Groton School Quarterly, Winter 2013

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Groton School uarterly Winter 2013 | Vol. LXXV, No. 1

When Martin Luther King, Jr. Spoke at Groton February 4, 1963

PHOTOS BY MIKE SPERLING

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

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Groton School Quarterly

Groton School

Lessons and Carols 2012

Winter 2013 • Vol. LXXV, No. 1

St. John’s Chapel filled to capacity three times and fans of the beloved holiday tradition tuned in online from 13 countries and 38 states.

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Honoring the Unsung Advisor

Winter 2013 | Vol. LXXV, No. 1

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Features 12

One parent, who wishes to remain anonymous, was so grateful to his son’s advisor that he decided to thank him in a uniquely generous way: in October, he funded a teaching chair in his memory, the Peter B. Camp Chair in English and the Humanities.

Between 1969 and 1994, Mr. Camp wore many hats at Groton, including those of English teacher, cross country skiing coach, and interim headmaster. When Mr. Camp retired, Headmaster William Polk praised his “humor, compassion, sense of justice, and unselfish devotion to the School.”

When Dr. King Spoke at Groton Fifty years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. accepted Headmaster John Crocker’s invitation and spoke at Groton School. This stunning event in Groton history, and American history, inspired the lives and careers of many who were there.

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Plus: Grotonians’ fight for civil rights in the Deep South, and Rosa Parks’ Groton connection.

The donor behind the Peter B. Camp Chair would say that Peter was unselfishly devoted to his advisees as well. His son, the beneficiary of Mr. Camp’s wisdom, explained the motivation behind his father’s extraordinary gesture: “Mr. Camp inspired me to succeed. When I got over my head taking Greek and Latin at the same time, he rightly encouraged me to drop Greek.

When I struggled early in Dr. Tyler’s American history class, he helped me improve my writing such that I came in second for the history essay prize. More than anything I will remember his graciousness and care—qualities, I believe, that gave my father enormous comfort since I was so far away from home. I believe he came to Parents Weekends as much to see Mr. Camp as me!”

by Gail Friedman

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Parents Weekend 372 students, 600 parents, 2,351 conferences, and Rick Commons’ final Parents Weekend speech

Cover photo of Martin Luther King, Jr. by Reg Lancaster/Hulton Archive/Getty Images. Photo composition by Jeanne Abboud.

Photo of Dr. King, above, by Michael Ochs Archive/Getty Images.

CINDY BEAMS; TOP, ALEXIS CIAMBOTTI ’13

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hile every teacher makes an impact on the life of Groton students, advisors have a special role. They often develop into mentors and confidantes, ready with guidance about matters academic and personal—from which courses to take to how to navigate the tricky milieu known as adolescence.

Peter B. Camp, coaching cross country skiing

The Peter B. Camp Chair in English and the Humanities is Groton’s 21st endowed teaching chair, testament to the power of the faculty to instill character in our students and shape their lives. For information about endowing chairs and other funds, please contact Director of Alumni Affairs and Development John MacEachern at 978448-7580 or jmaceachern@groton.org.

Groton School uarterly Departments 2

Message from the Headmaster

Circiter | Featured on Campus 4

new teaching chairs, out-of-the-ordinary concerts, a streetwise novelist, and other news from the Circle

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Personae | People of Note 8

At Home with Foreign Policy Maryam Mujica ’96

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An Unlikely Career rebecca stanton, Modern languages Department Head 10

Per Circulum Locuti Sunt | Voices on the Circle 32

Divine Fire A Chapel Talk by Theodore leonhardt ’11 and Kenneth Ballato, Jr. ’11

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Thanks for Listening A Chapel Talk by Hugh McGlade ’13

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Finding Your Grit A Chapel Talk by Ann Bakewell woodward ’86

De Libris | About Books 45

Book Review The Tomb of Alexander by seán Hemingway ’85 reviewed by Timothy F. Cunningham ’84

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New Releases

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Grotoniana | All Things Groton 48 50 52

Theater: The Crucible Gallery News Fall Sports

Notabilia | New & Noteworthy 57 94

Form Notes Marriages, New Arrivals, Deaths

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Groton School uarterly winter 2013 | Vol. lXXV, no. 1

editor Gail Friedman Design Jeanne Abboud Contributing editors Julia B. Alling Elizabeth Z. Ginsberg P’16 Elizabeth Wray Lawrence ’82 John D. MacEachern P’10, ’14, ’16 Andrew M. Millikin Melissa J. Ribaudo Amy Sim Photography/editorial Assistant Christopher Temerson editorial offices The Schoolhouse Groton School Groton, MA 01450 978-448-7506 quarterly@groton.org

Lessons and carols and Headmasters

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he opening notes of “Once in Royal David’s City” are indelible in the ears and hearts of generations of Grotonians, as they are sung by a single voice at the opening of every Service of Nine Lessons and Carols. When I hear those notes rising and reaching to the vaulted ceiling of the Chapel, I always hold my breath. The soloists for our three services this year were Alexis Ciambotti ’14, Charlotte Berkowitz ’13, and Mariana Gailus ’13, and each of them sang gloriously, presenting all of us in the Chapel (and many tuning in online) with the first true and lasting gift of the season.

I received another true and lasting gift at the very same time, as I stood in the side aisle of the Chapel, breath held, shoulder to shoulder with Bill Polk and Temba Maqubela, Groton’s sixth and eighth headmasters. A few weeks before, I had the privilege of introducing these two remarkable educators to each other. They have since spent a good bit of time together, and I know they will continue to do so in the months and years to come. As Bill, Temba, and I listened to those breathtaking opening notes and prepared to process down the center aisle with the other readers, I felt not only a deep and fulfilling camaraderie, but also an abiding sense of confidence in Groton’s past and its future.

Groton is very fortunate to have found Temba Maqubela, who impressed me from the first moment I met him as a person of tremendous wisdom, kindness, and personal grace. On the day after his appointment in October, when he and his wife, Vuvu, and their three sons, Kanyi, Pumi, and Tebs, came to Groton to greet the School, these qualities were felt by everyone on campus. The handshaking line stretched from the Schoolhouse to the Chapel and lasted for two hours, as every member of the Maqubela family shook the hand of every student, faculty member, and staff member. In that ritual, so essential to Groton, everyone noted Temba’s gentle authenticity in making each greeting feel personal, each person recognized.

Groton’s future is very bright, but this issue of the Quarterly focuses on a moment in the past, one created by the vision and conviction of another

Groton School publishes the Groton School Quarterly in late summer, fall, winter, and spring.

The fall issue is the Annual Report.

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MiKe sPerlinG

other school offices Alumni Office 978-448-7520 Admission Office 978-448-7510

Rick Commons headmaster

PHoTos By ellen HArAsiMowiCz

ellen HArAsiMowiCz

left, at lessons and Carols, former Headmaster Bill Polk, future Headmaster Temba Maqubela, and current Headmaster rick Commons. Above, Temba Maqubela and rick Commons on the day of the newly appointed headmaster’s welcome ceremony at Groton, october 25, 2012. Below, the entire school community greeted the new headmaster with the Groton tradition of handshaking.

Groton headmaster, Jack Crocker, who succeeded Endicott Peabody and led the school from 1940 to 1965. Reverend Crocker is remembered for many fine things, including his tireless and courageous commitment to civil rights, racial equality, and human justice. While graduates from the early ’60s have always recalled with pride that Martin Luther King, Jr. actually came to Groton at Reverend Crocker’s invitation, we had only imperfect memories— no record of what Dr. King said when he was here. Until now.

Knowing that the winter of 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s visit to the Circle, Director of Communications Gail Friedman put out an informal request for recollections of that visit. What she received in return included something stunning—a wellpreserved, amateur audiotape made by a pair of then-students. The tape contains the entirety of Dr. King’s words to the audience gathered in the Schoolhouse Hall on February 4, 1963.

There is no more stirring voice in all of American history than Dr. King’s, and to hear it calling out for justice right here in our own Hall, in phrases we recognize as among the most inspiring ever spoken by any public figure, is simply overwhelming. Yet another true and lasting gift.

As Bill, Temba, and I waited for the wonderful solo to begin the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols, I whispered to Bill that this must be the first time that three Groton headmasters had been together for one of the services. “Oh, no,” he said. “In my early years as headmaster, Paul Wright and Jack Crocker always joined me.” After the solo, as we turned to process up the aisle, singing that beautiful hymn, I looked for a long moment at Reverend Crocker’s name etched deeply into the Chapel stones, and I nodded to him.

Quarterly Winter 2013

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CHrisToPHer TeMerson

Circiter | Featured on Campus

Straight Talk with Novelist Andre Dubus The novelist met with classes throughout the day; his lessons about honest, vibrant writing continue to echo in english classes.

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roton students are still talking about novelist and memoirist Andre Dubus III, who visited the School in September. His honest, street-smart style and tales of his scrappy, troubled childhood inspired many students to reappraise their approach to writing and storytelling.

Dubus’ day began with a Chapel Talk, which echoed his memoir Townie. He shared vivid stories about growing up in a tough working-class town and insight into how the experience shaped him. Dubus learned the language of violence long before that of literature. Writing became both his calling and salvation.

While Dubus met with classes from various forms after Chapel, his visit centered on the Sixth Form, whose required summer reading was Townie. “I never intended to be a writer,” Dubus told students. But the desire to put thoughts to paper seized him, and ultimately freed him from considerable guilt and confusion. Writing also provided the mood alteration that drugs and violence once did. “I pinch myself. I feel like I’m getting away with something,” he said of his career as a writer.

“I just love doing it.”

Through his precise word choice and intricate descriptions, the writer made clear that details put life into a story, and he explained how novels can emerge from moments. For example, when he was seeing an Iranian woman with strict parents, he was forced to “date” her whole family, which provided insights that helped form his best-known book, House of Sand and Fog. To Dubus, seemingly mundane moments are fraught with potential. “Whole books come from slivers of images,” he said.

Throughout the day, Dubus met in the Schoolhouse Hall with classes, reading excerpts from Townie and provoking conversation with pointed questions. The students seemed enraptured by his colorful, unrestrained stories, and some approached him afterward to discuss their own writing or their struggle with writer’s block.

Pointing to curiosity as the single most important ingredient for a writer, he exhorted students to write what they feel, not what they think teachers want. “Bad writing is dishonest writing,” he warned students. “If you want to be a good writer, you must not lie.”

A Meditation Garden Revived

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t had been years since the Guthrie Willard Memorial was put to good use. The once-beautiful spot behind the Headmaster’s House was hardly noticed and in need of a facelift.

Thanks to a restoration effort last summer, it is beautiful once more, honoring the memory of its namesake, who died a year after his 1926 graduation from Groton. The project was inspired by the Form of 2013’s desire for a quiet, meditative spot on campus.

The fountain was fixed; the canopy raised on a grand English elm, enhancing westward views; the bench restored; grass planted and landscaping improved; and earth prepared for several shrubs, which Sixth Formers planted during a September dedication ceremony.

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Teachers John Conner and Cathy lincoln spoke to the sixth Form at the garden’s dedication.

roBin KiKuCHi

Circiter | Featured on Campus

A Varied Repertoire

LETTERS to the editor

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n the Fall 2012 issue, William Thorndike’s article on Groton football states that Jake Congleton converted the offense from single wing to the T in 1958. Not true. Coach Larry Noble did that in the 1940s. I quarterbacked the T offense of the undefeated, untied 1950 team led

by Frank White, which had potent running and passing attacks, scoring at least four touchdowns every game and a total of 225 points. It was then, and still may be now, the highest scoring team playing a seven-game schedule in Groton’s history.

John B. Rhinelander ’51

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GAil FrieDMAn

uring the first half of the year, the Gammons Concert Series presented a jazz quartet (above) led by Kenji Kikuchi, who directs Groton’s Jazz Ensemble and teaches saxophone, clarinet, and flute; unconventional pianist Barbara Lieurance; and Melodeego, a rock band whose instruments are powered by audience members pedaling stationary bicycles.

The concerts, in the Edward B. Gammons Recital Hall, are free and open to the public. Remaining performances include a recital by Groton’s musical faculty on February 14 and an appearance by Notorious, a versatile guitar-andfiddle folk duet, on April 15.

corrections The 1973 Form Notes were inadvertently printed under the Form of 1979 in the Fall 2012 Quarterly.

The Bishop Julius Atwood Literature and History Prize was not referred to by its complete name in the Fall 2012 Quarterly.

Recognizing

Teaching Excellence

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n September, Classics Department Head Scott Giampetruzzi and science teacher David Prockop P’15, ’17 were awarded teaching chairs at Groton School.

Dave Prockop was awarded the Lathrop Brown Chair, established in 1978 in memory of Lathrop Brown 1900 by his widow, Mrs. Helen Hooper Brown. Science teacher Hoyt W. Taylor, who recently retired after 28 years at Groton, held this chair since 2003.

Scott Giampetruzzi was awarded the Sherrard Billings Honored with teaching chairs: scott Giampetruzzi and David Prockop P’15, ’17 Chair of Classics, which was established in memory of Reverend Sherrard Billings, one of the School’s three original masters. Longtime Classics teacher John Tulp held this chair until his retirement.

Mr. Prockop has been at Groton since 1999 and teaches physics, astronomy, and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) courses. Mr. Giampetruzzi arrived at Groton in 2003 and teaches Latin and Greek at all levels.

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For the Love

of Politics

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ublic radio host and political commentator Kara Miller ’96 presented an All-School Lecture on September 24, sharing observations about success, the people she interviews, and her passion for politics.

“If I had a choice between hanging out with Tom Brady or NBC’s [White House correspondent] Chuck Todd, it would be Chuck Todd every day of the week,” Kara said. The Groton graduate has interviewed a wide range of thinkers, political and otherwise, including journalist E.J. Dionne, Harvard professor Howard Gardner, and mind-body spiritualist Deepak Chopra.

Kara also shared her personal experience with the college process, and explained why she felt pressure to choose Yale over Wellesley, a decision she came to regret. Relating part of her speech to the School’s summer reading, Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, Kara pointed out that most whom we

Andrea Fisher ’13 listens to political commentator Kara Miller at a reception at the Headmaster’s House after the lecture.

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From gridiron to kitchen: Among the nearly 100 students who contributed time during Fall Term to service programs in the communities surrounding Groton School were members of the football team (left), who served, cleared, and washed dishes at the Groton Community Dinner in September (the School contributed food for the event). Upholding cui servire est regnare, the School motto, other students have sorted food and clothing donations at Loaves and Fishes, served hot meals at Our Father’s House, looked after young children at a transitional housing facility in Devens, and volunteered at the town’s Grotonfest.

PHoTos By GAil FrieDMAn

PeTer Fry

Circiter | Featured on Campus

consider successful “took a leap into the unknown.” She encouraged students to do the same—not to be constrained by others’ expectations or conventional wisdom. Her own unconventional “leaps” included the pursuit of politics while she was in a medieval literature PhD program at Tufts University. When her advisor approved her thesis topic—an analysis of presidential speeches as literature—he warned her, “You’re never going to get a job.”

To Kara, “studying Chaucer and analyzing politics felt incompatible,” and she ultimately succumbed to the pull of politics. The host of Boston public radio station WGBH’s Innovation Hub, Kara broke into her field by “cold-calling” a producer who had no women on her show. She appreciates the longer attention span of radio listeners, recognizing that it is partly because many listeners are driving. “Because you don’t have the clicker right in front of you, you are more willing to stick with a story for seven or ten minutes,” she says.

Besides hosting Innovation Hub, Kara is a panelist on the public television program Beat the Press and an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.

Her writing has appeared in various publications including the Boston Globe, National Journal, and International Herald Tribune.

ArT DuriTy

Circiter | Featured on Campus

Breaking a Different Barrier

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JAMie Conner ’11

hen Spanish teacher and Dean of Faculty John Conner first published Breaking the Spanish Barrier about 15 years ago, he couldn’t be persuaded to add an audio disc to the Spanish textbook. “I didn’t want audio, I didn’t want maps, I didn’t want dictionaries,” says Señor, as he is called by students around the Circle. “All I wanted was to explain grammar.”

Breaking the Spanish Barrier, co-authored with Spanish teacher Cathy Folts and co-produced with faculty spouse Cindy Beams, was innovative in its approach to teaching grammar. For words on paper, it was lively. But oh, how times have changed, and Señor along with them.

This year, Breaking the Barrier, Inc., published its first electronic edition, available only for iPads. Conner’s small company has embraced the iPad format before many large, more tentative publishers. The print textbook, now published in both Spanish and French, is still available, but Señor is confident his new version will flourish, buoyed by Apple’s iBook textbook initiative and the growing use of iPads in schools.

In the iPad textbook, lessons are active and interactive.

