Groton School Quarterly, Spring 2018

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Groton School The Quarterly • Spring 2018

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Groton School • The Quarterly

Groton School

HONORING THE ENDURING CAREERS OF DEPARTING FACULTY

52 YEARS J O N CHO AT E

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THIS OAK BOX, probably

FOLLOW GROTON:

YEARS

BETH VAN GELDER

HUGH SACKETT Spring 2018 • Volume LXXIX , No. 2

used in the 1930s or ’40s, sat in the faculty room near one of the few telephones in the Schoolhouse. For any long-distance call (including to Boston!), faculty would write details of each call on a slip of paper and insert it in the box, so the Business Office could sort out the school’s telephone bill and charge the appropriate people for their calls. Students followed a similar system in the dorms.

63 YEARS

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BI L L M AG UI RE

Honor faculty with a gift to the 2017–18 Groton Fund.

DID A TEACHER CHANGE YOUR LIFE?

Groton teachers go above and beyond providing instruction in the classroom. They are coaches, advisors, dorm heads, mentors, and friends, a​ nd t​ hey continue in some of these roles ​long after Prize Day. ​Our faculty members nurture and motivate our students to think critically, to work together as well as independently, and to build important leadership skills.

Honor ​Groton’s​long-standing faculty, or those who were meaningful during your time on the Circle, with a gift to this year’s Groton Fund. Your gift will recognize the outstanding contributions of these teachers to the school and to the generations of students who were fortunate to be in their care.

Give online at groton.org/giving, use the business reply envelope​in this Quarterly​, or make a gift by phone at 800-396-6866. Thank you for your support.

Groton School

The Quarterly

Spring 2018 • Volume LXXIX, No. 2

DEVOTED TO GROTON With almost two centuries of classroom teaching among them, Hugh Sackett, Jonathan Choate, Beth Van Gelder, and Bill Maguire have touched countless lives and inspired generations of Grotonians.

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Message from the Headmaster

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Circiter / Around the Circle

11 Personae / Profiles 50 Voces / Chapel Talks 59 De Libris / New Releases 62 Grotoniana / Athletics 70 Grotoniana / Arts 75 Form Notes

Photo by Cha Cha McLean ‘17

Annie Card

Message from the Headmaster IN A STRANGE parallelism with Groton, Vuyelwa and I are

fortunate to be part of an educational continuum that can be traced to the late nineteenth century. Many of our ancestors were teachers and professors; thus, it is understandable that the teaching profession in general, and teaching at Groton in particular, has a special and warm place in our hearts.

Groton’s continuum, of more than 130 years, is built upon the shoulders of Endicott Peabody, Sherrard Billings, and Amory Gardner. The teachings of these founding “masters” were passed on through generations of teachers to the likes of Hugh Sackett, Jonathan Choate, Beth Van Gelder, and Bill Maguire, whose retirement is bittersweet, as it marks both a change of the guard and a celebration of the teaching profession.

Hugh Sackett was proud to remind us that he has served under seven of the eight Groton headmasters, starting with Jack Crocker in 1955. Imagine how we felt when we learned, at the beginning of this year, that he was stepping down. In our first year, when I wanted more faculty to attend Sunday chapel, Hugh—rather than have me appeal directly to the faculty—sent an email asking his colleagues (some of whom were his former students) to show up in support of our new headmaster. That helped quite a bit with attendance because of the high regard everyone has for Hugh Sackett. Before Hugh sent that email, I had asked if he and Eleanor would sit in the front of the Chapel with us during services, and Hugh, in his ever-gentle manner said: “In 1955, when Mr. Crocker hired me, he assigned me to sit where I currently sit.” I responded: “There is no more to be said. I withdraw my request.” A nod, a smile, and a twinkle in his eye were all I received. He had sent the message to the newbie, and it was heard loudly and clearly.

Editor Gail Friedman

Senior Editorial Advisor Elizabeth Wray Lawrence ‘82

Design Irene HL Chu

Form Notes Editor Jessica M. Hart Photographer/Editorial Assistant Christopher Temerson

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The legendary Jonathan Choate was one of Hugh’s students. Choatie taught mathematics with almost as much passion as he coached football and hockey. He was known as the teacher of teachers, even to those of us who were not at Groton. A legendary Andover teacher once told me that he had not been taught the beauty of teaching mathematics until he met Jonathan Choate. I remember approving grants for a contingent of Andover teachers who ventured to a summer program at Phillips Exeter Academy to learn how to teach from this legend.

Many of us are motivated to teach teenagers because of our passion for children at their most formative age. We have an abiding (sometimes blind) faith in the power and vitality of youth and the promise of tomorrow. While this ideal of the promise of tomorrow is not unique to Groton, here the embrace is intentional. We know that our gangly Second and Third Formers will eventually become senior prefects in Sixth Form and subsequently be true to our commitment to serve the greater good. This optimism is reassuring. Schools like Groton can weather many a storm on the Circle and survive conflict outside it, driven by determination to make the world a little better.

Just as I sit daily at the same desk that the Rector and his successors used and sometimes think of them, I often think of Hugh Sackett when I enter the Sackett Forum and Jonathan Choate when I enter the Jonathan Choate classroom, on the second floor of the Schoolhouse’s new addition. Our backs should stiffen a little when we recall how both of them carried so many on their shoulders for so many decades. We salute Hugh Sackett and Jonathan Choate, whose careers at Groton School span sixty-three and fifty-two years, respectively.

We also tip our hats to Beth Van Gelder, art teacher extraordinaire; Bill Maguire, a passionate statistics teacher; and Steve Marchand, our great librarian. It has been a privilege to work with and learn from these legends of the profession.

Advisory Committee Amily Dunlap Kimberly A. Gerighty Allison S. MacBride John D. MacEachern P’10, ‘14, ’16 Kathleen M. Machan

Editorial Offices The Schoolhouse Groton School Groton, MA 01450 978 - 448 -7506 quarterly@groton.org Send feedback, ideas, or letters to the editor to quarterly @groton.org.

Other School Offices Alumni Office: 978 - 448 -7520 Admission Office: 978 - 448 -7510 Groton School publishes the Groton School Quarterly three times a year, in late summer, winter, and spring, and the Annual Report once a year, in the fall.

FROM NFL TO ACTIVIST: Wade Davis Highlights MLK Day Celebration

CORRECTIONS

In the GRAIN story on page 3 of the Winter 2018 Groton School Quarterly, a parent year for Franz ColloredoMansfeld was omitted.

It should have read: Franz ColloredoMansfeld ’81, P’09, ’13, ’15, ’18.

The player in the volleyball photo on page 45 of the winter issue was misidentified. It is Gloria Hui ’19.

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ormer pro football player Wade Davis energized the community on Martin Luther King Jr. Day with a deeply personal story of his own experience as a gay player in the National Football League, as a high school bully determined to prove his masculinity, as a boy very close to a deeply religious mother who considered homosexuality “an abomination,” and finally, today, as an activist who shares the lessons he’s learned firsthand about defusing and redirecting hate.

Mr. Davis provided concrete guidance on how “to remove the distance that keeps us apart . . . to close the distance between you and someone different than you.”

When the instinct is to butt heads and disagree, he said, ask questions instead. He repeatedly distinguished between “calling out” someone for a disturbing comment versus “calling in” that person to learn more about them. His message was clear: sharing our stories and perspectives can help close the gaps among us.

The talk was one event in a busy commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Groton. The celebration marked not only the national holiday, but also the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination and the fifty-fifth anniversary of his speech at Groton School.

Christopher Temerson

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NFL inclusion consultant Wade Davis

A performance by Groton’s gospel choir introduced Mr. Davis’ talk, and a reading by four students of a powerful poem by Nailah Pierce ’18 capped off his presentation. Afternoon workshops covered a variety of topics, such as class, free speech and hate speech, media’s influence on sexual identity, LGBT identity in sports, and racism in Boston. Carolyn Chica and Michelle Brito ’02, faculty members in the Admission Office and co-advisors to the Cultural Alliance, organized the day, focusing it on the theme of intersectionality to, as Ms. Chica said, “show that everybody can approach inclusion and equity from different angles.”

It’s hard to imagine a more “intersectional” speaker than Mr. Davis, a black, gay NFL athlete born in the Deep South. His talk resonated with themes that would carry through the afternoon workshops.

The speaker said that often, while preparing his talks, he uses writer James Baldwin as inspiration. But he channeled Dr. King while crafting his remarks for Groton, and he shared one King quote aloud: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where

he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

“Where do you stand in moments of challenge and controversy?” the speaker asked Groton students.

For much of Mr. Davis’ own life, he faced challenge quietly, even silently. Not only did he hide that he was gay, he worked overtime to convince others that he was straight. When entering a new high school after moving to Colorado, he became a tough bully. He described going into “extreme panic” after catching himself admiring a male classmate. So he enlisted friends to become bullies, too, targeting those who didn’t fit gender stereotypes.

It was hard to imagine the speaker, as he advocated for kindness and understanding, as a bully. “How you relate to yourself is how you relate to others,” Mr. Davis explained. “When I hated myself, I didn’t care about taking care of you.”

Mr. Davis, now an inclusion consultant with the NFL, described discussions with men who would question the #metoo movement and would tell him they knew someone who was falsely accused of rape. “I then asked them if they knew any women that experienced sexual assault,

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and they didn’t,” Mr. Davis said.

“It’s interesting that one in four women will report surviving rape or attempted rape at some point in their lifetime, but my friends didn’t know any of them.”

The speaker readily talks about his own feminism, but with a caveat. “I’m a feminist,” Mr. Davis told the Groton crowd, surprising no one. “. . . I’m also a sexist,” he went on. “How could I not be? I

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soap operas with his mother, or that he questioned why no women served as leaders in his church.

He once asked his mother: “Can you imagine God being a woman?” The idea did not go over well. He tossed that question to the Groton audience: “What would be the impact on you all if you imagined God as a woman?” With one simple question, he had Groton

contemplating gender stereotypes and the structure of power and influence in society.

A victim of those gender stereotypes, Mr. Davis essentially was an actor during all his closeted years — including when he was in the NFL. “I was performing a certain type of gender,” he recalled. “I needed you to believe who I was.”

He worked hard at it. When a college crush kissed him, Mr.

Photos by Christopher Temerson

At MLK Day performances and discussion groups: 1 Cho Nikoi ‘19 and Rohan Varkey ‘18 2 Julien Alam ‘19 3 The Gospel Choir 4 Jack Goodrich ’20, Jon Lamson ‘18, and Layla McDermott ‘18 5 George Altshuler ‘18 and Caleb Coleman ‘20 6 Nailah Pierce ‘18 performing an original poem, “Angel Wings” (groton.org/angelwings)

grew up in this world, socialized to believe certain things about men and women.”

Long before Mr. Davis confronted his sexual orientation, he would play in his backyard with neighborhood friends; they liked a game akin to tag but with a ball. The kids called the game “Smear the Queer” and thought nothing of it. Neither did young Wade. He didn’t tell his playmates that he loved to watch

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On April 4, the anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination, Groton joined the worldwide bell-ringing commemoration.

A service in St. John’s Chapel featured words that Dr. King delivered at Groton in February 1963, followed by 39 people striking a bell, once each for every year of Dr. King’s life.

Gail Friedman

Davis realized he could no longer deny his homosexuality. So he never spoke to that friend again. During college, he made sure he had a beautiful girlfriend. He now realizes that she was “my object. All she was there to do was to be an ornament, to prove to the world that I am a man. I never saw her humanity.” Mr. Davis emphasized the difference between masculinity and “toxic masculinity,” which frames women as objects. Masculinity, he said, should be plural, for there are many kinds.

Speaking with a candor that captivated the audience, he admitted: “I used women as a tool because I was afraid to show up as myself.

“The only thing you should want to be is to be yourself,” he said. “Everyone else is taken.

You got to do some work to find out who you are.”

Besides being who you are, Mr. Davis said people have one other primary purpose in life: to care for one another. “How do you do that if you’re not learning about each other?” he asked. “How do you do that if you’re only worried about being right?”

Mr. Davis provoked thought with his suggestion that we forget about being right, and even forget about being a good person. “There’s a difference between being a good person and having a positive impact on lives . . . Your intent isn’t always important. Your impact on others is.”

The Groton Embrace Tour in Beijing

A WARM Groton Embrace

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he Groton Embrace Tour (GET) extended a warm welcome to newly admitted students in Beijing, Hong Kong, New York, San Francisco, Seoul, Shanghai — and right in Groton.

Thanks to the GRAIN (GRoton Affordability and INclusion) initiative, the school offered an all-time high number of students financial aid (72 of 145 admitted), including many in what Headmaster Temba Maqubela often calls the talented missing middle, a group neither high nor low income that historically has not been well represented at independent schools. Once again this year, Groton did not turn away any applicants for financial reasons.

The acceptance rate for the 2018–19 school year was Groton’s lowest ever, at 12 percent — a slightly more competitive process than last year’s, when 12.6 percent of applicants were admitted.

For only ninety spots, 1,206 applied, and 145 students earned a “Yes” from Groton’s Admission Committee.

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oul Sauce, Groton School’s jazz ensemble, joined the school’s smaller jazz combos for a lively performance at the Ryles Jazz Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in late January. At the time, no one knew it would be Groton’s last performance at the storied jazz club, which is closing, ending a jazz era and a more than decade-old Groton musical tradition. Performing Arts Head Mary Ann Lanier said the show will go on next year, and she is exploring new options among the clubs in Boston and Cambridge.

IT’S CURTAINS for Groton Jazz at Ryles Top, Jon Lamson ‘18; right, Dashy Rodriguez ‘19; far right, Andrew Lei ’19 and Rami Hahami ’22

ANOTHER SCHOOL’S Head, a Very Groton Story

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he Chapel speaker was head of another school, but he had a uniquely Groton story to tell.

When Todd Bland, head of Milton Academy, walked to the pulpit in St. John’s Chapel Tuesday morning, he began to unravel a moving speech about heroes — those we know and those we may not realize are among us.

He began to describe his Uncle Harry, admitting that he and his cousins sometimes made fun of the “unusual character” who didn’t seem to work, “looked a bit like Einstein,” and wore suits even in wretched heat.

Throughout his life, Mr. Bland had considered his grandfather, Congressman and diplomat Jonathan Brewster Bingham, his hero. He didn’t realize that seemingly odd Uncle Harry (a.k.a. Hiram Bingham IV) would earn, post-mortem, the U.S. Constructive Dissent Award, a Medal of Valor from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a place on the Episcopal Church’s list of American Saints, and even a postage stamp

in his honor.

It was 1992, four years after Harry’s death, when family members discovered letters with clues to just how heroic unassuming Harry had been — and why he had lost his job with the U.S. Foreign Service after working at the Consulate in Marseilles, France. He had joined the Consulate in 1939, a year before the Nazis occupied France. Jews were desperate to leave France, but a State Department official’s order had instructed diplomats to “put every obstacle in the way” of their visas.

Uncle Harry could not abide that order.

“In his position, he was not allowed to, or supposed to, grant papers to refugees,” Mr. Bland said. So Uncle Harry quietly disobeyed, over and over and over again, granting exit papers and ultimately saving the lives of an estimated 2,500 Jews. “He did what he knew in his heart was right,” Mr. Bland said. “And ultimately he [lost his position] as a result of that.” What once seemed an inexplicable departure from the Foreign Service was actually a result of Uncle Harry’s

Read Mr. Bland’s chapel talk at www.groton.org/blandchapel.

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moral decision to choose humanity over bad policy.

Mr. Bland never came to know his heroic uncle very well. “How many people in our lives have we looked at and not seen the very best?” he asked the Groton community, which had gathered for the first morning chapel after a long spring vacation. “How many people have we judged, unduly, because of what we actually don’t know about them?”

The kicker to Mr. Bland’s chapel talk? It was a Groton story. Many of the speaker’s family members attended Groton School, including his grandfather (Form of 1932) and, yes, Uncle Harry (Form of 1921).

“There is something in this place that for generations has cultivated an ability in young people and older people to think the very best of others and therefore to make others heroes,” he said, thinking not only of his uncle, but also of what lies ahead for his nephew Paul, who graduates from Groton this spring and who worked with Headmaster Temba Maqubela to bring Mr.

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oet Duy Doan visited “home,” helping students Groton School in understand how ideas January to share his work come together to make and provide insight into poetry. his writing strategies and Later in the afternoon, processes.

Doan hosted a workshop A graduate of in which students and Boston University’s MFA faculty discussed and program, Doan is a practiced poetry. He Kundiman Fellow and explained the difficulty of the 2017 winner of the translating poetry from Yale Series of Younger Vietnamese to English Poets competition. As due to the tonality of the a bilingual Vietnameseformer and explained how American from Texas, his reading Vietnamese poetry heritage and linguistic helped him begin to understanding are among understand his family and the tools he uses to craft culture. his poetry.

Doan then talked about Doan’s day at Groton rhythm and its importance started in two English in writing poetry. The best classes, where he read way to develop an ear poetry and led writing for rhythm, he explained, exercises. In one class, is to read poetry aloud. students did a “freeHe compared poetry to write” — meaning they music, saying, “I love wrote down everything music. Poems are the that came to mind — on same for me — they just the topic of “home.” Then, sound good.” He also Doan read poems about noted that poetry is “a

temporal experience” and that its sequential nature is essential to its meaning.

In the evening, Groton students gathered to hear Doan read from his work. Among his relatable topics was his passion for soccer. A player’s style on the pitch is part of his or her spiritual makeup, Doan said, then referred to superstar Lionel Messi, adding, “Messi is the greatest poet ever.”

Doan talked about his past, remembering his humble attempts at poetry in eighth grade, when he produced primarily R&B lyrics. In a Q&A after Doan’s presentation, a Groton student asked the poet for whom he writes. “I don’t really write for anyone,” he said. “I just want someone to go, ‘That was good.’”

— Christopher Temerson

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Photos by Kenji Kikuchi Christopher Temerson

Bland to campus. “The world is filled with ordinary people,” continued the speaker, quoting famed basketball coach Jim Valvano, “but ordinary people are capable of extraordinary things.”

Harry Bingham IV was once a Groton teenager, too, sitting in the very same Chapel where Mr. Bland, inspired by his uncle, urged today’s students: “I hope that each of you make decisions in your lives because you know in your heart they are right even if lots of people are telling you that they are wrong.”

He went on to express hope that all might one day recognize their own potential not only to become heroes, but to create heroes in others. “What I hope for each of you,” Mr. Bland said, “is that you remember that you have the power — just by the way in which you look into someone’s eyes — to make them a hero. To make your siblings, your classmates, your teachers, your students, your nephews, your nieces — to make them heroes by demonstrating your faith in and love for them.”

EVERYDAY POETRY with Duy Doan

Alexa Beckstein ’18, poetry teacher John Capen, and others with poet Duy Doan (in stripes)

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Tommy Lamont

From far left: Katherine Brown ‘19, Kevin Xiao ‘18, Brooks Anderson ‘20, Jared Gura ‘22, Liam Stuart ‘20, Andres Kaneb ‘20, Teddy Carlin ‘20, Land Tantichot ‘19, Grace Oh ‘21, and Phoebe Shi ‘19

DEBATE, LEGISLATE: Harvard Model Congress

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leven Groton students traveled to Boston in late February to participate in the Harvard Model Congress, a simulation of the United States Congress for high school students.

The annual conference is organized and run by Harvard undergraduates, and every year about 1,500 high school students from around the nation and the world come to the conference to learn about how the federal government of the United States works, or, at least, how it is supposed to work.

During the four-day conference, each delegate

sits on a specific committee, usually portraying an actual member of the U.S. government.

For example, Groton Model UN/Congress co-head Land Tantichot ’19 portrayed current Republican Senator Deb Fischer of Nebraska on the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, which discussed several topics, including privatization of U.S. space exploration.

In all, Groton delegates portrayed four members of the U.S. Senate, four members of the House of Representatives, two members of the National Economics Council, and

Tommy Lamont

Jack Wilmerding ’19 as McGeorge Bundy ’36; Jack channeled the Groton alumnus well enough to win an Outstanding Delegate award.

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one governor. The students had been preparing for the conference since December by conducting extensive research on their assigned individuals and topics.

At the conference’s closing ceremony, five Groton delegates earned awards for their impressive contributions to their committees. In a Groton first, Brooks Anderson ’20 won the award for Best Delegate on his committee for his portrayal of Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

Several students earned

honorable mentions: Jake Kissell ‘19, who portrayed Oregon’s Democratic governor Kate Brown on the National Governors Association; Kevin Xiao ’18, as former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on the National Economic Council (NEC); Katherine Brown ’19, as the feminist economist Barbara Bergmann, also on the NEC; and Phoebe Shi ‘19, as Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona on the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

— Tommy Lamont, Model Congress advisor, history teacher

OUTSTANDING DELEGATE, Enlightening Experience at Harvard Model UN

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n January, twelve students journeyed to Harvard University’s Model UN conference. Over four days and nights, Groton students mingled with peers from all over the country and the world to discuss issues such as refugees, drug trafficking, and climate change. Most of the Groton students represented Pakistan on the UN’s Economic and Social Council.

The more experienced Groton students participated on advanced committees, including simulations of the Vietnamese Communist Party Politburo in 1955 and the Working Committee of the Indian National Congress Party

in 1966. Jack Wilmerding ’19 won an award for Outstanding Delegate while portraying McGeorge Bundy ’36 in a simulation of a meeting of Lyndon B. Johnson’s cabinet in December 1963.

In preparation for the conference, all the delegates from Groton spent two hours every Sunday afternoon during the term researching their topics and individuals. Students enjoyed the opportunity to spend some time off campus learning more about important global issues and interacting with interesting and bright students from the rest of the world.

— Tommy Lamont Model UN advisor, history teacher

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Photos by Gail Friedman

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1 Gili Canca ‘20 at the booth representing South Africa 2 Roselle Lovell Smith ‘18 painting Montanna Riggs ‘19 3 Chinese dragon dance 4 Edward Cho ‘19 and Sangah Lee ‘18, serving snacks from South Korea 5 Ramen and rice balls were popular attractions at the Japan booth.

6 Alison Brown ‘19 and Lucy Gund ‘19 show off their henna designs.

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CULTURAL DAY’S Colorful Smorgasbord

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he Sackett Forum became a smorgasbord in late January, with table upon table offering tastes of the countries and regions that Groton students represent.

With music blasting an auditory feast, students lined up for Japanese ramen, Mexican tamales, Indian samosas, and Vietnamese chè (made from coconut milk, jelly, beans, coconut, and ice).

Students with French heritage flipped crepes, while Thai students served up pad thai and spring rolls. At one table, savory pork and plantains beckoned from the Dominican Republic. Nearby, determined Canadian students waited for hot maple syrup to turn ice into candy.

The second annual Cultural Day introduced the Groton community to the world that lives right here on the Circle. Students honored their respective backgrounds and heritages, setting up tables with food, games, and crafts from Canada, China, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, France, Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Peru, South Africa, South Korea, Russia, Thailand, the United Kingdom, Vietnam — and the Southern United States.

The Forum was festive with colorful flags, thumping music, and

participants dancing. “It highlights all that is best about us as a community,” said Director of Diversity and Inclusion Sravani Sen-Das. “Our diversity, our collaboration — the willingness of faculty and students, of different programs and groups, to work together to produce something meaningful — the pride our students and faculty have in their cultural heritage, and our ability to have fun together!”

The Forum remained packed throughout the evening. At one table, students patiently practiced Chinese calligraphy. At another, they watched as a henna artist drew intricate designs on their hands. Entertainment included a Chinese dragon dance and traditional music from Latin America. Students and faculty stepped and gestured with enthusiasm as Neha Agarwal ’20 taught a Bollywood dance.

