T H E E X E TT HE ER
The Exeter Bulletin FA L L 2 0 2 1
EB XU EL TL EE RT I BN U L L E T I N F A L L
Beyond the Book
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50 Years of the Class of 1945 Library
Watch for Day of Giving 2021 Wednesday, December 8
WAYS TO FUEL LEARNING AT EXETER
EXETER’S IMMEDIATE PRIORITIES / ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE / STUDENT FINANCIAL AID / EQUITY AND INCLUSION HEALTH AND WELLNESS / THE ARTS / GLOBAL PROGRAMS / ATHLETICS
One hundred years ago, Exonians launched The Exeter Fund to directly benefit students on campus. Our tradition is still going strong. To mark this anniversary, donors can now designate their gifts to the programs that matter most to them, personally. Every donor’s choice contributes to the unforgettable scope and diversity of an Exeter education. What will you choose, and who will you inspire? exeter.edu/give
The Exeter Bulletin Principal William K. Rawson ’71; P’08 Director of Communications Robin Giampa Executive Editor Jennifer Wagner Contributing Editor Patrick Garrity Class Notes Editor Cathy Webber Editorial Coordinator Maxine Weed Creative Director/Design David Nelson, Nelson Design Contributing Designer Jacqueline Trimmer Photography Editor Christian Harrison 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 Morgan C.W. Sze ’83 Vice President Deidre G. O’Byrne ’84 Wole C. Coaxum ’88, Suzi Kwon Cohen ’88, Mark A. Edwards ’78, Elizabeth A. “Betsy” Fleming ’86, Claudine Gay ’88, Peter A. Georgescu ’57, Scott S.W. Hahn ’90, Jacqueline Hayes ’85, Ira D. Helfand, M.D. ’67, Jennifer P. Holleran ’86, Cia Buckley Marakovits ’83, Sally J. Michaels ’82, William K. Rawson ’71, Genisha Saverimuthu ’02, Peter M. Scocimara ’82, Sanjay K. Shetty, M.D. ’92, Serena Wille Sides ’89, Kristyn A. (McLeod) Van Ostern ’96, Janney Wilson ’83 The Exeter Bulletin (ISSN No. 0195-0207) is published four times each year: fall, winter, spring and summer, by Phillips Exeter Academy 20 Main Street, Exeter NH 03833-2460 Telephone 603-772-4311 Periodicals postage paid at Exeter, NH, and at additional mailing offices. Printed in the USA by Cummings Printing. The Exeter Bulletin is printed on recycled paper and sent free of charge to alumni, parents, grandparents, friends and educational institutions by Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH. Communications may be addressed to the editor; email bulletin@exeter.edu. Copyright 2021 by the Trustees of Phillips Exeter Academy. ISSN-0195-0207 Postmasters: Send address changes to: Phillips Exeter Academy Records Office 20 Main Street Exeter, NH 03833-2460
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“OUR LIBRARY IS A PLACE OF STORED MEMORIES AND SHARED EXPERIENCES, ... A PLACE WHERE THE HOLDINGS ARE JUST THE BEGINNING OF THE STORY.” —page 32
IN THIS ISSUE
Volume CXXVI, Issue no. 1
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Features 32 Beyond the Book KATHERINE TAYLOR
Celebrating five decades of discovery at the Class of 1945 Library. Plus: Alumni reflections on the iconic building. By Jack Herney ’46, ’69, ’71, ’74, ’92, ’95 (Hon.)
42 The Next Darwin?
Physicist Jeremy England ’99 and his theory of evolution. By Andrew Faught
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46 Academics Afield
From wrangling giraffes to advocating for immigrant rights, students pursue purpose-driven learning. By Sarah Pruitt ’95
52 Post from the Past
Letters penned in the 1890s offer rare perspective of Exeter. By Benjamin H. Lacy ’44
Departments 52
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Around the Table: Meet the new Dean of Students, Trustee Morgan Sze ’83 and more
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Exonians in Review
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Sports: New football and field hockey coaches take the field
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Connections: Sarah Ream ’75, Brendan Rosseau ’15, Abena Agyemang Higgins ’03, Bill Witkin ’39
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Class Notes COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY TOM KATES
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Do you see what I see? A drone captured this bird’s-eye view of the Academy Building rooftop forming the letter “E.” PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTIAN HARRISON
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AROUND THE TABLE
What’s new and notable at the Academy
Letters to the Editor FINAL CURTAIN CALL
TA B L E D T H E A RO U N
A theater is indeed a living thing — and Fisher Theater lived richly. Drab outside, it did nothing short of catalyze magic inside (with wizardry from the likes of Rob, Bette, Cary, Sarah and Linda). Thanks for this fulsome final tour — many out here in Alumniland would’ve been bereft without a goodbye to our old friend. Wilburn Bonnell ’00
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The Last Ac
Theater and Instructor in moment for Theater’s A thoughtful he visits Fisher Richards as the Dance Rob last time on shop” for the black box “work May 18, 2021. morning of
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code to watch Scan this QR film about Richards’ tribute theater. the beloved
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Wow, this really got me. Fisher Theater was my safe place at Exeter. Watching this [video] not only brought back so many great memories of performing on those stages, but also of long conversations with folks I still call friends today, and others I haven’t thought about in many years. Thank you for this. Jeff Locker ’89 I think some of the best life lessons I learned at Exeter happened in that building when I was a Dramat proctor. Ben Rooks ’83 A lovely tribute. Happy memories of doing props for A Man for All Seasons, and then chorus/lead dancer in The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1975). Carl Bradford Stibolt ’75 I was the stage manager for the last show in Fisher. Great memories on the couches backstage. Gonna miss it. Nick Song ’18 I grew up in that theater from age 5 and being a campus/director brat through my own graduation and a postgrad performance. Wow. That will be a hard one to not physically see. Hope I can find all of our pictures! Alanna Brown Embry ’05 Can’t imagine a better place to fall in love with theater. William Peeler ’21
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OUR GOLDEN GAFFE
We regret to report that our coverage of Exonian Olympians in the summer issue of The Exeter Bulletin was not worthy of even a bronze medal. The robust list of Exeter alumni who have competed in the Olympic Games was incomplete, omitting these four Olympians: James Sloane ’39 was a member of the 1948
U.S. hockey team at the St. Moritz Games that fell victim to a political tug-of-war between rival American hockey governing bodies. Sloane’s team was supported by the American Athletic Union and the U.S. Olympic Committee; a second U.S. team was sponsored by U.S. Amateur Hockey and an international hockey faction. An 11th-hour compromise allowed Sloane’s team to march in the opening ceremonies and allowed the other U.S. squad to compete in the Games.
Sloane
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Hugh Thompson ’53 was an alternate on
the U.S. rowing team’s men’s eights that won gold at the 1956 Melbourne Games. When his Yale teammates — who included Exonians Bill Becklean ’54, Bob Morey ’54 and Dave Wight ’52 — won the Olympic trials, Thompson was chosen as the starboard alternate and traveled to Australia with the team.
Paul Wilson ’62 was an alternate on the U.S. rowing team at the 1972 Munich Games. Wilson was a near-miss in the Olympic trials in the singles and doubles and at selection camp for the fours and eights. He was added to the U.S. team for depth and was in Munich for the Olympics along with fellow Big Red rower and Exeter classmate Larry Hough ’62. Alberto Campari Knoepffler ’77 represented
Nicaragua in swimming in the 1976 Montreal Games. A former Exeter school record-holder, Knoepffler competed in the freestyle, breaststroke and butterfly in Montreal. Our apologies for omitting these Olympians.
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From top: James Sloane ’39; Paul Wilson ’62 at the Head of the Charles Regatta in Boston; celebrating after winning the EARC at Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1962 are Wilson, Henry Saltonstall ’62, Jon Reider ’63 (cox), Larry Hough ’62, Charlie Welch ’62.
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Finding Joy
By Principal Bill Rawson ‘71; P’08
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hen I ask our students about their experiences at Exeter, they consistently express joy in being here, joy in their friendships, and joy in their sense of personal growth and accomplishment. And, of course, they express joy in being part of a school community blessed with an extraordinary range of opportunities. This feeling has been particularly palpable this fall term, as we have been able to be together on campus in ways not possible a year ago. Our students also have a strong sense of purpose. They pursue excellence in their studies and all else that they do here. They are willing to work hard, and seek to be challenged. They do all this with the same purpose that our school has had since its founding: to prepare students to lead purposeful lives. It is with this sense of purpose, and in the spirit of non sibi, that we want our students to go forward in life. As prior generations of Exonians know well, much of the joy and sense of purpose at Exeter also come from the way students learn from one another, through Harkness, inside and outside the classroom, and from the lifelong friendships that are formed in the process. We teach our students to listen and
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think critically, with open-minded curiosity about why others might think differently, and to engage across differences with empathy and respect. These are skills that our communities and the larger world need today. Learning in this way is challenging, yet fun, and a major component of the joy at Exeter. Together with purpose and joy also comes gratitude, expressed powerfully by Dr. Emery Brown, class of 1974, last year when he accepted the John and Elizabeth Phillips Award for his extraordinary contributions in the fields of science and medicine (www.exeter.edu/ emerybrown). Speaking with considerable emotion, Dr. Brown said, “Exeter helped me become basically who I am.” Students share this sense of gratitude while they are here; some will tell you they spend their entire summers waiting to come back. But my experience is that the sense of gratitude students have when they leave Exeter deepens with the passage of time, as they understand more fully the impact on their lives of their time here. As you read through this issue of The Bulletin, you will see purpose and joy in all that our students are accomplishing, and in the impact Exonians are having in the larger world. I hope you will read these stories with pride and gratitude, and be inspired by all that it means to be part of the Exeter community. E
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Our school’s mission is to unite goodness and knowledge and inspire youth from every quarter to lead purposeful lives.
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A Shared 3 E xperience R E VA M P E D ‘ E Q U I TA B L E E X E T E R EXPERIENCE’ PROGRAM OFFERS OPPORTUNITY TO BUILD COMMUNITY By Adam Loyd
Connections being made on the quad.
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t’s a day before the official start of the school
year, but the lively conversation spilling out of room 207 in Phillips Hall might have you believe the term is well underway. Inside, Instructor in English Courtney Marshall looks on as a prompt about pop music, meant to serve as an icebreaker, is bandied about by a group of students whose thaw around the Harkness table and with each other started days ago. The class is part of a three-day orientation program for minority and LGBTQ+ students and students with high financial need known
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as Equitable Exeter 3 Experience, or E . After a three-year hiatus, the program has been revamped and revived by Director of Equity and Inclusion Stephanie 3 Bramlett. “What the E program does is help students prepare for a school that may not necessarily be ready for them,” Bramlett says. “For some students, this is the most diverse place they’ve ever been. For other students this is the least diverse place they’ve ever been. So, what does it feel like to sit around the table and have the conversations about identity, which we’re asking them to do all the time, at a school like Exeter?” After students in Marshall’s class exchange thoughts on singers Taylor Swift and Harry Styles, they dive into a dynamic discussion of the poem “Abandoned Farmhouse” by Ted Kooser. This practice time at the Harkness table is an important way to acclimate new students to what is an often unfamiliar way of learning.
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environment. “Having the E community as people who understand your background, you have that shared understanding going through Exeter,” she says. “The [new students] get to know the mentors and the faculty, but I think also in meeting each other, they’ve already met so many people with whom they have shared backgrounds and shared experiences.” “This program is for the mentors as much as it is for the mentees,” Bramlett says. “This is the beauty of Exeter — everything that we do, we are growing together. So as mentors are leading, they are also learning,” Having participated in the program, prep Layla Whitaker ’25 says she felt ready for the first weeks of classes and used what she learned 3 to make others feel at home. “Because of E I was prepared and I knew where the buildings were and I knew people on campus. I was able to help others like new preps, and it always feels nice to know what you’re doing.” At the program’s closing ceremony, mentors and mentees form a large circle on the lawn in 3
Assistant Director of Equity and Inclusion Kevin PajaroMariñez snaps a group photo.
Another key component of the program is pairing the 48 incoming students with 21 returning student mentors. “We’re trying to create long-standing relationships that hopefully will continue this year so the new students can have someone they can look to even past this program,” says mentor Evan Gonzalez ’22. “I think one of the things we’ve talked about the most are the resources available to new students that they might not find out about until later.” Bramlett believes it’s crucial for students to have a full understanding of the access they have to resources like the Office of Multicultural Affairs and affinity groups. The more awareness students have of the opportunities around them, she says, the more agency they have to become involved: “One of the big levers that independent schools can pull is making sure that students are feeling like they are stakeholders in the institution before they even start classes.” Like Gonzalez, mentor Sanisha MahendraRajah ’23 hopes the program will provide students with a peer group as they settle into their new
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front of Wetherell Dining Hall. The students take turns sharing what they’ve learned over the three days before tossing a ball of yarn to the next speaker. “I learned there are a lot of amazing people and a lot of amazing resources here,” says one student. “I learned so much from our Harkness conversations,” says another. Before long, a web of colorful string crisscrosses the quad, connecting the group in that moment and beyond. E
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Summing Up Julie Van Wright’s Classroom By Jennifer Wagner
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hile Math Instructor Julie Van Wright teaches everything from Math 130 to Math 430, her favorite area of study is calculus. Why? “Because it brings everything together,” she says. “The geometry, the algebra, the trig, and everything students have learned up to that point — it all spirals in.” Creatively carrying knowledge forward to solve problems is the backbone of Exeter’s math curriculum and the reason Van Wright loves teaching here. “This is the third independent school that I’ve taught at, and this is the most fun I have had in the math classroom,” she says. “The kids challenge me more than they realize and in a really good way. It’s awesome to see the ideas that they come in with, the different approaches they take and the ways that they build on concepts in ways I’ve never even thought of before. I feel like I’m constantly learning new stuff.” A math major at Williams College with a master’s degree from the University of Colorado, Van Wright spent four years as an information technology consultant before turning to teaching full time. Inspired partly by her mom, who taught teachers how to teach people with disabilities, she says that “being a teacher was my dream growing up.” We asked the instructor and diving coach for a tour as she excitedly readied Academy Building room 105 for in-person learning and the opening of school. E
summer in the Math Department we were looking “Tathisways to incorporate more underrepresented
mathematicians into our math problems,” Van Wright says. “My hope as a teacher, and especially in creating a classroom environment, is to have the kids feel safe and welcome and like they belong and that they can do well here. So, I specifically chose posters of women because I think they are often underrepresented and often unsung.”
