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Groton School • The Quarterly

Groton School

Groton School The Quarterly • Spring 2014

BACK SCHOOL ARCHIVIST Doug Brown ’57 pulled this photo (c1950) from an album that belonged to former Headmaster John Crocker and his wife Mary. The canine culture continues today. Assistant Head Craig Gemmell recently gave a Chapel Talk in the voice of campus critters; he reports that 36 dogs live on campus, as do 23 cats, two guinea pigs, and a rabbit.

Do you know any of the unidentified people (or their dogs!)?

Let us know at quarterly@groton.org.

Spring 2014 • Volume LXXVI , No. 2

From left, James Waugh, Ernst Loewenberg, Harvey Sargisson, William Cushing, Phil Nash, (two women and young boy unknown), Richard Pleasants, Mary Crocker, standing (person on far right unknown).

A Face of the Syrian Crisis Diana Sayegh, Form of 2014 Retiring, Inspiring: John Tyler, Ann Emerson Groton Plays at Fenway

Harnessing Resources to Values

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YPICALLY a donor establishes a charitable gift annuity to generate retirement income for him- or herself. But Malcolm “Mike” Peabody ’46 had a different idea.

Instead of steering the distributions to himself, Mike designated his longtime housekeeper, Teresa Mercado, as the beneficiary. And Groton School will receive the remainder from his annuity after Teresa’s lifetime.

Before her retirement last year, Teresa had worked for the Peabody family for 35 years. She is beloved by the entire family: Mike; his wife Pam; their two sons, Carter and Payson ’82; and their three grandchildren, including current Groton Fourth Former Claire Peabody.

“It struck me as a good way of supporting the School with a donation, while at the same time providing Teresa with a pension, which she deserves for her devoted service,” Mike says. “Ultimately the School, which has done so much for our family over several generations, will receive the full benefit of the gift.”

As the grandson of Groton School’s founder, Endicott Peabody, Mike is keenly aware of the School’s steadfast ideals, continuing generation after generation. “Temba and Vuyelwa Maqubela are carrying on the very best components of my grandparents’ approach: forging very close ties with the students,” he says. “From my granddaughter who is at Groton now, I hear how much Temba and

Mike Peabody ’46, his granddaughter Claire ‘16, and longtime housekeeper Teresa Mercado, who inspired his unusual approach to a charitable gift annuity

Vuyelwa embody that value–creating an environment where everyone is known, where adults and students work closely together.”

Mike takes satisfaction from knowing his charitable gift annuity will strengthen Groton School in the long term, while in the near term providing a more comfortable retirement for his loyal longtime housekeeper. “This approach,” Mike says, “is the perfect way to harness my resources to my values.”

Surprisingly Simple Gift Annuities MANY PEOPLE assume that gift annuities are complicated and only available in very large sums. They’re neither. Gift annuities are straightforward and can be arranged with as little as $10,000.

Setting up a Groton School gift annuity does not require a lawyer or trust officer. A donor writes a check or transfers stock to Groton School and, in exchange, Groton issues a signed

promissory note guaranteeing to pay the donor a set amount each quarter for the rest of the donor’s life. The quarterly payment amount is locked in for life. It’s that simple.

Rates are based on the age of the beneficiary, which is typically the donor but can also be the donor’s spouse or anyone the donor chooses, provided he or she is at least 50 years old. Right

now, a 72-year-old beneficiary locks in a 5.4 percent return rate. To find out the rate available to you, visit www.groton.org/planned_giving, or contact Director of Major Gifts Elizabeth “Betsy” Ginsberg at 978448-7584 or eginsberg@groton.org.

Groton School is happy to provide information in confidence and with no obligation.

Groton School

The Quarterly

Spring 2014 • Volume LXXVI, No. 2

A Face of the Syrian Crisis Groton School plays many roles in students’ lives, but it’s rarely a refuge from civil war. page 20

Frozen Fenway An epic rivalry in a historic venue: Groton boys hockey took on rival St. Mark’s at Fenway Park. page 40

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Message from the Headmaster

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Circiter / Around the Circle

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Personae / Profiles

27 Voces / Chapel Talks 37 De Libris / Books 43 Grotoniana / Arts & Athletics 54 In Memoriam Christopher Temerson

56 Form Notes

« Spring Fling 2013

Cover photo by Michael Lutch

Annie Card

Message from the Headmaster

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n my native language and in many African societies, there is no word for stranger. This is the case in some Native American communities as well; I noticed it when I used to recruit students from reservations in places like Tuba City and Kayenta, Arizona, and Jemez Pueblo, New Mexico. In these cultures people belong to clans, and therefore cannot be called strangers.

For me, it is not a stretch to think of Groton as a clan. Here on the Circle, we may not share a common ancestor, but we do share the legacy of Endicott Peabody.

We are bound by his vision, by our culture and mission, by a powerful shared experience, and by respect for our similarities and differences.

When a Sixth Former accompanies two Second Form vocalists on guitar during a Chapel postlude—very different age groups sharing a bond—I see individuals from the same clan. When Sixth Formers ask if they can take chocolate chip cookies from Parlor for their young advisees, I see the affection of a family, where older children care for the younger. When a student dropped by my office on the first day of School to give me a welcome gift, he really was telling me that I was not a stranger, but a new member of the Groton Circle, the Groton clan.

I’ve thought a lot about how Groton achieves this truly unique closeness, and I’ve recognized four pillars that gird the Circle’s foundation: spirituality, scholarship,

Editor Gail Friedman Design Irene Chu

Contributing Editors Kimberly A. Gerighty Elizabeth Z. Ginsberg P’16 Elizabeth Wray Lawrence ‘82 John D. MacEachern P’10, ‘14, ’16 Melissa J. Ribaudo Amy Sim Photography/Editorial Assistant Christopher Temerson

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service, and globalism. Gathering in a sacred space every morning, as Grotonians have done for more than a century, we form a spiritual bond, regardless of our faith.

During moments of pure silence in the Chapel, when we can hear each other breathe, I sense our commonalities.

We bond unapologetically over rigorous scholarship and service as well. Groton graduates share the power of our academic experience, and many forge common ties through their engagement with the community, whether in Tanzania or Lowell, Massachusetts.

Finally, I’ve felt personally the pillar of globalism.

Groton’s clan is distinctly global. I felt its extended warmth when Vuyelwa and I visited Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong over spring vacation. Imagine Nín stepping off the plane in Beijing and hearing, “ h˘ao! Welcome to China.” The Groton parents made us feel immediately at home. Some students—during their spring vacation!—attended receptions in more than one Asian city, helping to shepherd us, to bring the Groton Circle halfway around the world. The Groton clan knows no borders—we visited the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea, walking single file through secret tunnels built by North Korea, and we traveled there and back in a bus marked “Groton School.” To the Korean families and students with us, we say, “Kam-saham-nida”—thank you.

No matter where we went, we did not feel like strangers. Our goal is that when you return to the Circle, you will feel equally welcome.

Editorial Offices The Schoolhouse Groton School Groton, MA 01450 978 - 448 -7506 quarterly@groton.org Other School Offices Alumni Office: 978 - 448 -7520 Admission Office: 978 - 448 -7510

Groton School publishes the Groton School Quarterly three times a year, in late summer, winter, and spring, and the Annual Report once a year, in the fall.

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onstruction began on the Schoolhouse Project on March 10, while students were away for spring vacation. The work so far has been outside, primarily in the area behind the Hall. Between now and fall 2015, that area will be transformed into an indoor gathering area known as the Forum, flanked by the existing Schoolhouse and a new addition dedicated to the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subjects.

This summer, while the Schoolhouse Project is underway, another renovation will run concurrently: the Schoolhouse clock tower will be removed and restored.

What does all this mean?

• The Schoolhouse will be closed from June 9, 2014 until September 3, 2014.

There will be no entry to the building.

Administrative offices will be open in other locations around campus, and the School will continue its normal summer functions.

• The Schoolhouse clock tower will be dismantled in June, and work will begin to rebuild and restore the iconic but weather-worn clock tower to its original state by November 2014. Until then, the front entrances of the Schoolhouse will

be blocked by scaffolding, and entry will be only through the side and rear of the building. Although the building may not look quite right when School restarts, the reward is great: instead of a clock tower whose interior is crumbling from age, we’ll have a tower restored to last for another century.

• Windows facing the north courtyard have been blocked to ensure safety because they look directly onto the construction site.

This summer, considerable work will occur inside the Schoolhouse: math classrooms will move temporarily to the first floor, the college counseling and registrar’s offices will move to their permanent location on the ground floor, and the woodshop will relocate to the northeast corner of the building.

Once classes begin, interior work will stop and the project will focus on exterior work once again. The project, constructed by the Lee Kennedy Company, has been carefully sequenced to minimize disruption to students, classes, and the flow of the school year.

Additional work inside the Schoolhouse will resume during vacations, and the project will be completed during the summer of 2015. The renovated Schoolhouse — with an addition dedicated to STEM; a relocated library; numerous new communal spaces, including the Forum; additional humanities classrooms; and many more improvements — will open in September 2015.

Letters

Correction Sydney Brackett ’16 made the All State team in soccer, not the All New England team. She also earned the ISL scoring title, an unusual accomplishment for a sophomore.

I noted with joy on page 33 of the Winter 2014 edition of the Quarterly that the School has finally addressed the Dining Hall food/diet issue. In my day, 1953-57, the food was poor, especially the breakfast, which appeared to have been cooked in advance the day before. Only the boxed cold cereal was edible. When scrambled eggs

were served, the leftovers appeared again as our lunch, co-mingled with bacon. It appeared again as a side dish with the evening meal. While recycling is commendable, it was certainly not in this case.

My solution was to come back from vacation with a couple of cases of Chef Boyardee canned spaghetti

and meatballs, which I cooked daily on my Sterno stove. I was able then to survive the Groton diet without looking like a concentration camp refugee.

As food is both a health and morale issue, I am glad that Groton has finally addressed the issue.

Hill Bullard ‘57

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Schoolhouse Project Update

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One Warrior’s Fight Against Post Traumatic Stress

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ichard Brewer stood at the edge of the stage, feet wide apart, facing the audience squarely. “I’m here tonight to speak to you about PTSd. I have PTSd. And I’m not crazy.”

In late February, Brewer spoke to a group of students and faculty about Post Traumatic Stress disorder, or PTSd. The speaker, who has served as a Marine, a state trooper, a bodyguard, and a teacher, struggled for 20 years with his own Post Traumatic Stress disorder and now lectures about his experience. He founded the non-profit organization One Warrior Won, which is dedicated to providing support and therapy to veterans and active soldiers who suffer from PTSd, as well as education and support to their families.

PTSd, Brewer says, isn’t comparable to depression or schizophrenia, and it’s not a condition to which people are genetically

predisposed. It’s an injury, he says, inflicted by the same events that might cause physical damage. An explosion, an ambush, a sudden building collapse — these are situations that can harm not only a soldier’s body, but also a soldier’s mind. A traumatic event, or series of events, he says, may leave a soldier with flashbacks, anxiety, and increased levels of adrenaline for life.

According to Brewer, soldiers suffering from PTSd may have no physical signs of injury. “Vets come back from service with a prosthetic leg, a prosthetic arm — no one questions they’re injured — they’re missing a limb, for God’s sake. But a veteran comes back intact, except for the PTSd, and everyone’s less understanding.

“They don’t get it,” Brewer continues. “You look fine — except you’re different.

You’re pissed off all the time, you

can’t sleep through the night, you’re constantly checking the doors and windows, constantly looking behind you. You freak out when the waitress drops a couple of glasses. That’s PTSd. And they keep waiting for you to get over it. But it’s not something you can just get over.”

Though veterans may suffer from flashbacks and what he calls “hyperarousal” for the rest of their lives, PTSd is treatable.

With therapy, support, and education for families and the general public — services One Warrior Won provides — Brewer believes that vets' quality of life can improve considerably.

Brewer named his foundation One Warrior Won because he — one warrior — won in his own struggle with PTSd, thanks to years of therapy and support from his family.

— Olivia Thompson ’14

Writing History

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Presidential Scholar ed Widmer, a presidential scholar, history professor at Brown University, and former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton, delivered an All-School Lecture on Presidents Day, discussing the American presidency and how past presidents are perceived.

“Groton is a fitting place to remember the presidents,” Widmer said. “It would be difficult to find a school that has contributed more to the service of the executive branch of our country.”

Widmer went on to discuss President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Groton Form of 1900) and numerous public servants who attended Groton, including Francis Biddle 1905, who served as attorney general under FDR; Dean Acheson 1911, who was undersecretary of the Treasury under FDR and secretary of state under President Truman; and numerous senators, congressmen, FBI agents, presidential advisors, and other Grotonians.

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Groton, especially “Groton’s culture of service to others,” shaped FDR profoundly, the speaker said.

In fact, the 32nd president mentioned the Reverend Endicott Peabody, the School’s founder, in his fourth inaugural address.

While President Theodore Roosevelt did not attend Groton (his four sons did), he was close friends with Peabody, who asked him to teach at Groton, according to Widmer. He declined, but did visit the School during his presidency.

During the lecture, Widmer shared a more personal perspective on President Clinton, reflecting on the speechwriting he did for that administration.

Widmer said that he and his fellow speechwriters avidly read Lincoln, Jefferson, both Roosevelts, and Kennedy for inspiration. “We poured energy into writing speeches worthy of that tradition,” said Widmer, who also advised Hillary Clinton during her last year as secretary of state and helped with her memoirs. After the lecture, about 25 students attended a reception at the Headmaster’s House, where Widmer explained the workings of the White House in greater detail.

he Concord Review, a highly selective journal that showcases some of the best research papers written by high school students, selected works by two Groton students for publication in its spring issue.

Erik Nadeau ‘14 wrote “The Wannsee Conference: Rationalizing Anti-Semitism with Logistics, Office Rivalries, Legalities, and Dehumanization” for his World and the West history class, taught by Jennifer Wallace. Ryan Voon ‘14 wrote “Americanizing the Mormons: The 19th Century Anti-Polygamy Campaign” for his American History class, taught by John Tyler.

Ryan had another paper, “China’s Anti-Confucian Campaign 1973-1974: The Maoists’ Attempt to Promote Continuous Class Struggle,” published in the spring 2013 issue.

Emmett Till’s Cousin Delivers Riveting MLK Day Lecture n a gripping Martin Luther King, Jr. Day assembly, Wheeler Parker, Jr. spoke to the Groton community, describing the night in 1955 when two white men kidnapped his cousin, Emmett Till, from the Mississippi home where they both were visiting relatives.