Why read about a traditional food when you can watch a cooking lesson? Why describe a dance in words when the dancer can demonstrate? On the iPad version of Breaking the Spanish Barrier, flashcards are ready with a click and chapter self-quizzes provide immediate feedback. It’s engaging, entertaining, and, Conner believes, a better way to learn a language. Students hear native speakers as they study, have a constantly available and portable language lab, and take an active part in their learning every time they do homework.

Grotonians play a prominent role in the new iBook. For a lesson on Spanish omelettes, Spanish teacher Luis Viacava interviews a Spanish chef; Noah Altshuler ’15 wrote the

señor visits Apple headquarters, which he likened to oz.

erasing the words: John Conner’s textbook goes digital.

accompanying soundtrack and edited the video. A feature on the Peruvian dance called La Marinera, once static on paper, now includes video of teacher Fanny Vera de Viacava demonstrating her hobby and life passion. The School provided 35 iPads as a trial for Conner’s classes this year. A committee is examining whether the tablets should be more widely used in Groton classes.

Conner first wrote his textbook because he wasn’t satisfied with existing options. “I hated Level 3 textbooks,” he says.

“They didn’t integrate grammar well.” A few years after creating the Spanish textbook, Conner asked former teachers Catherine Coursaget and Micheline Myers to write a French version. By that point, he had added audio and maps and even a dictionary to his textbook, but it wasn’t until last year that he seriously considered an electronic version, ultimately becoming an Apple textbook pioneer.

Schools had been asking whether Breaking the Barrier would go electronic, so when a book design firm suggested that his book might be a perfect iBook, he was intrigued. Conner visited the Apple headquarters last June with his son, Jamie ’11. “It was like going to Oz,” he says. He left determined to adapt his Spanish book in time for a fall release. He traveled to Spanish-speaking countries, hired actors to provide updated audio, and worked nonstop. “Sometimes I got tired and slept on the floor,” he says. “It was round the clock.” After completing the Spanish iPad version, Conner began tackling the French, which he expects will be available this spring.

Even though the iBook will sell for much less than the print version ($14.99 on iPad versus $70 for book, audio disc, and answer booklet), Conner expects volume to compensate.

But that’s not really the point. “I became a true believer using this,” he says. “Pedagogically it changes the dynamic. It’s the most powerful learning tool I’ve ever seen.”

Quarterly Winter 2013

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At Home with Foreign Policy Maryam Mujica ’96

By Matthew Hutson ’96

Above, world leaders are part of the terrain: Maryam Mujica ’96 chats with Hilary Clinton.

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n 2009, three Americans hiking in Iraq were imprisoned in Iran for allegedly crossing the Iranian border and conducting espionage. It took a two-year international effort to get all three back on U.S. soil, and Maryam Mujica ’96 was part of that effort.

Working as a foreign affairs officer in the Office of Iranian Affairs at the State Department at the time, she helped coordinate the release, working primarily with the Swiss (who represent U.S. interests in Iran), Congress, and the hikers’ families. “It was amazing to see how much effort went into it,” she says.

Maryam joined the State Department in 2010, and is currently assigned to the White House National Security Council, as special assistant to the senior director for the Middle East and North Africa. Each morning, Maryam and her colleagues meet in their office across the driveway from the West Wing and prepare points for the national security advisor to present during the president’s daily briefing. “We’re constantly following developments abroad while helping to create U.S. foreign policy,” she says.

Their job has three parts: First, they make policy recommendations to the national security advisor and, ultimately, to the president, suggesting, for example, whether the United States should provide funding or manpower for education, job training,

Michael Gross

Personae | People of Note

Maryam’s office created a “virtual embassy,” plus Twitter and Facebook accounts in Farsi.

Joanne Pettaway

microloan systems, and other civil initiatives around the world. Maryam describes the programs as things that help people “thrive and succeed in everyday life.” Second, they coordinate the U.S. government response to evolving developments around the world in areas like Syria, Libya, Iran, and Lebanon. And third, they constantly support efforts to build and maintain relationships with partner countries to advance shared objectives.

Maryam says a combination of her international background and her time at Groton made her interested in this line of work. She was born in Iran during the Iranian Revolution and grew up in New York and Mexico, while spending summers with her family in Europe, before coming to Groton. At Groton, she became more interested in public service. “Other places I had been didn’t have structures set up to encourage students to give back in the ways that Groton did,” she says. At Trinity, she majored in political science and interned for the late Senator Ted Kennedy.

“I felt the public sector and government were where I could make the most difference,” she says. She also volunteered for the Clinton and Gore campaigns in 1996 and 2000, worked part-time on Barbara Kennelly’s unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign in Connecticut, and—for Trinity credit—worked in the Consumer Protection Division at the Connecticut Attorney General’s Office, advocating for scammed senior citizens.

Maryam attended law school at Santa Clara University, where she worked on the Innocence Project, offering legal support to inmates who were on death row or serving life sentences— possibly wrongly convicted—and visiting her clients at Folsom Prison, San Quentin, and other California prisons. During her second year of law school, she worked for a district attorney’s office prosecuting criminals. “To see what the other side was like,” she spent her third year working for a public defender. Maryam also clerked for a judge in San Francisco who handled complex civil litigation cases. Before heading back to Washington, she wanted to practice law for a few years to get some experience under her belt. Criminal law interested her, but offered limited exposure to other areas of law, so she joined a civil litigation firm. As a transition out of the private sector, Maryam accepted a fundraising job at Stanford Law School, where she spent two years meeting with alumni around the country.

After Stanford, Maryam was ready to return to public service. She felt Capitol Hill was too focused on money and campaigns, and finding international issues particularly salient as a first-generation American, she focused on foreign policy.

A Franklin Fellowship brought her to the State Department, where she worked on sanctions and public diplomacy issues in the Office of Iranian Affairs. Having no diplomatic relations with Iran and no diplomatic presence in the country, the United States makes an effort to engage directly with the Iranian people through public outreach. How can Iranian citizens learn about our sanctions, or figure out how to obtain a visa to study in the United States? One solution: Maryam’s office created a “virtual embassy” at www.iran.usembassy.gov, plus Twitter and Facebook accounts in Farsi. All three mechanisms have proven hugely successful with Iranians, and there is now a constant dialogue online.

After the year-long fellowship, the department asked her to stay, hiring her permanently in 2011, and a few months later putting her on the White House National Security Council detail. “It’s very grueling, obviously, but it’s been an incredible experience,” she says. “Foreign policy is what hits home for me.”

Maryam with Andrea Mitchell of NBC

Matthew Hutson ’96 is a science writer living in New York City and the author of The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking.

Quarterly Winter 2013

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Personae | People of Note

An Unlikely Career Four Law Degrees Equal One Masterful Teacher

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Bob Krist

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he dozens of Camembert boxes on Rebecca Stanton’s bulletin board tell only part of the story.

Yes, she grew up in France. And yes, she loves cheese. But the head of Groton’s Modern Language Department was born in Egypt, nourished more on Middle Eastern cuisine than croissants and profiteroles.

Stanton’s family moved to France when she was young, but they did not leave Egypt voluntarily. Her father, a prominent racehorse trainer who hobnobbed with the politically connected, was surprised to find himself targeted when then-President Nasser began exiling Jews and foreigners. One day he was called unexpectedly to the police station and didn’t return. Stanton and her mother did not know for two weeks that he had been sent to a work camp. His crime was his Judaism.

After six months in the work camp, Stanton’s father was given a choice: stay in the camp or leave the country. The family sold all their furniture and, carrying two suitcases apiece, moved to France. Stanton would spend her childhood and young adulthood there.

Even at a young age, multilingualism was a given for the future French teacher. Stanton knew Arabic from living in Egypt and English because it was spoken at her kindergarten. She grew up speaking French at home, but often heard her Turkish grandmother speak the Ladino dialect of Sephardic Jews. Later in life, she would master Spanish too.

It was her French fluency that brought Stanton to Groton. At first, she turned down the opportunity to teach. She was living in Groton with her husband, a neurologist at the local hospital whom she had met on the plane home from her brother’s graduation from Boston University. She had four law degrees—a juris doctorate and master’s degrees in international and business law, all earned in France, and a master’s in tax law from Boston University. She was planning to take the New York bar and move because the Massachusetts bar wouldn’t accept her French J.D. But former Groton teacher Catherine Coursaget had met Stanton at a Christmas party and called, offering a two-month stint.

A sabbatical replacement was pregnant so the department needed another replacement. “No, thank you,” Stanton told her. She was a lawyer.

She had never taught. And she couldn’t imagine

what she might possibly offer to teenagers. But Coursaget persisted, and Stanton relented. “It’s only for two months,” she thought to herself, 19 years ago.

In her first classes, Stanton was taken aback when the students didn’t grasp the grammar that came so naturally to her. “This makes sense, right?” she would ask them in French. Heads shook; they were clueless. So Stanton pulled out grammar books and learned the rules behind what she knew instinctively. More important, she became an eager mentee to Coursaget and another French teacher, Micheline Myers, who helped transform the novice into an effective teacher.

Stanton was surprised to find that she loved it.

“It was so much fun to be back in high school,” she recalled. When John Conner asked her to teach one section of AP French the following year, she agreed. It was only one class. “I liked the intellectual process of reading the literature and finding an interesting way to explain it to the students,” she says. The following year, she agreed to three classes, and two years later, Headmaster Bill Polk asked her to move into a dorm. She stayed for 11 years. Over the years, Stanton has worked in the Admission Office and advised the Cultural Alliance, Debating Society, and Jewish students group. For four years, she ran Friday night Shabbat services and, an avid cook, routinely baked three challahs each week—two of the traditional Jewish loaves of bread for the service and one for the dorm.

“Friday night was challah and Nutella night,” she said.

Stanton has come to realize that she does have something to offer teenagers after all. Not only is Madame beloved in the classroom, she is a sought-after advisor (10 advisees last year, eight this year). It’s not unusual to find her Sixth Form advisees at her campus home during their free 10 p.m.-to-midnight period, chatting over Camembert and crackers. She rarely can accept new students as advisees because so many returning students request her.

Stanton relishes the relationships she has built with her students and advisees. She sometimes wonders what a career in law might have been like, but the thought is fleeting. “Part of me wanted to be in law but I love coming here in the morning,” she said. “If I had been in law, I might have hated it.”

—Gail Friedman Quarterly Winter 2013

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when

Dr. King spoke at

Groton

Throughout the School’s history, the accomplished, the storied, and the brilliant have spoken on the Circle. This February marks the 50th anniversary of perhaps the most extraordinary visit of all.

by Gail Friedman

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Quarterly Winter 2013

| 13 Robert W. Kelley/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

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february 4, 1963

Many thanks to Groton Trustee Jonathan Klein, CEO of Getty Images, for providing many of the Quarterly’s historic photos.

t had been nearly nine years since the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision banned segregated schools, and seven years since Rosa

Parks’ arrest inspired the Montgomery bus boycott. Just four months earlier, President Kennedy had sent troops to quell the violence sparked by James Meredith’s enrollment as the first black at the University of Mississippi.

Civil rights protests were on the nightly news and the movement’s leaders well established on February 4, 1963, when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke at Groton. Over a two-day visit, Dr. King preached in the Chapel, gave an evening lecture in the Hall, and met with students for an informal discussion. Six weeks later, he would be arrested in Alabama and pen his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Six months after visiting Groton, during the March on Washington, Dr. King would deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech, and the following year he would win the Nobel Peace Prize.

“There was the sense that the country was undergoing major convulsions, both domestically and internationally with the escalating Vietnam War, and that in our isolated country outpost of Groton, we were at the very edge of it,” recalled Barton Lane ’66. “So it was remarkable

In the Words of Dr. King

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hough most alumni who heard Dr. King speak at Groton do not recall specifics of his message, many commented on his deep, sonorous tone and his slow, measured cadence. “What I remember is his extraordinary oratorical style,” said Edward Childs ’67, who was a Second Former when Dr. King spoke. “I was completely captivated by what he said and mesmerized by his presentation even though I didn’t fully understand all he was saying. He spoke with the rhetorical style of a minister from the South. He spoke in these long eloquent phrases full of metaphors. I had not been exposed to that before.”

Dr. King opened his Groton speech referencing the “all men are created equal” passage of the Declaration of Independence and its “amazing universalism. It does not say ‘some men,’ but it says ‘all men.’ It does not say ‘all white men,’ but it says ‘all men,’ which includes black men. It does not say ‘all Gentiles,’ but it says ‘all men,’ which includes Jews. It doesn’t say ‘all Protestants,’ but it says ‘all men,’ which includes Catholics.” Dr. King

14 | Quarterly Winter 2013

explained that the American dream offers dignity and worth to every man, but that since its birth, the nation “has been divided against herself.’’ He called slavery and racial segregation “strange paradoxes,” considering the egalitarian words of the Declaration of Independence.

Themes and a few key phrases overlap between the Groton speech and the “I Have a Dream” speech delivered six months later. For example, in the Groton speech, Dr. King said, “I’m

convinced that we will be able to transform the

jangling discords of America into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. ...And with this determination and with this

we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope...” In faith,

“I Have a Dream,” he said, “With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into

Groton’s archives hold little documentation of Dr. King’s visit. The Third Form Weekly announced the upcoming visit of “probably the most famous segregation-fighter.”

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and somewhat unreal to suddenly have a major actor from that outside world step into our world and walk along the same Circle with the Reverend Crocker and other faculty that we walked on every day. The image of King and our School’s leaders walking together is probably the most vivid image I remember.”

The headmaster, Reverend Jack Crocker, had invited Dr. King to speak, as part of the Washburn Lecture Series. Students were accustomed to a steady stream of noteworthy speakers, including Yale chaplain and activist William Sloane Coffin, violinist Isaac Stern, and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy ’36. “In some sense we had grown to assume that we were special,” Barton said. “But unlike McGeorge Bundy, King was from a completely different place, and he led a group of people that were very, very different from the typical Groton student. I think even as teenagers, we grasped that.”

Virtually no documentation of Dr. King’s visit exists in Groton School’s archives. Neither the 1963 yearbook nor the alumni Quarterly mention the lecture. One brief note in the February 2, 1963, Third Form Weekly did say: “Martin Luther King to Lecture! The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., probably the most famous segregation-fighter, is going to give a talk in the Hall, Monday at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday he will meet with members of the Upper School in the Library during the first three periods. The Reverend King was asked to talk to us a few months ago and has now finally accepted. It should be noted that a limited number of students from surrounding schools, including Concord, have been invited to attend the lecture.” Based on Dr. Crocker’s introduction at the lecture, visitors came not only from Concord Academy, but also from Lawrence Academy, Middlesex School, Applewild School, and from four nearby public high schools.

An email sent in September to Groton alumni who were students in February 1963 elicited a wide spectrum of responses—from vivid memories of the speech to lamentations over not recalling the visit (one noting a “teenage-befuddled” brain). The email also produced one stunning response: an audiotape of Dr. King’s lecture, an unanticipated donation that arrived on the Circle in an unassuming envelope. In 1963, a student who recognized the importance

Dr. Crocker’s letter inviting Martin luther King, Jr. to speak; the poem noted in the postscript was “Midnight” by edward Kellogg ’62.

a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.”

At Groton, he quoted Old Testament prophet Amos, “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” In his August speech, “No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” In both speeches, he used the term “soul force” to describe the desired nonviolent response to physical force, and in both he cited the Declaration of Independence’s universal guarantees.

At Groton, Dr. King emphasized the need to work within the system, using tools of democracy to right racial wrongs.

“Now it may be true that morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated,” he said. “It may be true that the law cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless.

It may be true, for instance, that the law can’t make a man love me down in the state of Georgia, but it can keep him from lynching me and I think that’s pretty important also.” continued on next page

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february 4, 1963

“Why was a fine, private school, Ivy League young man a perpetrator?” the judged asked him.

of the speech had asked another student to record it for him. Years later, he sent the tape to the classmate who had recorded it, who tucked it away in his attic, where it remained for several years. Neither individual wishes to be recognized, but their initiative as students and their immeasurable generosity has filled a chasm in the School history and the School archives.

Many alumni not only remembered Dr. King’s visit, but said that it—along with Dr. Crocker’s moral lessons and activist leanings—had enormous impact which, in some cases, continues today. “For many in our Form of ’64, Dr. King’s visit was one of our most memorable experiences at Groton,” said Nason Hamlin. “It was a major inspiration for me.”

He still can see the scene—exactly where he sat in the library (on the right side halfway back), and where others sat (some boys on folding chairs, others on the floor).

Nason would later hear Dr. King twice at Wesleyan, and, as a member of Wesleyan’s chapel choir, was present for a small, pre-service prayer with Dr. King—“five feet away from him.”

