The Exeter Bulletin, winter 2024

The Exeter Bulletin WINTER 2024

journey TO purpose EXETER ALUMNI SEEK AND FIND MEANING IN WORK AND LIFE

Yesterday.

Today.

Together.

Join us for

Reunions 2024

MAY 3-5

15th Reunion Class of 2009 20th Reunion Class of 2004 25th Reunion Class of 1999 30th Reunion Class of 1994 35th Reunion Class of 1989 40th Reunion Class of 1984

MAY 16-19

50th Reunion Class of 1974

MAY 17-19

5th Reunion Class of 2019 10th Reunion Class of 2014 45th Reunion Class of 1979 55th Reunion Class of 1969

MAY 21-23

60th Reunion Class of 1964 65th Reunion Class of 1959 70th Reunion Class of 1954 75th Reunion Class of 1949

FIND OUT MORE AT exeter.edu/reunions

WINTER

The Exeter Bulletin Principal William K. Rawson ’71; P’08 Director of Communications Robin Giampa Editor Jennifer Wagner Contributing Editor Patrick Garrity Class Notes Editor Cathy Webber Staff Writer Sarah Pruitt ’95 Production Coordinator Ben Harriton Designers Rachel Dlugos David Nelson 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

Una Jain Basak ’90, Bradford Briner ’95, Wole C. Coaxum ’88, Suzi Kwon Cohen ’88, Elizabeth A. “Betsy” Fleming ’86, Scott S.W. Hahn ’90, Ira D. Helfand, M.D. ’67, Paulina L. Jerez ’91, Giles “Gil” Kemp ’68, Eric A. Logan ’92, Cornelia “Cia” Buckley Marakovits ’83, Samuel M. Maruca ’73, William K. Rawson ’71, Christine M. Robson Weaver ’99, Michael J. Schmidtberger ’78, Peter M. Scocimara ’82, Sanjay K. Shetty, M.D. ’92, Leroy Sims, M.D. ’97, Belinda A. Tate ’90, 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 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 2024 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

PATRICK GARRIT Y

Trustees President Morgan C.W. Sze ’83 Vice President Deidre G. O’Byrne ’84

“I COULD’VE HAD A LOVELY LIFE SIMPLY DOING SOMETHING ADVENTUROUS. EXETER GAVE ME A SENSE OF A LARGER PURPOSE. ” —page 28

IN THIS ISSUE

Volume CXXVIII, Issue no. 2

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Features 28 Journey to Purpose Exeter alumni seek and find meaning in work and life.

By Debbie Kane and Sarah Pruitt ’95

36 Imagining Our Future A celebration of the 55-year history and enduring impact of the AfroLatinx Exonian Society. Plus: Musician John Forté ’93 on fame, activism and fatherhood.

By Sarah Pruitt ’95

44 Garden of the Forking Paths Writer Paul Yoon ’98 reconnects with his former English instructor about writing, teaching, mentorship and friendship.

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By Ralph Sneeden

Departments 6

Around the Table: Bennett Fellow reflects on long COVID, student research takes aim at malaria, Roxane Gay ’92 honored and more 24 Sports: New tech optimizes performance and recovery. Plus: Highlights from fall E/A 48 Connections: Ram Ahluwalia ’97, Lydia Moffet ’03, Alex Sinton ’85 and Margie Wakelin ’97 60 Class Notes 102 Memorial Minute: Frank Trafton Gutmann ’52 104 Finis Origine Pendet: L. Todd Hearon COVER ILLUSTRATION BY RICHARD MIA

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A drone camera captured this sweeping shot of a blazing bonfire and the surrounding town of Exeter during E/A weekend.

PHOTOGRAPH BY AUSTIN DESISTO ’24

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AROUND THE TABLE

What’s new and notable at the Academy

Letters to the Editor VISITING FELLOW

I am pleased that the Bulletin chose to commemorate J. Robert Oppenheimer’s memorable visit to Exeter in 1955. Since the “visiting fireman” program had originally been proposed by The Exonian, the editors of the newspaper had the privilege of lunching with Oppenheimer when he first arrived on campus.

And then, when William Loeb of the Manchester Union-Leader ran his outrageous editorial entitled “Mis-Education at Exeter,” I had the wonderful opportunity of replying in an Exonian editorial entitled “Mis-Journalism at Manchester.” That piece wasn’t mentioned in the Bulletin article, but I think a number of faculty members as well as students found it a gratifying act of resistance to the intellectual bullies of that era.

Peter Brooks ’56 Editor’s note: To read Peter Brooks’ editorial, visit The Exonian archives at theexonian.com. The article appeared in the December 14, 1955, edition of the student newspaper.

WRITE TO US!

The Exeter Bulletin welcomes letters related to articles published in recent issues. Please send your remarks to the editor for consideration at jwagner@exeter.edu or Phillips Exeter Academy, The Exeter Bulletin, 20 Main Street, Exeter, NH 03833.

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A Culture of Gratitude

By Principal Bill Rawson ’71; P’08

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xeter was founded as a free school in 1781, at a time when there was no system of free public schools. Today, Exeter is a private school with a public purpose — expressed in our mission statement — to “unite goodness and knowledge and inspire youth from every quarter to lead purposeful lives.”

We enroll students of promising academic ability and strong character from a wide range of backgrounds, identities and experiences, and we admit them without regard to their family’s ability to pay tuition. We strive to create a strong sense of belonging in every student, and to instill in each student a belief that their time here matters. We tell them they are not special merely because they are here, but that because they are here, they have the opportunity to accomplish special things together.

We urge our students to focus on learning and growth, rather than a narrow definition of success, and to embrace fully the opportunities to learn with and from students whose backgrounds and experiences differ from their own. This requires that we learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable, and that we expect — indeed welcome — a diversity of viewpoints on nearly every subject worth exploring in our Harkness classrooms.

We also seek to create a culture of gratitude. We understand that an Exeter education is an extraordinary gift, and attending Exeter is a great privilege. With that

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privilege comes opportunity, and with opportunity comes responsibility. In accordance with our core value of non sibi, we seek to graduate students “whose ambitions and actions are inspired by their interest in others and the world around them.”

I too am privileged to be a part of this community, and to be able to observe firsthand the joy our students have in their learning, witness how they care for each other, and see all the special things they accomplish together and the fun they have doing it. It also is deeply meaningful to see all that our teachers and all other adults in our school do to make these student experiences possible, and to hear parents express time and again their deep gratitude for the growth they see in their children during their time here.

I have said before that human connection is at the foundation of all that we do and all that we can hope to accomplish of significance in our lives. A few weeks ago, I wrote to our school community that we must work every day to create a world where the dignity and equal worth of every human life is understood and respected by all.

We do this work, like everything we do at Exeter, with a deep sense of purpose. We see the fulfillment of that purpose in how our students contribute to the life of the school while they are here, as well as in how they contribute to the greater good, and lead their own purposeful lives, after they leave. E

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The Vocabulary of Illness G EO RG E B E N N E T T F E L LOW E M M A Z I M M E R M A N’S RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG COVID

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ook how beautiful the water is.

Look how beautiful it all is” — my sister’s words, like cupped hands before me. A beg. Midsummer had returned for the first weekend in September.

Lake Michigan, aqua and crystalline.

Before us, suburban parents with sunscreen backs stood watch over the surf. Their children ran, sand-bucket fists or empty palms, along the shore. To carry oneself with such freedom — I hardly remembered. I watched an old man with sun-spotted skin plod wearily into the water, body tensing in the waves, then relaxing again. Many decades his junior, and I could hardly weather the waves. My limbs, too weak. I could hardly carry myself the two blocks from door to sand.

I could, however, climb out of bed this morning. And it struck me that I should be grateful for this pittance — a day with lighter symptoms; a tease of summer; the earth, grainy between my toes.

“There will be more days like this,” my sister pleaded.

“You must be around to see them.” She was my older sister and had known me before I knew this world. The two of us in our youth, all wide eyes, and matching dresses. Bruised knees and grass-stained jeans. Limbs like newborn calves.

So bemused we had been by the simplest of abilities. To reach, to grab. To run and climb. She had watched me

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CHRISTIAN HARRISON

The following is an excerpt from Body Songs, the hybrid-nonfiction book Emma Zimmerman is working on during her fellowship year at the Academy. The manuscript considers the epidemic of long COVID, blending Zimmerman’s own experience with other patients’ stories, alongside themes of mortality, communal suffering and solidarity. “This project is both emotionally rigorous and time-consuming, as it requires research and reporting on top of narrative and craft considerations,” Zimmerman says. “I am immensely grateful to Phillips Exeter Academy for granting me this precious gift: time and space to work on a project so important to me.”

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discover hands. Watched me make a mess of them — sweet potatoes, mashed peas. In a video from my first year, I sit in a highchair. My cheeks, rouged with something orange.

Suddenly, a little girl’s voice, tinny in the background, “I think I’ll call her the messy woman,” she shrieks.

And now, here we were, visiting our parents on the shore of Lake Michigan, some 26 years later. Women, yes. Messy, but not in the way she had meant.

She had watched me discover hands and here I was, too fatigued to use them. My fingers, too weak to plant a beach

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umbrella. Too numb to cut with fork and knife. I had been debilitated by long COVID for six months by then. On bad days, confined to bed. On better days, sedentary beside my loved ones. Trying, fumbling. Failing to translate into words how it felt to exist in my body.

“What did it feel like?” I ask recovered patients. “The brain fog?” As if the world were a video game, they tell me. Like a new dimension. Like stepping into a separate realm.

“What did it feel like?” I ask. “The fatigue?” Like being weighed down by sandbags. Like being pummeled by gravity and starved of oxygen, too.

“What did it feel like? The worst days?” Like being poisoned. As if an alien were inside of me, gripping my intestines with the strength of another world.

A new realm, an alien, a poison, a body laden with sandbags and starved of oxygen, too. Metaphors, all of these. But in illness, I wanted none of them.

A litany of great writers tells us we should not make a metaphor of illness. No poem, no imagery. No flowers to color the margins of this despair. One could trace this lineage to Susan Sontag — her blatant eschewal of metaphor in illness literature: “My point is that illness is not a metaphor. And that the most truthful way of regarding illness — and the healthiest way of being ill — is one most purified of, most resistant to, metaphoric thinking,” she writes in her 1977 essay “Illness as Metaphor.”

When Sontag wrote those words, she had just finished three years of treatment for stage 4 breast cancer. A radical mastectomy, extensive radiation, and 30 months of chemotherapy. To list cancer treatments alongside Sontag’s name — something uncanny, if not disturbing, about this affiliation. For the very vocabulary of illness narrows a person. It streamlines complex being into generalized body. One sees the word “chemotherapy” and imagines a port, a vein, or a shaved head. The word “mastectomy” and a breast or a surgical instrument. In cancer, and in all illnesses, a person is reduced to simpler forms. To body parts and their associated instruments.

One can hardly imagine Sontag — all black everything (“the dark prince,” recalls writer Judith Grossman in The New Yorker), her gray streak in black hair. A stoic, thinking expression on her face. This revered woman of letters, this woman so emblematic of a life of the mind — now, a body.

In the early months of illness, I too saw illness as void. Illness as pain, pure and unanesthetized. Illness, emptied of any meaning we otherwise seek to weather this place, this life. Illness, isolated from anything touched by the well.

I clung to the words of Sontag and her successors. After all, whom else might I trust? Who else clutched, in their hands, the white sheet of the ghost they had once been? Who else knew what it meant to lose the person they thought they were — beneath the skin and blood they thought they knew? E Emma Zimmerman is a nonfiction writer and journalist from Brooklyn, New York. Her essays and creative nonfiction have appeared in various literary journals. She has received fellowships and awards from organizations that include Lighthouse Writers Workshop and PRISM International. Her journalism focuses on the connection between sports, the outdoors and social change, and has appeared in outlets that include Outside and Runner’s World. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from Grinnell College and a Master of Fine Arts in creative nonfiction writing

“Trying, fumbling.

Failing to translate into words how it felt to exist in my body.”

THE GEORGE BENNETT FELLOWSHIP Endowed by Elias B.M. Kulukundis ’55, the fellowship honors Academy English Instructor Emeritus George Bennett by awarding a one-year fellowship to an author of outstanding promise who has not yet published a book. The purpose of the fellowship is to provide time and freedom from material considerations to a person seriously contemplating or pursuing a career as a writer. As a writer in residence, the fellow lives in Exeter and is available in an informal way to students interested in writing and, more specifically, to students in English classes and to members of student literary organizations.

from NYU.

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Mapping the Mosquito Genome

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alaria killed an estimated 608,000 people worldwide in 2022 and sickened some 249 million more. With globalization and climate change — and the presence of potentially disease-carrying mosquitoes — malaria may even make a comeback in North America, where it was considered eradicated in 1951.

Now Exeter students have joined research efforts aimed at fighting the global spread of malaria, which has no cure. In a new biology course developed by Science Instructors Shimaa Ghazal and Anne Rankin ’92, and taught by Ghazal, students succeeded in mapping a full genome sequence for a strain of the mosquito species Anopheles gambiae, a leading host for the parasite that causes malaria.

