Elizabeth Cobblah: 28 Years

28

YEARS

BY LAURIE O’NEILL

Elizabeth Cobblah

arts teacher, artist, and advocate for equity and justice

“WHENEVER A COMMUNITY MEMBER DEPARTS, there is a bit of history that goes with the person,” reflects Mike Salvatore, arts department chair and colleague of Elizabeth Cobblah, who arrived on the Fenn campus in 1985 with her husband, Tete, and retired last June after twenty-eight years on the Fenn faculty.

Mike says that “a bit of history” is a “huge understatement” in Elizabeth’s case and notes her many roles at Fenn.

“Her gift of bringing students who lacked confidence in their abilities out of their shells, getting them to believe in themselves…

was magical.” – Head of School Derek Boonisar

There is Elizabeth the parent, mother of Anoff ’01 and Kwame ’03, both grown and in their own careers as educators. There is Elizabeth the lunch lady, who in her early years on campus, with a small group of Fenn moms, worked in the kitchen. According to Mike, Elizabeth convinced Chef Glee to expand the salad bar and introduce to it such “exotic” and healthy fare as avocados.

There is Elizabeth the librarian, who served for several years as an assistant, helping Fenn boys in the School’s small lending library at the time to find what they needed.

With gentle encouragement, Elizabeth the art teacher “brought out the best and unleashed the creativity in scores of Fenn students,” notes Head of School Derek Boonisar. “Her gift of bringing students who lacked confidence in their abilities out of their shells, getting them to believe in themselves…was magical.”

Elizabeth the artist and published illustrator created the art for The Predator, a collection of short stories about the reflections of the life of an elderly Pennsylvania widow that was written by her grandmother, Linda Grace Hoyer Updike.

Last, there is Elizabeth the advocate for justice and inclusion. With Tete, whom she met while both were studying at the Rhode Island School of Design, she worked tirelessly at Fenn and beyond to promote equality, human rights, and peace.

Derek says Elizabeth’s decades-long commitment to Fenn’s diversity and equity efforts was not only as partner to Tete, retired director of diversity at the School, “but in her own right.” This, he adds, is one of Elizabeth’s significant contributions to the School. “Her passion for the work and the remarkable ability to both affirm our progress and stimulate future reflection and growth has been hugely valuable.”

Elizabeth is on the team of the Witness Tree Institute, a non-profit Tete founded. The Institute, which some Fenn faculty members have attended, offers multidisciplinary summer learning experiences in Ghana for Ghanaian and American educators.

Her summer 2021 Witness Tree trip was “fantastic,” says Elizabeth. It involved two weeks of visiting places of cultural, historic, educational, ecological, and artistic interest with a group of American and Ghanaian teachers. Elizabeth considers Ghana to be her second home, and in 1992 she volunteered to teach literature there for a year. Elizabeth and Tete continue to support students at the Akropong School for the Blind there, something they did with Fenn students.

The words “humble” and “empathetic” pepper her colleagues’ descriptions of Elizabeth. “She is a wonderfully kind, thoughtful, and gentle person,” says Jim Carter ’54. “She always saw potential in her students, even when a boy was not showing much enthusiasm or effort.”

It is no surprise that Elizabeth loves books and is a talented writer; she is the daughter of John Updike. But she is characteristically unassuming when it comes to her fascinating parentage.

Born in England while her parents were studying art at Oxford, Elizabeth later appeared in many of her father’s works, including the Rabbit series. She is the subject of his “March: A Birthday Poem,” which begins this way:

My child as yet unborn, the doctors nod; Agreeing that your first month shall be March, A time of year I know by heart and like To talk about—I, too, was born in March.

Updike goes on to describe all the associations with the month, from its astrological signs to its historical associations with Caesar’s fall and Beethoven’s death to its melting snow that sits in “dry crusts that huddle by the barn.” The poem ends with these lines:

Still, child, it is far from a bad month. For all its weight of compromise and hope. As modest as a monk, March shall be there When on that day without a yesterday You, red and blind and blank, gulp the air.

The word “modest” proved to be prescient. Among the experiences Elizabeth says she will miss most about her Fenn life is “witnessing [my students’] growth and development.” Her students’ achievements were never about their teacher, however; she stood out of the limelight, quietly proud of what the boys accomplished.