He traveled with Wesleyan’s glee club to southern colleges, including the all-black Tuskegee (Alabama) and Spellman (Georgia). “We were not under any circumstances to go into town at Tuskegee because as Northern whites we might be beaten up or killed,” he recalled. Nason detected a difference in Dr. King’s demeanor during his second visit to Wesleyan, a few months before his assassination. “He looked up at the end of the prayer; he looked as if he were hunted,” Nason said. “Clearly he was worried in a way he hadn’t been worried in the two other times I saw him. I was saddened by that.” Nason was overcome for a moment as he thought of the off-campus glee club concert that was interrupted by news of Dr. King’s death.

“We just sang a spiritual and ended early.”

James Blaine ’63, the senior prefect, found inspiration in Dr. King’s lecture and in Jack Crocker’s ethos, and he recognized how extraordinary Dr. King’s visit was to 1963 Groton.

“There weren’t a whole lot of people who went to Groton and places like it who were engaged in civil rights,” he said. Some parents, including his own, questioned whether the School’s subsequent preaching about King’s visit amounted to improper “pressure from the pulpit.”

His Groton years and the civil rights education it provided influenced Jamie. “It set me on a path in terms of my beliefs; I grew increasingly separate from the values I had grown up with,” he said. In 1970, after serving in the Army, Jamie went to graduate school at University of Michigan. “I tried to get into a doctoral program in Black Studies. But it was not an continued on page 18

In the Words of Dr. King continued from previous page He spoke of Gandhi and explained the benefits of nonviolence: “First, it has a way of disarming the opponent. It exposes his moral defenses; it weakens his morale and at the same time it works on his conscience, and he just doesn’t know what to do with it. If he seeks to beat you, you develop the quiet courage of accepting blows without retaliating. If he doesn’t beat you, fine. If he doesn’t put you in jail, wonderful. Nobody with any sense loves to go to jail. But if he puts you in jail, you go in jail and transform it from a dungeon of shame to a haven of freedom and human dignity. Even if he tries to kill you, you develop the quiet courage of dying if necessary without killing. And there is something powerful about this approach. It weakens the morale of the opponent.”

Dr. King referred to Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett, a segregationist who was speaking in Cambridge the same night Dr. King spoke at Groton: “There’s a man speaking tonight over at the law school of Harvard University who said not too

16 | Quarterly Winter 2013

long ago that God was a charter member of the White Citizens’ Council.” Dr. King also debunked segregationists’ claims of racial superiority and described scurrilous arguments about why standards lag in black communities. “They never say that poverty, ignorance, economic deprivation, and social isolation breed crime, whatever the racial group may be,” he said. “And it is a torturous logic to use the tragic results of segregation as an argument for the continuation of it.”

He spoke at length about love, its various definitions and interpretations, and the need to address wrongs with love, not bitterness. “That is a temptation to those of us who have seen the viciousness of lynching mobs with our own eyes, those of us who have seen police brutality, those of us who have been for years and generations the last hired and the first fired. There is a temptation for us to go into the new age with bitterness in our hearts and with a desire to retaliate. But as I’ve said so

AssoCiATeD Press/Bill HuDson

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roger Daly’s mother spotted him in this photo from selma, Alabama, published in the New York Times on January 28, 1965. Though roger’s face isn’t visible, she recognized her son because he was wearing his favorite plaid jacket. officers arrested roger ’63 and the two other civil rights workers because they argued when asked to leave the area where blacks were waiting to register to vote.

Dr. Crocker’s thank-you note to Dr. King: “i shan’t try to convey how much your visit meant to the school … innumerable misconceptions were cleared up …” he wrote.

often, if we do that the new age which is emerging will be nothing but a duplicate of the old age. And so it is necessary somehow to go in with understanding, loving goodwill in our hearts.”

Dr. King ended his Groton lecture on a hopeful note, one that demonstrated that wisdom and education need not go hand in hand: “And so I close by quoting the words of an old Negro slave preacher, who didn’t quite have his grammar right and his diction, but who uttered some words of ungrammatical profundity. And they were uttered in the form of a prayer: ‘Lord, we ain’t what we want to be. We ain’t what we ought to be. We ain’t what we gonna be. But thank God, we ain’t what we was.’”

Assistant Director of Communications Christopher Temerson assisted with this story.

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February 4, 1963

From 1963 to 1965: roger Daly’s Groton yearbook photo, and his mugshot when arrested in Alabama less than two years later

18 | Quarterly Winter 2013

atmosphere conducive to having white students. So I went into American Studies and took as many Black Studies courses as I could.” His family did not understand. “The idea that I’d go to graduate school in American Studies was unfathomable to them,” he said. “They assumed I would go to law school.”

Dr. King’s Groton lecture had perhaps the most profound effect on Roger Daly ’63, a student who stood out on the football field and fives court, struggled in the classroom, and bristled when students made fun of others, when people judged without information, and when faculty seemed to misuse their authority. For someone with this fine-tuned radar for injustice, Dr. King’s lecture provided hope. “When Martin Luther King was at Groton, I heard for the first time that there was something constructive and loving to do with the hurt and the injustice you felt,” he said. “That’s what hooked me, as well as this powerful black man.”

Inspired by Dr. King; his beloved black nanny, Wissy; and his mother, who always emphasized fairness and the importance of fighting for it, Roger took time off from Dartmouth to volunteer in Alabama. He went as an observer, charged with writing press releases and otherwise informing the media. “I was in a culture so alien to me, and my resources were worthless,” he said.

His first beating came about two weeks after he arrived in Selma, while he was watching a voting rights demonstration from the steps of the Federal Building. Trained to follow Dr. King’s message of nonviolence, not to fight back, he curled into a ball. In court the following week, the man who beat him was convicted and offered ten days in jail or a $10 fine. “I’ll pay your fine,” said a sympathizer in the gallery. He went free, and Roger got a lecture. “Why was a fine, private school, Ivy League young man a perpetrator?” the judged asked him. “You could get hurt here.”

Roger was angry; no longer satisfied to be just an observer, he joined the demonstrators.

A week later, he was arrested and jailed for “resisting arrest” and “willful disobedience of a police officer” while helping with voter registration. He was arrested three more times, for “unlawful assembly” and “parading without a permit” at a protest march; for “trespassing” and “willful disobedience of a police officer” for requesting service with two blacks at Carter’s Drug Store; and the last time with Dr. King, for “parading without a permit.” His mother in New Jersey spotted him in the media twice—once on national television news, being pushed into a sheriff’s car, and another time in a New York Times’ photo, recognizable by his favorite red-and-black wool jacket.

His goal as an activist was “to turn on the lights so the whole nation could see what was going on.” But about ten weeks after Roger arrived in Selma, a local high school boy, feigning interest in the movement, invited him to meet in front of the local library. It was a set-up.

Three men got out of a car and beat him at gunpoint, a beating that unraveled his last knot of courage.

Wracked with guilt, he grabbed his American Tourister briefcase and hopped a bus to Houston, then to Dallas and Denver, wandering in a fog until he finally headed north. He withdrew, wrote poetry, and mulled over the world’s injustices and what he learned in Selma.

At Selma’s Brown Chapel Church, he had heard impassioned words from Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and John Lewis, who tried to assuage his guilt over leaving Selma. While in Selma and afterward, Roger corresponded with Dr. Crocker—letters he still has today. He would work as a cabinetmaker and boatbuilder before finishing at Dartmouth and ultimately becoming a minister. But when he left the South, admittedly “a mess,” Dr. Crocker helped him arrange a speaking tour of New England independent schools. “I was forced to articulate what I had experienced,” he said. “I think Dr. Crocker understood me.” Roger wells up at the thought.

Dr. Crocker also understood the importance of bringing black students to Groton. He understood the importance of taking boys to march with Dr. King in Boston in 1965. And he likely understood the impact a visit to the Circle would have on boys like Roger and Nason and Jamie and others. “I think we can be grateful to Providence that there is a man like him in the United States at the present time,” Dr. Crocker told the audience in the Hall on February 4, 1963. “We’re going to learn much from Dr. King.”

A VISIONARY HEADMASTER

D

r. King was invited to Groton for a simple reason: Headmaster Jack Crocker and his wife Mary were outspoken and visionary. “They were way ahead of their times on the race issue,” said former faculty member Jake Congleton.

From his sermons, Groton students understood the headmaster’s impassioned desire to right the world and build character and morality in his students.

“As for the cause, this was clearly a national issue that was at Groton School because of Mr. Crocker,” said Warren Cook ’63. “The issue was front and center. I remember reading and discussing ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ with Mr. Crocker, and it made a huge impression on me, then and now.”

Warren said he clearly understood civil rights and social justice issues because of his years at Groton and “mostly my time with Jack Crocker. Perhaps he is one of the reasons I have been involved in hate violence prevention here in Maine for the past 20 years.”

Dr. Crocker communicated clearly through both words and actions. His values and priorities were unmistakable. Besides Dr. King’s speech, Warren Motley ’67 remembers vividly a presentation about voting rights in the South by four members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. “In an unprecedented break from what was then very regular protocol, at the end of their talk in the Schoolhouse, Reverend Crocker invited them back to his study in Hundred House and invited us all to come, well after normal lights-out hours, and listen to more of their personal accounts,” Warren Motley said. “It wasn’t cast in any particularly dramatic way; it didn’t need to be. Whether the School’s guests understood it or not, the message couldn’t have been more loudly conveyed that attention should be paid.”

Dr. Crocker had admitted Groton’s first black student in 1952, years before most schools. “You would have thought the world was coming to an end,” said Jake. “Trustees got pressure.

Some of them got cold feet. Jack never batted an eyelash because it was morally correct.” Mary Crocker, a Quaker, was a partner in marriage and ideology. “Mary just said, ‘We do what’s right,’” remembered Jake.

Roger Daly ’63 sought guidance from the headmaster, even after graduating; they corresponded regularly, often discussing Roger’s civil rights work. “He was bold in his expression of kindness and justice and what was good,” Roger said.

Alumni said that Dr. King’s speech at Groton was not particularly controversial, but the headmaster’s decision, two years later, to take students to a civil rights march in Boston was.

Jake can still hear a conflicted Dr. Crocker seeking his advice, which he still refers to as “the greatest compliment I’ve ever gotten.”

“I was totally 100 percent in favor of the civil rights movement,” Jake said, “yet there were faculty who thought the School shouldn’t be getting involved in this.” Rebellion, he added, was loosening your tie an inch until someone told you to tighten it up. In the end, Jake estimates that 75 to 100 students marched. “He would not allow Lower Schoolers to go unless they had parental permission,” Jake said. “He thought they were too young to make that decision.”

Several alumni remembered that march, and tied it to other outreach efforts that followed Dr. Crocker’s tenure, such a tutoring program in Roxbury and longtime English teacher Frank White ’51’s founding of the Upward Bound program, which helped prepare low-income students for college.

Above: Jack and Mary Crocker; the headmaster allowed dozens of Groton boys to attend a civil rights march in Boston in 1965. His lessons about justice and civil rights lingered after he stepped down as headmaster—for example, through a Groton tutoring program (below) in the roxbury neighborhood of Boston.

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don’t recall the content of the main speech itself, but I do recall Dr. King being at Groton and remember him and Jack Crocker, the headmaster’s dogs in tow, taking a walk to the river in the afternoon. …

My most serious memory of Groton’s relationship to the outside civil rights movement is another speech in the Schoolhouse Hall during which somebody from, I believe, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) lambasted Southern prejudice and provincialism. Charlie Sheerin [’44], very liberal but also very loyal to Virginia, took that speaker on so emotionally that Jack Crocker felt he had to gently prod him to stop in front of a large portion of the School community. Charlie’s main substantive point, not widely adhered to among self-congratulatory Northeastern liberals then, was that the South had a very complex relationship with the race issue, but would successfully integrate and move beyond historic prejudice and segregation long before the North. Of course, as it turned out, Charlie was right. Jack Crocker and Groton contributed significantly to the civil rights movement in those days, mostly by integrating Groton itself in a variety of constructive ways, but, as with any reform movement, the effort was not unaccompanied by naiveté, patronization, and false steps.”

—Douglas Hallett ’67

Douglas Hallett

20 | Quarterly Winter 2013

Former faculty member Jake Congleton remembers the headmaster seeking his advice on whether to take Groton boys to this April 1965 march in Boston. Many alumni have vivid memories of the experience.

Shaw McDermott ’67 spent college summers working for Upward Bound. At Groton, Dr. King’s speech made an impact: he went on the civil rights march and participated in the tutoring program in Roxbury, where he worked with the same student for two years.

“I remember thinking, this boy has a lot of potential, but he’s kind of slipping through my fingers because the street was grabbing him,” Shaw said. “I remember going to his parents’ house and talking to his parents; they were a family of former sharecroppers from South Carolina.”

Years later, Shaw was appointed to represent a defendant in a heroin case. As he delved into the man’s family background, he recognized a familiar name and asked the defendant if he was related to the boy he once tutored. “That’s my nephew,” the accused replied. “He is the first member of our entire family to ever attend college. He is the pride and joy of our whole family.” Shaw will never know if the tutoring program made a difference, but that program, like the invitation to Dr. King, reflected the School’s moral mission, put in place by headmasters determined take on society’s injustices.

CONFRONTING A CLOSED SOCIETY

Y

ou’re blacker than any of them!” A man, red-faced with anger, had jumped out from the barbershop on Courthouse Square in Canton, Mississippi, and planted himself, menacingly, on the sidewalk in front of an obviously Caucasian Bill Forsyth ’62, who was with two older black women from the farm country north of Canton. Bill was dumbfounded by what was intended as an insult and couldn’t think of anything to say, so he just stared at the man, who stood there for a long ten seconds or so then slunk back to the barbershop.

Bill had signed up for Freedom Summer, during which volunteers, mostly Northern college students, went to Mississippi to help register blacks to vote, to help black communities organize politically, and to teach in “Freedom Schools,” supplementing the abysmal education available to black students. Bill said that voter registration was challenging because many potential registrants were not well educated, and the local registrars used every conceivable excuse, or sometimes none at all, to avoid registering black citizens. They made the most of a Mississippi law that required potential registrants to pass a writing test, which required interpretation of a provision of the Mississippi Constitution chosen by the registrar.

When Bill and the black citizens approached the courthouse that day in August 1964, the registrar saw them coming and abruptly closed early for lunch. Bill and the two black women went to a corner store to buy soft drinks while they waited for the registrar to reopen.

Sitting on the curb near the courthouse with his Coke between his feet, Bill heard a sheriff’s car screech around the corner. It slammed to a stop in front of him. As Bill rose to his feet to get the ID the sheriff’s deputy demanded, he was promptly arrested for “littering” (the Coke was, after all, on the ground). He spent the night in jail, where officials had his hair—too long by their standards—cut off. “It was a memorable night,” Bill said.

In jail, Bill was assigned to the white section. But in the hospital, after a car accident early in 1965, staff weren’t sure how to categorize him. “They couldn’t figure out whether to put me in the black or white ward,” he said. “They found an in-between room, at the very end of one of the wings. I had more nurses than you could imagine; the white nursing staff all wanted to get a glimpse of one of these crazy people in captivity.”

Since he was on crutches after the accident, Bill was sent up North to raise money for the civil rights movement. He returned to Groton and lectured in the Hall, followed by a long session in the Headmaster’s study, surprised to find he was recognized as a civil rights authority, fielding “genuine questions from some of the masters who had been my teachers a few years earlier.”

Bill Forsyth ’62

“i had more nurses than you could imagine; the white nursing staff all wanted to get a glimpse of one of these crazy people in captivity.”

“

At Groton, of All Places

I

was either a Second or Third Former and just about as sheltered a white kid from the suburbs as it was possible to be. And Groton was the whole world for the most part. If it didn’t happen inside the walls of the campus, it didn’t happen.

Of course, I don’t remember Dr. King’s words from that talk at all; I wince and hope we had the sense to listen and show some respect. I do remember that Mr. Crocker, and a number of the faculty—Jake Congleton sticks in my mind—made a real point of King’s visit and his message. On some level they cut through the fog around our Third Form heads—we knew this was important. Years later, when civil rights and Vietnam became

commingled as the great issues of our generation, there was an odd familiarity to the news clips of Dr. King’s great speeches and rallies. Oh, right—we actually saw and heard this guy once upon a time; and at Groton of all the unlikely places.

The busing march in Boston is a much more complete memory—probably because it was something intentional on our parts, involving action, and most importantly, something that got us sprung from Groton and into the city itself. We did know why we were there (again thanks to Jake, Junie, and some others on the faculty). Intellectually at least, we knew it was the right thing to do, although who knows where we would have continued on next page

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Police in Canton, Mississippi, arresting Bill Forsyth ’62 in August 1965: he was picketing in support of a boycott of white-owned stores that would not hire blacks or address them politely. Bill volunteered during Freedom summer 1964, then spent nearly a year working for the Congress of racial equality (Core) in Mississippi.