Till was 14. His vicious murder is widely recognized as an important catalyst for the civil rights movement.

Till was kidnapped while Parker, then 16 years old, froze in terror nearby. “I just closed my eyes waiting to be shot,” he told the crowd in the Campbell Performing Arts Center. The murderers, who later confessed to the killing in a magazine article, were tried and acquitted by an all-white jury. They tortured and killed Till because he reportedly had whistled at one of their wives.

While Till’s murderers went free, Parker believes the trial signified progress because it was the first time charges had been brought against a white person for a crime committed against a black person in Mississippi. “We weren’t surprised by the acquittal,” he said.

Parker reminisced about his cousin, describing an affable kid, “a clown, a prankster,” who commanded attention despite a

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stutter. More than once Parker reflected that his cousin should not have traveled from Chicago to Mississippi. “He knew nothing about the Southern mores,” Parker said. “He wanted to go because I was going.”

Groton’s MLK Day assembly began with a 60 Minutes segment about the Emmett Till case, in which Parker was interviewed.

The case was reopened by the Department of Justice in 2004 amidst evidence that the two acquitted men were not the only ones

involved in the crime. After watching 60 Minutes, students and teachers asked a flurry of questions, covering topics from the conditions in the South today and why Mississippi has not prosecuted anyone else in the case to a rapper’s controversial mention of Emmett Till and Till’s mother’s determination to draw attention to her only child’s death.

When asked about the night of the kidnapping, Parker told the group, “It seemed like daylight would never come. I thought they were coming back.” Parker recalled putting on his shoes so he could run into the nearby woods if the men returned. His uncle took him to another uncle’s house many miles away, and from there he took the train to Memphis. Fear struck again in Memphis when people shouted warnings to the skittish young traveler because, accustomed to his life in Chicago without Jim Crow laws, he almost entered a whites-only restroom.

Today, Parker visits Mississippi regularly, which he believes has made significant progress, including having more black elected officials than any other state. “I feel more comfortable than I did in 1955,” he said, adding, “I still pick my places to go.”

Raising Expectations, Reducing Poverty

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short story by Ethan Woo ’16 and drawings by Yolanda Dong ’17 and Derek Xiao ’15 were published in the Winter 2014 issue of The Marble Collection: Yolanda Dong ’17, Derek Xiao ’15, and Ethan Woo ’16 Massachusetts High School Magazine of the Arts.

Ethan’s story, “Pills,” reveals a chilling and disturbing family portrait. Derek’s drawing, “The City by the Bay,” depicts an iconic hill, one of his favorite spots in his home town of San Francisco. And Yolanda’s work, “Transformation,” is a colorful work of nature and fantasy.

Derek also received recognition for his artwork from The Boston Globe. He won two Gold Keys in the Globe’s 2014 Scholastic Art Awards, for “The City by the Bay” and “The Darkness Around Us Is Deep.” Yanni Cho ’16 received three Globe awards — a Gold Key, a Silver Key, and an honorable mention.

Some works by Derek and Yanni are on pages 12-13.

Christopher Temerson

Art Accolades

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iana McCue ’07 returned to the Circle in February to speak to students about her work with disconnected youth at the Latin American Youth Center (LAYC) in Washington, D.C. As a job developer and job readiness trainer at the LAYC, Diana works with students who have dropped out of school or have been forced to leave school for personal or family reasons. Many of her students have criminal records, are homeless, are involved in the drug trade, or are already young parents themselves.

Despite the dramatic complications in their lives, Diana helps them overcome educational obstacles by preparing them to attain a high school equivalency or a specific skills certification, and by teaching them life skills necessary for the work force. She then helps them line up interviews and jobs in the retail and hospitality industry.

Through her work, Diana hopes to raise her Yanni Cho ’16 and students' expectations and Nala Bodden ’15 with Diana McCue ’07 break the cycle of poverty.

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Bayard Storey ’49

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Studying the Beginning of Life

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n the late 1950s, when Bayard Storey ’49 was beginning his career, fertility interventions that we consider commonplace today did not exist. In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) was still theory, and the world’s first “test-tube baby” was many years away.

Now he looks back at decades of research, much of it focused on the reproductive biology of mammals, including humans, and how it contributed to our growing understanding of human fertility and infertility. Specifically, Bayard’s work emphasized the processes that must occur for the sperm and egg to cooperate.

“It is just awesome—the intricacy of how life functions through myriad processes that interact,” Bayard says.

“Those processes must function flawlessly for life to perpetuate from one generation to the next.”

Bayard began his career in the field of chemistry.

With a B.A. and a Ph.D. in chemistry from Harvard, and an M.S. in chemical engineering from MIT, he headed to Rohm & Haas, a Philadelphia chemical company, where he worked on industrial chemistry projects. But, after six years there, in 1965, the fascination of biochemistry lured him to the University of Pennsylvania, where he explored energy metabolism with Professor Britton Chance, a biochemistry pioneer. Bayard’s research first focused on the cellular “micro-engines” known as mitochondria, which provide energy to the cell and thus to the organism. “This energy,” Bayard explained, “is used to fuel brain function, heart beats, and gut digestive processes, and also fuels the action of the body’s muscles to move the couch potato off the couch.”

By the late 1960s, research in reproductive biology was moving toward a major achievement—In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) in humans. During the 1950s, IVF had been successful in rats, mice, and rabbits. In 1969, a human IVF breakthrough in Cambridge, England, unleashed a storm of publicity and controversy. At UPenn, Professor Luigi Mastroianni, chair of the Department of Obstetrics &

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Gynecology, formed a basic research unit, the Division of Reproductive Biology, to intensively investigate fertilization in mammals—namely mice and rabbits—as models for humans.

Bayard joined this group, while also holding a position in UPenn’s Department of Physiology.

The U.S. government had placed enormous constraints on IVF research in humans in the early 1970s, but those restraints disappeared after the English researchers announced the birth of a healthy baby girl in 1978 through IVF. Around this time, Bayard began researching energy metabolism of the sperm cell in rabbits and mice.

Working with two talented graduate students, Patricia Saling and Harvey Florman, he wrote one of his landmark papers, explaining the role of a coating on the mouse egg known as the “zona pellucida.” Their research showed that sperm must first bind to that coating, then undergo a reaction that allows it to penetrate the coating before binding to the egg itself. The surprising findings showed that the coating actually signaled the sperm to react in a way that allowed it to enter the egg. Other laboratories soon validated the findings.

While his research on sperm had implications for IVF, Bayard also had a different goal—“to answer the big question of whether or not one could come up with a male contraceptive.

We never succeeded; we were killed by the numbers,” he explains. “In the female there is normally only one egg ovulated per cycle, and the pill stops ovulation, but the average male ejaculate contains anywhere from 10 million to 100 million sperm. It is not possible to debilitate this entire horde.”

Despite that disappointing reality, the research shed light on reasons

Bayard at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which he and his wife, Frances, frequent

for male infertility, including energy deficits in sperm that affect motility and oxygen-induced sperm damage.

Bayard would go on to conduct extensive studies on oxygen-related damage to sperm as well as on the freezing and storage of sperm, or cryopreservation.

This work led the American Society of Andrology, the national society focused on male reproductive biology, to give Bayard its Distinguished Andrologist Award in 2000.

During his studies, one thing that impressed Bayard was the dominant role of the female. “The female truly calls the shots in fertilization,” he says. “Sperm have evolved to adapt to the needs of the egg. It was hardly surprising, but it had been generally unappreciated.”

Perhaps then, it’s not surprising that Bayard actively promoted the scientific careers of female graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.

“The field of reproductive biology has attracted many women scientists, such that the field gets the full use of the intellectual and intuitive talents of each sex,” he says.

In 1996, Bayard became professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, but still had sufficient grant funds to maintain active laboratory

work for four more years. Thereafter he continued to be active as editor and reviewer. In August 2012, his colleagues held a symposium in honor of his 80th birthday. He has been fully retired since the end of that year.

Bayard’s research has led him to become a staunch advocate of female reproductive rights. He first got involved politically while writing grant proposals for his work; he realized that the U.S. government was funding more research on reproduction in domestic animals than in human females. “That fired up my indignation,” he said.

He has continued to be indignant, and frustrated. “A woman’s right to choose is a matter of scientific observation,” he argues. “After all, human sperm is a tiny cell compared to the egg. A woman provides 99.999 percent of the metabolic input to development of the offspring; the male’s contribution to the process is miniscule. It’s the woman who has to do all the work and carry the burden. No legislator has the right to regulate that.”

To this expert in human reproduction, supporting women’s rights and the candidates who espouse those rights is a natural outgrowth of the research to which he dedicated his career.

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Art Durity

Ann Emerson, faculty

Artist and Mentor After nearly two decades at Groton, Ann Emerson retires.

by Beth Van Gelder, Art Faculty

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lthough it feels like I have known Ann Emerson forever, it has been a mere 30 years. I first met her when she was teaching at Lawrence Academy, and marveled then at all that I had heard and seen of her talents as an art educator. I was overjoyed when she was chosen to replace me during my 1989-90 sabbatical, confident that my students would thrive under her tutelage and that my courses would be handled with the utmost care.

For the following seven years, 1990-97, Ann taught art at The Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, New York. When a position opened at Groton in 1997, she was the person I recommended to fill the job. Fortunately, then Headmaster Bill Polk ’58 agreed and, to my delight, Ann Emerson joined the Art Department.

students will long remember » Former painting an old chair in the style of a famous artist, drawing the dilapidated motorcycle that Ann retrieved from a dump, or transforming a long defunct vacuum cleaner into a fictional character.

Even though we were in the same old building in 1997, Ann’s presence infused the structure with new vitality and energy. She came with significant experience from her previous years of teaching and could teach virtually any course the department offered with equal expertise. This in itself was extraordinary, as many schools have separate teachers for each of the disciplines within studio art.

But beyond Ann’s vast knowledge of materials and techniques, the most distinctive quality that she brought to her teaching was her sense of fun. She always encouraged her students to be daring, to push the limits of their ideas, to jump fearlessly into the world of the imagination. Her assignments were designed to build skills, while allowing for personal expression and room for play.

Ann’s respect for all of her students, regardless of ability, was one of her hallmarks.

She would bring out the best in each student with praise and encouragement, enabling each to succeed regardless of talent. I am certain that former students will long remember painting an old chair in the style of a famous artist, drawing the dilapidated motorcycle that Ann retrieved from a dump, or transforming a long defunct vacuum cleaner into a fictional character. Any student who took Ann’s Third Form Visual Studies course could never again encounter the Guinness Book of World Records

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without recalling their painting inspired by a chosen record-holder.

The drawing studio reflected Ann’s sense of humor, as well as her ability to see everything as a potential art project. Many of the props that she had made over the years for a variety of plays eventually migrated to the Art Center, where they became permanent fixtures and endless sources of inspiration. Among them was Dr. Spinoza, the creepy old man in the tweed jacket who sat in an ancient wheelchair and watched over the studio like a silent prison guard.

Dr. Spinoza was joined by other theater props, such as a group of lifesize marionettes that dangled from coat hooks, greeting visitors as they entered the mixed media studio.

As department head, Ann was a master mediator who listened carefully and honored each person’s opinion. Juggling the needs and concerns of the members of the Art Department meant handling issues around theater, dance, music, and studio arts—not an easy task. Being the gracious person that she is, she made every member of the department feel valued, and our department meetings were always congenial and lively.

Ann’s impact on her students and department colleagues made the Dillon Art Center an increasingly vibrant and productive place. Ann, Monika Andersson, and I always refer to our beautiful building as the “art palace,” and in that regard, Ann was indisputably the palace queen, in the best sense of the word.

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was walking from Brooks House back to the library in the heavy snow when I bumped into Danny.

“Ms. Emerson’s retiring,” he said.

“What?”

“We are her last FSAs; isn’t this cool?”

I didn’t say anything because I was so shocked. This winter, I chose to do a painting FSA with 10

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Ann Emerson exhibited her own painted aprons at Groton.

clear contrasts looked like » The scars to me; I started obsessing over this imperfection.

An untitled work by Sophie Song ‘16, who learned from working on this painting with Ann that “shortcomings can be another kind of beauty.”

Ms. Emerson as my faculty sponsor.

Throughout the course of this project, I enjoyed working with her, thus it was hard for me to imagine saying goodbye to the person who played such a significant role in my art career and not being able to do another FSA with her next year.

I came to Groton as a Third Former who had no experience in art. Nevertheless I took the Third Form Visual Studies course taught

by Ms. Emerson. She supported my ideas and helped me make them soar, whether in the form of painting or drawing. Often I was scared that my next steps would ruin an entire work.

But Ms. Emerson led me out of my comfort zone and encouraged me to simply make an attempt instead of overanalyzing the consequences. Even now, whenever I face a dilemma, Ms. Emerson’s “Sophie, I think you should just try it out” echoes in my mind.

After a year of enjoying art I was thrilled when Ms. Emerson agreed to do a painting FSA with me in the winter. I had a lot of trouble trying to finish my first painting, consisting of a rye field and huge sky. While I was finishing the painting, I realized the sky and the clouds were not blending in well. The clear contrasts looked like scars to me; thus I devoted all my focus into the blend and started obsessing over this imperfection. I probably asked Ms. Emerson more than 10 times what I should do to blend everything in. Eventually she suggested that I leave the clouds in their contrasts because they were another form of beauty. Too bothered by my inability to achieve my goals and sick of trying but not succeeding, I agreed. Weeks later when I looked at my painting again, the contrasts created a different but lively perspective; they were not what I intended originally, but they were beautiful.

Ms. Emerson not only taught me an important lesson on painting but also on life: sometimes shortcomings can be another kind of beauty.

I am fortunate to have encountered a teacher like Ms. Emerson in

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the beginning of my art career. I am certain I will miss her deeply, but I will always remember her encouraging words as I continue to paint.

—Sophie Song ’16

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ince first meeting Ms. Emerson as a student in her Third Form Visual Arts class, her influence has played an essential role in my development as an artist. For three years now, she has constantly helped me expand my creativity and ideas in thinking about artwork, provided helpful critiques, and most important to me, simply been there whenever I felt like stopping by the Art Center to draw something.

