projects. He teaches a seminar, Communication and the Presidency, that serves as the basis for the students’ thesis work. Students enrolled in the seminar conduct primary research at presidential libraries, the National Archives and the Library of Congress. Penn is the only university in the country with a program that sends undergraduates to conduct primary research at the presidential libraries.

Students Eisenhower has worked with in recent years have conducted research on President Kennedy’s speeches, President Reagan’s war on drugs, Lady Bird Johnson’s whistle-stop campaign through the South, and President Wilson’s address to a joint session of Congress on the League of Nations. The Power of Citizenship: Why John F. Kennedy Matters to a New Generation, by Scott D. Reich (2013), had its origins as a thesis in Eisenhower’s seminar.

Every four years, Eisenhower offers a seminar that includes attending the Democratic and

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REACHING ACROSS THE AISLE E M M E T T S H E L L’ S ‘ C O N T E M P O R A R Y P O L I T I C S ’ T E A C H E S A D U LT S T H E A R T O F H A R K N E S S D I A L O G U E

By Genny Beckman Moriarty Civil discourse may well be an endangered American species but, like David Eisenhower ’66, Exeter senior Emmett Shell is committed to preserving it.

He believes “productive discussion — in other words, Harkness” — is one of the best ways to start.

“The more people we can get respectfully talking to

CHRISTIAN HARRISON

Emmett Shell ’18 (middle) leads a Harkness class of adults.

others with different political views, the better off the nation will be,” he explains.

That’s a strategy History Department Chair Bill Jordan P ’12, P ’17, P ’17 advocates for as well. Shell took Jordan’s History 550: American Politics and Public Policy in the fall, and he was inspired by a conversation they had outside of class to design a Harkness course for adults.

Created as an independent senior project, Contemporary Politics brought together 11 non-teaching staff members from opposing political camps in an attempt to promote constructive dialogue around controversial topics. Shell, who implemented the course under Jordan’s supervision during winter term, assigned readings and facilitated weekly

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discussions on climate change, immigration, inequality and a number of other hot button issues.

The participants represented five different departments (Admissions, Finance, Athletics, Institutional Advancement and Exeter Summer Institutes) and had no previous experience at the Harkness table. With Shell’s guidance, they worked together to establish ground rules that would encourage a thoughtful exchange of ideas, such as “Respect all voices and beliefs,” and, “Ask questions and admit your confusion.”

One might expect some trepidation upon entering into the political fray with students twice and even three times Shell’s age. He admits it was “fairly tricky” at times to figure out when to step in and jump-start a stalled conversation, or how to ensure quieter folks had the opportunity to help steer the conversation. Still, he describes his students as curious, engaged and, for the most part, courteous with one another. Perhaps most important to Shell, who made it a goal to finish the term without anyone guessing his political leanings: “They didn’t say what they thought I wanted to hear.” When disagreements did come up, “I did my best to highlight those,” he says. “We want to point those out. There’s no aspect here of trying to convince people to switch sides.

We’re practicing listening.”

Rachel Hanson, who manages Exeter’s summer conferences, signed up for Shell’s course to learn more about the Harkness pedagogy. “I’m often in a position where I need to describe what makes an Exeter education unique, and now that I’ve been through the class, I’m much more capable of doing so,” she wrote in her feedback at the end of the term.

Hanson praised the young instructor’s fairness in selecting weekly readings, his ability to mediate their discussions, and the satisfaction it gave her to listen and respond to her colleagues’ differing viewpoints, adding: “I wish every staff member had the opportunity to participate in this type of class; it made me feel more involved in the Academy, and it changed the way I think about the current political atmosphere in our country.”

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“THERE’S A REGENERATIVE CAPACITY IN A COUNTRY LIKE OURS. IT’S WHAT WE HAVE; IT’S WHO WE ARE.”

COURTESY OF WORLD AFFAIRS COUNCIL OF PHILADELPHIA

Republican national conventions and in-depth study of the campaigns and debates.

In the work he does with his undergraduates, Eisenhower feels he has a glimpse of the future, and this gives him considerable hope. “I am very optimistic based on my work with students,” he says.

“Today’s students have made tremendous progress. The undergrads I see today are performing at a 75 percent better rate than the undergrads I had 20 years ago. They think well and write well. I

David Eisenhower ‘66 interviews retired Gen. Wesley Clark on “The Whole Truth.”

work with terrific young people who accomplish things that impress me every semester. I don’t have to teach dedication. I think we have very promising leadership coming up in America.”

Eisenhower recalls his years at the Academy as one of the most important chapters of his life. He found the coursework very challenging, but the time at Exeter taught him “to never settle for second best.” He has found the same commitment to excellence at the University of Pennsylvania and values what this atmosphere encourages.

“I see myself as a student of the subjects I present,” he reflects. “I came to Penn in the first place because I knew I couldn’t live as a solitary writer. I’m part of a community of writers and scholars.”

Watch “The Whole Truth” The Season 3 premiere episode of “The Whole Truth with David Eisenhower” will be broadcast nationwide by June. You can find the airdate for your area on the website of the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia at www.WACphila.org under the page for “The Whole Truth.” All episodes for the previous seasons can also be viewed on this website.

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At Penn, he is among like-minded historians who, for example, worry about what one of President Johnson’s key speeches on the Vietnam War really meant. The dissection of this history, he says, is what they live by. The sharing of ideas is an ongoing and fruitful exchange.

The caliber of the instructors at Exeter left a lasting impression on Eisenhower. He credits them with preparing him well for college and graduate study.

In particular, he valued the small classes and the seminar approach. “The teaching at Exeter was very interactive. My Institute for Public Service at Penn is similar — small, interactive, and project-driven.

What I experienced at Exeter was a teaching mode I carried with me and brought to Penn.”

The excitement Eisenhower feels about today’s students and what they are capable of accomplishing is matched by his conviction that the United States will come out of the current period in our history with much of what defines this country intact.

“We’re in a transition period,” he explains. “We can worry too much about this. The resilience of our system is amazing to me. We will come out of this period of transition with a world that feels if not familiar, that will at least work for us. I’m confident of that.”

As a student of history, he takes the long view.

“People didn’t see the way out of Vietnam and the turmoil of the 1960s, but we came out of it in a much better place. There’s a regenerative capacity in a country like ours. It’s what we have; it’s who we are.” E Katherine Towler is a former Bennett Fellow and the author of three novels and, most recently, the memoir The Penny Poet of Portsmouth.

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Clockwise from top: Teddy Scott ’18, Cody Nunn ’18 and and Anzi DeBenedetto ’18, star in the 2017 production of The Liar; actors perform in the musical Westside Story at the Fisher Theater dedication in 1972; final touches backstage during Westside Story; PEA’s dance program merged with the theater department in 2006. Inset: Fisher Theater’s mainstage and seating in 1972.

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CREDITS (CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT): CHERYL SENTER, BRADFORD HERZOG (2), CHERYL SENTER. I N S E T: H E R N D O N A S S O C I AT E S

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THANK YOU, FISHER THEATER H O N O R I N G T H E B U I L D I N G T H AT F I R S T E L E VAT E D T H E A R T S

By Karen Ingraham

W

hen Chester Fisher ’66 needed to hang lights for a mainstage theater production during his Exeter years, he climbed a tall stepladder, lifted a heavy fixture over his head and hung it from a pipe that ran from one pillar to another. Wires were snaked across that pipe and threaded down to the backstage area, where they were plugged into an electrical panel so that, Fisher says, “you had to contort yourself and use elbows and knees and feet to push switches and dimmers in order to do a lighting change.”

This precarious work took place in the Academy Building’s Assembly Hall, which served as mainstage for the student-run DRAMAT club for several decades, including when Fisher’s father, James “Jim” Fisher ’38,

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was enrolled. A Feb. 19, 1938, Exonian article notes that “… Jim Fisher will supervise the lighting effects” for the production of Three-Cornered Moon in the Chapel, as Assembly Hall was then known.