Bill graduated from Groton a year before Martin Luther King, Jr., came to campus. But he was at the March on Washington in August 1963, where Dr. King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. After he signed up for Freedom Summer in winter 1964, he was trained in Ohio for what he was to encounter in Mississippi. “We were going to save the world,” Bill said. “I’m only slightly exaggerating. Looking back on it, it must have been infuriating for the veterans who came up to train us to encounter this group of very idealistic but I’m sure arrogant-appearing college students.”

Bill spent August 1964 in Mississippi, then took a leave from Princeton so he could remain in the South for the 196465 school year. He refers to it as his year abroad. “Mississippi at the time was an incredibly repressive, violent, racist society,” he said. “In another respect, in the black community where we lived and worked, it was an amazingly embracing experience. They were incredibly receptive, for the most part, and grateful and hospitable. I had to stuff myself with four separate Christmas dinners that December to avoid offending some of the people with whom I worked closely.”

Bill was driven to make a difference by his family ethos, which he says Groton reinforced. “I was raised in a very oldfashioned family in New York,” he said. “We were raised to do the right thing, no matter what the cost.”

The human cost was high, both to the volunteers and to the black citizens of the state, and, in the end, the number of black voters registered during Freedom Summer was low. In addition, the failure of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to win the right to represent the state at the Democratic convention in Atlantic City in August 1964 was a major blow. Bill was still in Mississippi, however, when the 1965 Voting Rights Act passed Congress. “The very first registrars sent to the South were sent to Madison County, Mississippi,” he said.

“The lines went around the block, day after day after day. It was really an astonishing sight.”

After he left Mississippi, Bill saw the civil rights movement splinter under the pressure, and it appeared disorganized and unsuccessful. Only years later did his assessment evolve.

“Our mission was to break the back of this totalitarian regime, which is what it was,” he said.

“The specific projects on which we worked often seemed like failures, but in retrospect, they certainly contributed to change in the toughest state in the South, so I think it was a success.”

At Groton, of All Places continued from previous page come down if Groton was a public school in Southie and it was we who were to be bused to Roxbury. But march we did—more than slightly embarrassed in our little coats and ties, behind the Groton School banner grabbed from the locker of equipment for the Memorial Day parade in Groton village.

Much later came the realization that participating in the march in Boston was very new territory for Groton and that the faculty were not sure how the day would go, and what blowback they might face from parents and alums. Adults could experience uncertainty! This put us all in the same boat in a way that had never happened to our class before. There was a briefing before we left in which the faculty explained the issues and events of the day almost as adult to adult. In that sense we probably gained as much in our educations as we were able to give in support of the movement to integrate the school system in Boston.”

—Richard Minturn ’67

22 | Quarterly Winter 2013

richard Minturn

PRIMARY SOURCES: THE ULTIMATE FIFTH GRADE PAPER

R

Few students could present a paper on Dr. King accompanied by flyers lifted directly from the streets of Montgomery, Alabama.

MPi/ArCHiVe PHoTos/GeTTy iMAGes

epresentative Bobby Scott ’65 was a fifth grader in Newport News, Virginia, when he was told to write a report on Martin Luther King, Jr. Little did he realize the extraordinary help he would receive on the assignment.

After school, he stopped to visit his grandmother, as he often did. She recently had taken a hostess job at the Hampton Institute (now Hampton University), replacing a woman who was leaving town.

“I remember specifically telling my grandmother I had to go home because I had to write a report about Martin Luther King,” Bobby said. “She told me, ‘This lady might know a little bit about Martin Luther King,’” referring to the person who previously held her job.

Bobby listened as his grandmother said, “Why don’t you ask Mrs. Parks?”

Rosa Parks contributed not only insight and personal information to the fifth grade report, but also important pieces of civil rights history. Few students could present a paper on Dr. King accompanied by flyers lifted directly from the streets of Montgomery, Alabama. “She loaned me some things, like the demands of the black community before the Montgomery bus boycott,” he said.

Mrs. Parks soon moved to Detroit, but not before she made an impression on a boy who was to meet Dr. King twice, once in Virginia and once at Groton.

Bobby’s father was on the local school board and because many Virginia schools were closing rather than following the integration demanded by the Brown v. Board of Education decision, he assumed the Newport News schools would close as well. “The Norfolk schools had closed the year before,” Bobby said. “The expectation was that our schools would close too, so my family looked for other opportunities.” Friends had explored New England boarding schools, and Bobby’s family did the same. He was

rosa Parks and Bobby scott ’65: Grandmother advised him, “This lady might know a little bit about Martin luther King.”

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February 4, 1963

50th Anniversary Commemoration

When Martin Luther King Spoke at Groton School

k

January 21, 2013, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.

Campbell Performing Arts Center Panel discussion: “Groton and the Civil Rights Era” featuring Bill Forsyth ’62 Freedom Summer, Congress of Racial Equality, Mississippi 1964-65

Jamie Blaine ’63, P’95, ’03 Senior Prefect

Roger Daly ’63, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Alabama 1965

accepted by the Admission Office and, overall, felt accepted by his peers. “Groton was a lot more open than a lot of situations you might have been in,” he recalled. “I don’t remember any incident where there was any suggestion that I was not accepted.

Every now and then you might run across something, something might slip out, but people at Groton were just better than that.”

White alumni also described an atmosphere of acceptance, but also the occasional racist remark. One remembers getting a sharp hit on the shoulder from a friend, who admonished, “Bobby Scott’s right there.”

Bobby, however, was keenly aware of what black students were enduring at newly integrated public high schools back home in Virginia. “My younger brother and sister went to public schools after they had integrated locally,” he said. “They had some friends. There were many uncomfortable moments.”

Because his father was a local leader, Bobby had heard Dr. King speak before Groton, at an event in Newport News. “I remember attending not only the speech he gave but the little dinner he had for community leaders,” Bobby said. The only black student in the Fourth Form when Dr. King spoke on the Circle, Bobby says he was particularly influenced by King’s message about changing the system through the political process. Indeed, Dr. King told his Groton audience, “… And so we must continue to work vigorously and unrelentingly for first-class citizenship. We must work through legislation. We must work through extending and increasing the number of registered voters so that we can liberalize the political climate. We must continue to work through the courts, as we have done over the last several years.”

Though he didn’t consider running for political office until after law school, U.S. Congressman Bobby Scott carried Dr. King’s message with him—“that change could be made within the system, that the political ballot is an essential tool.”

HulTon ArCHiVe/GeTTy iMAGes

Jake Congleton P’77, ’93, GP’03, Former faculty and civil rights activist

RSVP: receptions@groton.org or 800-396-6866

The 1963 March on washington

24 | Quarterly Winter 2013

PARENTS WEEKEND

372 students • 600 parents • 2,351 conferences.

From October 19-21, Groton parents traveled from all over the United States and the world to reunite with their children, meet with teachers and advisors, and celebrate Parents Weekend. They watched Groton teams compete; saw a preview of The Crucible, the fall theater production; and attended a concert featuring Groton’s musical ensembles.

Headmaster Rick Commons, whose well-crafted and superbly delivered speeches have become a hallmark of his tenure, presented the following, his final Parents Weekend address.

Photos by Ellen Harasimowicz

I

n September, Lindsay and I decided that it was time for our five-year-old, Matthew, to start playing soccer. He hasn’t shown much interest in sports, but he’s an active boy who likes to run pell-mell and bounce on the bed and wrestle and tickle and roll down hills. Lindsay and I both played a lot of sports growing up. She had a much more storied career, culminating in Division I college volleyball, but soccer was my game.

I played until my knee wouldn’t let me anymore, and I coached soccer at all the schools where I worked before Groton. “He could be quite an athlete,” I’ve heard myself say more than once about Matthew, before catching my tongue and adding, “or maybe he’ll prefer drama or chess, which would be just fine by me.” And it would be, but I’ll admit: I like the idea that he might play a little soccer along the way.

Early in September, Lindsay took him out to get the proper jersey, cleats, shin guards, his very own kid-sized soccer ball, a water bottle, and one of those chic little backpacks which doesn’t look like it could hold an extra t-shirt but which all true soccer players have to carry to practice. Matthew greeted me in full uniform when I came home that evening. I was stunned—you know those moments when your child suddenly seems three years older than the last time you saw him? It was the shin guards more than anything else. When did he get big enough to wear shin guards? We went outside and kicked the ball back and forth until dinnertime.

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Parents Weekend

The idea that learning to swim is more about him and soccer might be more about me was probably a little advanced, but I think it’s an important line for me to watch . . .

Director of Instrumental Music MaryAnn Lanier speaks at the international parents’ luncheon.

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At soccer practice the next day, however, he just stood on the sideline, hanging on to Lindsay’s sweater sleeve, refusing to join in with the other 39 kids doing exactly what he and I had done here on the Circle the evening before. He clung to his mother for the entire hour, leading us to a series of late-night strategic planning sessions on how to get our perfectly healthy boy to step onto the soccer field.

The following week, I was the one to take Matthew to practice, on the theory that a little father-son bonding would do the trick. He and I spent a glorious September afternoon going through what I will call the five stages of soccer practice: Basic Encouragement: “Go ahead! Show the coach how well you kick!”

Generalized Threat: “If you don’t try new things, you’ll never have any fun.”

Targeted Threat: “OK. We’re going to have to return the shin guards … and the backpack.”

Unlawful Bribery: “Listen, buddy, how badly do you want a BB gun?” Matthew turns out to be remarkably bribe-resistant, which is lucky for his little sister—the target of all projectiles.

The Conversation in the Car: (This takes place through the rear view mirror, because, despite the shin guards, he’s still too small for the front seat.)

“Can you tell me why you won’t play with the other kids?”

“Because I’m shy,” he says.

“You know, shy rhymes with try.”

“Yes I know,” he replies without missing a beat, “but shy also rhymes with bye-bye, which is what I wanted to do the whole time.”

No parenting book prepares you for the five stages of soccer practice. I’m on my own here. So I decide to take a completely different tack: “Matthew, there are some things that you’re going to have to do even if you don’t want to, because they keep you safe—learning to swim, holding my hand in the parking lot, that kind of thing. You understand, right?” He nods into the rear view mirror. “There are other things I want you to do because I think they’re fun. Soccer is one of those. I like soccer, but if you decide that you don’t, then I won’t make you play, because soccer is not about safety.

You know what I mean?”

He nods again, and for the first time all afternoon I feel like a good parent. Until I repeat this conversation to Lindsay, who has two words for me: “He’s FIVE.” She tells me I’m treating him like a Fourth Former. To prove her point, she asks him about soccer practice before bed, and he pipes up: “Daddy says I don’t have to play soccer because it isn’t safe, like swimming.”

While Matthew may not have completely followed my point about swimming lessons and soccer practice, I think he does know already that part of what I want for him, for better and for worse, is achievement—something for him, and for me, to be proud of.

The idea that learning to swim is more about him and soccer might be more about me was probably a little advanced, but I think it’s an important line for me to watch, so that when he’s old enough to sit in the front seat, and eventually to drive the car, I’m able to talk with him openly about the achievement I am so eager to see and how much of it might actually be about me. * * * Allow me another anecdote, this one about your kids, not mine. Earlier this fall, we had a Groton graduate come and give a lecture about her career as a political commentator.

Her name is Kara Miller, and she hosts a program on NPR. We told her that most of the students had read Outliers over the summer and that we were engaged in lots of community discussion about success and what factors contribute to it. So, as an opener, she related a story about her own days at Groton, saying that the typical equation between success and where one goes to college now seemed to her to be quite misguided. She said that she chose Yale over Wellesley for the simple reason that it was higher in the U.S. News rankings, and she wished in retrospect that she had chosen Wellesley.

This was a two-minute opener to an excellent half-hour talk on a range of worthwhile topics—why her interest in politics turned toward journalism rather than public office, how one might try to predict the outcome of the presidential election, and why she thinks radio is a more honest but less powerful medium than TV. When she finished and welcomed questions, a number of hands went up, a sure sign that the talk had been well received. She was asked about a dozen questions before we ran out of time, and I think nine of them were about Yale and Wellesley.

Again, this bit was an opener to her talk—a way to relate to the audience, a gesture toward what they read over the summer, not what she came to talk about. Nobody in the audience thought she had come to discuss her college choice or even the college process.

That didn’t mean that it was out of bounds for questions, and I wasn’t surprised when the Quarterly Winter 2013

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Parents Weekend

first question focused on it. Nor was I surprised when the second question echoed the first.

But when the third question was, “What was it about Yale that you didn’t like?” I felt a pang of concern.

Not concern for the speaker. She handled the repetition gracefully and candidly, answering each question as if it were new, saying that she thought Yale was too big and urban for her, and then explaining that she had meant that anecdote to be a lead-in to a larger theme about how one’s perspective on success changes over time.

The fourth question made me breathe easier: “Who is the most interesting person you have interviewed?” She answered by saying she might be crazy, but she’d rather interview White House Correspondent Chuck Todd than Patriots QB Tom Brady, which got a laugh.

We’re back on track, I thought. She pointed to a hand up in the balcony. The question floated down: “How do you think people should evaluate colleges if not by public rankings and reputation?”

I became a bit embarrassed at that point. But looking back, I shouldn’t have been. This is a critical question, and Groton students know that going to a college that has a strong reputation—a high ranking in the cultural dialogue that surrounds us—is an achievement their parents and the School really want for them. Still, we avoid talking candidly about the reasons why we want it, some of which are easily defensible and some of which are not.

Heads of school often preach that our sole aim is for students to be headed to colleges that “fit”; I’m sure the parents of Fifth Formers heard a great deal about “fit” during the college program yesterday morning. I give regular sermonettes about this to parents who might be blinded by reputation, and I do believe that “fit” should be the driver of college comparisons. Yet I know very well that prospective families, current parents, loyal alumni, Forbes magazine, and college admission offices themselves are counting up the number of selective schools on our final college list, and so, against my purer instincts, that metric matters to me too.

The fact that students didn’t ask a political commentator more questions about the presidential election than about her college choice reflects that our students, your children, need and want to talk about this achievement expectation that is placed upon them by their parents and their school. It’s a big deal to them, and the main reason that it’s such a big deal is that they know it’s a big deal to us.

Let me try this out on you: if you had the power to determine the outcome of the upcoming presidential election or the outcome of your child’s college process, which would you choose? I don’t mean this question as an implied indictment. I can tell you for certain

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that, 45 minutes into soccer practice, I would have traded in the prospect of world peace to have my son step on that field. But when our children know that we have moments when nothing matters to us more than their achievements, can we blame them for focusing on college admission more than the presidential election? And shouldn’t we try to talk to them candidly about why their college outcomes mean so much to us?

To begin with, I think we just have to confess that our reasons for wanting our children to achieve in this way are not wholly rational. The current parenting book on my nightstand is called The Parents We Mean to Be, by Richard Weissbourd, who says that parents should: “… stop finessing and talk far more honestly with children about their own feelings about achievement … [We] may be underestimating what a relief it would be to [our] children—and how much it would do to alleviate [their] shame, support their maturity, and secure their respect and trust—if [we] stopped bobbing and weaving and surfaced these feelings, including the irrational ones.”

He goes on to offer the following suggestion: “Parents might tell their own stories about the positive and negative ways in which achievement was handled in their families of origin.

These narratives help children not only understand and trust their parents more fully, but can help children spot irrational forms of achievement pressure and … help [them] puzzle through how they want to be the same or different from their parents.” (p. 78) Now there’s a novel idea. You mean my son might not want to be a soccer player? Might prefer Angry Birds to Harry Potter? Might not be a fit for a school like Groton? Of course this is all OK in theory, but who raises kids in theory? I know, deep down, that it will be tough for me if my children don’t like school as much as I do, and I hope I have the courage, when they’re old enough, to help them puzzle through how they might want to be different not only from me but from the high-achieving students I work with every day.

If you had the power to determine the outcome of the presidential election or the outcome of your child’s college process, which would you choose?

* * * Back to those high-achievers—your children: at the risk of stating the obvious, in addition to getting good at talking with them candidly about what we want for them and why, I think it’s critical to talk about why they are motivated to achieve. If the answer that your child gives to that question, when it is asked seriously and at a good time for talking, is “to get into a good college” or “to get a good job” or “to drive a BMW,” I submit that the subject needs some serious attention. Ditto if the answer is “I don’t know,” which I suspect

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Parents Weekend

Hera Lee P’13, ‘15 with Lindsay Commons and daughter

I was waiting for someone to note that the students in the room were quite obviously driven also by a desire to serve people who have so much less than we do.