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props like these angle legs allow students to be creative in their “Geometry thinking,” Van Wright says. “If we have a little bit of free time at the end of
class, I like to give the kids a challenge, like, say, make the longest structurally sound structure you can in five minutes with this collection of angle legs, and just see what they come up with.”
n the spring, I had rotating “Istudent facilitators who
led an activity during the first five minutes of class, just to set the tone,” Van Wright says. “These note cards are from Michael Yang ’24; he did jokes. One of them was, ‘I’ll do algebra, I’ll do trig, I’ll even do statistics, but graphing is where I draw the line!’ It was a great way to get the kids laughing, having fun together, and starting to feel more comfortable in the classroom.”
2-year-old son drew this, and he decided it was a turtle,” Van Wright “Mysays. “In math, we do a lot of diagram drawing, and I always tell my students, ‘Don’t assume anything.’ If it looks like a right angle, you can’t assume it is unless someone tells you it is. Or, the flip side, I might do a really bad drawing, but if I tell you all the sides are congruent, they’re congruent. So, if my son says this is a turtle, it’s a turtle.”
PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHRISTIAN HARRISON
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Meet Our Trustees
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hree alumni joined the ranks of Exeter leadership as new trustees on July 1, 2021. Exeter is fortunate to have such a dedicated body of volunteers with diverse and expert backgrounds to oversee the administration of the school and the management of its financial and physical resources.
“I am humbled to have the opportunity to serve Exeter in this new role. My years at Exeter, and the lessons learned at the Harkness table, have had a profound impact on my life. I am excited to have a place at the Harkness table again, to listen, to continue to learn, and to work with fellow Exonians to make a positive impact on Exeter’s future.”
Paulina Jerez ’91; P’21
St. Davids, Pennsylvania Paulina Jerez lived in Merrill Hall and participated in ESSO, Economics Club, cross country, swimming and diving, and lacrosse. She holds a B.A. in international relations and Latin American studies from Johns Hopkins University, and a J.D. and an MBA from American University. At Johns Hopkins, she received a grant to research the future impacts of a free trade agreement between Chile and the U.S. at the Corporation for Economic Research in Latin America in Santiago, Chile. In law school, she was executive editor of the American University International Law Review and published a comment on Brazil’s proposed money-laundering legislation. Jerez is currently senior counsel for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, where she has worked for 22 years. She serves on Exeter’s Parents Committee and volunteers as a class agent. She was an appointed GAA director and served as president of the Philadelphia Regional Alumni Association.
Giles “Gil” K. Kemp ’68
Orlando, Florida, and Assé-le-Boisne, France Gil Kemp entered the Academy as a lower from St. Luke’s School and lived in Dunbar Hall. He participated in cross country, winter and spring track, The Exonian, Pendulum and PEA Senate. Kemp holds a B.A. in sociology with honors from Swarthmore College and an MBA from Harvard Business School. During his professional career, Kemp founded Home Decorators Collection, one of the leading direct sellers of home furnishings and accessories,
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in 1991, serving as president. Previously, he co-founded Kemp & George, a catalog of products for the home, and developed direct-marketing programs for books and newsletters for New American Library, Bantam Books and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. He co-authored Dale Carnegie: The Man Who Influenced Millions (1989). Kemp is an emeritus board member of Swarthmore College, having served for 17 years, including a term as board chair. He has held the outdoor mile record at Swarthmore since 1970. Additional board service included Occidental College, The American University of Paris and Thrive Networks (East Meets West Foundation). For 18 years he has co-sponsored an educational philanthropy program in Vietnam focused on very poor high school and college students.
Eric Antoine Logan ’92
Cleveland, Ohio Eric Logan entered Exeter as a prep from Ohio and lived in Main Street North. In addition to his service as both a dormitory proctor and an assembly monitor, he was active in football, ESSO, Afro-Exonian Society and tutoring. He holds a B.S. in materials science and engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University. Eric is principal at KPMG Strategy and Industrial Markets in Cleveland, where he leads the National Operations Center of Excellence and the Inclusion and Diversity Council. Previously, he was VP and general manager of Special Metals Wire Group, NC; VP of PCC Revert Group, NC; VP and general manager, McWilliams Forge Company, NJ; and VP of Precision Castparts Corporation. He is a Corporate Visiting Committee member at Case Western Reserve, an Equity and Inclusion Engagement Committee member of the Greater Cleveland Partnership, and a board member of Team NEO, Cleveland, a business development organization; of Journey Center for Safety and Healing, Cleveland; and of Esperanza, Inc., Cleveland.
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“As was true for many of my classmates in the late ’60s, my Exeter experience was not a particularly happy time. But a record number of us returned for our 50th reunion and found it easy to appreciate how much Exeter had done to prepare us for life. We also appreciated how the Exeter of today is using its heritage and resources to create wonderful opportunities for a diverse and very capable student body, which is coming from all over the world to take advantage of these opportunities.”
“When I look back, Exeter truly represents a crucible event, a pivotal moment in my life. My experience at the Academy exposed me to new ideas, people, cultures and more diverse thought. I was also challenged to better understand myself and my opinion on both academic and social topics. Having the privilege to ensure that our institution not only continues to provide opportunities like these to future generations, but also better itself by adapting to the changing environment, is perhaps the greatest honor in my life.”
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CAMPUS LIFE AT A GLANCE
CORE TO WHO WE ARE: Dean of Students Russell Weatherspoon introduces the Core Values Project, a continuation of work dedicated to anti-oppression, community values and justice.
SEEING THE FUTURE: Aesthetes marvel at the “Invented Futures: Chesley Bonestell and Beyond” exhibit on display at the Lamont Gallery.
MOVE-IN DAY: Students roll onto campus.
CLUB NIGHT: Membership with a handshake.
MUG SHOT: Painting pottery on the quad. P H O T O G R A P H S B Y P AT R I C K G A R R I T Y, C H R I S T I A N H A R R I S O N , W I L L I A M P A R K
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ACADEMY LIFE DAY: Dorm mates battle and bond over a game of Spikeball at Hampton Beach.
CLASS IS IN SESSION: New faculty come together for discussion and Harkness training.
CONNECTION: Friends reunite on campus in September.
OPENING ASSEMBLY: All cheer for the start of Exeter’s 241st academic year!
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Welcome Back! The start of school was heralded with a day of games and smiles as students — from preps to seniors — gathered with their class year during Exeter’s annual orientation program. “This is the first time I’ve seen our entire grade in one room,” says Anvi Bhate ’24. “It’s really cool!”
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By Jennifer Wagner In front of a small, socially distanced audience, David Goodall ’24 takes a seat on the piano bench poised center stage in the Forrestal-Bowld Music Center. For more than four minutes, his fingers dance along the black-and-white keys and the notes of “Malagueña” from Ernesto Lecuona’s Andalucía fill the room. In a final, commanding crescendo, Goodall completes his first solo program as an Exonian. Goodall was one of 11 musicians who performed in the May soloist concert, which celebrated the work students and teachers accomplished together over winter and spring terms. The evening was especially exciting because Goodall played his piece on a handcrafted Bösdendorfer piano, recently gifted to the Academy by Caroline Levine in memory of Tommy Gallant, an Exeter music instructor from 1967 to 1998. Chair of the Music Department Kristofer Johnson calls the piano, now part of Exeter’s permanent collection, “remarkable.” The students agree. “Before coming to Exeter I had no idea pianos were capable of producing such intimate experiences,” says Goodall, who has been studying piano since age 5. “Playing the Bösdendorfer was unlike any piano I had previously played. It was capable of bringing forth stunning emotion that filled the entire Bowld with beautiful tones. I felt that I could play better than I ever had.” E
Scan this QR code with your smartphone to listen to Goodall and the spring soloist concert.
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Mission Driven P R E S I D E N T O F T H E T R U S T E E S M O R GA N S Z E ’8 3 D I S C U S S E S H I S E N D U R I N G D E D I C AT I O N T O T H E A C A D E M Y By Patrick Garrity
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organ Sze ’83; P’19, P’22, P’25, came by his faith in educa-
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tion through family. His father Morgan Sr., on a limited budget, managed to earn a doctorate in chemical engineering at MIT in two years in 1941 and later in life was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. His mother Agnes was a pioneer traveling by boat and train from China to attend the University of Rochester on a Rochester Prize scholarship in 1940. She then was one of the first women to graduate from Columbia Business School in 1945 and later became an abstract expressionist painter. Brother Karl built a 40-year career eventually running his cardiology practice in Maine after Cornell Medical School. His other brother, Arthur, discovered poetry at MIT and then pivoted majors transferring to UC Berkeley in 1970. Since then, he has become a National Book Award-winning poet. Morgan met his wife, Bobbi, at Cornell and they both went on to earn degrees in English Literature before receiving master’s degrees from the University of Chicago. His belief in the power of a strong, well-rounded education and his commitment to PEA are displayed by his decade of service as a trustee, including the past 18 months as president of the Trustees. We caught up with Sze to talk about that enduring dedication to Exeter and how he feels the Academy is rising to current challenges as it begins its 241st year as an institution:
When someone asks you “What is Exeter all about?” how do you answer?
Unite goodness and knowledge and inspire youth from every quarter to lead purposeful lives. That’s the modern version of our school’s mission statement drawing on the key elements from John and Elizabeth Phillips’ 1781 Deed of Gift. The values are as enduring today as ever. They embody excellence and leadership in secondary education, building on Edward Harkness’ transformative 1930 gift, as well as a foundational commitment to non sibi. How can the school best fulfill that mission?
By continuing to attract the best faculty and staff and most promising students both nationally and internationally. Our school is fortunate to be supported by the generosity and goodwill of so many diverse alumni. Alumni support and engagement enables our school to maintain this level of mission excellence for students regardless of their means or background and have outstanding faculty and staff in place to support our programming. I am grateful and humbled by the passionate work of our on-campus community, alumni and parents. The Academy is strong because of them. 20 • T H E
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How do the core values of a school founded in 1781 remain relevant today? And how does the school balance embracing its traditions while continuing to evolve in the 21st century?
The mechanics of learning and leveraging knowledge are evolving rapidly in tandem with technology and society itself. By contrast, our values are enduring. In today’s world of exponential artificial intelligence, the value of goodness is more critical than ever. Our new mission statement rests on the foundation of our Deed of Gift while emphasizing a modern statement of our five core values: Goodness and Knowledge, Academic Excellence, Youth from Every Quarter, Youth is the Important Period and Non Sibi. I believe these enduring values will continue to serve our students well today and well into the future. The last 18 months have been a challenge in most respects. How do you feel Exeter has weathered the challenges, and what are some of the things we’ve learned as an institution that can inform us going forward?
“I am grateful and humbled by the passionate work of our on-campus community, alumni and parents. The Academy is strong because of them.”
The pandemic has been extremely challenging, both personally and professionally, for everyone. The level of innovation we saw from our faculty, staff and students in response to the pandemic was breathtaking to watch. We hope to capture the best of those innovations to help Exeter lead into the future. The trustees are incredibly proud of how Principal Rawson, his leadership team and our entire on-campus community have kept the community safe and delivered excellence for our students in the face of the enormous challenges. Amidst the crisis, we have also managed to advance many priorities for our school, including making progress toward specific goals for improving diversity, equity and inclusion, adopting our new mission statement, approving a campus master plan, as well as financing important new projects such as the new dormitory, improving our financial sustainability and continuing to strengthen our resources for financial aid. Exeter is committed to becoming an anti-racist institution. Exeter also recently celebrated 50 years of coeducation. Can you talk about these important priorities?
When my mother graduated from Columbia Business School in 1945, she could not get hired in the private sector as an Asian woman. This was immensely frustrating to her given she was well qualified having excelled in college and graduate school. There is still much work to
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do, but significant progress has been made over the past 76 years in terms of gender and racial equality and the country is better for it. Excellence in diversity, equity and inclusion is core to overall excellence as an institution and as a society. I’m extremely proud that we have such a diverse body of trustees made possible by our school’s commitment to diversity over past decades, including the decision 50 years ago to open Exeter up to coeducation. The Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Vision Statement adopted by the Trustees in 2018 underscores the commitment of the Academy to diversity in all forms, as does our June 29, 2020 letter to the community. Diversity is fundamental to a Harkness education, where learning through shared dialogue and debate is critical to excellence. Did you have a favorite place on campus as a student?