Groton Cultural Day was a joint effort by the Student Activities Committee, the International Community Advising Program, and the Diversity and Inclusion Group.

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Clockwise from above: Groton students at the Parthenon, on the Athenian Acropolis; Julien Lee-Heberling ‘19 reading Tennyson’s “Ulysses” atop the medieval fortifications of Acro-Corinth; Macy Lipkin ‘18, Katherine Brown ‘19, and Anuj Agarwal ‘21 on the GEO to India; high tea at Welham Girls School in Dehra Dun, India

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ver spring vacation, Groton students explored the world beyond the Circle on two Global Education Opportunities (GEOs), traveling with faculty to India and Greece.

In India, fourteen students and three faculty leaders immersed themselves both in the remarkable vigor and dynamism of today’s India, as well as in the rich and unique spiritual life of one of the world’s oldest and most diverse civilizations. The group spent a few days exploring Delhi, including visiting Sikh and Jain temples in the old city. Then the group headed south to Agra via Fatehpur Sikri, the site of the sixteenth-century capital of the great Mughal emperor, Akbar. In Agra they awoke at 5:00 a.m. to see the magnificent Taj Mahal at dawn, then explored Agra’s Red Fort.

In the bustling city of Dehra Dun, Groton’s boys and girls were hosted, respectively, by the Doon School (for boys) and Welham Girls School.

In between activities— including cricket, soccer, dance, and cooking classes — students visited the city’s market, an organic farm, a migrant community, a Tibetan Buddhist college, and a Tibetan Buddhist women’s monastery, and took in a Bollywood (Hindi) movie. At Rishikesh, a small city at the headwaters of the Ganges, students encountered India’s famously aggressive Rhesus monkeys, and then lunched in an ashram with an esteemed yogi. Later that day the group took a safari

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through Rajaji National Park and saw wild elephants, boars, Langur monkeys, and other wildlife.

From Dehra Dun the group ascended the Himalaya (by car) to the nearby Hill Station town of Mussorie, then hiked to Everest House, where British explorer and cartographer George Everest did much of his groundbreaking survey of the world’s highest mountain range. The final stop was two days in Varanasi, the holiest city in Hinduism.

There the group visited Sarnath, the site of the Buddha’s first teaching, and at sunset took a boat ride on the Ganges, serenaded by three young classical Indian musicians as the boat passed blazing funeral pyres and loud offerings to the gods.

Meanwhile, nineteen students and four faculty members were beginning an “Odyssey” in Athens, visiting the Tower of the Winds, surveying Hadrian’s Library, looking out over the ancient Agora, and gazing at the sheer northern wall of the Acropolis.

After a dinner worthy of an ancient Greek symposium, students arose early to ascend the Acropolis. Making their way to the city’s iconic citadel, they paused to consider Stoicism at its birthplace, the Stoa Poikile.

They read St. Paul’s message to the Athenians in the very place where he delivered it, atop the Areopagus, and marveled at the architectural genius and timeless beauty of the Propylaia, the Parthenon, and the Erechtheion, and its unforgettable Caryatids.

In the following days, the group toured the archaeological sites of Eleusis, home to the Eleusinian mysteries, and, in Corinth, climbed the impressive Acro-Corinth and listened to recitations of Tennyson’s “Ulysses.”

A visit to the Peloponese included the Mycenae, the fabled home of Agamemnon and the Mycenaeans, and Epidaurus, a sanctuary dedicated to the God Asklepios, which offered the opportunity to sing, declaim, or dance interpretively for a captive audience from the orchestra of one of the best-preserved theaters in the Ancient World.

The following day in Olympia, a twohundred-meter foot race in the stadium was heated, but the surrounding fields lush with poppies and warm sunlight invited reading and relaxation.

After a night ferry to Crete, the group visited Knossos, the legendary home of King Minos, learned about the Bronze Age culture of Crete, and were mesmerized by the artifacts found in the Heraklion Museum.

Equally memorable: gorging on Cretan honey and delicious lamb dishes. The trip ended back in Athens, with a visit to the National Archaeological Museum, the Athenian agora, and the Temple of Poseidon at Sounion, where students dipped their feet into the Aegean and reflected on the trip.

— Tommy Lamont (India), Scott Giampetruzzi and Amy Martin-Nelson (Greece), faculty GEO leaders

Photos by Amy Martin-Nelson and Monika Andersson

SPRING GEO Adventures in India & Greece

Heather Clark ’92

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the 1960s and ’70s. “When I think of Plath, the first word that comes to mind is ‘driven,’” said world-renowned Plath expert Heather Clark ’92. “I admire her not only for her astonishing literary achievement, but for pursuing her goals in the face of harrowing mental illness—before the age of Prozac—and deep societal sexism … Her determination to fulfill her potential as a woman and as a mother has been an inspiration to me.”

Heather Clark’s story is not short on inspiration either.

She describes attending a play at Groton with her family when she was ten years old and being “astounded that such an extraordinary school was fifteen minutes away” from her home in Townsend, Massachusetts. Against the advice of her middle school guidance counselor, she applied for a Second Form spot in 1987 and was awarded a nearly full scholarship.

Heather was the first in her family to attend an independent school and the first to go to college. “I knew it would change my life, and it did,” she said. At Groton, she was editor of the Grotonian, an avid oarswoman, and an aspiring writer, all heavily inspired by former English teacher Todd Jesdale’s mentorship—in the classroom, in the gym, and on the river—and by her “intellectual and creative friends …

“I was lucky to be in a dorm with Curtis Sittenfeld and Zahr Said, two of the most brilliant women I’ve ever known.

We used to read our stories to each other out loud in our down time. (I seem to remember a lot of tragic romances.)”

personae

THE PATH

SYLVIA PLATH defied the expectations for women in

Heather Clark ’92, recognized expert on Sylvia Plath

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While at Groton, she doesn’t remember reading any Plath. Her undergraduate studies at Harvard led her to an MPhil in Anglo-Irish Literature at Trinity College Dublin, and a doctorate in English at Oxford University. By 2002, ten years after Prize Day, Heather had a PhD, and four years later, Oxford University Press published her first book, The Ulster Renaissance: Poetry in Belfast 1962–1972. As she was writing her doctoral dissertation on poet Seamus Heaney, working in Emory University’s library which houses one of the world’s best collections of contemporary poetry manuscripts, a new archive arrived—that of poet Ted Hughes, Plath’s husband. “I remember sitting at a desk as large carts full of Hughes’ papers trundled by me—

forthcoming BBC documentary about Sylvia Plath (to air in the UK this June).

Heather’s portrayal of Plath promises to reach far beyond the popular understanding of her as the confessional depressive, which Heather claims does her “a disservice…. Ariel is one of the most important poetry collections of the twentieth century, and The Bell Jar is one of its great protest novels. Plath moved the goalposts: she changed the nature of the elegy, pioneered the poetry of motherhood, and chronicled her own battle with depression in spare, unflinching language. Her late poetry’s speed, daring, and bravado broke new ground….

She is an ironic surrealist.”

think Plath is having a moment, Her work resonates in new ways » “Iwith the #MeToo movement. We forget how much she had to overcome. Hers was a man’s world, much more so than it is now.” papers no one had seen before—and I thought, ‘There’s my next book.’” Knowing that Plath would figure largely in Hughes’ archive and that Heather would be the first to dig into it was very exciting. “I was fascinated that two of the most important poets of the twentieth century had lived and worked together,” she said.

Initially, Heather “wanted to understand how they had influenced each other as poets.” In 2011, Oxford University Press published her second book, The Grief of Influence: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Her third and fourth books, Sylvia Plath: The Light of the Mind (to be published by Knopf in 2019) and Sylvia Plath: A Very Short Introduction (to be published by Oxford University Press in 2020), focus solely on Sylvia Plath, about whom no definitive biography has yet been written.

In 2012, publishing contracts in hand, Heather resigned her tenured professorship at Marlboro College to devote herself full-time to writing about Plath and to raising Isabel, 9, and Liam, 4, with her husband Nathan Holcomb in Chappaqua, New York—nearly three decades since she first dreamed of pursuing an extraordinary education. Currently, she is also a visiting research scholar at the City University of New York’s graduate center and a visiting professor at the University of Huddersfield, United Kingdom.

Both of Heather’s published books have won awards in their field, and she has published numerous academic articles. This year, she won a 2017–18 Public Scholar Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities for her work on Plath. In 2016–17 she was a fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the City University of New York; a visiting scholar at the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing; and a visiting fellow at the British Library. She is also a scholarly consultant for a

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When asked how Plath captures the attention of young people today, particularly young women, Heather said, “I think Plath is having a moment, Her work resonates in new ways with the #MeToo movement. We forget how much she had to overcome. Hers was a man’s world, much more so than it is now. With each passing decade, her poetic achievement seems more astonishing, and harder-earned.”

After a Groton student gave a chapel talk on Plath this past year, she learned of Heather’s expertise, and the two of them have connected. Young women often approach Heather when she gives talks, asking if it’s all right to email her with questions. She always says yes.

“It’s important to be generous with time and expertise.

I think it’s especially important for women to mentor other women in academia, where there is still a lot of institutional sexism.”

In Heather’s favorite Plath text—the little-known verse-play Three Women—the First Voice says, It is terrible to be so open: it is as if my heart put on a face and walked into the world.

I find myself again. I am no shadow though there is a shadow starting from my feet.

While Heather’s path to Plath seems serendipitous—an outing to a high school play, a generous teacher and coach, a set of brilliant girlfriends, a trolley full of a poet’s papers—her capacity for astonishment, her appetite for extraordinary education, and her very own Plath-like drive to put a face on a poet’s heart as it walks into the world are forging a legacy that is all her own.

—Laura Rogerson Moore ’78

John “Jock” Hooper ’63 personae

Eco-Activist Jock Hooper should be slowing down by now, but his

golden years are more of a robust green.

Jock, with a fifth-generation San Francisco pedigree, left Groton for Harvard, graduating in 1968—but the Ivy League path to a dazzling career on Wall Street ended right there.

“Harvard graduates of ’67 went to business school,” Jock says. “The grads of ’68 were in the streets demonstrating against the Vietnam War, going to hippie communes in Vermont. That’s an overgeneralization, but there is a truth in that. I had really been influenced by young people becoming activists, the emerging backto-the-land movement of the late sixties, early seventies.”

That activism has informed Jock’s life work: farming intertwined with environmental conservation. He has worked for the Wilderness Society and the Sierra Club, helping enact laws protecting massive stretches of wilderness in Colorado, New Mexico, and California. He has helped restore Buena Vista Park in San Francisco and Mendocino County’s Garcia River. He worked on cleaning up the water in Lake Tahoe, and helped save old-growth redwoods in a splashy lawsuit against the prestigious San Francisco-based Bohemian Grove social club.

Jock traces his passion for the outdoors back to his childhood roaming the rugged California back country on his grandfather’s Sonoma County cattle ranch, or on horse-packing trips with his family into the Sierra Nevada Mountains and Kings Canyon National Park, an experience he describes today as a “wonderful sense of solitude and being at one with nature—really kind of a Zen kind of thing at an early age.”

In those days, things were changing fast in California; Jock saw farms and miles of open land replaced by subdivisions. “I was witnessing that with great apprehension.

Something tremendously valuable—the natural world— was being lost,” he says. That was the beginning of a sensibility that would chart Jock’s course in life.

After a stint in the Army from 1968 to 1970, Jock cast around for land he could afford, and ultimately secured his own farm on Prince Edward Island. By then he was reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Stewart Udall’s The Quiet Crisis, and a host of other books that were required reading for the eco-conscious counterculture.

“I was very influenced by the writings of the time,” he says. “We didn’t call [our farm] organic then, but that was what I was groping toward.” That was the time Jock

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assumed his first political stance, when he and a group of other people who’d gone to the island to get back to the garden mounted—and won—a campaign to defeat the construction of a causeway from New Brunswick to Prince Edward Island.

“At the age of twenty-six I realized that one person really could make a difference; that was the beginning of a morph toward activism,” he says.

Jock moved to Washington after six years of farming “to get back in the thick of things” and began working for the Wilderness Society and the Sierra Club, “getting up to my ears in public lands protection” at a time when President Reagan and Secretary of the Interior James Watt were launching an effort to sell off public lands. By 1980 (the same year he married Molly Bolton) he had moved to the West Coast for the Sierra Club, working in federal wilderness legislation and earning his chops as a fierce conservationist.

In 1989, the Hoopers bought more than three hundred acres on the Garcia River and established Oz Farm, an organic apple farm they managed for twenty-seven years, and a de facto gathering place for environmental activists. Jock had continued his conservation work in the city of San Francisco and the Friends of the Garcia River, among other organizations, but the situation that catapulted him into the limelight was his lawsuit against the insular and exclusive Bohemian Grove social club.

These days, Jock calls it a “tempest in a teapot” but it was audacious enough to warrant a May 2007 feature in Vanity Fair detailing how one Grove member—John Hooper— fought against the club establishment to halt its irresponsible management of old-growth redwoods on its property.

“That was a very difficult set of circumstances,” he says, noting his family’s strong ties to the club. The short version is this: Jock, a fourthgeneration club member, discovered the Grove had a forest “management”

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plan that included logging old-growth redwoods. After six years of following due process, including repeated attempts to appeal to board members of the club, Jock filed a lawsuit and won.

“We prevailed in the litigation, and the Bohemian Club is doing a much, much better job in terms of protecting that forest,” he says. “There are still a few people who don’t talk to me, but that is the cost of doing business.”

Today, Jock sees many other more important initiatives as part of his legacy, including being a thirty-twoyear member of the California Tahoe Conservancy Board, the state agency that “stabilized the rapidly deteriorating clarity of Lake Tahoe—which everyone said was impossible.” He has several publications to his credit, including Conservationist’s Guide to National Forest Planning.

Although Jock has stepped down from some longtime board positions, he is still very active in the movement to stop California’s controversial twin tunnels water diversion project, and, until recently, was a trustee of the National Tropical Botanical Garden, whose Breadfruit Institute promotes

the use of breadfruit for global reforestation as well as food. He laments the dwindling activism and numbing influence of technology these days but he calls himself an optimist when it comes to what still can be done “in saving our planet for humanity—and not cockroaches. . . .

“We have a window of opportunity which may not be longer than a human generation to turn things around,” he says. “What we are talking about, without exaggeration, is saving the planet and learning how to live in the context of a complex ecosystem.”

Jock says he isn’t about to retire, not just yet. And that he’s no “martyr to a cause” either. He just likes the work.

“I am fascinated by working with other people, and very interested in trying to figure out ways to get younger people involved. Half of my friends spend their time on cruise ships, or swanky golf clubs, or discussing rare vintages at three-star restaurants.

These [conservation] issues fascinate me as much as they ever have, and their severity makes me wonder if I have a choice,” he says. “Besides, I really don’t want to take bridge lessons.”

—Marie Speed

DEVOTED

T O

GROTON We’re saying goodbye to some legends this year. Combined, they have nearly two centuries of experience teaching at Groton.

Their wisdom, mentorship, and dedication to teaching have helped weave the fabric of our school.

The following pages pay tribute to...

Classics teacher Hugh Sackett, our longest-serving faculty member

PAGE 16

Jonathan “Choatie” Choate, mathematics educational pioneer and beloved coach

PAGE 30

Beth Van Gelder, inspiring art teacher known to free students’ spirits through self-expression

PAGE 38

Math teacher Bill Maguire, affectionately known as “Fire” among the cross-country runners he led

PAGE 43

These four join the esteemed group of faculty who, through multiple decades of devotion to Groton students, have strengthened the foundation that upholds Groton’s values. We also celebrate retiring librarian Stephen Marchand’s fourteenyear service to Groton (page 48). We miss them already.

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A TRIBUTE TO HUGH SACKETT

THE

BUSINESS OF A

TEACHER — by Andres Reyes ’80 —

The business of a teacher: a. Is to become a schoolmaster: to cry for the moon, to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, to bring sight to the blind, and keep his own eyes open. b. To teach a boy how to read a book (the hardest of all tasks), how to read print (the sight of history), how to read things (clues to truth), how to read persons (by the eyes of empathy). c. To refuse to accept that intelligence tests have tested intelligence, even when he thinks they have. d. To take his pupils up the high mountain and prevent them and himself from knowing they are right. e. To stop teaching at the first possible moment and get out of a pupil’s light.

A. B. SACKETT

I

FIRST READ these precepts in 1975, in my Second Form year, and I imagine that Hugh Sackett must have shown them to me. They had been written by his father, A. B. Sackett, well known as the progressive and reformist headmaster, from 1928 until 1959, of Kingswood School in Bath, England, which Hugh had attended. I suppose that Hugh presented these precepts to give some idea of what was expected, over the next five years, of him as my faculty advisor and of me as his advisee.

As ever with such dicta, the fluency of the words

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belies the difficulty of their execution. But all of my time at school, it seems to me, Hugh admirably fulfilled the “business of a teacher” as set out by his father. In those more conventional, rule-laden days, advisory sessions at his dormitory apartment—always a steak dinner (called a “snake dinner” by Rogers Scudder, my advisor in the spring when Hugh left to excavate)—were formal, but friendly, and one easily got a sense on those occasions of the man behind the master. “Teaching was his business, and he wanted others to share his wonder at the enthusiasm for

Hugh Sackett in the de Menil Gallery, during the 2009 exhibit celebrating his archaeological work, “Fifty Years of Archaeological Discoveries”

beauty … wanted too to get others to fly on their own intellectually, to question, observe, wonder, and love.”

Hugh wrote those words, with their verbal echo of the precepts, in a memoir of his father, but he may as well have been describing himself.

As pupils, we were fully aware of Hugh’s excellence as a classroom instructor. He insisted on precision but was always forbearing and never unkind. In 1977, in the Fourth Form, I found myself in the Advanced Placement division for Virgil. Hugh, in going over exams, would

correct me firmly on minute points of metrical detail, while simultaneously forgiving non compos essays written in reply to questions for which I had marshaled inadequate arguments using select pseudo-facts.

But we had also heard, dimly, of the more glamorous life he lived outside school, as an archaeologist, whatever that was. It was only much later, after I had graduated from Groton, that I understood the magnitude of what his excavations in Greece had achieved, when, as an archaeologist myself, I worked on problems involving

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connections between the Classical and Near Eastern worlds, discovering that, for the most part, I was simply walking along a furrow Hugh and his colleagues had started to plow in the 1960s. My own archaeological career, in other words, like my school career, owes everything to Hugh’s knowledge and critical acumen. “In my beginning is my end,” as T. S. Eliot, one of Rogers Scudder’s astonishing array of acquaintances, put it.

Hugh was then the principal archetype at school for the “professorial schoolmaster,” one who, in the midst of teaching, managed still to keep abreast of recent research, interrogate his subject, and, in publication, advance its claims. There were some similar figures on the faculty: Tom Carpenter, Norris Getty, Robert Gula, Warren Myers, Rogers Scudder, and, toward the end of my time, Jack Smith and John Tyler. There may have been others, but Hugh’s reputation loomed largest.

The reputation of any archaeologist would be considered remarkable enough for the discovery of only one monument or object fundamentally altering our understanding of the past. Hugh has discovered three.

These are the terracotta centaur-figure from Lefkandi in Euboia, the long, slender island athwart Attica; the building known as the Heröon, raised, perhaps, in honor of a fallen hero, also at Lefkandi; and the statuette of a standing young male, known as the Kouros from Palaikastro in the eastern end of Crete, largest of the Greek islands.

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The centaur and the Heröon changed the way Classical and Near Eastern archaeologists think of what were once called the Greek “Dark Ages,” from roughly the twelfth to ninth centuries BC, when Greece looked, not backward to its Palatial past, but forward to the eventual achievements of Classical democracy. Completing Hugh’s trifecta, the Palaikastro Kouros, made from a combination of ivory, gold, serpentine, and rock crystal, is considered one of the great artistic achievements of the ancient world. Seán Hemingway ’85, curator of Greek and Roman Art at the Metropolitan Museum, New York, was instrumental in its excavation.

Each of these discoveries, as I explain below, affected my career at different times, enlarging my sense of what teaching could do, what archaeology was, and why, despite the development of archaeological theory (eschewed but not unappreciated by Hugh) and advances in technology, it remains a humanistic discipline, the investigation of human variety at its core.

The Lefkandi Centaur

When the Olympic Games were held in Athens in the summer of 2004, part of the opening ceremonies was a parade that represented the panoply of Greek history.

One of the floats, representing the ninth century BC, was based on the Lefkandi centaur—so famous and iconic had the figure become since its discovery in 1969. I first saw it when I was a Sixth Former, one evening in the fall of 1979, at Hugh’s apartment (“snakes” for the advisees again). After ice cream (dessert was always ice cream), Hugh set in front of us on the table the Lefkandi reports, published that year and in which the centaur featured prominently. He told us about it: thirty-six centimeters tall, its head had been found in one tomb, the body in another. What did we think? What of the six-fingered hand or its damaged knee? Was it right to see the figure as Cheiron, tutor to Achilles? None of us could answer adequately, of course, and we muttered inconsequentially.

But Hugh listened and responded to the little we had to say. He took us seriously, in other words, whatever the extent of our knowledge (shockingly slim) or the depth of our scholarship (alarmingly shallow), a testament to his generosity and a salutary lesson for any future schoolmaster. That evening also showed us just how much care and patience was necessary simply to think about any object or author. (Once when I was a student, Hugh lamented to me, in his modest way, that while his school and his archaeological colleagues wrote their books so well and so quickly, he himself always seemed in need of more time.)

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The Lefkandi centaur (0.36 meters) and the Heröon (length: ca. 50 meters), two of Mr. Sackett’s discoveries, changed how archaeologists think of the Greek “Dark Ages.”

The Heröon

I came to know the Heröon as a graduate student under the gimlet eye of Mervyn Popham, Hugh’s longtime collaborator at Lefkandi and Knossos in Crete. Its excavation, from 1981 to 1983, was a masterpiece of archaeological fieldwork. The building was 13.80 meters wide, with a length of about 50 meters, housing two burials. One belonged to a warrior, clearly important, his cremated remains placed inside a bronze amphora next to which a female skeleton was found. In the adjacent burial were the remains of four horses. Dated to the tenth century BC, it is the earliest building known to have as an architectural feature a colonnade around its walls, similar to those surrounding ancient Greek temples, like the Parthenon. The wooden columns, long rotted away, left just their postholes, each one carefully located and measured. With the discovery of the Heröon, the history of religious architecture in Greece was rewritten.

In studying this building and its burial finds, I began to take an interest in contact between Greeks and Near Easterners of the Bronze and Iron Ages. Throughout my time as a graduate student, in fact, the theories of Hugh and Mervyn on early Greek history, like friendly phantoms, hovered over my shoulder, nudging my pencil,

as I added my mite to the archaeological conversation.

The two also allowed me to use photographs and unpublished information for articles or essays I was writing. It was at this time as well that Hugh and I began to play tag around the Mediterranean, checking whether, in the course of our wanderings, our schedules overlapped.

We have only managed three meetings so far, all in Greece, at eleven-year intervals. The first was in March 1985, when, with Mervyn and Tom Carpenter (Professor of Humanities at Ohio University), we met for dinner at a local taverna. I realized for the first time that Mervyn’s and Hugh’s natural mode of conversation was disputation, and through the evening, they argued everything from the best way to interpret a potsherd to the correct translation for “two blocks further” into modern Greek.

Tom commented sagely, and Mervyn occasionally cast an amused glance my way to see what I made of all this. I later told Tom that Mervyn’s and Hugh’s conversation was “better than television”—more entertaining certainly, and far more enlightening.