Sixth Form Parents Adam Cohen, Maureen Bousa, Mary Elizabeth Bunzel, Kate Cohen, and Jane Santinelli

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it is for a number of the super-bright, wonderfully articulate, hard-working students at Groton.

On October 10 there was a gathering in the Headmaster’s House of students who had participated in global service projects over the summer—those in Tanzania, Uganda, and Peru. The date was chosen because it was the eve of the first annual International Day of the Girl, so named by a resolution of the U.N. General Assembly. An inspiring presentation about a new girls’ school in Rwanda led to an interesting discussion about drive.

The students agreed that what drives the girls in the Rwandan school is that education is the only way to save themselves and their families from extreme poverty. “What drives us at Groton?” someone asked. “Ivy League colleges,” someone else said, and the group nodded sadly. I was waiting for someone to note that the students in the room were quite obviously driven also by a desire to serve people who have so much less than we do, by a desire to understand the world’s problems firsthand, by a desire to build bridges across borders and cultures. The discussion moved on without anyone noting that irony, and not one of the students in the room volunteered a better answer than “Ivy League colleges.” I didn’t want to kill the conversation with another sermonette, so I too kept silent.

One of the college admission officers who came here yesterday to speak with Fifth Form parents gave the advice that parents should choose just one night a week to talk about college with their kids. I recognize that many of you have entrusted the nightly conversations with your children to Groton faculty, but the point was that during the college process parents should not let college dominate every discussion with their children.

Good advice.

But I think we should approach this from another angle. I suggest that parents balance every conversation about college with a conversation about motivation, about mission. We need to help them learn to speak with conviction about why they attend a school that asks them to study so hard, to turn over so much of their time and talent to the pursuit of achievement. The answer should evolve and change over time, but the word “college” should be off limits in the conversation.

If you find me a bit idealistic, impractical, or out of touch in suggesting that you talk with your child about his or her mission, I urge you to check out the short film running upstairs in the third floor lounge about the Iris Fistula Project. I warn you ahead of time, it might make you cry. I saw it that night in the house, on the eve of the International Day of the Girl, and I definitely needed my hanky.

As described in your Parents Weekend program, the film features Ethiopian women

who suffered from this devastating childbirth injury, were given the gift of restorative surgery, and are now successfully combating the problem in their communities. The film was made as part of a project that two Groton Fifth Formers undertook last summer, traveling to Ethiopia and raising $5,000 to sponsor 10 women who needed treatment for obstetric fistula.

The Groton students, KT Choi and Ade Osinubi, have created a website devoted to their work, and here’s what’s on the homepage: “Welcome to the home of the Iris Fistula Project … We believe that no woman should have to suffer because of the most natural process in the world—childbirth … Our mission is to start a campaign to end fistula and support the women plagued with it.”

There’s the word—mission. On the “About Us” page, KT and Ade write, “Our dream is to make a difference in maternal health. Our inspiration is the iris flower, which represents rebirth and renewal. Our aspiration is to be medical doctors and philanthropists.”

Wow. My point is this: If we’re going to spend one night a week talking about college, shouldn’t we spend another on dreams, inspirations, and aspirations? What’s your child’s mission? Let it be lofty, let it be idealistic, let it be unrealistic, but let’s agree not to let it be “an Ivy League college.” * * * I should conclude so that we can go outside on this glorious day and cheer them on.

This is my 10th Parents Weekend talk at Groton, and my last. It’s a tradition I inherited and have tried to honor, but, honestly, it always feels presumptuous—standing up here, telling a group of devoted, thoughtful, and loving parents who have raised truly remarkable children how you might do your jobs better.

There are a few of you out there who have endured many, perhaps even all ten, of my Parents Weekend Presumptions. I often think that one of you should be at this podium, or perhaps all of you, one by one, and I should be your attentive audience, listening to your sage advice on how to do my job better. I’d enjoy that, and I know I’d learn a great deal.

Quite apart from this annual exercise and what we might learn from each other, while I have the chance, I want to conclude with this: working with and for your children— helping to prepare them to do something meaningful with their tremendous gifts—has been the mission, the inspiration, and the dream of my teaching life.

Thank you for the privilege, and for your trust.

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Per Circulum Locuti Sunt | Voices on the Circle

Divine

Julia Alling

Fire

Theodore Leonhardt ’11 and Kenneth Ballato, Jr. ’11

A Chapel Talk

by Theodore Leonhardt ’11 and Kenneth Ballato, Jr. ’11 October 8, 2012

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I

t is wonderful to return to the Circle, and a true honor to speak from this pulpit, on the occasion of the School birthday. We would like to thank Mr. Commons for the invitation to speak today, and the whole Groton community for welcoming us back to the Circle.

At Groton, we are privileged to walk the campus each day knowing that we attend a famous School with a long history and numerous notable alumni. The letters from presidents in the Schoolhouse hallway and the names on the walls of the Schoolroom remind us that as Grotonians, we are a part of a long tradition centered on the School motto: cui servire est regnare.

From the beginning of the Franklin Roosevelt administration through the Nixon administration, Grotonians populated the highest reaches of government to a disproportionate degree. Groton was so ubiquitous in the State Department that the Groton-educated diplomat became something of a cliché. For example, in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1934 novel, Tender is the Night, the protagonist enters the American consulate in Rome where “from above and behind the porter floated down a weary Groton voice.” Indeed, the list of notable Groton graduates who served in the United States government reads like the cast of the drama of the rise of America in the 20th century. A brief list would include Attorney General Francis Biddle, Governor of New York and Ambassador to the Soviet Union Averell Harriman, Secretary of State Dean Acheson, Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon, and, of course, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Grotonians served in many capacities: they were adventurous CIA operatives, tactful diplomats, and clever elected politicians.

As we examined the careers of individual Grotonians through our tutorial in Sixth Form, our appreciation for Groton’s role grew more profound. We began to fix our study on a deeper question: how did a single school shape a leadership class that, in turn, shaped a nation?

1

Peter Collier with David Horowitz, The Roosevelts: An American Saga

Peabody adapted the British system to the United States by emphasizing four traits that he felt were necessary for future leaders: patriotism, a commitment to public service, energy, and tenacity.

Ted Leonhardt ’11 with his family on Prize Day

Julia Alling

Answering this question began with understanding both Groton School and the students who attended it. While at Groton, the men who went on to great careers in public service were not unlike the Groton students of today. They were talented and hard-working, but they also had their share of challenges, shortcomings, and embarrassing moments. Future Secretary of the Army Stanley Resor took such little interest in his studies at Groton that the Form of 1935 yearbook sarcastically noted, “We are informed on good authority that Resor read a book before the year was out.” National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy did not write an essay about the first Duke of Marlborough and pretended to read his paper to the class, improvising sentences and holding several blanks sheets of paper that looked like an essay. Foreshadowing their careers in the CIA, Richard Bissell stole his opponents’ plans before a debate, and the cavalier Tracy Barnes was punished for literally walking on thin ice. All the while, Secretary of State Dean Acheson narrowly avoided expulsion and graduated second to last in his class with a 68 average.

The prominent Grotonians were not always perfect students. But beginning at Groton and continuing through their long careers, we observed in each man an energetic optimism, a sense that through tenacity and tact they could positively affect the world. These men pursued their careers in the service of the nation emboldened by a “Divine Fire” that seemed to be burning in their breasts. A woman named Fanny Smith first used that phrase to describe young Theodore Roosevelt and his family as “so rarely gifted that it seemed touched with the flame of ‘divine fire.’” 1 If Theodore Roosevelt personified this burning drive for a better nation and world, then Groton School soon became the caretaker and progenitor of his flame. For generations of Groton students, [School founder] Endicott Peabody acted as Prometheus, the ancient Greek mythological figure who stole fire from the gods and passed it on to mankind.

Peabody’s conception of Groton arose largely from his own experiences. He attended an English boarding school, Cheltenham College, before studying at Cambridge

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Mike Sperling

Per Circulum Locuti Sunt | Voices on the Circle University. England’s ancient public schools and universities self-consciously nurtured Britain’s hereditary ruling class. Peabody adapted the British system to the United States by emphasizing four traits that he felt were necessary for future leaders: patriotism, a commitment to public service, energy, and tenacity. He placed on a pedestal his good friend Theodore Roosevelt, who shared his notions of civic duty and vision for the vigorous life. Roosevelt spoke frequently at the School in its early days, and generations of Roosevelts walked the Circle as students. The connection between the Roosevelts and Groton continued even after Archibald Roosevelt was expelled during his father’s presidency for writing a letter in which he referred to Groton as “the old Christ factory.”2 Theodore Roosevelt’s rise coincided with the ascent of the School’s reputation, and his visits to Groton as president amplified the School’s prestige.

Channeling Roosevelt, Peabody preached patriotism from his pulpit here in St. John’s Chapel. During World War I, boys participated in compulsory military drills and grew wheat on the Circle. Many graduates, at Peabody’s encouragement, enlisted in foreign military services even before the United States entered the Great War. Theodore Roosevelt’s son, Quentin, was killed in action while flying fighter planes over France.

Today, monuments to youthful sacrifice, like the window behind you [in the Chapel], continue to commemorate this era of service. Nearly all of the men who went on to major public careers served in the military in some capacity during one of the World Wars. Certainly, the martial atmosphere of Peabody’s Groton promoted the patriotism of men who would devote their careers to the United States.

Peabody’s service culture was not hollow pomp and preaching. Groton was a decidedly harsh place, epitomized by its mandatory cold showers. Many Grotonians who achieved success in their careers later admitted that they were unhappy at the School.

However, Groton graduates set aside their memories of challenges at Groton in recognition of the School’s influence on their character and success. Dean Acheson barely addressed Groton in his extensive memoirs, saying only that before entering Yale, “the past six years had been unhappy ones.” 3 That did not stop him from sending his son to be educated by Peabody. Francis Biddle said of his Groton days, “I suffered too much from my inadequacy as a Groton boy. … I compromised, I yielded; I was less obstinate and less courageous.” 4 But nobody would have questioned Biddle’s courage as attorney general during World War II or as the American representative at the haunting Nuremburg trials. Though disappointed by his failure to become senior prefect, Franklin Roosevelt declared, “As long as I live, the influence of Dr. and Mrs. Peabody means and will mean more to me that that of any other people next to my father and mother.”5 Franklin Roosevelt and Peabody corresponded regularly until the Rector’s death. Dr. Peabody even officiated at Roosevelt’s wedding and delayed the proceedings by chatting at length with the groom.

Peabody envisioned a school that provided ample time for extracurricular activities, especially athletics. It was not uncommon for a boy to hold between five and 10 leadership positions on sports teams and clubs simultaneously. Competition for leadership slots was fierce. This competitive drive, coupled with the energy required to pursue so many interests, foreshadowed the vigor with which Groton-educated officials attacked public policy problems. George W. Martin, chairman of the Groton Alumni Association, wrote that Groton students “learned determination … to be unafraid; and these attributes carried some to honor and glory.” 6 While peer institutions may have benefitted from similar resources and students, the Groton experience was unique in its intensity and capacity to spur students to action. Insurance executive and Connecticut

2

Dean Acheson, Morning and Noon

4

Francis Biddle, A Casual Past

5

Ted Morgan, FDR: A Biography

6

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Peter Collier with David Horowitz, The Roosevelts: An American Saga

3

Views from the Circle

Divine Fire politician John Alsop articulated this most explicitly when he wrote that “Groton was indeed a competitive place. … For this is a competitive world, and it is helpful … in the formative years to be trained to extend ourselves to the utmost.” 7 The School became the training ground for the men who would comprise the nation’s leadership class.

Upon leaving the Circle, graduates were not merely talented men who had happened to attend Groton; these were Grotonians who shared a set of ideas, values, and goals.

Kenneth Ballato ’11 delivered the first half of the Chapel Talk, and Theodore Leonhardt ’11 the second half, beginning here.

The Grotonians in the CIA were known as the “Bold Easterners” for their audacious plans.

W

hen asked why he had wanted to join the Central Intelligence Agency, future CIA Director of Plans Richard Bissell responded that he felt the men there were “doers.” The same could be said for most Groton graduates. That spirit of action arose directly out of Peabody’s educational vision and the characteristics it fostered, namely creativity, confidence, a willingness to take risks, and an understanding of a greater purpose in the service of the United States.

Grotonians were naturally independent and individualistic men who favored decisive action through outside channels. They were not afraid to act unconventionally in both their public and private lives. Bissell sailed dangerously far off the coast of Maine and climbed hazardous mountains and cliffs. On one climb, he fell 50 feet and broke his collarbone. After his recovery, he secretly returned to the site of his fall and summited the cliff.

Joseph Grew was a respected diplomat who served as undersecretary of state, ambassador to Turkey, and ambassador to Japan. In this last post, he was interned in the embassy for several months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Grew owed his start in the Foreign Service to his sense of adventure. On a hunting trip in China after college, Grew killed a tiger while it leapt over him as he lay on his back in a dark cave. Word of the feat spread to President Theodore Roosevelt, who offered Grew a diplomatic post. In later years when he administered the Foreign Service entrance examination, Grew would tell applicants that they only had to pass a test to gain an appointment; he had needed to kill a tiger. To more conservative contemporaries, this behavior must have seemed eccentric and reckless. But the willingness to face obstacles and take risks alone, outside of societal norms and organizations, rendered Grotonians unique.

This creative spirit positioned Grotonians to be the modernizers of America. They shaped the dominant institutions of the 20th- and 21st-century American power structure. Diplomat and lawyer George Rublee, Groton’s first graduate, was one of the inventors of the modern Washington power law firm that takes an active role in public affairs.

With Dean Acheson, he established the notion of the “revolving door” for smooth transitions between the public and private sectors. Joseph Grew pioneered the professionalization of the Foreign Service. Though he first entered diplomacy in part through the influence of family friends, Grew, the nation’s first career diplomat, became a major advocate for entrance examinations and an opponent of the spoils system of appointments. Along with Walter Lippmann and others, brothers Joseph and Stewart Alsop advanced the role and influence of the modern newspaper columnist. Finally, Richard Bissell oversaw the development of high-altitude reconnaissance airplanes and, in doing so, created a major new factor in post-World War II strategic defense.

Aggressive policymaking was another product of the confidence and resourcefulness that defined Grotonians. Franklin Roosevelt’s famous optimism was rooted in his own belief in his ability to solve problems. Acheson and Harriman favored bold action as they rebuilt Europe and contained Communism. CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt, a grandson of Theodore Roosevelt, had the audacity to engineer the successful 1953 coup in Iran,

7

Views from the Circle

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Per Circulum Locuti Sunt | Voices on the Circle even after others in the CIA gave up on the mission. Kermit Roosevelt remained calm under deep cover. He played tennis with the leaders he was attempting to overthrow and snuck into the royal palace by hiding under a blanket on the floor of a car. Such aplomb enabled Groton graduates to be decisive in times of crisis and, therefore, lead effectively. These men had reason to be confident; they were indeed very capable.

Confidence also explains one recurring weakness of Grotonians: a tendency toward excess aggression. The Grotonians in the CIA were known as the “Bold Easterners” for their audacious plans. When their assertive style famously backfired during the Bay of Pigs invasion, a more cautious group of officials, the so-called “Prudent Professionals,” replaced them. Nor were other Groton graduates immune to overextension. For example, Dean Acheson called for the strategic William Bundy ’35 McGeorge Bundy ’36 bombing of Soviet missile sites during the Cuban Missile Crisis. National Security officials McGeorge and William Bundy became major targets for criticism as the Vietnam War became a protracted struggle. While Grotonians certainly favored forceful plans, they were not complacent about implementation. The work ethic of the Bundy brothers typified the tenacity and diligence of the Grotonians in public service.

The shared sense of duty of Grotonians ensured that their relationships with one another were instrumental to the success of their endeavors. Collaboration between Groton graduMany put aside lives of ates was most apparent in the late 60s and early 70s, when four graduates from the Forms of 1935 and 1936 directed American policy in Southeast Asia. McGeorge Bundy served luxury or financial gain to as national security advisor from 1960 to 1966 and worked with his brother, Assistant complete sometimes poorly Secretary of State William Bundy, to craft the Vietnam policy. Secretary of the Army Stanley Resor and William Bundy had been friends at Groton and roomed together at recognized but important Yale. Another formmate, Marshall Green, the erstwhile ambassador to Indonesia, replaced government work.

William Bundy as assistant secretary in 1969. Similarly, Grotonians were so numerous in the CIA that some noted the existence of a Grottie clique, which included Richard Bissell, Tracy Barnes, John Bross, Kermit Roosevelt, and Archibald Roosevelt, Jr. All had graduated from Groton within eight years of one another. Notably, three Groton graduates (Dean Acheson, Douglas Dillon, and McGeorge Bundy) were among the handful of officials who advised President John F. Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis. Like the players in a hockey or lacrosse game, Grotonians seemed to rotate on and off the field of global conflict. They did not forget the lessons of their common education when they left the Circle.