For example, during the winter term of my Fourth Form year, I often came to the Art Center after school or sports just to sit down and draw for a while; whenever I stopped by, Ms. Emerson was always there to welcome me and help me along with my art pieces. With her guidance and valuable suggestions that winter, I sketched a charcoal depiction of an elderly gentleman gazing out a window, a drawing that I believe is among one of my finest pieces. Truly, Ms. Emerson has been a tremendous influence on my growth as an artist since coming to Groton; her gentle guidance and lessons—whether in class, during my FSA, or even when I’m just at the Art Center in my free time—will undoubtedly be carried close with me as I further explore my passion for art in the future.

—Derek Xiao ’15

* * *

I

had the good fortune to work with Ms. Emerson last year in Third Form Visual Studies and continued to draw through an art FSA this fall.

To me, Ms. Emerson was the one who made the Art Center a place I enjoy. Her enthusiasm for new ideas

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“The City by the Bay,” top, and “Reflections,” above, by Derek Xiao ’15, who said that Ann had “a tremendous influence on my growth as an artist.”

Both were drawn during an FSA supervised by Ann. At right, “Out of Reach” by Yanni Cho ‘16.

and encouragement for adventure allowed me to expand my capabilities.

Whenever I was unsure and hesitant about starting a project, she always reminded me that I could figure out what to do once I tried.

I also appreciate Ms. Emerson’s sweet gentleness, which made my days brighter. She always made me feel loved through her care, which exceeded the boundaries of art. Last fall, when I told her that I had begun writing a research paper concerning art and the Nazis, she left surprises for me every afternoon by placing relevant newspaper articles on my desk.

I hope she knows how dearly I will miss her and how I will think of her every time I pull out a paintbrush.

—Yanni Cho ’16

* * * “Escape” by Yanni Cho ‘16

M

s. Emerson always encouraged me to find creative independence. This year, I initially painted my self-portrait using only greens and blues. Rather than insisting I use realistic colors, she handed me a book of skin tone recipes. This subtle hint inspired me to improve my painting while still feeling in control of my own art.

Ms. Emerson has made me a more confident artist, who is willing to take risks without fearing a mistake.

She showed me that any painting can be fixed and that there is a beauty in irregularity and imperfection. Without Ms. Emerson I wouldn’t love art as much as I do today. I am so grateful for everything she has taught me.

—Monica Bousa ’15

Self-portrait by Monica Bousa ‘15, drawn during an FSA with Ann Emerson

www.groton.org

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John Tyler

personae

36 Years at Groton The esteemed historian has left a history of his own.

by William M. Polk ’58, Former Headmaster

W

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As a colleague, John was challenging, encouraging, sympathetic, and generous. His house on Higley Street became a wonderful oasis for many, and where John would tease his close friend, Jack Smith, about being considered the fourth best cook on the faculty.

Micheline Myers and Catherine Simon were clearly one and two, but who was three, John would wonder in Jack’s presence.

John Tyler’s history at Groton will be kind to him, and he won’t have to write it. He will be missed.

John Tyler in 2007 Bob Krist

inston Churchill famously said, “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.”

John Tyler’s history at Groton, 36 years long, will be kind to him, and he won’t have to write it. It will be written in the lives of many graduates and colleagues.

In spring 1978, John was my first hire as Headmasterelect; he set the bar for the hires that followed. An individual of high personal standards, he lived the values of the School, and by so doing helped others reach for the same.

Passionate about his subject with the mind of an active scholar, John had the gift of encouraging students to think independently, to build arguments based on an honest use of sources, and to express themselves clearly. In one class John told an unusually verbose student, “You have five minutes of air time this period, use it well. Make it count!”

Given his knowledge of art and literature as well as of history, John represented interdisciplinary teaching at its best. Outside of the classroom his comprehensive view of the arts was readily apparent in his work as curator of the de Menil Gallery, which has been a great benefit to the town as well as to the School community. He also has left his mark by the prominent role he played in the renovation of the Chapel and more recently in the planning of the Schoolhouse restructuring and expansion.

Woody Allen stated that 80 percent of life is showing up. John always showed up at athletic contests, plays, concerts, and other events to support advisees, his students, and colleagues. I have in mind a vivid picture of John urging on his dorm during a tug-of-war contest at Spring Fling and coming to the Headmaster’s House for any number of celebrations, feeds, and receptions.

It is rare for high school students to enjoy regular exposure to teachers with Ph.D.s from Princeton. It is rarer still for those teachers to take an active role in students’ education at all levels. Dr. Tyler’s Fifth Form American History course offered me a foundation in the history of our nation, but it also instilled in me a lasting level of historical curiosity.

That inquisitiveness was what led me to embark on a tutorial study of Groton’s notable graduates, along with Ken Ballato ’11, during my Sixth Form year.

Dr. Tyler was the ideal tutorial adviser. He offered us freedom to pursue our interests, yet asked the right questions to “nudge” us in the directions that more accomplished historians, like him, would take. In particular, Dr. Tyler taught us a method of finding and following sometimes obscure connections between people and events. Without his help in teaching us to think like historians, our tutorial paper and book on Groton’s graduates would not have been possible.

When I encounter Groton graduates away from the Circle, I am astonished by the number of Grotonians who major in history during college. No doubt those hordes of historians are the intellectual progeny of Dr. Tyler. Students strive to match his encyclopedic grasp of the past. Graduates, faculty, and especially students will miss Dr. Tyler’s pleasant demeanor and institutional memory in his room on the second floor of the Schoolhouse. Yet even as Dr. Tyler moves on from the Circle, they can recall his impact on their educations and their School.

—Ted Leonhardt ’11

* * * During any hour of the boarding school day, Dr. Tyler’s depth of knowledge seemed bottomless.

Whether it was the destruction of the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex in St. Louis, the initiatives of the CIA during the Cold War, or the

significance of an Ortolan, he always had masterly insight. Exploring the Wadsworth Atheneum on a class trip with him left one in awe.

But behind his distinctive peaked lapels and erudition, Dr. Tyler has uncommonly good humor and pleasantness. He has left an indelible mark on several generations of Grotonians who have had the good fortune to sit in his classroom overlooking the Circle. It will be difficult to picture Groton School without one of its most formidable pillars.

—Ken Ballato ’11

* * * While Dr. Tyler possessed immense integrity as a scholar and as a man, I will always remember his subtle sense of humor. With a wry smile, he tolerated the Fourth Form European History class’ mock séance of the late historian Kenneth Clark. Dr. Tyler was an engaging supporter of students in the classroom, in the community, and on the playing fields/river/courts.

He will be missed.

—Will Fisher ’90

* * * For generations of Groton students, John Tyler’s classes marked an intellectual coming of age. He loves his work, possesses a broad, almost encyclopedic, understanding of history, and is devoted to this School. As a colleague of 19 years, John has been a wonderful person with whom to share ideas and enjoy fruitful discussions.

His wry sense of humor, his commitment to excellence, and his ability to command respect and affection from his students has been a gift to hundreds of Grotties since the late 1970s.

He cares deeply about students’ intellectual development, and it’s no surprise that by any measure our students tend to perform at a high level on national exams.

More importantly, while I have not conducted a study, I suspect a disproportionate number of our graduates major in history, thanks in large part to John’s influence during their

John Tyler at Roll Call

formative exposure to the field here. I feel blessed that my youngest daughter had John as her history teacher for three different courses across seven consecutive trimesters. On countless occasions she would muse enthusiastically that she “loved ‘Jack Ty’s’ class.”

Not surprisingly, she recently decided to major in history. I thank John for taking such good care of her as a teacher, as well as for his leadership in our department, his friendship, and for enriching the academic lives of our students. I wish him a happy, exciting, and well-deserved retirement as he wrestles with his project on Thomas Hutchinson and continues his travels to the far corners of the globe. John has been one of those legendary figures with whom people identify this School, and it is hard to imagine what the place will be like without him when we reconvene next September.

—John Lyons, history teacher

* * * www.groton.org

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personae The scholar four years after arriving at Groton

reading material was » The ambitious, the writing assignments complex and sophisticated.

John, as I am pleased to now call him, was a major figure in my life in the late ’70s and happily became so once again 35 years later. While I was a student at Groton, John arrived as a young, new faculty member and became my Fifth Form history teacher, dorm master, and advisor.

I certainly kept him busy in all of these roles!

More recently, John and I have worked closely together over the past three years, initially with a large group on the master plan for the School and more recently as part of a small group on the plans for the expansion and renovation of the Schoolhouse. This has been an engaging, challenging, and exciting endeavor. We had a wonderful mix of talents and personalities as part of our group. John played a critical role as he actually possessed highly relevant knowledge of the School and architecture!

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John is wonderfully creative, artistic, and articulate. What I valued most as the leader of this small group was John’s classical good taste and his willingness to embrace new ideas. He could not have been better suited for our assignment, or more enjoyable to work with. I like to think that John not only made a lasting impression on me at a formative time, but has now had the opportunity to make an even more durable impression on the School he has devoted his life to these past 36 years.

—Franz Colloredo-Mansfeld ’81, P’09, ’13, ’15, ’18

* * * From afar, Dr. Tyler may seem to be a closed book, but he’s a book with a stylish jacket. I loved running into him on the School Birthday, as he always sported a well-tailored tuxedo.

Once, and only once, I saw him in a

Spring 2014

gray sweatshirt, and I almost fainted.

But beyond the bowties, as you spend time with Dr. Tyler you come to know and love his many strong suits—his humor, his teaching, his insight, and his witty charm. In the classroom, he achieves the perfect balance between gravity and lightheartedness. I remember the time when a classmate was late for our World History class, and Dr. Tyler wondered aloud, “Where is she? Smoking cigarettes in the parking lot?” As clearly as I recall the chuckles that followed that line, I too recall the passionate and focused discourse that surrounded an Asher Brown Durand painting in his Romanticism course.

It is most amazing to think that more than 1,000 Groton graduates share similar memories of him.

Dr. Tyler has spent more than three decades inspiring minds on the Circle—devoted to his subject, his students, his community, and his passions.

Whether in his role as the advisor to the Gay-Straight Alliance or as the curator of the de Menil Gallery or as an open ear at a Dining Hall table, Dr. Tyler’s commitment to Groton is quite extraordinary. He is a Groton giant.

Thank you, Dr. Tyler, for devoting your career to all of us.

—Hugh McGlade ’13

* * * In the classroom, I had Dr. Tyler for American History as well as for both of his electives in political philosophy.

Rather than lecture us, he empowered us by quietly drawing out the points he wanted to make from the class’ discussion, so that we felt as if we had come up with the ideas ourselves. His papers and test essay questions always proved a challenge, but I appreciated how Dr. Tyler showed infinite patience in breaking down my dense prose in search of lucidity.

I was also fortunate to have Dr. Tyler as my advisor throughout Groton. His style as an advisor was similar to his as a teacher, but those few moments where he gave direct advice seized my attention because I

knew they came from his unwavering loyalty to me. Dr. Tyler’s feeds were as one might expect—their seemingly simple appearance belied the thought, effort, and complexity that went into each dish, coming together to form a gourmet experience beyond his table’s comprehension. Over these dinners, his eyes constantly sparkled as we discussed seemingly vital issues, such as upcoming sporting events or midterms. Occasionally he even erupted into laughter. The elusive simple but elegant sentence, the art of making one’s point by drawing out ideas from others, and a unique mix of loyalty and humor—these are some of Dr. Tyler’s qualities that have stuck with me and continue to influence me for the better. While I know Dr. Tyler will enjoy his well-deserved retirement, Groton will feel his absence.

—Benjamin Cooke ’04

* * * I travel to Virginia often and end up driving past many historic sites, including President John Tyler’s home. It always brings back fond memories of our friend, Dr. Tyler. In addition to sparking an interest in American history, his high academic expectations, coupled with encouragement, helped me to learn how to think. I’ve been fortunate to have had many excellent teachers, and John Tyler certainly ranks among the top of the list. Well done, thank you, and wishing you all the best.

—Carl Reiss ’86

* * * John Tyler has been a close friend for decades, first as a dorm head in Hundred House and more recently (since 1990) as our hospitable next door neighbor on Higley Street. We share the occasional alarms. On one occasion when I had a full cord (or truckload) of firewood dumped at my garage door (and was about to start stacking), he appeared with the cheerful Will Webb (power saw in hand— “just in case”) and hey—presto—the job was done (it would have taken me

many hours)!

Perhaps the best thing about having a historian close by is that all local lore is at one’s fingertips— whether stories about Higley himself, a local kidnapping by Indians, or specific details about land-use rules for our immediate neighborhood.

John did join us on at least two occasions as a Hellenic traveler in Greek lands (and islands), where we enjoyed exploring new sites together.

As the remarkably creative and brilliant managing director of the de Menil Gallery, John afforded my archaeological records a very full showing in recent years, for which I will always be much indebted to him.

—Hugh Sackett, classics teacher

* * * I know John Tyler now as a friend.

But when I was at Groton, I knew him in other capacities: as my advisor when I arrived in Fourth Form, as a dorm master when I was in Fifth and Sixth Forms, and, through all my years at Groton, as a teacher.

He excelled in the first two roles, and I could certainly share stories demonstrating his thoughtfulness toward and support of a younger, not very confident, awkward adolescent me. They’re real, and I’m grateful for them.

But if you ask me about John, the first way in which I always remember him, what to me is the most important thing about him at Groton, is that he was a teacher. I don’t mean “teacher” in some feel-good, after-schoolspecial kind of way; I mean that John was passionate about challenging students in the classroom, about holding us to the highest standards, about compelling us to think rigorously and ambitiously. John was a scholar who could easily have taught at a university, but he chose instead to work at a prep school because he believed in Groton’s sense of community and its values.

But he didn’t lower his expectations just because he wasn’t teaching college students; his American History class was hard. The reading material was

ambitious, the classroom conversations high-level, the writing assignments complex and sophisticated.

Since history was an interest of mine, I appreciated John’s rigor; it was just so obvious that he loved history, that he wanted us to share his passion, to immerse us in the world and the questions of the past.

When I was a Sixth Former, I asked if I could work with John on a year-long tutorial of independent reading in American colonial history.

He created a reading list, and we met every week to discuss the material, none of which I’d heard of before. I knew him well enough to make sure that I was prepared.

I didn’t do very well in the tutorial, frankly; I struggled more than I had in any other class at Groton.

But I didn’t mind; I understood that John was challenging me to work above my comfort level, and I took that as a compliment, a sign that my teacher had faith in my ability, perhaps more than I had myself. And although I didn’t get the grades that I had hoped for, that tutorial was as satisfying an intellectual experience as I had at Groton. Years later, when I was in graduate school at Harvard studying American history, I experienced an uncanny sense of déjà vu; I had already read the work of my thesis advisor, Bernard Bailyn—one of the 20th century’s finest historians— when I was a senior in John Tyler’s tutorial.