The results of their efforts were published in GenBank, the National Institutes of Health’s annotated database of publicly available DNA sequences.

To carry out this realworld research, Ghazal, who has a doctorate in microbial genetics, and her students collaborated with laboratories run

by Dr. Seung Kim ’81 at Stanford and Dr. Michael Povelones at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine.

Called PEA_Agam_2022 (short for Phillips Exeter Academy, Anopheles gambiae, winter 2022), the newly mapped genome is one of only seven for Anopheles gambiae that are published in GenBank and the first to be published by a high school.

By studying the different strains of Anopheles gambiae and pinpointing genetic material that makes the mosquitoes better or worse at carrying the disease, scientists hope to develop more effective insecticides and — one day — breed mosquitoes that are resistant to carrying malaria.

In addition to the complex “wet lab” work involved in preparing the snippets of mosquito DNA for sequencing, students read and discussed journalist Sonia Shah’s book The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years. “We wanted to put the disease into a broader context, and broaden the students’ understanding,” Rankin says. “We sequenced a genome, but we did not just sequence a genome. We learned a lot about the context of malaria in different parts of the world, and the way it has influenced human history.”

The “malaria course,” offered in the winter term 2022, will return this spring as BIO650: Exploring Bioinformatics and Next-Generation Sequencing. Building on the model of Exeter’s popular “fruit fly course,” part of a collaboration with Kim’s lab at Stanford since 2012, BIO650 will also introduce students to the growing interdisciplinary field of bioinformatics, which applies computer technology to understand biological data and information. E

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Lead With Optimism RETIRED ARMY LIEUTENANT GENERAL DELIVERS GOOD NEWS

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CHRISTIAN HARRISON

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etired Army Lt. Gen. Charles Luckey ’73 wants Exeter students to know that, despite all the challenges and injustices the world may present to them, they are “on the road to awesome.”

Luckey delivered his upbeat message to the full student body in Assembly Hall as part of the school’s fifth Exeter Salutes celebration. He urged the students to trust that the lessons they learn at the Academy today will make a very real difference tomorrow. “This institution, this room, your lives — all of you — represent not just the future, but future promise,” he said. “The things you are learning here, whether you know it or not, are powerful. Powerful.”

The Exeter Salutes program honors and celebrates those who exemplify the Exeter spirit of non sibi through military service and raises awareness of the effect their sacrifice has on our community. Luckey is a worthy choice.

His 43-year Army career began with his commissioning as a second lieutenant after he graduated from the University of Virginia in 1977. Luckey commanded forces at every Army echelon, including in operations in Panama and Iraq. His final military assignment was leading the U.S. Army Reserve Command, a force of over 200,000 soldiers and civilians spanning 20 time zones. He retired in 2020 with three stars.

The war stories Luckey brought to Exeter related not to his decades as a soldier but to his four years as an Exonian.

He pointed to the balcony seat he remembers sitting in as a prep the day after four college students were killed by national guard troops in Ohio during a Vietnam War protest. And just as students today worry about the world they are about to inherit, Luckey says, he and his peers felt “a little bit of fear, a lot of concern, a lot of worry.”

“Now, I’m going to give you the good news,” Luckey said. “I didn’t know it then, but I know it now. We were and we are on the road to awesome. I suspect there are students and faculty who are worried now.” But, Luckey said, the lessons of resilience, curiosity, humility and empathy he learned as an Exeter student, and has carried ever since, remain core values taught at the Academy today. That, he says, explains his optimism.

“You have the ability in this place, in this time, to develop and grow the intellectual confidence to lose a conversation, to lose a discussion, to be wrong a little bit, and in so doing make a new friend, build a new team,” he

said. “Driving positive change is about building teams, collaborating, sharing a vision and sharing a commitment to your teammates.”

He left the audience with a request to honor veterans’ service by treating gratitude as a verb. “Be the force that validates the sacrifice,” Luckey said. “Make it count. Earn it.” E More than 700 current Exeter alumni, faculty and staff have served or are serving in the U.S. armed forces. Scores more have died in combat or in active service to the country. Please add your military status to Exeter’s official record at exonians.exeter.edu/veterans.

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Campus Life at a Glance

CERAMIC ARTS: Visiting artist Yeonsoo Kim at work in the Frederick R. Mayer Art Center clay studio.

DIWALI: Lanterns line the library pathway to celebrate Diwali and the triumph of good over evil, light over darkness and knowledge over ignorance.

POLAR EXPRESS: ESSO Reading Buddies share Chris Van Allsburg’s classic tale with local community children.

DAY OF THE DEAD: Alinne and Brenda RomeroTorres ’24 at Exeter’s Día de Muertos Festival.

P H O T O G R A P H Y 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 A N D A U S T I N D E S I S T O ’ 2 4

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BEAMING: Students sign the new dining hall’s last structural steel beam before it is lifted into place as part of the building’s “topping off” ceremony.

POLITICS: Exonians meet Republican presidential candidates Asa Hutchinson and Nikki Haley at the Exeter Town Hall.

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rom her op-eds in The New York Times to her

best-selling 2017 memoir Hunger, Roxane Gay ’92 is known for writing with radical honesty, courage and compassion about some of society’s most difficult and divisive issues. In October, she returned to campus to accept the John and Elizabeth Phillips Award, which recognizes an Exonian who has contributed significantly to the welfare of community, country or humanity.

CHRISTIAN HARRISON

being often underestimated by adults and peers alike.

Gay went on to earn her master’s and doctorate degrees and began teaching at the college level. She published her first short story collection, Ayiti, in 2011, and blogged regularly; writing articles for Salon, The Rumpus, The Nation and Time, among other outlets. She also built a reputation for sharp commentary on Twitter, then a relatively new social network.

In 2014, Gay was on the tenure track at Purdue University when the success of her essay collection Bad Feminist launched her to a new level of fame.

“I’m a writer who has achieved some measure of success,” Gay said, “because I dared to believe that I had the right as a queer Black woman to articulate my understanding of the world.”

She spoke of the “massive social upheaval” our culture has experienced during her career, including a global pandemic, a divisive political landscape, rampant misinformation, proliferating anti-LGBTQ+ policies, book-banning efforts and multiple wars around the world. “The climate into which I write is incredibly fraught, but I do write, nonetheless,” Gay said. “I write to express outrage or to bear witness or express admiration. I write knowing many people will disagree with me for one reason or another.”

In addition to her own writing, Gay has worked throughout her career to amplify the voices of those who are underrepresented in publishing, particularly younger authors of color. She regularly publishes essays by emerging writers in her newsletter, The Audacity, which boasts more than 80,000 subscribers. In partnership with Grove Atlantic, Gay recently started her own publishing imprint, Roxane Gay Books, with three titles in print by the end of 2023.

“People often call me an activist, but truly, I am just a writer,” Gay said near the end of her remarks. “I am fortunate enough to bring attention to the things that matter most to me. I’m able to advocate for vulnerable communities. I do all of this because 35 years ago, my parents had a big, bold vision for myself that started right here.” E

“As an author, editor and professor known for your exploration of complex questions surrounding race, class, gender and sexuality, you have become one of the leading social commentators of our time,” Trustee and General Alumni Association Vice President Una Basak ’90 said when delivering the award citation in Assembly Hall in October. “You have earned this distinction by writing about subjects that matter deeply to you, in a way that resonates with millions of readers.”

Gay dedicated many of her acceptance remarks to her parents, seated in the audience, who, she says “saw the power of possibility” in her when they made the investment in her Exeter education. “They saw what I personally would not see for decades, honestly — that I have a powerful voice and something to say.”

She reflected on her time at Exeter, calling it “formative, in ways both good and bad.” She recalled English Instructor Rex McGuinn, who saw something in her “very bad teenage writing” and encouraged her to take herself seriously as a writer. She shared experiences of microaggressions, and of

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The John and Elizabeth Phillips Award was inaugurated in 1965. It honors Exonians whose lives and contributions to the welfare of community, country and humanity exemplify the nobility of character and usefulness to society that John and Elizabeth Phillips sought to promote in establishing the Academy.

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Heard in Assembly Hall S O U N D B I T E S F R O M T H I S F A L L’ S S P E A K E R S E R I E S Manny Vega ’04, admissions director at The Waldorf School of Garden City “Allow your ambitions and actions to be inspired by your interests in others and the world around you. Living a life of non sibi requires you to be a disruptor for goodness. Ask yourself, How are you going to make a difference in the spaces you take up? And consider it your obligation.”

To watch videos of these assemblies, go to exeter.edu/live.

Kate Tomford ’95, former senior analyst at the Chicago Transit Authority “Everyone knows that you can’t hide at the Harkness table.

You have to speak up and share your ideas and opinions, but you have to do so thoughtfully and respectfully: observing, listening, noticing and asking questions. These parts of Harkness are just as important, often more important, than speaking. The same will be true as you go on in life and build partnerships and families of your own.”

John Broderick, author and former chief justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court “[Schoolwork] is important, but it shouldn’t be the sole focus of what you’re doing and who you are. … It’s not your grades that are going to cause you to succeed. It’s your intelligence, your ability to work with people, your ability to solve problems, your ability to understand other people.”

Nitin Mittal P’25, global artificial intelligence leader for Deloitte Consulting “We have essentially a non-bipedal, non-carbon-based workforce that is starting to get developed. That radically shifts the basis of how business is conducted … how businesses compete and how businesses are interacting with society. That’s the world all of you will be entering into.”

Mónica Guzmán, journalist and author “When we test our ideas with each other, when we challenge each other, when we expose ourselves to different ways of thinking and being, that’s when we sharpen ourselves and get to some clarity about what we believe — and that can be an amazing gift.”

Brendan Shay Basham, writer, artist, educator and former chef “If consciousness is the story that we tell ourselves about ourselves, then we have plenty of time for revision — to revise our story, to look at ourselves in new ways, to look at the world in new ways.”

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On Stage

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The fall dance concert, “Mixed Media,” featured original choreography by students and faculty in a range of styles from traditional ballet to modern movement.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRISTIAN HARRISON AND PANG-DIAN FAN ’86

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The concert choir directed by Music Instructor Jerome Walker in November.

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The dramatic play Lost Girl, staged in the Actor’s Lab, followed Peter Pan’s Wendy as she learned to stand in the center of her own story instead of the shadow of someone else’s.

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Focus on Filipino History T R AV E L B R I N G S E X O N I A N S C L O S E R T O T H E I R H E R I TA G E

By Sherry Hernández

Los Angeles’ Unidad Park is home to the nation’s largest Filipino American mural west of the Mississippi River.

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ning, the Academy led its first travel-and-learning trip focused on Indigenous Filipino history in the U.S. The 10-day Balikbayan Program to California in November supported nine students and three chaperones, including me.

As the adviser of the Exeter Pinoy Society, the dean of Multicultural Affairs, and a person born and raised in Manila, Philippines, I feel privileged and honored to be a part of a project that has been

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professionally and personally affirming.

The idea for this cultural trip took root in 2021 when the Pinoy Society co-heads at the time — Grace Nivera ’23, Gretl Baghdadi ’22, Elijah Porras ’22 and Aaron Venzon ’22 — dreamt of bringing the club to the Philippines as a way of “coming home.”

Balikbayan is the Tagalog word for “returning home” for someone who has been away for some time.

The Philippines still had COVID travel restrictions, so we pivoted to a domestic trip. We researched cities that had significance to the Filipino American experience, including St. Malo, Louisiana, the first settlement of Filipinos in the U.S.; and St. Louis, Missouri, home of the 1904 World’s Fair, where 2,000 Filipinos, many of whom were Indigenous, were displayed in a human zoo.

We decided to visit Morro Bay, California, where the first Filipinos landed on U.S. soil on Oct. 18, 1587.

After submitting the club’s trip proposal to the Academy, the students had the opportunity to talk about the project at the People of Color Conference in San Antonio, Texas, and the Asian American Footsteps Conference ’22 at St. Paul’s School. Shortly thereafter, we received confirmation that the proposal was approved and that Exeter would support our dream.

Our journey began in San Francisco where

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Experiential Immersion Here’s a look at where else Exonians took lessons in global citizenship over Thanksgiving recess.

New Orleans: Ten students headed to “The Big Easy” to immerse themselves in service. Working alongside members of the local community, students helped restore wetlands and support neighborhood revitalization projects.

we visited the SOMA Pilipinas cultural neighborhood.

Our tour guide led us through the San Francisco Filipino Cultural Heritage District and showed us the impact of gentrification on the Filipino communities that were displaced. One of the students reflected: “It is easy to sympathize with the city workers and their wish to ‘clean up’ the city and make it more ‘presentable’ by modernizing roads and buildings. Yet this point of view completely ignores deeply important cultural and social values imbued in these spaces that ‘need modernizing.’”

After four days in San Francisco, we made our way south to Morro Bay, where we visited the Landing of the First Filipinos. One student said, “One of my highlights was visiting the Morro Bay Rock and reading about the first landing of the Filipinos in America … being able to crane our necks at the towering rocks and watch the sunset while journaling was truly a breathtaking experience.”