Outside of their official posts, the relationships between the Grotonians enabled them to form a coherent stance through ongoing debate. But the friendships between these leaders extended outside the bounds of their professional careers. A number of graduates including Dean Acheson, Averell Harriman, Richard Bissell, the Alsop brothers, and all of their wives participated in a weekly ritual called the “Sunday Night Supper.” Lest the dinners serve as Groton reunions, they invited prominent non-Grotonians, including Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett and Soviet expert George Kennan. Stewart Alsop’s wife described the dinners, saying, “We’d get bored with our children on Sundays and abandon them and have dinner with each other.” The suppers often grew rowdy. During one fierce debate, Ambassador to the Soviet Union Charles Bohlen, a St. Paul’s graduate, yelled “Get out of my house!” at newspaper pundit Joseph Alsop. A laughing Alsop told Bohlen that he would not, because it was Bohlen who was a guest at the Alsop house that evening. 8 The dinners also served an important function for this so-called “Georgetown Set” of leaders. They frequently exchanged ideas and intelligence, sometimes bending confidentiality rules.

8

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Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made

Divine Fire After Stewart Alsop’s column described classified material on one occasion, Richard Bissell was forbidden to return to the Alsops’ for a week.

These relationships made Grotonians conscious of their roles as leaders and added a human element to leadership. They together served not for personal advantage or glory, but as caretakers of a nation far more important than themselves. Accordingly, Grotonians took the time to mentor younger graduates of their alma mater and prepare them for leadership. Early in his career, Congressman Jonathan Brewster Bingham served as secretary for Governor of New York Averell Harriman. Marshall Green worked in the Japanese embassy under Ambassador Joseph Grew and went on to become the ambassador to Indonesia, assistant secretary of state, and ambassador to Australia. George Rublee mentored Dean Acheson at his Washington law firm. Rublee called the rising legal star Acheson, once a failure at Groton, “the shiniest fish that ever came out of the sea.” 9 These graduates understood the common origins of their commitment to service. CIA official Tracy Barnes best captured their spirit in an essay he wrote while at Yale: “It sounds as if my day was pretty full of doing nice things for other people, but I don’t think I mind. I love it; it makes me realize that I am attaining the ambition of my boyhood, devoting my life to service.” 10 Where else did Barnes and his schoolmates develop that ambition than in the classrooms and on the fields of Groton School?

In the more competitive, open society of the United States in the 21st century, it is unlikely that a group of friends from Groton, or any other secondary school, can exert such influence in government. That does not mean that the School’s ideal of public service is outdated or that we cannot learn from the graduates of a bygone era.

The “Divine Fire” of Groton graduates represented a potent combination of personal characteristics and virtues that enabled these men to lead. They were progressive, innovative, and internationally minded moderates. Highly relevant today—most were non-partisan figures who served under both Democrats and Republicans. They believed in American exceptionalism. Their “Divine Fire” was a stabilizing and modernizing force amidst the turmoil of the 20th century and the emergence of the United States as a superpower. These men refused to see their vision marred by partisan battles and paranoid infringements upon fundamental freedoms. Franklin Roosevelt outflanked radicals on the far left in order to protect the American system of capitalism and liberal democracy. Dean Acheson and others denounced the fear-mongering of Senator Joseph McCarthy, even as they became targets of his rhetoric. Groton graduates were civilized and worldly pragmatists intent on national greatness. They were equally at home on tennis courts with European monarchs and trekking through hazardous “banana republics,” if doing so advanced American interests.

These men did not shrink from providing strong leadership. Many put aside lives of luxury or financial gain to complete sometimes poorly recognized but important government work. They saw themselves as stewards designated to guard the path of the nation.

Inside them burned a fire that filled them with the courage necessary to confront the challenges of the age. Groton graduates were risk-takers and forceful leaders. Their times presented them with situations in which there were no easy solutions, but they worked with endless energy in order to promote their vision of the future. Although they were pragmatists, these Grotonians cherished an idealism grounded in their view of the United States as a city on a hill. Setting out into the field of global leadership, Groton graduates held high the torch of their “Divine Fire.”

The fundamental aspects of Groton that produced leaders in Peabody’s time remain the same. Groton is still a strenuous school where, from Chapel to check-in, teachers work with students to prepare the next generation of leaders. During this epoch of uncertain leadership and a divisive political and professional scene, Groton is uniquely positioned to be a fertile ground for enlightened leadership in the 21st century, just as it was in the 20th. In short, the “Divine Fire” still burns here at Groton School.

Dean Acheson ’11

Averell Harriman ’09

Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made

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Evan Thomas, The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA

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Per Circulum Locuti Sunt | Voices on the Circle

Thanks for Listening A Chapel Talk

by Thomas Hugh McGlade III ’13 October 19, 2012

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I

attribute many of my best characteristics to a woman by the name of Melanie McGlade. I also attribute many of my more “forceful” and “outspoken” qualities to her.

Melanie, who stands at 5 feet 4 inches and has a full head of natural red hair, is known to many as my mother—mostly because she birthed me. Quick and sharp, Melanie’s bold personality has made many of her visits to the Circle memorable to my dormmates.

At one point last year, she displayed her aptitude for candor and clarity while visiting Sales’ dormitory. Nick Funnell and Adam Hardej—both of whom had just visited the McGlade home—were sitting in my room with me. Melanie sauntered in—possibly in high heels— and, prior to any hellos or how-are-you’s, said, “Nick! Thanks so much for your thank-you note. Adam, I’m sure yours is in the mail.” She then proceeded to explain to us how we were “pigs” for keeping our room in such a gross condition, and as is always best with Melanie, we nodded our heads as if we understood her concerns. This type of behavior—known as “classic” or “vintage” Melanie—is both highly amusing and quite expected.

Now let’s move on to the other half—Tom McGlade. Tom, who stands at 6 feet 2 inches, with basically no hair, is my father. Tom is passionate about many things—exercise, his diet, our family, his profession—but there may be one thing that he loves to do more than almost anything else—talk. Melanie and I often exchange a glance as Tom delves into an explanation of why the curve of the 30-year bond has been steepening so dramatically recently. Luckily,

So what does it mean to be “waiting to talk”? It means that when someone says something to me, I think about what I am going to say in response.

Bob Krist

Melanie has taught me good tactics when confronted with these situations. Just nod and say, “Oh, of course, uh huh, yes” as the rambling continues. That said, I have learned many great and interesting and worthwhile things from my father—it just takes a little bit of filtration. Another trait he possesses—one that I admire greatly—is his terrific ability to utilize the art of BS. Tom knows a lot a bit about almost everything. In reality, he knows a little bit about most things and a lot a bit about few things, but he is much more intriguing when he knows a lot a bit about everything.

Now, as the saying goes, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. As much as I enjoy knocking my parents for their entertaining and sometimes abnormal behavior, I have inherited quite a mix of Melanie and Tom. To start, I got that condescending bluntness that Melanie champions. Couple that with my complete and utter adoption of Tom’s capacity to yammer. Mix in the art of BS and there you have it—Thomas Hugh McGlade III. A minor aside—I have spoken almost entirely about attributes that may be considered “unflattering” or “not the best ones to have.” Believe me, my parents have a plethora of appealing and kind characteristics—they’re just not that fun to talk about.

There is one attribute, though, that both of my parents have and that I don’t—an attribute that I struggle to obtain each and every day. My father always uses a scene from Quentin Tarantino’s film Pulp Fiction to describe this characteristic, and so, like father like son, I too will use that example.

Mia, played by Uma Thurman, asks Vincent, played by John Travolta, the following question: “In a conversation, do you listen or wait to talk?” she says. “I wait to talk,” he responds, “but I’m trying to listen.” Now, given that Vincent is a hit man for a mob, he and I may differ slightly, but in at least one way, we’re the same. I, Hugh McGlade, am forever waiting to talk.

So what does it mean to be “waiting to talk”? It means that when someone says something to me, I think about what I am going to say in response, and I don’t think nearly enough about what they just said. In fact, I probably barely listened to what they just said. I probably picked up a few key words and then quickly shifted my focus to what I was going to say.

Now of course, this is a bit extreme. When I am talking to people whom I find particularly intriguing or useful to me, I listen closely. For example, when I’m sitting with a faculty member gossiping about the School, my ears are totally turned on. But when I am surrounded by my peers—by people whom I consider my equal—I focus too much on me and not enough on them. Here is Sarah Palomo’s excellent description of where my talking can be harmful “Hugh continued to anchor our class discussions,” she wrote in my spring comment for U.S. History, “though on occasion he did overpower some of his more reluctant classmates. Listening can be an important skill, too!”

Or, in the more candid words of a Dr. Tyler comment, “Hugh does need to think before he speaks or writes.”

I think that my dream job speaks to my “waiting to talk” persona. No, my dream job is not being a lawyer, or senator, nor is it hosting The Evening News with Hugh McGlade.

My dream job is former President Hugh McGlade. Think about how great that would be. Former president involves everything I love to do. Everyone wants to listen to you.

Your days consist of speaking events, talk show appearances, and a diplomatic stop or two thrown in for good measure. None of that overwhelmingly stressful “governing” that the president has to do—no, but still all the perks.

Although I may be an extreme case, I feel as though I am not the only one on the Circle who has this garrulous attribute. In fact, I think that the Groton community fosters an environment in which speaking is heavily rewarded while listening gets almost no appreciation. Let’s think, for example, about the forever-ambiguous “class participation” grade that some teachers stress. What is class participation? Am I not participating if I’m listening to my peers? Am I only participating if I voice my opinion? Teachers always praise me for having great class participation, but I think that my sometimes-

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Per Circulum Locuti Sunt | Voices on the Circle overpowering nature shouldn’t translate into “great class participation.” I think that my vocal participation should be well received, but I think that I am consistently one of the worst listeners in the room.

Expo has proven to be a great example of my need to talk.

For those who haven’t taken or taught the class, I’ll give a brief explanation of how it works. Each writer takes a turn at being peer edited. The author reads his or her paper aloud, and the class goes, one by one, around the circle and gives editing suggestions.

I cannot handle it when I am not the first peer-editor. As I hear my classmates make suggestions, all I can do is think about what I am going to say. I can’t focus on their advice—which is often very strong—because I am so caught up in planning my comments. After my turn is through, I am comfortable listening and absorbing what the other editors say, but before I speak, I can barely sit still; my mind is on one track.

As I’ve been writing this talk and focusing on this concept, I have made a conscious attempt to listen in my everyday life. In Expo, I have tried not to be the first person to speak. I have tried to listen to all of the editors—even before I make my suggestions.

I’ve found that I am more relaxed, I absorb more, and I make better comments for having listened to those before me. This leads me to believe that listening is not a natural tendency we’re born with—it’s not that some of us are listeners and others are talkers. No, listening is a learned skill, just as talking is.

From this realization, I noticed how cultural this tendency to talk is. We are bred, here in the Northeast of the United States, to voice our opinions and speak our minds. We put little to no weight on listening. Beginning in preschool, I was taught to stick my hand up in the air whenever I wanted to say something. I was taught to approach every adult and blabber away. “Hi Mrs. Smith, how are you? And your kids, they’re doing well? What sport’s Bobby playing this season? Soccer, right, I remember now.” I was taught to give presentations and speeches. As the years went on, I learned the value of speaking up; I thought nothing of it, but whenever something popped into my head, I made it clear to all those around me that I was thinking it.

This sense, this understanding that talking is the key, does not exist in all cultures.

Take, for example, the Navajo Indians. When meetings are held with Navajo leaders, they are known as “listening sessions” and not as discussions or debates. In a University of Michigan study, they spoke about listening within the Navajo community. “Interest in what an individual says,” the authors write, “is shown through attentive listening skills.”

He goes on to explain how many Navajos are “comfortable with long periods of silence.”

Long periods of silence? Can you imagine? Ten seconds of silence is considered wildly awkward in any of the conversations we have. [He pauses for ten seconds of silence.]

I just stopped talking for 10 seconds. 10 seconds—that’s it. You guys were probably worried; probably slightly embarrassed for me; you probably thought I had lost my place.

And it was only 10 seconds.

Now, I am in no way arguing that next time you and I are hanging out in Scudders we should shut up for 10 seconds. Please, one 10-second silence was enough for me. But I am saying that we should try to listen, just a little bit more, to each other. And yes, I appreciate the irony that I am talking about listening while all of you are listening and I am the one talking.

As my mother Melanie likes to say, “Hugh didn’t start talking until he was two and hasn’t stopped since.” I am proud of being a talker, but I am embarrassed about being a poor listener. There is a happy medium—somewhere in the middle, a New EnglandNavajo convergence—that I strive to achieve. Help me in my task by trying to do the same.

Thanks for listening.

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Finding Your

Grit A Chapel Talk by Ann Bakewell Woodward ’86, Trustee November 9, 2012

Like so many of you, I found grit I never knew I had right here at Groton School.

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omehow I managed to avoid giving a Chapel Talk as a Sixth Former, and I’d thought I’d managed to escape having to give one while Mr. Commons was still the head of School. However six weeks ago I had a premonition that my number was up after visiting campus for a meeting, and sure enough a week later I got the call. Mr. Commons was sincere and convincing in his appeal to my loyalties, but he was also clearly desperate since another trustee had had the guts to say no (I won’t name any names …). As I considered the invitation, one factor tipped the scales—the chance to stand before you and reveal embarrassing stories about Mr. Funnell and Nick Funnell!

Most of you probably don’t know that Mr. [James] Funnell* is my husband’s cousin, and I consider him to be the brother I never had. I also think of Nick Funnell ’13 as my nephew. We get to spend a lot of time together as an extended family on the Cape in the summertime. I bet you all didn’t know that upon graduating from Amherst with a degree in geology, Mr. Funnell used his knowledge of rock formations and stalactites to become an award-winning airline stewardess (back then they weren’t called flight attendants). He traveled the world, discovering how many different hot beverages he could serve without spilling and how many blankets and pillows he could pass out with a smile on his face. He was also a trendsetter during the summer on the Cape—dabbling in cutting-edge culinary delicacies. One summer he decided to only eat jarred baby food—no joke; another time he went on a baked bean kick—you did not want to be around him then. He also spent another summer refusing to speak in anything other than a thick New England sea captain’s accent, to the point that no one in his own family even understood what he was saying. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree with Nick. Although I haven’t ever witnessed any strange food preferences, I do know that Nick is quite the voice impressionist. Ask him sometime to do his animal voices (his chicken and cow are particularly good) and his “sassy girl” imitation, if you haven’t already heard them.

Today I’m not going to talk about some grand philosophy, my views on politics (the bumper sticker on my car speaks for itself), or some other weighty topic. Instead I’m going to address what I imagine is happening with many of you—probably all of you in some way in the short term, here and now—stressing about your Latin test, homework, the dance, practice, study hall, issues with friends, issues because of a lack of friends, a crush, heartache, where you want to go to college, applications, SAT prep, homesickness, regular sickness, pressure pressure pressure from parents, peers, teachers, and most of all yourself— to be perfect. In everything. Simultaneously. Chances are each of you is worrying about one or more of these things, rather than listening to this Chapel Talk. You are likely not worrying—here at 8 a.m. on a Friday—about how you will live a balanced, full, productive, compassionate life. No, your most forward-looking worries probably range between a few minutes to at most a few months. How did this happen and what does it mean? *Jamie Funnell is also associate director of admission at Groton.

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Per Circulum Locuti Sunt | Voices on the Circle

Three Groton generations: Henry Bakewell ‘25, Ann Bakewell Woodward ’86, and Henry Bakewell Jr. ‘55

42 | Quarterly Winter 2013

Groton students may or may not have heard this, but each of you belongs to something called the “Trophy Generation.” There was Generation X—that’s mine, the slackers—then Generation Y, aka Generation Trophy. The theory goes that this generation has been raised to value self-esteem over all else, hence the proliferation of participation medals, 12th-place trophies, and ribbons ribbons ribbons just for showing up. I witnessed this a few weeks ago at a parents’ night speech given by an administrator at my sixth grader’s middle school.

In describing admirable teaching moments, the administrator recounted seeing a student answer a teacher’s question and then, as the child was turning to go back to her desk, the teacher stopped her, turned her around, and said, “Remember—you are fantastic!!” This story was met by nods of appreciation, a teary eye or two, and a general undercurrent of “isn’t that wonderful!” from my fellow parents in the audience, while I cringed in response.