The example of John Tyler—a deep, visceral passion for one’s material combined with a commitment to excellence—infuses whatever literary work I’ve done since. I don’t know if I’ve lived up to his standards. Probably I’m still trying.

—Richard Bradley ’82

* * * Others will surely wax poetic about John’s fabulous mind, his brilliant teaching, his impeccable sense of style, his awareness of and willingness to articulate what is good and right in this small, old school. I surely agree

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Left, Dr. Tyler with Maggie Sakaki Tucker ’89 and, below, with Alexandra McGovern ’79 and Amy Cunningham Atkinson ‘79, P’16

personae

hoping that through a kind of osmosis, I can fast-track a lifetime’s worth of learning.

I wish I could go back to the pit stops we would make at Whole Foods before tackling museums, or his many home-cooked meals, and be a better listener. I aspire to Dr. Tyler’s example, and am sure that he will continue to shape and inspire those around him as he has inspired me.

—Harsh Govil ’10

* * *

with all of this, and these are surely the stripes of the great colleague he has been over our 20 years at Groton together. But for me, his retirement also represents a significant personal loss to me, for he has become a dear friend and valued advisor.

I’ve come to look forward to and expect a visit from John just before dinnertime in the Gemmell-Hughes house, and I’ve learned how he likes his tea (Earl Grey, lots of sugar, a touch of milk). And I’ve come to realize that he shows up when he senses that I need to talk through what’s going on. Our discussions have ranged from the politics of the movement of the library to the Schoolhouse, to the sore subject of the day among the faculty, to challenges with my children, to the correct time to prune a butterfly bush. And as we talk, John never expostulates. He stretches his head back, utters, “Well . . . I think . . . ,” and then gives careful, precise advice.

Whether John realizes it or not, I channel him and a few other key mentors as I move through my days, and I will miss him more than words can express. I will take solace that he’s not far away, and I will forever 18

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be reminded of his presence as I walk Groton’s halls.

—Craig Gemmell, Assistant Head of School

* * * I never shied away from making sweeping statements at Groton. I remember disparaging modern art as childlike scribbling to Dr. Tyler during one of our many long drives around New England as part of a tutorial. Dr. Tyler did not betray the slightest reaction. Rather, in his silence was an invitation to revisit my thinking and retort with something more articulate.

Modern art was inevitably not the only topic where I stumbled. On subjects ranging from residential architecture to colonial relations in Boston, it took Dr. Tyler’s patience to guide me in search of questions and insights that were meaningful and not just convenient. I’ve always admired that casual wisdom of his, and wondered what books I needed to read, or what classes I should take, to achieve the same state. I’m sorry to report that I haven’t found the right reading list yet. Instead, I’m betting on Dr. Tyler’s continuing friendship, and

Spring 2014

When I first heard John speak in a faculty meeting, I remember thinking that he was 1) incredibly smart and 2) a curmudgeon. I was sitting next to Mary Dupuis at the time and I asked her, “Is he always like that?”

“Yes,” she said, “but he’s also one of the kindest people I know.”

In time, I was honored to get to know the kind John, the playful John, and the unwilting advocate for students. In my department, we have an informal award for “advisor of the year.” Twice in the last 10 years, John has been the recipient of our award.

Always kind, gracious, and patient, he does so much for his advisees and students that most people will never know. Groton has been lucky to have him as a scholar, teacher, curator, mentor, and advisor. I will personally miss our lively (and sometimes bawdy) lunchtime conversations, his delightful love of chocolate, and his warm heart.

—Melinda Stewart, Director of Counseling

* * * Over the last three decades, it has been a pleasure to be a student, prefect, and ultimately a friend of Dr. John Tyler. When I was a student in the 1980s, both the standard European History text, Palmer’s History of the Modern World, and the faculty who taught the class, elicited the fear of God among rising Third Formers.

The rigor and discipline expected by the Groton History Department was tremendous intellectual training, and Dr. Tyler’s patience with my academic

limitations was greatly appreciated.

Thankfully, I managed to muddle my way through U.S. History, but it was not until I took John’s Handel, Hogarth, and Haydn, 18th-Century British History (HHH) course, that I learned to really appreciate the meaning of history. An academic highlight of my five years at Groton, the HHH course was a distinct departure from the simple textbook approach common across the majority of high school courses. Dr. Tyler fashioned a course where Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera were placed alongside Handel within the seedy underbelly of 18th-century London. For the first time in my life, I appreciated the power of satire and cultural criticism as a window into the down and dirty aspects of society.

Gone was the sanitized timeline of history, and front and center was the debauchery and drunkenness immortalized by Hogarth. Outside of the topical content, John introduced the four Sixth Formers in the class to the power of primary sources of all kinds and demonstrated that a tutorial approach and traditional historical

scholarship were important elements of a Groton education.

Dr. Tyler provided me with a critical view on human behavior for which I am much indebted; I suspect that many other graduates also gained a new perspective from his quiet, scholarly approach. God only knows what Dr. T could write or Hogarth could paint about prep school culture and assorted shenanigans in the late 20th century.

—Charlie Wray ’82

* * * Being a student of Dr. Tyler’s was one of the most memorable experiences of my Groton education. While I certainly began his course as an intimidated girl, he helped me develop confidence by teaching me how to meet his high expectations. Not only did I learn the content (I remember heated study group discussions in the library to prep for his quizzes), I learned how to write a term paper that supported a thesis, and to truly understand how U.S. History is one person’s account of the happenings in our country. Thank you, “Doc Ty,” for

such excellent teaching. I imagine you are responsible for the love of history in many of us.

—Sara Becton Ardrey ’91

* * * Dr. Tyler holds an outstanding breadth of knowledge that has challenged students and developed their understanding of world and American history for decades. He was extraordinarily supportive of all of my academic pursuits at Groton, whether in the classroom, the de Menil Gallery, or the School’s archives, and I am so grateful for his leadership, careful thought, and open mind.

—Katherine Gracey ’12

* * *

Bob Krist

New to Groton, I was invited over to John Tyler’s one afternoon in spring 1980. We had both graduated from Trinity, as had our Headmaster, Bill Polk. Sitting in the dappled light of John’s dormitory apartment, the old library, I was a bit cowed by his beautiful antiques and his far-ranging intelligence. We talked about the School, the students, and the faculty.

He offered some advice: “Many of the most interesting faculty members are the older ones.”

To my 26-year-old self, who had never socialized with people older than me, this was an eye-opener. And he was right. My friendships with people like the Myerses, Jesdales, and Bob Gula were all important parts of my early years here.

I’ve enjoyed working with John on the Landscape Committee and seeing his passion for preserving and enhancing Groton’s beauty. I’ll always remember his quip about what has kept him at Groton for so many years: “Good architecture and great students.”

I’ll miss, too, his Chapel Talks.

Where else could we hear about writing thank you notes and the importance of RSVPs? We will all miss John’s humor, rigor, and character.

—Andy Anderson

www.groton.org

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Michael Lutch

A Face of the

Groton School plays many roles in students’

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Syrian Crisis

lives, but it’s rarely a refuge from civil war.

— BY GAIL FRIEDMAN —

U

ntil July 2012, Diana Sayegh ’14 and her family lived in the center of Aleppo, Syria, in a five-story, white stone apartment building, a five-minute walk away from both her maternal and paternal grandparents. Diana saw at least one set of grandparents—she calls them Teta, grandmother, and Jeddo, grandfather—every weekday. On Sundays, she, along with her large extended family, would visit both of her grandparents’ homes.

Diana’s life was pleasantly unremarkable in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city.

Her mother worked as a civil engineer; her father, a dentist, ran a dental clinic.

Until she enrolled at Groton, Diana had attended the same Catholic school since kindergarten. Each morning she would ride a bus about 25 minutes outside the city to school, and when she returned in the afternoon, she would hang out with friends, take piano lessons, or head to the English and French classes that supplemented what she learned in those subjects at school. Diana also studied drawing in an afternoon program, and she was a Saint Michel Scout, akin to a Girl Scout.

Diana’s story, at least at this moment, is not particularly sunny. How could any story about Syria today—a country embroiled in a brutal, deadly, and seemingly intractable civil war—be happy? Hers is a story about uncertainty and longing, but also about opportunity.

»

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“We hadn’t heard those sounds before, why would we be hearing them now?”

Syria—bordered by Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, and Turkey—is home to about 22 million people, some 2 million of them in Aleppo. The population is shrinking: the United Nations reports that 5,000 Syrians flee their country every day. In June 2013, nearly a year ago, the U.N. already had attributed about 93,000 deaths to the civil war, including some 6,000 children. Other reports place the number much higher. While many of Diana’s friends long to leave Syria, Diana dreams of returning.

Before 2011, if political turmoil was brewing in nearby countries, or even in her own, Diana was fairly oblivious. But in March of that year, that began to change. Peaceful protests against the president, Bashar al-Assad, sparked a sharp and decisive response from the government, which, according to numerous reports, kidnapped, tortured, and killed activists. Government security forces began opening fire on peaceful protests, and armed civilians began to return fire.

In the beginning, Diana didn’t think much of the protests. “At first it was a group of people rallying in the streets in support of the president,” she recalls.

“They carried signs and flags.” Over several weeks, vocal opposition from anti-government groups joined the cacophony. Diana frequently heard the shouting, and she could see the protests from the balcony of her apartment, but they still didn’t seem threatening.

The explosions altered her perspective. The government told the people the bombs were part of military exercises. “We didn’t know what to believe,” Diana says. “We hadn’t heard those sounds before, why would we be hearing them now?”

Still, the brewing civil war seemed distant until one day at school when students overheard a teacher whispering to another teacher about an explosion in central Aleppo. It had damaged a building just 10 minutes, by foot, from Diana’s home, and right next door to a friend’s home. As rumors spread, children began crying, and the teachers shared the few details they knew. School closed early that day. A few parents rushed to pick up their children, but most 22

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Spring 2014

of the students, including Diana, piled into buses and headed home, toward the city—and toward the bombing site. “We were told to put our bags up to block the bus windows and to keep our heads down,” Diana recalls. She and the others ducked and covered the windows as best they could, remaining that way throughout the 25-minute ride.

That close-to-home explosion uncorked a stream of violence in Aleppo. “Explosions started happening everywhere,” Diana says. “They were throwing grenades, shooting all the time.” One night she awoke at 2 a.m. to gunshots. “It was so close. They were on the street, right outside the apartment,” she says. Her younger sister Britney, with whom she shared a room, began to cry. Her father appeared in the doorway and warned them both to stay in bed.

Bombings became commonplace, and mundane routines stopped abruptly. Diana could no longer take her piano lessons or her afternoon French and English classes. It just was not safe to travel even a few blocks. She stopped walking to her relatives’ homes, minutes away. Her once frequent visits to family members became special, not regular, occurrences—she was allowed to go only if a parent could drive her. The explosions triggered a new routine: after each one, Diana’s family would call every relative to make sure each was unharmed.

H

B

H

efore the unrest began, Diana’s family had been similar to other educated families in Syria, except for one distinction: her brother, Michael, is studying at Harvard. “In Syria, nobody thought of studying abroad,” Diana says.

That Harvard connection brought Diana to Groton. A Harvard admissions counselor who knew Michael and understood the precarious situation in Syria suggested that Michael encourage Diana to explore boarding schools, and provided contact information. In the end, Diana applied only to Groton. Director of Admission Ian Gracey interviewed Diana by phone—they couldn’t Skype

The Sayegh family in Syria during simpler times Diana and friends at their first communion, when she was in third grade

Diana and her brother, Michael A gathering of Diana's large, extended family

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The Sayeghs' apartment building in Aleppo Diana (second from right in top row) with friends from Aleppo

Diana (second from left, foreground) in class at the school she attended from kindergarten until 11th grade At her ninth-grade graduation, flanked by her friends Myriam and Marianne

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Mastering the spoken language was considerably simpler than learning to understand inferences in multilayered novels.

because electricity in Aleppo was spotty and the Internet signal too slow. Diana was nervous about her English; though she’d taken those after-school classes and studied for years in school, her grammar was rudimentary.

“It was late in the spring after the admission season had concluded, but we had the capability to get someone out of a war zone, to be helpful to someone in need,” Ian says, adding that a generous benefactor covered her tuition.

When Diana received her acceptance to Groton, she was thrilled. It was a refuge and an adventure.

She never imagined a short-term haven in America for her would turn into a long-term asylum for her family.

In August 2012, Diana flew to the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon with her family. The American embassy in Damascus, Syria, had closed two years before. The road to the airport in Aleppo was perilous; guards stopped the Sayeghs every few miles, but the family arrived safely. They stayed in Lebanon about three weeks, until their papers were in order. Then, on August 23, 2012, Diana; her parents, Nael and Salwa; and her sister, Britney, left Lebanon for Boston. They expected to drop Diana at Groton, spend about a month in the area, and return home.

Originally, Diana had planned to fly to the U.S. with only her father, but her parents decided they all would accompany her. That was a fateful decision.

After they arrived in the U.S., Syria’s airports closed and danger escalated. Her parents worried about their safety, especially about the safety of Diana’s sister. Diana’s father, Nael, had an uncle in Pepperell, Massachusetts, not far from Groton. Only Nael had met him, but the Sayegh family moved in.

On her first day at Groton, Diana had her parents and her brother and sister by her side as she entered the Schoolhouse to register. She was unsure, afraid to approach the registration desk. “You talk,” she urged her brother, but he refused, and Diana cautiously introduced herself.

That night, at check-in, her dorm prefects—in typical teenaged innocence—asked everyone to share

one highlight and one “low-light” of the summer.

One by one, they shared details of trips, camps, adventures, and mishaps. When it came to Diana, she wasn’t sure what to say. “I had to leave my family in Syria,” she finally reported. “I don’t have a highlight.”

“Your highlight is coming here,” one of her dormmates suggested.

H

H

W

ith her English skills improving rapidly but still emerging, history and English were much more challenging than math and French. Reading James Joyce seemed impossible. “I just didn’t understand anything,” Diana says. Challenged by the culture and the academics, she met with her English teacher, Sravani Sen-Das, frequently, but often succumbed to tears. One day she confided in modern language teacher Rebecca Stanton, a native of Egypt who grew up in France. Rebecca urged Diana to stop by every day after school so they could read English together.