In Los Angeles, we visited Historic Filipinotown, spending time at Unidad Park which has a mural that outlines over 2,000 years of Filipino history. We also met with Anthony Christian Ocampo, a sociology professor and author of The Latinos of Asia: How Filipino Americans Break the Rules of Race. He was generous with his time and the students appreciated the meaningful exchange.

In the end, one student summarized her experience with gratitude: “We learned on this trip that Filipinos often feel the need to assimilate, and thus try to distance themselves from the culture. Now that I have clearly seen this and learned about it, I feel more compelled to learn more about the other 50 percent of me that I feel I have neglected for a very long time. This trip has taught me so much about who I am, and I am sincerely grateful for it.” E

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Costa Rica: More than a dozen students traveled into the rainforest of Costa Rica to learn about the country’s commitment to protecting its natural resources and how it’s become the model for sustainable tourism.

Exonians interfaced with local scientists and farmers to hear about the delicate balance of preserving Costa Rica’s ecological beauty while welcoming nearly two million visitors each year.

Dean of Multicultural Affairs Sherry Hernández and Instructor in Modern Languages Ning Zhou (far left) with students in Morro Bay, California.

Florida: Twelve students learned about the history and culture of the people who inhabited and migrated to Miami and the marine ecosystems that thrive in and support the growth of the area. Students spent three days with scientists at the University of Miami Marine Lab, toured the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and visited Everglades National Park.

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Career diplomat Jorge Ryder Torres-Pereira offered key insights on world politics during his keynote address.

hat does it take to be a change maker on the global stage?

More than 400 students from 30 schools across the United States visited campus in November to find out during Exeter’s flagship Model UN conference, PEAMUN XV. Career diplomat Jorge Ryder Torres-Pereira, who has served as Portugal’s ambassador to seven countries including France, China and Thailand, kicked off the weekend gathering with a lively keynote address that offered students rarefied insights on world politics.

“It was a fascinating speech about what life is like as a diplomat,” says Alex Rosen ’24, a director general for PEAMUN XV, who had lunch with Torres-Pereira following his remarks. “He spoke about the severity of the issues he has dealt with, such as helping to broker ‘secret pacts’ between Portugal and China, and about problems like world hunger and how many of them are caused by polarization and extremism. ... I found it particularly interesting how he’s spent time representing Portugal in both Tel Aviv, Israel, and Ramallah, in the West Bank. … His speech was also PHOTOGRAPHS BY AUSTIN DESISTO ’24

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humorous, ending with a wholesome picture of him holding a panda, which he joked might serve as encouragement for us to become diplomats.”

Inspired by Torres-Pereira’s words, students assumed their roles as mock delegates to the United Nations, each representing a nation and its policies. This year’s meeting featured 11 committees on such hot-button topics as cyberespionage, the Haymarket Affair and environmentalism in the Amazon rainforest. At each turn, the students offered their creative point of view while honing their public speaking, negotiating and collaboration skills.

“I have been involved in MUN since my freshman year, and it is truly one of my favorite clubs on campus,” says Natalie Welling ’24, who was a chair of the Haymarket Affair Committee. “I am really passionate about political engagement.”

PEAMUN is especially meaningful as it is developed and run by students. “My experience participating in MUN comes solely from Exeter,” Patrick Snyder ’25 says. “My first conference was at PEAMUN 2022, and I instantly fell in love with the debate and strategic arguments.” This year, Snyder transitioned from delegate to vice chair in general assemblies to further expand his Model UN knowledge and responsibilities.

Next up: The Model UN Club will be taking their skills to Harvard MUN at the end of January, MIT MUN in early February and Cornell MUN in April. E

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More than 400 students from across the country gathered on Exeter’s campus to participate in PEAMUN XV.

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By Ben Harriton

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erched high above campus,

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on the roof of a dormitory named after one of Exeter’s esteemed graduates and principals, Harlan P. Amen (class of 1875), sits a cupola. Constructed alongside Wentworth and Cilley halls in 1925, Amen Hall was part of a transformative era for Exeter that increased residential capacity by 193 students.

In October 1929, the dorm’s vacant cupola became the center of an ambitious wireless communication project led by licensed student operators Fred H. Gilbert ’30, Robert Langmuir ’31 and Malcolm G. Moses ’32. With support from Exeter resident Henry S. Shaw, equipment for a shortwave wireless station operating under Gilbert’s call number was placed in the Amen cupola.

A month later, the station received its own call letters, WICOW. It relayed radiograms — free to Exeter students and teachers — on Wednesdays and Saturdays with a nearly 60% success rate. The station connected Exonians with others across the U.S. and in countries like Sweden, England and Belgium.

One reached as far as Navy Admiral Richard E. Byrd in the Antarctic.

As technology advanced, the cupola’s role evolved. The radio station eventually fell silent, and the cupola, once a bustling communication center, became a quiet observer of the changing campus landscape. Though no longer sending or receiving radio signals, its presence remains a tangible link to the past — a reminder of an era when airwaves were the gateway to the world, connecting people in ways previously unimaginable. E

We’d like to fill gaps in the cupola’s history. If you have memories of the cupola, we invite you to share them with us by emailing bulletin@exeter.edu.

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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 in future issues. Works can be sent to: Phillips Exeter Academy, The Exeter Bulletin, 20 Main Street, Exeter, NH 03833.

ALUMNI 1953—David Mumford. Numbers and the World: Essays on Math and Beyond. (American Mathematical Society, 2023) 1955—Richard Maltby, director. The Country Wife. The musical played at the Red Bull Theater in New York in December.

1959—Daniel C. Dennett. I’ve Been Thinking. (W. W. Norton & Company, 2023) 1966—Alfred “Kirby” LaMotte. Strangers & Pilgrims. (Saint Julian Press, Inc., 2023) 1969—Anthony Davis, composer. X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X. The reimagined 1986 opera premiered at the Metropolitan Opera on Nov. 3.

Myriorama Owen Brown

Myriorama Owen Brown

Myriorama Owen Brown

Myriorama Owen Brown

Myriorama Owen Brown

Myriorama Owen Brown

Myriorama Owen Brown

1969—Charles Trueheart. Diplomats at War: Friendship and Betrayal on the Brink of the Vietnam Conflict. (University of Virginia Press, 2024) 1969—Daniel Wolff. How to Become an American: A History of Immigration, Assimilation, and Loneliness. (The University of South Carolina Press, 2022) 1971—Christopher “Kip” Davis, story author. X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X. The reimagined 1986 opera premiered at the Metropolitan Opera on Nov. 3.

1972—Rob Dinerman. A History of Squash at Trinity College.

(Millennium Printing Corp., 2023)

Myriorama Owen Brown

1973—Owen Brown, artist. “Myriorama,” exhibition at the Veronique Wantz Gallery in Minneapolis in October. The cover of the accompanying catalog was designed by George Mattingly ’68 and includes an essay by Ulysses Grant Dietz ’73.

1981—Claudia Putnam. “Thoughts on Crossing to Safety,” prose. (Passengers Journal, Volume 4, Issue 3, September 2023) 1982—Kim McLarin. Everyday Something Has Tried to Kill Me and Has Failed: Notes From Periracial America. (Ig Publishing, 2023) 1982—Shalini Amerasinghe Ganendra. Veins of Influence: Colonial Sri Lanka (Ceylon) in Early Photographs and Collections. (Neptune Publishing Pvt Ltd., 2023) 1990—Jon Bonné. The New French Wine: Redefining the World’s Greatest Wine Culture. (Ten Speed Press, 2023) 1992—Meghan Riordan Jarvis. End of the Hour: A Therapist’s Memoir. (Zibby Books, 2023) FAC U LT Y Todd Hearon. Yodelady. This 2023 album is available for download on all digital platforms.

Matt Miller. “In the Clover,” poem. (Pleiades: Literature in Context, Volume 43, Number 2, Fall 2023) —“Far Away,” poem. (Academy of American Poets, Poem-aDay, November 15, 2023)

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Science in Motion N E W T EC H H E L P S O P T I M I Z E AT H L E T I C P E R FO R M A N C E A N D R EC OV E RY

By Brian Muldoon

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ootball co-captain Nihaal Rana ’24 enters the

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rehab program necessary for a student to return to play.

“This has been a game changer,” Director of Athletic Training Adam Hernandez says. “Having objective data that we can point to so we’re not guessing on how a student feels has allowed us to return students back from injury in a safer manner and has decreased the amount of time a student has a recurrence of an injury. We can look at the data and know how close they are to their normal.”

The jump tests can also create a motivational bond among teammates who use the technology during their scheduled in-season lifts.

“Whenever our team gets on the force plates, it’s a good chance to get everyone hyped up,” says Kate Rose ’24, co-captain of the varsity field hockey team. “We all yell and cheer each other on. It can be fun. We use the data to compete a little bit against each other, too.”

Although the programming, data and use of this equipment is supervised by the strength and conditioning staff, once students are trained they can test themselves and track their progress.

The ability to view results in real time and notice developments, fatigue or other variances in their personalized data gives students ownership and responsibility for their training.

“Our students bring in exactly what they bring into the classroom with a sense of agency and a sense of wonder,” Hernandez says. “They want to see the data and want to understand what the data means. It gives us another opportunity to educate our students. We are arming them with data to ask good health questions, be stewards of their own healthcare, and prepare them to be lifelong healthy individuals.”

Athletes are not the only beneficiaries. As Fishel says: “No matter what sport they play, or even if they do not play a sport, this technology offers data that we can look at to keep all students healthy.” E BRIAN MULDOON

Downer Family Fitness Center for an off-season workout after a full day of classes. He warms up quickly to the fast-paced rhythms pumping through the facility sound system, then greets head strength and conditioning coach Shaun Fishel, aligns his feet on the left and right side of a force plate deck, and gets ready to jump.

Fishel pulls up Rana’s profile on an iPad and prepares a countdown for him to complete a series of countermovement jumps.

Rana stands with his hands on his hips, then squats and jumps as high as he can. As he leaps, a three-dimensional, full-body assessment camera captures his movements and more than 70 data points, including body weight, jump height and peak propulsive force. That data will help shape Rana’s workout program for peak performance.

Although force plates are new to Exeter, they are a staple in collegiate and professional strength and sports medicine facilities and have become part of medical testing at the NFL Scouting Combine.

“It is interesting to be able to track my progress,” Rana says.

“Coaches want to know your weight and how much force you can create, so it is cool to be able to have this in our gym on campus.”

The data is also used to individualize strategies for injury prevention and rehabilitation. Fishel says the software includes an automatic flagging system that identifies potential body mechanic problems. For example, lower-limb asymmetries could alert trainers that a student is favoring one side because of tightness, injury or natural body development.

Not all asymmetries need to be fixed, but the data identifies a student’s baseline.

The body assessment camera also notes potential body compensations that would raise a student’s risk of injury.

Capturing a baseline measure of function offers a guide to any

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Exeter/Andover Weekend

By Brian Muldoon “Get hype” daily dress codes. A cross-campus, all-school march to a blazing bonfire. Pep assembly. And hotly contested sporting matchups where athletes lay it all on the line. That’s the stuff of E/A, the rivalry between the Red and the Blue, now celebrating its 142nd year.

The girls volleyball team ignited competition day with a 3-1 victory over Andover in front of a loud and raucous crowd. Ellie Ocampo ’25 powered an explosive offensive attack that led to Big Red’s 20-25, 25-19, 25-15, 25-12 set victories.

On Hatch Field, Andover field hockey outlasted Exeter for a 4-3 overtime win. The Blue held a 1-0 lead at the half, but Big Red evened the score early in the third period when Clare Stewart-Selvan ’25 capitalized off a corner opportunity. Andover scored twice over the next three minutes to reclaim a 3-1 edge. Exeter continued to battle, and Natalia Ulbin ’25 found the back of the net twice to even the score with three minutes to play in regulation. In overtime, Andover netted the game-winner on a breakaway.

Andover boys soccer took home a 2-0 victory. The Blue scored midway through the first half and with some tic-tac-toe passing with three minutes to go before the break. Dieder Wagner ’24 and Aaron Park ’24 were strong on the back line for Big Red, helping keep the Blue scoreless in the second half.

Andover girls soccer bested Exeter by a score of 4-0. Morgan Mayer ’24 and Morgan Signore ’26 played well for Big Red, creating several chances throughout the day, while Esme Shields ’24 was strong in the middle of the field for the hosts.

In football, Exeter capped an exciting day with a 47-20 victory over Andover.

It was the third straight win in the series for Big Red and earned the team the Northeast Prep Football Conference championship. Zion Simmons ’24 took a reverse for 20 yards into the end zone for the lone score of the opening quarter.

Andover took a 7-6 lead early in the second quarter on a 25-yard scoring scamper, but from there it was all Big Red. Simmons broke away for a 58-yard touchdown run before Kai Honda ’24 plunged in from 4 yards. Isaiah Reese ’25 then took a screen pass 50 yards into the end zone, giving Exeter a 26-7 lead at the half. Johnny Getman ’24 hauled in a 4-yard touchdown pass from Eddie Buehler ’24 before Reese exploded for a 51-yard score and Buehler added a touchdown on a keeper from 6 yards to secure the victory.