Influenced by his father’s experience and possessing a natural proclivity for technical work (he was an amateur radio operator by the age of 12), Chester Fisher joined DRAMAT after entering the Academy as a lower. He was elected as the club’s vice president during his upper year, with classmate Fred Grandy ’66 serving as president. Fisher confirmed for his father that little had changed in 30 years regarding the production hurdles involved in using a space designed entirely for something else. English Instructor B. Rodney Marriott, a longtime, passionate theater director and advocate for the performing arts at Exeter, told The Exonian in 1966, “It is ridiculous to put on a play in the Chapel” because of the poor acoustics, the inability to see actors’ expressions, the limitations (and dangers) with lighting, and the uncomfortable benches in the hall.

Things marginally improved when Marriott led a retrofitting of Harris House on Elliot Street, adding a small stage and 150 seats to the former parish house during the spring of ’66.

The youngest Fisher, James “Jim” Fisher Jr. ’68, benefited from the upgrade, choosing, unlike his father and brother, to be on stage during his years at Exeter. He doesn’t count himself amongst the acting legends from those years, like Grandy and Jack Gilpin ’69, both of whom went on to have long, successful screen careers after Exeter. But he had fun, adding, “I bet I held spears and [had] one-liners in seven or eight shows.”

Even though neither of his sons would reap the reward, on stage or off, the elder Fisher felt compelled to help elevate the performing arts even higher at Exeter. An Academy trustee, he chaired the school’s ambitious fundraising campaign, The Long Step Forward, from 1966 to 1970. His

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family’s contribution would be a theater. His wife, Edith “Toto” Fisher, says her husband “felt so indebted to Exeter; he felt that Exeter had opened his eyes to the world.” He wanted to do the same for future generations of students, so he and his family’s foundation provided most of the money needed for the construction of a permanent theater, one that was designed to provide something that the other spaces had not: greater flexibility and opportunities for invention.

Construction on the building that would become Fisher Theater began during the winter of 1971 and finished in the spring of 1972. The theater’s director, Donald Schultz, described the new space to a local newspaper as an “educational theatre” where “students can build things and instruct on their own.” He later added that, unlike Harris House, Fisher Theater is a place where “students can work and not have the sense they can’t touch anything.”

The Foster’s Democrat news article, dated April 18, 1973, goes on to describe the building: The Fisher Theatre is flexible enough to offer at least ten years of entirely original sets, according to Schultz. The flexible seating and stage arrangement allows for many different sets. The traditional frontal stage can be glorified by moving the light arrangement. The frontal stage itself can be adjusted to form a circular theatre or even a scatter theatre, where part of the actual staging takes place within the audience’s seats.

Opening night was May 12, 1972, and students performed the Gilbert and Sullivan opera The Mikado. The formal dedication of the building occurred later that year, on Oct. 21, with a production of the musical West Side Story, which included more than 80 students in the production and 15 scene changes. James Fisher was in attendance, in a theater that could now seat 350 people, and he

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reflected on the significance of the building that now bore his name: “The proof of the value of this institution will be fully realized in subsequent productions. Helping the students to grow through discipline of the mind, molding a sense of unity as a group, but also strengthening the students’ individuality, are all aims of this institution.”

Chester Fisher says that his father was most proud of

offerings, but in the years since, it has grown to encompass PEA’s dance program and now offers 23 courses in the performing arts, as well as actively supporting several student clubs, including DRAMAT. The programming in the space has been so successful over the past 46 years that it’s created the need for a new, modern facility in which to support the hundreds of student thespians, dancers, stage hands and set builders who are drawn to the stage each year. That building, the David E. and Stacey L. Goel Center for Theater and Dance, will open on the south side of campus this spring. When James Fisher funded the 1972 building, he knew it would have a lifes-

“IT HAD BECOME WHAT HE WANTED IT TO BE ... A GATHERING PLACE AND A PLACE FOR PEOPLE TO TRY OUT THEIR IDEAS.”

pan — that something would eventually succeed it.

His wife says he was “beyond rewarded” by what Fisher Theater had given Exeter. “It had become what he wanted it to be,” she says, “a gathering James A. Fisher ’38 place and a place for people to try out their ideas.”

James Fisher died in February 2014 after a fall at the age of 93. His wife of nearly 60 years says, “He was a very curious man and passionate about the the marked growth in the number of students who pararts; he never ceased. He kept right to the end of his life ticipated in theater or dance in the years after the buildbeing as curious and as accepting of new ideas.” His theing opened. Such interest compelled the Academy to add ater, she adds, and its impact on students, was “a dream formal course offerings to the curriculum, beginning in come true.”

1972 with a course available to uppers entitled Dramatics, which was opened to lowers in 1974. At a faculty meeting on Feb. 14, 1975, Principal Stephen G. Kurtz also A MAKER-SPACE THEATER announced his decision to form a Dramatics Department, When Rob Richards, now chair of the Theater and Dance a move proposed and championed by both Marriott and Department, first entered Fisher Theater in 1994, he Schultz. Kurtz said in that meeting, “The creation of was struck by the architecture — the exposed beams and this small department is a step toward recognizing that ductwork, the open ceiling. He thought, “I like this. You Dramatics is a co-equal curricular offering along with Art can add to this.” It was a space, he sensed, that would and Music.” The department began with three course present opportunities for invention, that would challenge

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FINDING HOME

By Sarah Ream ’75; P’09, P’11, Instructor in Theater and Dance, Instructor in English Fisher Theater has had an enormous impact on my personal and professional life, and it seems fitting that I should pay a small tribute to this odd building before we bid it farewell.

As a student back in the early days of coeducation, it was in Fisher Theater that I made my first Exeter friends. They were a gang as awkward and uncool as I was. While everyone else on campus was busy grooving to Led Zeppelin on turntables in dorm butt rooms, we would stay after rehearsal and plonk away on a tuneless piano, singing show tunes and ballads from the Great American Songbook. Several of those fellow geeks are still close friends today. Although we didn’t know it at the time, we gave each other more than notes on Gershwin; we gave each other courage to be who we really were, a lesson that sustained me at Exeter and long afterward.

It was in the Fisher Theater Black Box that I directed my first play, an insignificant little comedy called The Knack – and learned something about management. As a new lower, I knew I had no clout. But I singled out the three best senior actors on campus and told each one that the other two had already agreed to do the play. It was almost opening night before they realized how I had corralled them all.

But the show was a hit, at least by the standards of the day, and provided enough of a buzz to keep me directing and believing that a woman could aim at a career as a professional theater director.

I became that director, as well as a teacher. When I returned to Exeter more than 20 years later, again Fisher had lessons for me to learn. Year after year, it provided a venue for engaged, curious people to come together and create work that none of us could have imagined on our own. Time and again, my students taught me. In the early days, they showed me how to use some new-fangled search engine (whatever that was) called Google to research everything from lighting plots to costume design. They suggested dances and music and references to popular culture for shows that dragged me kicking and screaming into the 21st century. (The first time I heard someone call a friend “phat,” I made him apologize.)

Fisher gave me the chance to collaborate with colleagues and alumni, too. I will never forget [History Instructor] Jack Herney addressing my cast of Journey’s End about the Battle of the Somme in World War I. Or John Irving ’61 talking with the cast of A Prayer for Owen Meany about how his own experiences as a student at Exeter and how those shaped the book. In every case, the connections were powerful ones. Over and over, Fisher Theater has, despite the tin roof and incessant graffiti, been a safe place for people to share, to grow, and to do their best work. For that, I am very grateful.

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him as a director to use the facility in different ways. He wasn’t wrong.