Throughout fall term, Diana spent almost every afternoon with Rebecca, either in her classroom or her campus home. Rebecca would read out loud with Diana, explaining, in English or French, the challenging words and providing cultural and historic background to lend context to the readings. Rebecca also asked questions that she thought might come up in class so Diana could think about them in advance.

By winter term, the School had provided a tutor, who helped Diana with English language skills and literature in lieu of her English class, and who also helped her manage the workload in her history class. The tutor worked closely with Sravani, who continued grading Diana’s essays.

While the process wasn’t easy, the result has been a marked improvement in Diana’s critical reading skills. Mastering the spoken language was considerably simpler than learning to understand inferences in multilayered novels. But she now can detect implied meanings and analyze literature, which Diana doubts she would have learned in Syria. “Here we

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On one hand, she realizes her good fortune: she is safe, she is free. But then she isn't so sure. . . “I don't know whether I would choose freedom or home.”

actually read books and novels, then talk about them and analyze them,” she says. “In Syria we don’t really read novels; we read texts. We don’t fully understand what’s between the lines. Now, even when I read something for pleasure, I try to fully understand it.”

This year, as a Sixth Former, Diana no longer faced a significant language barrier. She took the regular required Exposition class, as well as U.S. history, ethics, physics, calculus, computer science, drawing, and printmaking. She says she wouldn’t have had the opportunity to study computer science or art in Syria.

Her studies haven’t been easy, but she has persisted and improved.

Diana also sampled a number of afternoon and extracurricular activities at Groton, all of them entirely new to her. She had never played squash, but tried out the thirds team. She performed community service, tutoring at a school in Lowell, Massachusetts, and did a ceramics Faculty-Sponsored Activity (FSA). Last spring, Diana acted in the theater department production, a video called “There’s No Bus Without Us.” “It was a completely new experience. I was so scared at the beginning. I had never acted, and I’m kind of a shy person,” she says. “But it turned out well and I loved it. I loved how I got to know people I wouldn’t have gotten to know otherwise.” Diana is also a peer counselor and co-head of the French Club and Groton’s International Community Advising Program (ICAP).

For all the differences in the classroom and afternoon activities, what really has stunned Diana is the student-teacher relationship at Groton. “I find it so amazing how students talk to teachers outside class and go to their house and have dinner with them.

This does not exist in Syria,” she says. “Here teachers actually do care about our lives outside school.”

Diana knows she has grown from the challenges of the past two years. “Living in a completely different culture and a completely different place has made me more independent,” she says. “I realized I can depend on myself.”

As Diana was gaining independence, her parents were trying to acclimate. She had a student visa, 26

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but they had entered the U.S. on tourist visas and couldn’t work at first. Even if they’d had the right papers, their credentials did not suffice in the U.S. Her father would have needed extensive additional schooling to earn a U.S. dental license. Her mother’s weak English—she is just learning now—prevented her from the kind of engineering work she was trained to do. Eventually, they achieved an immigration status that allowed them to work, and they settled into jobs far removed from the careers they once had. Her father now works in a Home Depot, not far from their apartment, and her mother is a seamstress in a bridal shop.

The family hears about the daily travails of family members who stayed in Syria. Electricity is typically on only two hours a day—and heat runs on electricity.

“It’s hard for people who stayed there, and it’s hard for people who left the country,” Diana says.

Her family still has its condo in Aleppo, where they left most of their things. Diana’s room there sits untouched, like a museum exhibit of a former life. “All my stuff is there,” she says. “I thought I was going back.” Some of the apartment’s windows broke during a nearby explosion, but it has not been seriously damaged, and, fortunately, no one in her extended family has been injured.

At Groton, Diana’s dorm room is spare. One very small poster delivers a powerful message. “I used to dream of the future,” it says. “Now I dream of the past.”

To say Diana is homesick understates the yearning she feels not just for family and friends, but also for a country whose future is uncertain. “I miss everything,” she says. “I feel especially homesick before breaks, when everybody’s booking their flights home and I’m not.” On one hand, she realizes her good fortune: she is safe, she is free. But then she isn’t so sure. “I don’t know whether I would choose freedom or home,” she muses.

Diana’s friends in Syria, who stay in touch via Facebook, think she’s lucky. “I tell them I really want to go back,” Diana says, “and they tell me they want to leave.”

A C H A P E L TA L K

by Nosheen Hotaki ’14 January 28, 2014

The View

from Afghanistan

voces

A

doctor once told one of his patients that he had to run eight kilometers a day for 300 days for his disease to be cured. Three hundred days later, the patient called the doctor saying that he was all better, but that there was one problem. “What is the problem?” asked the doctor.

“I am 2,400 kilometers away from home.”

I find this joke the funniest joke of all time, perhaps because it is a typical Afghani joke. I have spent more than half of my life in places other than my motherland, yet no joke can me make laugh as hard as an Afghani joke can. No song can make me dance as cheerfully as an Afghani song can. I was born in the capital city of Afghanistan—Kabul—and raised in a home where I was always associated with writers, poets, and books. As a young girl, I saw how much respect my parents received from people in Kabul, and how highly my grandfather’s devotees spoke of him.

I always knew that education and learning were the most valued treasures in my family. My parents would always say that knowledge is the one thing no one can steal from you, the one thing you can always keep with you. My siblings and I were our happiest selves when my dad took us to the bookstore—our little heaven—where we would simply lose it and run around hunting for good books. He often took us to the zoo, ruined palaces, and other historical sites in Kabul. I loved going to all these places. I loved listening to him talk about the history of our country or philosophy, or the complexity of the human mind. On Fridays we usually went to Parwan, a province to the north of Kabul.

Afghan culture is very family-oriented; my neighbors, my aunts, their neighbors, my cousins, my cousin’s cousins, and so on would all be present—usually about

100 people. After paying our respects, saying hi, giving three kisses on the cheeks, and shaking hands with everyone, my cousin and I would sprint out of the room. We would go say hi to our favorite horses, and although I never dared to touch them, I would wave my hand and adore them from a distance. We would pick peaches from the trees and eat so many that our stomachs hurt.

We played hide and seek with all the kids around the grapevines.

I used to attend a Turkish school, and we were all fluent in Turkish. We took 15 yearly courses and eight classes per day, yet we were so happy that I remember crying during our school breaks because I missed everyone so badly. This was probably the very reason why I

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voces

Clockwise from top left: Nosheen as a little girl in Kabul; Nosheen with her brother, Mustafa, and her sister, Mariam; the Hotaki family in Norway — Nosheen's sisters, Mariam and Parnian, her mother, Manizha Bakhtari, her brother Mustafa, Nosheen, and her father Naser Hotaki; Nosheen in Jabal Saraj, Afghanistan

wasn’t pleased when my mother, a professor at Kabul University and a diplomat, was appointed as the ambassador in the Nordic countries. But we soon found ourselves on Scandinavian land, having left everything behind.

Needless to say, it was tough, and I spent most of my first days wishing to go back where I belonged. But I am not one to wait for my problems to be fixed; it suffocates me. So I chose to make the experience a good one, and I did. I treasure those three years. I like to think of Norway as my second home; it was where I matured, where I learned a new language, where I was always welcome.

When I applied to Groton, I decided not to worry about having to speak English 24/7, or anything of that sort. I chose to concentrate only on how it would help me learn more, complete my education, and get me closer to doing what I want.

The image most people have of Afghanistan is of a huge desert with long-bearded, barbaric men and uneducated, poor women. I have met open-minded Americans who understand even without me telling them, who know what is going on, who are hopeful. But some think I have been “saved” and some feel sorry for me and say, “OMG, I didn’t know you were from Afghanistan. I am so sorry!”

Some are just curious and ask me questions like, “So how many wives does your dad have? Do you have to marry your cousin? Are you, like, oil money Middle Eastern or the refugee kind? Were you like so sad when we killed

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Osama? I know he is one of your people. Are you like totally happy that our troops are making it all civilized in Afghanistan? Is it time for you to pray on your little magic carpet thing? Can you teach me how to say, “‘Don’t blow me up! I have Muslim friends!’ in Afghanistani?”

Americans always talk about values like individualism, yet they see us all in one group. You can’t watch the news and decide that is how Afghans are, nor can you look at me and decide all Afghans are like me. We are a multiethnic society; our national anthem mentions 14 ethnic groups, and there are more than 40 languages and 200 dialects. There have been more than three decades of war. My people haven’t lived many days in peace. It certainly doesn’t feel good when I hesitate to read the news, afraid of seeing Afghanistan’s name, afraid of finding out how many more people have died. Twenty Afghan civilians died in a suicide attack. Four people kidnapped. Ten people shot. Fifty bodies found.

I hate this feeling of uselessness; there is nothing I can do that would stop the wickedness. All I can do is sit, cry, and then continue living my life—nothing else. All of you have known a single story about Afghanistan, a story of war. It is a complicated place, and even I get confused and can’t quite tell what is going on. But it is also a matter of perspective. I could tell you that my grandmother had to secretly study with her brothers, hiding from her dad because at the time, it was unacceptable for girls to even

touch books. Or I could tell you that she grew up to be an independent woman who graduated from Queensland University, who was one of the 1,000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Prize of 2005, who helped hundreds of Afghan women become literate. I could tell you my grandfather had to leave his motherland because of the war, or I could tell you that he is a genius who wrote his first poem when he was 9. His first published poem was when he was 11. He attended Columbia and is a literary leader to many Persian poets, writers, and linguists. I could tell you that my dad couldn’t go to college because all male high school graduates were required to fight in the war, and my grandmother had to use all her money to get him to Iran to save his life, or I could tell you that six years ago, when he finally had the opportunity, he chose to go to college and get the best grades out of all his classmates. And the fact that he was 40 years old at this time made no difference. I could tell you that after graduating from college, my mom had to stay home for six years because of the war, but I could also tell you that after the Taliban reign was over, she worked hard every minute of her life. She became a professor and taught people what she was passionate about, published three books, and is now the only female ambassador of Afghanistan.

We went to school every day, everybody went to work, and we continued our daily routines. And no, we didn’t know if we would be the victims of the next suicide bomb a few miles away or not, but sitting at home and waiting for the disaster to be over wasn’t the solution.

When you are so aware of how cruel the world can be, you learn to grab every chance to laugh, to be happy, to help others. We have feminist men, educated women, and strong people determined to bring a change. We know too well that if we don’t work hard to make that happen, it probably never will. I can’t wait for the day when I am not afraid of reading the news—when I am not worried about my people, my family, and myself returning home safely.

Just like the patient who ran 2,400 kilometers to cure his disease, I am here at Groton. I am around 7,000 miles away from home. I don’t speak Persian every day, and I really miss it. I don’t go to Parwan on Fridays, or play hide and seek around grapevines. I don’t go on field trips with my dad anymore, and sometimes I feel like I am all by myself out in a strange land. Sometimes, it is suffocating. Sometimes, I want to give it all up, pack my bags, and go back home—wouldn’t that be so much easier? But deep inside, I know I won’t because I have taken a step forward in the long journey I have ahead of myself. I will walk this journey with my sister whom I look up to, my parents who are my greatest inspiration, and with everyone else who is tired of injustice. Everyone who is tired of inequality. Everyone who wants peace.

An Afghan proverb says, “There is a path to even the tallest mountain,” which means: don’t be afraid of dreaming big, because you will eventually achieve your goals and your story will have a happy ending. And if it doesn’t, then that is not the end.

Nosheen (first row, second from left) celebrating her birthday with her dorm mates

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A C H A P E L TA L K

by Peter Erichsen ’74, Trustee January 17, 2014

The Myth

of the Mainstream voces

I

believe it is customary for those of my ilk who find themselves standing in this pulpit to begin by remarking that they are “out of their comfort zone.” But until this moment, I had no idea how inadequate a phrase that really is. I fear that in the months and years to come, a dream in which I am standing here with no prepared remarks will be added to my already not infrequent dreams of appearing at college exams having read nothing and attended no classes. But at least those dreams don’t include an audience.

Speaking of the audience, I do have one significant advantage over many of my trustee predecessors in this role of Chapel talker—no children in the audience to embarrass. No children at all, if it comes to that, though I fear that as a non-parent, I have just retained all that capacity for embarrassment myself.

Fortunately for you, I am taking advice from Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the Sixth Form of 1900, who famously offered this wisdom to all public speakers: “Be sincere. Be brief. Be seated.”

Speaking of advice, it won’t surprise you to know that I sought advice from several people—some Grotonians, some not—about what topic I might address this morning. One dinner table conversation over Christmas with an old friend led to a rather detailed conversation about A Separate Peace, which I confess I didn’t really follow, and since I hadn’t read the book in 40 years, I moved on.

A Groton formmate suggested “service” as a theme, and as Mr. Maqubela’s kind introduction suggested, I have been privileged in my life to be given several opportunities to perform public service at high levels. But being a bit closer to the Groton of today than my friend is, I am impressed by how thoroughly service is already

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made a part, not just of the School’s mission statement, but also of its mission and its day-to-day fabric.

Besides, Mr. Maqubela had already made pretty clear what he would like me to talk about, and he did it in a way that marked him as a born headmaster. He didn’t tell me what I should talk about. Please feel free to address any topic at all, he said. It’s just that we have made inclusion and welcoming the major themes of my first year as Headmaster, so it would be wonderful if you could address them.

Now I know what you’re thinking. What does a late middle-aged white guy have to tell us about inclusion?

What does someone who has, as you’ve heard, been welcomed into the right schools and the right jobs all his life have to tell us about the need to be welcoming?

Well, I’ll hold you in suspense on that point for a few minutes while I talk about a concept that I’ve recently run across in a book by a Yale law professor. Because I have worked for institutions—a presidential administration, a university, a leading museum, an international law firm—that are committed to the ideal and hard work of

“Covering” was a crucial part of my own experience at Groton.

achieving meaningful diversity, I have read and thought a lot about the topic. But almost nothing I have read has resonated for me like a book called Covering by a Yale Law School professor named Kenji Yoshino. So I’d like to begin by telling you about this concept that Yoshino calls “covering.”

Yoshino’s thesis is a complicated one, with implications for the law and the courts that I can’t do justice to, so forgive me if I boil down this very interesting book to a couple of core insights. First, society imposes an enormous pressure on each of us to conform, to assimilate, to play down the differences between ourselves and the perceived mainstream. Our response to this pressure is what Yoshino calls “covering.” It’s different from an older and better recognized concept called “passing.” In the old South, light-skinned blacks sometimes tried to “pass” as white. In our own time, many closeted gays and lesbians avoid exposing personal details and try to “pass” as straight.