I was a four-year resident of Merrill Hall (or 3 ½ years to be exact as I participated in the Washington Intern Program my senior spring). It still looks pretty much the same almost 40 years later! The Davis Library is another place where I have many memories. I spent many hours working on the PEAN, where I was co-editor, The Exonian as one of three photo editors, and WPEA as a DJ. The opportunity for students to grow and develop outside of the classroom with so many student-run activities is a huge advantage for us as a residential school and also creates strong friendships that endure. How does the Exeter you attended compare to the school of your children?
Firstly, just walking around campus, Exeter is a much more diverse community than it was 40 years ago. In addition, Exeter today is a much more welcoming and supportive school than it was in the early 1980s. Those are both really important and critical to ensuring our students not just succeed but thrive. What does the Exeter of 2050 look like?
We just had a wonderful celebration of 50 years of coeducation. 2031 will mark the 250th anniversary of the founding of our school. I believe our values will endure and continue to serve us well, so in 2050 Exeter remains a leader in secondary education, teaching the values and skills that will enable our students to be impactful and positive contributors to society. E
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t took me a long time to get here,” says Russell Weatherspoon ’01, ’03, ’08, ’11 (Hon.); P’92, P’95, P’97, P’01 about the spur-of-themoment detour he took in the mid-1970s to visit the Exeter campus for the first time. Traveling south on I-93 after a speaking engagement in Rumney, New Hampshire, Weatherspoon saw a sign for the Academy pointing eastward. Assuming the town of Exeter and the school were around the corner, the New Yorker was surprised to find himself still searching some 30 minutes later.
“I want to be helpful. Whenever possible, I want to try to bring people together.” Time is, of course, relative, and what might have felt like an eternity on an endless road was just a short drive to the destination where Weatherspoon would devote a lifetime of service. This summer, he took on his latest role at the Academy: dean of students. Making his way down Front Street during that initial introduction to Exeter, Weatherspoon was struck by the large trees, lush lawns and brick buildings of the Academy. It was a decade later, returning as an assembly speaker, when he’d discover the caliber of student was every bit as impressive as the campus grounds. Weatherspoon’s presentation, “Romantic Love and the Love of God,” was bookended by Harkness discussions giving him a front-row seat to the Academy’s acclaimed pedagogy. “That’s when I got very interested to understand what Exeter could possibly be doing that all these students were able to manage conversation in this way — it was
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A Career for the Ages stunning,” he says. “After having that experience, I thought, ‘Wow, it would be amazing to be able to get more exposure to this.’” Weatherspoon wouldn’t have to wait long for that notion to become a reality. In the Assembly Hall audience that day was Instructor in Religion Peter Vorkink, whom Weatherspoon cites as being influential in his hiring as a full-time religion instructor just one year later. “I actually spent a long time trying to figure out whether or not I could keep pace with whatever it was that Exeter was asking,” Weatherspoon says. “A few months went by before I finally said, ‘OK, let’s do this.’” In the more than three decades since Weatherspoon first said “yes” to Exeter, he’s compiled an impactful list of credentials as an instructor and administrator. His latest role, dean of students, is the culmination of a career supporting the Exeter community no matter his title. “I want to be helpful. Whenever possible, I want to try to bring people together. This is a tough time in our society, and the school is just simply part of the larger society. I want to try to continue to inject a degree of calm, so as we go through the number of different conversations we have to have with each other, we continue to feel like we are listening and can be heard.” In his current position, Weatherspoon brings with him a unique perspective as a father of four alums. “I listened to what Exeter is through those four different lenses,” he says. “So when I look at our students, I’m always thinking about how each of them is having a different experience. They’re having a common experience, but they’re also having a different experience. … There are obviously basic things about Exeter we’re trying to provide. And yet, from year to year, the tone of the school changes based on the kids who are here, the faculty that are here.” Weatherspoon’s appointment will take him through the 2022-23 school year, and he says with a smile “there will be no more roles after this one.” And though he does not plan to add to his résumé, he hopes to continue his connection to the school that started as a scenic diversion on that fateful road trip many years ago. “I was thinking when I got here that I would be here for about five years,” he says. “Obviously, 34 years later, something went wrong. But I have known just really remarkable people who are just too numerous to name. Just amazing people.” E
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Russell Weatherspoon holds a master’s degree in education from Harvard and counts some 34 years as an administrator and instructor in three academic departments at Exeter (including 21 years teaching at Exeter Summer). You’ll often find him walking the paths or visiting advisees in Cilley Hall, where he lived for 12 years. A former girls JV basketball coach, he continues to support Big Red from the sidelines and acts as faculty adviser to the Young Brothers Society, Precision, and Journalists for Human Rights. His vast experience will serve him well in his latest role. 1987-98: Instructor in Religion 1987-89: Instructor in Drama 1987-98: Instructor in English 1998-2000: Chair of the Religion Department 2001-11: Dean of Residential Life (and Instructor in Religion through 6/30/05) 2011-12: Instructor in Religion 2012-14: Dean of Multicultural Affairs 2014-19: Instructor in Religion 2019-21: Director of Exeter Summer July 2021 to present: Dean of Students
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The Sky’s the Limit This fall brought Ursa Major’s Big Dipper to the sky surrounding the Grainger
Observatory — along with hopes for the first public visitors to the facility since the dawn of the pandemic. Weather permitting, the Academy’s Astronomy Club will host the community for International Observe the Moon Night (part of NASA’s annual Global Moon Party) in October and offer citizen scientists a personal glimpse of the celestial body through a telescope. Meanwhile, Club Adviser and Director of the Grainger Observatory John Blackwell has charted a year of activities for the club’s 100-plus members — from astrophotography to telescope mirror grinding and polishing. “I suppose the real focus of this term is to get classes back to a ‘more normal’ state of being,” Blackwell says. “I am thrilled to be able to bring students to the observatory again. Working in person, the actual doing of astronomy, has always been my greatest joy when teaching.” E
PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTIAN HARRISON
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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
By Patrick Garrity
The Class of 1945 Library Stamp When the history of the Class of 1945 Library is finally written, it can be signed, sealed and delivered with its very own stamp. Sixteen years ago, the library was included in a commemorative set of U.S. Postal Service stamps titled “Masterworks of Modern Architecture.” Twelve iconic American buildings were featured, including the Guggenheim Museum and the Chrysler Building in New York City and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Louis Kahn’s design has long been a darling of architects. In 1997, the American Institute of Architects presented the library with its Twenty-Five Year Award, given annually to a building of “architectural significance that is still fulfilling its original purpose after 25 years.”
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That honor came with an inscription: “The massive block of dark red brick reveals surprising delicacy. It is artistically ahead of its time, and will continue to enlighten as a spiritual touchstone of great design for generations of architects.” Exeter’s inclusion in the stamp set was first proposed by the Postal Service in 2003 to then-Assistant Principal Thomas Hassan, who kept it a secret for almost two years until the final dozen buildings were announced. When the unveiling took place on May 20, 2005, The Exonian wryly noted that no mail was moving at the Academy, as the post office was abandoned. The mailroom staff had slipped out to watch the ceremony. E
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Alumni are encouraged to advise the Bulletin editor (bulletin@exeter.edu) of their own publications, recordings, films, etc., in any field, and those of their 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: Phillips Exeter Academy, The Exeter Bulletin, 20 Main Street, Exeter, NH 03833. ALUMNI 1957—Peter Georgescu. “Shareholder Primacy: Failing Supply Chains and Failing Businesses Threaten Our National Security,” “Stakeholder Capitalism Saves the American Dream,” and “An Unholy Attack on American Democracy,” articles. (Forbes, 2021) 1963—William H. Schubart. The Correctional Facility. (Magic Hill Press, 2021) 1964—Bob Dole. “Friedrich Nietzsche’s Glorification of War,” article. (Journal of Literature and Art Studies, May 2021, vol. 11, no. 5) 1966—Alex Lasker. The Memory of an Elephant. (Self-published, 2021) 1967—John Foley, composer. Going Up the Country, a musical play. Performed at the Lost Nation Theater, Montpelier, Vermont, in May 2021. 1969—Costa Mantis. No Place Like Home: The Tent City Diaries. (Snapdragon Books, 2021) 1971—Dan Hunter. “Brain Training,” article. (Arrowsmith Journal, vol. 15, 2021) — “Get Ready Man,” article. (Arrowsmith Journal, vol. 14, 2021) 1981—Claudia Putnam. “South Road,” short story. (Sunspot Literary Review, March 2021)
1991—Jessica DuLong. Saved at the Seawall: Stories from the September 11 Boat Lift. (Three Hills Press, 2021) 1991—Noel Sloboda. Everyday Divine, chapbook. (Červená Barva Press, 2021) 1992—Gigi Foster. The Great Covid Panic: What Happened, Why, and What to Do Next. (Brownstone Institute, 2021) —“Write It Large on the Wall: The Sculptors Evelyn Beatrice Longman and Daniel Chester French.” (Fine Art Connoisseur, June 2021, vol. 18, no. 3) 2003—Elizabeth Ricker. Smarter Tomorrow: How 15 Minutes of Neurohacking a Day Can Help You Work Better, Think Faster, and Get More Done. (Little Brown Spark/ Hachette, 2021) 2019—Miles Mikofsky. “On Good Ideas,” “O Typologies,” “Close (The Widower),” “In Solidarity (Cotton),” “Two in the Mountains,” poems. (Subnivean, March 2021)
— “About Bears,” poem. (Gyroscope Review, Summer 2021)
FAC U LT Y Alex S. Myers. “What a 13th-Century Medieval Text Can Teach Us About Queerness and Gender,” essay. (Literary Hub, June 22, 2021)
— “Confessional Poem II,” poem. (Open Minds Quarterly, vol. 23, no. 2, summer 2021)
Tom Simpson. Review of Shrapnel Maps, by Philip Metres. (Tar River Poetry, spring 2021)
— Wild Thing in Our Known World, chapbook. (Finishing Line Press, 2021)
Todd Hearon. Border Radio, album. Available for download on all digital platforms.
1985—Dana Pilson. “Margaret French Cresson at Chesterwood,” article. (Sculpture Review, summer 2021, vol. LXX, no. 2)
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Vision Quest N E W C O A C H E S S E T P AT H F O R B I G R E D P R O G R A M S T O F O L L O W By Brian Muldoon
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here are two new faces patrolling the PEA sidelines this fall. Panos Voulgaris is the new head coach for varsity football, while Samantha Fahey has stepped in as the head coach for varsity field hockey. Each has plans for their respective program to make a big impact in the Exeter community and beyond while continuing to honor the rich tradition of Big Red athletics.
PANOS VOULGARIS
Instructor in physical education, football coach Voulgaris is a career coach and educator who is passionate about the game of football and excited to bring Big Red to new heights. “Football requires mental and physical toughness at a high level,” Voulgaris says. “It teaches the values of perseverance and teamwork that kids can take with them for the rest of their lives. Being able to teach the game in a residential environment where kids come from a diversity of backgrounds on all levels is unique and exciting.” Voulgaris is no stranger to prep school football, having spent the past 14 years as a teacher, administrator and head
coach. He arrives in Exeter after a successful coaching stint at Noble and Greenough School, where he led the program to a bowl game victory in his first season. Prior to his time at Nobles, Voulgaris was responsible for turning the Episcopal High School and Taft School programs into regional powerhouses. He led both programs to championship seasons while seeing more than a hundred former student-athletes go on to play collegiately across the country. His teams’ on-field success can be attributed to working from the ground up, building a foundation of strong camaraderie, culture and training. “Preparation and teamwork are essential to any football team’s success,” he says. “I’ve always emphasized hard work, selflessness and fun as being key components to a football team. One of our goals is to continually improve our practice habits as we move forward. This will be instrumental to setting our program’s foundation and establishing a jumping board to a great future.” Voulgaris, who earned his bachelor’s degree and played college football at Merrimack College before earning a master’s degree at Harvard University, has surrounded himself with a great team of coaches that features a lot of PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRIAN MULDOON
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experience and expertise on the field, in the classroom and in the Exeter community. “I’m fortunate enough to work with an experienced coaching staff who have done a great job working with our kids and love and appreciate all that is Exeter,” Voulgaris says. “They are dedicated to our process, believe in our philosophical objectives from both a football and cultural standpoint, and know how to have fun on the football field.”