Coffee mug in hand, Richards stands in the prop room 24 years and dozens of productions later and studies the trap doors that open onto the stage from below. He recalls the production of Macbeth that he directed, and how he enlisted the help of Gerry Hill, who is a technician in Facilities Management and whom Richards describes as “a creative genius who can make anything out of anything.”

Richards wanted a way for the character Banquo to rise up through a layer of fog during the play. So, they removed the stairs and Hill rigged up some old Nautilus exercise equipment to raise and lower the actor.

The effect, Richards says with a smile, was almost magical: Banquo’s appearance shocked the audience each time he emerged.

Richards and Hill partnered on many such projects. The steel prop cage tucked against a wall off the mainstage is left over from the set of Hamlet. Its staircase provided dramatic height for the play, and it has since served as a second point of access to the catwalk above.

When acoustics needed adjusting in the mainstage, Richards tapped the late Gary Tuttle and his carpentry crew, who constructed a wall behind the audience seats to bounce the sound off of. They also relocated the light booth to improve its sight lines.

“The greatest thing about Fisher Theater, in my opinion, is that it has given us versatility … flexible spaces,” Richard says. “It’s sort of a maker-space theater.”

Cary Wendell, the theater’s designer and technical director since 1998, agrees. “Fisher Theater, because of its uniqueness and undefined architecture, is more like an experimental lab than a standard theater for my process of designing,” he says. “In a way, I have to reinvent the space every time I design. It

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requires of me an openness to experiment and a willingness to take artistic risks.”

That was James Fisher’s original hope, according to Mrs. Fisher. “It was to be this place where students could experiment to see if they liked theater, to act, to see if they liked production,” she says. “And it was [a place] to fulfill the desires of those who were more experienced and yearned for a real theater.”

it unique, challenging and inviting is the fact that there is no architectural separation of stage and audience. This is partly because the floor of the stage is at the same level as the front row of the audience. It also has allowed us to remove curtains and expose the walls offstage to make for a raw look.”

“This [is] not an intimidating building,” Richards concludes, and that is part of what has made it a home for so

“IT REQUIRES OF ME AN OPENNESS TO EXPERIMENT AND A WILLINGNESS TO TAKE ARTISTIC RISKS.”

The design focus, she adds, because of both budget and desire, was on “the workings of the theater,” the technology, lighting and production. It was designed and built to be functional rather than monumental. A space accessible to everyone.

Nowhere, perhaps, is this more apparent than in the seating arrangement in the mainstage. “It is roughly the shape of a Greek amphitheater,” Wendell says. “Because the seating wraps around in a partial semicircle, the audience is aware of being part of a communal event — they can see each other watching the show. The fact that [the seating] is raked (slanted) at a steep enough pitch makes for good visibility for everyone. This allows (and requires) the set designer to include the floor as a significant design element. A third feature of the space that makes

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many students over the years. “Sometimes the students who come here are folks who need a niche, they need a little sanctuary. … And theater is all about truth and releasing what’s going on in a community.”

Richards is standing in the scene shop. Giant puppet heads hang from the wall, handcrafted by him during the summer of ’94 for the satirical play American Hurrah. The hood from the car he built for a production of Grease still sits in his barn at home.

“So many memories, so many shows,” Richards says, staring at the old props on the shop’s walls. “I don’t remember the order; I don’t remember the year. But you remember those moments or that kid who was particularly good in the role and the bond that you have with them.” E

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Left: Long jumper Cedric Blaise ’18 takes off. Right: Big Red played host this season to its first home indoor track meet in seven years.

The Thompson Legacy Lives On E X E T E R’S N E W F I E L D H O U S E O P E N S A N D H O M E M E E TS R E T U R N

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By Karen Ingraham

he new, wooden bleachers that run the length of the track and seat about 500 were at capacity on a brisk Saturday in late January. Members of the PEA community — students, parents, trustees, alumni and employees — sat in anticipation, many with maroon pennants in hand, ready to wave.

On the previous night, the building’s name had been formally announced: The William Boyce Thompson Field House. It’s a fitting choice. Eighty-nine years ago, almost to the day, the Thompson Cage stood on the same ground, ready to house the school’s first indoor track meets. The generosity of Thompson, class of 1890,

who funded the Cage’s construction, transformed and elevated Exeter’s athletics and the overall student experience. In honor of that legacy and in anticipation of history repeating itself, the new field house carries his name and the vision forward.

Dressed in red and gray warmup gear, the boys and girls winter track and field team ran onto the track at the grand opening of the field house that Saturday.

Pennants fluttered and the crowd cheered. More than 100 Exonians, about 10 percent of the student body, participate in the winter program each year, making it one of PEA’s largest competitive sports teams. The team PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHERYL SENTER UNLESS NOTED

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Watch a video celebrating the opening of the Thompson Field House at www.exeter.edu/fhvideo.

gathered to sit on either side of the stage and listened raptly to their coach, Hilary Coder Hall, reflect on the weight of that moment in her remarks: “Has it really been seven years since we have had a track meet here at home?

Seven years since we have been able to train aggressively on turns or on runways, or in fact, simply to be a team, all in one space, together?”

More importantly, Hall added, “We all know that the success and support that is experienced as a member of a healthy team can be the thing that gives a student the strength and confidence to do the hard work in the Exeter classroom. To weather those late-night storms, and sometimes bigger life storms, knowing that their team and their coaches are here as a safe harbor.”

Wrestlers, too, have the opportunity to push themselves farther and to feel more deeply the support of their campus community in the field house’s dedicated wrestling room, which includes spectator seating. The tennis teams can also practice for the first time on indoor courts,

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and the baseball and softball teams can take infinite swings in the batting cages. Every team and sports club, every adult and student member of the Academy community, has access to a space designed to increase the health and well-being of all who utilize it.

“When all is said and done, the very best way we can say ‘thank you’ is for each of us to honor the gift of the Thompson Field House, this gift that will likely enhance virtually every Exonian’s experience, by being the best people we can possibly be,” Hall said in her closing remarks. “The best athletes, teammates, coaches, parents, alumni, sons, daughters, siblings and friends we can possibly be. Let our deeds, our behaviors, and the striving to continually improve our performances be our way of saying how much we appreciate all that you have given. We are grateful and humbled beyond words.”

After the ceremony, the student athletes shed their warmup gear, passed the first batons and cleared the first hurdles. The home crowd cheered on.

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84,574 square-foot facility

Coach Hilary Coder Hall: ‘We are grateful beyond words.’

FOUR tennis courts

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cameras for live broadcasts of meets

The track and field team was all smiles at the opening of the new field house.

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TWO batting cages

Hurdler Hannah Brown ’19 leads the pack during the first home meet.

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meter, six-lane track oval (eight lanes at the straightaway)

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panel rooftop solar array, the largest of any school in New Hampshire and estimated to save $2 million in energy costs over the system’s lifetime

8,000 square-foot wrestling center

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Wrestler JaQ Lai ’21 (right) competes in the new space for the first time.

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WHO IS WILLIAM BOYCE THOMPSON?

By Patrick Garrity

PEA ARCHIVES

His classmates called him “Tommy,” and few Exonians have appreciated their time at the Academy more. But when William Boyce Thompson set foot on campus in January 1887, it was as familiar to him as the dark side of the moon.

He had grown up in frontier Montana amid the Indian Wars and gold rushes of the American West. His hometown of Butte was a mining camp of “whisky and women and dice and profanity,” writes Hermann Hagedorn in The Magnate: William Boyce Thompson and His Time.

“Young William, at 15, was gambling in the beer halls for stakes which might have made an adult dizzy.”

Thompson “went to public school, such as it was, without notable result” and his teachers predicted little promise, save for an Oxford scholar whom circumstance had led to Butte. He urged Thompson east “to get a bigger view of things.”