In the summer of 1996, with Eleanor Sackett and, for part of the time, Jennifer Stager (Form of 1996 and herself an art historian and archaeologist), we wandered through assorted sites, speeding past the countryside in a minibus, Hugh at the wheel, Eleanor on the passenger’s side in front. We clambered over a fence to get a better

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view of the temple of Hera at Argos, tramped up and down the Lycabbetos hill in Athens, and went fieldwalking in Euboia. Hugh would sometimes pick up an unassuming sherd from the ground and, like a seer pronouncing over an omen, identify it and explain what lay beneath our feet, citing too a few apposite literary references. There was also conviviality and hospitality at his and Eleanor’s apartment in Eretria, where I was allowed to make up my bed on their balcony overlooking the town and its harbor.

In the spring of 2007, we met briefly for lunch near the British School of Archaeology at Athens, before I left to survey elsewhere. When I returned a week later, I saw him and Eleanor again at the Athens Academy, for a lecture given by a visiting professor from Israel on the chronological implications of chemical clay analysis. As with the legendary Greek law-giver Solon, so too with Hugh, I thought: “I grow old, but always teaching myself many things.”

Between these meetings, there was irregular correspondence which managed to find me wherever I happened to be, earlier ones signed “LHS,” the initials by which everyone at school knew him, and then, later on, simply “Hugh.” In the spring of 1990, a note of his found me in Jerusalem, and in it he pointed out that he was nearly sixty-two (there was an exclamation mark after the number). “Should I retire?” he asked. “No,” I answered. In 2005, again in spring, another letter reached me, addressed in the familiar hand, this time “care of the basement of the Eretria Museum.” I think that, in receiving a note from the great man himself, I gained a certain prestige in the eyes of the official who came racing to find me.

Archaeology and Classical Archaeology with him in the fall and winter terms, and when Hugh and Eleanor returned from Greece in the spring, they would rejoin me for the Roman Archaeology classes, which I had taken over from Rogers.

And so, I came to know the Kouros through Hugh himself, as he told the boys and girls about its discovery and meaning. Smashed, burnt, and dismembered, its separate parts were discovered between 1987 and 1990 and carefully reassembled. A reconstruction was the centerpiece of an exhibition, curated by John Tyler, at the school’s de Menil Gallery, held in 2009, to celebrate Hugh’s “Fifty Years of Archaeological Discoveries.” Its left leg advanced, the arms bent at the elbows with hands brought together towards its chest, the Kouros, around

The Palaikastro Kouros

I have only ever thought about the Palaikastro Kouros in the context of archaeology class at school. I had returned to teach in 1993, the result of a chance meeting with Hugh in New Orleans, in December 1992, at the annual sessions of the American Institute of Archaeology. He told me that Warren Myers was away the following year, and that other Classics faculty were in line for sabbatical after Warren. Would I be interested in teaching at Groton? Yes, I said—and so it came to be, the outcome of Hugh’s felicitous intervention. I eventually shared with him and Rogers the familiar classroom in the southeast corner at the top of the Schoolhouse, inheriting it later, when Hugh and Rogers, tutorials apart, devoted themselves to archaeological instruction. In 2014, at Hugh’s invitation, I began to teach the classes in Aegean

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The Palaikastro Kouros (height: ca. 0.50 meters)

DEVOTED TO GROTON

fifty centimeters tall, seems to have been a cult figure of the fifteenth century BC, to be associated perhaps with the young Zeus, who, according to legend, was raised on nearby Mt. Dikte.

We would talk of the Kouros and other archaeological problems in class, which, at its best, was simply good conversation. We did not always agree. Hugh, for example, thought, and still thinks, that I did not have to see, as I still do, so many Near Eastern influences lurking in the shadows of the Greek achievements of the fifth century BC. These moments of disagreement were, we hoped, instructive, possibly even amusing, for our audience. Certainly amusing, and a delight to the classes, were times when Hugh would present a theory on one or other issue and then ask me what I thought. Not infrequently, I was unaware that such-and-such a theory existed, and I could do nothing other than admit that I had never actually thought about the matter, and then furious reading would follow before our next session.

The centaur, the Heröon, and the Kouros aside, Hugh made other archaeological contributions less well known, but momentous too in their way. His excavations at two country houses in Attica, one between 1958 and 1960, the other in 1966, brought into focus a level of society neglected by a discipline that was, even then, still tinged with an antiquarian preference for more overtly impressive architecture. In 1992, his report on the site called the “Unexplored Mansion” in Knossos appeared, one of the few studies to document in a rigorous way the Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman periods of Crete. The sum of Hugh’s books and reports, articles and essays, in fact, comprises that rare achievement: a body of work that will always have to be consulted, as long as the study of the ancient world continues.

It is not given to all to have the good fortune of keeping one’s school advisor for over forty years. The advising and feeding continue yet, almost as they had in my Second Form year. But dinners are now at Hugh and Eleanor’s elegant home on Higley Street, the meals served on the round table that had been in the dormitory, books and papers and slides, as ever, scattered over assorted chairs. “Snakes” have given way to fish.

Conversation still has to do with kindly consideration of adolescent foibles which have remained the same whatever the decade, and there is advice on how best to write a test or teach an author. There is talk of archaeology, of course, and the diplomacy—of which Hugh is a master—needed to maintain cordial relations between local residents and the excavation staff, and the

ease with which problems can arise on any dig with its many moving parts: the theft of a car (as happened once), the byzantine bureaucracy of government departments (an occupational hazard), and the mad scramble to close an excavation on the last day, precisely when an important find has come to light (as so often is the case).

Hugh, therefore, has left a distinct mark as schoolmaster and as archaeologist. Boarding schools and archaeological excavations, in fact, are not dissimilar environments. Both can be equally fraught, and it is not surprising that so many mystery novels are inspired by one or the other setting. At school, tensions arise when adolescents and adults live in daily proximity, with little respite over term. In excavations, the same holds true, but there are further unsociable hours to negotiate, with work starting before dawn to avoid the misery of the noonday sun. But whatever the difficulties of either environment, Hugh has remained unfailingly kind and self-effacing.

And for these qualities, he is well known, not only at school, but also in the archaeological world. In 1987, there appeared in bookshops a mystery novel, Digging

by Lucy Cadogan, about skullduggery on an excavation in Crete. It was rumored to be a roman-à-clef, which, properly deciphered, would lay bare the secrets of the archaeological academy. In samizdat fashion, since it was thought unseemly to take an interest in such matters, copies were surreptitiously passed in plain brown parcelwrapping between those of us who were students at the time.

“We should read this,” a friend, now a distinguished professor, said, as she showed me the book. “One of the archaeologists may be based on Hugh.”

“How will we know which one?” I asked her.

“Ah,” she replied, “That’s easy. Hugh will be the nice one.”

Dr. Reyes, a Groton Classics teacher since 1993, has compiled a bibliography of the works of Hugh Sackett mentioned in this article; it is available at www.groton.org/reyesbiblio.

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Master Sackett, Kyrios Hugh “A subtle ability to inspire others”

IF GROTON had a Mr. Chips, surely

he’d be Hugh Sackett. He’s English, which helps, and mannered, scholarly, kind, inspiring—and now so beloved that he has loosed a torrent of tributes that surround this one, many of them from students like me from nearly a half-century ago.

Honestly, I owe a lot of what I treasure in myself to him. I’m sure he would be surprised to hear that, for he has been surprised to hear it when I have told him any number of times since graduation. In fact, I can pinpoint the exact moment when he located the essential part of me that had escaped the attention of everyone else. It was Fourth Form year, when I was in his Latin class. Sackett had us put on a play—The Bacchae. This may seem now like something out of the Dead Poet’s Society, but then it just seemed, well, Sackett-y. He cast me as the messenger who reports at length the hideous death of Pentheus, the uptight King of Thebes who has a perverse fascination with the rampant sexuality of Dionysus’s female minions. A lot to unpack there! Pressed for time, Sackett had me rehearse my part with him after lights-out—in my bathrobe and pajamas in the stairwell at Brooks House. There, I declaimed my part, full-throated, with great imploring gestures. Today, such a man-boy setup would be presumed to be ghastly, but then it led to my discovering that I loved this stuff. I was never going to be an actor, but the experience awakened

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deep, literary feelings I’d not been fully aware of—and a need to express them.

Readers, I became a writer that night. Remarkably, my first published piece was Sackett-inspired: an account of Minoan archaeology in Harvard Magazine that stemmed from a wild visit with some formmates to Crete, where he showed us his dig at Knossos and then took us bombing around the island in his yellow Mercedes.

I have been a professional writer ever since.

—John Sedgwick ’72 N I arrived at Groton in 1979 and was fortunate to be placed in Mr. Sackett’s dormitory. He gave us a handshake before the fireplace in the common room every night, and there was no avoiding those steely blue eyes. I first tasted moussaka, which he had whipped up in his bachelor’s apartment. He ran the dorm with quiet, firm authority for decades, and hundreds of boys in his charge all benefited from his unique style of watchful care.

Years later, I encountered Hugh Sackett in another setting. I worked one summer as a trench assistant for the archaeological excavation that he co-directed at Palaikastro, which employed several Groton students over the years. I saw firsthand his ability to manage a complex operation that began at sunrise one day in June and never

stopped until the excavation season was over six weeks later. Whether it was opinionated graduate students, difficult local officials, mercurial abbots, or the many uncertainties and obstacles presented by digging in ancient ground, he managed to handle it all. For his efforts he was, and still is, greeted in the village as “Kyrios Hugh” (roughly “Master Hugh” in Greek). Despite his devotion to hard work, fairness, and the highest standards of scholarship, he has never lost sight of the thrill of discovery that drove the whole endeavor.

A few years later, a big twist! I got to see Hugh Sackett in a third and entirely unexpected way. As my mother later recounted to me, she and Hugh (no longer “Mr. Sackett” to me) got married in Antigua in 1995 before two witnesses from the registrar’s office in St. John’s. It took a while for everyone at Groton to adjust to this change. In 2007, while attending my twenty-fifth reunion dinner under a tent behind the Sackett home with my wife and two sons, then both toddlers, a formmate turned to me and said, “What are your children doing running around Mr. Sackett’s house in their pajamas?”

Hugh seemed to adjust to family life with his usual grace and aplomb.

My mother and Hugh worked on the excavation together and traveled throughout Greece and England in the summers for more than two decades.

They kept a busy work schedule, but always made time for a daily swim and

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Students in Hugh’s “legendary van,” in Palaikastro, Crete — so legendary that several people submitted this photo

meals with friends, colleagues, and visitors. Hugh was a delightful part of our holiday gatherings back in the U.S. My boys still marvel that by shaking his hand, in their words, “we are touching the hand of one who studied with Tolkien.”

I feel fortunate to have experienced Hugh as a dorm master, teacher, and stepfather. Through the years I feel I have been looking at different facets of the same stone. That stone was formed in a time gone by, but remains durable and radiant today, like one of his great archeological finds. I would describe its enduring qualities in just a few words: integrity, curiosity, discipline, compassion, and humor.

— Townsend Davis ’82

of Archaeology in Athens, his career at Groton was uncertain. The school asked Hugh to return for Prize Day the following year, whereupon Headmaster Crocker handed Hugh a check for his full year’s Groton salary.

Hugh immediately did what any proper, Oxford-educated Latin teacher would do: he bought a muscle car.

Hugh’s Ford Mustang was an instant hit on campus. It was the bluish-black color of a raven. This noble

ride lasted well into the 1980s—slightly menacing, well past its prime, and highly collectible. Hugh’s love of combustion engines with wheels started when he owned an ancient London taxi as a teenager. It had some kind of hand-operated crank instead of an electric starter, according to his brothers.

Then there was the famous, gray 1950s Mercedes that lived in Europe/ Greece for decades. Hugh had bought the car from Charlie Alexander after a sabbatical year in Italy. Hugh had the gray Merc—after many years of hard service in support of archaeological fieldwork—lovingly, painstakingly, and expensively restored. It was stolen off the streets of Eretria one Easter morning, never to be seen again. The 1990s saw the arrival of the legendary minivan, a thoroughly modern, gleaming white tribute to lean manufacturing kaizen and efficiency. Countless Groton kids rode in that vehicle over the years.

Getting to ride with Hugh, along with so many other things, has been a sublime joy and a privilege.

—Henry Davis ’84 N I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Hugh Sackett, whom I consider to have been one of my most important mentors.

There were the times at Groton—the

N Hugh was an inspiration as a teacher and a source of great wisdom and support for so very many who came through Groton School and beyond.

There will be over-the-top testimonials in these pages. I echo and endorse them all, but have a less well-known side of Hugh to share.

When Hugh took a leave of absence from the school in the early 1960s to be assistant director of the British School

Hugh and Eleanor Sackett with (center) Henry Davis ‘84

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privilege of living in Sackett’s Dorm in Fourth Form with the fabled SackettScudder “feeds” on the choicest cuts of steak (which in antiquity would have been reserved for the gods but which Hugh and Rogers recognized were better suited for Groton’s growing youth) from the butcher in Ayer that supplied the troops at Fort Devens.

Hugh supplemented his lively Greek archaeology class with modern Greek lessons in his apartment, accompanied by tea and biscuits, to prepare us for our trip to Greece the summer after we graduated. That trip in the summer of 1985 was amazing and a routine part of Hugh’s service to Groton and its students—it was also the first time that Hugh and Eleanor, the future Mrs. Sackett, traveled together, albeit in a van full of rambunctious teenagers through olive groves to ancient sites where legends were made. For me though, my tutelage with Hugh began most meaningfully after Groton, working at Palaikastro in eastern Crete together for nearly thirty years.

I came to work at Palaikastro in 1988, when I was a junior at Dartmouth, and Hugh, field director of the British School’s Palaikastro excavations, placed extraordinary trust in me by making me a trench supervisor working with the foreman Nikos Daskalakis and our team.

Ever a good judge of character, Hugh’s trust was not misplaced; it turns out I had a talent for excavating. I immediately took to archaeological fieldwork, and Greek art and archaeology became the focus of my life’s work, too; I am now the curator in charge of Greek and Roman antiquities at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

There were lots of Groton students at Palaikastro in those years when we excavated, and a group photo with Hugh and the van that Bill Getty’s parents donated captures something of the wild bucolic magic of that place and time. I have never stopped learning from Hugh Sackett —the consummate teacher, archaeologist, and scholar who all the while never forgets to enjoy life.

Thank you Hugh, for your friendship, your generosity with your unparalleled knowledge, and your leadership. You

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are a shining example in so many ways of the best of what a teacher can and should be.

—Seán Hemingway ’85 N In the fall of 1955, a tall young Englishman arrived on the Groton campus, and thankfully Groton has remained his home to this day. Because he is soft-spoken and self-effacing, those of us in his first classes had the initial impression of a teacher who might go easy on us, and we on him. We soon realized that he was in full control of his subject matter and his students. In his calm, patient way he would encourage those students for whom Latin was a challenge and challenge those for whom it was not.

Hugh’s special gift has been to see potential and cultivate it in students before they recognize it in themselves.

Many graduates are devoted to him because he believed in them when they were in trouble or not sure that they wanted to stay at Groton and were just having difficulty navigating the choppy waters of adolescence.

As a dorm master he treated his charges with respect, and they responded with affection and pride. His kitchen was the source of many student meals and open to all who wanted to demonstrate their culinary skill.

Hugh did not often speak at faculty meetings, but when he did everyone paid attention. In times of crisis and tension, he always provided a calm, thoughtful perspective, one that often took us beyond the Circle. Hugh’s father was headmaster of an English boarding school that had to merge with another to survive during the war. Hugh often spoke of that experience and of his father. One sensed that his father provided the foundation on which his son stood.

In 1995, Hugh came into my office to tell me that he and Eleanor had gotten married during the vacation but they were not going to announce it just yet. Since Eleanor had two sons who graduated from Groton, I doubted that the news would stay off the airwaves for long. It didn’t, and the news sparked

great rejoicing. Eleanor became a wonderful addition to the community in her own right and a stalwart in supporting Hugh at Groton and in Greece.

How unusual for a person so devoted to teaching Latin, even to Second Formers, and living as a dorm master, also to be a renowned archaeologist and scholar. During the spring term, Doc Scudder would fill in for Hugh as he traveled to Greece, often with a gaggle of Sixth Formers, to lead excavations at Knossos, Palaikastro, and Lefkandi. The students received a first-class tour of the country and an outstanding introduction to the archaeological process. Some found their life’s calling there. Students also experienced hair-raising rides in Hugh’s old, large, and with-him-at-the-wheel fast Mercedes. After one trip, a student leapt from the car and kissed the ground!

Given Hugh’s natural modesty, I learned of his achievements in the world of archaeology through other sources. When he gave the Loeb Lecture at Harvard, I learned about it from a clipping in the Harvard Gazette. Well after the fact, a graduate told me that at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America, Hugh received the Gold Medal for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement. The citation read: “He served our field well for more than sixty years as teacher, field archaeologist, and advocate for the Greek heritage—he has done so with great humility, loyalty, and generous spirit.”

The same can be said about Hugh at Groton: he has served the school well for more than sixty years as a colleague, teacher, advisor, dorm head, and advocate for those values that stand at the heart of the institution—and he has done so with great humility, loyalty, and generous spirit.

—William Polk ’58, former headmaster N Before I arrived at Groton School in the fall of 1975, I’d heard of Hugh Sackett.

My brothers told many stories about him, his Latin classes, his dorm, and his gentle yet engaging demeanor. I was

Austin Anton ’10 with Mr. Sackett in Crete in 2003, two years before joining Groton’s Second Form; unsurprisingly, Austin went on to take archaeology at Groton.

“

How unusual for a person so devoted to teaching Latin, even to Second Formers, and living as a dorm master, also to be a renowned archaeologist and scholar.”

— William Polk ’58, former headmaster

lucky enough to take Latin I in Third Form and Greek Archaeology during the Sixth Form fall term. Compared to my Latin I experience with Mr. Sackett, his archaeology class transported us way beyond the confines of the Circle to an ancient world that felt real. At the time, we didn’t know that Mr. Sackett was a world-renowned archaeologist, but his knowledge and enthusiasm for the subject were palpable. By the term’s end, the spell of his teaching and storytelling overcame us—we begged him to take us to Greece. In a few short weeks, almost every student had convinced their parents that a Greek archaeological tour during spring vacation was a great way to enhance our already fine education.

It’s always interesting to see someone out of their natural environment, and while Groton, for the most part, was Mr. Sackett’s home, to see him in Greece was an entirely different experience. I remember the first breakfast in Athens. He’d been to the market and returned to his apartment with a tub of local sheep’s-milk yogurt and fragrant local honey. It was the perfect antidote to our jet lag and became a trip staple.

Before he let us wander the streets, Mr. Sackett pulled me and the other

two girls aside and made us memorize a phrase to use if strange Greek men approached us—translated literally: “not tonight, honey.”

For the next three weeks, we had an experience that was both adventure and constant classroom. We toured the museums and sites of Athens, hiked the Samaria Gorge in Crete, visited the Pelopponese, swam in the sapphire-blue Aegean, and ate and drank the best of Greek food and retsina. Camped out in farmers’ fields at night, Mr. Sackett would use the brilliant stars to teach us more about Greek mythology.

On one of the final days, Mr. Sackett guided our Volkswagen van, echoing with Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl,” to the side of a dirt road in Lefkandi, a small town on the island Euboea. He told us that we were about to walk to a site that was historically significant. At the far end of the adjacent pasture was a small, staked rectangle trench, no bigger than a large dining table. Mr. Sackett and Mr. Popham had been digging in this trench for years. With great conviction, he told us his hunch that underneath this pasture, beside the straits of Euboea, once bustled a large Mycenaean city settled after the fall of Knossos.

Excitedly, we zigged and zagged our way across the field looking for our own pieces of history. One person found a red-hued pottery shard, and I found a tiny clay wheel. Ecstatic, we showed them to Mr. Sackett, who carefully examined each piece.

“Bah, those are Roman, throw them away.” Classical Romans were nothing more than copy artists to him.

Mr. Sackett’s hunch led to one of the greatest archaeological finds in modern memory. Departing Lefkandi, we knew we’d witnessed history—beneath our feet on that pasture and with Mr. Sackett. His vision of a lost ancient city, its location, and excavation would significantly change Greek history. We also knew that our small group had changed, too. Guided by a teacher who loved his subject and its country, we experienced learning at its best. To this day, I know each of us feels privileged to have traveled with Mr. Sackett in his natural habitat, Greece.

Congratulations, Mr. Sackett, on your sixty-year Groton career. The Circle will not be the same without your presence, but I suspect that your heart has always been in Lefkandi.

—Olivia Hatch Farr ’79 N Hugh Sackett kindly invited David Erhart and me to assist with a dig in Crete in the spring of 1973, during our gap year between Groton and college. It was a privilege to work with Hugh, and an experience I will always remember fondly. We helped with the excavation of a well that over time had been abandoned and repurposed as a deep, cylindrical trash bin. Two local assistants worked in the well doing the actual excavation work, and they would send up buckets of shards and fill. David and I were responsible for recording what came out of the well, in addition to searching through the fill to recover any missed shards or material of interest.

Hugh would periodically stop by to see how things were going. Invariably, he would find a shard in the refuse pile that David or I had missed. As a teacher and mentor, Hugh would patiently

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explain why the shard was important. on a sandy beach, I found Hugh standHis kindness and willingness to allow ing by the side mirror of his ancient two inexperienced Groton boys to be Mercedes, face lathered and razor in part of his team are a testament to what hand, shaving. “Why bother shaving way makes Hugh the extraordinary person out here?” I asked, and he said, “because and scholar he is. For me, Hugh is the you never know whom you might meet.” very best of Groton.

With Hugh, there has always been a —Charlie Coolidge ’72 sense of propriety seasoned by a sense of the wild and unexplored. Always a N gentleman, he is always ready to explore whatever tomorrow might bring.

Hugh was a great teacher, but he was so For more than forty years, Hugh has much more than that. He had a subtle been profoundly important in my life ability to inspire others, and he brought and in the lives of so many others. Travout the best in me. He was so darn els with him in Greece and Italy were modest. I never once heard him boast always exciting and illuminating, and at about his archaeological achievements. a critical point he took me in hand and To me he was a father figure, honest introduced me to his colleague, Sir John and honorable like most Groton teachBoardman, who became my mentor ers. Most special about him was that he at Oxford, and that has made all the didn’t judge. difference.

What did my class do for Hugh? We —Tom Carpenter, Classics Professor, amused him. He let his hair down. Both Ohio University, Groton faculty 1971–76 parties expanded.

Coming back from Boston at the N height of rush hour, he pulled his light blue Ford off the road and said, “You’re I have been privileged to work alongside going to drive.”

Hugh Sackett for nearly thirty years “Crap, five days with a license, and since leaving Groton, where I knew him Sackett wants me to drive.” as a dorm master, teacher, and coach.

But I did it. Hooray, hooray. Switch- Hugh has always seemed to know a bit ing that big manual floor shift, I got us more than he lets on, to be clued-in, home. And it felt so good! whether to the inner workings of the A final chapter in my relationship school, layers of meaning in the poems with Hugh happened because of Blackie. of Catullus, or the best café to pick up While in college, I took a year off and a bottle of raki—or whether digging a went to Prescott, Arizona. I inherited bit further over there might produce a dog dropped from a car on account better results. But he always seemed of a bulging and costly hernia. Blackie, most clued-in to the simple question of the black setter, returned East with me how to live the best life—with compasand passed time while I was in college sionate inquiry, hard work, generosity, and after. Blackie and I were both high- curiosity, and moderation, surrounded strung. My abilities to care for him were by students, friends, and companions, stretched to the max. So I went to Hugh especially his wife Eleanor. and said, “Can you help?” When I came Many can attest to the mixture of to Groton for several years afterwards, I history, culture, education, and advensaw a dog in the flow completely, led by ture we all encountered on his summer a secure and confident master. tours of Greece, and I am sure every Thank you, Hugh, and God bless.