SAMANTHA FAHEY
Instructor in physical education, field hockey coach If Samantha Fahey’s name sounds familiar to Big Red followers, that is because she has returned to the Exeter field hockey sidelines after previously serving as head coach in 2013. After spending time in her home state of New York, Fahey is back to lead the program and serve as a physical education instructor. “I loved my time here and could not be more excited to come back,” says Fahey. “This campus and community makes for a very easy transition. The students are responsible, intelligent and highly motivated — qualities that mimic my experience working with collegiate athletes. I am thrilled to work under [Director of Physical Education and Athletics] Jason Baseden’s guidance and vision. I believe great things are in store for Big Red.” Fahey’s coaching career started immediately after an impressive playing career at the University of New Hampshire, where she helped lead the Wildcats to the NCAA tournament while earning All-America,
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all-conference and academic honor roll awards. “It was my college coach who encouraged me to get into coaching, and I am very grateful for that,” Fahey says. “My college experience has given me so much throughout my life and career, and I hope field hockey can do the same for other female student-athletes. I truly enjoy mentoring young women and helping them find their path. I love the sport, the community around it, and I am thankful for everything that athletics has done for my life.” After graduating from UNH, Fahey earned her master’s degree at Michigan State University while coaching with the Spartans field hockey program. From there Fahey returned to coach at UNH before moving on to Harvard University and eventually Columbia University, where she was the Lions’ top assistant for the past five years. Since returning to the Seacoast, Fahey has established a clear vision for the Big Red program, with influence from her Exeter colleagues. “As a coach you always notice what great coaches and great programs do, and you gravitate to follow that path,” she says. “There are so many great coaches and teachers here that I want to learn from. Off the bat, I look at a program that coach Christina Breen has built with Exeter girls lacrosse, and I want to mirror that. I want to build a program with high standards, where the students are setting the bar and are continually pushing themselves. My hope is to build tradition and a program that involves our PEA community and surrounding community.” E
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Girls varsity soccer team
Rafe Carner ’22
Jack Hudson ’22
Isabelle Benoit ’22
Sofia Morais ’23
John Jean Baptiste ’22
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WE WILL ROCK YOU! By Patrick Garrity Exeter athletes have put on a little extra weight this fall. As a way for coaches to recognize studentathletes who demonstrate what it means to be a great teammate, display strong leadership on campus and exhibit the best attributes of non sibi, the Department of Athletics has created The Rock Award. Recipients are students who are strong, steady, gritty and consistent — they are the rocks of their teams and their programs. Each week, coaches will honor two student-athletes with the “trophies” — two wave-smoothed chunks of stone liberated from the Gulf of Maine coast and painted red. The winners will hand off their prizes to the next honorees, week to week, season by season. The inaugural winners were girls soccer captain Kate Mautz ’22 and football player Sean Greene ’23. E
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Beyond the Book 50 Years of the Class of 1945 Library By Jack Herney ’46, ’69, ’71, ’74, ’92, ’95 (Hon.)
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or many years, former Academy Archivist Ed Desrochers ’45 (Hon.) read letters from the Academy’s holdings as part of the orientation program for new students. These included a three-letter sequence from a new student, the first of which expressed terrible homesickness and how much he missed his family. By the third letter, written about two weeks after the first, there was a different sentiment, as it ended with, “Tell Papa that if he thinks I am homesick, he is very much mistaken, for I wouldn’t go home for anything, until vacation.” One fall, at the end of the program, a young man stayed behind, approached Desrochers and said, “Thank you for reading those letters. Until I heard them, I thought I was the only kid who felt that way. I think I can make it now.” Similarly, Desrochers often ended his Parents Weekend program with correspondence, in this case a letter from statesman Daniel Webster, who wrote to his son, then a student at Exeter, saying, “You are at the most important period of your life,” and urging him to “cherish all the good counsel which your dear mother used to give you.” Each time, Desrochers recalls, “I would watch some of the parents just melt in front of me ... and there was always a line of parents requesting a copy of the letter.” We think of a library, even now in the digital age, as being most of all about books. The Class of 1945 Library (Note 1) certainly has many of those. Since its opening in 1971 with 80,000 volumes, the collection has grown to 140,000, and it continues to expand through databases that give access to library holdings throughout the world. But it is about so much more. As these letters make clear,
Alumni Reflections
our library is a place of stored memories and shared experiences, a place of community connection across generations, a place where the holdings are just the beginning of the story. More than 50 years ago, the Program Statement, written by the library committee that recommended Louis Kahn (Fig. 1) as architect, suggested the new library be about what takes place inside, calling for a building that was “no longer a mere depository for books and periodicals, the modern library becomes ... a quiet retreat for study, reading, and reflection; the intellectual center of the community.” Surely, over its first five decades, the Academy Library has fulfilled that directive, and beyond. Not only a quiet place for reflection and study, the library has touched the lives of so many — students and faculty, of course, but also alumni, parents, staff and friends outside the Academy community. Its impact demonstrates that the wisdom of author Wendy Lesser’s comment on its architecture, in her biography of Kahn, also applies to what’s happened on the inside of our library, that “There is always something new to be discovered here: that is the main thing the library seems to be saying.” Let us take a look back at what has been discovered over those past 50 years.
Note 1. The library was completed in Nov. 1971. In 1996, it was officially named the Class of 1945 Library (in recognition of the class that ensured the library’s future care) and dedicated to honor Dr. Lewis Perry, Exeter’s eighth principal.
Fig. 1. Library architect Louis Kahn, right, at the library reception in 1971.
Fig. 2. Jacquelyn Thomas ’45, ’62, ’69 (Hon.); P ’78, P ’79, P ’81
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n what is surely a most important moment in the library’s history, both symbolically and practically, Librarian Jacquelyn Thomas ’45, ’62, ’69 (Hon.); P’78, P’79, P’81 (Fig. 2) decided to place a Harkness table in the middle of Rockefeller Hall, thereby acknowledging that the icon of Exeter’s pedagogy should have pride of place in the library, that it, too, should be recognized as a classroom, albeit a very large
“Having just turned 50 three days ago I was excited to learn that I share this milestone with one of my favorite places! I spent a lot of time there, sometimes just to admire the architecture. The rooftop gave me an amazing view of the mountains in the distance still holding their autumn colors in the winter months. ... I remember the early days of computers there. I used a terminal in the library to chat with a friend who was in the Academy building. It was a novel idea then, so commonplace now. I remember writing my first PEA paper in the “Rainbow Room” in the library. It was named for the Rainbow 100 computers used for word processing. ... Happy 50th, Class of 1945 Library!” Ron Gray ’89
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Fig 4. A student reads to children from the Harris Family Children’s Center.
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Crises, in which she found a “dickey slip” issued to T.G. Katzman on Nov. 14, 1972, 42 years earlier, for missing A.A. Polychronis’ science class. On the opposite side was a note, written by Nathan Radford ’91, stating “... T.G. got this Dicky even before I was born and who knows maybe I’m writing this to someone who isn’t even born yet. ... Don’t get stressed. ... Stop to smell the roses. Listen to the Grateful Dead. Jerry saves. ... Good luck.” Here the library brought together, through Dana’s discovery, three Exonians, generations apart. Dana added her own note to the book, along with Nathan’s, awaiting discovery by a future Exonian. English classes have long made use of the library’s rare copy of Shakespeare’s Second Folio from 1632 and, more recently, his Fourth Folio (Fig. 3), students delicately leafing through with white gloves to marvel at these treasures. Homage to The Bard has taken more robust forms, including the 450th birthday celebration with students, faculty and alums standing on the Harkness table in Rockefeller Hall performing scenes from his plays. That was just part of a spectacular that also featured poetry on a Caliban theme written by English Instructor Todd Hearon and set to music by Greg Brown ’93. The students of English Instructor Becky Moore’s Children’s Literature course used the library’s design itself for a class in which they partnered with children from the Harris Family Children’s Center (Fig. 4). Having identified the countless geometric shapes one sees simply by looking around and up in Rockefeller Hall, Becky’s students helped the youngsters find and name them, increasing their mathematical vocabulary.
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Fig 3. Shakespeare’s Fourth Folio
and glorious one. Classes have met there ever since, undisturbed and focused, as patrons walked by observing at the table what Exeter is all about. Harkness tables and Harkness classes in the library have proliferated, so that the dozens of classes held there annually in the early years now number in the hundreds. Prominent among them were those in Junior Studies, an interdisciplinary course for preps begun when the new curriculum was adopted in the mid-1980s. At the end of fall term, all preps and their instructors gathered in Rockefeller Hall for their first Exeter “graduation,” complete with officiants garbed in academic robes, proclamations read and time capsules stored. Four years later, those preps, now seniors, opened those capsules to revisit the artifiacts inside from their first term at the Academy. As preps matured as scholars, the extent of their use of library resources grew, culminating for many in the History Department’s term paper, when 300-plus uppers and a few seniors descended on the library each spring. A collection of sources as extensive as ours, not to mention online databases, allowed students to explore most any topic they could conjure up, such as Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago as a Cold War weapon through recently released CIA documents; or the 1918 influenza pandemic in New York through the official papers of the city’s Department of Health; or Henry Kissinger’s role in the opening of China through the foreign relations papers in our stacks. Sometimes this research produced unexpected discoveries. In 2014, upper Dana Tung included in her bibliography Richard Nixon’s Six
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hile we may think of students being those using the library’s resources, faculty have also profited from its holdings for their very serious scholarship. Among the many is former History Instructor Ted Bedford ’48, who, when writing a book on 20th-century American history, recounted asking Reference Librarian Marilyn Worboys whether the Harvard or Dartmouth libraries might have an obscure collection of Depression-era interviews. “Did you check the catalog?” she asked. He hadn’t and, of course, the book was just upstairs. Former History Instructor Michael Golay (Fig. 5) used the library extensively for his book The Tide of Empire, as well as for a current work in progress. And since he wrote seven books, History Instructor Don Cole no doubt logged many hours rummaging through the collection. Other Exeter faculty have found the library to be a welcoming host for presentations of their published work, as when Dolores Kendrick read from her Women of Plums: Poems in the
Voices of Slave Women, just one of the many Academy authors to find there an appreciative audience. In addition, the George Bennett Fellow, a writer-in-residence chosen by a faculty committee (Fig. 6), makes their office in the library for the year and presents readings there for the Academy and the public. Current faculty may also become a Friends Faculty Fellow, thanks to Librarian Gail Scanlon’s idea of inviting instructors into the library, with summer stipends, to work on a project of their choosing. That program is funded by the Friends of the Academy Library, a group of alumni, parents of alumni, emeriti and retired staff whose contributions each year also provide support for acquisitions and many of the concerts, exhibits and other library offerings. The Friends, begun in 1930 and revitalized with the opening of the library in the early 1970s, were for many years chaired by Rob Shapiro ’68, surely one of the library’s most dedicated cheerleaders — his name now gracing the door of one of the classrooms on the fourth floor. Just as the library’s holdings have expanded to assist scholars in their work, the collection has grown to accommodate patrons with a variety of interests. As the popularity of CDs grew in the 1980s so did the library’s music holdings — classical, jazz, folk, most any genre — expanding to fill the mezzanine room above the card catalog. When technology shifted to DVDs, the Student Council proposed and the library agreed in 2001 to house CinemExeter, making available what has become a collection of hundreds of movies for student use outside the library. Students have not only contributed ideas about library acquisitions. Over the years they have also urged — and in one Exonian article titled “Library Fascism” (Fig. 7) even demanded — expanded library hours for more time to study. The latest request, delivered more diplomatically, suggested
“I remember back to my first year and the library was always a place of immense serenity and peace in an occasionally chaotic year. The top floor also has a great view of the Academy Building’s gorgeous weather vane!” Charlie Holtz ’23
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The Art Department also made constructive use of the design features of Rockefeller Hall. One assignment for an architecture course required students to build a parachute device that would cradle an egg. After the parachute was dropped from the upper levels, it would hopefully land the egg safely, unbroken, on the floor. Naturally, the final day of this project, when students launched their parachutes, became a spectator sport as eager onlookers watched the result: safe landing or ... splat. That event has since been moved outside the building, for obvious reasons. And the Modern Language Department for a time oversaw a browsing area and video collection for eager linguists. These examples help explain how the library has secured its place as one of the Academy’s most exciting classrooms.
Fig. 5. Michael Golay, instructor in history, emeritus
Fig. 6. Kim Coleman-Foote, George Bennett Fellow, 2021
Fig. 7. The Exonian, Issue CVI, Number 11, Dec. 15, 1984, “Library Facism,” by Fred Schultz ’86
“As a day student the carrels quickly became a second home! So much time was spent there. Studying of course, but more often forging bonds with friends that have stayed strong 10-plus years later!” Margaret Lewis ’10
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Fig 9. Painting of Corliss Lamont ’22 by Diego Rivera
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he Academy Library has also inspired intellectual stimulation and reflection in very public ways, becoming an open forum where art and ideas are presented and discussed. In 1983, Corliss Lamont ’22 endowed, at the suggestion of Librarian Jackie Thomas, a program to bring two poets each year to the Academy. Since then, virtually every major poet, beginning with Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, has presented a reading in the library — a list that includes four Nobel laureates and numerous Pulitzer Prize winners. As a companion, in 2004 the Lamont Younger Poet Prize was established, to
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honor deceased English instructor Rex McGuinn, a champion of young poets, by recognizing the best of prep and lower poetry. Award ceremonies are often held, appropriately, in the library’s Lamont Room, in which formerly hung a portrait of Lamont, painted by the eminent Mexican muralist Diego Rivera (fig 9). In welcoming the audience to the 2006 awards ceremony, Thomas admitted, “Corliss didn’t much like that portrait, so it’s all right if you don’t either.” Though currently on loan, when the portrait is returned to the Academy visitors will be able to render their own judgment. Other events hosted in the library have included a symposium on the works of James Agee ’28, author of the American classic Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, attended by Father Flye, age 96, Agee’s correspondent when a student at Exeter; an evening with the Benchley family of writers with several Benchleys on hand, Nathaniel ’34, Robert ’38 and Robert III; and a talk with James Baldwin (Fig. 10), novelist, poet and activist and author of such works as The Fire Next Time, as part of a partnership with the Lamont Gallery on the Harlem Renaissance. Such programs introduced the community to a broad range of American letters, from serious issues of social criticism to lighter topics of humor and satire. In 2000, “The French Children of the Holocaust: A Memorial Exhibition” featured 250 photographs of children deported to concentration camps, with PEA’s La Cantate, an all-girl vocal group, singing a Yiddish lullaby as part of the opening reception. Projects related to the exhibit developed by a religion class on the
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TOM KATES AND CHRISTIAN HARRISON
Fig 8. Library Commons
an earlier opening hour on Sunday. Such eager scholars deserve the kind of library Exeter has provided. The interior spaces of the library have undergone some revision, particularly of late, all designed to enhance study and reflection. Glass-enclosed study rooms have been added on the third floor, in spaces created by removing stacks not needed for shelving books, providing opportunities for collaborative study of up to four or five students. The Kaplanoff Room on the ground floor is now the Library Commons (Fig. 8), where students can study, socialize and even enjoy food and beverages. Most recently, the entire basement has been renovated into expanded space for the archives, with tables in the open middle for research, and the Jay Whipple Special Collections Vault, which will display many of the library’s treasures, to be overseen by our current archivist, Magee Lawhorn.