And so, at 17, he came to Exeter. There began a love affair that would last until his death more than 40 years later.

“Exeter days were happy days for me,” Thompson would recall long afterward. “I knew when I was passing through them that I was enjoying a time the memory of which would remain always and give me pleasure.”

The Academy didn’t tame Thompson, but it did harness his intellect and feed his ambition. He never graduated from the school, nor from the Columbia School of Mines he subsequently attended. But “Exeter gave him perspective, social, intellectual, spiritual,” Hagedorn writes, and he used that learned viewpoint — and a knowledge of mining earned by birthplace — to build a fortune.

He struck it rich first investing in and promoting copper mining, and then sulfur, gold, iron ore and oil, with holdings stretching from Canada to Peru. He became a giant on Wall Street and a political power broker and was a millionaire by 35. Shrewd and sometimes ruthless in business, Thompson was remarkably generous with his wealth — and none benefited more than Exeter.

His gifts transformed campus. He built a gymnasium, a science center, squash courts and a sports cage. He paid for Jeremiah Smith Hall and The Exeter Inn. He served as a trustee through the 1920s, even after he was partially paralyzed by a stroke, and gave money for dorms and scholarships and teaching positions. In January 1930, he donated $1 million to the school’s endowment, equivalent to nearly $15 million today.

He died six months later from complications of pneumonia. He was 61.

“His old school had come to exercise a hold on his heart and mind which increased from year to year,” Hagedorn writes. “In his march to wealth he had grown away from her for a time, but the discovery that the Academy needed him drew him by degrees nearer to her than he had felt even as a boy.”

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The new field house boasts more than 84,000 square feet.

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THE THOMPSON CAGE LIVES ON The William Boyce Thompson Field House is inextricably linked to the original Thompson Cage, in name and by design.

The Cage’s large, stone dedication plaque bearing Thompson’s name is now nested in a wall in the field house’s main lobby. The Hahn function room, located on the second floor and adjacent to the wrestling room, has a wooden floor constructed from salvaged and restored pieces of the Cage’s track. And beloved Coach Ralph Lovshin’s meticulous record keeping will be honored when some of his original wooden record boards are hung alongside a new hall of fame wall in the track area.

Even the Cage’s dirt, such a visceral piece of that building’s history, has found a home in the new field house. During the grand opening celebration, community members had the opportunity to sprinkle bottles of Cage dirt into the long jump pit. There was more than one alumnus who nostalgically sniffed the bottle’s contents before slowly letting the dirt drain into the pit, where old mixed with new.

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WINTER SPORTS HIGHLIGHTS BOYS BASKETBALL RECORD: 10-10

Head Coach: Jay Tilton Assistant Coaches: Rick Brault, Bill O’Malley Captains: Emmett Shell ’18, Brian Zhao ’18 MVP: Zachary Stenglein ’18

GIRLS SWIMMING & DIVING RECORD: 6-2

Head Coach: Jean Farnum Assistant Coaches: Chelsea Davidson, Caroline Meliones Captains: Genesis Baez ’20, Lily Carden ’18, Maddie Shapiro ’18 MVP: Maddie Shapiro

BOYS SQUASH RECORD: 4-13

Head Coach: Fred Brussel Assistant Coach: Paul Langford Captains: Gautam Ramesh ’18, Stuart Rucker ’18 MVP: Alex Mangiapane ’19

GIRLS HOCKEY RECORD: 11-11-3

Head Coach: Melissa Pacific Assistant Coaches: Lee Young ’82, Tim Quint Captains: Kaleigh Conte ’18, Johna Vandergraaf ’18, Lydia Anderson ’19 MVP: Kaleigh Conte

BOYS SWIMMING & DIVING RECORD: 7-2 2ND PLACE IN NEW ENGLAND

Head Coach: Don Mills Assistant Coach: Avery Reavill ’12 Captains: Joaquin Riojas Zambrano ’18, Harry Saunders ’18, Taylor Walshe ’18, Maxx Murray ’19 MVPs: Andrew Benson ’19, James Cassidy ’18

GIRLS SQUASH RECORD: 8-9

Head Coach: Bruce Shang Assistant Coach: Mercy Carbonell Captains: Chandler Jean-Jacques ’19, Katie Lee ’18 MVP: Anna Reaman ’18

BOYS HOCKEY RECORD: 24-6-2

Head Coach: Dana Barbin Assistant Coaches: Mark Evans, Tim Mitropoulos ’10 Captains: Kyle Jadatz ’18, Sam Stone ’18 MVP: Kyle Jadatz

WRESTLING RECORD: 7-4 NEPSAC CLASS A CHAMPIONS

Head Coach: David Hudson Assistant Coaches: Bob Brown, Ted Davis Captain: Kevin Lyskawa ’18 MVP: Kevin Lyskawa

GIRLS INDOOR TRACK & FIELD RECORD: 1-1

Head Coach: Hilary Coder Hall Assistant Coaches: Toyin Ikwuakor, Brandon Newbould, Richard Hardej, Steve Holmes, Hillary Holmes Captains: Anna Clark ’18, Chi-Chi Ikpeazu ’18, Claire Melvin ’18 MVP: Margaret Hock ’19

GIRLS BASKETBALL RECORD: 1-18

Head Coach: Hadley Camilus Assistant Coaches: Colleen Brockmyre Captains: Ella Johnson ’18, Olivia Lei ’18, Sammie Weaver ’18 MVP: Sammie Weaver PHOTOS: D A M I A N S T R O H M E Y E R : B OY S S Q U A S H , G I R L S H O C K E Y, B OY S H O C K E Y, B OY S B A S K E T B A L L C H E R Y L S E N T E R : G I R L S T R A C K , B OY S T R A C K B R I A N M U L D O O N : G I R L S S W I M M I N G , B OY S S W I M M I N G , G I R L S S Q U A S H , B OY S S Q U A S H , B OY S W R E S T L I N G

BOYS INDOOR TRACK & FIELD RECORD: 0-2

Head Coach: Hilary Coder Hall Assistant Coaches: Toyin Ikwuakor, Brandon Newbould, Richard Hardej, Steve Holmes, Hillary Holmes Captains: Cedric Blaise ’18, Gregory Zhu ’18 MVP: William Coogan ’20

“WE ARE THE STEWARDS OF A COMMUNITY THAT MEANS SO MUCH TO ALL OF US.”

CHERYL SENTER

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CONNECTIONS

News and notes from the alumni community

Our Exeter

By Tony Downer ’75; P’06, P’06, P’07 President of the Trustees

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xeter is blessed with a remarkable alumni

community — remarkably bright, diverse, challenging, engaged and generous. Some of the true treasures of serving as president of the Trustees are the many opportunities I have to interact with you.

Your capabilities and accomplishments shine through in abundance. Set your Google alert to “Phillips Exeter Academy,” and you will be reminded on a nearly daily basis of how one among you has made a very real difference in her or his community or field.

And wherever you are — our 21,000-plus alums have dispersed themselves around the world and across the full panoply of disciplines and pursuits — you care deeply about the Exeter you attended, and you are devoted to the preservation of the school, its values and its standards.

When I speak with you, I am invariably impressed by how many different “Exeters” live on in your hearts and minds. The all-boys Exeter, the early coed Exeter, the Exeter of the past 10 years — each of these, while sharing a common address, is worlds apart from the rest in terms of the experiences provided and the memories sparked.

(If you are looking for your own proof of this, just observe the range of reactions the words “Dean Kessler” trigger — from beaded sweat to blank stares — across our different vintages.)

But there are elements of DNA that thread consistently across the eras: excellence, Harkness, friendships made for life, and a teacher, coach or adviser who still informs your values and worldview. You embrace those

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DNA strands and insist that we — those who currently hold responsibility for the Academy’s well-being — preserve and advance those defining traits.