Groton alumnus/a for the last sixty—David Erhart ’72 three years benefited from his wit and wisdom. Hugh was always quintessenN tially mild-mannered and donnish, even as he’d stomp on the gas and pull smack Soon after dawn on a steamy morning in into the middle of the road if an oncomthe wilds of southern Crete, where seving lorry edged over too far. One time eral of us had spent the night sleeping while excavating at Palaikastro, on the

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way back from a team dinner in a nearby village, the car I was in (driven by Henry Davis ’84) was running out of gas. Henry made the mistake of thinking he could pull around and in front of Hugh, so that we could get a ride if we ran out. Later, as we coasted back into town, Henry pulled over behind Hugh’s van to chide him for taking our plea for assistance as a challenge to race, whereupon Hugh simply opened the back of the van to display the jerrycan he had already loaded up in case we didn’t make it back. Always calm, never boring. Just this past summer in Palaikastro, on the last dig dinner of the season, Hugh mesmerized a cluster of grad students working on our study team with tales of his first excavations and life during World War II; as always, he continues to give so much to both his subject and his audience as he brings them together.

—Tim Cunningham ’84 N The opportunity to work closely with Hugh over the past fifteen years has been a singular privilege. My visit to Palaikastro in 2005 and tour of Greece with Hugh as my guide stand out as one of the most formative and enjoyable experiences I have had during my time at Groton School.

—Scott Giampetruzzi, faculty N Teacher, dorm master, archaeologist, mentor, legend. That’s how I know Hugh Sackett or “Huge” as some of us called him. I lived in his dorm during Fourth Form and Sixth Form. I took his classes. I traveled through Greece with a group of Groton formmates on a tour led by Hugh. And I spent a couple of months in the early nineties working on his excavation in Palaikastro.

He is an inspiration—a soft-spoken leader who has led large and complex projects. While at Groton, it was hard for me to put into context his many accomplishments. His British composure and sensibility sometimes masked his warm and maverick side, except to those who know him well.

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I have the fondest memories of our tour through Greece—Hugh at the wheel of our VW micro bus. He gave us the behind-the-scenes view of excavations, museums, hiking trails, caves, and villages, while sharing with us a sense of history and adventure—the experience of a lifetime. It’s what led me to my undergrad major in classical archaeology.

— Matthew Briger ’84 N Young Hugh Sackett arrived quietly at Groton in my Second Form year in 1955.

It was the beginning of a long and, dare I say, illustrious career. He always wore his eternal green tweed jacket. I bought one for myself eventually. Still have it. So does he, I’d bet.

Sixth Form year, I was a prefect in Mr. Sackett’s first dorm, the small one next to the Headmaster’s House.

Cubicles, of course, black soapstone sinks with loud tin basins. Freezing cold. Hugh’s private “apartment” was two cubicles with a roof and a door. Our 1959 Swedish exchange student, Martin Wilkens, was a prefect as well, and we have remained close friends for sixty years. Hugh was not much older than we were. He and I have kept in touch for the same six decades.

In addition to occasional stops at Groton, I visited Hugh and the redoubtable and excellent Eleanor twice at the dig at Palaikastro in far eastern Crete.

The first time was with Martin and our wives. The second time, about 2005, my partner and I dropped by without warning. Although busy, Hugh kindly invited us for drinks in the nearby village after a day’s dig—a very small village, it turned out.

“How will we find you?” I asked.

“Park outside the village,” he said mysteriously. “You’ll hear us talking.”

We found him and Sandy MacGillivray, his then-assistant, sitting at a small table: in the middle of a tiny street, just outside a taverna, with room for only one other tiny table inside. Across from the village church. Ouzo of course.

Suddenly, Hugh said quietly but urgently, “Pick up your chairs and move against the wall. Here comes the priest

for Evensong in his truck. And he’s He was, and still is, a great teacher, drunk.” someone who led by example that you A flurry of activity. Then, the priest really could do what you loved to do. He safely parked, performed a short service taught generations of young students for two elderly ladies, and soon joined and enjoyed the independent life of an us with just-picked wild artichokes in adventurous archaeologist. Because of hand to share. Sliced raw, with olive oil, his example, I chose geology and volunand a glass of our ouzo, a perfect end to teering for educational causes, including a long day’s work for all. serving as a trustee for Groton. And, yes I cannot think of a life better spent Mr. Sackett, I am still having fun! than Hugh’s: successfully mentoring —Stephen Strachan ’72 hundreds of lucky students and contributing vastly to our archaeological N knowledge of early Attic and Minoan glories. I can only wish him still more “When in doubt, hit the pedal, not the perfect endings to his long day’s work. brake.” This was Hugh Sackett’s advice — Phil Tilney ’59 not only for driving on mountain roads in Crete but for living one’s life. From N Homer, we know the ancient Greeks whose lives Hugh unearthed were reckMr. Sackett met me long before I met less in the same good way. It was reckhim as a First Former in 1966: I was less for Hugh to thumb his nose at some a two-year-old faculty child when thuggish Greek soldiers at a taverna in Mr. Sackett first came to Groton. As I Heraklion in 1972, but what else was a came to know him over my six years at true Greek to do?

Groton, he was the only teacher who —Stephen Givens ’72 accepted and appreciated me for the young and restless teenager that I was, N and not hold me under a preconceived notion of what a beloved teacher and It has been said that good teaching minister’s son should be like. The woncomes from the identity and integrity derful thing was, this was not unique of the teacher. By that measure, and all treatment of one student; he accepted others for that matter, Hugh Sackett is a all students at Groton with his own truly extraordinary teacher.

English style of patience and respect, In his long, multi-faceted life, Hugh both in the classroom and on the has played many roles. In each, he has soccer field, on campus or off campus. given willingly and generously of his He appreciated and tolerated all of genuine self, sharing his mind, body, and us, regardless of our typical-teenager, soul—his essential “Sackettness”—with obstreperous nature. He listened and students, colleagues, family, and friends. was patient and non-judgmental as From accomplished teacher of the Clasa teacher and mentor; it was only his sics and world-renowned archaeologist wry smile that let you know you may to intramural soccer and crew coach have wandered a little out of prescribed and avid fives player, canoer, hiker, and bounds. cross-country skier; to devoted husband, Perhaps hiking down around Lake stepfather, and grandfather; to longRomeyn on a full midnight moon and serving dormitory head and chief bat being retrieved by the Groton constaexterminator with an unparalleled and ble; or further afield at a New Riders of deadly squash racquet swing; to loyal the Purple Sage/Jerry Garcia concert in friend and willing (though perhaps not Boston and being turned in by someone completely safe) chauffeur to Johnpretending to be a Boston detective. A son’s, Mr. Tom’s Pizza, and other local, simple, “Did you have fun?” was enough Groton student destinations. of a question to make one think of the The Form of 1972 dedicated our upcoming meeting with Mr. Wright and yearbook to Hugh. He was, I believe, the long trip home. honored and deeply moved to be so

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recognized. In his typically humble way, however, Hugh turned the dedication page, with its two wonderful photos of our friend, into a thank you note to the form. He graciously used the following terms to describe us—“actively friendly,” “personal warmth,” “good humor,” “sharing,” “acceptance,” and “generosity.”

Those words, while undoubtedly not completely accurate, are certainly aspirational for us and they remind me, in a very positive way, of the old elementary school playground retort of, “It takes one to know one.”

Hugh closed his thank you to us forty-six years ago with the shorthand Gratias amicis, and now the Form of 1972 responds in longhand, Gratias agimus tibi amico nostro.

—Steven Borgeson ’72, P’03, former faculty N Hugh arrived at Groton the same year I did (1955) and we have remained close friends for over sixty years. That’s not easy to do! He is the kind of teacher you hope you will run into when you are suddenly thrown into a boarding school environment—kind, patient, fair, willing to help and encourage students who need it, always able to listen to his students, and all of this with a good sense of humor. He really cared about everybody in the school.

His archaeological accomplishments in Crete are legendary. What a difficult task to unearth the past, spoonful of dirt by spoonful, year after year after year.

He has the patience and determination to find for all of us important archaeological treasures. He has always been an inspired team leader who brought out the best in those who worked with him.

And despite all of his accomplishments, he is a very modest person who never sought credit for himself. He is still a very skillful writer and I always look forward to his annual summary (including great photographs) of his work.

Anyone who knows Hugh well will appreciate how important Eleanor has been to him—providing all the support and affection that any husband would relish. They make a great couple.

He is a great inspiration to me—a

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person I truly look up to. I only wish I could have seen more of him over these many years.

—Peter Magowan ’60 N I traveled around Greece with Hugh Sackett after graduation in 1985. My felt-sense impression of that wonderful time is of Mr. Sackett’s warmth and steady guidance through a land of saturated color, sand, and sun, amidst the pillars of ancient history. Five students and Eleanor Davis traveled together throughout the country in Mr. Sackett’s Volkswagen van. I remember the taste of tzatziki on freshly baked bread, the salt on my skin after our daily dips in the Mediterranean Sea, touring the kitchen in restaurants serving deep dishes of moussaka, and photographing the crumbling, elegant stone temples.

As the years go by, I am deeply impressed by the opportunity for selfdiscovery provided by Hugh Sackett.

His teaching has style and depth. He was at once kind and stern, enthusiastic and reserved. The immediacy of that moment in time lives deeply in my memory.

—Phoebe Moore Kelly ’85 N I first met Hugh and Eleanor Sackett not at Groton, but in Athens. I had just arrived by boat from Italy and was on my way to Port Said in Egypt, where I would begin an extended period of travels in the Middle East. The three of us had lunch at an outdoor café near the Acropolis in the springtime sun, and Mr. Sackett told me stories from his decades as an archaeologist in the Aegean.

Being with Mr. and Mrs. Sackett that afternoon made me feel like I was part of a great adventure. It was not just my own travels, but the extraordinary work of other generations of Grotonians that I was participating in: the work of our classmates and our teachers, the scholarship, the earnest inquiry, the noted achievements, and the interplay of scholarship and the field—not the playing field, but the wider world. It all

Sandy MacGillivray, co-director in Palaikastro; Hugh Sackett; and Seán Hemingway ‘85

seemed much larger than I had understood it to be when I sat with Hugh that day, and it left a strong impression on me, warm as the springtime Grecian sun.

Two years later, I wound up beginning my graduate studies at Oxford, Mr. Sackett’s alma mater. His example as the scholar, soldier, and adventurer was with me in that stage, too. The halls of Oxford were not just my own, but his as well, and again I felt that this was all the more familiar, and that I was part of something larger and more extraordinary, because I had seen his example in the world.

It wasn’t just Indiana Jones who could guide me—there were those among us who were real. I just want to say how lucky I was, and all of us were, to be around such a great and worldexpanding person when we were very young.

—Jonathan Ward ’02 N With so many vivid memories of wonderful times with Hugh, which one shall I choose? Groton? The British School?

Excavations? Crete in particular? The

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interest in cultural contact. In addition, as slide technology gave way to newly inexpensive digital color images, the contrast between these early art history lessons on Greek art and what we knew to be visible in the material culture of excavations and on our travels helped to shape my dissertation project and my forthcoming book on color in ancient Mediterranean art and its afterlives.

Mr. Sackett, through his intellectual generosity, has played an important and ongoing role in my development as a scholar, as I know he has for many other students lucky enough to have worked with him at Groton School and in the field.

—Jennifer Stager ’96 N

Taverna dig house at Knossos (this dates me!)? The deafening sound of cicadas inside the palace at night with the throne eerily illuminated by moonlight?

Palaikastro? Actual tavernas? On the sea after a long day’s work?

No, I think the one memory for me to highlight is the sheer pleasure I had staying with Hugh when I was a school trustee and attended meetings. This gave me a chance to review with him his recent book purchases, often on archeological topics, usually from England, with his wise, learned, and always understated comments. Odd that the memory of those moments should lead the list, but they were really the highlight of whatever vita contemplativa I have had while otherwise on the go. What an extraordinary career Hugh has had and what luck for those of us who in our youth wandered into his truly magic circle.

—Hunter Lewis ’65 N Like many students, I first encountered Mr. Sackett in Latin class. As a cradle archaeologist, however, I shared Mr.

Sackett’s interest in material culture and soon found myself as the youngest (Fourth Form) student in his Greek art and archaeology class, otherwise populated by a very cool set of Sixth Formers. We met in the common room of Sackett’s Dorm and, from comfortable arm chairs and dimmed lighting, we reviewed the canon of Greek art from projected black and white slides. From the group class, I went on to tutorials with Mr. Sackett to deepen an engagement with the ancient Greek past that would shape the future direction of my education and career.

The Sixth Formers traveled with Mr. Sackett to Greece over spring break of that year, a trip for which he deemed me too young, with the result that he and Mrs. Sackett invited me to travel with them along coastal Anatolia the following summer. The many museums and archaeological sites we visited included various Lycian funerary monuments, a topic that I took up much later for my master of study at Oxford. The juxtaposition of these Mediterranean explorations with the Sacketts and my summer job on my father’s excavation in Ashkelon, Israel, honed my early

When I arrived in 1981, my classroom was right next door to Mr. Sackett’s. It took me a few years to get up the courage to call him “Hugh.” I felt completely in awe of such a wise and learned man, whose fame was international yet whose focus was local. His top priority always seemed to be the Groton students lucky enough to be in his class or in his dormitory.

Sackett’s Dormitory, for me, was the model of a family. Hugh kept his door wide open, his kitchen buzzing with activity, and his mind and heart always ready to engage students, wherever they were. One of the best writers on the faculty, Hugh composed end-of-term comments for students that could have been published. He got to the heart of the matter, always with such elegant prose.

A kind, gentle, and cerebral colleague, Hugh was a role model for me of all that was possible in education. I was fortunate to be part of a special group that held yearly birthday parties for Rogers Scudder, even years after his passing. At these gatherings, Hugh would share a story that would make us all laugh and cry, all in the in the span of a few minutes. Schools such as Groton have earned their incredible reputations because of giants in our profession such as Hugh Sackett.

—John Conner P’11, ’14, ’16, ’19, faculty

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JONATHAN CHOATE ’60, P’85, ’88, ’88

Inimitable Choatie “The best teacher I have ever had”

MR. CHOATE, or Choatie, is the

consummate teacher and mentor. He always knew what to look for in each student. In my case, he very smartly suggested I try out as hockey goalie after having seen me dive face first one too many times into a soccer ball or player’s knee. In Bobby Han’s case, he looked for his mouth—with a piece of chalk—as a clever way to wake a snoring senior in the middle of class.

These are silly examples of a brilliant mind. He was the first to introduce Applied Math to high school students. I don’t think we—as members of one of the first classes—truly appreciated the magic and innovation of the class. How do you get high school seniors motivated by probability? Talk football. This class analyzed how NFL average salaries rose faster after the USFL started. It was clear from this that the labor trend was unsustainable relative to revenues.

Proudly, the Form of 1984 successfully predicted the failure of the USFL. As a whole, the class invented the player strike scenario . . . [and] yes, perfectly predicted the future. Most of our mathematical skills descended from there. Choatie made us all feel like geniuses and pushed us beyond our limits. He gave us problems to solve that even he had yet to conclude, leaving some of our more dedicated minds to continue seeking answers years after graduation!

I don’t think many teachers live and love Groton the way Choatie does. He

has seen it grow, let it grow, and grown with it. Hopefully, he will never truly leave the Circle.

—From the Form of ’84: Peter Cawley, Tad Degray, Gregor Former, Bobby Han, Stacey Symonds, and Lanny Thorndike N Choatie’s classroom is a perfect place for someone so fascinated with chaos theory: tables are covered with papers, books, and odd shaped models, some of which hang from the ceiling. When still with us, Morley, his dog, would occasionally appear to sniff around and take a nap. Under Choatie’s guidance, the magic of discovery occurred regularly, such as seeing order in chaos. His teaching has emphasized the process— the critical thinking component—over the product. He has often split the class into groups of four, given each the answer to the problem, and sent them off to find as many ways as possible to get to that answer. Whether in the classroom, on the football field, or in the hockey rink, Choatie’s dedication, creativity, and excitement about what he is doing is contagious.

He has always had an interest in how things work and an attraction to cutting-edge activities and thinking.

As a handyman at the school camp in the early sixties, he spent the summer putting together old pumps and tinkering old engines back to life. He was an early sailor of the Hobie Cat boat and

then turned to the windsurfer board.

At a windsurfer’s school in Florida, he so impressed the owner’s wife with his jibe that she insisted he sit with her at dinner; I insisted that he do that too so I wouldn’t have to!

In 1987, Choatie received the prestigious Presidential Award for Excellence in Science and Mathematics Teaching, one of only three Massachusetts teachers so honored. Thanks to his efforts, Groton was one of the first secondary schools to teach systems dynamics as well as chaos theory. More recently, he helped the school move into STEM. Despite carrying a heavy load on campus, he found time to co-author the Bank Street Writer and to develop software at the Bank Street College of Education.

He has also taught at Lesley College.

What a run Choatie has had at Groton School. As a longstanding friend and as headmaster, I have benefited greatly from his sage advice, good humor, and occasional explosion. To say that this person, who has been so important to so many colleagues and students, will be missed is an understatement, but typical of him he has mentored well those who will fill the void he leaves.

—William Polk ’58, former headmaster N As my teacher, coach, and faculty advisor, Choatie had an amazing influence on me during my time at Groton. I will always remember his course in Applied

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Mathematics, which embodied the true essence of his teaching. The course sat at the intersection of mathematics, science, design, and engineering, and he taught it with such passion and fervor that many students still remember it to this day. His courses culminated in the annual Egg Drop, an event where students designed all manner of structures and flying objects to protect an egg from a drop from the height of the Chapel tower. I remember Choatie, mastermind behind the event, watching with joy as his students’ designs came flying, spinning, tumbling, and dropping from the Chapel tower.

Outside of the classroom, his calm demeanor and knowledge for sports made him a great coach on the football field and the ice. I will always remember his sense of humor, even in the most difficult of situations, like returning from an away game on an old Buckingham bus in a blinding snowstorm.

As a faculty advisor, he encouraged a good balance of academic excellence and personal development while also encouraging healthy living. Choatie’s advisee dinners were something that could not be missed, and I remember all of his advisees sitting together at his dinner table enjoying a fabulous meal and listening to his great stories. It was such a wonderful break from the busy Groton schedule.

Choatie has touched so many lives over his tenure, and we thank him for all of his hard work, his wonderful teaching and coaching, and for his great sense of humor. We wish him the absolute best in retirement.

—Matthew Asano ’97 N It is difficult to imagine opening day at Groton next September without Jon Choate. After all, only a handful of Labor Days have passed since the Eisenhower administration without Choatie’s smiling presence waiting to greet colleagues and students alike back to campus. When my family and I arrived here in 1995, I had the good fortune to coach football with Choatie, Charlie Alexander, and Chris

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Seeley. Those wonderful relationships made for a very smooth transition and are some of my happiest memories of this place. We just had so much fun together. To me, Choatie always epitomized the triple-threat faculty member—equally adept at exploring fractals with advanced math students, counseling a troubled advisee in the dorm, or encouraging linebackers and left wings. Generations of Groton students are so blessed to have crossed paths with this very special teacher.

For some reason, one “Choatie moment” stands out in my memory and occurred during my first year here.

It was mid-October, we were new to campus, my five-year-old was adjusting to kindergarten in town, my wideeyed two-year-old was adjusting to a new day care, my wife was running a regional hospice, and I was trying to establish some credibility in a place that was quite different than my previous school.

By mid-October, we were all exhausted. New school, new dorm, new classes, new advisees, and, to top it off, the football team wasn’t “getting it.” One day, in the midst of that transition, my five-year-old arrived home from school and her mom hadn’t returned in time from work to greet her, so she wandered down to practice, sobbing. I had forty kids to coach and was torn between comforting her and pushing our preparation for the next game. Choatie immediately walked her over to the side of the field, put his arm around her, and spent the next half hour or so quietly playing the role of doting uncle. I would periodically glance over to see her tiny frame huddled next to him, smiling and giggling, telling him about her new friends, her dogs, and her school day. He won’t remember it, but I like to hold that picture in my mind’s eye, for it captures what this wonderful man did for so many people here, from tiny tykes to older colleagues.

Thank you, Choatie, for all you have done for me, my family, and for so many people whose lives traversed yours over the last fifty years. You have set an amazing example and, very sadly,

Groton won’t be the same place without you next Labor Day. —John Lyons P’12, faculty N I arrived at Groton in September 1967 and was assigned to Choatie’s Second Form dorm. When my mother met him that first day, she said: “What form are you in?” He looked so young.

It marked the beginning of an amazing relationship and friendship. I was in his dorm Fourth Form and was a dorm prefect in Sixth Form. I had many math classes with him. He was my advisor. I managed the hockey team.

I babysat for his children many times.

When in his dorm, Tiddlywinks was the craze and our weekly TV show was either Star Trek or It Takes a Thief. Last but not least, slide action hockey ruled.

When I decided to try out for drama, he told me to go for it.

At our fifth or tenth reunion, in looking back on our form’s years, Choatie admitted they were difficult and turbulent times, but what he loved about the Form of 1972 was its incessant curiosity and its vibrant and healthy skepticism of authority. We have all come a long way since 1967. If being a great teacher means having his or her own passion for learning, then Choatie must be near the top. Since he arrived at Groton as a teacher, Choatie has constantly renewed himself as a professional in a quest to provide Groton students with the highest quality education possible. He was a huge influence on me. Thanks for everything, Choatie, and God bless you.

—Larney Fowler ’72 N Simply put, Jon Choate is the best teacher I have ever had. Not just the best math or high school teacher, but the best across my entire education. A few other teachers came close: John Kemeny (co-inventor of BASIC) at Dartmouth and Michael Porter of HBS both came close but they were not Choatie. I often reflect on what makes him so good as I mentor my team. I

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“

He is the reason I stayed at Groton. He is the reason I was able to graduate from Groton. He is the reason I am where I am today.”

— Billy Larkin ’09

distill it down to several core elements: his passion and excitement for an understanding of the material, his ability to communicate clearly, and his genuine connection, respect, and care for those he teaches. I know I was blessed to be taught by him. Choatie, enjoy your retirement. It’s well deserved!

—Renee Noto ’84 N Choatie is a thoughtful teacher, a brilliant mathematician, a wonderful father, and a beloved coach. I was lucky to know him in all of these roles. As my Fourth Form geometry teacher, he was one of the first people I met at Groton.

In his classroom, I also met one of my closest friends to this day, his daughter Anne (also called Choatie). Recently, he laughed about teaching his teenage

daughter (rolling her eyes at every joke he told), but my memory of that fall was the luck of stumbling into friendship with an amazing family. I spent many happy hours at the Choate house.

Family dinners and sleepover parties, refrigerator raids and sunbathing on the roof, or just hanging out, the Choate home was a quick trip across the road to a safe and cozy place.

With Anne playing ice hockey, Mr. Choate had switched to coaching the girls ice hockey team. That year I was the weakest member of the team, barely clinging to the bottom of the roster.

We were undefeated, and I was thrilled to be a part of the ride! Being on Mr. Choate’s ice hockey team was one of the happiest, most powerful experiences I had at Groton. He embodied all that is beloved in a coach. He had high expectations for each of us and clear rules

and goals for the team. He knew the game and loved the game in a way that was infectious and inspiring. We traveled together to tournaments, gathered for dinners at his house, and attended summer camps he helped to coach. He laughed with us and taught us to laugh at ourselves, to support each other, and to work hard. Above all, he loved his players as individuals. He stuck with us through our ups and downs and made us all feel like family. On Choatie’s ice hockey team, I grew so much as a person. For all of these reasons, and countless more, I am forever grateful— thank you so much, Mr. Choate!