CHRISTIAN HARRISON
CHRISTIAN HARRISON
Holocaust were displayed in cases in the library’s entry. A year later, 10 monks from Drepung Gomang Monastic University in South India created over several days a large, intricate, colorful and architecturally breathtaking sand mandala on the floor of the hall, entrancing onlookers, who by the time of the ending ceremony of dispersal numbered in the hundreds. Accompanying the sand mandala exhibit were images from Tibet taken by globetrotting photographer Ellen Kaplowitz. In 2006, Michael Rockefeller’s pictures of Dani warriors from the western highlands of New Guinea were on display in the hall named in his memory. A more recent exhibit, titled in a manner to appeal to patrons of all ages, “Harry Potter’s World: Renaissance Science, Magic and Medicine,” explored the ways in which Renaissance traditions played a role in the development of modern science, as well as assisting J.K Rowling in creating the magical world of Harry Potter. These programs represent just a sampling of countless such events hosted in the library since 1971 that expanded and enriched the educational experience of all venturing inside. As guests walked into the library to attend such events, they might have passed by displays created by the librarians. “Tally Ho” featured just 100 items from John H. Daniels’ ’39 collection of 5,000 “Sporting Books, Prints, Manuscripts and Ephemera” dating from 1500 to the present. Another displayed a portion of the AIDS Memorial Quilt as part of AIDS awareness week in 1994. In 1985, librarians created a “Banned Books” display, an event repeated often since, most recently featuring banned books written by Exeter alums John Irving ’61, John Knowles ’45 and Dan Brown ’82. Such displays seem to encourage a belief in historian Edmund Morgan’s notion that libraries should be “nurseries of heresy and independence of thought.” Often over the years, exhibits have also showcased the library’s Special Collections,
which feature remarkable treasures from the 16th to 21st centuries and have grown significantly since the library’s opening. In 2007, “Expanding the Known World” featured accounts written by noted explorers and sea captains — James Cook on his first Pacific voyage in 1769, Captain William Bligh, he of mutiny fame, on voyages in the South Pacific, and George Vancouver’s expedition to northwestern North America. Speaking of Captain Bligh, among the library’s extensive collection of original manuscripts is Nordhoff and Hall’s Mutiny on the Bounty. While many of the Special Collections are housed in the archives for safekeeping, the Bates Mountaineering Collection (Fig. 11) of 500-plus titles is housed in its own room open to the public. When the Academy received the 300-plus films of the Ottaway/Adams Silent Film Collection, a showing of The Phantom of the Opera marked the event, signifying the collection’s availability for entertainment as well as research. In 1987, the library published a pamphlet, Rarities of Our Time, which details all of the impressive holdings in the Special Collections, yet another part of the library’s inventory of discoveries to be found. While libraries aren’t usually considered performance spaces, yet another gift our library has bestowed to the community is that it has become a stage, with special qualities that help make it so. Music Librarian Drew Gatto has commented that, “I have always thought of our library as an instrument unto itself ... an active performer and participant in the magic being created.” Such magical moments have included the Summer Concert Series, long a welcome addition to the musical experience of not only the Academy but the larger Exeter community, featuring classical, jazz and folk programs. For many years Rob Richards, dressed as Ebenezer Scrooge (Fig. 12), has performed Dickens’ A Christmas Carol before audiences that
Fig. 11. Robert H. Bates ’29 and Bradford Washburn summiting Mount McKinley, July 23, 1942.
Fig. 12. Robert Richards, instructor in theater and dance, as Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge.
“The library is where I fell in love with my wife. She was a very driven and motivated student who loved books and spent as much time in the library as she could. I was less academically inclined, but found myself spending more and more time studying because it gave me an excuse to sit with her. She made me feel seen in a way I hadn’t before at Exeter. As the year went on, we started dating. When I think about it now I think of warm sunlight coming in through the windows, the two of us trying not to laugh too loud at each other’s stories, and how lucky I felt to get to be there with her every day. We got married in Phillips Church two years ago and we still go back to visit the library whenever we are on campus.” Alex Braile ’10 FA L L
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“On the day the library was opened, we formed fireman’s lines, passing cartons of books between the two buildings: the richly ornamented Davis Library, and the big, brick box. Only later did I realize the significance of this event, with the whole community coming together to transfer those books, and all the ideas and possibilities contained within them. Then I walked inside and climbed the stairs into the ethereal light of the Great Hall. It was a transcendent experience, a moment of awe and disbelief; how could anything so plain be so beautiful? How could a space be so empty and yet so full? It was cavernous and anonymous, and yet intimate and personal. It was a revelation, and as the light drifted softly, silently down from the clerestories, the Great Hall felt like a cathedral. The solid serenity of the structure also suggested a subtle beauty that would reveal itself over time, and in that moment, the possibilities of that space conjured up all the wonder of places and ideas that I had experienced only in books, but now I could imagine as real.”
Tiggy Valen ’13
J. Scott Finn ’73
Fig 13. One of two possible (known) library cats, Mycroft or McCavity.
Fig 14. Study Paws, April 2021
Fig 15. Students playing chess in the library.
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"During one of the first weeks of prep year, my Junior Studies class went to the library for a tour. It was a beautiful fall morning. After admiring the architecture and countless books, our teacher passed out a quiz. Expecting to regurgitate dates and numbers, I’d taken notes on all the facts we’d heard. Instead of asking us how many books the library housed, the questions were things like, “What was the pattern of the rug in the basement?” and “What color was Mr. Desrochers’ tie?” I failed the quiz. This library is where I first learned to pay attention to beauty and detail, and I’ve taken that lesson with me since.”
included pajama-clad Academy children sitting on the floor at his feet, enraptured. Storytellers Jay O’Callahan and Odds Bodkin have made repeated appearances, inspiring the creation of the R.W. Ellis “Anvil” Prizes for storytelling, open to Exeter students, with performances often held in the Kaplanoff Room.
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ot all visitors or events in the library have been planned, or even welcomed. The first interloper of note, a cat named Mycroft (Fig. 13) belonging to English Instructor John Kane and his wife, Mary Ann, would slip inside and curl up in sunlit corners, requiring the librarians to launch a Mycroft search before closing to ensure his departure. While accomplishing that chore, they weren’t similarly successful one December night in ferreting out persons hidden away. Then-Librarian Ted Bedford recounted how students snuck out of hiding after the 9 p.m. closing to decorate the giant Christmas tree in Rockefeller Hall, so that surprised librarians found the next morning an evergreen, previously decorated only with lights, now adorned with all manner of cranberry and popcorn garlands and handmade ornaments. Given the tree’s height of 30 feet, that was, as Bedford reported, “no easy task, even for elves with high SAT scores.” Other uninvited guests were not so constructive. Take the Andover students who released 57 mice, painted blue, on
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floor 3M, requiring their capture by librarians, on their hands and knees. Jackie Thomas patroled the next day with her cat, McCavity (Fig. 13), to ensure the job was complete. Exeter students have demonstrated their adolescent side as well, using the upper floors as launching pads for all manner of debris: a giant pumpkin, snowballs and, once, a large, inflated palm tree suspended first into the center of Rockefeller Hall and then days later on the outside of the building. In this case. the perpetrator was apprehended and appeared before a faculty committee to receive his punishment. To demonstrate the rehabilitative power of the school’s discipline system, that miscreant is now a tenured member of the Academy’s Science Department. While four-legged creatures have sometimes been a bane to librarians, their latest appearance is very much a planned event and a welcome one to students — the Study Paws program (Fig. 14), which brings faculty and staff dogs to the library to provide furry companionship to harried students during stressful times, particularly in May. That might be considered an oddity for a library, but then again, our resourceful librarians have devised over the years many ingenious ways to lure students inside, such as a miniature golf course laid out among all floors; game nights when various board games (Fig. 15) are set up around the building;
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C
lasses are rarely canceled at Exeter, but they were on Nov. 16, 1971, in order for all students, working in shifts of 400 with faculty acting as monitors, to carry 60,000 volumes, in book brigades, from Davis Library into the new library (Fig. 16). Since then, that day has been recognized as the Academy Library’s official opening, celebrated on some occasions with talks by its first librarian, Rodney Armstrong, and Kahn biographer Carter Wiseman ’63, on others by a cutting of a large chocolate cake, in the shape of the library of course, with streamers released from upper floors. On the 40th anniversary, the program featured a three-dimensional installation and projected images with performances by Music Department
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Instructors Jon Sakata and Jung Mi Lee, an evening that no doubt left attendees with a new appreciation of Goethe’s observation that “architecture is frozen music.” This year, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of our library, an event designed by students that will feature art and film installations with music and poetry performances. Nothing less is demanded in order to suitably pay tribute to our library, which has become, after all, a national landmark. In 1997 the American Institute of Architects, which each year recognizes a single building that “exemplifies a design of enduring significance,” selected Exeter’s library. In 2005, the library was one of 12 “Masterworks of Modern American Architecture” to be honored with a stamp issued by the U.S. Postal Service (see “Exeter Deconstructed,” pg. 24). More important than those accolades is what has happened, what has been discovered, inside the building and what that has meant to all who ventured inside. Librarians over the years, its chief stewards, but assisted by faculty, students, alumni and friends, clearly have always seen the library as more than a depository of books. For the past 50 years, in addition to making it a haven for scholars of all ages, they have made it the intellectual and cultural center of the campus. Beyond expanding the mind, we have discovered there much to excite our emotions and enrich the spirit, a legacy that gives great promise for the next 50 years. E
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and sleepovers for library proctors, much of this due to the creativity of Librarian Gail Scanlon. Once upon a time, dances were held in Rockefeller Hall, until the evening Thomas noticed, standing in the Kaplanoff Room on the ground floor, the ceiling pulsating above her. That was the last dance. That inviting space has, however, been the scene of all manner of less rambunctious social occasions — retirement send-offs, faculty receptions, small alumni dinners, even weddings and wedding receptions, the latest just this past August between two PEA faculty, Instructors Andrew McTammany ’04 and Tyler Caldwell.
Fig. 16. A student carries books from the Davis Library to the new library, Nov. 16, 1971.
To read more about the library and the 50th anniversary celebration visit www.exeter.edu/library50
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PHOTOGRAPH BY KATHERINE TAYLOR
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The
NEXT Darwin? Scientist Jeremy England has a new take on evolution
J
By Andrew Faught
eremy England ’99 will have you know that he’s not buying the Charles
Darwin comparisons. “The echo chamber of exaggerated statements on the internet is very loud and very powerful,” he says. Nonetheless, the young physicist has grabbed the attention of the scientific world with a hypothesis about evolution that he calls dissipative adaptation. In short, England theorizes that random molecules can self-organize into life forms through the absorption and dissipation — or shedding — of heat in their natural environments. It’s akin, England says, to the way a tangle of springs and balls, when vibrated in his experiments, morphs into shapes by the laws of thermodynamics. The notion that molecules can waltz their way to incipient life doesn’t supplant Darwin’s theory of evolution, England asserts, but instead it is complementary. Still, the Pulitzer Prize-winning science historian Edward J. Larson says, England “could be the next Darwin” if his hypothesis bears out.
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England expects to spend the rest of his career proving his point, and he’s hoping scientists the world over join in. For now, the married father of three young boys keeps busy with his day job: working in Israel as a senior director for the British multinational pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, specializing in artificial intelligence and machine learning. But England’s story starts
Perhaps surprisingly, England never enrolled in a physics class as a student at the Academy, where he began as a lower. He had already taken a number of advanced math courses at the University of New Hampshire before the 10th grade, and besides, he says, focusing on biochemistry allowed him to experience the full breadth of the hard sciences, and not be railroaded into the narrower physics curriculum. It was in a biology course taught by Science Instructor Townley Chisholm that England studied — and found a kind of majesty in — protein folding. Proteins are a cell’s molecular machine, stringy structures that can shapeshift and make it possible for a cell to accomplish its task. “I was fascinated at that point by the idea that pieces could fold into complicated shapes to give you exquisitely performed biochemical functions,” he says. But he was never much for lab work. Not one to be careful and meticulous on the bench top, “I was a complete mess,” England admits. Chisholm is charitable in his observations: “What I particularly remember about Jeremy was his delight in discussing ideas and their implications with his classmates. He was a very inclusive, considerate member of the conversation who consistently added unusual insights and perspectives to our classes. He thought a lot about the meaning of what we studied.” England’s curiosity led him to earn his biochemical sciences undergraduate degree at Harvard, then to study theoretical physics as a doctoral student at Oxford, before he earned his Ph.D. at Stanford in 2009. “I was attracted by sweeping ideas,” he adds. “That was the catnip that drew me in. But there’s a danger there because a lot of students, especially younger ones, get caught up in the beauty of ideas and their apparent power and grandeur. They forget how much science really has to be rooted in empirical observations.” These are sentiments he passes on to his own students; England launched his career as a lecturer and independent fellow at Princeton, after which he took his first teaching post at MIT when he was just 29. Today, in addition to his work at GlaxoSmithKline, he’s a principal research scientist at Georgia Tech.