INTERSCHOLS

The Exeter cross-country teams continue to dominate. The boys captured their fourth consecutive New England title. Byron Grevious ’24 claimed his third straight individual title, finishing in a blistering 14 minutes, 56 seconds. Max Lacombe ’24 (fourth overall), Pearce Covert ’25 (eighth), Jack Hutchins ’24 (ninth) and Austin Desisto ’24 (12th) followed, helping lift Big Red to the team win.

The Big Red girls claimed their fourth New England cross-country championship in the past five seasons, led by Tenley Nelson ’24, who cruised to second place (18:21) and Daria Ivanova ’24, who captured third (18:30). Big Red accounted for 67 total points, edging Andover by one point to secure the win.

Just last week, Andover beat Exeter by one at the E/A dual meet at Andover.

The third-seeded boys varsity water polo team also enjoyed success by defeating second-seeded Hamden Hall, 10-6, in the semifinals of the New England championship tournament. E PHOTOGRAPHY BY AUSTIN DESISTO ’24, VICTORIA LIU ’25 AND PATRICK GARRIT Y

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FALL SPORTS

FOOTBALL RECORD: 7-2

Head Coach: Panos Voulgaris Assistant Coaches: Patrick Bond, Tom Evans, Bill Glennon, Dave Hudson, Max Lane, Stephan Lewis, Matt Miller Captains: Reid Burke ’24, Cade McMillan ’24, Nihaal Rana ’24 MVP: Reid Burke ’24

BOYS CROSS-COUNTRY NEW ENGLAND CHAMPIONS

GIRLS CROSS-COUNTRY NEW ENGLAND CHAMPIONS

Head Coach: Brandon Newbould Assistant Coach: Nick Unger Captains: Malcolm Courchesne ’24, Byron Grevious ’24, Advay Nomula ’24 MVP: Byron Grevious ’24

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Head Coach: Diana Davis ’03 Assistant Coaches: Dale Braile, Emily Quirk Captains: Annika Finelli ’24, Andrea Nystedt ’24 MVP: Daria Ivanova ’24

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GIRLS SOCCER RECORD: 2-16-1

Head Coaches: Alexa Caldwell, Diego Ardura Assistant Coach: Liza Williams Captains: Jett Goetz ’24, Esme Shields ’24 MVP: Morgan Mayer ’24

BOYS SOCCER RECORD: 6-12-0

Head Coaches: A.J. Cosgrove, Nolan Lincoln Assistant Coach: John Hutchins Captains: Jordan Adeyemi ’24, Aaron Park ’24, Dieder Wagner ’24 MVP: Dieder Wagner ’24

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL RECORD: 11-3

Head Coach: Bruce Shang Assistant Coaches: Sue Rowe, Sophia Scola Captain: Sophia Dabney ’24 MVP: Ellie Ocampo ’25

FIELD HOCKEY RECORD: 10-5-1

Head Coach: Samantha Fahey Assistant Coaches: Mercy Carbonell, Sarah Nelson Captains: Adora Perry ’24, Pippa Pflaum ’24, Kate Rose ’24 MVP: Adora Perry ’24

BOYS WATER POLO 2ND PLACE IN NEW ENGLAND RECORD: 12-3

Head Coach: Don Mills Assistant Coach: Meg Blitzshaw Captains: Charlie Gao ’24, Will Reed ’24, Alex Rosen ’24 MVP: James Faulhaber ’26 PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN MULDOON

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Journey to Purpose At the heart of the Academy’s mission is to unite goodness and knowledge and inspire youth to lead purposeful lives. Not only does living with purpose often uplift others, research shows that people driven by purpose — whether in work, family, spiritual practice, creative endeavors or something else — experience greater life satisfaction, have fewer health problems and even live longer. In the spirit of one of our institution’s core pursuits, we share the stories of three alumni from three decades — an attorney and law professor, a documentary filmmaker and an Episcopal priest with a military background — who, shaped by their experience at Exeter, find true meaning and fulfillment in their work and life.

Write to us at bulletin@exeter.edu to tell us how you find purpose.

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JUSTICE & CHANGE J A M E S E . C O L E M A N J R . ’6 6 ; P ’ 1 6

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rowing up in segregated Charlotte, North Carolina, James Coleman ’66 witnessed injustice and discrimination — and was moved to fight it.

During his senior year in high school, Coleman worked for local civil rights lawyer Julius LeVonne Chambers, who successfully litigated a case forcing the Charlotte public schools to desegregate. “His office and home were bombed,” Coleman says. “To me, that meant he was threatening the status quo, and that being a lawyer was a way to do that.”

Coleman has carried the lessons learned that year through his long career as an attorney, both in private practice and government service. As a professor at Duke University School of Law and director of the school’s

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Wrongful Convictions Clinic, he helps students champion the wrongly accused. “Trying to remedy a miscarriage of justice is one of the highest callings we have as lawyers,” he says.

The summer before interning with Chambers, Coleman attended Exeter for a five-week academic enrichment program. It was a summer of firsts: his first experience living away from home; his first classes with white students and teachers; his first discussions around a Harkness table.

Drawn by the educational opportunities Exeter afforded, he returned for a postgraduate year in 1965.

In an essay entitled “Living in the Shadow of American Racism,” published in 2022 in Duke’s Law and Contemporary Problems journal, Coleman recalls writing

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English essays at Exeter about growing up in a segregated country. A classmate, the grandson of a U.S. president, wrote about traveling with his grandfather. “Such diversity was not the purpose of my admission to Exeter,” he wrote, “but it was a natural consequence … facilitated by the Harkness method, where we were all equal around the table.”

After graduating from Harvard University and Columbia Law School, Coleman worked in various positions in the public sector, including deputy general counsel for the U.S. Department of Education. He later joined Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, a law firm specializing in federal court and administrative legislation. Active in the firm’s pro bono program, he advised civil rights organizations and represented clients in discrimination cases.

In his most high-profile pro bono case, Coleman drew heavy criticism for representing convicted serial killer Ted Bundy in Bundy’s final death penalty appeal. “My job is to protect my client’s constitutional rights,” Coleman told the Orlando Sentinel at the time. He went on to campaign against the death penalty, and says he saw the Bundy case as a way to draw attention to the potential for public opinion to exert influence in capital cases.

In another case with intense media coverage, Coleman chaired an internal committee investigating accusations of rape against several members of the

“ T RY I N G T O R E M E DY A MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE IS ONE OF THE HIGHEST C A L L I N G S W E H AV E A S L A W Y E R S .”

Coleman at the Duke University convocation for Graduate and Professional Schools in 2019.

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Coleman (right) as a law clerk for a U.S. district court judge in Detroit in the 1970s.

Duke University men’s lacrosse team in 2006. Again, he focused on the need to not rush to judgment. “We wanted to make sure the facts were accurate,” Coleman says.

“It’s easy to convict an innocent person, and, in a sexual assault case, it’s particularly hard to prove after a conviction that the perpetrator is innocent.” Charges against the team members were ultimately dropped because of inconsistencies in the accuser’s testimony and ethical violations by the district attorney.

Coleman now devotes himself to teaching and working with law students seeking to overturn wrongful convictions, like that of Charles Ray Finch, a North Carolina man accused of killing a gas station owner in 1976. Coleman and his students worked for 18 years on Finch’s case, litigating it in state and federal courts. Finch was finally released in 2019.

“If there’s merit to a client’s claim of innocence and we can pursue the claim, we don’t get rid of the case because it gets difficult,” Coleman says. One of his students on the case became involved in restorative justice work as a prosecutor and was recently named a North Carolina district court judge. “Her career reflects what I hope for my students: that they’ll stay involved in criminal justice issues,” Coleman says.

He describes himself as a “happy warrior,” finding passion in his work but not taking himself too seriously.

“It’s the most realistic way to approach difficult litigation,” he says. “To have a sense of humor and not lose sight of the work’s human element.”

— Debbie Kane

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STORYTELLING & COMMENTARY JULIE DUNFEY ’76

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n February 2020, Julie Dunfey found herself in the Galapagos Islands, mulling over whether to produce another documentary with her longtime collaborator, Ken Burns, before retiring. The proposed film would tell the story of the American buffalo, or bison: its significance to Indigenous people of the Great Plains, the devastating impact of European-American settlement and efforts to bring the species back from the brink.

“I was in some tiny museum, looking Dunfey (right) in the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Bison at evidence of tortoises that had gone Range, Montana, 2021. extinct,” Dunfey recalls of her time in the Galapagos. “When you’re in a place like that, you’re so aware of biology, animal evolution, this whole notion of extinction.

I thought, [the story of the bison] is such Since she was a child, Dunfey has been fascinated by an American tale of de-extinction. It’s about our relationthe American story. At Exeter, where she was one of only ship to the natural world, which we ignore at our peril 10 girls in the prep class in 1972, she took every history … but it’s also about our relationship to each other, as humans.” Drawn to the idea of sharing one more uniquely course she could. “What Exeter really taught me was how to think and how to write,” Dunfey says. “It was the American story with millions of public television viewdefining educational experience of my life.” ers, Dunfey put her retirement on hold, and signed on to Just before starting her master’s degree in history at produce the film.

Stanford University, Dunfey interned at WGBH, Boston’s public television station. Working on a series about the Vietnam War showed her she could tell important “ W H AT E X E T E R R E A L LY stories about history in a more collaborative way, and in TA U G H T M E WA S H O W T O a way that could potentially reach more people than the scholarly work she had envisioned for herself. She coldT H I N K A N D H O W T O W R I T E .” called Burns, a New Hampshire filmmaker whose work had begun to gain notice at the time. Although he didn’t

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immediately have a job for her, the phone call led to a nearly 40-year collaboration, with Dunfey moving back to her home state after grad school to produce for Burns’ company, Florentine Films.

Dunfey won her first Emmy Award as co-producer of The Civil War (1990), a nine-part documentary that attracted some 40 million viewers — a public television record that still stands. By the time that series aired, she had embarked on starting a family. “Ken and I jokingly say I took a 16-year maternity leave,” Dunfey says. During that “leave,” she had three children, consulted on film projects and served as an Exeter trustee for 11 years, including four as vice president.

She returned to work full time in 2006, helping produce acclaimed miniseries like The National Parks: America’s Best Idea (2009), The Dust Bowl (2012) and Country Music (2019), all of which drew viewership numbers in the tens of millions. With each project,

Dunfey traveled around the country meeting people of all ages and backgrounds; mined libraries and personal photo collections; and worked with cinematographers to capture images that breathed life into different chapters of the American story. “I love going into archives … finding all the things we need, and sometimes finding things that people haven’t seen before,” Dunfey says.

Of all the films Dunfey has produced, she feels especially connected to The Dust Bowl, for which she interviewed many people in their 80s and 90s — around the same age as her parents at the time — knowing she and her colleagues might be the last ones to capture their stories. “That was very meaningful,” she recalls. “These were all people who grew up not knowing how and when the Depression would end, or how World War II would turn out.”

Dunfey celebrated her retirement shortly before The American Buffalo aired on PBS in October. She plans to channel her knowledge and connections made during the filmmaking process into volunteer efforts on behalf of bison rehabilitation.

“My hope is that I can contribute in some hands-on way because I believe very strongly that we need to rewild this animal,” Dunfey says. “It’s one thing to save it from extinction; it’s another to restore its ecological habitat and make it wild again. That’s something that is of great interest to me, and it feels like it might be a good moment.”

— Sarah Pruitt ’95

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Above: Dunfey in Yellowstone National Park, 2022.

Right: Dunfey (right) conducting an interview for The American Buffalo.

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Steffensen in her vestments as canon to the bishop suffragan for the armed forces and federal ministries. Right: Steffensen as a young U.S. Navy officer, circa 1990.

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n September, the Rev. Canon Leslie Nuñez Steffensen ’85 joined tens of thousands of people headed to Burning Man, the annual gathering of artists, makers and LESLIE NUÑEZ others exploring community and creative self-expression in Nevada’s Black Rock S T E F F E N S E N ’8 5 Desert. After 11 years as an Episcopal priest, she says, “My hope was to get back to the basics of priesting and the essence of chaplaincy — meeting people where they are and loving them as they are.”

Service is part of her family legacy. “My parents were Decked out in bright pink hair extenvery involved in the Episcopal Church,” she says. “We sions, matching sunglasses and a “Holy Chic” T-shirt, Steffensen welcomed all those interested in conversation, Nuñezes all have a very strong faith and are dedicated to community service.” connection and prayer to her “camp.” As an offering to Exeter expanded Steffensen’s mind intellectually the Burning Man community, she and her husband, Kirk, and its lessons around non sibi equipped her for ministry had designed and built a labyrinth for visitors to navigate. and public service. “I graduated in the ’80s, when many “I thought the experience would ‘burn the burnout’ from careers were about money,” she says. “I could’ve had a my system,” Steffensen says. “It did!” lovely life simply doing something adventurous. Exeter A desire to find and build community is what led Steffensen to the priesthood. Like her Burning Man maze, gave me a sense of a larger purpose.”