Because you care as much as you do, you share your insightful perspectives and advice freely, and our decisions and actions always benefit from your input. Please keep it coming. Particularly when we fall short, continue to let us know; we are the stewards of a community that means so much to all of us, and our duty as leadership is to hand the school to our successors improved in every way we can. We welcome your incredibly thoughtful and passionate recommendations even as they challenge us — and even as we balance them against your classmates’ equally thoughtful and passionate voices on the opposite side of the issue. Our decisions or actions may not always align with your recommendations, but please know that we value your views.

Finally, you are generous. Generous with your time, with your advocacy and with your treasure. Whether at the class level, the city level or via affinity groups, you come together to be together, to share your common heritage and to celebrate what the school and what each of you mean to one another. The energy and passion that prevail at those gatherings attest to how Exeter is in no way confined to 03833. Today’s Exeter would be a faint shadow of its present self without the financial support that you and generations of our predecessors have provided. The school was born out of an act of philanthropy — John and Elizabeth Phillips bequeathed a significant amount of land to establish the Academy — and that tradition of philanthropy is carried on vigorously today, though in different forms. (I don’t think that John Phillips ever conceived of a web-based day of giving.)

On behalf of my fellow Trustees, my thanks to all of you for the care, the counsel and the support you provide so heartily to our Exeter. E

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An Attitude for Altitude

By Craig Morgan ’84

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dward Mills’ love affair with the F-86 F Sabre fighter plane began as an arranged marriage.

Mills ’51 had been accepted to Princeton, but his father attached conditions to that enrollment.

Alfred Mills ’27 had been a commanding officer in the U.S. Navy and had taken part in the D-Day invasion during World War II. “He was very proud of his military service,” Ed Mills says. “He strongly felt and communicated to me that because of our relatively privileged position, we owed service to the country. He did say, ‘If you don’t do it, I’m not going to send you to Princeton.’ ” Mills immediately enrolled in Princeton’s ROTC unit. In 1956, a year after graduation, he drove from New Jersey to Texas with Exeter and Princeton classmate George Hackl to begin Air Force pilot training.

The initial training occurred in a smaller plane with an instructor, but Mills’ maiden voyage in the single-seat F-86 F was dreamlike.

“I still wonder about that trust factor in your training to let you fly it by yourself,” Mills says, chuckling. “Somebody flies next to you, an accomplished pilot, so if you do get in some kind of bind or forget something, he’s sitting 30 feet away and can talk to you on the radio and give you some coaching. I didn’t need the coaching. It was astonishing. This beautiful airplane was flying exactly as I wanted it to.

“When we got up to altitude, the chase pilot said on the radio, ‘Do you want to roll it?’ I said, ‘Well, yes sir.’

He said, ‘Just move the stick about an inch.’ I did and this beautiful airplane rolls upside down, all the way around and back to right-side up and comes back to exactly the same position. That told us how maneuverable and responsive the plane was.”

Mills’ book, Beautiful Sabre: A USAF Pilot’s Memoir

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of Gunnery School and Flying the Storied F-86 F, was published by Hellgate Press in May 2017. He dedicated the book to Hackl and Tony Ross, another Exeter classmate with whom he lived in Soule Hall and who became a pilot.

Mills, 84, worked for Exxon Corporation for 19 years and later served as CEO for North Atlantic Refining Ltd. He has lived in retirement in Bonita Springs, Florida, since 2014.

Mills has not flown in about five years. He says he wrote the book partly to honor what he calls “the most beautiful airplane ever constructed,” partly to reminisce with friends, and partly to leave a lasting memoir of that seminal time in his life for his children, Gay, 61, Laura, 60, and Edward, 58.

“I enjoyed the thought that they would understand what the old man was up to before they came on this earth,” Mills says.

“I think it was also to capture a part of my life that was 60-plus years ago. I thought if I didn’t write it down, it would be, to some extent, lost.”

Six decades later, the sensation of flying the F-86 F is still a vivid and cherished memory.

“It begins with the extraordinary beauty of the environment,” Mills says. “If you see a cumulus cloud rising up 20,000 feet and you want to fly straight down its face for the fun of it, you do, and it looks absolutely gorgeous with other clouds around you and the sky and the light changing.

“Most of us took that airplane up as high as it would go. In those days, it didn’t get much higher than 47,000 feet, but once you got up there you realized the sky wasn’t blue any more. It was black. To discover aspects of the world that were unexpected was a function of being able to fly up there in this beautiful bird.” E

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An EPA Legal Eagle

By Janet Reynolds

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lise Packard’s younger self, the shy girl who entered Exeter as a lower and initially preferred to listen rather than talk around the Harkness table, might be surprised to meet the adult Elise.

That Elise is associate general counsel at the federal Environmental Protection Agency and is quite used to managing high-power clients and facing off with lawyers about appropriations law and other matters.

“Exeter was a formative experience in terms of how I think and developing my self-confidence and the ability to talk,” she says. She launches into a story about introducing a speaker. The teacher working with her took her to the auditorium to practice. “He made me do Tarzan yells from the stage to make me comfortable with speaking out,” says Packard, who began working with the Academy’s advancement team as a student and has served as class agent since graduation.

Packard says she still feels Exeter’s influence daily. “The concept of collegial ability to have a discussion and get to some kind of consensus about whatever the issue is, that came out of the Harkness table,” she says. “The idea of batting ideas around and, as a group, getting to a place you wouldn’t have gotten to on your own.”

Packard graduated Georgetown Law expecting to focus on trust and estate work. She clerked for Judge Judith Rogers, who at the time was on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, the highest court in D.C. “I learned so much from her — how to look at a case, how to analyze things,” Packard says.

“It gave me a standard for writing and for legal analysis that I’ve carried through,” she adds. “It gave me a nice appreciation for the breadth of what comes before a court, because I got to see all kinds of law.”

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Packard spent 20 years at the federal Department of Commerce before beginning her current position at the EPA. Her specialty is appropriations law, which basically focuses on how the executive branch can spend its money. While at the Department of Commerce, she managed more than 30 legal areas, involving everything from international trade issues to the census. “The clients were varied and the questions [quite] varied, so it was unendingly interesting,” she says.

While not unhappy with that job — Packard had risen in the ranks to manage her department — she applied to the EPA because the job there as associate general counsel for civil rights and finance would include civil rights, contracts and grants, as well as appropriations. “That’s a nice segue to try something new,” she says.

Her theory about the variety has proved right in her four years at the agency so far. “I work with all the offices in the EPA,” she says. “You can interact with all kinds of policy experts and scientists.

What I have loved about this law is it is constantly new and you can be on the cutting edge of what is going on.

“I really like managing people,” she adds. “I enjoy the challenges of seeing the issues of people working for me and having them work through that.”

Those management skills can be traced to her Exeter days, as well. After initially being “miserably homesick,” Packard says she found her niche in the theater, working behind the scenes, first on costumes and property before becoming stage manager for various productions. “That’s where I started finding my footing,” she says.

By her senior year, she had moved onto the stage and was performing a one-woman show. The shy Elise was gone for good. E

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Gone but No Longer Forgotten

By Lynn Horowitch ’81; P’19

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ayvon Mitchell Pendleton had just passed the civil

service exam for a job with the city of Philadelphia’s water department when he was shot and killed as he and a friend walked in his neighborhood on March 2, 2016. He was 20 years old.

Tamara Johnson, 21, was studying to be a neonatal nurse and was the single mom of a 2-year-old daughter.

She was gunned down in her Point Breeze neighborhood on April 12, 2009.

Alexander “Tito” Martinez, 23, had passions for doing hair and makeup and for art. He was killed in a stickup on Jan. 9, 2012.