“There was a fevered sense of
more than 5,000 miles away in Andover, Massachusetts, where as a 5-year-old he thrilled to dinosaurs and had early designs on becoming a paleontologist. That was until a few years later, following a move to New Hampshire, when he discovered the writings of English theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking and his imagination turned to weightier questions. England’s precocity was in full bloom by age 10, when he and childhood buddy Alex Kaufman ’98 procured a forgotten blackboard from the basement of Temple Israel in Dover and decided to spend a day engaged in an impromptu math war. Typical kid stuff. “I thought I was pretty hot stuff when it came to math, but Jeremy swore he knew more than I did,” says Kaufman, now a Bay Area analytics manager. “A challenge like that couldn’t stand. We went back and forth posing math problems, until Jeremy finally gave me a quadratic equation to solve. It was something I’d never seen before, and I was completely stumped.” Although England excelled in the well-ordered world of mathematics, it was physics — with its concomitant order and disorder — that would become his passion. “I’m the type of physicist who likes statistical mechanics,” he says. “That’s a branch of physics that says, ‘All right, here’s a big mess. How do you figure out what kind of order is hiding in the mess?’ That’s much more how I operate — as a theoretical scientist.” That mess, he notes, is a “refuge,” where he can “take something that seems too complicated and realize that you can make predictive models. Then you can see some kind of deep mathematical perfection hidden behind it.”
having an idea
and not being able to stop thinking about it, and not being able to sleep.”
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Underlying England’s credentials is an insatiable desire to unlock puzzles that defy intuition and simple assumptions. “In this case,” he says, “asking how and whether simple laws of physics might somehow already imply that matter eventually starts acting in a lifelike way.” England’s thought processes have long garnered notice. He was a Rhodes scholar, a Hertz fellow, and in 2011, he was named one of Forbes’ “30 Under 30 Rising Stars of Science.” England is also a polyglot; he speaks German, Spanish and Hebrew. He learned the latter to read the scriptures without a translator, and as a way to nurture his love for Israel. England’s name became known beyond
“There was a fevered sense of having an idea and not being able to stop thinking about it, and not being able to sleep.” These days, he views his work through a spiritual lens. But there is a right way and a wrong way to go about that, he explains. “If you start with the scripture, and then go to the science, you’re doing it upside down and you’re going to end up very confused and not producing,” England says. He melded science and faith in his 2020 book about dissipative adaptation, Every Life Is on Fire: How Thermodynamics Explains the Origins of Living Things. He began with a broader set of questions that people ask when they think about scientific reasoning and its relationship to the origins of life: What is the purpose of life? Who are we as human beings? He included Hebrew scriptures “as a different way of talking about the same topic,” England says, noting that there are people “horrified by the idea that someone is trying to make a serious case about science by mixing in anything to do with his religion.” “People sometimes assume that [the book is] about whether you can reconcile religion and science, as though Jeremy is trying to find scientific proof for the existence of God, but I don’t think that’s right,” says Eric Henney, England’s editor at Basic Books. “What Jeremy is doing is trying to figure out what kinds of answers scientific inquiry can provide for existential questions. And where he lands is quite profound.” Profundity aside, England is currently taking dissipative adaptation in new directions, into questions of algorithmic matter. “How much can a big pile of particles compute if each particle itself is a computer?” he muses. He continues to ignore the Darwin comparisons. Such assessments can shut down reflection and critical engagement. He is unperturbed. He’s all about adapting. E
“[England] is trying to figure out
academia in 2017. A character with a like identity stars in Origin, a novel by Dan Brown ’82 in which a fictional Harvard professor of symbology and religious iconology considers the origins of human life. Brown took England to lunch a month before publication to let his namesake know that he’d modeled a character after him. England does not criticize the book — not the science aspect, at least — but he penned a column for The Wall Street Journal disagreeing with Brown’s portrayal of the fictional Jeremy England as someone whose sole purpose in the story is “to demonstrate that science has made God irrelevant.” It was a characterization that years ago might not have nettled England. But times have changed. When he graduated from Harvard, England, whose mother’s parents were Polish Jewish Holocaust survivors, was an avowed atheist. A 2005 visit to Israel, during his time at Oxford — and succeeding visits to the Holy Land — changed him in profound and unexpected ways. “I felt more at home here than I had anywhere,” he recalls. “It was a stunning experience.” Now a practicing Orthodox Jew, England also is an ordained rabbi who spends his limited free time studying the Hebrew Bible. It was in Jerusalem in the summer of 2012 that England first began to chew on dissipative adaptation, with thoughts and ideas intruding on his honeymoon. “I played around with equations, flipped things around, and suddenly it seemed like there was an implication there that I hadn’t noticed before that pointed in a certain direction,” he recalls.
what kinds of answers scientific inquiry can provide for existential questions.”
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Academics
Afield
Students pursue purpose-driven learning at home and abroad this summer By Sarah Pruitt ’95
E
nergy and excitement filled Love Gymnasium on September 10, 2021, as the entire school community of students and faculty gathered for the first time in 18 months for Opening Assembly. In the front rows, members of the class of 2022 listened as Principal Bill Rawson ’71; P’08 offered a reminder of Exeter’s mission “to unite goodness and knowledge and inspire youth from every quarter to lead purposeful lives.” But as all Exonians know, the pursuit of goodness and knowledge doesn’t begin after Opening Assembly, and it doesn’t end after that last class in late May. Summer may be for rest, relaxation, family and friends — but it also offers many students, including those featured here, the precious time and space to continue the pursuit of learning and to follow their sense of purpose into the wider world.
ZANDER GALLI ’22
Zander Galli ‘22 places satellite tracking tags on giraffes in Namibia.
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Guardian of biodiversity For as long as he can remember, Zander Galli ’22 has been interested in wildlife and nature. After his lower year, Galli planned a trip to Africa, where he initially thought he’d be working with cheetahs. In fact, he headed to the Munyawana Conservancy in southeastern South Africa for a conservation project involving pangolins, the rare insect-eating mammals that are covered in overlapping scales resembling the leaves of an artichoke. “They have this entrancing aura that’s hard to describe if you’re not right next to it,” Galli says. “It’s like stumbling on some otherworldly alien, they’re just so strange and beautiful.” While often compared to anteaters, pangolins are in fact more closely related to the Carnivora order, which includes cats, dogs and bears. Their unique scales are made of keratin, the same protein that forms human hair and fingernails. Despite having no proven medicinal value, the scales are highly sought after for use in traditional cures for ailments ranging from arthritis to cancer. Due to a robust poaching trade over the past 10 to 15 years, pangolins are now believed to be the most-trafficked mammal in the world. Though the COVID-19 pandemic scuttled all travel in the summer of 2020, Galli returned to the same conservancy this summer. His job was to help rehabilitate three young pangolins that had been rescued from the poaching trade and reintroduce them into the wild. Pangolins are normally solitary, nocturnal creatures, but these orphaned animals were completely dependent on Galli and his colleagues to dig up ant and termite nests for them to feed on. “At night, you bring them back and sleep right next to them, because you have to keep them warm and make sure they don’t get sick,” Galli says. “It’s very stressful for them.” In addition to the threat of poaching, “the climate crisis is really
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affecting the areas that pangolins live, especially the drier areas,” Galli says. “When the rainfall is much lower, the insects are way less prevalent, so the pangolins have to spend more time out of their shelters looking for them.” Not only are the animals exerting more energy and risking starvation, but they’re more easily hunted when they’re in the open. All eight pangolin species native to Asia and Africa are currently classified as threatened with extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Galli also spent a month this summer in the Namib Desert in northwest Namibia, working with the Giraffe Conservation Foundation to track and place satellite tags on giraffes. “The foundation used the tagging data to track the giraffe migration between the Namibian and Angolan border and set up community conservation programs,” he explains. After taking Advanced Biology his upper year, Galli is now working with Science Instructor Townley Chisholm on a senior project to create a new biology curriculum. “It connects natural disruption to zoonotic diseases, like COVID and Ebola and HIV, and explains how the status quo of natural destruction will probably lead to more diseases like those,” he says. Galli hopes to test the curriculum in Exeter biology classrooms before rolling it out to a wider audience. In addition to his conservation interests, Galli is on the wrestling and crew teams, serves as co-head of the Daniel Webster Debate Society and sits on the Community Conduct Committee. Next spring, he will travel to the nation’s capital for the Washington Intern Program and plans to intern at an environmental law or policy organization. In a TEDx talk Galli gave at Exeter in the spring of 2019, he advised fellow Exonians to “think of biodiversity as a massive Jenga tower” in which every species is important to the solidity of the tower. He still sees this metaphor as an apt one for illustrating the need to take climate change — as well as the plight of the pangolin and other threatened animals — seriously. “I think the most important thing for humans is to think of ourselves as part of nature and recognize and appreciate how our actions have effects we can’t even picture,” Galli says. “We just don’t know enough about how all these ecosystems function, and how the entire biosphere keeps us alive. We don’t know when that tipping point will be.”
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“The most important thing for humans is to think of ourselves as part of nature and recognize and appreciate how our actions have effects.”
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EMMA FINN ’22
“My goal for the project was not just to make [Greek] easier to learn, but to make people really fall in love with the language the way I did.”
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Champion of ancient Greek Emma Finn ’22 started taking Latin in sixth grade and chose to come to Exeter in part to continue her studies. In pursuit of a Classics diploma, she enrolled in her first Greek course during her upper year and was immediately hooked. “I love Latin, but for me Greek is a more fluid language,” Finn says. “There are these little words called particles that can convey sarcasm and nuance in a way you can only really get while speaking in English.” When Finn heard that Matthew Hartnett, chair of the Department of Classical Languages, was looking for a student to work remotely over the summer to revise ΑΓΩΝ (pronounced “ahg-own”), the ancient Greek textbook he wrote that is used in Exeter’s introductory Greek courses, she jumped at the opportunity. “My goal for the project was not just to make it easier to learn, but to make people really fall in love with the language the way I did,” she says. In addition to reformatting the appendix, indexing prepositions and other tasks, Finn added new sentences to the textbook to ensure better distribution of vocabulary words. She particularly enjoyed researching and writing short biographies of the authors whose texts are included in the book, hopefully inspiring her fellow Greek scholars to read more of their work. “It’s been great practice to see the curriculum and the material through a different lens,” she says. “I’ve always loved storytelling, and it’s been really rewarding to shift from being a consumer of knowledge to being able to produce it in ways that will have an impact on other students’ learning.” “Emma came up with a lot of ways to make learning the vocabulary and grammar easier, including little mnemonic devices, tricks and tips,” Hartnett says. “Because she can still see Greek through a student’s eyes, she helped us present the material in a way that’s easier for students to understand.” Finn’s academic interests also led her to Exeter History Instructor Aykut
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Kilinc, who enlisted her help in designing lesson plans and curriculum for his economics course. “We read this really interesting book that’s basically a comprehensive history of U.S. trade policy,” she says. “Which I know doesn’t sound interesting, but it turns out to be a great way of looking at the broader political shifts in the United States over time.” On top of those two projects, Finn found time to complete a summer internship for the New-York Historical Society. Working remotely from her home in Maryland, she wrote a blog post about the pioneering female journalist Ruth Hale for the museum’s Center for Women’s History and helped develop lesson plan content for Museums for Digital Learning, an educational platform that provides K-12 schools with curated resources. For her academic excellence, Finn was recently selected as a Coolidge Scholar, an honor that comes with a scholarship for four years of undergraduate study at any accredited college or university in the United States. Coolidge Scholars are also selected based on a demonstrated interest in public policy and a record of humility and service. In Finn’s case, she has been involved in the Exeter Student Service Organization since her prep year and is now the co-president. She’s also co-head of Exeter’s Economics Club and Microfinance Club, which provides small loans to entrepreneurs in the developing world. Before the pandemic, Finn frequently volunteered to care for abandoned horses at the Hidden Pond Equine Rescue in Brentwood, New Hampshire. “The goal is to socialize the horses and get them used to being around humans again so they can be adopted,” Finn says. An experienced equestrian who started riding when she was 6 years old, Finn competed in horse shows on weekends during her lower year and hopes to resume riding and volunteering with horses during the new school year.
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JUSTIN RIGG ’23
Next-level non sibi
In July, Justin Rigg ’23 (pictured above, on right) spent two weeks in the Naval Special Warfare Orientation Course, a specialized training for highly qualified cadets in the U.S. Naval Sea Cadet Corps, a youth organization sponsored by the U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard. After passing the Navy SEAL physical fitness test twice — a feat he prepared for by training with Dallas United Crew to row at a national event earlier in the summer — Rigg joined his fellow cadets for training sessions in weaponry, jungle reconnaissance and close-quarters battle, among other skills. Highlights of the course for Rigg included “Hell Night,” a 40-hour period when cadets were not allowed to sleep and had to perform grueling physical tasks with little to no rest. His experience at NSWOC marks the conclusion of a four-year stint as a Sea Cadet, which began when a 12-year-old Rigg toured the battlefield at Iwo Jima and met members of the Young Marines, a military youth group similar to the Sea Cadets. He completed a year with the Young Marines but was drawn to the Sea Cadet program for the many different types of training it offered, ranging from combat medical training to scuba certification to aviation training. “It was an excellent way to close out the program,” Rigg says of his summer at NSWOC. “The skills I developed and the people I met will stay with me for a very long time.”