Steffensen graduated from Johns Hopkins University her path was circuitous. She is one of five members of her in three years, then joined the U.S. Navy. After emerging immediate family to attend Exeter, including her father, from Officer Candidate School, she became an aviation Charles Nuñez ’57; brothers Varrick ’77, a retired U.S. Naval officer and librarian, and Timothy ’79, an Episcopal intelligence officer. “I chased Soviet submarines,” she says. She met her husband, also a naval officer, while priest; and sister Libby ’93, a teacher.

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“ B E C O M I N G I N T E N T I O N A L LY U N C O M F O R TA B L E P U S H E S Y O U I N T O N E W G R O W T H .”

serving in the military and ultimately left to help raise their three children.

While pregnant with her second child, Steffensen reconnected with the Episcopal Church through talks about faith with a local priest. “My faith came through community involvement,” she says. As the Navy moved them to different locations, she volunteered with her local church and held various positions in church leadership, then pursued a master’s degree in theology at Virginia Theological Seminary.

In the mid-2000s, she embarked on a church mission in Dodoma, Tanzania, teaching theology and biblical studies at Msalato Theological College. It was a trip she was well-prepared for. “[Spending] my Exeter upper year abroad in Barcelona gave me this extreme bravery and an opportunity to meet others who were different from me,” Steffensen says. In Africa, she discovered a love for teaching, as well as a facility for translating theology into a different culture, as she helped train Tanzanian students in Anglican ministry.

Once she returned stateside, Steffensen pursued a second master’s degree in divinity and became ordained a priest in 2012. As assistant to the rector at Grace Episcopal Church in Alexandria, Virginia, she ministered to the church’s Latino congregation, La Gracia, helping them develop their sense of leadership and mission in the parish and wider community.

Steffensen’s most recent role drew on her military experience, her commitment to faith and her dedication to serving others. As Episcopal Church canon to the bishop suffragan for armed forces and federal ministries, she provided support to Episcopal chaplains who minister to service members and their families. “It was sometimes difficult work,” she says, noting that military chaplains are under enormous stress, coping with deployments, social upheaval and, more recently, the COVID pandemic.

“Mental health issues can affect your work in the military, and I wanted to create a safe space for chaplains.”

Her future plans include returning to Burning Man in 2024. “There’s so much to explore and experience in life,” she says. “Becoming intentionally uncomfortable pushes you into new growth, personally, spiritually and professionally.”

— Debbie Kane

Scenes of Steffensen at her Burning Man camp in 2023.

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Dr. Emery Brown ‘74 speaks at the celebration’s closing night dinner.

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IMAGINING OUR FUTURE A L U M N I A C R O S S G E N E R AT I O N S G AT H E R T O C E L E B R AT E T H E E N D U R I N G I M P A C T O F T H E A F R O - L AT I N X E X O N I A N S O C I E T Y

By Sarah Pruitt ’95

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ore than 200 Exeter alumni, guests, faculty,

staff and trustees convened on campus for a weekend in October to celebrate 55 years of the Afro-Latinx Exonian Society, or A.L.E.S. Founded in 1968 as the Afro-Exonian Society, A.L.E.S. has served ever since as a vital place to support and share the culture and history of Exeter’s Black and Latinx students.

The anniversary programming kicked off with a welcome address from Academy Trustees Wole Coaxum ’88; P’24 and Paulina Jerez ’91; P’21, in the Class of 1945 Library. Principal Bill Rawson ’71; P’08 offered remarks, followed by Academy Trustee Eric Logan ’92 and Magee Lawhorn, head of Archives & Special Collections.

“I submit to you that on Monday Exeter will not be the same school it was yesterday,” Rawson said. “You will be responsible for how we are learning, growing and

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changing as an educational institution this weekend by being together, telling and hearing your stories, celebrating and reflecting on where we have been, what we have become and imagining our future.”

Saturday’s panel discussion was a program highlight.

Moderated by Dean of Students Russell Weatherspoon ’01, ’03, ’08, ’11 (Hon.); P’92, P’95, P’97, P’01, the panel brought together current students and five alumni spanning five decades with professional expertise in the fields of journalism, medicine, law, venture capital and public policy. The conversation centered on how core values such as knowledge, goodness, truth and justice can be channeled to address the enduring and thorny challenges involving race in our society. A consistent theme emerged: the importance of people of color in general, and Exeter alumni in particular, reaching across generations to support each other.

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“All of these things we talk about as ideas or ideals — we can bring them to reality.” of the need for people of color to seek out — and to become — sponsors, rather than mentors. “A sponsor has to know what your motivations are, what your capabilities are in order to be able to advocate and to be able to say, ‘I’m going to bring you along,’” he said. “It’s just not an invitation. …

You need to feel like you belong in that room.”

Mark McClain ’74; P’08, a Baptist minister and attorney, added, “We can put our minds together and we can really find out what truth is, what justice is. All of these things we talk about as ideas or ideals — we can bring them to reality.”

Upper Sophie Goldman ’25 shared her gratitude and impressions of the event, eliciting applause and visible emotion from the panelists and many in the audience. “I’ve never been in a room where people who looked like me were able to speak these hard truths,” Goldman said. “I want to connect with the alumni in this room because it’s important that … we can make sure the truth changes for the next generation, and we’re able to see our own truth.”

Coaxum offered a touching tribute to Weatherspoon, who is set to retire at the end of this school year after 37 years of service to the Academy. “For many of us, Mr. Weatherspoon played an essential role in our lives as students and continues as we navigate the world as an adult,” Coaxum said.

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MARY SCHWALM MARY SCHWALM

“When we think about knowledge and access and goodness … it’s complicated to break through those silos, to break through those attitudes, to break through those beliefs,” said Stephanie Neal-Johnson ’85; P’19, COO of the Massachusetts Department of Labor. “But at the end of the day, having those conversations as we are today [is] really what will make the difference.”

Panelist Veronica Juarez ’00 spoke of forming her own venture capital firm to invest in companies headed by Latinx founders. “It’s critical for us — being a part of the game, playing the game, getting into this asset class of investing,” Juarez said. “Typically those opportunities have not even been presented to us because they’re private. … You would only access this via your friends who tell you in a closed-door meeting. This is our closed-door meeting.”

Claudia Cruz ’96, director of internships and experiential learning at the University of Nevada’s Reynolds School of Journalism, said: “Journalism is important, but we’re not always conveying all the information or all the truths to all the right people. If we did that, could we balance the scales a bit?”

Dr. Leroy Sims ’97, an Exeter trustee and head of medical operations for the National Basketball Association, spoke

Snapshots from the A.L.E.S. 55th anniversary celebration weekend. From top: Joana Andoh ’13, Vera Aimunmondion ’24, Kehinde Odusote ’13 and Tiffany Tuedor ’13; Josh Bloodworth ’93, Saba Khan and Yusef Windham ’93; Bill Rawson ’71, Dr. Emery Brown ’74 and Wole Coaxum ’88.

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“Pull quote to come Me prae apel molupta ssuntionet facculparum volupta tatist Sed essim quas a”

Discussion moderator Russell Weatherspoon with panelists Claudia Cruz ’96, Dr. Leroy Sims ’97, Veronica Juarez ’00, Stephanie Neal-Johnson ’85 and Mark McClain ’74. Left: Roberto Garcia ’71

“I want to connect with the alumni in this room because it’s important that ... we can make sure the truth changes for the next generation.”

To round out the weekend’s programming, attendees and current students enjoyed several appearances by John Forté ’93, the Grammy-nominated recording artist, songwriter, activist and filmmaker (See “Rhythm and Redemption,” page 40).

At the celebration’s closing dinner in the William Boyce Thompson Field House, physician-scientist Dr. Emery Brown ’74, recipient of the 2020 John and Elizabeth Phillips Award, offered some keynote remarks based on his own academic and career journey. “Exeter got me on the road … so I could have a seat at the table.

It started that process for me and I’m totally grateful for that,” Brown said. “I think another part of the good fortune I’ve had has been bringing up ideas, or thinking

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out of the box. What I’ve noticed in problem solving is people will try to solve problems [by] extending what is already being done, as opposed to standing back for a minute and saying, what is it that we really need?”

Amid this packed slate of events, visiting alumni enjoyed some free time to attend sporting events, an A.L.E.S. club meeting and a Morning of Remembrance in the Forrestal-Bowld Music Center, officiated by Bryan Contreras ’91; P’24, to honor those who have touched the lives of the A.L.E.S. and the greater Exeter community.

Before departing campus, alumni and students shared a community-building brunch with Stephanie Bramlett, director of equity and inclusion; and Kevin Pajaro-Mariñez, assistant director of equity and inclusion. E

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1985

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FOR THE ARCHIVES Throughout the weekend, alumni were invited to share their memories as part of the A.L.E.S. Oral History Project, which aims to collect stories of the ways the club has affected students’ lives at Exeter and beyond. These reflections will be stored in a digital repository in the Class of 1945 Library. Add your voice at exeter.edu/ content/55-years-ales-celebration.

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To watch video highlights and view a picture gallery from the two-day celebration visit exeter.edu/ content/55-years-ales-celebration.

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RHYTHM AND REDEMPTION S O U L F U L LY R I C I S T J O H N F O R T É ’ S T O U R F R O M E A R LY F A M E T O P R I S O N , A N D F I N D I N G N E W M O T I VAT I O N I N F AT H E R H O O D

By Sarah Pruitt ’95

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John Forté ’93 performing in the Goel Center during the A.L.E.S. anniversary celebration.

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ohn Forté ’93, a Grammy-nominated recording artist, producer and filmmaker, is asking questions. Seated at a Harkness table in a second-floor classroom in the Forrestal-Bowld Music Center, he wants to know everything about what the eight students in MUS206: Musical Structure and Songwriting are working on. What are the themes, the beats, the styles and the lyrics running through their minds?

“It’s hard for me to hear about songs and music as if it’s not the air that I breathe,” Forté tells the students.

“Music is that critical to my existence, and in my life.”

The students begin sharing. Connor Drobny ’24 talks about a linked song cycle he plans to record, as either an EP or an album. “They’re all about the importance of memory, and how memories make up who someone is,” he explains.

Forté lets the silence stretch for a moment as he considers this. “The whole notion of remembering and being reminded — that’s the conversation,” he says.

Raylea Richmond ’26 is writing multiple songs from the perspective of a ghost haunting a particular place and exploring “how [the ghost] sees this space where she’s stuck transformed over time.”

“That’s really interesting,” Forté says. “What keeps us in a place, whether we’re here or not here.” He encourages Richmond to keep exploring the world of the songs she’s writing, and to ponder why that story resonates with her. Moving on to his own music-making process, he starts talking faster, with more emphasis. “Part of me showing up as a creator is explicit,” he says. “I tell myself three things: I’m here, I’m curious and I’m wide awake.

Then whatever happens, happens.”

On this particular weekend, Forté is “here,” at the Academy. He has taken a short break from a sold-out arena tour with hip-hop legends Lauryn Hill and the Fugees to celebrate the 55th anniversary of the AfroLatinx Exonian Society, or A.L.E.S., an organization that was integral to his Exeter experience. “I would not have made it a year [at Exeter] without A.L.E.S.,” Forté says.

“It was a cornerstone for [my] sanity.”

Having returned to campus at the invitation of the A.L.E.S. anniversary planning committee, Forté takes pride in being asked to share his work with students and fellow alumni during such a momentous event. “It’s one thing to show up and see your classmates at a reunion,” he says. “But coming here this morning I felt just how important the A.L.E.S. was to me while I was here, and I’m deeply honored to be part of the programming.”

“The committee’s goal was to highlight the success of our fellow A.L.E.S. alumni across generations and industries,” says Trustee Paulina Jerez ’91; P’21, co-host of the event. “Personally, A.L.E.S. 55 provided me the opportunity to see John again on campus, experience the unique cadence of his storytelling and musical performance in the

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company of A.L.E.S. alums and students.”

For planning committee member Bryan Contreras ’91; P’24, Forté’s presentation of his work scoring a new HBO reboot of the civil rights documentary series Eyes on the Prize was one of the “magical moments” in a memorable weekend. “John’s music and passion reminded me of the special place [where] A.L.E.S. and Exeter live in my heart.”

Forté’s love of making music began long before he set foot on Exeter’s campus. On the day they handed out musical instruments at P.S. 327 in Brownsville, Brooklyn, an 8-year-old Forté debated his options: Wait on the long line outside the rock band room and risk going home emptyhanded or make the less popular choice. “I walked into the orchestra room, and I walked out with a violin,” he recalls.

“I took that home and it changed my whole trajectory.

Music gave me the ability to participate in a way that made me feel so empowered, and like I belonged.”