History remembers them a little better today thanks to Cletus Lyman ’63 and his Philadelphia Obituary Project (phillyobitproject.com).

Disheartened that so many victims of homicides in his adopted hometown were relegated in the official record to an anonymous dot on a map, Lyman launched the website last year to ensure an appropriate memorial for the slain.

“News reports would provide the intersection where a homicide occurred,” Lyman observes. “They would provide the age of the victim, and whether they died on the scene or at the hospital, but no further information.”

This urban journalistic practice, common in major U.S. cities, didn’t sit well with Lyman. He grew up in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, population around 23,000, where, he noted, “Everybody who died got an obit.” He left Hazleton to attend Exeter, then Yale, class of 1967. Lyman moved to Philadelphia to attend graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania, from which he also earned his law degree, in 1971. The next year, he founded Lyman & Ash, a small law firm in downtown Philadelphia “with a history of protecting the rights of individuals.”

As an attorney dealing solely with civil matters, Lyman had not spent much time in criminal court until he was called several years ago for jury duty. When he and other

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prospective jurors were interviewed to serve on cases, he was struck by how many people had a connection with or were related to a homicide victim.

Given that so many people in Philadelphia had such connections and knowing that the media presented impersonal and perfunctory accounts of many of them, Lyman laid the groundwork for his website. Begun in September 2016 and launched in June 2017, the site features photos and obituaries for Philadelphia’s previously forgotten homicide victims. Lyman, currently the sole benefactor for the project, which he runs as a nonprofit organization, has retained an editor and two journalists to gather information, write and post the obituaries.

The team has created a compendium of life stories, celebrating achievements, educational records, personal connections and distinct qualities. The website also features names and photos of victims still to be commemorated, with requests for information.

The project is progressing smoothly, now that there is a live site populated with stories. It wasn’t so easy at the beginning, Lyman recalls. “People thought we were the cops or undertakers; we didn’t get much cooperation,” he says. Now that the team can point to a critical mass of obituaries, the response has shifted. Many people are eager to share details of their loved ones’ lives. In some of the obituaries, a killer is mentioned. In others, readers are encouraged to call a tip line with any information.

The initiative has garnered the attention of the media.

Lyman was featured on a segment of the local NPR station’s All Things Considered program. The Associated Press and a London publication have covered it.

For Lyman, The Obituary Project is meaningful and rewarding. He says, “The way the news organizations covered homicides was just so anonymous. And just so wrong.” E

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THANK-ADONOR DAY The generosity of our donors keeps Harkness discussions lively, makes course offerings plentiful, helps Big Red teams compete and fosters a diverse and inclusive Exeter community.

Our students paused their busy lives one day last term to thank donors for helping to foster the Exeter difference. Academy Trustee Peter Georgescu ’57 delivered a powerful assembly address, reminding his fellow Exonians that the chance to say thank you is itself a gift.

“Gratitude opens my arms and heart to those around me, particularly to those in need,” he said.

“Gratitude has propelled me to empathy and to caring for others more than myself and allowed me to give and to love.

“So today I am here to simply say, ‘Thank you, Exeter.’ ”

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A Hero’s Life S T E P H E N C R A B T R E E ’4 2 I N S P I R E S A N E W F I N A N C I A L A I D F U N D

By Stephen Jones

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here were approximately 300,000 American combat deaths in World War II. Among them was Stephen Mason Crabtree, Exeter class of 1942. These tragedies are remembered with statues in town squares and on memorial walls across the country. Steve’s name appears in Exeter’s Assembly Hall; in Dunster House at Harvard; in Grace Episcopal Church in Newton, Massachusetts; and on an engraved brick outside the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.

Each of the losses represents a unique human story, most of which, seven decades later, have passed into history. An epitaph at the Gettysburg Museum and Visitor Center perfectly captures the effects of these individual tragedies.

Referring to the great number of deaths on both sides during the Civil War, it reads: “Every name is a lightning stroke to some heart, and breaks like thunder over some home, and falls a long black shadow across some hearthstone.”

Such was the strike inflicted on the Crabtree home in Newton Centre, Massachusetts, when news of the combat death of 20-year-old Stephen, the family’s youngest, arrived in April 1945.

Preserving the human story of Stephen Crabtree is the motivating factor in establishing the Stephen Mason Crabtree, Class of 1942, Financial Aid Fund at Phillips Exeter Academy. Hallmarks of his brief life were leadership, patriotism, duty and quiet accomplishment, all traits that came to full bloom in his Exeter years.

Amid World War II, Exeter students in the winter of 1942 were conducting blackout and building evacuation exercises. Courses in first aid and airplane trigonometry

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were offered. New students arriving from England reported the suffering and destruction in their homeland.

Debate societies strongly disapproved of Hitler’s policies, reflecting the prevailing campus sentiment of the day.

Such was the environment from which Steve graduated, and which he found at Harvard, where he enrolled as a premed student. An honor student at Exeter, Steve achieved the same distinction at Harvard.

Nonetheless, the war pulled deeply at his sense of patriotism, and he left college to enlist in the Army at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, in February 1943.

He chose to serve in the most basic manner — as an enlisted infantryman.

It wasn’t a glamorous choice, and Steve would have had many easier and safer avenues available. He would not have been drafted because he suffered from poor vision, but he memorized eyesight examination tables in order to pass the exam. And as a premed student he could have exempted himself, as the country expected a shortage of physicians. But he persisted in a cause he believed was right.

By all accounts, Army life agreed with Steve. He was first assigned to the 10th Mountain Division at Camp Hale, Colorado, then to the Army Specialized Training Program at the University of South Dakota, and, finally to I Company, 386th Infantry Regiment, 97th Infantry Division in 1944.

Disembarking at Le Havre, France, in February 1945, the 97th traversed France and Belgium into Germany, through Aachen, and on to the Rhine, all war-torn areas.

On April 3, he wrote his mother, “Dear Mom, I am in [Germany], and as I am in the Infantry you can imagine what I will be doing. Right now things are happening so

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fast that it is difficult to keep the correct mental perspective.” Cheerfully, on April 4 he wrote, “I am fit and well and think of you and home always. Send some chow!”

But later he wrote, “It isn’t until you get over here and start playing for keeps that you realize what they have done, and are still doing to you personally.” He refers angrily to “privation, pain, and suffering.”

Steve’s unit eventually came under enemy fire at Neuss, near Dusseldorf, Germany. They crossed the Rhine south of Bonn and made their way north to the Sieg River. Steve volunteered for hazardous night patrols across the Sieg, locating enemy positions.

I Company went on offense on April 10, crossing the Sieg River on small rubber boats and proceeding northwest with the goal of taking the city of Solingen. They were a part of the Ruhr Pocket, an operation in the Ruhr area intended to destroy the last of Germany’s industrial capacity.

I Company advanced northwest through up-sloping woods onto an open plain at Ober Hulschied, a small crossroads, when they hit a German strong point and were attacked. Twelve Americans were wounded and four were killed — including Steve.

He was killed instantly by a shell burst from an 88-mm cannon.

Frank Lazlo reported that both he and Steve hit the ground, almost side by side, at the same time.

There was an explosion. Frank got up and Steve didn’t. Two other fellow soldiers, Paul Piccard and Jim Moore, saw Steve lying dead on the ground with a hole in his helmet. A few weeks later, the war in Europe was over.

The first in I Company to receive the Combat Infantryman Badge, Steve was awarded the Purple Heart posthumously. His battalion commander wrote that “his excellent traits of character set the example for all the men of his organization” and that “he was a man who wasn’t satisfied with the best; he wanted to do better.”

His company commander wrote that “[Steve] was one of the best soldiers I commanded. He was very well-liked by all his comrades and a natural leader.”

Stephen Mason Crabtree was born on Aug. 30, 1924, in Brookline, Massachusetts. His father, Dr. Harvard H.