Tricia McCarthy, head of the Middle School for many years, says that Elizabeth “released talents and expressiveness in boys that they may not have known they had. “Her sense of humor and her patience,” Tricia adds, “worked so well with Middle School boys and their often-anxious parents.” Tricia has experienced first-hand the power of Elizabeth’s serene temperament. “I’m always calmer in her presence,” she says.

Tony Santos, a teacher in the arts department, has known Elizabeth for thirty-seven years. He says Elizabeth served as “a beacon of sensibility and good judgment” at Fenn and that her “dedication to her students’ education, wellbeing, and personal growth,” was inspiring. “On a personal level,” he adds, “she has been one of the most sincere and genuine colleagues I have ever worked with.”

Ceramics teacher Carolyn Dittes reflects on the dozen-plus years she worked with Elizabeth by saying that the latter was “the most wonderful, amazing, sensitive, collaborative, fun, friendly, real, patient, respectful, attuned, terrific colleague I could ever have hoped for. Elizabeth created the best working situation I have ever had in my life.”

When the Cobblahs joined Fenn, they lived in a tiny apartment on campus, in a building that used to be the infirmary. With a group of other faculty members who took care of locking up the buildings at night, they formed a little community, sharing dinners, picnics, and life events. Marilyn Schmalenberger recalls Elizabeth as a young mother watching Tete coach soccer, “with Anoff at her side and Kwame, wrapped in a colorful knotted Ghanaian cloth, tucked snugly on her back.”

“[She was] the most wonderful, amazing, sensitive, collaborative, fun, friendly, real, patient, respectful, attuned, terrific colleague I could ever have hoped for. Elizabeth created the best working situation I

have ever had in my life.” – Ceramics teacher Carolyn Dittes

“The halls with moving bodies, student energy, amazing lunches, a day off because of extreme cold, not snow, the lunch bell, the squeaky wooden chairs in Robb Hall, the ceramics studio, and the little square window, now blocked high up in the stairwell coming

down from Mulvany.” – Elizabeth Cobblah on the Fenn she will remember

Elizabeth, Marilyn says, is “thoughtful, kind, empathetic, creative, talented, and perceptive…and someone who never turns away a friend or colleague in need.” The Cobblahs taught Marilyn and her husband, Jon, how to play badminton in the Old Gym, and “we had no idea how intense this game, which we knew only as a backyard lawn sport at picnics, could be,” she says. But Tete and Elizabeth “always played to our level so we didn’t get discouraged.”

In an interview for a faculty spotlight series several years ago, Elizabeth said that it is “the caring community” that drew her to Fenn. When asked about her goals, she replied: “I hope the boys in my classes feel nurtured and empowered to create and to respond to art in their worlds.”

Unsurprisingly, Elizabeth the artist paints a picture in words of the Fenn she will remember: “The halls with moving bodies, student energy, amazing lunches, a day off because of extreme cold, not snow, the lunch bell, the squeaky wooden chairs in Robb Hall, the ceramics studio, and the little square window, now blocked high up in the stairwell coming down from Mulvany.”

Since she retired, Elizabeth has dedicated more time to racial justice and climate issues. She is actively involved in organizations including Showing Up For Racial Justice, the NAACP, the Unitarian Universalist Urban Ministry, and the United Native American Cultural Center, and with Third Act, environmentalist Bill McKibben’s climate change campaign.

She also has joined the Maynard Tree

Corps, which oversees the planting and care of trees in public spaces.

Elizabeth has studio space in Maynard and has been drawing every day in a blank book that goes “everywhere” with her. She is especially interested in capturing natural forms such as seedpods and seeds.

Elizabeth has said that “fresh air, the natural world, and family and friends” are “essential sustainers” for her; they are among her priorities in retirement, as is spending more time with Anoff’s two sons, ages three and five, who live in Maine. “I can’t get enough of being a grandmother,” she says.

Mostly, Elizabeth is enjoying having no set routine. “Every day is different,” she says, “and open to my own choreography!”

Laurie O’Neill is a freelance writer and former teacher and writer/editor at Fenn. She lives in Concord.