But even in contexts where African-Americans are welcomed and gays and lesbians feel comfortable coming out, they and others are frequently asked to play down the salient characteristics of their identity. African-Americans are asked by their employer not to wear corn rows. Gays are advised by friends not to “act gay” so as to make others uncomfortable. Working mothers don’t mention their children at work lest they be seen as mothers first and employees second. Latinos are asked not to speak Spanish in the workplace. And so on.

In many cases, courts have found that such requirements to “cover” distinguishing characteristics aren’t unlawful discrimination because the courts draw a distinction between immutable characteristics, like skin color, and mutable ones, like dress or hair style, which individuals can alter or “cover” in order to fade into the mainstream.

Yoshino’s second core insight is that everyone covers.

Everyone covers. Yoshino writes about talks he has given on “covering” as an emerging civil rights issue and what he calls the “angry straight white man” reaction. He writes: “A member of the audience, almost invariably a straight white man, almost invariably angry, denies that covering is a civil rights issue.” The man says something like: “[Racial minorities or women or gays] should receive legal protection against discrimination for things they cannot help. But why should they receive protection for behaviors within their control—wearing cornrows, acting ‘feminine’ or flaunting their sexuality. After all [says the angry white man], I have to cover all the time. I have to mute my depression, or my obesity, or my shyness, or my workingclass background. Why should legally protected groups have a right of self-expression I do not? Why should my struggle for an authentic self matter less?”

Yoshino says: “I surprise these individuals when I agree. [We err when we assume] that those in the so-called mainstream—those straight white men—do not also cover.

[Representatives of majority groups are too often] understood only as obstacles, as people who prevent others from expressing themselves, rather than as individuals who are themselves struggling for self-definition. No wonder they often respond to civil rights advocates with hostility. They experience us as asking for an entitlement they themselves have been refused—an expression of their full humanity.”

Now let me pause here to say that the most serious pitfall confronting a speaker in my position is the assumption that any particular idea or phenomenon I might bring to your attention is actually relevant to Groton students in 2014.

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Everyone feels some need to hide some aspects of who she or he really is.

voces

I do know that covering was a crucial part of my own experience at Groton. As a scholarship student, I tried hard to fit in with my new rich friends. As the son of a single working mother, I tried hard to make my family life seem as normal as anyone else’s. And as someone who’d known from an early age that he was gay (even though the term itself was just coming into vogue), I did my very best not to let on that some of my friendships with other boys were really crushes and that I wasn’t interested in experimenting with dating and other pursuits with the opposite sex.

But I am staring my 40th Groton reunion in the face this spring, and though I am not a parent, I know enough young people to be fearful that any insight I may have has reached its “sell by” date. What’s more, the world is moving incredibly fast. In my own lifetime, I started my career in a workplace that, while tolerant, did not even acknowledge the possibility of gays. Today the same firm trumpets its ability to attract the best gay and lesbian law students, and the firm’s managing partner hugged me in the hallway when he heard I’d married my partner.

But as Yoshino tells us, even after the battle for equal legal rights is well on its way to being won, the pressure to conform to the mainstream remains fierce. Though I truly believe my colleagues and friends accept me for who I am, I not infrequently find myself editing myself to play down my gayness. So it doesn’t seem too much of a reach to assume that even though Groton is a welcoming community, it still exerts tremendous pressure to “cover”—to sand off the rough or just the unusual edges that make one student different from another—and that this pressure applies not just to minority or “diverse” members of the community, but to everyone who perceives a difference between her- or himself and the mainstream.

Still, fearful that my experience was out of date, I started looking around. I was struck by what someone confronting his 20th high school reunion recently wrote on The New York Times’ website of his high school 32

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experience. “While I wasn’t bullied,” he wrote, “I did forfeit my youth to a colorless heteronormative fairy tale. While my classmates experimented with romantic relationships and sex, I avoided making eye contact or brushing elbows with a crush. This was 1993, the year President Clinton instituted the ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy in the military, a credo I hoped those in my personal life would follow.”

Finally, and bringing my research up to date, I read with interest the results of the very thoughtful work that the School has done recently to examine the issue of diversity at Groton. The surveys and focus groups revealed a real commitment to diversity and openness, but also a strong pressure to conform to a perceived mainstream. I was especially struck by the fact that in a 2013 survey of current Groton students, not a single respondent identified him- or herself as an out gay or lesbian. While statistical anomalies are possible, I think this finding says more about a community that is tolerant and welcoming, but in which the pressure to conform is nevertheless keenly felt.

I’ve talked a lot about the gay and lesbian experience because it’s what I know best. But Yoshino’s great insight is that everyone covers. Not that everyone is subject to the same level of discrimination or the same number of disadvantages, but that everyone feels some need to hide some aspects of who she or he really is. Inclusion and welcoming are not just things that “mainstream” and “majority” folks can do for “diverse” or “minority” people. We all have aspects of our identities that we need to or want to cover. If that’s the case—and I believe it is—it means that the mainstream is something of a myth, because no one is entirely within it.

Once we recognize that we are all subject to that pressure to cover—some more than others, but each of us in his or her own way—it can give us common ground on which to think about and talk about what a truly inclusive and welcoming community can look like.

The struggle for inclusion and diversity isn’t just about making sure that under-represented groups get a fairer deal. It’s also about making sure that each of us has the freedom to express her- or himself as freely as possible and that each of us has the room in which to be, outwardly, the person we know ourselves to be inwardly.

That’s a struggle we all share, and in which we all have a stake.

A C H A P E L TA L K

by Schuyler Colloredo-Mansfeld ’14 January 27, 2014

Becoming

the Gran Llama

T

he first time my family went to Ecuador, I was 5 years old. My father was doing anthropological research there, and we were along for the ride. We all ate, slept, and cooked in one room for the six weeks we spent there. Two summers later, we returned to the same room, and then again the year after that. During the summers we spent there, my younger sisters and I filled our days however we could.

We played nonsensical games for hours, taking turns throwing pebbles at piles of bottle caps and then at each other when one of us broke the rules of our extraordinarily complex game. We flew kites made from trash bags and kinewa stalks. We rode the bus down to town with our mom on Saturday mornings to watch the live animal market. Our time growing up in Ecuador shaped my and my two sisters’ lives immensely and has given us a unique perspective on the world.

I imagined, as I sat down to write this talk, that I would be able to draw some critical truth from what I have learned from my time in Ecuador. I could say, for example, that the people whom I lived with in Ecuador are happier than most Groton students despite having a fraction of the wealth, opportunities, and resources.

Therefore, we shouldn’t worry at all about SATs or biology finals as these things do not matter in the grand scheme of things. Or I could say, “The time I have spent on cobbled roads and in concrete-block houses has instilled in me a true appreciation for the opportunities all of us in this Chapel have. Not to work hard to take full advantage of these opportunities, then, is ungratefully wasting what we have.”

While both of these may be true, I do not think it is honest to present the effect my time in Ecuador has had on me in such a black and white way. To this day, I do not

entirely understand the lessons that I have taken from Ecuador. At different times, my experiences have resonated with me in different, and often contradictory, ways.

So I gave up on the single big message and settled for what my time in Ecuador has caused me to think most deeply about, and that is what it means to be accepted.

After the three summers that we had spent in Ecuador, my family moved there for most of my fifth-grade year. Living there, I quickly learned, was an entirely different experience from being there in the summers.

When I was there during the summers, I could remain mostly isolated from people there. Now, I found myself thrown into a local school, forced to sink or swim. And I basically sunk. At least at first. I was a head taller than my peers; my hair, which was much blonder than it is now, contrasted starkly with the jet-black ponytails worn by all of my classmates; and most importantly, I did not really speak any Spanish, so I could not communicate with anyone around me.

There were about 25 of us fifth graders at the school.

Our classroom was one of five other identical classrooms tacked onto each other and covered by a corrugated sheet-metal roof. The room was dim as little light made it through the dust-encrusted windows. I spent the first few weeks of my time there looking out through the dirty panes of glass at the courtyard beyond them, too intimidated by the differences between myself and the children around me to attempt to bridge the gap and connect with them.

When I eventually turned my attention to the classroom I was in, I began to see the chaos that surrounded me. A fairly typical day included kids yelling as they ran around and around their desks until our teacher could not take it anymore and sent kids to stand in the corners.

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I won a pig. To be fair, actually it was only one-fourteenth of a pig.

voces Left, Schuyler with Israel; top right, with the prize pig; bottom right, with his soccer team in Ecuador

Invariably one of the kids would stand in the trashcan that was in the front right corner of the room, tip over, and begin rolling around the floor inside it. This, of course, started the running and yelling all over again. I never understood why our teacher did not just move the trashcan, but that ranked quite low on the long list of things that baffled me at the time. Eventually, my teacher would once again regain control, and we would all end up writing lines. I still have notebooks in my desk at home that are filled with page after page of neat Spanish writing. “Debo respectar a mis compañeros,” or “I ought to respect my peers,” the first line of one of the notebooks reads. The second one says the same thing, and the third, and the 147 lines after that. Looking back on it, I do not know why we were made to write this particular phrase 150 times—it was not as if any peer were being disrespected.

In fact, it was the respect one of my peers showed me amid all the chaos that began to change things for me. My gradual acceptance into the school started small. Quite literally. It started with the shortest boy in my class, Israel, taking the time to look over my shoulder and whisper a 34

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word or two to keep my dictation on track as the teacher read from the one textbook the class had. During recess, he pointed out which five-cent candies were worth buying at the school store, pantomiming the word sour to me. And one day, Israel showed me how to jump on the packets of mayonnaise that came with the bags of chips to send a satisfying condiment arc out across the outdoor basketball court.

It was not as if someone had flipped a switch and I suddenly began feeling at home at that school. In fact, I never felt entirely comfortable there. Israel, though, in stopping his work or play for a moment to help me out, gave me ways to join in. Even though I did not ever feel as if I really belonged, I increasingly was included; I began to feel a dependable connection with several of the kids in the rowdy crowd of my peers and found myself sharing in moments of their fun.

That same year, I won a pig. To be fair, actually it was only one-fourteenth of a pig. The other 13 shares belonged to my teammates from the soccer team I was on. The team was put together to represent our neighborhood in a parish-wide soccer tournament. I was asked

to be on the team by the coach, who, at the time, did not even know if I even played soccer. All he knew was that I was a head taller than every other kid in my neighborhood, making me the only player on any of the teams who could touch the crossbar of the goals that we played with, and that was good enough for him. The team had one practice before our first game. We met in a village grazing area and dribbled around for a half-hour or so between cows and sheep. I kept to myself. All of my teammates knew each other. They all had great nicknames—one was called Cat, another Dog, another Puma, and another Goat. In retrospect, Goat does not actually seem like a particularly cool nickname, but at the time for some reason it struck me as intimidating.

As we began playing and winning games, it became clear that we were actually pretty good. Over the several weeks that the tournament spanned, more and more members of the town began coming out to watch our games. Several games into the tournament, someone from the town donated uniforms for us to play in. They were everything one could hope for in a child’s soccer jersey—bright yellow and proudly sponsored by Pilsner, a beer company. We made it through the quarter, then semifinals, and into the final. In the most heavily attended athletic event I have ever participated in, my team defeated another in a game that I cannot actually remember at all, but I am sure was thrilling. I do remember very clearly, though, several days before, I got my own nickname. I had affectionately been deemed Gran Llama by my teammates. Granted, Gran Llama may not have had the same intimidation factor as, say, Puma, but that didn’t matter to me. The name, which stemmed from a combination of my height and the fact that I had not gotten a haircut since I had arrived, meant that I was a real part of the team.

The night after we won the final, my team was invited to a special ceremony in which we were awarded our prize. At that point, I imagined this was medals and possibly a trophy. Never make assumptions. That’s a moral for you right there. Heralded by a man mumbling into a megaphone and then the Ecuadorian national anthem, someone emerged with a pig—a hairy, black, 180-pound pig that was angered by the screaming crowd. My team erupted into ecstatic cheers. The pig was handed to the coach who, after a concise 20-minute speech, turned toward the team. Mistaking my frown as a sign that I was unsatisfied with the size of our prize, he set out earnestly trying to convince me that it was a very big pig. My nodding apparently unconvincing, he reached over and

handed the rope to me. In picture books, pigs are cute. In reality, pigs are terrifying, and very strong. I stood there playing tug-o-war with our prize until I could hand the beast, that was now foaming at the mouth, off to a teammate. The boy I handed it to was promptly pulled onto his face by the pig that then ran for the cornfield next to us, chased by our whole team. It was eventually caught, and the story had a happy ending for everyone except for the pig, which, over the next two days, was killed and carefully divided into 14 equal shares, which, incidentally, is how I know it weighed 180 pounds.

Now when I walked around the community, people would call out to me; usually I had no idea what they were saying, but they were smiling and I smiled back. I was invited to play in pick-up soccer games. I had my own nickname. I was the Gran Llama. This was a more

I had no idea what they were saying, but they were smiling and I smiled back.

complete form of acceptance than the kind I felt at the school. I was a true part of a community. That being said, this too was complicated. My acceptance actually caused me to recognize parts of myself that would always be different from my playmates. I would never feel totally comfortable with angry prize pigs, the plastic bags they were divided into, or even the chaotic village celebration as they were awarded. Once again, I was in a gray area.

Since Ecuador, I have had to find acceptance many times. I moved from Iowa to North Carolina in the seventh grade. While the differences between myself and my new peers and environment were not as pronounced as when I was in Ecuador, I was once again looking in from the outside.

Of course, I do not need to convince any of you that seeking acceptance is something that is complicated. At one point or another, we all arrived here as outsiders to some degree, and we were forced to confront the chaos that we found ourselves surrounded by. This is not a single confrontation either. I have found myself an outsider in many different communities throughout my time here at Groton. Whether it was joining the Jazz Band my

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The Gran Llama, back row, with classmates in Ecuador

voces Third Form year, lacing up my skates for the first time and stepping on the ice with a skate guard on in Fourth Form to join JV puck, or simply entering a new dorm at the beginning of each year. There is no single moment of acceptance at Groton.

We hear a lot about the “Groton mold” and the dangers of conformity in the early forms at Groton. The way I see it, however, some degree of conformity is not inherently bad. In my experience, acceptance is something earned, something changed, and something gained. Had I not been willing to go along with Israel, had I refused to try the strange Ecuadorian version of Sour Patch Kids, or to jump enthusiastically on a little packet of mayo, I would not have created the common ground that connected me to Israel and others at that school.