Forté rose to first chair in his school’s orchestra and performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. When he arrived at Exeter as a ninth grader as part of the nonprofit educational program Prep-for-Prep 9, he expected to continue playing violin but got a rude awakening. “I was so out of my depth because I didn’t learn until I was 8,” Forté says. “My peers were doing Suzuki at 3 or 4. I was outmatched, and I pivoted.”

By that time, he was in love with hip-hop, and would order cassettes of pioneering artists like Dr. Dre and Public Enemy from a local record store near campus. Some of his friends had makeshift studios in their dorm rooms: a keyboard, some speakers, maybe a four-track tape recorder.

“That was just enough to allow us to find our voices,” Forté says. “Hip-hop felt like part of my identity, something I could really lean into, and it made me feel like home [at Exeter]. Whenever I had the opportunity to do a class project and was given free form to express myself, 10 times out of 10, I would always choose to turn it into a song.”

Guided by his favorite instructors, such as Christine Robinson of the English Department, Forté learned how to talk about art and to feel some ownership in its interpretation. “To be able to not just look at art or not just experience it passively, but to show up, to have agency inside the art,” Forté says. “My professors here really unlocked that for me.”

Even fellow Exeter students familiar with Forté’s talents as a “rapper extraordinaire” (according to a 1991 Exonian profile) may have been surprised at how quickly he soared to hip-hop fame after graduation. Midway through his freshman year at New York University, he left to take a job in A&R, or artists and repertoire, at the underground hip-hop label Rawkus Records. A friend introduced him to the music of the Fugees, and he met Hill at one of the group’s shows.

Their connection led to his co-writing, producing and performing several tracks on the band’s second album, The

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Score, released in 1996. An electric fusion of hip-hop, reggae and soul music paired with socially conscious lyrics, the album went to No. 1 in 10 countries and became only the second rap album to earn a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year. It has sold more than 22 million copies to date.

Forté scored another hit with “We Trying to Stay Alive,” a cut from Wyclef Jean’s debut solo album that sampled the classic Bee Gees song “Stayin’ Alive.” Amid all the hype, Forté signed with a major label, Ruffhouse Records, and was given a year to make his debut solo album; he completed it in just eight months.

“There was the pressure of finishing it, not to mention the pressure of everything else going around, because I was part of a very, very successful machine,” Forté says. “My first album was so aspirational. There was a lot of braggadocio, which is what hip-hop is about, and a lot of youthful ego, because I had a lot to prove to the world.”

That album, Poly Sci, came out in 1998, featuring collaborations with Fat Joe, DMX and Pras. It was critically acclaimed but sold just 80,000 copies. The album’s commercial failure, and the subsequent break with his record label, led to a series of events that changed Forté’s life forever.

Determined to earn money so he could continue recording his music, he became involved in a criminal operation. In 2000 he was arrested at Newark International Airport in connection with a conspiracy to sell $1.4 million worth of liquid cocaine. Found guilty of possession with intent to distribute, he was sentenced to a mandatory minimum of 14 years in prison.

During his first few years incarcerated, Forté focused all his energy on appealing his conviction. Though he had recorded a second album, I, John, by then, he felt the music industry had turned on him. As a result, “I kind of turned my back on it,” he recalls. But while Forté was at Loretto, a low-security federal prison in Pennsylvania, another inmate brought him an unexpected gift: an acoustic guitar. “He was so excited because he knew I was a musician,” Forté says. “What he didn’t know was that I didn’t know how to play the guitar.”

Forté stashed the instrument under his bed and left it there for months, until he was offered the opportunity to give music classes to his fellow inmates. “I had to learn two chords a week, just enough to be able to teach,” he says. “That motivation — having people depend on me week in and week out — taught me to learn my chords.”

In rediscovering music, and collaborating and performing with other musicians, Forté found a much-needed outlet. “It was wonderful to be able to find access to music, and to feel that as its own sort of opportunity to be free in a very not free place.”

Meanwhile, a group of people devoted to Forté’s cause, including the musician Carly Simon and her son, Ben Taylor, had been working to secure his release. In November 2008, President George W. Bush commuted Forté’s sentence, and he left prison after serving seven years.

After his release, Forté threw himself into activism, advocating for prison reform and working to change federal and state drug laws, including the legalization of marijuana. He currently serves on the board of the Transformational Prison Project, a restorative

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JOHN FORTÉ’S PLAYLIST Collaboration is key to Forté’s creative process. Here are five of his favorite collabs and the artists he “played with in the sandbox.”

“Scary Hours”

Moor Mother, Billy Woods and DJ Preservation

“Down for Some Ignorance (REMIX)” Saul Williams

“Being Is Believing”

Ben Taylor and Talib Kweli

“The Little Things” Lippie

“Ancestors” Ram Dass

HONORABLE MENTION

“I, John (2002)”

Herbie Hancock, Carly Simon, Ben Taylor, Esthero, Tricky and co-producer Joel Kipnis (J.K.) “I recorded this album while I was on house arrest in 2001, awaiting trial for federal drug possession charges. … It was cathartic to have had the opportunity to process my journey through song and have a vehicle to express myself during such a challenging time. The album was a creative leap forward for me: In addition to rapping, I discovered and incorporated my singing voice for the first time.”

— John Forté

Scan this QR code to listen to these songs.

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CHRISTIAN HARRISON

John Forté participating in an Exeter music class in October 2023.

justice organization that aims to help people affected by crime and incarceration, including ending recidivism.

“I think I immediately felt duty bound as soon as I received word that I was going to be in receipt of clemency. … I felt that there was work to be done to get more people home,” Forté says. “Some of the best people that I met in life have been from Phillips Exeter and my time at prison. Irrespective, I think, of what folks would like you to believe, character transcends geography.”

Today, Forté’s life looks far different from his early days of hip-hop fame, but he is no less dedicated to making music. Most of his work takes place in a studio adjoining his house in Martha’s Vineyard, where he lives with his wife, Lara, and their two young children. “My studio feels like my life’s work,” he says. “Every day that I walk in there, I’m just so grateful.”

Forté composes first on the piano, though he doesn’t consider himself a pianist. After spending his early years in hip-hop reliant on DJs or bands to perform and record his music, now he relishes being able to accompany himself on the guitar. “It allows me to be a self-contained unit,” he says of the instrument. “I feel all the more empowered and capable.”

As it has been throughout his career, collaboration is key to Forté’s creative process, and he enjoys welcoming fellow musicians into his studio to work together. “I’ve never, ever put out an album that has not included a bunch of other people in the mix, either explicitly or implicitly,” Forté says.

“Playing in that sandbox is like a mirror: It allows me to see myself and my growth and my contribution.”

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Much of Forté’s newer music is quiet and calm, far from the boasting and bluster of his early work. Forté plays guitar and alternately sings and raps, touching on themes of family, gratitude, redemption and reflection. Riddem Drive (2020) was his third album, though he has worked steadily and productively for years, putting out singles, videos and collaborations. He quickly followed up with Vessels, Angels & Ancestors (2021), written and recorded amid the response to the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery and the mass movement for racial justice that followed.

Vessels deals with difficult themes, but Forté considers that album just as much a testament to his children, whom he regards as the motivating force behind his creativity. “It’s like a diary to my kids, first and foremost,” he says. “Secondarily, it reminds me of the journey, and I try to honor that. And then it feels like it’s for the rest of the world.”

Near the end of the Exeter songwriting class, Forté muses on the differences between why he made music as a younger man and why he makes it now. “What will inspire you as songwriters and deliberate co-creators will and should change over time, but what you might want to check into is why you’re doing what you’re doing,” he says, as he prepares to spend a warm fall weekend sharing his work and reconnecting with old friends and fellow alumni at the A.L.E.S. event.

“The creative process, whether you’re writing a poem or a song or a piece of music, allows you to check in on your humanity … again and again and again,” Forté tells the students. “So, keep writing songs. Don’t ever stop.” E

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Garden of the Forking Paths PHOTOGRAPH BY PETER YOON

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D E C A D E S A F T E R M E E T I N G AT T H E H A R K N E S S TA B L E , AWA R D - W I N N I N G N O V E L I S T PA U L YO O N ’ 9 8 A N D ENGLISH INSTRUCTOR EMERITUS RALPH SNEEDEN

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By Ralph Sneeden

n the fall of ’97 Paul Yoon was a student in my senior English 410 class, and I can’t remember if, in his writing back then, he ever really tackled the core requirement of the English curriculum: the personal narrative. What I do remember, however, other than his hunger to read, was his short fiction. One story, in particular. For his final assignment, he handed in “La Guitarrista” instead of a personal essay or autobiographical narrative. The story ended up in the student journal Pendulum that year. True, Paul played guitar and sang, but the piece’s imaginative trajectory, pathos and sudden violence were rendered so confidently that any experience the author might have had with music was only a point of departure. The story deflected the teacher’s/reader’s attempts to sift the author’s presence from the plot. It was a real story, not a personal narrative dressed up like a story.

Over the subsequent years, we’ve kept in close contact, become friends, even colleagues, one might say, especially since I’ve been able to spend more time writing and he is descending deeper into his role as a teacher. Last March I had the opportunity to interview him in front of a live audience at The American School in London, where he was the Bergeron Fellow/writer-in-residence. I’d been awarded the same honor in 2008, so it was a beguiling crossroads in both our careers, a juncture where we could both take stock of the separate roads we’d chosen, but where our writing and teaching seem to keep intertwining, as if in some Borgesian “garden of the forking paths.”

Paul’s last appearance in The Exeter Bulletin came after his first book, Once the Shore, was released by Sarabande Books in 2009. The achievements he’s compressed into the following “micro-decade” have been remarkable: two novels and two more story collections, along with a trove of awards (New York Public Library Young Lions Award), fellowships (Guggenheim), publication in the commercial

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literary triumvirate (Harper’s, The Atlantic, The New Yorker), not to mention an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers.

Before I retired from Exeter, I’d regularly invite Paul to visit my classes and do readings. He has been generous with his time, though I was always worried that his art might seduce students away from the sacred Personal Narrative. I caught up with Paul just as his latest collection, The Hive and the Honey, was placed on Time magazine’s list of “100 Must-Read Books of 2023.”

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Sneeden: Since your time at Exeter as a student, you’ve put so many terrific authors on my radar: Benjamín Labatut, Jenny Erpenbeck, Esther Kinsky, Hernan Diaz, John Williams, to name a few. You have also been instrumental in helping me find venues for my work. And you’ve encouraged me, kept me writing when my energy and confidence were flagging. What do you make of this role reversal/turning of the tables, when a student becomes a teacher, a mentor?

Yoon: Well, first of all, let’s get something straight here: There’s only one teacher/mentor in this two-person party, and it’s not me. I’m only engaging with what you gave me (and to so many other former students who are reading this) and keep giving me: love of literature, love of art, generosity of spirit, discipline, engagement. I can’t count how many times you gave me a book “off the books” to read (much to the detriment of my PEA grades) or how many conversations we had about film, music, painting.

The thing about Exeter is that Harkness lives beyond the table, continuously, along all the paths of the campus, in dorm rooms, in dining rooms, in the air. That’s the magic of it. I just see us keeping these conversations going, 25 years later. You are writing, and I am writing, and we’re both reading, and we’re still talking the way we always did.

Except maybe I’m a bit more mature these days … maybe.

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I’d really like to hear more about your evolving relationship with teaching — your ongoing position as a senior lecturer at Harvard, stints at Bennington and the University of Texas (Austin) for the Michener Fellowship. I know that writing is at the center of what drives you as an artist, but has teaching shifted your aesthetic at all, your relationship to reading, or even how you approach your own craft?

I don’t know if you feel this, Ralph, but I feel like as the years go on, the less I know.

That is, I feel more of a student these days, and that my students are teaching me. And I kind of find this exhilarating. I am very upfront that I hold no answers to how one should go about writing good fiction. I also think what is deemed good fiction is constantly changing. But I find being in the classroom with some really smart, kind, empathetic people to be a soul balm these days, especially as the world feels more and more grim. I love the hope of words.

And I think it’s given me that extra boost to read more widely, to pick up something that I normally wouldn’t, a book students are really inspired by. Maybe what I’m trying to say here is that being a “teacher” has helped me realize that I don’t really want to be alone — writing is at its core a solitary art, but being in

the classroom has helped me understand that it doesn’t always have to be.

Writer David Means offered some compelling back-cover insight for your new book, describing your signature demographic of characters who are “… far from home, longing for home, finding ways to reconcile and embrace complex new landscapes.”

You grew up in Poughkeepsie (and maybe PEA?), but you’ve recently moved back to New York. Given that so many of your characters are diasporic, displaced searchers, wanderers, exiles, can you describe what it has been like, after your own wanderings, to return to your “heimat” in the Hudson Valley?

Ralph Sneeden with Paul Yoon '98 at Sneeden's daughter's wedding .

I didn’t realize how much I longed to go back to a “home” until the pandemic and lockdown, when I was “stuck” in a place (sigh, Florida) that was really far from places I hold dear and people (like you) I hold dear. It was like I had turned into one of my characters, as far away as possible from anything familiar. I ached. I yearned. I think also I was doing some hardcore wandering before then, moving from place to place, following the money, and maybe that all caught up with me too. This is a weird thing for a writer to say, but

THE BOOKLIST Works by Paul Yoon

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I couldn’t be happier. I think this means I won’t write again, because I’m too happy … thankfully, I wrote a book I’m proud of, before pure happiness does me in.