—Nina Simonds Trowbridge ’85 N What a privilege it’s been to have Choatie as a colleague for the past

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“

The passion and idealism that a sixteenyear-old exudes is still very much an intrinsic part of Choatie’s own personality.”

— Peter Fry P’15, ’17, ’23, faculty

dozen years. And while it will seem very strange indeed to work at Groton without seeing him on a daily basis, my knowing that he’ll make the most of his retirement and will not be a stranger here anytime soon makes this major change easier to digest.

It was on the football field where I spent the most time with Choatie and where I saw so many of his remarkable qualities. More than anything, he so clearly exhibited a joy of working with young people. I think this is partly because the passion and idealism that a sixteen-year-old exudes is still very much an intrinsic part of Choatie’s own personality. Choatie also always demonstrates an uncanny and rare understanding that being an adolescent can be a downright difficult thing. And so even when he was being demanding, there was always that element of deep empathy and respect for others, which I so admire. Then there is his sense of humor—his appreciation of goofy adolescent shenanigans, his gifted storytelling, his ability to get a smile out of anyone—that made working with him such a pleasure. When I started coaching at Groton, these were my playing field mentors: Jon Choate, Charlie

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Alexander, and John Lyons. Holy smokes—what amazing good luck this was for me as a new teacher at Groton in 2005.

Groton School would not be the kind of place it is today without Choatie: his enduring intelligence, kindness, patience, and wit exemplify the values we keep working hard to embrace here. I wish him all the best as he enters this next exciting phase of his life.

—Peter Fry P’15, ’17, ’23, faculty N I would not have graduated from Groton without Jon Choate. It is difficult for me to express all that he did for me during my time there. He was my teacher, my coach, my advisor, and, most importantly, my friend. He truly embodies what Groton is all about. He inspired me to learn, to lead, and to be a better person.

The transition to boarding school life was not easy for me, and many times I wanted to go back home to Houston. However, this all changed one night at Wendy’s (of all places).

Choatie, aware of my feelings towards Groton, convinced me to change my

attitude and to be more positive. I know it seems like simple advice, but during that time I was so set on leaving I was critical of every little thing. The constant nitpicking led me to be surrounded by negativity, making it impossible to be happy. After the dinner, I focused on changing my attitude, and over time the miraculous happened: I fell in love with Groton.

I know I did not make it easy for him. He probably (no, definitely) thought more than once, “What the hell did Billy do now?” But even so, he was always there for me, lending me support and giving me advice. He is the reason I stayed at Groton. He is the reason I was able to graduate from Groton. He is the reason I am where I am today. A simple thank you is not enough for everything he has done for me. Mr. Choate and Ms. Leggat are truly incredible people, and I wish them the best.

—Billy Larkin ’09 N Choatie was a most remarkable and influential person. Through his integrity and wit, he was a beacon of fairness

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and wisdom. He breathed spirit into numbers and inspired us all to embrace the beauty and possibility of mathematics. His conviction and enthusiasm never waned. To this day, I can remember Morley [his dog] discreetly overseeing each lesson as parabolas and matrices came to life in Choatie’s classroom. A timeless gift.

—PK Robbins ’82 N Choatie was one of the most impactful teachers/mentors I have had throughout my life. He was funny, kind, tough, demanding, but you knew he always had your back. He was particularly supportive of me during some very challenging times—for which I have always remained incredibly grateful.

However, my anecdote is more on the funny side than the sappy side. My Third Form year, they had more girls accept Groton than they had cubes, so they turned an old common room into a triple for Kisha Foster, Amy Fridlund, and me. While Kisha and Amy were quite neat, I was a hot mess. Clothes everywhere! One night I came back from hockey practice to find that any clothes of mine that were not put away/ hung up were gone! Choatie had put all my clothes that were on the floor, on the bed, on my desk/chair into a garbage bag and had thrown them all into the dumpster behind the Third Form dorm. I will never forget the humiliation of having to ask my boyfriend, a Fifth Former, to help me fish my clothes out of the dumpster.

I wish I could say this experience turned me into a neat freak; alas, it did not. But it is a memory I will always have and cherish. Thank you, Choatie, for the huge and formative role you played in the lives of so many of us over the years. We love you, and you will be greatly missed.

—Jackie Cavanaugh ’91 N When I heard the news of Choatie’s retirement from Groton, I felt happy for him and sad for Groton—happy for

his future journey and sad for Groton’s terrible loss of such an amazing man.

Choatie made me feel at home at Groton from the second I stepped onto the Circle to the second I left it.

In the worst of moments and best of moments, he was always there to support me through them.

Peers sometimes asked me—as Choatie’s youngest and only female advisee—how I could connect to Choatie if I hated math and wasn’t on the football team. The truth is, Choatie can connect to anyone and everyone of any age or gender. He is one of the wisest, most caring, and genuine people I interacted with throughout my time at Groton, and I feel infinitely lucky to have gone through Groton with him. I’m not sure I would’ve made it past the Second Form without his wise words and gentle guidance.

—Emma Cusano ’16 N I knew Choatie as a Second Former in his Hundred House dorm. He was new, and we were new to Groton in the fall of 1967. The shakedown was mutual.

Choatie was (and still is) young and handsome. He coached football, hockey, and baseball, or so says my now-faulty memory. Was Choatie a jock? At Groton, being labeled a jock was not such a good thing—unless, of course, you were on a team that beat St. Mark’s, Middlesex, Milton, Belmont Hill …

I fancied myself as a math guy. Lots of calculus our Fifth Form year. We were exploring the theoretical world. I returned to Groton for my Sixth Form year, and down in the bowels of the Schoolhouse there was a buzz about a big new computer that had just been installed, a so-called mini-computer made by Prime Computer. It did not look mini to me. I was told that this was Choatie’s computer, Choatie’s Prime. It must have cost a fortune.

How had he convinced Paul Wright and Donald Pleasance to spend that kind of money? I began to realize that there was way, way more to this teacher than hockey or football or sports and the standard math texts.

I followed Choatie through the years, thanks to two sons who chose to go to Groton and asked him to be their advisor. Whether it was his efforts to promote a STEM curriculum or his old-fashioned way of serving as an advisor, Choatie was always available, always thoughtful, and with no doublespeak. For this, I, my sons, and many of Groton’s students do indeed deeply appreciate his service as a teacher.

Groton was lucky to land him in ’67.

Thank you, Jon Choate.

—Dan Davison ’72, P’02, ’03, ’06 N It was indeed a privilege to start my time at Groton under Choatie’s wing.

It was inspiring to see Choatie exhibit a delight and excitement for the subject after so many decades of teaching.

My own teaching style and adoption of new technologies grew under Choatie’s influence, and I learned much through team teaching and working closely with him. From his forays into Mathematica, to his vast knowledge of fractals and chaos theory, to his use of SketchUp, Geometer’s Sketchpad, and other graphics packages, Choatie was always the first to introduce us to new ideas. In fact, he had his younger peers scrambling to try and keep up with the pace with which he was able to include these in his courses! During his tenure as head of the math department, he introduced the Applied series of courses, where students studied real-world mathematical applications alongside calculus. It changed the way students understood and learned mathematics and opened them to a different perspective. Even today, Choatie is at the forefront of high-school mathematical learning and is one of the first to embrace new techniques and include them in his teaching. We will miss him, but given that he will remain on campus, we will continue to benefit from his wisdom as we try to grapple with the new teaching pedagogies that are starting to crop up around us.

—Nishad Das P’16, ’19, ’23, faculty N

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For the almost fifty years that I have known and worked with Jon, I have considered him both a mentor and a friend who has encouraged me to question and improve both what and how I teach. I remember when Groton first purchased two Apple II+ computers in the 1979–80 school year. Jon started to play with these computers and he immediately observed, “We can’t teach math the same anymore.” This led him to forty years of innovative teaching and research unparalleled for secondary school teachers. Jon has consistently brought new ideas to how and what we could be teaching, and he has shared his ideas nationwide through his many articles, books, and over thirty years of teaching teachers at Anja Greer summer math conference at Exeter. Jon has been the most influential person not only in my career but surely also in the lives of the countless Groton students he has taught and coached. While his retirement is a great loss for future Groton students, he leaves behind an over-fifty-year legacy that is unequaled in the history of the school.

—David Bannard P’01, ’03, Groton faculty 1972–89 N For most of my time at Groton, I lived in the house next to Choatie; he was a good neighbor—but more important, he was a great teacher and the quintessential school person. For Choatie, the kids always came first, and I can remember conversations about different ways to teach, and his excitement about math, especially geometry. For Choatie math was truly “the music of the spheres.”

Choatie and John Tulp taught a remarkable course, Modes of Order and Disorder, based on the intersection of math and humanities. This was a flagship course, taught by two extraordinary teachers, who encouraged students to make connections and see the beauty in playing with ideas. Choatie embodied all that was great about teaching at Groton, and I still miss him.

—Janet Hartwell P’00, Groton faculty 1996–2003

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a lot of golf together. There are many stories I could tell you about him, and some would even be publishable. My When I reflect on my five years coachfavorite was in 1971 when we were ing boys ice hockey at Groton, they coming off a three-year stretch where were all memorable. But my last four we would only lose two games. It was years were particularly special because a wonderful group of Grotties who of Jon Choate. He was instrumental were wearing the Zebra stripes at that in our success. He was part of buildtime. The team was led by one of the ing a team from a meager beginning greatest athletes the school has ever to Groton School’s first ISL ice hockey had, quarterback Bill Larkin. Bill’s championship. dad was in a wheelchair and had never He helped me create a studentseen Bill play, and it was arranged for athlete profile, which I used in the him to come to the St. Mark’s game in admission process to find qualified Southborough, which was Billy’s final players who would be successful at game. Choatie came up with the idea Groton School as students and athletes of renting a golf cart so Bill’s dad could as well as contributors to everyday life move about as he watched the game. on the Circle. I know the players heard Well, we lost on a disputed missed extra my voice and sometimes too often, but point, but I am sure Mr. Larkin enjoyed Choatie had input on every speech I finally seeing Billy play. made. He knew what Groton studentHowever, after the game, Choatie athletes needed to hear. He had a and I had to return the golf cart to unique perspective because he lived Worcester. People who know us realize Groton for fifty-plus years. There were Choatie and I are not very happy times I wanted to blast the team and losers, and it was a heartbreaking loss; he would talk me off the cliff, and other needless to say, we weren’t very happy. times he would blast the team himself.

We stopped on the way to Worcester I have been involved in hockey for and bought some malted beverages, and over fifty years, and Choatie is one of when we got to Pleasant Valley Golf the most compassionate, thoughtful, Course, Choatie had the great idea genuinely nice people I have met in the that we should take a little ride in the game. It was an honor and a privilege to cart in the dark. It probably wasn’t the coach with him. Best wishes for a long smartest thing we ever did, but with and enjoyable retirement. You have Choatie driving we had a blast. It was earned it! the perfect therapy for two heartbroken —Mike Mastrullo P’11, coaches! Thanks, Choatie, for that boys ice hockey coach 2004–09 adventure and for being such special person!

—Jake Congleton P’77, ’93, GP’03, N former faculty 1957–95 N

My first three years at Groton, Choatie was still a student. I had him in history class and coached him in football.

Choatie was a great kid, but I don’t think there was anyone on the faculty at that time who would have predicted that in the future he would become one of the great teaching legends of Groton School.

When Choatie returned after college, he and I coached close to thirty years together, and he took over during my last sabbatical. We became great friends and we even found time to play

N I remember Choatie always being so full of curiosity and enthusiasm. In my Sixth Form year, I was fascinated by fractals and chaos theory, but there were no classes specifically in that area. So I turned to Choatie, who had introduced me to the topic in Applied Math. The answer was obvious to him— we would set up an independent study.

This was unlike any formal teaching I had experienced to this point. There was no curriculum or lesson plan.

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“

I do not tell people what to do; instead I lead with curiosity, enthusiasm, and with questions. I had a perfect role model for this in Jon Choate.”

— Marsh Gardiner ’90

There were no quizzes or tests. Instead, Choatie acted as my coach and mentor on my quest. He set expectations, made me accountable for my progress, and asked probing questions. While I still remember the nature of the work I did that semester, I do not remember it ever feeling like “work.” It was selfdirected and almost indistinguishable from play. I wasn’t just learning a subject, I was learning to think and act on my own.

Years later, it is this class that most resembles my professional life as a product manager at Google. Together with my team, we pick a landmark on the horizon, and then we figure out how to get there together. I do not tell people what to do; instead I lead with curiosity, enthusiasm, and with questions. I had a perfect role model for this in Jon Choate. Thank you so much, Choatie; I know you will never really stop teaching!

—Marsh Gardiner ’90 N Having Choatie as a colleague is inspiring. He has always been a leader in math education, embracing the use of technology in the classroom in all the best ways. His willingness to try new approaches and to incorporate different teaching strategies encourages those

around him to try different approaches in the classroom. We spent two years co-teaching STEM 2 and I am a better teacher as a result. Jon, thank you for showing me that the best teachers are always learning.

—Sandy Kelly, faculty N Choatie has been my mentor for thirty-eight years. I have learned so much from him . . . some of it having to do with math, most of it having to

do with what is really important in the

lives of the students with whom we work. He was always compassionate, always honest, always available to listen and to give advice. The students and faculty who have worked with him have been helped in so many ways: in the classroom, on the athletic field/ice, in his advisory, and in the conversations in small groups about life and what is really important. Choatie, you will be missed, and I thank you for all of your help, encouragement, and friendship.

—Cathy Lincoln P’07, ’10, faculty

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BETH VAN GELDER

Creative Expression “She taught me that art is about freedom and joy.”

THERE WERE paint-speckled CDs in

the art studio that we students would play during class. The music flooded the room like a tide under the moon, and like an evening sky blanketing silver waves and sleepy fish, you cared for us, and perhaps most importantly, you let us dream.

It is as if you introduced us to the poets that live within us. An awakening heart-to-heart over tea. Thank you, Beth, for giving us the opportunity and space to express ourselves and grow with honesty.

—Haruka Aoki ’08

the everyday. Like all excellent teachers, she’s supportive of her student’s work.

She encouraged me to do installations in the school gallery as a student and then continued to give me shows once I graduated. I feel grateful to have had Beth as a teacher, mentor, and friend all these years.

—Liz Canner ’86 N

Rosamund and Benjamin Zanders wrote a book entitled The Art of Possibility.

Beth Van Gelder presents her students not only with the Art of Possibility but N also with the Possibility of Art. Quietly yet firmly, she helps her students If you’re lucky, you spend your formaovercome their fear and resistance to tive years learning from a teacher who expressing themselves artistically as well pushes your intellectual and artistic as verbally. Turning their mistakes into growth in ways that help shape the rest learning opportunities, she stretches of your life. Beth Van Gelder is one of them to think of what might be possible these teachers. She taught me not just in terms of creativity and inventiveness. to make “art for art’s sake” but rather to The results in self-confidence and use it as a creative vehicle for digging personal expression are evident in the into our current social political moment. drawings, paintings, and ceramics they Her stories about the sculptures, textiles, produce. Some of her students have and paintings she collected during her gone on to a life in the arts; thankful to travels to faraway lands expanded my her for opening to them the world of ideas about the role of the artist and art, many others have made a lifetime the varied meaning of art in different habit of trips to museums and galleries. cultures.

Given her love of travel and From her exquisite home and immersion in different cultures, Beth garden to her delight in food, she taught has been a resource of the art, music, me that being an artist means blurring and stories from around the world, an the lines between work and life so that important contribution to the life of aesthetics and sensuality are imbued in the school. Her advisees have had not

only the benefit of her careful attention but also of her international advisee dinners.

Beth practices what she preaches. In her own artwork, she tries new modes of expression and demonstrates the risks of creativity. One can certainly see the influence of different cultures, especially that of Bali, in her ceramic pieces and paintings.

With the building of the Dillon Art Center and the de Menil Gallery, the development of the Brodigan Gallery, and curricular changes, the arts have taken an ever more important role at Groton. Beth has played a significant role in that change as a strong voice for the Art of Possibility and the Possibility of Art. —William Polk ’58, former headmaster N By taking pottery classes during nearly all of my terms at Groton, I spent more time with Beth than with any other teacher and possibly some of my own formmates. She gently taught me my life’s most valuable lessons: the indispensability of art and creativity, the importance of balancing it with craft, and the impermanence of our work.

Most art doesn’t spontaneously combust, but Beth helped me learn to accept that my favorite vases had a good chance of blowing up in the kiln or meeting some other random

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demise. Fortunately, not all did. Being made of stone, many are still with me today. One of my largest pots has become my son’s favorite—he pushes it around the house like a walker. My best hope is that, in fifteen years, he’ll be covered in mud in a studio, spinning clay into wild shapes, with a patient teacher who will forgive him for making such an awful mess.

—Edward Blair ’92 N When I needed a shoulder to cry on, Beth Van Gelder was there, and when I needed a kick in the pants, she was there as well. Beautiful and artistic, she created a world around her that was so appealing, I think I may have managed to have at least one class with her every year I was at Groton. She inspired the best in me, and I could not possibly be more grateful.

—The Rev. John H. Finley IV ’88 N Beth, you are not only one of the biggest reasons I chose Groton, but one of the reasons I survived Groton, returned with my family to Groton, and am indebted to Groton till this day. Through your tutelage, I found my voice and my calling at a time when my only identity was that of a struggling student. Through the arts, I learned that I too belonged on the Circle and that I had something to offer beyond the athletic fields and outside of helping fulfill admissions quotas.

You taught me the power of the imagination, how to bring dreams to life, and the profound impact that storytelling through heartfelt imagery can have on others. And it is because of you that I still dream today. From teacher, to mentor, to dear friend, your contributions not only to me but to this great institution will forever be felt. There are many friends who helped me make it through Groton, but only a handful who helped make Groton home, and for this, I am forever grateful.

—Nii-Ama Akuete ’96

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N

N

Beth was a truly significant figure to those of us who gravitated to her art classes and the art center. I had her as a teacher almost every term during the five years I spent at Groton, and during this time, she warmly nurtured my interest in art and art-making; I am deeply grateful for her being a mentor.

Through her stewardship of the Alliance for Student Harmony and its programs during the days around the MLK Jr. holiday, her sabbaticals in Indonesia, and other worldwide travels, as well as her affinity for international cuisines and culture, Beth showed that there was a vast, interesting, diverse world outside of the Groton gates.

— Guillermo Barnetche ’97

Beth Van Gelder inspired me to take the time, at an endlessly busy place, to express my creativity and to challenge myself to grow artistically. She understood the importance and beauty of painting and she influenced both her students and the community of Groton through this understanding.

—Anna Reilly ’16 N Ms. Van Gelder was my faculty advisor throughout my four years at Groton. She watched and helped me grow from someone who was still stuttering when first arriving as a Third Former. She taught me how to use

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acrylic paint in art classes; she cooked with me for Sunday brunches; she took me to Bali in my Third Form summer.

A fourteen-year-old girl coming from China, I relied on her love and care like I relied on my own mother’s.

Ms. Van Gelder remains a good friend even now that I have graduated. I am beyond lucky to have her as a mentor, a friend, and a part of my family.

—Echo Zhuge ’16 N At Groton it was my great privilege to have Beth Van Gelder as my advisor.

Throughout high school, Beth’s house was an always-open door, an artistic sanctuary, and a space where I could truly be myself. I have for decades reflected upon and valued the support I received from Beth. The time that she selflessly gave to me, always making me feel that my thoughts, stories, and experiences were valuable to her, was fundamental to my student experience and something I have carried with me into adulthood and my own life as an educator. To be truly listened to is rare, and Beth always listened and shared, never making me feel that her time for our talks was anything but endless. Under her guidance, I received a rich foundation in Asian art; global wanderlust and looking at the world from a different perspective were seeds that Beth nurtured in me as a young person. Thank you Beth, from your student always.

—Brantley Turner ’94 N Beth Van Gelder was my advisor during my time at Groton. I remember and very much appreciate her warm and gentle demeanor and caring attitude.

She helped me several times throughout my time at Groton and always made herself available. Her love of art shone through in her classes, and while I am far from artistic, she honestly inspired me. I still remember the great dinners she cooked for her advisees as well! I wish her all the best in the years ahead and thank her for her years at Groton.

—Matt Burr ’98

N Mrs. Van Gelder was my art teacher, advisor, mentor, and friend while at Groton. I was admitted to Amherst College, where I majored in fine arts, because of her guidance and leadership. My love of art continues because of the nurturing and caring atmosphere that Beth provided in and out of the studio—not only to me, but to all of her students. Needless to say, she was definitely a positive influence in my life and a force multiplier at Groton. I thank her for everything she did for me and the Groton community. She is the true embodiment of cui servire est regnare.

I wish her much health and continued happiness in her retirement.

—Euclides Uribe ’95 N The Groton School experience continues to shape my path in life in very positive ways. Ms. Van Gelder equipped me with an enduring love of the artistic process. What she taught me as a young teenager continues to influence the way I look at the world and how I express myself. She taught me that art is about freedom and joy, about taking big leaps and running with your imagination.

This is something I now share with my sons. Ms. Van Gelder’s teaching and guidance continue to enrich my life, and I am so very grateful.

—Johanna Vega Losert ’87 N I believe that Beth holds the record for being the longest working female teacher at Groton School. When one thinks of how many students Beth has worked with over the years, one cannot help but be impressed. Congratulations Beth, and enjoy life without dorm duty!

—Cathy Lincoln P’07, ’10, faculty N I have a vivid memory of sitting in the Dining Hall one late fall evening—a time when the dying rays of the sun cast long shadows and you find yourself

sitting with colleagues at the last table, reluctant to leave the conversation that envelops you. The Belskys, Nishad, and I sat with Beth as she recounted the last moments she spent with Ann Emerson before she passed away on an August afternoon.

Beth told us that just before Ann died, she had taken the key to the Art Center that she wore around her neck and asked Beth to “look after” the space and the students that inhabit it. I remember being struck by the beauty of the gesture and the words—two colleagues whose shared love for their craft and their dedication to their students made the act of teaching seem almost holy.

I have listened to countless students talk about being with Beth in the art center as an act that saved them at Groton, that enabled them to be their authentic selves—that the art she inspired from them provided them with an outlet when words failed. Many others have talked about Beth helping them see themselves as artists, as individuals worthy of attention. And I too have found peace and beauty in Beth’s gentle company; in her house filled with art, pottery, statues, and carvings, I forgot about the insistent rhythm of a school day by listening to her talk about the act of creation as something that sustains and endures. Groton will not be the same without her.

—Sravani Sen-Das P’16, ’19, ’23, faculty Beth Van Gelder has been a wonderful colleague and neighbor to me for nearly four decades. A caring, wise, and talented teacher, Beth was always a model to me for how to connect with students. She had advisees (and fellow teachers) to her home frequently, offering wonderfully delicious meals, often with an international flavor. Beth’s love for travel and for connecting with people and other cultures made her a true citizen of the world. She imparted her love for art with generations of students around the Circle, giving them confidence in their own abilities to portray ideas in a visual way. A number of the Conner children had Beth in class; a

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“

I have listened to countless students talk about being with Beth in the art center as an act that saved them at Groton.”

terrific assignment she had about imagining an animal doing a human activity resulted in some amazing pieces. In fact, in our hallway we have a monkey walking the runway and a bear, microphone in hand, getting ready to sing, perhaps at a talent show. I smile each morning as I pass those beautiful drawings, thinking about how great teachers bring joy to the lives of so many.