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JANESSA VARGAS ’22
LOGAN OLAZABAL ’23
Climate change crusader
Logan Olazabal ’23 spent his summer making improvements to his recently launched website CAR-bonator. com, where users can compare cars based on the amount of carbon emissions they produce. He and his sister Lina, now a senior at the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, were inspired to create the site by their experience growing up in Southern California. “Wildfires constantly threatened our home, so I was aware of climate change from a very young age,” Olazabal says. “Ever since, I’ve devoted a part of my life to making more people aware of the very real danger of climate change.” He and Lina also serve as co-editors of Two Degrees, an anthology of short fiction and poetry about climate change.
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Advocate for immigrant rights As a first-generation Mexican American, Janessa Vargas ’22 has always been aware of how pervasive questions around immigration status can be in families and communities like her own. While at home in New Jersey near the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, she started working with Make the Road, a nonprofit organization that focuses on empowering working-class and immigrant communities. Building on that experience, Vargas dove deep into researching U.S. immigration policy this summer through a fellowship with the National Advocacy Institute at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). With Make the Road, Vargas helped people apply for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the Obamaera program that protects from deportation certain undocumented people brought to the United States as children and allows them to work. “For my [ACLU] research proposal, I asked the question, ‘How do we achieve citizenship for people who are left out of this very specific pool that the government or politicians think are worthy or have ‘earned’ their citizenship?’” Vargas explains. She interviewed immigration lawyers and community organizers, both in her area and in other regions of the country, to get a more complex picture of the issue. “The way I tackled the research project was bringing humanity to policy,” she says. “I would mix people’s interviews — their realities — with the law and present the human perspective. I tried to show how a lack of citizenship and a lack of stability in one’s immigration status is so pervasive in people’s lives, and in the lives of my family and my community.” In July, around the time Vargas was preparing to present her research (virtually) to some 200 people, a federal judge in Texas ruled that DACA was unlawful and suspended the program. As the debate over immigration reform continues in Congress, Vargas will travel to Saint Peter’s University in New Jersey to speak at a campus event on immigration in September. She also plans to head to Washington, D.C., for
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events surrounding the vote on the planned budget, which she hopes will include “the pathway to citizenship for millions of people.” Vargas rounded out her summer with a stint doing research for the Greater Good Institute, a youth-led think tank, as well as classes on literature and philosophy through the Yale Young Global Scholars Program. For good measure, she attended a five-day virtual course on critical race theory at the African American Policy Forum, led by the scholar and writer Kimberlé Crenshaw. At Exeter, Vargas has immersed herself in the ongoing work devoted to promoting anti-racism and diversity, equity and inclusion on campus. She is head of diversity and equity for Student Council; co-head of the Afro-Latinx Exonian Society, Feminist Union and Democratic Club; and has worked as a student proctor in the Office of Multicultural Affairs. She also co-leads Model UN, which she’s been involved with since her prep year. “Like most Exonians, I’m pretty overcommitted,” Vargas says. “But even though I’m spread in a lot of places, I feel like it’s all within the same area of work.” She’s seen the positive impact of anti-racist work in the Exeter curriculum, as well as in Model UN. “I saw the board before me take accountability and take people out of spaces where they were causing harm, admit that wrong, and make clear that things need to change,” Vargas says. “Now our board is made up mostly of women of color, so I’ve seen that transformation in a club where I probably would have least expected it.” Vargas is also excited to begin working with GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network), a nationwide organization that seeks to protect and create positive environments for LGBTQ students in K-12 schools. “I think the crux of my Exeter career is making sure that it’s a better place for people like me after I’ve left it,” she says. Referring to the oft-quoted statement made by one of her heroes, James Baldwin, about America, Vargas says she too believes that “if you love something, then you criticize it and make it better.” E
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“The crux of my Exeter career is making sure that it’s a better place for people like me after I’ve left it.”
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Post Past ! from the "
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Letters tell of life at Exeter during the Amen era By Benjamin H. Lacy ’44
Peabody Hall
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y father, Frank R. Lacy,
and his younger brother, Burritt S. Lacy, both entered the Academy as uppers in September 1897 and graduated in the class of 1899. The letters that my father wrote home to his parents in Dubuque, Iowa, and which, to my good fortune, they preserved, paint a picture of life at Exeter in the Principal Harlan P. Amen era that later Exonians may find interesting.
Although the letters I have start only in the spring of 1898, it appears from the inscription “in Oct. 1897,” on the back of a picture of Burritt sitting at a desk in 11 Peabody Hall, that the Lacy brothers lived in Peabody throughout their two years at the Academy as two of its first occupants. In fact, the building seems not to have been quite ready for them. In a letter dated October 12, my father reports that he was still sleeping on a “lounge” because bed springs, which the Academy had ordered from Boston, had not yet arrived. Could this have been a belated attempt to adjust the school’s bed sizes to accommodate the 6-foot-6 Burritt and other oversized boys present or to come? In other respects, the brothers took the furnishing of their room into their own hands. My father writes enthusiastically about a Morris chair that they bought for $10. Their mother had sent them andirons for the fireplace, and they had purchased a screen and soapstone to complete the equipment necessary for its safe and efficient use. The Academy apparently did not yet have dining halls, and Frank and Burritt took all their meals at Mrs. Read’s boarding house. The price was right. My father’s letter of June 20, 1898, thanking his father for a draft of $40, indicates that part of the money would be spent on paying his and Burritt’s bills of $9 each for board from June 22 to July 3. The Lacy
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Burritt Lacy in his Peabody Hall dorm room in 1897; Frank Lacy’s senior PEAN photo.
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boys were expected by their father to keep meticulous records of every penny they spent while at Exeter. I turned my father’s account book over to the Academy’s archivist some years ago. It would also appear that there was not yet an infirmary. In May 1899, Burritt, along with a number of other boys, came down with German measles. He simply stayed in his bed in his room, and Frank “had the doctor come and see him.” To cope with the constant threat of catching cold, Frank, at the beginning of his senior year, sent away for a half dozen bottles of cod liver oil, which, he assured his parents, he took regularly. There were team sports. My father reports watching a football game and a track meet in Andover, and he exults in the camaraderie of a student parade through the town of Exeter and a bonfire following Exeter’s decisive victory in the track meet. His own physical training seems to
The boys
also had bicycles and, in those pre-automotive days, were apparently free to go as far afield as they desired. One letter tells of a 24-mile round trip to Rye Beach.
have been limited to workouts in the gymnasium. He and Burritt did play tennis with some frequency, on their own, and my father writes of lengthy canoe trips and swimming up the river. The boys also had bicycles and, in those pre-automotive days, were apparently free to go as far afield as they desired. One letter tells of a 24-mile round trip to Rye Beach. A more startling revelation in the letters is of the boys’ frequent exercise with firearms. In their senior year, they appear to have brought an arsenal with them. The letter of Oct. 6, 1898, to Papa and Mama reports they had gone out with the revolver and practiced firing. Later letters have them shooting a rifle and hunting (unsuccessfully) in the snowy woods with a shotgun! They often wrote of academics as well. The letters include a “Report of Proficiency, Faithfulness and Attendance of F. R. Lacy of the Upper Middle Class for the Term ending June 21, 1898,” which, I believe, gives a full listing of the curriculum of the time: Latin, Authors and Composition; Greek, Authors and Composition;
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Mathematics; French; German; Physics; Chemistry; History, Ancient and Modern; English, Authors and Composition; Declamation; Mechanical Drawing; and Physical Training. In the ancient languages and English, separate grades were given on “Authors” (reading) and “Composition,” which in the case of the ancient languages I take to mean the ability to translate English into good classical Latin or Greek. Declamation consisted of memorizing a set piece and declaiming it before an audience including a faculty judge. Grading then, as in my time in the 1940s, was tough. Notes to the report card state that “A” represents practically perfect work and is a mark seldom conferred, and that “B” represents highly satisfactory work. My father was graded on Latin, Authors and Composition; French; German; Physics; English, Authors and Composition; and Declamation. I assume this represented a typical class load. Classes were referred to as “recitations,” for whatever that means. There were, of course, no Harkness tables, but the classes were small. A letter dated Jan. 26, 1899, mentions an analytic geometry class of just seven. It appears that there could be some flexibility as to required attendance. In March 1898, my father writes that he has been invited by the teacher to join a geometry class and, because of a conflict with a laboratory obligation, was considering going once a week instead of the two times that the class would regularly meet. The pervasive influence of Harvard on the Academy, as a major source of its freshman class, is very evident. A letter of March 13, 1898 mentions that Harvard’s president, Charles Eliot, had that week spoken to the whole student body in chapel. The Harvard Examinations, which were given at Exeter over a full week following the end of the spring term, were, at least for the Lacy boys — and, I suspect, for the whole Academy — the high point of the academic year. Regular recitations ended, in 1898, on June 21 with the “Trustees’ Examination.” There was then a week during which the whole teaching staff was present in the old Academy Building to provide individual tutoring to any of the examinees who felt the need of help. Then, commencing on June 28 and continuing through July 2, examinations, which may have served both as qualifying and placement tests, were given by Harvard in all of the subjects in which the applicants wished to be examined. My father writes that “the order of ‘our’ Harvard exams is as follows: Tuesday: Advanced German, Thursday: Elementary Latin, Friday: Physics, Geometry, Algebra, English, Saturday: Elementary French and German.” Were there also Yale exams or Princeton exams given at the Academy? Or did you have to go elsewhere to be tested if you were so misguided as to have come to Exeter with the thought of applying to a college other than Harvard? In reading these letters, I cannot but be impressed by
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the magnitude of the changes wrought at the Academy in the 43 years between my father’s graduation and my arrival in 1942. Some things that have changed greatly since my time were then still the same: My father and I both traveled between home and school by train, accepted Latin as the heart of the Academy’s curriculum and wrote letters home in longhand. But the school had in that 43-year interval been transformed. It had a new Academy Building and two other large new class buildings, numerous new dormitories and dining halls, greatly expanded playing fields and sports buildings, an infirmary, and even a church and an inn. I could go on. Dr. Lewis Perry (principal, 1914-1946) with the munificent support of Edward Harkness and other generous donors, had created a physical and social environment my father would not have recognized. I have always regretted that I was not able to coax him into visiting the Academy while I was a student there, but Dubuque was still a long way from Exeter and in 1943, with the war ongoing, travel was not easy — so he never made it. E Editor’s Note: The letters written by Frank R. Lacy were given to Ben Lacy some years ago, he says, by his sister, Margaret Lacy Zimansky, of Iowa City, with whom his father lived during the last years of his life. The letters will now be preserved and added to the permanent collection of the Academy Archives.
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CONNECTIONS
News and notes from the alumni community
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My Radical School By Sarah Ream ’75
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s a 10-year-old growing up in San Francisco, I was obsessed with the Summer of Love. I would save my allowance and take the 22 Fillmore bus down to Haight-Ashbury and stare with envy and longing at the flower children there. I wanted to play guitar like them, to drop out like them, to belong to a radical movement like them. Instead, I baked brownies for the Girl Scouts and did my homework. My one radical gesture consisted of spending the rest of my allowance on tarot cards from the Mystic Eye Bookstore and then doing readings for gullible friends. But the longing to belong to a radical community never left me. Little did I know that, in interviewing at Phillips Exeter in the fall of 1971, I would be fulfilling that dream. At the time and for some time afterward, Exeter seemed the epitome of the very opposite of that vision: It seemed staid, restrained and committed to convention and tradition. But over the last (God help me) 50 years that I have been connected to the school as a student, teacher, parent and, now, emerita, I have seen what is precious and radical continue to emerge in a variety of different and unexpected ways. Yes, when I arrived in the fall of 1972, the engraved Latin slab over the entry to the Academy Building read, “Here come boys to be made into men,” but I also walked under that sign into a history classroom with Ms. Jane Scarborough, who modeled fearless inquiry at the table — and made me realize that a woman could more than hold her own in a room full of men. If she could do it, then so could I. As a lower, I learned to never let gender keep me from speaking my mind. The dictionary’s first definition of radical? “Relating to or affecting the fundamental nature of something; far-reaching or thorough.” Yes, indeed. When I returned to Exeter, 22 years and several careers later, I was again surprised. I thought I was returning to the school I had left.