The purity of your fiction guarantees imaginative gambles, whether you’re writing about refugees from 1960s Laos or samurai in 17th-century Japan. I think this is heroic, even with the deep and respectful research that you engage in.

Given all the chatter about the unofficial, societal limits placed on art these days (i.e., who is qualified to write about what, etc.), do you ever embark tentatively on your projects? Ever worry if the territory you’re exploring is forbidden, dangerous?

of the 20th century. One of these is Claude Simone’s The Flanders Road, set in 1940 as the German army approaches Paris. There’s a compelling riff in the publisher’s description: “... the question that must be urgently asked even as it remains unanswerable, is whether fiction can confront and respond to the traumas of history.”

How would you begin to answer this question, given the thematic concerns of so much of your work?

I’m not sure if this is a good answer, but I think I’m, book by book, responding to the traumas my father and his family endured before and during the Korean War. That’s my baseline. I can explore different eras, countries, cultures, stories, but I think in some deeper underlying way, I’m always engaging with these unimaginable things my family endured and survived. That’s the beating heart that runs through it all. You pan out and my father is just one tiny, minuscule story in a billion stories, from ones we’ve forgotten to ones that we are witnessing, quite literally, unfold now, across the world. But maybe if I focus deeply and creatively on my family’s stories, I can engage with the stories of other families. I hope that’s a way to keep learning and to keep having conversations. A way to live and a way to be human. E

"I love the hope of words. ... it's given me that extra boost to read more widely. "

When I was starting to write, I was drawn to reading fictions that felt borderless — the books written by writers who seemed to be able to go anywhere. I’m thinking here of writers like Michael Ondaatje and Kazuo Ishiguro. In a lot of ways, I was an outsider. I wasn’t going into writing with any kind of formal education, aka a graduate degree, and I didn’t know a lot of writers then, especially ones who came from a Korean immigrant family. So, I read, in part, to feel free and powerful and feel like I had agency in my life — that I could make choices, and be encouraged, and to be confident, explore and learn about the world. I write first and foremost as a response to the books I fell in love with and continue to fall in love with. And those books were the ones that gave me a passport to explore the world, which makes me want to keep exploring.

We’ve often talked about our shared obsession with the New York Review of Books Classics, probably because many of those novels try to apprehend the darkness, especially when it comes to modern warfare, at the heart

THE HIVE AND THE HONEY: STORIES

A Time magazine Must-Read Book of 2023

THE STORY: This collection confronts themes of identity and belonging across countries and centuries.

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Ralph Sneeden taught English at Exeter from 1995 to 2022, held the B. Rodney Marriott Chair of the Humanities, and is a co-founder of the Exeter Humanities Institute. His most recent book of poems, Surface Fugue (2021), won the Poetry Society of New Hampshire’s Best Book of the Year award, and The Legible Element, his collection of water-related essays, was released this year by EastOver Press.

THE BACKSTORY: “The twentieth anniversary of writing my first book, Once the Shore, was on the horizon, and so I knew I wanted to write a companion book. That was how The Hive and the Honey came to be. I wanted to capture the vastness and mysteries I used to feel as a kid, wondering what kind of life the relatives I never met, and never would, lived. It’s a book that contains, I suppose, the imagined limbs of my family tree, and that feels different this time around — using fiction to creatively explore my own family.”

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CONNECTIONS

News and notes from the alumni community

PATRICK GARRIT Y

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Crypto and Financial Wellness

By Sarah Pruitt ’95

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o many of us, the cryptocurrency industry can

seem like an impenetrable maze of acronyms and unfamiliar terms — NFTs, hashrate, stablecoin, Web3 — too confusing and untested to even consider when it comes to financial planning. But to Ram Ahluwalia ’97, crypto is a brave new world with tremendous potential to increase consumer freedom, trust and transparency compared with traditional banking.

Unlike traditional currencies, which are typically tied to a government’s central banking system, crypto is managed by a global network of thousands of computers, with transactions recorded on a shared digital ledger known as a blockchain. “It’s a novel form to manage, represent and exchange value,” Ahluwalia says. “We’re still early in that, but the ability to secure your rights, my rights, through cryptography on a blockchain that doesn’t require intermediation is transformative.”

As co-founder of Lumida Wealth Management, an independent financial advisory firm with a focus on alternative investments, Ahluwalia sees digital assets (aka crypto) as an important way to help his clients pursue their goals and improve their overall financial wellness. A frequent guest on industry podcasts, he provides a calm, erudite voice seeking to interpret, reassure and help people navigate the tumultuous and ever-evolving world of crypto.

Ahluwalia credits his four years at Exeter with both humbling and inspiring him, from the Cs he got in French his prep year (he won a French prize as a senior); to studying Buddhism and philosophy with Emeritus Religion Instructor Peter Vorkink; to soul-searching late-night conversations with his dormmates in Abbot Hall. As manager of dorm grill, he innovated by buying smoothie ingredients at Costco and selling Andolini’s pizza by the

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slice to fellow students. “It wasn’t even about the money,” Ahluwalia says. “It was the satisfaction of being able to service others, create something of value and improve upon what was already there.”

He majored in philosophy and economics at Columbia University, then worked on Wall Street in management consulting and spent more than a decade at Merrill Lynch. In 2011, he founded his first asset management firm, Winged Foot Capital.

He started the data and risk analytics firm PeerIQ three years later. “I always had the entrepreneurial energy and drive and was always building businesses, either as my main job or as a side hustle,” Ahluwalia says.

After Cross River Bank acquired PeerIQ in 2021, Ahluwalia co-founded Lumida.

Ahluwalia describes his new company’s approach to investing as “endowment style,” with an emphasis on alternative investments like distressed commercial real estate, biotech — and digital assets.

Ahluwalia stresses that crypto is still relatively new and acknowledges the pressing need for more regulatory clarity. But it’s an important tool when it comes to guiding his clients. “People’s long-term goals are incredibly meaningful to them … their own livelihood, their kids and their philanthropy,” he says. “It’s deeply rewarding when you can help someone achieve their goals.”

But his most important role, Ahluwalia says, is being a parent to his three young children. “It’s a duty, and a special responsibility,” he says. “If you want to create impact, it’s not about service to yourself, it’s about service to others. That starts with your family, and then you send it out to your community and radiate it through your profession as well.” E

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C O N N ECT I O N S LY D I A M O F F E T ’0 3

Baking (and Breaking) Bread

By Juliet Eastland ’86

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hen The New York Times published “The Restaurant List 2023,” Lydia Moffet ’03

had to laugh. The annual compendium of 50 places in the United States that the paper’s staff is “most excited about right now” featured the usual culinary hot spots: New Orleans, Chicago, Manhattan. And … Brooksville, Maine?

That lonely dot in the nation’s northeast corner marks Tinder Hearth, the bakery/restaurant created in 2006 by Moffet and her husband, Tim Semler. It’s a relatively modest operation, offering breads and pastries for walk-in purchase and a nightly pizza menu, all featuring locally sourced ingredients. With the nearest town center 15 miles away, “we really are in the middle of nowhere,” Moffet says, adding, “We have people come from all over the country and show up and feel like they’re home. I hear people say that over and over again.”

What’s her secret? For one, it’s a bewitching spot. In wintertime, patrons dine in a 200-year-old barn restored by Semler. A small breezeway kitchen leads to the 1840s-era farmhouse, Semler’s childhood home, where the pair live with their two children. In warmer months, outdoor tables sprout amid trees, flower beds and vegetable plots, planted by Semler’s mother over decades. The result, says Moffet, is “magical,” a sort of enchanted garden.

Food and community have always been central to Moffet, a Deer Isle native who as a girl began working summers in the nearby Haystack Mountain School of Craft’s kitchen. At Hampshire College, she relieved academic stress by “doing a lot of fermentation projects in my little campus apartment, baking very dense sourdough spelt bread. Fermentation was my wanting to have that kind of physical work, and to have things to nurture.”

In her 20s, she met Semler, and they moved back to Maine.

Initially, Tinder Hearth consisted of one clay oven, handmade by Semler, dominating their backyard. When they weren’t outside baking, they sold their goods from their porch or at farmers’ markets. Eventually, they approached friends (“before it was called crowdfunding”) and raised capital to build the bakery space.

Making good bread is “a whole relationship,” Moffet says. “It’s process-oriented rather than recipe-based.” The restaurant’s organic grains come from small local farms, “so seasonally, or even pallet to pallet, the flour we receive may behave very differently,” she says. “It has to do with working with a wood fire, natural leavening, the type of flour we work with, the way we like to make the bread. Small variables make for huge differences in outcome.”

Of course, Moffet is an employer as well as a baker, supervising 15 to 40-plus workers at a time.

She credits Exeter’s instructors with teaching her how to lead by “opening doors for people to be seen and heard, rather than just being ‘the boss.’”

“I feel so committed to creating a workspace that people want to come to,” she says. “It raises them up to be together, to be collaborative. I feel like that’s pretty rare in the food world, where there’s a lot of negativity and competitive energy. … I try to make that a gift I can give them, to say, ‘You can have work in your life that’s meaningful, where you’re valued.’”

When she’s in her office, wrestling with bookkeeping and email, she says: “I can step into the bakery for a minute and just have this wave of feeling of goodness. I love these people! It’s so simple.

I’m a mammal, these are my people, this is my pack. … I feel so grateful.” E

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C O N N ECT I O N S A L E X S I N TO N ’8 5

The Ideas Man

By Danielle Cantor

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Wesleyan was enriching, but Sinton says he was still n October 2020, Alex Sinton ’85 was crabbing off a “veering off course,” searching for the right career path. After dock in Chincoteague, Virginia. As he struggled to cut college, he worked as a broker, hoping to earn enough to his bait and find a place to rest his drink, he had the thought that a good fishing table would be useful. Then finance an inventing hobby. (“I had seen it in a Woody Allen movie,” he jokes.) Thankfully, a better idea materialized: If he went on with his day.

Sinton became an engineer, he could get paid to invent.

That moment, however, stayed with him. For most other At Oregon State University, Sinton earned his master’s people, that would have been the end of the story. But for Sinton, an engineer who specializes in product design, it was degree in mechanical engineering. He was on his natural path. He took on contract design the origin of his latest invention, work, bringing other people’s TakTable, a portable field table, ideas to life. (Dozens of patents, and the start of his company, for products including laparoKeystone Outdoor Gear. scopic instruments and sippy “Looking back, I believe I cups, bear his name.) With each wanted to be an inventor since project, he broadened his experI was about 7,” Sinton says. “I tise — CAD, quality systems, wanted to be an architect, or prototyping, testing, manufacan architect for things. I always turing, supply chain. enjoyed working with my hands, To supplement his engineermaking models and taking things ing knowledge, Sinton began apart.” That desire grew into pursuing an MBA. When he a long-held dream of owning was laid off from his job in the a business and introducing his aerospace industry during the products to the world — one that pandemic, he had newfound he is now realizing. time to pursue his own product Sinton came to the Academy ideas. He soon zeroed in on the as an upper in 1983. He rememlittle fishing table he had wished bers particularly enjoying the Alex Sinton ’85 and his invention, the TakTable for in Chincoteague. architecture class he took as an He dived in, testing proofs of concept, and different elective and making great friends, whom he continues mechanisms and materials, until he arrived at a prototype to see every year. “Being among these brilliant people, that was lightweight, sturdy and versatile. Next came the the banter was just ridiculously funny — still is,” Sinton arduous task of finding a manufacturing partner, settling says. Perhaps most important for his inner inventor, he on materials and arranging testing. The process of patentwitnessed firsthand, and internalized, the value of hard ing the product and bringing it to market took nearly two work and persistence. years, but by November 2022, Sinton had founded Keystone After graduation he attended Wesleyan University Outdoor Gear and was awaiting his first shipment of tables. and studied cognitive psychology, which involves a lot of A year later, Sinton has decided to go all in on the dream computer science. The technology naturally resonated with venture. He sold his house in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, him, but he also found the neurological element fascinatand his car, and kicked off a world tour (alex-sinton.traveling. “In cognitive science, you learn how the brain works,” Sinton says. “You don’t really have to put effort into learning. map.net) — for TakTable, and also for himself. “This was my plan for the company all along, to travel around with it,” he You just keep stuffing things in your brain.” says. “It just took a while to get there.”

Today, this concept is how Sinton explains his ideation As Sinton has learned, sometimes you have to go a little process as an inventor. “What you do is, you just study a problem. You don’t have to be obsessively thinking, How am off course to find what truly brings you joy and purpose.

“All invention comes from a need,” Sinton says. “This is I going to solve this? You just keep stuffing information into my motivation: to leave some sort of legacy by introducing the machine, and then, usually in the shower or when you’re something new and enduring to the world.” E waking up, the solution will eventually appear.”