—John Conner P’11, ’14, ’16, ’19, faculty

— Sravani Sen-Das, P’16, ’19, ’23, faculty

Beth van Gelder has not just been a valued colleague, but a friend and an inspired peer. When I first arrived on the Groton campus, Beth was particularly welcoming and kind, and it wasn’t long before I really got to know her and got comfortable enough to joke with her without fear of being taken too seriously or misunderstood. One morning, as she sat down next to me in chapel, she leaned over and asked, “Do you mind if I sit here?” On noticing that she had already sat down, I replied, “I don’t seem to have much of a choice, do I, you’re already sitting.” Without batting an eyelid, she quipped, “It’s just that you look so lonely since no one else wants to sit next to you.”

Besides having a terrific sense of humor, Beth also has a fine eye for beauty and art. Going to her house was like going to a museum, for it was full of exotic statues and artifacts, collected from many different corners of the globe, that reflected her love of different cultures and art forms. Her love of Bali made her a natural choice for our first Global Education Opportunity (GEO) to Bali, and she singlehandedly organized and set up a fabulous schedule for the Bali GEO. In typical Beth fashion, she planned the GEO with the same thoughtfulness with which she set up many an exhibition in the Brodigan Gallery. Beth is of the “old school” era of teachers, one for whom teaching art was much more than a job; we shall miss her for years to come.

—Nishad Das P’16, ’19, ’23, faculty

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BILL MAGUIRE

On Fire “Under the wing of such a perfect mentor”

BILL MAGUIRE has been a terrific

colleague and teacher, not only because he is knowledgeable and dependable, but because he is an expert at two things that help him and many others, including me, keep our sanity—playing music and playing cards. Bill is a terrific guitar player, has a powerful voice, and knows the complete lyrics to every important and popular Bob Dylan song.

It has been my privilege to play music with Bill on many occasions, sometimes for the school community and sometimes for the heck of it. Perhaps less popular is Bill’s impressive skill as a card player, specifically poker. As one of the longest-serving members of a poker group that can trace its lineage back almost half a century and includes such Groton notables as Jake Congleton and Peter Camp, Billy has won nickels and dimes off the best of them. Yet even in this pastime, Bill has always been a model of magnanimity and intelligence.

If life is all about give and take, then Bill Maguire is a master at it.

—Tommy Lamont P’09, ’12, ’15, faculty N When I recall New England athletic “dynasties,” two coaches come to mind: Bill Belichick and Bill “Fire” Maguire.

Fire consistently led the cross-country team to ISL and New England titles through his patented program of sprints up Groton’s gorgeous hills. He deftly developed inexperienced runners

into deep varsity and junior varsity competency in the upper-level math teams. While the flame of our coach’s courses and played a role in reorganizcompetitive spirit spurred success ing offerings (think statistics) and innoon the course, Fire also emanated vating in the department. warmth off the course. Practices often During a sabbatical, Bill was a began with pick-up Frisbee games and Klingenstein Fellow at the Columbia comical stories of prior teams before University School of Education—where Fire led us on idyllic riverside runs and he studied educational problems and forest climbs. Each day closed with practices. On his return to campus, his stretching and good-natured ribbing excitement about what he had learned among teammates. Fire’s winning way, and his willingness to share his lessons his perfectly calibrated combination with the community were wonderful to of competition and fun, drew a larger experience. team each year In the faculty room and at faculty All the while, Fire was a welcoming meetings, Bill was always a thoughtful host in his classroom and home, willing participant in discussions, especially to talk training, academics, and life about students, and showed his lively advice. A talented teacher, he showed sense of humor and engaging laugh. He particular patience explaining algebra was also generous in sharing his conto students like me who were slower siderable musical talent as a member of with problem sets than on the crossthe faculty-student band. I also rememcountry course. ber Bill and Christopher Borg playing Groton will miss Maguire’s fire in “Ashokan Farewell” at the evening vigil the classroom and on the trails, but after 9/11, a moving moment with the his shared spark will continue to fuel school gathered by the flagpole. students and alumni. I wish Bill the An exceptional cross-country best in retirement. coach, Bill led his team to ISL and New —Ted Leonhardt ’11 England championships. Until a back problem restricted him, he always ran with the team in practice. He quoted N Olympic swimming champion Summer Sanders to convey to his charges that Bill Maguire has demonstrated again their involvement was “not about winand again those qualities that all good ning or losing; it’s about everyday hard teachers share: an unquenchable thirst work and about thriving on a challenge. for learning something new and an It’s about embracing the pain that you’ll openness to challenges. Coming to experience at the end of a race and not Groton as a lower-level math and being afraid.” computer teacher, he actively pursued

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I could always count on Bill to do what was best for the students, his colleagues, and the school. Now that Bill is about to cross the finish line as a Groton teacher/coach/advisor, we wish him well as he discovers new learning opportunities and challenges in his life beyond the finish line.

—William Polk ’58, former headmaster N Mondays were reserved for the toughest workouts. One cold and sunny Monday in October, my birthday, I remember asking Fire if I could skip an interval (maybe an 800-meter sprint) around the lower soccer field. In his sarcastic way, he didn’t just refuse; he made me run an extra interval as my “birthday present.” I’m sure I wasn’t particularly grateful at the time, but he was right. Fire always made us go the extra mile (or half a mile, as the case may be) because he knew that we were much tougher than we realized. On my sixteenth birthday, I think I began to realize it, and I’m still grateful. Thank you, Fire!

—Julian Petri ’04 N Coach “Fire” Maguire will go down in my books as one of the greatest coaches I have ever had. He made being part of the cross-country team not just fun or enjoyable, but genuinely the best part of my days during every fall term. His prerace, in-classroom, Google-maps-based chalk talks were, like him, legendary.

Winning the ISL championships in 2005 with the team he built is still one of my fondest sporting memories. He was more than just my cross-country coach—he was my advisor, my geometry teacher, my dorm affiliate, and, most importantly, an institution at Groton.

Many happy years ahead, Fire!

Congratulations!

—Alex Karwoski ’08 N Mr. Maguire’s support for a small group of Groton students wanting to

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launch a track FSA shaped my entire Groton experience. Mr. Maguire not only was our team’s coach; he was our advocate. During at least one meet, Groton students were told our results could not count due to our FSA status, something Mr. Maguire would not tolerate. Thanks to him, we were allowed to compete in the league. Mr. Maguire enabled us to excel in a zero-pressure environment. He was the most patient coach I could ask for—frequently talking me into what I was capable of and serving as my champion. Thank you, Fire.”

—Chloe Fross ’12 N In the fall of our junior year, I was very lucky to meet Groton’s newest faculty member, Bill Maguire. Bill’s bright and positive demeanor was a welcome addition to a stressful year. In addition to his excellent leadership of our famous boys cross-country team, a.k.a. the Winged Hogs, Fire Maguire was a wonderful mentor and inspiration to us all. This positive experience continued through our senior year and many years thereafter, even extending through my daughter’s recent tenure at Groton.

Bill, Groton will miss your many contributions. Your legacy will never fade for any of us. Thank you for everything.

—Bobby Greenhill ’87, P’17 N Fire was my advisor for each of my five years on the Circle, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. The feeds at his house with Mrs. Maguire and Mary, with great food and sports games, are memories that I’ll always have. He will be missed!

—Mike Doherty ’12 N I grew to cherish bus rides with Fire.

We typically sat together and pored over results, kibitzed about how much crazier than us the other cross-country coaches were, talked about favorite Bob

Dylan lyrics, pored over results some more, perhaps ranted about politics.

He laughed easily, poked at kids deftly, reminded us all why running through the woods actually mattered, at least to us.

—Craig Gemmell, Brewster Academy head of school, former Groton assistant head N Fire was a remarkable coach. He created a team culture that outclassed (perhaps my bias) and outperformed (that’s fact!) not only every other team we raced but, as important, most of the other team sports on campus. In our four years, we were undefeated save for one school—and that was certainly a blessing in disguise to keep the fires of motivation (“Beat St. Paul’s!”) and humble work ethic among our group.

Fire was notable for his cutting sense of humor, which tolerated no elitism among us but at the same time contributed to the lively chatter that made up many a town forest long run, and that ultimately built the bonds of mutual accountability and trust among this small group of nerdy, unconventional athletes. Above all, Fire was inventive with his training strategy and consistent in the overall structure: you knew the type of punishment you were in for on Monday and Wednesday intervals—but which new apple orchard hill (thanks to our gorgeous Groton landscape) or which girls-soccer-fieldadjacent track (even more motivating) was ever a pleasant surprise.

I’m personally grateful that the school gave me this experience, and I thank Fire for his hard work and patience with us over many years.

—Matt Perkins ’04 N As a Third Former, I suspected I’d been placed in Fire Maguire’s advisory incidentally and purely because I’d enrolled in his algebra class. The more I look back on it, though, the more it seems an act of providence that I wound up under the wing of such a perfect

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“

On one afternoon run, we somehow got separated and ran through the forest looking for him screaming, ‘Fire! Fire!’

(It seemed very funny at the time.)”

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— Ben Lyons ’96

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mentor. Our quirky, misfit advisory group proved among the most durable friend groups I had at Groton, and our bi-annual dinner with Mrs. Maguire (and their terriers!) was eagerly anticipated by all.

Moreover, I’m sure none of those present will ever forget the afternoon during the May of our senior spring when Bill joined Tom Lamont and a cohort of us Sixth Formers in staging “Grotonstock,” our very own rock concert on the Circle. That remains my favorite memory—not just of Fire, but of my years at Groton in totality.

—Angus Warren ’16 N The first couple of days I spent on the Circle were vastly different than anything I had ever experienced. I was considerably overwhelmed and felt like I didn’t quite fit in amongst my peers.

I’ll always remember the sense of ease that came over me at my first advisor dinner in the Maguire household.

These gatherings humbled me and served as a reminder to cherish times of laughter and togetherness.

Congratulations on a career of selfless service, Bill. I give you and Jan my thanks and wish you all the best in retirement. Cheers!

—Paul MacCarty ’12 N No memory of Groton is complete without thinking of Fire. There are many small tidbits that come rushing back: I sent my first email ever—well before I understood what the whole Internet was all about—to my brother at college from Fire’s computer. There were the pre-race pasta dinners at his house with Jan and Connor. On one afternoon run, we somehow got separated and ran through the forest looking for him screaming, “Fire! Fire!”

(It seemed very funny at the time.)

But mostly, when I think back to Fire, I remember the banter, jokes, and conversations that we shared in practice and throughout the entire campus. Of course, there were always unapologetic

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rants about politics—he certainly never held back his true feelings or left any doubt how he’d vote in the next election! He would tease us good naturedly—sometimes even waxing poetic, such as on a chilly November afternoon when, upon hearing a team member was dating someone new, he wryly commented, “Isn’t it wonderful in this season of death and decay to see love in bloom?”

Ultimately, he came to symbolize so much of what I loved and took away from Groton—great relationships with teachers and students alike who filled many different aspects of our lives. Fire was always his natural self with us—there was very little student/ teacher barrier, and he seemed to treat and respect us as genuine friends. That respect was sincerely reciprocated, and the overriding memory is that, with his wit and candor, Fire was (and still is) simply great fun to be around.

Thank you for all the time you spent with us, on and off the Triangle, and for encouraging and supporting us so successfully with your friendship.

—Ben Lyons ’96 N I have so many fond memories of Bill (aka Fire) Maguire, most of them as a cross-country athlete as I never had the pleasure of taking a math class with him. As an educator now, when I reflect on my running days at Groton and my work with Bill, I come back to two qualities in particular.

Bill was a “growth mindset “ educator before that was a popular term in education. He started coaching cross country not long before I was a Second Former, and he did so without a formal background in the sport. His training methods changed a lot in the years I was at Groton as he learned the sport more deeply. Having spoken with him in the years after graduation, I know they continued to evolve. Groton teams were often successful, and it would have been easy to have continued with the “tried and true” once he had developed his approach. Yet Bill never stopped learning, listening, reading,

and tinkering, and his teams improved pretty consistently from each group to the next as a result.

Bill set high expectations for us individually and as a team. It was clear to everyone that anything less than one’s best was not enough. I remember vividly one moment in Second Form when he made that mindset clear to me. I had, in my immaturity, taken a detour into the woods off the triangle during a run with some older members of the team. We sat for what felt like the appropriate amount of time and then ran back out of the woods as if we had completed the entire run. We did not fool Bill. He made his displeasure clear and directed a good portion of it at me.

I think he did that because he knew that if I, as one of the younger runners, became more focused, that could impact my running and the team’s performance for some time to come.

It did. I became much more disciplined after that. More so, once I became a Fifth and Sixth Former, Bill and I would talk about the younger members of the team and how we might help them to be more focused and faster.

That reflection not only on the younger runners’ performances but also on their mindsets gave me insight into how Bill approached us not only as athletes but also as young people. That was part of what made Bill not only a great coach but also a true educator who had an impact on our character and our lives beyond running. Congratulations on your retirement, Fire!

—Aaron Cooper ’94 N I knew Fire (never Mr. Maguire) primarily as a coach, and in that role, he represented Groton at its best.

Foremost an educator, Fire taught his cross-country team to exert ourselves to our physical limit for the sake of each other’s success; to welcome each other without question; and to have fun along the way. He did this by his own example, and rather than make us work, he had us wanting to work. Although with any coach, running the triangle as the sun sets through turning leaves will

be transporting, somehow, with Fire in charge, it was a joy even to run intervals for the first hours of a Surprise Holiday.

I’m thrilled to offer him thanks and very best wishes for a long and happy retirement.

—Swift Edgar ’03 N Bill Maguire was a colleague to whom I looked as a model employee when I first joined the faculty. As both a master teacher of all levels of his subject and an enthusiastic and devoted, multisport coach, Bill is thoughtful, kind, lighthearted, and actively involved and invested in all aspects of the job. Bill leaned in fully as a faculty member, and he did so with an understated but everpresent joy for the demanding work of the classroom teacher at the school. We are all going to miss what he brought to the Circle.

—David Nelson, faculty N Bill worked hard in the classroom, on the cross-country trails, and as the chair of the math department. He always seemed to be on the move: going to class, taking a run, or riding his bike. Bill also has a terrific sense of humor, which brightened up many gatherings of the math department. He will be missed, but I am confident he will enjoy retirement, whether that is relaxing on the Cape, hanging out with his granddaughter, or traveling with Jan. —Cathy Lincoln P’07, ’10, faculty N Some of my happiest years of coaching at Groton have been coaching crosscountry alongside Billy “Fire” Maguire.

I knew him as a colleague in the math department first and, initially, I didn’t understand why his cross-country team called him “Fire.” However, it wasn’t long before I really came to understand and appreciate the name. Besides having the ability to light a fire in his young steeds, he also had a fire—that is, a passion—that lit up each training

“

Fire taught his cross-country team to exert ourselves to our physical limit for the sake of each other’s success; to welcome each other without question; and to have fun along the way. He did this by his own example, and rather than make us work, he had us wanting to work.”

— Swift Edgar ’03

session. One afternoon, after Fire had finished explaining our running route, new ninth grader Trip Burwell naively asked clarification of the part of the route that involved the town forest. Fire didn’t flinch, but raising his voice a few decibels, stated: “You will be running on a road with houses and pretty gardens, and then you’ll see a wall of trees and when you go through that wall of trees, there will be no more pretty gardens and houses. That’s when you know you’re in the forest!”

Fire Maguire was an outstanding coach and I learned much about

cross-country coaching through his leadership. He oversaw a period that was certainly one of the most successful in Groton’s history, and the credit for that success goes singlehandedly to Fire.

He was meticulous in planning races, analyzing the opposition on the eve of a race, and inspiring students to do their best. I know I speak for many students and coaches when I say I am grateful for the opportunity to have run with Fire.

—Nishad Das P’16, ’19, ’23, faculty

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STEVE MARCHAND

An Unassuming Librarian

by Stephen Fernandez, faculty “Quot libros, quam breve tempus!” If Steve Marchand, Groton’s library director, were fond of tattoos, he would certainly decorate one of his biceps with this Latin adage. Instead, he wears a T-shirt bearing the quote, a gift from his staff. Its message is quite straightforward: “So many books, so little time.” Mr. Marchand has always made an effort to offer a variety of new books, including history, the Classics, the arts, graphic novels, fiction, and books on gender issues. “I try to be at the service of all users,” he says.

“The library should offer different perspectives, different tastes.” And it does, with a collection that includes The Yale Shakespeare as well as the last issue of People magazine.

When Mr. Marchand arrived in 2004, some nine thousand volumes had recently been donated to the library’s already substantial collection and the place looked like an immense geyser spurting books. It was a bookworm’s heaven, but needed some order. The heavy lifting began and, in less than a year, the bequeathed volumes were moved to the basement for later evaluation while twelve thousand history books were taken to the second floor. We know that ants can carry many times their own weight. Well … so can librarians. They split the big load into smaller ones and move them little by little. In hindsight, this was only an appetizer, because ten years later, thirty-five thousand volumes needed to travel from Hundred House into the heart of the

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School House, the place designated for the new library. “It took us three years to prepare for the big move,” says Mr. Marchand, “and all thirty-five thousand books were relocated in one day and one morning. This time around, a moving company helped us.”

The hustle and bustle was not only happening within the confines of Groton School, but also in the outside world, where life was becoming more and more influenced by technology. As Mr. Marchand had become a member of the Tech Committee upon his arrival to Groton, he knew all too well that the print volumes needed to live harmonically with the electronic

resources. The fusion happened gradually and, as a result, the library now has two hundred thousand e-books, databases with hundreds of thousands of full-text articles, a new website, and a sophisticated tool that enables all library users to search the databases simultaneously. In sum, Groton’s library is not only a dynamic hub in the School House, but also an intangible entity sponging information from the virtual world.

“Before the arrival of the Internet, it could take weeks to gather certain information,” says Mr. Marchand.

“Now it’s almost instantaneous. The flip side, though, is that people have access

A FOND FAREWELL to Three Longtime Staff to so much information that it is difficult to separate the pertinent from the irrelevant or unreliable.” History students tend to populate the library during the school day and, as their papers progress, books pile up on the desks. Yet, those piles are nothing but the tip of an iceberg that multiplies its invisible size on their computer screens. Mr. Marchand teaches students the tools to evade the “quick Google fix” and gain independence and rigor as skilled researchers in a library. He is not only a librarian, but an instructor as well, and one with a long professional career, for that matter. Before arriving to Groton, Mr. Marchand taught English to foreign students in Madrid and Massachusetts for over twenty years. In his own words: “To this day, working with students remains the most rewarding part of my job.”

This June, Mr. Marchand will retire after working at Groton for fourteen years, including his sabbatical,

when he traveled to Johannesburg and volunteered to evaluate the library at the African Leadership Academy.

During his tenure, Mr. Marchand wore many hats: he directed the library and worked with a diligent team (the late Helen McNally, Judy Clark, Anne Simeone, Judy Lebet, Pam Farmsworth, and Allie Thiel). He was a dorm affiliate, an assistant faculty advisor to the Debating Society, and a participant in the community engagement program.

Now that he is retiring, Mr. Marchand will have plenty of time to visit two of his children in Spain, perhaps return to the clarinet, be a volunteer bilingual medical interpreter, and hit the gym with his “Quot libros, quam breve tempus!” T-shirt and smile at those weightlifters who are unaware of the steel it takes to move an entire library from one place to another.

Groton School also thanks three devoted staff members for their long service. Retiring this year are Steve Sawyer, a twenty-year veteran of the Buildings and Grounds Department; Martha Villani, a presence in the Business Office for eighteen years; and Mike Burke, a member of Groton’s technology team for sixteen years. Groton wishes Steve, Martha, and Mike a happy retirement!

Steve Sawyer

Stephen Fernandez, a Groton Spanish teacher, is Steve Marchand’s son.

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The place looked like an immense geyser spurting books. It was a bookworm’s heaven, but needed some order.

Martha Villani

Mike Burke

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A C H A P E L TA L K

by An Nguyen ’18 February 8, 2018

Objects

in Perpetual Motion “Listen, to live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know. In perfect stillness, frankly, I’ve only found sorrow.”

—Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

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s of this morning, I have lived through exactly 222 full moons, the 222nd of which happened to be a “super blue blood moon eclipse,” which (besides sounding awesome) is something that only happens every 150 years or so—a proper “once in a lifetime” occurrence.

It seems rather fateful that this “once in a lifetime” event would coincide with the most notorious “once in a lifetime” event of all: my 18th birthday—the radical moment when I instantaneously went from being not quite an adult to a “not quite adult” adult.

Apparently, society now deems me fit to do things like write a last will and testament, or pawn my possessions away, but I’ll let you in on a wonderful little secret: [whisper] I have absolutely no idea what I am doing. At all.

Lateness is my default state of being; I can be unbearably awkward; I forget to put on my glasses way too often for someone whose world becomes blurry beyond the length of her arm; and, as the girls in Petroskey’s dorm know very well, I generally view sleep as a light suggestion rather than a requirement.

I’m not quite sure how I’ve successfully made it to the age of 18. Perhaps it was luck or just plain enthusiasm, but along the way I have acquired a couple more words to this story of mine. This talk is essentially my three-part answer to the question: “What have you even been doing for the past 18 years, An?”

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Part I I’m not really sure how the majority of the people sitting in this Chapel perceive me, but I suspect that it is along the lines of, “Oh, it’s that short Asian girl that smiles a lot.” [pause] Well, you’re not wrong. I am certainly short, very much Asian, and I am incredibly, perhaps annoyingly, cheerful.

I used to effortlessly express my emotions to the world … but only when I deemed them acceptable. My mother once told me, over a kitchen sink filled with suds and dishes, that I should only love with half a heart so that I could never lose everything. All the advice that a mother ever gives to her daughter is done with the utmost care, and 99% of the time it ought to be listened to, but in this one instance, I absorbed and clutched at her words too fiercely. I laughed with an utter abandon and lack of shame, I was unafraid of letting myself delight in the things I found most interesting, and I never hesitated in my joyfulness. But any feeling that was complicated to deal with did not exist in my emotional vocabulary. Sadness? Self-doubt? Fear of the future? Jealousy? [softly] Love? [pause] Yikes. I would hurl them away with as much force as my hands and mind could possibly muster.

No one could condemn me for feeling happy, or cheerful, or content. But those other emotions? The rawer, rougher ones, with potential to wound? Those were dangerous and should be avoided AT ALL COSTS. I would tell myself: “An, you will be okay in the end!” without admitting the statement implied within: “An, you are not okay, not right now.”

Thus, my ultimate defense for all my problems could be summed up in a single word: AVOIDANCE. I would procrastinate, ignore, dodge—everything and anything I could do to prevent direct confrontation. These days,

Part II Sometimes I have not been practical; I do not always listen to [the advice to] “be smart, be rational, don’t do stupid things.” This may sound a bit harsh, but that advice has never made me happy. I wish someone had said to me earlier: Rationality? Bleh.

Stay in the Dining Hall until Colleen gently reminds you to clear your plates before they close. Or better yet, stay there until the bells toll ten times and you realize that you are most definitely late for check-in.

On the night of blizzards, go and tumble into the snow and gaze up at the night sky. Even though your legs will be numb and the air will hurt to breathe, that moment will be warm and oh-so alive. And you will say, “The snow is piling up on my face!” as people walk by, judging you, and Jamie will whisper at your side: “Hey, just pretend you’re dead.”

And yes, wake up at 5:00 a.m. on a Saturday to watch shooting stars, even though they will probably be too dim against the rising sun. But it’s okay, because even though the blankets are wet with morning dew, your hand is in Blair’s and Candilla is resting at your side.

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when I do this, Noelia will look over at me with her perceptive and quiet eyes, the ones that say, “Stop running away, you coward.” She’s right. She usually is.