To me, it was not wonderful at all but instead symptomatic of a problem that goes beyond the harmless bolstering of young self-esteem. But before you whisper “Tiger Mom!” to each other, I would note that I too am frequently guilty of showering praise on our young girls for some of their more basic achievements. However, there is a bright line between home life and school life, and part of the mission of today’s education is fostering an environment that takes the supportive, nurturing elements of home life and then infuses the more unforgiving realities of life—competition, failure, stress, disappointment—all toward educating the character along with the mind. To me, facing these challenges and acquiring the tools and disciplines to not only function but also thrive is a core building block for adaptation and success in a complex world. The educational process around discovering these traits of persistence and resilience has many labels, but the simplest is “grit.” Finding your grit—and developing and harnessing its powerful potential—is at the heart of character building. For me, like so many of you, I found grit I never knew I had right here at Groton School.

Let me take you back almost 30 years—to 1983; yes, it was a time of MTV and bad hair, but it was also when I arrived at Groton in Fourth Form, with my own chic, feathered haircut and fashionable flowered skort. I was never a cool kid or a hip dresser or on the cutting edge of the social scene, and when I arrived here I felt absolutely out of place. I was in Cathy Lincoln’s dorm (and she has a very incriminating photo of that great haircut but I have bribed her to keep it under lock and key!). My first memory was of setting up my room and seeing the four other new Fourth Formers in the dorm making their beds—all with beautiful Laura Ashley comforters, bedskirts, throw pillows, and stuffed animals. I had the School-issued, paper-thin, blue-ribbed bedspread and one pillow. They put beautiful posters on the wall, cute carpets on the floor, and even had color-coordinated bath caddies for all their bath accessories. I had a few things for my desk, my clothes, and that was about it. You see, I came to Groton on financial aid and I was pretty clueless in the ways of just about everything. My dad, a Groton alum, had embodied the School’s motto and had gone into a life of public service, working for the government. He was a brilliant engineer and worked for the Navy as a civilian helping to develop sonar technology for our country’s nuclear submarines. While this job was crucial to our country’s naval defense, as a civil service position, it didn’t particularly pay well. Thus, I was lucky enough to even be at Groton with the help of the School’s financial aid program. So I made my sparse bed,

unpacked my things in about 15 minutes, and said goodbye to my parents. I wasn’t sad to see them go—in fact, they were embarrassing me even more than I already felt about my utilitarian side of the room and how I looked.

On to the classroom. The first week was a complete wake-up call. While I’d been the top of my class in my public school and had been president of the Student Council, I felt out of my league academically, surrounded by other super-smart kids. I remember one class in particular, Latin, where I had no idea what was happening. I failed the first test— something that had never happened to me before. Math with Kathy Leggat and Spanish with Señor Conner were a bit better, but I’d never gotten just 85s and 86s before. Forget science. I didn’t have the courage or background to even attempt chemistry like most of my formmates. (I eventually ended up struggling through biology as a Sixth Former and only passed thanks to Mr. Belsky’s good graces and pity.) I was used to straight As. I also was a mediocre athlete, uncoordinated at soccer and field hockey, so I joined the small cross country team and slowly brought up the rear during most of our practice runs, huffing and puffing since I’d never run long distances before. This was also the first time in my life that I ever had stayed up until midnight to finish my homework or study. The first weeks at Groton I would sit alone in the hallway outside of my room after my roommate and everyone else in the dorm had gone to sleep and would study my Latin verbs for hours—I was determined to master this subject. I knew that if I wanted to be at Groton I had to work harder than I had ever done before in my life. I spent more late nights studying that year and throughout my Groton career than I ever did in all of my subsequent years at Yale.

Slowly but surely, my hard work began to pay off. I gradually got better at Latin, as well as my other subjects, not from my innate intellectual ability but from the “fire in my belly” desire to do well and achieve. I also miraculously found some success with music and was chosen to be in the Madrigals as the only new Fourth Former. I was ecstatic and finally began to feel like I had a place—at that moment I literally began to find my voice. It was really hard at times, but I pushed myself to keep going, and in the process found and began to harness my “grit.” But I didn’t find it on my own—all of my teachers were available for extra help when I needed it, and I spent many hours outside of class, and they helped me feel like I belonged at Groton. Slowly friendships formed and to this day, my closest, most loyal friends are from Groton. My transition to Groton was very hard, but along the way I had to rely on my internal drive, determination and belief in myself. I recognize now that my intense feelings of inadequacy, failure to fit in, and imperfections—academically, socially, socioeconomically—actually enabled me in the end to persevere and succeed. If things had been easy, I wouldn’t have developed into the person I am today.

The career path I chose was directly a result of my Groton experience. I wanted to work in the independent school world because I had had such a formative experience at Groton, and it was a way to give back for the excellent education I’d been fortunate to receive.

Groton taught me to think, push myself, and develop an inner confidence that I have relied on ever since. I wanted to help other students, regardless of financial means, to benefit from an independent school education just as I had. I spent 15 years in independent schools, including tenures as dean of admissions and financial aid, as well as dean of students and Spanish teacher (gracias a Señor). While in admissions, I tackled similar questions to those your Groton admission office must address—how to select and craft a student body when you can fill the class several times over with “perfect” candidates. And while I didn’t use the term “grit” then in evaluating candidates, finding the seeds of character in an applicant that indicated she or he would be able to handle the more challenging aspects of the prep school mosaic was always at the forefront of the process.

One of my stops as dean of admission was at Riverdale Country School in New York City. Some of you may have heard that Riverdale, in partnership with the charter school KIPP Academy, is at the forefront of a movement to gear their teaching curriculum to include development of the predictive strengths of success: character development. The seven predictive strengths that Riverdale/KIPP addresses are zest, self-control, gratitude, curiosity, optimism, social intelligence, and grit. Let me read that list again: zest, self-

Ann, proud recipient of the Choir Cup

The seven predictive strengths that Riverdale/ KIPP addresses are zest, self-control, gratitude, curiosity, optimism, social intelligence, and grit.

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Per Circulum Locuti Sunt | Voices on the Circle Caroline Grant

control, gratitude, curiosity, optimism, social intelligence, and grit. I think we all could agree these are worthy attributes but also not things we associate with being teachable, though I bet some of you are thinking, “man, I’d like to take a course on curiosity.” Interestingly enough, that is essentially the goal of this initiative—to bring character education, to be taught and graded as part of a CPA (character point average), into the conversation alongside GPA. This gets directly at this idea of the Trophy Generation. The average high school grade in the U.S. is a B. There is nothing at all wrong with a B, but when everyone gets a B, important skills are not being developed. It was important for me to fail a Latin test, be helpless for a time in science, struggle in athletics, and feel out of place socially. This is where we find our grit—in the tremendous relevance that the difficult, painful, humbling moments of our education have in forming character.

So what does this all mean for you, here today at 8:15 in the morning when you’ve got a million pressing things on your mind, none of which concern grit? You have worked hard and achieved great things just to get here. Now what? How do you deal with seemingly perfect formmates and pressure from parents to be perfect, coupled with your own inner drive?

I know a lot of you in this audience strive toward perfectionism or the illusion of perfection, and that the seeming failures many of you have had in these first two months of the year are new territory for you. You may be down on yourself, overly stressed, doubting your capabilities, rethinking what you think you can achieve. I would ask you to keep a couple things in mind. First, every other person in your form is thinking the same thing. Whether they look like it or not, whether they appear perfect or not, this School will challenge even the most self-assured. So you are not even close to being alone in your soul-searching. Second, you are not here by accident—you were hand-picked for admission not because of your straight As or all the participation medals on your walls at home, but because the School recognized a strength of character that could thrive even as it is being tested by the challenges of this environment. And finally, embrace your faults, embrace your imperfection, embrace your idiosyncrasies, embrace your failures. In finding your grit, you find your character. And that will help give you strength your whole life journey.

Do chapel talks have to end with a quote conveying the wisdom of elders? Of course they do. So let me conjure up a true elder, Confucius, who famously said: “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” OK, that’s a good quote, but I like words of wisdom from the Funnell family better. When Nick Funnell and I were watching Downton Abbey this summer … what, you didn’t know Nick was a devotee of the period Brit soap opera genre? Oh, he is! In any case, as he was fighting back tears after star-crossed lovers Lady Mary and Cousin Matthew finally shake off the death of Livinia and succumb to their love, Nick said, “If love was easy, it wouldn’t be worth living.” How apropos—so go forth, enjoy your day and find your grit in all that you do.

Gordon Woodward

Above, the Woodward family; below, Ann Bakewell Woodward ’86 and Jamie Funnell, associate director of admission and target of the Chapel Talk’s playful barbs

44 | Quarterly Winter 2013

Note: After Ann Woodward’s chapel talk, Jamie Funnell circulated a “Snopes” fact-check, entitled “Mr. Funnell is a baby food-eating former stewardess who talks like a salty sea dog.” It said: “The ‘stewardess’ allegation is essentially correct, however he was technically a flight attendant, since that more politically correct term was already in use in the mid-80s … Baby food is delicious (try the banana some time), but to suggest that he ate nothing but baby food and beans for an entire summer is entirely unfounded. There is no evidence that he has ever uttered more than a sentence or two in an ‘old sea captain’ voice, let alone a speaking exclusively in that sort of accent for a whole summer. Aye, an’ that sure be true.” As for Nick, he diplomatically alleges “some elements of fiction,” in particular regarding Downton Abbey.

De Libris | About Chapel Books Talk

BOOK REVIEW The Classics Meet Pulp Fiction The Tomb of Alexander by Seán Hemingway ’85 Reviewed by Timothy F. Cunningham ’84

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eán Hemingway ’85, classical and Aegean archaeologist, curator of Greek and Roman art at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and editor of several reissues of his grandfather Ernest’s books, has recently written, of all things, a thriller. The Tomb of Alexander is a real Dan Brown–style romp through museum storerooms, excavation sites, and famous monuments in Greece, Rome, and New York—informed in this case by Seán’s exceptional depth of knowledge of said terrain.

While his scholarly and professional credentials are beyond question, one might well wonder how an author of The Horse and Jockey from Artemision: A Bronze Equestrian Monument of the Hellenistic Period or Greek Art from Prehistoric to Classical: A Resource for Educators might handle the transition to unabashed pulp. I am happy to report that he is up to the task, though perhaps his abandoning two young (and naked) lovers on a moonlit beach for a three-page discourse on antiquities law gives him away.

The plot of the book centers around a search for the tomb of Alexander the Great, whose body was taken to Egypt by Ptolemy I. After a brief stay in Memphis, the sarcophagus (originally of gold, but changed to glass) was set in the city of Alexandria. Although seen and recorded by ancient sources until the third century A.D. the location of the tomb was subsequently lost. In the novel, an inscription unearthed at a hitherto unknown temple to Alexander on Crete provides a clue to the whereabouts of the tomb and sets off a quest, ranging from a Bronx warehouse housing the Met’s astonishing collection of plaster casts to Rome (where many Grotonians might recognize a lively Latinist described as bearing some resemblance to Toad of Toad Hall).

Seán sticks to familiar ground here, having excavated in Crete at Palaikastro (a project led of course by Hugh Sackett), where he uncovered part of a magnificent ivory statuette; and for those who know him it may be hard to separate “handsome, cheerful” Tom, archaeologist and Met curator, from “handsome, cheerful” Seán, archaeologist and Met curator; or the beautiful, brilliant, and somewhat mystical love interest, Veronica, from Seán’s beautiful, brilliant, and somewhat mystical wife, Colette; but it is Seán’s firsthand experiences, whether of museum storerooms or Cretan villages, excavation protocols or the illicit antiquities trade, that make the novel as interesting as it is, for this reviewer at least. (I should give full disclosure: Seán is both a close friend and a colleague, so when I say that I believe that everyone should buy this book, even if they don’t intend to read it, take the advice with a grain of salt.)

Indeed, my only complaint lies with the publisher, who has for some reason decided to “Greek up” the cover by adding horizontal slashes to the Os in “tomb” and “of,” which, while admittedly making the letters look more Greek, also makes them into the Greek consonant “theta,” pronounced “th” and hence rendering The Tthmb thf Alexander. Even this minor flaw is fortuitous as it lends a slightly sinister, Lovecraftian tone to the title (or perhaps reminds us of granddad in his cups!).

Did I say full disclosure? Maybe I should add that Seán has assured me that any uptick in sales resulting from this review will result in a generous grant towards our ongoing work at Palaikastro (unless this is somehow illegal, in which case I trust the editors will redact it), so buy this book, by all means and as many times as you can.

Tim Cunningham ’84 is an archaeologist. His focus is on the prehistory of Crete, and he works primarily at Palaikastro.

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De Libris | About Books

New releases Thomas Bator ’79

Notes from the Has-Been: A Collection of Weekly Soccer Thoughts Curtis Brown Digital (Kindle only)

T

om Bator ’79—a soccer player, experienced youth soccer coach, and former president of a youth soccer club—sent an email to his town’s soccer coaches in 2003, telling them what he thought they should have in their coaching bags (17 different items; 19 if coaching girls). Tom’s simple, straightforward advice sparked a series of weekly emails, full of soccer and life lessons for youth soccer coaches.

Notes from the Has-Been is a collection of those emails, which touch on a variety of topics that Tom thought would interest other coaches. Among his suggestions: coaches should shake hands with each player at the end of every game, something Tom learned from Groton’s nightly checkin. The author provides both the beginning and experienced soccer coach with practical tips, stories, and a philosophy of coaching that he gleaned from his years coaching youth soccer.

Walter Birge ’31

They Broke the Mold: The Memoirs of Walter Birge Paul Mould Publishing

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alter Birge ’31 was a U.S. Foreign Service officer from 1940-53 and, in his memoirs, recounts adventures in Istanbul, Baghdad, Prague, and other postings around the world. He was in Prague from 1945 to 1949, where he was known as the “Scarlet Pimpernel of Prague” for helping many escape after the 1948 Communist takeover. The book describes Walter’s family background, childhood, and education—one chapter covers his Groton years, from 1925 to 1931. It is filled with amusing anecdotes as well; for example, when Robert Taylor filmed A Yank at Oxford with Vivien Leigh in 1938, Walter, then a member of the Thames Rowing Club, rowed in place of the star in a scene involving the annual Cambridge-Oxford boat race. They Broke the Mold covers Walter’s life through World War I, the affluent 1920s, the depressed 1930s, World War II, and the Cold War era.

Emlen Hall ’61, Mary Black, and Fred Phillips

Reining in the Rio Grande: People, Land, and Water University of New Mexico Press

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he iconic Rio Grande was ancient long before the first humans reached its banks. These days, the highly regulated river looks nothing like it did to those early settlers. Alternately viewed as a valuable ecosystem and life-sustaining foundation of community welfare or a commodity to be engineered to yield maximum economic benefit, the Rio Grande has brought many advantages to those who live in its valley, but the benefits have come at a price. Reining in the Rio Grande examines human interactions with the river from prehistoric time to the present day and explores what possibilities remain for the desert river. From the perspectives of law, development, tradition, and geology, the three authors weigh what has been gained and lost by reining in the Rio Grande. Em Hall ’61 is an emeritus professor at the University of New Mexico School of Law and the author of two previous books on New Mexico land and water.

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Book summaries were provided by authors and/or publishers.

Nason P. Hamlin ’64 and Christopher J. Wong

The Perioperative Medicine Consult Handbook Springer

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atients with a wide range of medical conditions undergo surgeries of varying levels of risk, and the evolving field of consult medicine aims to address the needs of these patients whether preor post-surgery. Creating a differential diagnosis, weighing risks and benefits, providing timely treatment—these skills are equally valuable to the internist whether he or she is in an office or in a perioperative setting. The Perioperative Medicine Consult Handbook provides useful information, advice, and guidelines for physicians, based on a combination of clinical experience and evidencebased medicine. It puts critical information about anesthesiology, cardiology, pulmonology, gastroenterology, rheumatology, endocrinology, and many other clinical areas at a physician’s fingertips.

Naomi Pollock ’77

Made in Japan: 100 New Products Merrell

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rom kettles and cutlery to chairs, Japan creates some of the most innovative, elegant, whimsical, and well-made objects in the world. Combining high aesthetic standards with cutting-edge technology, many of these designs turn everyday items into functional works of art that would look as good in a museum as on a kitchen counter. Made in Japan surveys 100 of the country’s recent design triumphs, among them furnishings, utensils, gadgets, clothing, office equipment, and even a silent guitar. While the book features mainly mass-produced objects, it also includes one-off prototypes and limited-edition items that are immensely popular in Japan. Created specifically for the Japanese consumer, these products reflect the way people live, work, and play in a country that prizes both exceptional craftsmanship and industrial perfection.

Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs ’95

The Food 52 Cookbook, Volume 2: Seasonal Recipes from Our Kitchens to Yours William Morrow

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owered by the thriving online community at Food52.com and edited by food writers Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs, The Food52 Cookbook, Volume Two: Seasonal Recipes from Our Kitchens to Yours spotlights the best recipes from talented home cooks all over the world. The book features 75 of the latest community favorites, including Late-Night CoffeeBrined Chicken, Roasted Carrot Soup, Herbed Beef Skewers with Horseradish Cream, and Burnt Caramel Pudding.

William N. Thorndike, Jr. ’82

The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success Harvard Business Review Press

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he Outsiders profiles eight exceptional CEOs, each of whom dramatically outperformed both their peer group and the broader market over extended periods by following a very similar, highly iconoclastic approach. This blueprint/template was highly effective across a wide variety of industries and market conditions. With a few exceptions (Warren Buffet, Katharine Graham), the CEOs kept very low profiles and are not well known today.

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LAURIE SALES

Grotoniana | All Things Groton

THE

CRUCIBLE

E

ach fall the Groton School Theater Department produces a large-scale, large-cast production in the Marion D. Campbell Performing Arts Center’s Asen Theater. The idea is to take the first term of the school year as an opportunity to invite new (and returning) students to the stage with a production that ties directly into the Groton School curriculum.

This year the School took on Arthur Miller’s classic drama, The Crucible, which focuses on the historic events surrounding the 1692 Salem, Massachusetts, witch trials. The show, featuring a cast of 23 and a stage crew of 13, played on November 3 and 4. Students involved were able to visit Salem, spend a day working on a real farm, and rehearse in the Groton carriage house as a part of the creative process. The result was a rich and elegant pair of performances that highlighted the enormous talent we have on The Circle.

–Laurie Sales, Theater Department Director

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Photos by Mike Sperling

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Gallery NeWS de Menil Gallery winter

Exh i b i t

The Commonwealth’s Attic: Curious Treasures from the Massachusetts Historical Society January 7 through March 4, 2013

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Monika Andersson

hat is the meaning of historical objects? Why are they preserved, and why have they survived? Are they valued for their associations, aesthetic appeal, oddity, or simply the stories that they tell? Founded in 1791, the Massachusetts Historical Society is the oldest organization of its type in the United States. Thus, its members began to assemble documents and objects long before other museums began to gather their own collections. The understanding about what objects are truly museum-worthy has changed over time. Thus, objects once viewed as great treasures have been relegated to the basement and are now rarely displayed.

The winter exhibition at the de Menil Gallery contains more than 50 objects from the Society’s collections. The items are as varied as birds shot by Theodore Roosevelt on vacation in the Adirondacks, tea allegedly gathered from the shore of Dorchester Neck after the Boston Tea Party, an elmwood burl bowl removed from King Philip’s tent after he was slain in 1676, a cane made from a charred timber of the White House after the British burned it in the War of 1812, and bullets fired in the Boston Massacre. The exhibition also includes military hardware from the 17th century, handsome silver teapots and cutlery, and 18th-century cloaks and waistcoats. And what gathering of New England artifacts would be complete without some object associated with Paul Revere? In this case, his tin lantern. The show even includes some fakes, as well as objects that are not at all what they were assumed to be, on which visitors can test their sixth sense for fraud. Of particular interest for Grotonians may be the death mask of Phillips Brooks, who chaired the School’s first Board of Trustees.

The de Menil Gallery is open 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekdays except Wednesdays and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekends. Closed February 8 -11, 2013. Admission is free.

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Silas Finch

Christopher Carey Brodigan Gallery winter

Exh i b i t

Afloat

by Silas Finch January 8 through February 22, 2013 “Yesterday’s Girl”

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combination of Geppetto fashioning metal Pinocchios and Thomas Edison indifference to utility, Silas Finch has a gift for re-imagining the curious debris of the ordinary world. His workshop is an archive of vaguely identifiable fragments that, once he plots the instructions for their assembly, become small, unofficial mysteries. The relationship of part to part is always unexpected, but never forced. Every joining point seems the result of a logical connection.

Silas understands history’s machinery, traced on skateboard maps of violence with bullet track threads of gunfire and assassinations. But in “Afloat,” he also fashions animals for carousels, dwarf flying ships dangling beneath newspaper balloons, prosthetic limbs for carnival fortune tellers, and a dream of Emily Dickinson in a parachute dress. Every one of his battered, artful constructions is an instrument for decoding memories—both his and ours.

The Brodigan Gallery, in the foyer of the Dining Hall, is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. Admission is free.

Silas Finch

Silas Finch spent a week on campus in December as an artist-in-residence, through Groton’s Mudge Visiting Artists Program. The New Haven-based artist held workshops for Lower School Visual Studies students and others who were interested. The Mudge Visiting Artists Program was established by the Mudge Foundation in 1992 to enhance exposure to the arts for all Groton students.

“Two Sides of the Communist Coin” Adapted from text by Stephen Vincent Kobasa

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Grotoniana | All Things Groton

FALL SPORTS Jon Chase

Boys Varsity Soccer | 9 – 6

B

Jon Chase

y all accounts, this was a special season for varsity boys soccer. After narrowly missing a New England Prep School Soccer Association Class B Tournament berth last year, this year’s squad made the tournament and a strong finish in the highly competitive ISL, its top two goals for the season. While Groton just missed a spot in the NEPSSA tournament, the fact that this was even a possibility speaks to the remarkable leadership of this year’s seniors, as well as the character of the team as a unit.

After a reasonably productive preseason, the squad turned in solid performance after solid performance, but kept dropping contests by the narrowest of margins. Admittedly, the team had its hands full with eventual ISL co-champions Rivers and Brooks, but every other contest was decided by just one goal. Unfortunately, after six matches, the team had given up 14 goals and sat at the bottom of the table with a 0-6 record.

At this point, most teams would have cashed in their chips.

This team, however, was made of finer stuff, and the boys learned the most important lesson any game can teach. I have played since age 9, in matches and tournaments all over the country, in a few foreign lands, in the ISL and in college. This season marked my 18th year as a coach. As I told the team before the St. Mark’s match, this was the most remarkable season I had ever known.

What was so remarkable? After that 0-6 start, Groton’s boys varsity soccer went on to win every remaining contest, conceding just two goals in the process, finishing 9-6 and fourth in the ISL. Every game was story of a group of young men coming together

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as one, each playing his part in the fabric of the larger story they were crafting. The remarkable unity and sheer will of the group was in evidence in the hard-fought shutout against Roxbury Latin, eventual co-champion of New England; in the gutsy 1-0 wins against St. Sebastian’s and Governor’s; and in the waning minutes against St. Mark’s, when Jared Belsky ’15’s shot provided a storybook ending.

At the close of the season, the team was honored with not only six All-ISL selections, but also the ISL’s Mark H. Blood Soccer Trophy, established in memory of a longtime stalwart member of the group, Mark Blood of Groton, and awarded by peer teams to the team that “best exemplified the spirit of the game of soccer through its enthusiasm, effort, sportsmanship, dignity, and competitiveness ... a team that both earned your respect and was an enjoyable opponent.”

It’s not often in life that you get a chance to accomplish something that everyone (including you, just a little bit) believes is simply impossible; that you get a chance not just to achieve success, but also to glimpse grace. The educational lessons behind this season are far too many, and probably far to clichéd, to even mention, but for me this season encapsulates what every athlete, coach, fan, and parent implicitly understand—that sports, at their finest, allow us to strive and dream in ways that most other endeavors just don’t; they allow us to test and push ourselves, and in doing so we come to understand our teammates, our coaches, and ourselves in the most important of ways.

As the old adage tells us, “Adversity does not build character, it reveals it.” I will always remember and be thankful for the character of this year’s varsity boys soccer squad.”

—Coach Peter Quagliaroli

Jon Chase

Fall Sports

Most Valuable Player and All-State: Ryan Meuth ’13 Most Improved Players: Ross Coneybeer ’14, George Wells ’13 All-ISL: George Bukawyn ’13, Ryan Meuth ’13,

Chris Higginson ’14 ISL Honorable Mention: George Wells ’13, Ross Coneybeer ’14,

Charlie Oberrender ’14 Coaches’ Award: Peter Mumford ’13 Captains-Elect: Chris Higginson ’14 and Charlie Oberrender ’14

Girls Varsity Soccer | 5 – 8 – 2

A

“rebuilding season,” that was the phrase tossed around last year as the final whistle blew on the 2011 season.

We would graduate eight seniors that spring, and this fall welcomed five new players to the squad, including three Lower Schoolers. And so it seemed that the 2012 season was over before it began. Once a team gets that “rebuilding” title, it has a built-in excuse when the scoreboard disappoints. And for a team that had become a perennial New England playoff team, the scoreboard became one of our biggest enemies in the first half of the season. A 1-4-2 start challenged our confidence and forced us to realize that, in fact, we were rebuilding. Rather than let that be an excuse, we had to embrace it and refocus on the little things, not all of which would lead to wins, but which would lead to individual and team development. After a huge win against rival Middlesex on the eve of Fall Long Weekend, the team found its turning point. We played to a 4-4 record over the last eight games, including a solid win against BB&N and a commanding win on a bitterly cold day against our cross-town rival, Lawrence Academy.

In our losses, we found important lessons about preparation, commitment, and hard work. But most important, we had fun playing a game we love. Our Sixth Formers, Loulie Bunzel, Baheya Malaty, Ellee Watson, and Captains Christina Napolitano and Catherine Walker-Jacks set a terrific example for our newer and younger players as they modeled the passion and work ethic

that Groton soccer has come to rely on in recent years. The season culminated with a well-deserved victory over St. Mark’s on a glorious fall day. The 2012 season was both challenging and rewarding. My hope is that we learned that these two words mean so much more when they are in the same sentence.

—Coach Sarah Mongan Most Valuable Players: Christina Napolitano ’13, Dorrie Varley-Barrett ’15 All-ISL: Christina Napolitano ’13, Dorrie Varley-Barrett ’15 All-State Nominee: Christina Napolitano ’13 Coaches’ Award: Ellee Watson’13 Captains-Elect: Breezy Thomas ’14 and Dorrie Varley-Barrett ’15 Quarterly Winter 2013

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Jon Chase

Grotoniana | All Things Groton

Football | 2-6

A

fter a highly successful 2011 season, this year’s football team felt the effects of heavy graduation losses. Nevertheless, though the season ended with a 2-6 record, the team was competitive in the tough ISL and the many young players gained valuable experience.

Led by two fine captains, two-way lineman Tom Santinelli ’13 and running back/defensive back Francisco Fernandez ’13, the team opened the season with strong victories against St. George’s and Brooks. The Brooks contest, a Saturday night game played at Merrimack College and attended by throng of enthusiastic Groton fans, was a particularly rewarding 27-6 win. During the next five weeks, Groton gridders faced a string of formidable foes who would ultimately post a collective 22 wins against 10 defeats.

Not surprisingly, Groton’s young, undersized team struggled down the stretch.

The team’s resilience during this skid was apparent in the runup to the annual end-of-season tilt against St. Mark’s, played at home on November 11. St. Mark’s, the bigger and more physical team, ground out points, while Groton pursued a diversified attack to score relatively quickly at times. Nevertheless, St. Mark’s ate up the clock and built a commanding 10-point lead with less than two minutes remaining. Beginning on their own 32-yard line with

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no timeouts left, Groton moved 68 yards in just six plays to score with 40 seconds on the clock. After a two-point conversion pass narrowed the score to 28-26, Groton attempted an on-sides kick that, though contested for a brief moment, St. Mark’s recovered.

The excitement of the final minutes of that great rivalry game was a great way to honor the team’s outgoing Sixth Form and provide inspiration for the many young players who will return next year.

Groton started just three seniors on offense and three on defense against St. Mark’s, so the future may well be bright.

Now that the games are finished, the team bids a fond farewell to Sixth Formers Adam Hardej, Mike Somerby, and Ben Altshuler, as well as Tom and Francisco, the captains. They did a fine job leading an inexperienced group and made sure the team competed very hard each week. They will be missed.

—Coach John Lyons

Most Valuable Player: Adam Hardej ’13 Coaches Award: Ben Altshuler ’13 Charles Alexander Award: Tom Santinelli ’13 All-ISL: Adam Hardej ’13, Austin Stern ’14 ISL Honorable Mention: Matt Borghi ’14, John Beatty ’16 Captains-Elect: Matt Borghi ’14, Austin Stern ’14

Fall Sports Ellen Harasimowicz

Girls Cross Country | 9 – 7

T

Ellen Harasimowicz

hough the team was large on the first day of practice and swelled to just shy of 40 runners by the time the first meet rolled around, this was an inexperienced group. In the opening weeks of the season, the collective fitness improved as did the collective understanding of the virtue of hard work. Consequently, this young team showed perhaps more growth than any team in the history of girls cross country at Groton.

After losing to a number of strong ISL teams early in the season, the momentum turned at Parents Weekend, when Groton’s squad defeated a strong Thayer Academy team soundly and never looked back. At the ISL championships at Nobles, they posted a solid sixth place and defeated three teams they had lost to earlier in the season. This strong showing was due in part to the fine racing of Third Former Maddie Forbess, who finished in the top 20 in this highly competitive race. She was followed closely by Fifth Form Captain Addie Ewald, and the varsity was rounded out by Sixth Form Captains CC Ho and Anita Xu, along with Fourth Former Kelsey Peterson, Fifth Former Alexis Ciambotti, and Second Former Abby Kong.

Though Alexis was unable to compete in the New England Class “B” Championships, Fifth Former Cayley Geffen moved into the varsity ranks and ran well with her teammates. Maddie and Addie earned All-New England honors as individuals and the team placed an impressive third overall. Coaches Crowley, O’Donnell, and I look forward with anticipation to next season.

—Coach Craig Gemmell Most Valuable Runner: Addie Ewald ’14 Most Improved Runner: Abby Kong ’17 All-ISL: Maddie Forbess ’16 ISL Honorable Mention: Addie Ewald ’14 All New England: Addie Ewald ’14, Maddie Forbess ’16 Coaches’ Award: CC Ho ’13 Captains-Elect: Ellie Dolan ’14, Addie Ewald ’14, Lucie Oken ’14

Boys Cross Country | 8 – 7

T

he boys cross country team placed seventh both in the league and in the ISL championship race. We edged out rival St. Mark’s by one point in our midseason dual meet on their course, and beat them 170 to 185 points at the ISLs. Co-captain Chris King ’13 placed 16th at this league championship race at Nobles on November 2 and then seventh in the New England Division II Championship race at Hebron Academy in Maine on November 10. He went on to place sixth against the best runners in every division at the end-ofseason All Star Race.

Willy Anderson ’15 and Fraser Wright ’15 joined Chris King in setting a quick pace, along with energetic and enthusiastic Cocaptain Hugh McGlade ’13 and the other Sixth Formers Johann Quarterly Winter 2013

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Ellen Harasimowicz

Grotoniana | All Things Groton Varsity Field Hockey | 5 – 8 – 2

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hile our final record doesn’t sound like a success if judged by wins and losses, the season was a huge success in terms of how well this team played, how much we improved as individuals and as a collective, and how much joy we had in sharing these fall afternoons. Winning four games in the ISL is not an easy task (Brooks, BB&N, Rivers, and St. George’s)—and we had at least four more games that were really close, either a tie or a one-goal loss. And we knocked off Brooks, the #2 team in the B division of the NEPSAC tournament, 1-0. I’d say we gave Middlesex and Nobles a run for their money once we adjusted to playing on turf—it’s a hard first 15 minutes getting up to speed against teams that train on that surface. This group of girls battled mightily in every minute of every game, playing to the last whistle, never yielding to an opponent. Their coaches, Kathy Leggat, Maggie Florence, Thursday goalie coach Nishad Das, and I are awfully proud of them.

—Coach Martha Gracey

Most Valuable Player: Maeve McMahon ’13 All-ISL: Maeve McMahon ’13 ISL Honorable Mention: Thea Johnson ’13 Coaches’ Award: Thea Johnson ’13, Carolyn Grenier ’13,

Jon Chase

Olivia Bono ’13 Captains-Elect: Melissa Cusanello ’14, Charlotte Gemes ’14

Colloredo-Mansfeld, John McCrossan, and Mitchell Zhang.

I look forward to hosting another group of Upper Formers on Mount Desert Island in Maine again next Labor Day weekend for a pre-season running retreat. We hope to see many of you on the trails cheering for and running with us! —Coach John Capen Most Valuable Runner: Chris King ’13 Most Improved Runner: Jamie Thorndike ’14 Coaches’ Award: Hugh McGlade ’13 ISL Honorable Mention: Willy Anderson ’15, Chris King ’13,

Fraser Wright ’15 Captains-Elect: David Howe ’14, Jamie Thorndike ’14

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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.