Perhaps most importantly, as we find ourselves changing to fit in, following along with others, and all of those things that make us nervous that we are conforming, I think we also recognize those things within ourselves that will always make us a bit different from those around us. For me, the Gran Llama, it was my fear that my prize was going to turn and bite me that reminded me how American I was. These parts that we refuse to let go of and that distinguish us from some communities, these 36

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are our links to the communities we came from—and maybe to where we are going to next.

This past summer when I was back in Ecuador, as I was walking around the neighborhood I had lived in, someone waved from the other side of the street. “Is that the Gran Llama?” he called. I laughed and told him it was indeed. He smiled and continued up the road. I smiled to myself, as it reminded me of all the time I had spent with Dog, Puma, and the other guys. Standing here in the Chapel, I am reminded of the communities I am a part of here, but I cannot help but think about the future.

Who knows where I will be in six months? I certainly do not, but I figure I will be on the outside somewhere, trying to work my way into a new community. And that’ll be fine. Because it seems to me, that as long as we constantly put ourselves in the position of the outsider we don’t have to worry about conformity, as we will be constantly refreshed through the complicated process of acceptance. I hope that in 10 years if someone stops me on the street and asks if I was the Schuyler who once went to Groton School I will smile just as I did this past summer in Ecuador. I hope that I will be both reminded of the piece of Groton I have taken with me and struck by of all the ways that I have changed since I left.

book review

JFK’s Last Hundred Days: The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President Thurston B. Clarke ’64 Review by Richard Bradley ’82

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OES THE world need another book about John

JFK’s philandering. In the next months, the two drew closer than perhaps they had ever been. Clarke suggests that the death put at least a temporary halt to Kennedy’s womanizing, noting that when Marlene Dietrich, a JFK conquest in September 1962, visited the White House in September 1963, the president gave her a cooler reception. Would the interruption have endured? Clarke implies that it might have; Kennedy was in love with his wife, and also feared that he was losing his looks and that his infidelities would eventually result in scandal. (He was obsessed with the Profumo affair, Clarke reminds us.) The deepened relationship between Jack and Jackie was certainly tangible: it prompted Jackie to agree to campaign with Jack in Dallas, an act she despised and a place she distrusted, on November 22.

The autumn of 1963 was also filled with political challenge for Kennedy. Facing an election in 1964, the president believed that he would beat Republican Barry Goldwater, yet fretted over polls showing a close race. Consumed with thoughts of his place in history, he was stung by criticisms that his presidency had accomplished little and furious with himself over self-inflicted wounds like the Bay of Pigs. Kennedy was tormented by the potential atrocity of nuclear war, sensitive to the horrors of conventional war, appalled by anti-black violence in the South, and moved by the persistence of poverty in the U.S. In political terms, Clarke posits, that would have translated into more bridgebuilding with the Soviets, improved relations with Castro, a U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, and a focus on civil rights and what we would now call economic justice. It sounds too good to be true, but Clarke makes it credible, which makes what happened in late November all the more painful.

Richard Bradley ’82 is the author of American Son: A Portrait of John F. Kennedy, Jr. and, most recently, The Greatest Game: The Yankees, the Red Sox, and the Playoff of ’78.

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de libris

F. Kennedy? The ones already written fill countless library shelves and, likely, more than a few libraries; an Amazon search for John F. Kennedy books turns up 81,404 results. So the bar for a new entry to the genre is both low—why not 81,405?—and high: what could there possibly be left to say about JFK? Which is why Thurston Clarke’s new book, JFK’s Last Hundred Days: The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President, is so impressive: it does have something new to say. Clarke wants to answer the 50-year-old “what if ” questions about Kennedy: had he lived, what kind of president would he have been? What might a second term have been like? And how was he changing, both as a president and as a man? No book on Kennedy could possibly be definitive, but JFK’s Last Hundred Days presents some compelling answers.

The titular reference point for Clarke’s book is Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.’s A Thousand Days—John F. Kennedy in the White House, one of the first evaluations of Kennedy’s abbreviated presidency. But Clarke narrows the prism. A close reading of the period from August 7, 1963 through Kennedy’s death on November 22, he argues, reveals a man in political and personal transition. As Clarke puts it, he wants to “search through all of [Kennedy’s] compartments during the crucial last hundred days of his life—days that saw him finally beginning to realize his potential as a man and a president—in order to solve the most tantalizing mystery of all: not who killed him, but who he was when he was killed, and where he would have led us.”

There are a lot of compartments, filled with both pain and promise. The first in which Clarke searches is the death on August 7 of Jack and Jackie’s newborn baby, Patrick, who was born five-and-a-half weeks premature. As the infant struggled to breathe, Kennedy held his tiny fingers.

When Patrick stopped breathing at 4:19 a.m., Kennedy said quietly, “He put up quite a fight—he was a beautiful baby”— and wept.

The loss had a profound impact on Kennedy, bringing him and Jackie closer and renewing a marriage strained by

new releases

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1 Divine Fire Kenneth R. Ballato, Jr. ’11 and Theodore L. Leonhardt ’11

Graduates of Groton School played an important role in shaping the direction of American government.

People like Dean Acheson, Averell Harriman, C. Douglas Dillon, McGeorge Bundy and, most famously, President Franklin D. Roosevelt 38

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prominently led the nation. Numerous other “Grotties” held leadership positions in the State Department, CIA, and other areas of government.

Grotonians influenced events of historical import: the New Deal, World War II, the Marshall Plan, the 1953 Iran Coup, the Bay of Pigs, and the Vietnam War. Divine Fire explains how the alumni of one small secondary school could have such a large impact. The profiles offer not only a study of

Spring 2014

20th-century American foreign policy, but also a view into the education of an American leadership class.

2 Elephant Miguel Ali Hasan ’99

How does a political campaign that starts with a scandal almost end with a win? Elephant, published by

BearManor Media, is Miguel Ali Hasan’s personal narrative. It explains how he overcame the scandal, his views on American politics, and most important, the 12 things he learned as he knocked on more than 20,000 doors, fighting his way back to a near victory.

3 Garden Magic John Train ’46, GP’97 and Linda Kelly

Garden Magic compiles works of art, literature, and poetry that capture the joy of gardens through the ages.

The authors consider whether our love of gardens and gardening stems from ancient history: after all, the first garden, as we are told, was the Garden of Eden. Are garden lovers, they wonder, trying to return to paradise—or at least capture a piece of it? The works in Garden Magic remind us that gardens are places of beauty and refreshment, whose growing things bring us close to nature and deliver sheer joy and a unique sense of fulfillment.

4 Escape Home: Rebuilding a Life after the Anschluss, A Family Memoir Charles Paterson and Carrie Paterson ’90

Escape Home is the riveting story of a secular Jewish family uprooted by the Nazi occupation of Austria and Czechoslovakia. A tapestry of historical and personal accounts, one thread is the memoir of Aspen hotelier, ski instructor, and architectural designer Charles Paterson (born Karl

Schanzer in 1929), who was 9 years old when the Nazi invasion reached Vienna; it is woven together with the biography of Charles’ stalwart, inventive, and visionary father, Steve Schanzer. Escape Home also chronicles, in his own words, Steve’s foundational experience as a prisoner of war in Siberia during World War I and his dramatic three-month-long escape through Nazi-occupied France by bicycle during World War II. Broader than a family history, the book also connects movements in modern architecture—through VienneseCzechoslovak architect Adolf Loos, Charles Paterson’s uncle; through Charles’ apprenticeship with Frank Lloyd Wright; and through Paterson’s own architectural work. Carrie Paterson worked with her father, Charles, for four years to expand his memoir into a nonfiction book that takes readers through two world wars, upheaval, forced migration, heartache, and hope. The survivors’ tales in Escape Home also show architecture as a reflection of perseverance.

5 Opera at the Bandstand: Then and Now George W. Martin ’44

In Opera at the Bandstand: Then and Now, George W. Martin ’44 surveys the role of concert bands during the 19th and early 20th centuries in making contemporary opera popular. He also chronicles how in part they lost their audience in the second half of the 20th century by abandoning operatic repertory.

George begins with the Dodworth bands in New York City from the 1850s and moves to the American tour of French conductor

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

and composer Louis Antoine Jullien, bandmaster Patrick S. Gilmore’s jubilee festivals, the era of John Philip Sousa from 1892 to 1932, performances of the Goldman Band of New York City from 1920 to 2005, and finally the wind ensembles sparked

by Frederick Fennell. He illustrates the degree to which operatic material comprised these bands’ overall repertory.

Opera at the Bandstand describes how the technological advancements sweeping the country, such as radio, automobiles, recordings, television, and air conditioning, along with changes in demographics, affected the country’s musical life.

6 Learning-Focused Leadership in Action: Improving Instruction in Schools and Districts Michael S. Knapp ’64, Michael A. Copland, Meredith I. Honig, Margaret L. Plecki, and Bradley S. Portin

Learning-Focused Leadership in Action explores what it means for educational leaders to focus educators’ practices on improving the learning of young people, adults, and the system itself. The volume demonstrates what these forms of leadership look like in practice, and how educational systems can enact and sustain them.

Drawing on extensive case study research in public schools and districts, the volume presents a promising set of strategies and practices that can help leaders at both the school and district level improve the quality of learning opportunities and student performance, no matter how challenging the circumstances.

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Photo s by J o n C has e

In an unusually intense chapter of the storied GrotonSt. Mark’s rivalry, Groton’s boys hockey team traveled to a frozen Fenway Park in January to take on the St. Mark’s Lions.

Frozen

Left, Jason Cahoon ’15; above, Ace Cowans ’15, foreground, Kevin Maldonado ’14, far right, and Andrew Popp ’14 in the background. Top right, the coaches, Scott Young from St. Mark's and Bill Riley from Groton.

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Below, Matt Winter ’16; bottom left, Ace Cowans ’15; bottom right, Tristan Smith ’17

F e n w ay

Donning “throwback” jerseys in honor of the late, legendary Groton coach, Frank “Junie” O’Brien, the Zebras took the ice in front of an excited crowd of students, faculty, parents, and alumni.

The team came out of the gate fast, adjusting to the harsh outdoor conditions, and controlled the pace of the game for much of the first period. After a myriad of scoring chances were turned away by St. Mark’s, the game remained tied 0-0 after the first period.

Continuing the momentum, the Zebras capitalized on a scoring chance midway through the second period, thanks to relentless fore-checking by Michael Brown ’16 and a beautiful pass from Ward Betts ’16 to Dorien Llewellyn ’15, who beat the St. Mark’s goaltender for the goal. The rest of the second period saw back-and-forth action from both sides and great goaltending from Co-captain Matt Pompa ’14, who kept the Lions off of the board going into the third period.

However, with five minutes left in the third, the Lions caught a bouncing puck in front of the net and knotted the score 1-1. The Lions struck again less than two minutes later, putting them ahead with three minutes left to go in the game.

Unfortunately, the Zebras took a late penalty and could not find the equalizer.

Although the Fenway game ended in a tough 2-1 loss, the team will never forget the experience.

— Joe Gentile ’14, Co-captain

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Near right, Michael Brown ’18; far right, Maddy Forbess ’16. Bottom left, Andrew Popp ’14 and Will Corman ’16; bottom right, Danny Lopez ’15, Desiree Jones ’14, Brittani Taylor ’14, and Sashni-Cole Mathews ’15, photographing the Fenway fervor

Kenny Maclean '57

Hugh Scott '57

Stu Forbes '57 Temba Maqubela

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mong the fans at the Frozen Fenway hockey face-off in January were six members of Groton’s 1957 championship hockey team (pictured with Headmaster Temba Maqubela): from left, Kenny Maclean '57, Hugh Scott '57, Stu Forbes '57, Gordon Gund '57, Bill Polk '58, and Billy Oates '61. They traveled from as far away as California to cheer on Groton’s boys, but even more, they came to pay tribute to their beloved coach, the late Junie O’Brien.

Junie’s imprint on Groton hockey is well known — one of the School’s rinks is named in his memory. At Fenway, the team wore jerseys styled like those worn in the 50s, with Junie’s initials on a sleeve — a gift from Hugh Scott.

Just before the national anthem, a photo of Junie was

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Gordon Gund '57

Bill Polk '58

Billy Oates '61

displayed on the Jumbotron while an announcer read the following: “Groton School honors the memory of coach, teacher, and mentor Junie O’Brien. Junie made a profound impact on countless students between 1948 and 1980, coached varsity ice hockey for 20 years and varsity baseball for 26 years. Several members of his undefeated 1957 varsity hockey team are here today. Thanks to a grateful Groton alumnus who played on that 1957 team, Groton players are wearing throwback jerseys bearing Junie’s initials. Junie would have loved to be here today.”

Jon Chase

Boys Ice Hockey 16-8-3 What a difference a year can make! Last year at this time I reported on a tough season and a 7-16-2 finish. This year was a different story.

The boys’ varsity hockey team had a storied run in the playoffs and finished the season at 16-8-3. As a hockey coach I always want my guys to be playing their best hockey when it counts. I’m proud to report that this year’s team did just that. I couldn’t have been more proud of the way the players came together as a team this year.

In November, we began our season with a scrimmage against St. Paul’s in Concord, New Hampshire. After jumping out to a 3-0 lead in the first period, we held on for a well-earned 5-4 win. It was a terrific team effort. The

game gave me a clear indication that we had a special team, and it made everyone eager to start the regular season. Come winter break, we were 5-2-1, with the highlight being a well-played road game against another “big school”—this time a 4-4 tie against Deerfield.

Shortly after returning to campus from winter break, the boys played rival St. Mark’s at historic Fenway Park. Despite a 2-1 loss, it was an amazing and memorable experience for everyone involved. The middle of January proved to be a tough stretch for the Zebras, losing to Brooks 4-6 and to Lawrence Academy 1-2. We rebounded well though, going undefeated over the next five games, including a 4-1 victory against the eventual Eberhart champion, Rivers.

Because of timely goals, timely saves, and tight defense, the wins kept coming for the Zebras during February. We managed to squeak by BB&N with a 2-1 road win, and then beat them a second time at home with a come-from-behind victory, scoring five unanswered goals during the second half of the game for a 6-2 win.

These wins helped us solidify a spot in the Division I Small School Tournament, in which we earned the fifth seed, sending us on the road to Connecticut in a Founders League matchup against Westminster School.