Knowing in your mind that you will be okay, that there are much worse things in the world, does not detract from the fact that, in those moments, the feelings demand to be felt. We have a duty, as humans capable of complex emotion, to feel them, to take them and cradle them in our hands, and say: “This thing that I’m experiencing is valid.” Only after that can we step away, place them down, and perhaps even show them to other people.

This past December, Blair said to me, “I think we’re the only people who can understand what we’re going through.” I hadn’t realized that I needed to hear the first person plural. But I did, because the easiest pathway to understanding another person is to share an experience.

Emotions are like pollen in the spring: they scatter everywhere, it’s impossible to avoid them, and they will definitely make you cry at some point. But, like seed to flower, so much more life and beauty will spring up out of the messy spread of those curious things we call feelings.

Don’t limit yourself from the infinite possibilities of the human heart.

Clockwise from above: An; with friends Noelia Carbajal ‘18, Blair Donohue ‘18, Isabella Yang ‘17, Candilla Park ‘18, and Jamie Jiang ‘18; Jamie, An, Ivana Primero ‘17, and Isabella; An with her mother, Tu Tran, and brother, Hai-Bien Nguyen

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To the people here who are either not quite yet adults or “not quite adult” adults like me: we’ve got the rest of our lives to be rational grownups. As teenagers, we are in a very lucky position. We have, as I’m sure you’ve heard way too many times, underdeveloped brains—underdeveloped prefrontal cortices, to be exact.

When else are we going to have a medical excuse to be a little bit foolish?

This may sound completely ridiculous, and perhaps I want it to, but what in the world is wrong with a little bit of irrationality now and then? Irrationality is simply the absence of premeditation, is it not? It’s doing something without a clear reason or a practical purpose. I do not have a rationale before every action, speech, or thought.

But why must we come up with logical justifications for all our actions? And why must we be, as Yann Martel put it, under the “thrall of reason, that fool’s gold for the bright”?

Perhaps we ought to be more like Alice, who jumps down the rabbit hole, “never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.”

Part III I have always assumed that I was the most unchanging person out of all my friends, and I used to be proud of the fact that I was consistent. Stable, dependable, always content An. But, in many ways, that constancy ensnared me. I felt like I couldn’t be anything other than cheerful and steady. Those traits had become fundamentally An. Señor Fernandez once said that I would change much more, but only after leaving Groton. He has a knack for predicting the exact opposite of what usually happens. But! He also has a knack for knowing the exact words that must be heard. For me, “to not be so afraid of stepping into the unknown.”

Yes, perhaps I haven’t changed too much outwardly.

I am still dark-haired, round-faced, and five-foot zero… if you generously round upwards. But I’ve also stepped out of complacency, just a bit. I am no longer blissfully— ignorantly—content in who I am as a person.

Sometimes I still need a catalyst to push me forward, whether that be in the form of Mr. Creamer, with his well-timed letters and even better-timed words, or in the form of the great Imani McGregor and her wonderful lack of patience with my cowardice. But ultimately, it doesn’t seem so stagnant anymore.

I suspect that at some point in the future I will be sorting through old documents on my computer and I will stumble across the final draft of this talk. So, to the older An: If you’re reading this, have you believed in any impossible dreams lately? Since we’ve been together, have you fallen inexplicably and irrationally in love, whether it be with a person, or an idea, or a place? I hope so. And I hope you have been scared (utterly terrified!)

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of losing something because of how much you treasured it. Then at least you know that your love was genuine. At least, that’s what 18-year-old An believes.

I hope that you are now completely different from, and hopefully wiser than, the An standing in this Chapel today, the one who wants to be anything other than stagnant. However, I also want you to remember what it feels like to be 17 and 18, and in this place we call Groton.

The achingly wide smiles. Laughter that bubbles and bursts its way from your chest. You say, between gasps, “It’s so funny that it hurts.”

The feeling of being unsure about what to say, but knowing that your words have the power to either mend someone or to break them further apart. You fail, and fail again, but it’s okay, because maybe next time you will be able to grasp them.

The sensation of fingers interlocking fingers, trembling, as you both look up into the night. It is cold, and Orion has made his way to the other side of sky. You wonder: do I really understand other people?

Most of all, the moments when you are with someone and you want to say to them: “Hey, I appreciate you as a person, no matter how we both change. Let’s share our time together on this strange, blue sphere.”

A friend once told me that the most beautiful thing in the world to her was people in motion. I had replied then that I found the rippling waves of the ocean to be the most beautiful. Now, I am starting to think that our thoughts were not so separate from each other. Whether it be the shape of a body dancing, or the undulating of water dancing, continuous evolution is what makes both these things so beautiful to us.

To the Form of 2018: I don’t know about you guys, but I’m truthfully terrified of leaving this place. The future feels like closing my eyes and stepping into an abyss without the slightest certainty of what lies at the bottom. I neither know how to properly say goodbye nor how to say hello again. Perhaps the only thing we can do is to keep moving with the motion of our lives.

I do know that the answer to the question, “What have any of us been doing?” is a simple one: we have been living. We have been changing and acquiring the words to our stories.

The vast majority of us will spend our lives on this lopsided little planet, which whirls itself 67,000 miles per hour around our Sun. And that Sun itself races at 483,000 miles per hour through our boundless universe, a universe filled with countless other stars, planets, and nebulae, all swirling, and zooming, and exploding into and out of oblivion. Isn’t it so marvelous that we are alive and constantly in motion? Wouldn’t it be such a shame if we were only stationary beings?

A C H A P E L TA L K

by Dwight Daniel Willard Gardiner, Jr. ’82, P’19 January 26, 2018 voces

Another Door Always Opens

“And you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?”

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rexit—what a wake-up call, especially for those of us who live in Great Britain. Donald Trump—his election has been a global wake-up.

I can vividly remember where I was when I learned that the British people had voted to leave the EU—at a Groton trustees’ dinner in New York. All through the day the pound had been strengthening, as the financial markets bet on “Remain.” At about 7 in the evening, in New York, the pound started to crash as people started to realize that the Brexiteers would win.

I can remember when it became clear that Donald Trump would be elected—it was nighttime and I was trying to sleep in my house in London. The New York Times website had an arrow pointing to the projected winner. All through the night in London it was pointing to Hillary, until about two in the morning … As new polling results came in, the arrow started to drift, and in about five minutes it flipped toward Donald. The world hasn’t been the same since. It was history in the making.

I enjoy reading history—mostly because I am fascinated by the great stories, but also because I think that through them we can learn a lot about the present and possibly the future. There are lots of different ways of interpreting history. In the nineteenth century, Thomas Carlyle, a Scottish writer, came up with the great man theory, which argues that history can be largely explained by the impact of great men or women on the course of events.

Of course, other theories take the opposite view, namely that long-term social, environmental, or economic trends are actually more important. One book that makes this argument is Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, in which he argues that the rise of Eurasian

societies to conquer other societies has largely been due to very long-term environmental factors, as opposed to any specific actions of individuals.

As with most arguments, the answer to this debate is not “either/or” but instead “both/and.” Long-term trends have an impact, but so do individuals. There are many long-term factors that contributed to Brexit, and to Donald Trump’s election, but equally, a lot of individual decisions by important and less important people played a part. Now that he is president, I have no doubt that he is having a huge impact.

History may be interesting to some of you, but right now you are all probably more worried about other things. If you are a Sixth Former, and are lucky, you have been accepted by the college of your choice and are probably not thinking about much beyond the bagel you are planning to have in the Forum. Other Sixth Formers may be experiencing that terrible anxiety that comes with feeling as though someone else (in a college admissions office) is about to decide your life. If you are a Fifth Former, you are at the beginning of that same process: worrying about grades, and SATs—or ACTs— and APs and college tours.

The college process is one that creates lot of anxiety.

We all feel that the outcome is massively important, and yet to a significant extent, we feel powerless to control that outcome. It is so easy to spiral down into a place where we think that the college admissions people are deciding our lives.

Don’t let that happen … for better or worse.

I have been reading Edmund Morris’ Theodore Rex, an excellent biography of Theodore Roosevelt. I would highly recommend it for those who enjoy that kind of thing. Toward the beginning of the book, Morris

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describes Roosevelt’s career in this way: “Minds less fatalistic could view Roosevelt’s career only as a crazy trajectory, like that of a bee smacking against many surfaces before buzzing into the open air.”

Morris wrote this because Teddy Roosevelt arrived in the White House by quite a circuitous route, and only became president because of the tragedy of President McKinley being assassinated.

I thought that was a great image to describe the path that one’s life can take: “a bee smacking against many surfaces before buzzing into the open air.”

Let me give you another example of a circuitous path in life. My wife Beth and I were married by a gracious and charismatic South African minister, whose name is Ernle Young. He recently wrote his memoirs, which he entitled An Unpredictable Journey. He grew up in South Africa but left the country in 1973 for fear of being arrested for opposing apartheid. Ernle has had an incredibly rich life, first as a minister in South Africa, later as a minister, professor, and clinical ethics specialist at Stanford. As he writes: “Frequently in my years as a professor and clinical ethics consultant, one or other of my Stanford students would ask wistfully, ‘How does one get to do what you do?’ I would tell them that when I was their age, I couldn’t possibly have known what I was going to do when their paths crossed mine, let alone have formulated any plan to end up doing it. My only advice to them was, ‘Do whatever it is you are doing right now to the very best of your ability. Do it with all your heart. Do it with passion and joy. Be ready to walk fearlessly through whatever next door may open to you.

And remember, especially, that whenever one door slams shut, another always opens.’”

Another great image for me: “whenever one door slams shut, another always opens.”

When I look back at my life, I started out in quite a traditional way: I did well at Groton, and well at Harvard.

I studied Russian and was heading toward a career in government or the foreign service. By chance, I got a great job offer to go work at Citibank in Mexico … so I took it and became a banker. I lived there for three years, went back to school for my graduate degree, and then went to J.P. Morgan in New York to continue my banking career. I was on the path and doing well.

But after about ten years as a banker and a move to London, I decided to do something else. So I jumped.

One of my closest Groton friends has described me as a great “lily pad hopper” able to jump from lily pad to lily

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pad. First I worked for an Internet company, then for Sky TV, and then for CSR, a semiconductor company. Finally, for the last two years I have been working at Drax, a UK power company. In January I became the CEO. Which all brings me to some of my favorite lyrics ever … from a band that was big when I was at Groton, The Talking Heads. The first verse of one of their most famous songs finishes up like this:

And you may find yourself Behind the wheel of a large automobile And you may find yourself in a beautiful house With a beautiful wife And you may ask yourself, well How did I get here?

So … How did I get here and how will each of you get to where you are going in your lives?

I started my life in New York City and my career as a banker. I now live in London and am running a renewable power company. I never had a plan for that.

I have made a lot of decisions that in retrospect were probably crazy: Why did I decide to become a banker when I had spent my whole life up to the age of twentytwo convinced I would be a public servant? Why leave a comfortable career in banking to work at an Internet company? Why move out of the world of technology and media, where I had worked for almost fifteen years, to try to run a power company when I know nothing about generating power (much less any physics) at well past the age of fifty!?

Each time I made a decision in life, I either walked through a door that opened for me . . . or found one to go through when another one shut. I have tried to do things with passion and joy.

Which brings me back to Brexit, Donald Trump, and how history works. I have no doubt that the actions, big and small, of lots of individuals make a huge difference . . . not only to their own lives, but also to the lives of many others.

As Groton students or graduates, that idea goes a little further. Cui servire est regnare. At the core of a Groton education is the idea all of our actions make a difference. In fact, that education gives you a right, and a responsibility, to participate on the small stage, or, if you

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Why did I decide to become a banker when I had spent my whole life up to the age of twenty-two convinced I would be a public servant? Why leave a comfortable career in banking to work at an Internet company?

Will Gardiner ‘82 with his daughter, Isabella; above, with his sons Oliver and Theo ‘19

are lucky and the right doors open, on the big stage. Your actions and decisions will make a difference.

So, as you are feeling anxious about college admissions, remember that ultimately where you go to college is not as important as people say it is. What really matters is what you do. There is so much to get involved in—the world is huge and there are lots of exciting and new things happening and really challenging issues.

Through a very circuitous route, I have become CEO of a power company called Drax. Since it was built in the sixties, Drax was the largest coal-fired power station in Europe—generating 7 percent of the UK’s electricity. Ten years ago, the company realized that using coal was a bad idea, so decided to convert from coal to

using sustainable biomass to generate power. We are now the largest decarbonisation project in Europe. We generate 16 percent of the UK’s renewable power. As a company, our purpose is to help change the way energy is generated, supplied, and used for a better future. Eighty percent of the power that we sold to our customers last year was renewable. We are trying to make a difference.

I will close with Ernle’s advice again. “Do whatever it is you are doing right now to the very best of your ability.

Do it with all your heart. Do it with passion and joy. Be ready to walk fearlessly through whatever next door may open to you. And remember, especially, that whenever one door slams shut, another always opens.”

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A C H A P E L TA L K

by Noah Aaron ’18 January 23, 2018

My Inspiring Big Sister

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fter finally building up the strength, I walked up the steps and looked at the doorbell. This wasn’t my first time coming to the house, but this time sure was going to be much different.

Earlier that day, Mrs. Maqubela had sent me an email that said (and of course I read it in her accent), “Noah, stop by my house sometime today. We need to talk about your grades.” I’m not going to lie; someone did need to ask me about my academic life. I currently had three C’s and zero A’s after my Fourth Form spring midterms. My life was starting to get away from me.

I was once told that there are three aspects to life as a student. There’s your academic life, your athletic life, and your social life. You can easily balance two, and the third must go if you want to go to bed at night. My first two Groton terms, I chose athletics and academics, leaving my social life off to the side, knowing that’s what my parents would have wanted me to do. But in that third term, I took on the challenge of balancing all three. I was staying up into the late hours of the night doing the work that I easily could have done hours before, but I wanted to spend my time playing 2k and hanging out with the Fifth Formers in my dorm. My body couldn’t sustain that, for I couldn’t handle the lack of sleep. So, I just stopped doing my work at the highest level. During school, I felt myself getting behind all the kids around me, and I kept saying I wouldn’t get distracted and that I’d go catch up, but every night I chose to hang out instead.

Now to get back to the story, I pushed the doorbell, and waited. I thought about running, but it was too late.

When the door swung open, Mr. Maqubela saw it was me, and his smile immediately turned into a stern look of disappointment.

“How are you doing, Mr. Maq?”

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“Not too good. Come in, Noah!”

Mr. Maqubela proceeded to lecture me for the next thirty minutes about all the people in my life I was letting down. That list included the Maqubelas, my parents, and even my ancestors, for (and I quote), “Our ancestors did not survive the middle passage for you to be wasting your opportunities.” My fellow AfricanAmerican friends had told me about the time when Mr. Maqubela had told them the same thing, so I knew I wasn’t special. But still, his lecture hit hard, because there’s no worse feeling in the world than letting down the people you love.

After Mr. Maqubela finished, Mrs. Maqubela walked into the room. I was expecting the same wrath to come down on me, but she simply sat down next to me and asked me how I was doing. My voice cracked as I forced the words out of my mouth: “Not so well. I’m letting everyone down and the pressure is just too much. I can’t do it.” She grabbed my hand, and looked me in my eyes as if I were her own. She said, “Noah, I want you to be the best Noah you can be. I know your parents have an idea of what you should be, I know my husband has an idea of what you should be, but that doesn’t matter. What I want is for you to be the best Noah you can be.”

In that moment, I didn’t know what to say, but now that I have the opportunity to, I want to say thank you to Mrs. Maqubela. That was exactly what I needed. At that moment in my Groton career, I was having fun. I was beginning to understand the rhythm of school life and I had found my group of friends, but something just wasn’t right. I liked Groton, but I wasn’t liking myself at Groton. Your advice gave me the structure to figure that problem out.

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I watched her as her hair thinned and her skin got paler.

Jon Chase

Adam Richins

Clockwise from top: Noah’s beloved sister, Naomi; Noah on the gridiron (he will play at Yale next year); Noah performing with Johnny Stankard ‘19 and Caleb Coleman ‘20

When I look upon the people in my life that have challenged me to be the best Noah—the best person—I can be, my sister is the number-one person who pops into my head. Going back to when I was in the sixth grade, my mom thought it would be a great idea to move my sister and me to Calgary, Alberta, for a year, leaving behind my dad so he could pastor his church. Being young and naïve, I was very reluctant to go. I remember when we got to the new house in Canada, I leaned over to my sister and said, “Naomi, I want to go home.” She responded, with the sense of hope she always has, “Don’t worry. We got

this, little bro.” And for the next three months, we had it—staying up late to watch Netflix on our iPads and, of course, fighting over the smallest possible thing we could find. But then everything changed. Winter! The days were getting significantly shorter, extending the darkness of the night. Clouds cemented over the city, blocking out all possibility of seeing the sun. And worst of all, Naomi was not the same. She was no longer the person who told me, “Don’t worry. We got this, little bro.” Her energy wasn’t there anymore. She no longer wanted to hang out.

I watched her as her hair thinned and her skin got paler

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“

At the time, I didn’t understand how she could smile so easily, after knowing what her life was going to be like. But I now know that she was just being the best Naomi she could be.

by the day. Her eyes had turned from a glossy white to a foggy, lifeless yellow. I was watching my sister die!

The doctors could not figure out what was wrong with her. My mom took her to every suggested doctor in the Alberta area. She went as far as taking us three back home to North Carolina—hoping our old doctors could find the problem, but really she just wanted our family to be back together. This was a very rough time for all of us. Naomi, being in a state of shock, started acting out in ways that I couldn’t understand. My mom was a mental wreck, for her child was slowly dying in front of her day by day, and my dad just couldn’t be very effective from so far away. Luckily I had a basketball team to distract me from the whole situation.

But there was one night that, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get Naomi out of my head: the night before the surgery. My mom and sister were spending the night in the hospital, while I was at the house, with one of my mom’s colleagues as the babysitter. I remember lying down on the couch in the basement with tears in my eyes. As I stared at the ceiling for hours, I thought about the possibilities in my head. Naomi is going to have surgery in the morning. The surgery will go well, and everything will go back to normal. Naomi is going to have surgery in the morning. The surgery will go poorly, and she will never see another day. Thinking about becoming an only child felt like a knife jabbing into my stomach. I couldn’t even be there to say, “Don’t worry, sis.

We got this.”

Naomi came home the next day knowing she was going to be sick for the rest of her life. She was diagnosed with an auto-immune disease in her liver. Yes, the surgery saved her life, but the disease was going to affect it

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forever. She was never going to be who she was. She was going to have to take handfuls of medicine every day, like an eighty-year-old woman—the medicines that would keep her up all night regurgitating. With this disease, her body would forever change in uncontrollable ways; no matter how hard I tried not to believe it, she was never going to be the same.

When we returned home to North Carolina, because my mom couldn’t take it [in Alberta] anymore, I had to finish my sixth grade year. Naomi was too weak to go to school, so she did her schoolwork at home. She never complained about the circumstances. She would just wait every day for that moment when I’d pull into the driveway from school. She would come racing out to play basketball, grinning from ear to ear. At the time, I didn’t understand how she could smile so easily, after knowing what her life was going to be like. But I now know that she was just being the best Naomi she could be, and that was Naomi with liver disease.

After I left the Maqubelas house, I called my sister. I told her that I simply couldn’t do it anymore—that it was just too much. She laughed in the phone and said, “Don’t worry, little bro. You got this.”

I can hear my dad in his sermonic way telling me: In this life you will have some ups and some downs, some rainy days and some sunny days, but every day you must get out of bed and put your feet on the floor, do something that will make the world a better place… Be the best you can be. The great Benjamin Mays would say it this way:

I have only just a minute.

Only sixty seconds in it.

Forced upon me, can’t refuse it.

Didn’t seek it, didn’t choose it.

But it’s up to me to use it.

I must suffer if I lose it.

Give an account if I abuse it.

Just a tiny little minute, But eternity is in it.

I challenge everyone in this Chapel to be the best you you can be. Sometimes that’s hard at Groton with all the pressures we have in our lives to be successful. But if you’re not here for yourself, it will become too much.

But don’t worry. You got this.

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â–ş Please send information about your new releases to quarterly@groton.org.

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1 Sarah Norodom ’09, Hanna Kim ’17, and Andres Reyes ’80 (faculty)

The Ethiopian Legend of Solomon and Sheba

The Queen of Sheba is one of the most famous women of antiquity, rivaled only by Cleopatra and Helen of Troy for wealth, power, and beauty.

She is best known for her legendary meeting with King Solomon, an encounter that has resonated through time, nowhere more powerfully than in Ethiopia, where she is a foundational figure within the Ethiopian Church. There, the legend is known not only through the text, called the Kebra Nagast, but also through traditional paintings.

One of the most impressive of these paintings is the goatskin example by the artist Janbaru Wandemmu, given to Groton School by Professor Asrat Woldeyes, personal physician to Haile Selassie.

This book illustrates scenes from that painting, which shows the legend in twenty-five panels, as well as another fifty-six-panel work—with translations of their accompanying texts.

Of special note: the foreword by Headmaster Temba Maqubela, which says in part, “It is no accident that this all started with the Classics and an association between two great institutions—Groton School and the Unviersity of Oxford—where the Classics and the knowledge and scholarship accompanying that discipline are valued.” The seeds of Classics scholarship for authors Sarah and Hanna, both students of Andy Reyes, were planted at Groton.

Mr. Maqubela’s foreword concludes, “Aside from shedding light on the rich tapestry of the Ethiopian people, therefore, this book will, I hope, encourage fresh scholarship to surface in the service of other cultures.”

Quantities are limited; if you would like a copy, please contact Andy Reyes at areyes@groton.org.

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Curtis Sittenfeld ’93

You Think It, I’ll Say It

Throughout the ten stories in You Think It, I’ll Say It, Curtis upends assumptions about class, relationships, and gender roles in a nation that feels both adrift and viscerally divided. In “The World Has Many Butterflies,” married acquaintances play a strangely intimate game with devastating consequences. In “Vox Clamantis in Deserto,” a shy Ivy League student learns the truth about a classmate’s seemingly enviable life. In “A Regular Couple,” a high-powered lawyer honeymooning with her husband is caught off guard by the appearance of the girl who tormented her in high school. And in “The Prairie Wife,” a suburban mother of two fantasizes about the downfall of an old friend whose wholesome lifestyle empire may or may not be built on a lie.

With insight and precision, Curtis pinpoints the questionable decisions, missed connections, and sometimes extraordinary coincidences that make up a life.

3 Hunter Lewis ’65

The Secular Saints

The term “secular saint” may immediately raise questions or even objections. Each religion specifies grounds for being considered a saint.

What does it mean to be a secular saint? Presumably an exemplary life. But exemplary based on what?

Exemplary according to whom?

Perhaps an exemplary life is not even enough to qualify.

These questions are variants of the perennial question: are ethics and moral objective in some way or completely subjective? Is anybody’s opinion worth hearing?

This book provides the thoughts of some leading candidates for the term “secular saint.” Many of them

are famous moral philosophers.

Taken together, they offer a kind of history of moral thought. Some of them are not what we would today consider philosophers. All of them have much to teach us about how we lead our lives and think about the fundamental questions.

This book also offers a conclusion: that morals and ethics are not just subjective, that they are grounded in very objective realities. There is such a thing as right and wrong, better and worse, and as thinking creatures we should recognize this and act on it.

4 Laura Rogerson Moore ’78

Using Your Words

Laura Rogerson Moore’s second volume of poetry chronicles three generations of women from the same family as they navigate the choices and obstacles all women have encountered over the past sixty years.

