25 minute read
Post from the Past
Post
from the Past
Letters tell of life at Exeter during the Amen era
By Benjamin H. Lacy ’44
Peabody Hall
My 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 nd 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 rst 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 replace, and they had purchased a screen and soapstone to complete the equipment necessary for its safe and e cient 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
Burritt Lacy in his Peabody Hall dorm room in 1897; Frank Lacy’s senior PEAN photo.
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 in rmary. 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 bon re following Exeter’s decisive victory in the track meet. His own physical training seems to
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 a eld 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 rearms. 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 ring. Later letters have them shooting a ri e and hunting (unsuccessfully) in the snowy woods with a shotgun!
They often wrote of academics as well. The letters include a “Report of Pro ciency, 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;
The boys
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 exibility 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 con ict with a laboratory obligation, was considering going once a week instead of the two times that the class would regularly meet.
The pervasive in uence 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 sta 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 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 elds and sports buildings, an in rmary, and even a church and an inn. I could go on. Dr. Lewis Perry (principal, 1914-1946) with the muni cent 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.
CONNECTIONS
News and notes from the alumni community
My Radical School
By Sarah Ream ’75
As 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 ower 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 ful lling 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 di erent 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 rst de nition of radical? “Relating to or a ecting 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. 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 o and 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
C A T C H I N G U P W I T H A Y O U N G A L U M BRENDAN ROSSEAU ’15
The Space Futurist
By Sarah Zobel
Somewhere 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 red up my drive to make a di erence, 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 rma in Boston.
What’s happening in the space economy? 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.
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.
Where are we headed next — Mars?
I’m passionate about using space to make a di erence 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
P R O F I L E ABENA AGYEMANG HIGGINS ’03
Global Education at Home
By Sarah Zobel
Maybe 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 sta ng 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 sta ng,” 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 sta 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 rst 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 sta 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, 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 sta ers. “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 o er 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
G I V I N G B A C K BILL WITKIN ’39
Exeter’s Longest-Serving Donor
By Debbie Kane
Bill Witkin has witnessed a lot of history since graduating from the Academy in 1939: World War II, the space race, the ght 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 o er 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 e orts; and he continues to be an enthusiastic donor. “Many students can’t a ord 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, ying 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 ak from the ground but never took on a German ghter 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
kill someone because you don’t agree with them. I think we’re better o 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 rst 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
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 second-
oldest 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
The man
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.
LAUREN CROW
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
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
20 Main Street 20 Main Street Exeter, NH 03833-2460 Exeter, NH 03833-2460
Parents of Alumni: Parents of Alumni: If this magazine is addressed to an Exonian who no longer maintains a permanent address at your home, please email us (records@exeter.edu) with their new address. Thank you. If this magazine is addressed to an Exonian who no longer maintains a permanent address at your home, please email us (records@exeter.edu) with their new address. Thank you.
Staying in touch with Exeter is easier than ever!
We’ve developed a simple online form where you can quickly update your o icial record with new contact information and share life’s most meaningful milestones — from job changes and marriages to births and adoptions.
www.exeter.edu/recordupdate
Family members and friends of alumni may also use this form to notify the Academy of deaths. Death notifications will appear in the In Memoriam section of an upcoming issue of The Exeter Bulletin alumni magazine.