Crabtree, was a prominent urologist in Boston. Dr. Crabtree rose from humble beginnings in Hancock, Maine, to graduate summa cum laude from Harvard College and Harvard Medical School. He lamented that his years at Harvard were very difficult, as he lacked the preparation enjoyed by most of his classmates. Wishing a better collegiate experience for his own sons, he enrolled Harvard H. Crabtree Jr. (class of 1937) and Stephen at PEA. Stephen Crabtree was my uncle, and Dr. Crabtree was my grandfather. Steve died before I was born. As a boy and young man, I spent many weeks and months living at my grandfather’s house at 1029 Beacon Street in Newton Centre.

I learned much about my Uncle Steve from my grandfather during those times.

I have seen the indelible grief such a loss inflicts on a family.

Later, I had several occasions to attend I Company reunions and to meet and visit with several men who served with Steve. To a person, they confirmed every one of Steve’s traits and characteristics that his father had conveyed to me years earlier. I visited the area and site of his death on two occasions. On the second visit, in 1995, I was accompanied by David Robinson, a sergeant in I Company.

Interviews during the 1990s with several of Steve’s Army colleagues consistently portray him as a regular guy, one of the team, even though the rest of the team didn’t have backgrounds of Exeter and Harvard. He fit in. He was liked, respected and trusted. Similarly, Steve enjoyed the camaraderie of enlisted life, as evidenced by his repeatedly declining offers to enroll in Officer Candidate School. He felt a loyalty to his peers.

Steve’s mother wrote to the Academy in May 1945: “We are increasingly grateful to you all at Exeter for giving Stephen his happiest years. The many interests and plans, fostered by association with friendly, understanding teachers and comrades, filled him with a zest for life and appreciation of solid worth wherever found.”

Archival material related to this narrative is maintained at PEA. Annually, on the anniversary of his death on April 10, the Academy will fly the American flag that accompanied Cpl. Crabtree’s remains as they were transferred home after the war. E

THE WAR PULLED

DEEPLY AT

HIS SENSE OF PATRIOTISM, AND HE LEFT COLLEGE TO

ENLIST IN THE ARMY.

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FROM EVERY QUARTER E XO N I A N S M A K E C O N N E C T I O N S AT H O M E A N D A R O U N D T H E WO R L D Please note, all photos are identified left to right unless otherwise indicated.

NEW YORK The Exeter Association of Greater New York welcomed alumni, parents, families and friends to its annual reception in January.

Shannon (Guy) Errico ’04, Mark Weisenborn ’98 and his wife, Joyce

Edward Dippold, Debby D’Arcangelo ’82 and Youn Lee ’97

Rob Lamb P’17, with daughter Sydney ’17

Principal Lisa MacFarlane ’66 (Hon.); P’09, P’13 and Andre Francois ’86

Featured speaker and 2017 John Phillips Award recipient Zach Iscol ’97 with his wife, Meredith Melling, and father, Ken Iscol P’97

Special faculty guests included Rob Morris, instructor in health and physical education. He is pictured here with Kate Elkin ’06; Madeleine (Kennedy) Saraceni ’03; and Mike Saraceni ’00.

John Lane ’52 and Frederic Sater ’52; P’80 NEW YORK PHOTOGRAPHS HAROLD HECHLER

See more event photos at www.exeter.edu/receptions.

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Fellow members of the class of ’97 gathered with Zach Iscol after his remarks.

Class of 2003 members Lily Dionne-Jermanovich, Katherine (Powers) Cuomo and Hannah (Knipple) Elsevier

Moni Owoade, Kehinde Odusote, Eileen Wong and Wesley Abram, all class of 2013

EXETER-ANDOVER ESCAPE ROOM During a friendly competition, New Yorkarea alums beat their Andover counterparts by “escaping” from the Egyptian tomb in 48:08.

Alan Jones ’72, Jocelyn Bohn ’11 and Julio Peterson ’86

NEW YORK NON SIBI Exonians from the New York area gathered for a happy hour in December in support of the Toys for Tots program.

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CALIFORNIA: THE PENINSULA A festive cocktail reception at the Menlo Circus Club was one of several events in the Bay Area.

Jen Holleran ’86 and Sasha Stitt Gifford ’82

Jordon Wang ’00, Jeff Kang ’98 and Charlie Chen ’00

Mike Shim ’91 addressed the crowd of Exonians at the Peninsula reception.

English instructor Mercy Carbonell, with Dick Lee ’53 and his wife Patricia

Dana Tung ’15, Chinedum Egbosimba ’14 and John Barton ’78 Christopher Lee P’16, P’18, P’21; Nathan Lee ’21; Elianne Lee ’18; and Clare Lee P’16, P’18, P’21

See more event photos at www.exeter.edu/receptions.

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CALIFORNIA: THE PRESIDIO

Charlie Gill ’12 and Luke Brugger ’12

Principal Lisa MacFarlane ’66 (Hon.); P’09, P’13 greeted Cottrell Armistad ’71 and John Monroe ’71 at the Presidio in March.

Dieter Brommer ’07, Sarah Vick ’05, Parth Bhakta ’09 and Max Bodoia ’10

The Exeter Association of Northern California gathered alumni, faculty, family and friends together for a reception at the Golden Gate Club in San Francisco.

Hilary Kivitz ’89, Camilla (Norman) Field ’93, Gabrielle Kivitz ’93, Susan Schuster ’93 and Ashling McAnaney ’92

BAY AREA PARENTS Host Ellie Wehlen P’19 (right) with Betsy Dallape P’18 (left) and Christina Tan P’14, P’19 at a parent gathering in January. Theater Instructor Sarah Ream ’75; P’09, P’11 and Science Instructor David Gulick (not pictured) led a Q&A. Exonians group up for a photo-op with Principal Emeritus Ty Tingley.

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LOS ANGELES This year, the Exeter Association of Greater Los Angeles held its annual reception at the Steven J. Ross Theater on the Warner Bros. Studio Lot in Burbank.

Regional Association Vice President Geoffrey Cheng ’12 addressed the crowd while Jackie Hayes ’85 looked on, with Regional Association President Graham LippSmith ’95, Principal Lisa MacFarlane and Trustee Doug Smith ’83.

Lindsey Ricker ’96; Emily Lehrer ’99 and daughter Chava; and Robert Myhill with his wife, Theater Instructor Sarah Ream ’75, P’09, P’11 Doug Smith ’83 with Tom Samiljan ’85 and guest Maximillian Shrem in Los Angeles

Valerie Kosheleff ’95 and Ian Ingram ’95 Uni Choe ’08, Bryan Koo ’05 and Sam Sweeney ’06

During the reception at the Steven J. Ross Theater at Warner Bros. Studios, Exonians had the chance to tour the Warner Bros. archive museum.

Special thanks to Trustee Jacqueline “Jackie” Hayes ’85 for making this opportunity possible.

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Gloria Mayorga-Garcia ’13 dons the famous Hogwarts Sorting Hat as she tours the Warner Bros. archives.

Min-Jae Kim ’11 and Tony Bai ’88

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COAST TO COAST AND BEYOND Alumni gatherings brought Exonians together for good conversations and great company.

TACOMA Tacoma Art Museum board member Anthony Chen ’78 helped organize a guided tour of the exhibition “In Search of the Lost History of Chinese Migrants and the Transcontinental Railroads,” led by the artist, Zhi Lin. Following the tour, Barton Truscott ’78 conducted a Harkness discussion.

PHILADELPHIA Alums from the Philly area gathered for some skating fun in February.

SEACOAST NEW HAMPSHIRE Susan Dromey Heeter P’18 and Lisa (Cummings) Kramer ’93 were among the revelers at a skating party in Exeter.

ATLANTA The Exeter Association of Georgia hosted a reception at the Carter Presidential Center in November.