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But in the intervening time, the Academy had pushed forward in surprisingly progressive ways. Harkness pedagogy, originally intended as “a real revolution in methods,” had continued to evolve, becoming even more student-led and student-centered than I remembered. As a teacher, I always loved the moment when a student would say something about a book that I thought I knew well, making an offhand remark of such fresh insight that I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. But more exciting still was seeing a Harkness approach applied to student life outside the classroom. Activities, clubs and meetings, whether the Gay-Straight Alliance, Middle East Society or Pirate Club, seemed to be asking, “Who are you? And how can we help you be who you are?” Dorm life evolved with the option of all-gender dorms, providing more choice for students. A second meaning of radical? “Advocating thorough or complete political or social change.” Change was in the air and Exeter was part of it. My own children felt that change as students there and responded to it in ways that helped them grow into the engaged people they are today. A term at Mountain School turned my son into a climate warrior, while Dramat fed a dream of writing for TV. And Exeter gave my daughter the support to begin a quest in search of gender identity and expression that led to her happy pursuit of a career in social work and psychotherapy. At the conclusion of a year commemorating 50 years of coeducation at Exeter, I look at my children and see yet another expression of what it means to be radical: “Of, or springing direct from, the root or stem base of a plant.” They have sprung from the same base, the same soil that nurtured me. And I cannot wait to see the ways in which Exeter will continue to thrive and help her students grow into who they are meant to be. As an emerita, I will stand on the sidelines and cheer for the radical change to come. E
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B R E N DA N ROSS E AU ’1 5
The Space Futurist By Sarah Zobel
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omewhere beyond Earth’s exosphere is the
future of the global economy, says Brendan Rosseau ’15. As an engineer and consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton, Rosseau is developing space systems; as a researcher for Harvard Business School, he’s writing case studies for a new space-economy curriculum. The work is full-time-plus, but for Rosseau, two years out of college, it’s a dream realized. “I’ve always liked big ideas, and astronomy is as big as it gets,” he says. Rosseau’s passion for space, reinforced during childhood trips to Chicago’s Adler Planetarium, inspired him to enroll as a new upper at Exeter, where Science Instructor and Grainger Observatory Director John Blackwell encouraged his development. At the Academy, Rosseau collaborated on research projects, served as observatory proctor and presented at a conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. For his outstanding contributions to the advancement of astronomy at Exeter, he received the 2015 John and Irene MacKenty Astronomy Prize. “Exeter fired up my drive to make a difference, deeply understand things and connect with people,” he says. Of course, Rosseau didn’t spend all of his time with his eyes on the sky. He also played piano and was a linebacker for the football team, for which he was named a captain. At Williams College, he combined time on the gridiron with majors in astronomy and economics. Being multidimensional is key, he says. “In this burgeoning Space Age, there’s a real need for people with a broad range of skill sets: engineers, but also people in business, academia, government. To accomplish the potential of space, we’ll need talented folks from across the spectrum.” We reached Rosseau — who is in no rush to visit outer space himself — on terra firma in Boston. What’s happening in the space economy?
In the past few years, we’ve seen startups leverage new space technology and cheaper launch and satellite costs to do amazing things. I just researched a company that is using a constellation of 110 satellites to create a digital map of Earth. It’s a commercial company, but it’s helping to mitigate climate change through better data. There are a million examples like that.
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What does space systems engineering entail?
I help civil, military and commercial customers develop next-gen space systems. As an example, GPS is one of the main systems. We know it as the blue dot on our phones, but it’s also how precision-guided munitions reach targets and soldiers know they’re in the right area. GPS is a great example of how space systems help everyone — it was created for a military purpose, but the Air Force provides it free to 5 billion people daily. Uber wouldn’t be possible without GPS satellites; ATM transactions rely on them. Our whole modern way of life involves GPS. It’s a great use case for the importance and potential of space. Where are we headed next — Mars?
I’m passionate about using space to make a difference on Earth, whether it’s national security or climate change. I’m more focused on that than “Let’s go colonize Mars!” That’s years down the road, and it doesn’t get me as excited as making real change and helping solve problems. E
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C O N N ECT I O N S
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Global Education at Home By Sarah Zobel
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aybe it came to her when she
learned to milk a goat at summer camp in Vermont. Or perhaps during her three-hour round-trip commute from her home in Brooklyn to elementary school. More likely, Abena Agyemang Higgins ’03 realized just how much education matters while a student in the Prep for Prep program. Today, with a career that has included teaching abroad, education policy work and staffing classrooms, she’s focused on making sure quality education is accessible to everyone. “Ask any school right now what is their biggest issue, and they’ll tell you it’s staffing,” Higgins says. “Even before the pandemic, there was a teacher shortage. I think it’s going to be what forces change in education in America.” As chief of staff at Kokua Education, Higgins helps to alleviate the impact of the shortages by training retired baby boomers, artists and others to serve as guest teachers (who bring their unique experiences to classrooms on a short-term basis) and developing teacher-training programs for those looking for career do-overs and full-time positions. Higgins never planned on a life in education. At Exeter, she participated in dance groups Precision Step and Imani, served as president of the AfroLatinx Exonian Society, and ignited a love of travel in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where she spent her senior winter. She went on to Tufts, majoring in psychology and Spanish and studying in Spain. Her first post-college job was as an advertising agency associate account executive. Though Higgins saw advertising as her career path, the Great Recession made it challenging, and she decided to step back. She signed on to a one-year program with the Spanish Ministry of Education in Madrid, teaching immigrants English while training school staff working with parents. She stayed for a second year, then returned to the U.S. to earn a master’s in economics and education at Columbia University’s Teachers College, with a goal to work in international education policy. A stint teaching in a Bronx neighborhood not unlike the one she grew up in changed that. “I saw how little the students had and how much the school was trying to be for them, but couldn’t,
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and decided I was going to stay in education in America,” she says. In 2013 she joined Families for Excellent Schools, where she managed 45 employees, organized rallies of thousands and lifted the caps on charter schools. For this work, she was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. Her long-term plan to lead the organization came to an abrupt halt when Families for Excellent Schools closed its doors. Disappointed, Higgins looked forward to a more low-key position at Kokua. Then COVID hit. During the pandemic, Kokua provided virtual learning training and recorded COVID symptoms among school staffers. “We tracked every headache and runny nose,” Higgins says. “It felt like the responsible thing to do — we were asking them to go into buildings.” Now Higgins will have the chance to learn about education in yet another country. She and her family recently moved to Amsterdam so her husband could be closer to work responsibilities in the Middle East and Africa. She’s excited about the opportunities living abroad will offer her 2-year-old twins. “If we stay long enough, they’ll know a language I don’t, which is a little intimidating,” she says with a laugh, perhaps recognizing the odds are good that she, too, will learn at least a few words in Dutch. E
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Exeter’s Longest-Serving Donor By Debbie Kane
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ill Witkin has witnessed a lot of history since graduating from the Academy in 1939: World War II, the space race, the fight for civil rights, Watergate, the fall of the Berlin Wall, 9/11. Although much has changed over the years, one thing has not — Witkin’s support of Exeter. Inspired by his family’s philanthropy and a desire to offer the Exeter experience to those less fortunate, Witkin, who celebrates his 100th birthday on December 15, is the Academy’s longest-running since-grad donor. He has donated to the Academy for 83 consecutive years, even while serving in the U.S. Air Force during World War II. Witkin chaired The Exeter Fund committee in the mid-1980s, then later became involved with the school’s planned and capital giving efforts; and he continues to be an enthusiastic donor. “Many students can’t afford Exeter,” he says. “I believe supporting their education and donating to the school are worthwhile.” Giving to the Academy, he notes, “has been a lifelong habit.” Witkin grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side during the Great Depression. His father, Isaac, was a commodities trader who founded the New York Cocoa Exchange in 1925, and then his own cocoa importing business, the General Cocoa Company, in 1926. Although Witkin’s childhood was comfortable, his father, the son of immigrants, grew up poor in Philadelphia. Nonetheless, he attended Harvard on a scholarship and later was a consistent donor to that school. “I learned the importance of charitable giving from him,” Witkin says. He also learned the importance of a good education. Witkin followed his older brother Richard ’35 to Exeter and then enrolled at the University of North Carolina in 1939, just as the United States was entering World War II. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor during his junior year, Witkin graduated early and joined the Air Force. He became a B-24 bomber pilot, flying combat missions out of Italy, as had his brother. He characterizes his own experience as much less dangerous than Richard’s: “My planes were hit by flak from the ground but never took on a German fighter in the air.” Witkin did have the great misfortune of losing his best friend, Dana Reed, a pilot in his squadron whose plane was apparently shot down during one of their missions. One of Witkin’s greatest takeaways from his military experience is a belief that war doesn’t accomplish anything. “Killing people doesn’t make sense,” he says. “You don’t
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kill someone because you don’t agree with them. I think we’re better off living by the Golden Rule, to be kind to your neighbor and treat them as you would be treated.” Newscasters called veterans returning from the war “the greatest generation,” but Witkin says they were actually “the luckiest generation,” because the GI Bill supported them to pursue further education. After the war, Witkin, who admits to being embarrassed that he didn’t get into Harvard as an undergraduate as had his father and brother, received his MBA from Harvard Business School. After graduation, he worked for Mack Trucks, and later joined General Cocoa, where he remained until his retirement in 1975. Several years later, he participated in his first Exeter Annual Fund phone-a-thon in New York City, calling alumni and soliciting donations. It turned out that he was good at it. “Joan, my wife of 63 years, tells me it’s because I’m friendly, but one thing that’s made me a successful fundraiser is not being afraid to ask people for money and to just keep doing this until they are convinced.” Witkin, who was named class agent for the Class of ’39 and class president at his 55th Exeter reunion, is noted for his warmth and his personal letters to classmates and alumni. After stepping down as chair of the Annual Fund, he raised capital gifts (and goodwill) for Exeter during fundraising trips to Florida and Arizona with Associate Director of Development Woodie Haskins. Witkin received the Founders’ Day Award in 1995. “I wasn’t a big shot at Exeter,” he says. “I was more involved after I left than when I was as a student.” As he enters his 10th decade, Witkin has slowed down a bit (he attributes his longevity in part to mindful breathing and positive thinking), but is every bit as eager to continue his family’s philanthropic legacy, especially if it creates opportunities for those less fortunate. “Charitable giving comes naturally to me and I’m lucky to be able to do it,” he says. “I give to Exeter because I want to help kids receive scholarships. It’s just the right thing to do.” E
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Back in 1922, inspired by Principal Lewis Perry’s habit of using his own money to provide students in need with clothing and other items, the class of 1920 voted to have classmates who were able give $10 annually to the Academy. The classes of 1921 and 1922 quickly followed suit and thus established the “Christmas Fund,” or what we now call The Exeter Fund, the secondoldest annual fund in the country. As The Exeter Fund enters its 100th year, we reflect on, and are grateful for, the profound impact that annual giving continues to have on all aspects of the Exeter experience — from the Harkness curriculum and financial inclusion to athletics, global programming and wellness. www.exeter.edu/give
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The man LAUREN CROW
By Clark Shen Wu ’23
Incisors, roots rotten, locked in place by implants. A nipple in his left lung breeds suffocating cells, brewing Chernobyl. The big man, steel-made keystone of Pisa, laid on a blue bed. Dariya black dye smeared in his thick seventies’ hair. To die, to unplug the bleeping ventilator of a man on a blue bed beside him. To flaunt his three bullet sized punctures etched on his torso, a shade of burnt coal and trampled wild berries. To crash a glass perfume vial, to scold a daughter without profuse tears. To mourn all bare witch hazel boughs, to dust all deserted cock roaches and woes.
Clark Shen Wu ’23 was named a 2021 Lamont Younger Poet and received a silver medal in the 2021 National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.
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LAMONT GALLERY FREDERICK R. MAYER ’45 ART CENTER
2021 & 2022 EXHIBITIONS
INVENTED FUTURES: CHESLEY BONESTELL AND BEYOND
July 6–October 2, 2021
Work by iconic space artist Chesley Bonestell meets contemporary artists in an exploration of all things cosmic. The Bonestell pieces are drawn from the collection of the late Jay Whipple ’51. A virtual version of this exhibition can be viewed online on the Lamont Gallery’s Exhibition Archives webpage. “SATURN SEEN FROM TITAN, ITS LARGEST MOON 760,000 MILES AWAY” BY CHESLEY BONESTELL, 1961, OIL ON PANEL, FROM THE COLLECTION OF JAY WHIPPLE ’51
FORCES IN MOTION: GORDON D. CHASE ’66
October 22–December 18, 2021 Artist and educator Gordon D. Chase ’66
asks big questions in dynamic ways through gestural paintings, powerful black-andwhite drawings and piercingly angular sculpture. “THE INSANITY OF VIOLENCE,” 2016, PAINTED PLYWOOD
WINTER EXHIBITION January–April 2022 This exhibition features a selection of work by Exeter alumnae artists who were showcased in the winter/spring 2021 virtual Collective Curiosity exhibition. “I JUST SAW,” BY MAUD BRYT ’83, 2021, WATERCOLOR ON PAPER
ADVANCED STUDENT ART SHOW
May–June 2022
This annual exhibit showcases the creative outcomes from a period of highly focused artmaking by Exeter students in advanced studio courses. “YOUR WORDS TO MINE,” BY DANIELLE SUNG ’22, OIL ON CANVAS, ROPE, METAL CLIPS (STUDENT WORK FROM UNCHARTED TERRITORY, THE 2021 ADVANCED STUDENT ART SHOW)
LAMONT GALLERY PHILLIPS EXETER ACADEMY 11 TAN LANE EXETER, NH 03833
603-777-3461 • gallery@exeter.edu The Lamont Gallery is open to the public by appointment. Please go to the “Visit the Lamont Gallery” page of our website to learn more and make a reservation. www.exeter.edu/lamontgallery
PP H E TE ETRE R A CAACDAE D MEY M Y HIILLLLI IPPS SE X EX
20 20Main MainStreet Street Exeter, Exeter,NH NH03833-2460 03833-2460
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