Mimi Baird, author of He Wanted the Moon, said, “Stepping into Using Your Words is like stepping into one’s own life. For any age, this generous gathering of free verse grabs the heart and doesn’t let go.”

Laura has been teaching at Lawrence Academy since 1983.

She has also had fiction and essays recognized by and published in various journals and magazines. Her articles on education are available on the Independent School Magazine website.

Her first volume of poetry, Yahoodips, published in 2010, is written in memory of her father, long-time Groton School faculty member David “Rogie” Rogerson.

5 Kim Magowan ’85

Undoing

Characters in Undoing’s short stories are frequently caught with their eyes on the past, trying to discern

6 Hunter Lewis ’65

Economics in Three Lessons

Henry Hazlitt’s 1946 book Economics in One Lesson sold more than a million copies. It is perhaps the best selling economics book of all time. In this book, Hunter Lewis, a Hazlitt admirer and student, provides a sequel and update.

The central lesson of Hazlitt’s seminal work is that economic thought and policy must consider all the consequences of an action, not just the immediate or most visible ones. Hazlitt is right that this is the kernel of all good economics. Lewis covers this theme and also introduces two more lessons: how a free and uncontrolled price system creates prosperity and how a controlled or manipulated price system creates only crony capitalist corruption and, ultimately, poverty and economic failure.

The great merit of this work is its brevity and simplicity. Anyone can read and understand it. It is an ideal introduction to economics.

7 John Sedgwick ‘72

Blood Moon: An American Epic of War and Splendor in the Cherokee Nation

Blood Moon is the story of the century-long blood feud between two rival Cherokee chiefs from the early years of the United States through the infamous Trail of Tears and into the Civil War. The two men’s mutual hatred, while little remembered today, shaped the tragic history of the tribe far more than anyone, even the reviled President Andrew Jackson, ever did. Their enmity would lead to war, forced removal from their homeland, and the devastation of a once-proud nation.

It begins in the years after America wins its independence, when the Cherokee rule expansive lands of the Southeast that encompass eight present-day states.

With its own government, language, newspapers, and religious traditions, it is one of the most culturally and socially advanced Native American tribes in history. But over time this harmony is disrupted by white settlers who grow more invasive in both number and attitude.

In the midst of this rising conflict, two rival Cherokee chiefs, different in every conceivable way, emerge to fight for control of their people’s destiny. Through their eyes, the author restores the Cherokee to their rightful place in American history. This propulsive narrative was fueled by meticulous research in contemporary diaries and journals, newspaper reports, and eyewitness accounts—and by John’s own extensive travels within Cherokee lands from the Southeast to Oklahoma.

Book summaries were provided by the authors and/or publishers.

MUSIC

Robert Stallman ’64 The Romantic Flutist — Chopin: 10 Waltzes, 10 Nocturnes for the Flute and Piano Robert Stallman, renowned flutist, has said that Chopin transports listeners into a realm of mystery, peace, and celestial beauty. Robert expands the flute repertoire with The Romantic Flutist’s unique compilation of Chopin waltzes and nocturnes for flute and piano.

de libris

where it all went wrong, whether that concerns a marriage that survives infidelity only to fade later into oblivion or the premature termination of an affair. A young girl hopes to make sense of her seduction by the father of the child she babysits, while a new wife surveys her youthful indiscretions to help her forge an emotional bond with an anorexic stepdaughter. Through it all, struggles become universal, perhaps inevitable. Characters often reappear: older, wiser, seeking to break the cycle of dysfunction. The ultimate effect is a feeling of community, of shared mistakes, leaving the individuals lonely but not alone.

These are curious, resilient people, open to the idea that the solutions, not just the problems, lie within. They hope, despite much evidence to the contrary, that they can undo what has been done.

Chris Pitsiokos ’08 Before the Heat Death Chris Pitsiokos, alto saxophonist and composer, combines the lyricism of jazz and intensity of extreme rock and noise with the attention to detail and abstraction of contemporary classical music.

Sage Redman ’11 and Joe Gillick Out of Tune Sage Redman’s experimental pop duo FKL was first known as Funktionslust, which means “deriving pleasure in creating something.” One reviewer called Out of Tune “expertly executed minimalist electro-pop.”

GloMonCho OffWhite Fifth Formers Gloria Hui, Montanna Riggs, and Kochoe Nikoi recorded and produced their first album during a winter term Faculty-Sponsored Activity (FSA) in Groton’s Music Technology Lab. OffWhite includes their original song, “Hold the Floor.”

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Photographs by Jon Chase

Alyna Baharozian ‘18, second female to score more than 1,000 points in Groton history; opposite page, Joe Collins ’18, fourth male to break 1,000 and new Groton record holder, with 1,163 points. Besides Joe and Alyna, only three others have scored 1,000 points for Groton basketball: Marissa Garey ’13 (1,070), Drew Daigneault ‘10 (1,088), and Asenso Ampim ’07 (1,050).

winter SPORTS Girls Basketball 10–12 Coming off one of the most successful girls basketball seasons in many years, including the team’s first trip to the post-season in eight years, meant high expections for the 2017–18 season. With the strong leadership of tri-captains Alyna Baharozian ’18, Mary Sabatelle ’18, and Lyndsey Toce ’19, the Zebras were competitive until the final whistle in every game.

Our first game of the season was a sign of things to come, as we lost to a talented St. Paul’s team in the last minute of the game. There were three more games that

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went down to the final seconds, which unfortunately put us on the losing end versus Pingree, Winsor, and Beaver Country Day. We lost these three games by a total of four points!

Key wins of the season were against Class A opponents Phillips Andover, BB&N, and Milton Academy. The biggest win of the year was our last game of the season, versus longtime rival St. Mark’s: for the second time in three years, we won on a last-second buzzer-beater. Alyna Baharozian ’18 made the shot for the two-point win — an identical shot to the one that clinched a one-point win over St. Mark’s two years ago,

which caught the attention of ESPN, which aired a segment interviewing Alyna and me about the two impressive game-winning shots.

Another highlight of our season also involved Alyna, as she scored her thousandth point during her final home game, ending her Groton career as the second leading scorer in Groton girls basketball history.

— Coach Joe Crail

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Boys Basketball 2–18 Led by Sixth Formers Noah Aaron, Joe Collins, and Garvel Cassamajor, the boys varsity basketball team continued to improve the basketball culture of our program and competed valiantly against all opponents.

We were competitive in numerous games and, on most occasions this season, lost by the slimmest of margins — usually in the last few minutes.

I would like to recognize Joe Collins ’18, who capped off a four-year varsity career by becoming the all-time leading scorer in Groton basketball history with 1,163 points.

Defeating St. Paul’s in front of a large crowd was a highlight of the season, and though we lost to St. Mark’s this year, the improved stature of the program has made the season-ending St. Mark’s game a “mustattend” event. To quote Fourth Former Jonathan Hahami: “That game was the loudest crowd I have ever played in front of!”

Though the 2017–18 season did not go as planned — due to injuries and other unforeseen events — it was an exciting winter. I was sad to see the season end, and I am excited for what the future holds for Groton basketball.

— Coach Harold Francis

Boys Hockey 11–12–3 During the pre-season, the boys varsity hockey team established a wonderful team culture and set several goals, among them to be a gritty team, to have fun every time they stepped on the ice, and to be positive at all times. Of the teams I’ve coached over fifteen years, this team had the most success reaching these goals. As a direct result, I had as much fun coaching this season as in any that I can remember. I commend these young men for their hard work and dedication and for remaining positive even when the odds were stacked against them.

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Left, goalie Thomas Steere ’18; opposite page, clockwise from left, Ishana Das ’19, Walker Davey ’19, and Imani McGregor ‘18

The Zebras had early success when they easily beat North Yarmouth Academy 6–2 and Roxbury Latin 6–3. An early road trip to perennial Founders League powerhouse Deerfield ended in a 3–1 loss when the Zebras failed to get enough pucks past Deerfield’s future Dartmouth goaltender.

The next five games proved difficult when the Zebras competed against Andover, Culver, Dexter, Proctor, and eventual “Elite 8” semi-finalist Rivers. Despite the adversity, the Zebras maintained a positive attitude and focused effort. They would end the drought by beating last years’ NEPSAC Small School Champion, Pomfret, by a 6–1 margin. It was

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a total team effort where six different scorers lit the lamp and a terrific way to finish the 44th Annual Groton/Lawrence Holiday Tournament.

Groton returned to action after the New Year against Exeter and came up short in a 4–1 home loss, but rebounded with a 4–0 shut-out against Brooks and a 3–2 victory over Hebron. We would finish the month with a 4-4-2 record, excited about the team we were becoming.

February proved to be an enjoyable ride as we started playing our best hockey. We had convincing wins against BB&N, Brooks, St. George’s, and Middlesex, outscoring

these opponents 22–5. On St. Mark’s Day, we exchanged blows for three periods plus overtime with the playoff-bound Lions, eventually battling to a hard-fought 1–1 tie.

We finished the month with a 4–2–1 record and narrowly missed the playoffs.

The team will greatly miss the Sixth Formers who are moving on next year: Liam Calder, Kai Duenez, Tyler Forbes, Dan Herdiech, Cam Schmitt, and Thomas Steere all left an indelible mark on the program.

— Coach Bill Riley

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Girls Hockey 10–12–2 Girls varsity hockey had another successful season, again narrowly missing a playoff berth in the final two weeks.

This year was perhaps the best opening to a season I can remember in my six years coaching hockey at Groton; we headed into winter break at 4–1–2, ended our holiday tournament with an exciting overtime win over Thayer, and did not drop a game in our division until nearly halfway into the schedule.

One highlight was when — following back-to-back, three-game weeks in

late January and some high-intensity games — the girls stole a win from Holderness in the final minutes. They found a way to capitalize on two power-play opportunities, which absolutely stunned Holderness, who watched the game go from a 2–1 lead, to a 2–2 tie, to a 3–2 loss, all within a minute and a half. For much of the game, we didn’t play well, which points to how even some of the messiest games can become memorable with a few well-timed shifts.

The season also included one of the most spirited, memorable battles against St. Mark’s that I have seen (including when

I played for St. Mark’s years ago!). After a tough, two-week stretch against ranked teams in our division, a few puck bounces away from victory, the St. Mark’s game was an emotional, intense game that involved a lot of guts, passion, and sacrifice and ended with a Groton win, 2–1.

Our team mentality toward competition and our general intensity allowed us to overachieve in moments when the odds were against us. I am deeply proud and humbled by the way the players have defined the identity of Groton girls hockey — they are truly creating a positive, lasting legacy for the program.

— Coach Randi Dumont

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Girls Squash 7–8 Last June, our top three players and another in our top ten graduated, but our young team held its own — led by captain Sarah Conner ’19 and our freshman star from San Francisco, Katherine Sapinski ’21, who was ranked number-12 in the U15 in the USA. The team ended with a 5–3 record in the ISL and tied for fourth overall. In all our matches, we had a very credible 7–8 record.

Early in the season, we lost a really close match against Exeter 4–3, with the deciding match going to five games.

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After winter break, we had a strong start, winning four of five matches; all the hard physical training we had been doing was starting to pay off. Team members were gaining confidence in themselves and looking forward to the team tournaments!

We ended eleventh at New Englands (of forty-two teams) and twentyseventh at the U.S. High School Team Championships (of seventy-eight teams).

It’s always special to play in a team event because squash is essentially an individual sport. The girls get to watch each other play, cheer each other on, and feel like they are really playing for the team — and

it brought out the best in them!

We also had a good win against a strong St Mark’s team this year, 4–3. We lost narrowly 3–4 to Milton and went down 2–5 to St. George’s, and we look forward to turning these results around next season.

Hopefully we’ll able to give Deerfield, Nobles, St. Paul’s, and Andover a bit of a scare, too! The team has gained valuable experience and improved significantly, and we look forward to a successful season next winter with all of our girls returning to the courts.

— Coach Mike Tootill

Far left, Lyndsey Toce ’19; left, Garvel Cassamajor ‘18 and Robbie Stankard ‘21; right, Sarah Conner ’19; below, Jimmy Sullivan ’19

Boys Squash 5–9 Knowing that our team would face more experienced opponents again and again this winter, we came into the season ready to work hard and improve as much as possible, every step of the way. December brought a decisive loss to a strong Deerfield squad, a snowed-out Jackson Tournament, and then, just before Christmas vacation, a promising but heartbreaking, 3–4 loss to Exeter.

January began well, with Sixth Formers Jay Montima, Charlie Vrattos, and JJ Cheng leading the way to make every practice

fun and productive. All the Groton players improved their squash and their fitness noticeably from week to week. Even so, an early win over St. George’s was followed by losses to Brooks (extremely tough this year), Andover (competitive, but not quite enough), and Tabor (whose top four were just too strong).

Groton went .500 for the remainder of the season, but the record tells far from the whole story. This was a dedicated group of squash enthusiasts who raised their level of play and also worked hard to improve their fitness as the season went on. As a result,

we had great, competitive matches at High School Nationals in Philadelphia, where a 5–2 win over Westminster was our best team showing of the season, highlighted

by Charlie Vrattos ’18 taking almost an hour to come back from two down to win his fifth game, 11– 4. The Groton players’ improvement was even more evident at the season-ending New Englands at Moses Brown, where Aaron Jin ’19 won his draw, Gus Vrattos ’19 was runner-up in his, Walker Davey ‘19 finished third in his, and Tate Burgin ‘21 came in fourth. Those strong performances highlighted the team’s depth

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caption

Bridget Cornell ’19

and helped us to a solid third-place finish in Division B. Next year’s team will miss this year’s top three players, but the enthusiasm of the returners and love of the sport will continue to carry us forward.

— Coach Dave Prockop P’15, ’17

Swimming 1–5 Swimming continues to grow at Groton. The team had its best season ever, with thirtytwo students participating, including fourteen on varsity, and students at all levels

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showing improvement across their events as the season progressed. Once again, Ben Milliken ’18, Riya Malhotra ’19, and Derek Chang ’20 dominated the meets for team points.

Being a young Groton team — only eight years old — our swimmers have ample opportunity to break records — and break them they did. In all, seventeen new school records were set this winter: Riya broke records in the 100m freestyle, the 100m and 200m backstroke, and the 50m and 100m butterfly. Ben did the same in the 50m and 100m freestyle, the 50m and 100m backstroke, and the 100m individual

medley. Derek set new standards on the 500m freestyle and the 400m individual medley, Katie Reveno ’20 on the 100m breaststroke, and Sophia Wu ’21 on the 200m breaststroke. Several new records were set for medleys and relays as well.

We are saying goodbye to five seniors this year: Ben Calmas, Yan Davidoff, James Hovet, Ben Milliken, and Michael Senko. Each of these swimmers spent every winter semester at Groton swimming. We will miss them!

—Coach Carol Wright

Riya Malhotra ‘19; right, Foster Waxman ‘21

Follow Groton Athletics on Twitter:

@GrotonZebras

BOYS VARSITY BASKETBALL

GIRLS VARSITY BASKETBALL

BOYS VARSITY ICE HOCKEY

GIRLS VARSITY ICE HOCKEY

BOYS VARSITY SQUASH

GIRLS VARSITY SQUASH

VARSITY SWIMMING

Most Valuable Players Noah Aaron ’18 Joe Collins ’18

Most Valuable Players Alyna Baharozian ’18 Meghan Carney ’19

Most Valuable Player Jonah Gold ’19

Most Valuable Player Min Shin ’18

Most Valuable Player Jason Montima ’18

Most Valuable Player Katherine Sapinski ’21

Most Valuable Swimmer Riya Malhotra ’19

Coaches’ Award Garvel Cassamajor ’18

Leadership Award Mary Sabatelle ’18

7th Player Award Kai Duenez ’18

Coaches’ Award Imani McGregor ’18

Most Improved Player Charlie Vrattos ’18

Most Improved Player Lily Kempczinski ’21

Coaches’ Awards Ben Calmas ’18 Ben Milliken ’18

Most Improved Player Johnny Stankard ’19

All-ISL Alyna Baharozian ’18

Coaches’ Award Dan Herdiech ’18

ISL Honorable Mentions Angelina Joyce ’18 Min Shin ’18

Coaches’ Award Walker Davey ’19

Coaches’ Award Sarah Conner ’19

ISL Honorable Mentions Noah Aaron ‘18 Joe Collins ’18

ISL Honorable Mentions Meghan Carney ’19 Lyndsey Toce ’19

All-ISL Jason Montima ’18

All-ISL Katherine Sapinski ’21

ISL Honorable Mention Charlie Vrattos ’18

Captain-Elect Sarah Conner ’19

Captains-Elect Bennett Smith ’19 Johnny Stankard ’19

Captains-Elect Meghan Carney ’19 Angelika Hillios ’19 Lyndsey Toce ’19

All-ISL Jonah Gold ’19 Cam Schmitt ’18

Captains-Elect Bridget Cornell ’19 Lily Delaney ’19

ISL Honorable Mentions Kai Duenez ’18 Tyler Forbes ’18 Dan Herdiech ’18 Will Torriani ’19

Class B All-NEPSAC Jason Montima ’18 Charlie Vrattos ’18

Flood Shield Award Tyler Forbes ’18

Captain-Elect Walker Davey ’19

Captains-Elect Derek Chang ’20 Riya Malhotra ’19

Captains-Elect Drew Burke ’19 Jonah Gold ’19

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The Brodigan Gallery, located on the Dining Hall’s ground level, is open 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on weekdays (except school holidays). It is free and open to the public.

Christopher Carey Brodigan Gallery SPRING EXHIBIT

CLOSEUPS: Exploring Nature’s Unnoticed Corners Photography by Mark Hopkins Through May 20

M

ark Hopkins’ wanderings in the forests and along the seashores of New England result in striking visual canvases of an often overlooked world.

“There is such a wealth of visual experience to be found in natural settings that are beyond the obvious and expected, and that is where my explorations are directed,” Hopkins said. “It is so easy to sit admiring a spectacular seascape and entirely miss the remarkable rock formation you’re sitting on.”

The photographer focuses on details sometimes lost amidst a broader spectacular vista.

“This isn’t about Arctic auroras or Serengeti sunsets. It’s about the way a rain puddle reflects the sky.

The way tree roots intertwine along a river’s edge. The way seaweed sways in a tide flow,” he said. “It’s about capturing and sharing those unexpected, surprising images that can strike a spark and engage our sense of wonder.”

Hopkins has exhibited his work in solo exhibitions, group shows, and juried competitions around New England and beyond.

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“Tidal Gathering”

“Ancient Upwelling”

de Menil Gallery SPRING EXHIBIT

In Light — In Shadow

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The de Menil Gallery is open 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on weekdays (except Wednesdays) and 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on weekends (except school holidays). It is free and open to the public.

Photographs by Bruce Cratsley Through June 3, 2018

“A-Lone (Columns and Shadow) Prince Street, Soho, NYC 1986”

T

hese seventy-two vintage gelatin silver photographs, carefully selected by gallery director Monika Andersson, reveal the varied interests of Bruce Cratsley and his mastery of light and shadow. Most of the images were selected from the estate of Cratsley, who died in 1998, and have not been on display before.

Cratsley, often referred to as “the Master of Light and Shadow,” captured urban scenes of New York, from store

windows to graffiti to the streets of the city. His scenes from Paris and Venice, on the other hand, contain statuary and formal art. Other images, such as “New Year’s Day, 1987” and “A-Lone (Column and Shadow), Prince Street, NYC 1986” express dazzling light, while mystery emanates from “Rising Incense Smoke, Chez Moi, 1991” and “Burst Balloon, Midtown, NYC, 1990.” Cratsley’s greatniece, a current Fifth Former, assisted with cataloging the inventory.

Whether expressing the ordinary or reflecting life’s complex emotions, all of Cratsley’s photos display the range of his talent with what he called “a beat-up, early 1950s twin-lens Rolleiflex “ with which “I joyously participate in the light of love, the love of light, and yes, the refuge of shadows.”

Photographs courtesy of the Estate of David Bruce Cratsley and the Gallery Kayafas in Boston

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Photographs by Ellen Harasimowicz

Malik Gaye ‘18, Lucy Anderson ‘20, Julien Alam ‘19, Caroline Drapeau ‘21, Josie Fulton ‘18, Rose Gil ‘18, and Lucy Gund ‘19

CABARET

Groton’s Theater Department staged a timeless classic, Cabaret, on February 23–25.

The impressive production combined beautifully executed song and dance performances with powerful and surprisingly current socio-political messages.

Layla McDermott ‘18, Lucy Gund ‘19, Malik Gaye ’18, Lucy Anderson ‘20, Caroline Drapeau ‘21, and Josie Fulton ‘18, with Julien Alam ‘19 above; Dashy Rodriguez ‘19 and Max Solomon ‘19; Sophie Conroy ‘19

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grotoniana

Top left, Lily Cratsley ‘19 and Christian Carson ‘18; center, from top, Julien Alam ‘19, Rose Gil ‘18; right, Lily Below, Malik Gaye ‘18, Layla McDermott ‘18, Caroline Drapeau ‘21, Lucy Anderson ‘20, Julien, Josie Fulton ‘18, Lucy Gund ‘19, and Rose

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“Just So”

For the first time in about a dozen years, Groton School staged a play just for Second, Third, and Fourth Formers: Just So Stories, based on Rudyard Kipling’s book.

1 Standing, Beatrice Agbi ‘21, Jack Sperling ‘22, Edwina Polynice ‘21, Luke Benedict ‘21, Mikayla Murrin ‘21, Jane Park ‘21, and Becky Lipson ‘20; kneeling, Tai Campbell ‘21, Julia Lin ‘22; sitting, George Kingsland ‘21, Alex Brown ‘21, Janice Zhai ‘21, Angelica Parra ‘21 2 Julia Lin ‘22 (seated); Luke Benedict ‘21 and George Kingsland ‘21 holding Janice Zhai ‘21 3 Standing, Edwina Polynice ‘21, Jane Park ‘21, and (right) Luke Benedict ‘21; sitting, Angelica Parra ‘21 and Becky Lipson ‘20 1

3

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Photos by Ben Calmas ’18

2

Form notes

R Form Notes are now password-protected.

Members of the Groton community may read them online by signing in at www.groton.org/myGroton.

Honor faculty with a gift to the 2017–18 Groton Fund.

DID A TEACHER CHANGE YOUR LIFE?

Groton teachers go above and beyond providing instruction in the classroom. They are coaches, advisors, dorm heads, mentors, and friends, a​ nd t​ hey continue in some of these roles ​long after Prize Day. ​Our faculty members nurture and motivate our students to think critically, to work together as well as independently, and to build important leadership skills.

Honor ​Groton’s​long-standing faculty, or those who were meaningful during your time on the Circle, with a gift to this year’s Groton Fund. Your gift will recognize the outstanding contributions of these teachers to the school and to the generations of students who were fortunate to be in their care.

Give online at groton.org/giving, use the business reply envelope​in this Quarterly​, or make a gift by phone at 800-396-6866. Thank you for your support.

P.O. Box 991 Groton, Massachusetts 01450-0991

Groton School The Quarterly • Spring 2018

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Groton School • The Quarterly

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HONORING THE ENDURING CAREERS OF DEPARTING FACULTY

52 YEARS J O N CHO AT E

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THIS OAK BOX, probably

FOLLOW GROTON:

YEARS

BETH VAN GELDER

HUGH SACKETT Spring 2018 • Volume LXXIX , No. 2

used in the 1930s or ’40s, sat in the faculty room near one of the few telephones in the Schoolhouse. For any long-distance call (including to Boston!), faculty would write details of each call on a slip of paper and insert it in the box, so the Business Office could sort out the school’s telephone bill and charge the appropriate people for their calls. Students followed a similar system in the dorms.

63 YEARS

33 YEARS

BI L L M AG UI RE