John Brooks ’79 and Betsy McKay ’79

Mike Weaver P’15, Scott Mitchell ’89, Ellen Cordle ’89 and Russell Washington ’89

Won Lee ’86 with John Fuller ’86 and his daughter, recently admitted student Emily Grace Fuller ’21

Keagan Russo ’99, president of the Exeter Association of Georgia, addressed the Exonian crowd at the reception in Atlanta this winter.

See more event photos at www.exeter.edu/receptions.

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LONDON Exonians in the United Kingdom connected at a reception in London.

Institutional Advancement Director Morgan Dudley ’77 and U.K. Regional Association President Dick Schumacher ’83

Sam Brooks ’96, Sam Greene ’94 and Yasheng Lin ’13

Karl Ludvigsen ’52; P’80, Annette Ludvigsen and Ramsey Haddad ’79 Christina Murdock ’05, Fletcher Williams ’12 and Derek Chang ’85

MANILA A dinner in Manila gave alumni in the Philippines a chance to mingle in March.

(Standing) Clarissa Delgado ’04 and Ning and Zaki Delgado ’97; (sitting) Apa Ongpin ’83, Chuck Ramsay P’21, director of principal and major gifts, and Andy Locsin ’80 and his wife, Mailin

See more event photos at www.exeter.edu/receptions.

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FLORIDA Exeter alumni and parents gathered at a number of social events around the Sunshine State in February.

Ceasar Cone ’58, Dick Breithaupt ’58, Diane Breithaupt and Bob DeVore ’58; P’95, P’00 at the Naples Botanical Garden

Hosts Bob Hoffman ’54 and Janet Hoffman, with Janet Bill and her husband, John Bill ’75, at a reception at the Windsor Beach Club

Nora Parell P’18 (right) hosted Primrose Williams P’20 and other parents and alumni at her home in Hillsboro.

COSTA RICA BIRDING Guided by Science Instructors Chris Matlack and Richard Aaronian, Exonians encountered the beauty and biodiversity of Costa Rica.

EXETER EXPEDITIONS The spirit of Harkness met the passion of Exeter instructors to create extraordinary travel opportunities for alumni, parents and friends.

NORTHERN LIGHTS Adventurous alumni and parents, pictured here at Thingvellir National Park in Iceland, visited the country with English Instructor and Sustainability Education Coordinator Jason BreMiller in March.

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F I N I S

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P E N D E T

Heartshot

By Claudia Putnam ’81, 2011-12 Bennett Fellow

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ALLAN BURCH

hat does it mean if a heart-shot, bowshot stag tears on dead legs through the fuel load on your canyon’s north side, exits the woods to die beneath your window at dawn?

If you are a poet and a novelist?

What if you have Frida, antlers springing from her head, stag’s body pierced with arrows, several to the heart, forest mysterious around her, that print of all prints above your desk, the desk you use to write web copy instead of poems?

What if on a shelf in your study there’s a container with the ashes of your firstborn?

He died of a heart condition. What has this stag with its blown heart come to say to you? Shot a mile from your house, this animal which could have run in any direction at all?

What if you’ve moved to this house in the wake of divorce? Sometimes you wake sucking air, as if your lungs have stopped. While the stag dies in your yard, dies in its very leap to your yard, you burst from dreams in which lions, wolves stalk your living son.

He’s 8. His heart, you’ve already seen, is not getting through the divorce merely “broken.”

When your dogs bark into that dawn, you go looking for what they know. What can you hunt but metaphor?

Meanwhile, your alluvial well coughs, sputters, dries, your car battery dies and dies. A tame crow will visit the following year, flying to your shoulder, pacing the backs of your neighbors as they pull food from the earth.

You leave the stag’s body, go of course to your desk.

Hunter. Prey. Arrow. Heart. Hart. You look out into the meadow, yellow now in sunfall piercing the canyon cleft.

Already no sign where the deer fell. Not a speck of blood, everything hurried away by man, rodent, ant. Aspens feign stillness. Forest mysterious around you. You type on the laptop given to you by the IT department at Leopard, your marketing agency. You patter everything out in a rush.

How you waited on the back deck in your oversize T-shirt, thick wool socks. You hadn’t heard a shot, hadn’t imagined a bow. You were still thinking of Frida, the fletching sticking out of the body of the buck. You’d never seen a modern bolt, didn’t know how it would saw through the heart, head off on a further trajectory of its own. T-shirt, socks. You were wondering who to call, how to dispose of the body before Wild Kingdom arrived. Coyotes and lions.

And then you type: Thirty minutes later the men in camouflage showed up.

That’s when you know you have something.

Where do you get your ideas, the kids at Exeter wanted to know. I didn’t know it was a common question. Exeter, during the Bennett Fellowship, was the first to force me into that real-writer role. A science-fiction author is famous for responding “Poughkeepsie.” That’s not a bad answer; technically, the location of my “idea” would be Lefthand Canyon, outside Boulder.

Lefthand Canyon, as one might guess from the name, is a good place for getting ideas and also for fleshing them out. It’s an edgy, wild place. It’s got megafauna, interesting plant species. Weather and wildfires. Colorful people accrete there or erode into it.

The stag is not an idea, though. He’s an occasion, an invitation. A big-time troublemaker for me. Like John Irving’s dancing bear, maybe.

He’s already turned up in a couple of poems; now he’s in a novella that may be part of a novel. Here he is in this essay. I didn’t know the stag would appear in this piece, though. I no longer live in Lefthand; the Frida print has been put away for years. Had I not unwrapped her a day or so before the Bulletin deadline … .

In the novella, which I began as a side project during my Bennett year, the protagonist tries to force meanings out of signs and significations. Not only because she is a poet.

She was taught to do this. For example, at her boarding school, her history teacher asked her class: Would Russia have modernized without Peter the Great — how important are individuals in history? Another teacher asked whether Falstaff was a tragic or comedic character. She was prodded to discuss Irving’s bear. What is the meaning of this?

I hope my character finds some. Readers are so lucky, especially when we’re around Harkness tables. All the things we get to come up with! As a writer, my hands are in the dirt, there’s a crow kneading my shoulders.

The men in camouflage push through the scrub oak, trod the low-lying juniper. Dew lifts, fir trees dance as if to catch sun in their layered aprons. In a small yellow meadow in Lefthand Canyon, a tiny stucco house stands alone. The deer in the yard is a giant. The woman inside is writing. Soon a fist will strike the door. E Editor’s note: The George Bennett Fellowship celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Established by Elias B.M. Kulukundis ’55 in honor of PEA English Instructor George Bennett, the yearlong fellowship provides writers “of outstanding promise” with support they need to pursue their craft. To commemorate the anniversary, we will feature a Bennett Fellow in each Bulletin issue during the 2017-18 academic year.

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IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, JOHN AND ELIZABETH PHILLIPS STARTED A REVOLUTION OF THEIR OWN. THEY BELIEVED IN THE FUTURE OF OUR NEW COUNTRY, AND IN THE POTENTIAL OF THOSE WHO WOULD SOMEDAY LEAD IT. THEIR BEQUEST HELPED A FLEDGLING ACADEMY PROSPER.

WHAT WILL BE THE LEGACY OF YOUR ESTATE PLAN?

Many Exonians choose to put Exeter in their wills.

Our Planned Giving Office will help you and your advisers as you consider a lasting gift to PEA. Please contact Phil Perham at 603-777-3594 or pperham@exeter.edu

20 Main Street Exeter, NH 03833-2460 Parents of Alumni: If this magazine is addressed to a son or daughter who no longer maintains a permanent address at your home, please email us (records@exeter.edu) with his or her new address. Thank you.

Š B R U C E T. M A R T I N . A L L O T H E R R I G H T S R E S E R V E D