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M A R G I E WA K E L I N ’ 9 7

In Defense of Equitable Education

By Sarah Zobel

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or Margie Wakelin ’97, a reading assignment in an Exeter religion class her senior year was the springboard to her life’s work. The book: Jonathan Kozol’s Savage Inequalities, a striking 1991 analysis of the U.S. education system’s race- and economic-based disparities. “Sitting in this beautiful room around a Harkness table, reflecting on schools in Detroit and Chicago where there were massive [water] leaks and books that weren’t in any way teaching contemporary education, was the first time I had looked at that,” Wakelin, a Maine native, recalls.

“And I thought, OK, we need to do better.”

And she has. Today, Wakelin is senior attorney in the Education Law Center in Philadelphia, where she played a pivotal role in the 2023 overhaul of Pennsylvania’s approach to school funding. In a landmark fair-funding case against the Pennsylvania Department of Education, the ELC asserted that legislators, education officials and the governor had violated the state’s constitutional obligation to provide a “thorough and efficient” system of public education. The state, they argued, should ensure that all students have the opportunity to meet its rigorous educational standards.

“We also said that it violated the equal protection clause of the Pennsylvania Constitution because there’s no reason that students who attend schools in low-wealth communities should not be able to obtain an adequate education in comparison to their peers who are in either high-wealth or not-low-wealth school districts,” Wakelin says. A 786-page decision on the heels of a four-month trial made it clear that the Commonwealth Court (one of the state’s two intermediate appellate courts) concurred.

Wakelin has long sought ways to help others. At Exeter,

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she was an active member of the Exeter Student Service Organization and read to children who were waiting for their mothers at a nearby WIC clinic. As an undergrad at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, she organized students in a successful protest against an increase in in-state tuition that would have most negatively affected first-generation college students and students of color. “It was a great time and place to learn about advocacy,” she says. The recipient of a Morehead Scholarship at UNC — a four-year merit scholarship for which she was nominated by Exeter — Wakelin took advantage of the associated opportunities to look more closely at educational equity initiatives happening internationally and spent a summer conducting research in India.

She quickly realized she wanted to see what educational equality — or inequality — looked like closer to home and took a post with Teach for America in the Mississippi Delta after graduation. “Kozol wasn’t looking at Mississippi, but he could have been,” Wakelin says, describing her two years teaching self-contained special education in a post-Brown v. Board of Education high school in Indianola. The school had been neglected so long, she says, that a plaque stating it was the city’s “high school for colored students” still greeted visitors in 2002, when she arrived.

With most white students enrolled at segregated Indianola Academy, Gentry, the only public high school in town, had a primarily Black population that did not accurately reflect the city’s demographics. Every day, regardless of whether her students seemed aware of the deficits, Wakelin saw them. “My classroom was filled with nonfunctional computers, and I had to say, ‘Try not to look at the half of the classroom you can’t use. We’re going to huddle in this other half.’”

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She chose to spend a third Teach for America year in Clarksdale, a socioeconomically comparable community about 90 minutes north of Indianola. Although the schools’ facilities and approaches differed, many of the challenges were the same. Clarksdale’s high school was newer, but students with disabilities were placed in a segregated wing; at Gentry, corporal punishment was an acceptable practice.

“There were lessons to be learned in terms of positives that were happening in both schools,” Wakelin says, “but there were also lots of lessons about the impact of low-wealth communities not being able to raise local resources to fund their schools.

Having worked within [underfunded schools] and seeing the impact as a teacher — that is a lesson that has been driving me now for almost 20 years. I’m not lying when I say that experience has impacted me every day.”

In fact, it inspired Wakelin to enroll at Northwestern’s law school, with the idea that she would be able to represent students like those in her classroom. “As a special education teacher, I was required to learn about and I interacted daily with the special education civil rights laws: the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act,” Wakelin says.

Although she believed the laws were fundamentally strong, they were not being followed at the Mississippi schools where she taught.

“Some of the cornerstones of the laws were being flagrantly violated,” she says. “I believed that if my students did receive the protections of those laws as they were entitled, they would have been in very different positions in their education trajectories.”

At Northwestern, Wakelin maintained her focus on inequality, representing students at risk of expulsion and serving as the managing attorney of the Journal of Law and Social Policy. For the next decade, she represented students with disabilities at Equip for Equality, based in Chicago, before landing at the Education Law Center.

At the ELC since 2018, Wakelin has litigated cases at every level to improve school funding equity and secure essential resources for all students. She was on the team that filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of former students of a boys reform school who alleged abuse; the case resulted in a $3 million settlement with one defendant, but is ongoing. She also represented a first grader who was said to have been denied enrollment in a charter school because of a disability that required special education services.

Wakelin is watching to see what determinations the commonwealth’s education funding commission settles on after it completes the process of soliciting input from residents statewide. She eagerly awaits the plan, expected in the spring, that will ensure sustained investment in Pennsylvania’s public education system. And she will continue doing “education civil rights work” for as long as she needs to, imagining a time when the schools in Savage Inequalities will seem a relic from a different era.

“I have for a long time been interested in working to address what I call the second wave of the American dream,” Wakelin says. “To take the privilege I’ve been afforded and use that to make America the place I think it really needs to be in terms of living up to the ideals that we have as a nation.” E

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The legal team for the Pennsylvania fair funding case, including Margie Wakelin ’97 and other lawyers from the Education Law Center, the Public Interest Law Center and O’Melveny.

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Memorial Minute Frank Trafton Gutmann ’52

George Albert Wentworth Professor in Mathematics and Chair of the Department of Mathematics, Emeritus (1934-2020)

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rom Frank’s early days as a student to his retirement

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days living in Exeter, his heart and soul were with the Academy. Of his very many contributions to the school, two areas stand out: math and crew. An Academy graduate in 1952, he won first prize in the advanced math competition and, with his crew teammates, traveled to Helsinki, Finland, to compete in the Olympic trials.

After degrees from Amherst, Yale and Bowdoin, Frank returned to Exeter in 1959, serving as dorm head and leading the Math Department from 1987 to 1991. In a letter appointing Frank as the George Albert Wentworth Professor in Mathematics, Kendra O’Donnell, principal at the time, cited his “patience with novices, whether on the Squamscott or in the classroom or — most remarkable of all — in the labyrinthine negotiations of committee work.” As chairman of the Budget Review Committee, Frank brought levelheadedness to discussions and fair recognition to all points of view. The same could be said for his committee work on Faculty Affairs, Advanced Placement and Health Policy. Frank also served as director of student activities and as the financial adviser to The Exonian. In every one of these varied roles, Frank’s graciousness shone through. Colleagues have described him as a gentleman and a gentle man — modest, sincere, thorough and honest.

In the Math Department, Frank was the go-to guy for any question on geometry. He knew of beautiful results that most had never heard of, like Feuerbach’s theorem, which states that a triangle’s nine-point circle is tangent to four other special circles. It is when discussing such beautiful mathematics that the usually deliberate, soft-spoken Frank would raise his baritone voice and become excited and animated.

Frank’s license plate number was 271828, his way of advertising the first six significant digits of the most important number in Analysis. Those who knew of his penchant for precision were not surprised when he took a permanent black marker and inserted a decimal point between the 2 and the 7.

As a student, Frank sang with the Academy and the Amherst College Glee Clubs. As an Exeter resident, he sang with the Rockingham Choral Society and with Portsmouth Pro Musica, a friendship chorus that traveled to China and Eastern Europe. It was always easy to spot Frank in the back row of the choir, towering over his fellow singers.

Frank loved the outdoors. Born in Maine, he canoed, skied

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ACADEMY ARCHIVES

and hiked from an early age. As a teen, he learned how to repair a birch bark canoe and in his 70s he learned the skill of canoe poling. He not only climbed all the White Mountain peaks 4,000 feet or higher, but also could identify them by their silhouettes.

He led the Academy’s Outing Club on many weekend adventures, including mountain climbing and sometimes snowshoeing. He delighted in coaching crew no matter how foul the weather or how unfavorable the tide. He once rowed a four-man dory down the Colorado River, surviving two Class 10 rapids. Most people who go through the Grand Canyon on the river do so in a large motorized rubber raft. Few have the courage and the strength needed to navigate a wooden dory.

Among Frank’s many skills were photography, carpentry and a little bit of unusual chemistry. He took four trips to Iceland to photograph its geological wonders. He helped a colleague plan and build a cabin in the northern New Hampshire woods; the foundation, framing and roof were all executed with his usual precision. As for the fierce black flies, Frank concocted a chemical bug repellent that kept the flies away when in the woods and the people away when in town. Here was social distancing 50 years before it became commonplace.

Frank also was a clever harvester of wild low-bush blueberries. He made a small rake, which made the berry collection fast and easy on the back, with one drawback: His collection bucket would also fill with leaves. He solved this problem by slowly pouring the leaves and berries down an inclined window screen.

The berries rolled to the bottom while the leaves stuck to the screen.

Frank passed along his love of the outdoors to his wife, Lois, and their children, Tim and Cynthia, both Academy graduates.

Frank and Lois were instrumental in planning and overseeing the construction of RiverWoods Exeter, the retirement community where they spent their retirement years. They would come to Academy concerts, lectures and crew races, and they would continue singing in the Rockingham Choral Society. Frank always attended the end-of-year Mathematics Department party, right up to the last years of his life. He was excited to meet and chat with our current generation of math teachers. All of us, whether we knew him for 40 years or for one, felt honored and privileged to be his colleague. And, of course, Frank continued to row. Well into his 80s, he would go to the boathouse in his L.L. Bean plaid flannel shirt, ease into his old wooden single scull and leisurely row … at peace on the river he loved so much. E

“In every one of these varied roles, Frank’s graciousness shone through.

Colleagues have described him as a gentleman and a gentle man — modest, sincere, thorough and honest.”

The Memorial Minute excerpted here was written by Richard Brown, emeritus mathematics instructor. The full remarks were presented to the faculty at its meeting on May 8, 2023, and are available at exeter.edu/memorialminute.

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African Burying Ground

By L. Todd Hearon “a mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye” When you planted me and mine out of sight, so out of mind it might have been a wilderness — the frontiers of your consciousness with chattel, paupers, criminals, where wolves weave midnight hymnals all winter with the howling waste — circumscribed, you little guessed how I would in time become the center. I resemble Him, the God you taught my kind to fear, Whose radius is everywhere.

Very like a Master’s hand, discriminating soil from sand: men and what you would have called mine. I doubt we have evolved.

Doubt we’ve ever left the cave.

What I was in life I have remained: an inconvenience.

(But what’s the end of patience?)

When you lay your sewer line up against my knuckled spine needling my sleep, I rise with voodoo in my eyeless eyes troubling your theology.

And you will have to deal with me. E Editor’s Note: This poem is part of At This Point, a commemorative piece commissioned for the city of Portsmouth’s 400th anniversary celebration. The work, which premiered at the Music Hall in November 2023, featured a musical composition by Gregory Brown ’93, poetry by English Instructor L. Todd Hearon and narration by Dean of Students Russell Weatherspoon.

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JUNE 23-28, 2024

for Exeter hosts weeklong professional development programs for teachers.

Most conferences introduce teaching in the Harkness tradition.

Anja S. Greer Conference on Mathematics and Technology

Environmental Literature Institute

Focus on mathematical modeling and the impact and applications of technology in the classroom.

Develop courses and refine environmental curriculum with classroom time and while on a three-day paddling excursion.

Astronomy Education Conference

Exeter Diversity Leadership Institute

Collaborate with peers and learn about changes in the science of astronomy and astronomy education.

Biology Institute at Exeter Explore phenomena-based biology instruction with labs, classroom work and field trips.

Acquire new methods for leading efforts in diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, and for guiding lasting change in schools.

Writers’ Workshop Discover what it means to be a teacher who writes and a writer who teaches.

Exeter Humanities Institute Explore the Harkness method of teaching, as taught by Exeter’s experienced instructors.

Exeter Humanities Institute – West Join us in La Jolla, California, July 7-11 The materials, instruction and faculty of the flagship New Hampshire program on a West Coast campus.

REGISTER TODAY Scholarships are available exeter.edu/conferences24

PHILLIPS EXETER ACADEMY PHILLIPS EXETER ACADEMY

20 Main Street 20 Main Street Exeter, NH 03833-2460 Exeter, NH 03833-2460

Parents Parentsof ofAlumni: Alumni: IfIfthis to an anExonian Exonianwho who thismagazine magazine is is addressed addressed to no longer maintains a permanent address at your no longer maintains a permanent address at your home, (records@exeter.edu)with with home,please please email email us us (records@exeter.edu) their new address.

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Collaboration. Enrichment. Discovery. Fun.

Exeter Summer July 6 – August 8, 2024 At Exeter Summer you will learn alongside — and from — students from all around the world. There are a wide variety of course options in our middle and high school Jackie Addo ’25 and Kendra Wang ’25 are one of several programs.

Whatever sparks yourdormitory, interest, you will find cross-dorm pairings in Exeter’s newest New Hall. it at Exeter Summer.

Learn more at exeter.edu/summer24