This quarterfinal game allowed the Zebras to showcase what they had learned over the course of the season, and they performed admirably. The boys really managed the puck

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grotoniana

Winter Sports

Olivia Ladd-Luthringshauser ’15

This page, clockwise from top left: Kate Belanger ’17; Coco Wallace ’17 and Anna Thorndike ’16; Anna Nicholson ’16; Amani Jiu ’17, Breezy Thomas ’14, and Rachel Reed ’14 Opposite page, Zahin Das ’16, Luka Bakic ’15

PHOTOS BY JON CHASE

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well, played sound hockey, and came away with a 3-2 win. I’m told it was the first win for any Eberhart team against a Founders League team in the playoffs. Needless to say, the boys and the coaches were all overjoyed and excited to move on to the next round.

Unfortunately, the season ended during the semifinal match against the #1 seed Dexter School. It was a great battle and remained tied 1-1 for the entire second period. In the third period, Dexter broke the stalemate with a short-handed goal.

Overall, it was a season to remember, and I know we are all excited to start the 2014-15 season next fall.

— Coach Bill Riley

Girls Ice Hockey 1-17-3 The 2013-14 girls varsity hockey season can be best characterized by the theme of building resilience to adversity. Although the program attracted more players than it has in the

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past five years, most were new team members and underformers. Upper School veterans were few. Perhaps the team’s greatest challenge was weathering consistent one- or two-goal losses — there’s nothing like emptying the tank every game only to fall short by a slim margin.

The win-loss record would suggest that we did not overcome our persisting struggles.

However, the reality is that the young squad remained impressively stable over the course of the year. We welcomed the challenge of perseverance and simplified our goals, causing the team to rise against the toughest opponents on our schedule. The end of the season was punctuated with the highlight of an exhaustive team effort, falling only 1-0 to a strong rival on St. Mark’s Day. Reflecting on and carrying over the accomplishments of 2013-14, we look forward to building upon our efforts next winter.

— Coach Randi Dumont

Spring 2014

Boys Squash 5-8 The boys squash team came into this season with more potential than experience, having lost four of last year’s top seven players.

Despite our relative lack of experience in a league that gets tougher every year, we were intent on looking like a team of veterans as early as possible. That meant practicing with focus and energy (and running lots and lots of court sprints), which everyone did from Day 1.

It took little time for Captain Ryan Voon ’14 to emerge as an exceptional leader and for his teammates to throw themselves eagerly into their collective effort. We suffered a few early losses, but then it was Ryan who pulled out a tight match, 11-9 in the fifth game, to give the team a solid win over Andover — and an important sense of confidence.

Five different players represented Groton at the #7 spot this season and, together, accumulated a record of 10-3, indicating what an exceptionally deep team this was. With

Photos by Jon Chase

everyone working hard, the improvement in both fitness and skill level was clear from week to week. Following the examples of Ryan, Ross Coneybeer ’14, and top dog Anthony Chu ’15, the team began to compete with that crucial balance between intensity and poise. Our progress was marked not as much by our handful of wins as by the closeness of some of the contests we lost, including two matches that went 3-4 to both St. Paul’s and St. George’s when Anthony was out with an injury, and then, late in the season, a 2-5 loss to powerhouse Milton that actually could have gone either way.

It was largely by virtue of some other teams’ uneven records that Groton was granted a spot in the 16-team A Division at New Englands, held at Brooks. Even though we were one of the lowest-ranked teams coming into that top division, we knew by then that we were better than our record and welcomed the chance to prove it. Prove it we

did, putting together a series of solid matches that earned the team a proud 11th-place finish. Highlights of the weekend included Simon Park ’17 and Ryan Voon both pulling off inspirational, come-from-behind wins to set the tone for a Saturday morning round in which the team won six of its seven matches.

This season of exceptional improvement ended on a fitting high note when his teammates got to watch Anthony display both grit and intelligence as he overcame an extremely impressive opponent.

This is a young team on the rise, and we owe a debt of gratitude to this year’s Sixth Formers, Ryan and Ross, for contributing so much to the momentum that will surely carry us into next year in fine form.

— Coach Dave Prockop

Girls Squash 7-7 This was a rebuilding year for Groton’s girls varsity squash team, as the departure of five

seniors last year created a significant gap.

Our 7-7 win-loss record included some tough battles against Andover, St. Paul’s, and Milton.

We finished fourth in the ISL–our lowest finish in years–and 12th in the New England Division A end-of-season tournament. That said, our team improved significantly over the season, and with the athleticism exhibited from many players, the prospects for the next two years do look good. Departing Sixth Formers include Co-captains Manjari Ganti (#1) and Hannah Conner (#7). We’re a young and athletic team with a depth that goes all the way to the #10 ladder position.

— Coach Nishad Das

Boys Basketball 3-18 The 2013-14 basketball season was challenging for everyone involved, but joyful nonetheless. The program was under the direction of a new head coach, and many of the students, as well as the coaching staff, were unsure how

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This page, clockwise from top left, David Selden ’16, Turner Banwell ’15, Will Bienstock ’16 Opposite page, clockwise from left, Marie Wesson ’15, Sammy Johnson ’16, Kai Volcy ’17, Johnny Lamont ’15

PHOTOS BY JON CHASE

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the season would play out. During our first meeting as a team, we established a goal: we would strive to get better each day in practice and we would always compete with full effort in games. There were times when we lost sight of our goals, but overall this team grew substantially over the course of the season, and I am excited about the progress we made.

Our three Sixth Formers, Atiba McReynolds, Yowana Wamala, and Ycar Devis, along with Fifth Form Captain Hugh Cecil, provided great leadership throughout the season. The ISL is a challenging league, and every game was a battle. With the work that I know our team will put in during the off season I am sure the basketball program is moving toward success as it heads into next season.

— Coach Harold Francis

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Girls Basketball 5-15 The girls basketball team started the 2013-14 season in dramatic fashion as they won their first game of the season on a lastsecond three-pointer by Marie Wesson ’15.

The big win was against last year’s Class C champion, Beaver Country Day, and snapped that school’s 26-game winning streak.

Groton’s second win of the season was accomplished in similar fashion as Alyna Baharozian ’18 also hit a last-second threepointer that defeated Brooks. Groton entered the annual holiday tournament on a high note, thanks to those two early-season wins, and that propelled the team to its most lopsided win of the season, beating Kent Hill by 36 points. The second game of the tournament saw Groton’s leading scorer and rebounder, Co-captain and center Rachel Reed ’14, go down with a serious ankle injury. The team wasn’t the same without Rachel, and Groton lost the last two games

Spring 2014

of the tournament.

Victories were hard to come by for the remainder of the season as injuries continued to pile up, but the girls played with passion, heart, and pride in every game thanks to the leadership of Rachel and her co-captain, Breezy Thomas ’14. The team’s last two wins came against Vermont Academy and Holderness, and they lost a few close games to St. Paul’s, Middlesex, and St. Mark’s.

Despite the nagging ankle injury, Reed was still voted a Class B All-Star and second team All-ISL. This year’s varsity team was very young, including one Second Former and four Third Formers. The experience and improvements these young players gained throughout the year will benefit the girls basketball program’s future. Next year looks promising for we will have 11 returning players, including three starters.

— Coach Joe Crail

BOYS VARSITY HOCKEY

GIRLS VARSITY HOCKEY

BOYS VARSITY BASKETBALL

GIRLS VARSITY BASKETBALL

BOYS VARSITY SQUASH

GIRLS VARSITY SQUASH

Most Valuable Players Ace Cowans ’15 Matt Pompa ’14

Coaches’ Award Violet Papathanasiou ’14

Coaches’ Award Turner Banwell ’15 Hugh Cecil ’15

Most Valuable Player Rachel Reed ’14

Most Valuable Player Anthony Chu ’15

All-ISL Manjari Ganti ’14

Best Defensive Player Breezy Thomas ’14

Coaches’ Award Ryan Voon ’14

Coaches’ Award Monica Bousa ’15

All ISL Anthony Chu ’15

All ISL Honorable Mention Anna Nicholson ’16 Molly Prockop ’15

All ISL Honorable Mention, Class B All Star team Rachel Reed ’14

Captain-Elect Anthony Chu ’15

Coaches’ Award Andrew Popp ’14 All ISL Michael Brown ’16 Ace Cowans ’15 Matt Pompa ’14 All ISL Honorable Mention Jason Cahoon ’15 Andrew Popp ’14 Matt Winter ’16 Captains-Elect Jason Cahoon ’15 Ace Cowans ’15 Dorien Llewellyn ’15

Most Improved Player Coco Wallace ’17 All ISL Honorable Mention Violet Papathanasiou ’14 Captains-Elect Jenna Blouin ’15 Grace Liggett ’15 Dorrie Varley-Barrett ’15

Most Improved Player John Cecil ’17 ISL Honorable Mention Hugh Cecil ’15 John Cecil ’17 Captains-Elect Turner Banwell ’15 Hugh Cecil ’15 Ben Osterholtz ’15

Captains-Elect Olivia Ladd-Luthringshauser ’15 Molly Prockop ’15

Captains-Elect Monica Bousa ’15 Rachel Hardej ’15 Lillian Harris ’15 Marie Wesson ’15

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hairspray PHOTOS BY MIKE SPERLING

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Nothing brightened Groton’s winter like the spectacular production of Hairspray Hairspray, February 28 to March 2. Directed by Laurie Sales, the School’s theater director, the insistently upbeat musical starred Genevieve Corman ’14 as Tracy Turnblad, the Baltimore teen who morphs from social outcast to celebrity when she dances on the “Corny Collins Show,” breaking social and racial barriers — and finding love — along the way.

From left, Max Gomez ’15, Genevieve Corman ’14, Lilias Kim ’18, Elizabeth Dickson ’15, Reed Redman ’14, and Lily Edwards ’15 against a backdrop designed

by Sarah Sullivan and built by the student tech crew and Technical Director Brandt Belknap

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Top half of page, clockwise from left: Austin Stern ’14 and Genevieve Corman ’14; Max Gomez ’15; Lily Edwards ’15; Cam Ayles ’15; and Nala Bodden ’15, Langa Chinyoka ’17, and Brittani Taylor ’14.

Center right, Nala Bodden ’15, Adia Fielder ’17, and Malcolm Akinje ’16. Below left, Lilias Kim ’18 and Ejaaz Jiu ’15. Below right, Verity Lynch ’17 and Mac Galinson ’17.

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Clockwise from top left, Alaric Krapf ’15; (foreground) Austin Stern ’14, Verity Lynch ’17, and Genevieve Corman ’14; Max Gomez ’15; Reed Redman ’14 and Austin Stern ’14; Charlie Hawkings ’17 and Max Gomez ’15. Center left, Matt Ko ’15, Trevor Fry ’15, Elizabeth Salisbury ’14, Phoebe Fry ’17, Reed Redman ’14, Cam Ayles ’15, Genevieve Corman ’14, Sofi Llanso ’14, Austin Stern ’14, Mac Galinson ’17, and Nick Godridge ’15.

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Right, Ejaaz Jiu ’15 (foreground), Malcolm Akinje ’16, and Ade Osinubi ’14. Center left, Nala Bodden ’15, Malcolm Akinje ’16, Ade Osinubi ’14, Malik Gaye ’18, Langa Chinyoka ’17, Brittani Taylor ’14, Ejaaz Jiu ’15, and, on the floor, Genevieve Corman ’14. Center right, Phoebe Fry ’17, Verity Lynch ’17, and Reed Redman ’14.

Bottom, KT Choi ’14, Talia Horvath ’14, Becca Gracey ’14, Ella Capen ’17, Ally Dick ’14, Mimi Fiertz ’14, Charlie Hawkings ’17, Elyssa Wolf ’17, and, at center, Max Gomez ’15 and Genevieve Corman ’14.

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The Brodigan Gallery Images of Our World Photography by Dan Mead and Sally Eagle April 7-May 18

de Menil Gallery SPRING EXHIBIT

“Renewal and Metamorphosis: Russian Photographs from the Forbes Collection of the Navigator Foundation”

In “Images of Our World,” Dan Mead and Sally Eagle have collected stunning landscape photographs, compelling cultural scenes, and intimate images of animals to transport viewers to faraway places, if only in the mind.

The Brodigan Gallery, located on the Dining Hall’s ground level, is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. It is free and open to the public.

April 7 – June 1, 2014

“R

enewal and Metamorphosis: Russian Photographs from the Forbes Collection of the Navigator Foundation” provides insight into Russian history and politics, through the photographer’s lens.

In the early 20th century, Russian photography flourished along with the other arts and continued to show vitality through the turmoil of the Bolshevik Revolution and civil war. By the late ’30s, Stalin had muzzled all the arts, although when Germany invaded Russia, he partially lifted photographic censorship in order to popularize the heroes of the Great War for the fatherland. As the Khrushchev era melted into the Brezhnev years, private citizens were allowed to amuse themselves with amateur photography as a modest form of individual expression. With the advent of glasnost, photographers could display their work to larger audiences than friends and fellow camera club members. Indeed, Russian photography during the 1990s experimented with growing abstraction and more biting social content.

Murray Forbes III ’58 assembled this remarkable group of photographs from artists and collectors during repeated visits to the Soviet Union over three decades. He founded the

Untitled work by Sergei Leontiev, 1991

Navigator Foundation in order to promote international understanding through an appreciation of the ways different cultures have employed photography to express their own experience.

The de Menil Gallery, in the Dillon Art Center at Groton School, is open 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekdays (except Wednesdays) and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekends (except School holidays). The gallery is free and open to the public.

www.groton.org

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John Richards II ’50 March 15, 1932 - October 5, 2013

by Eliot Hawkins ’50

P

Savoring Jack Richards!

When I was at Groton in the Form of 1950 with Jack, his father, Henry Howe Richards 1894, was an iconic personage. One saw him frequently and knew that he had taught Latin for many years. One also knew a famous saying of his about the language, namely that “the e in -erunt (a particular third person plural verb ending) is as long as the road to the Town of Groton!” It seemed that Mr. Richards’ students had had this instruction ringing in their ears. In my estimation, Jack himself embarked on a similar long road in the world of education, and with spectacular results.

Even when he was a younger boy, Jack together with his family offered special friendship and warm support.

One of my good friends and classmates, Ivan Hall, has recounted a favorite memory: “I came to Groton at 13, three days and three nights distant by Pullman sleeper from my own home and family in Idaho. The Sunday afternoon teas Jack invited me to so often were preciously en famille for me—his dear mother charming us with her gentle laugh as she poured the tea from her magnificent silver set, with H.H. Richards looking up from his New York Times crossword to inject some comment or other, almost always wryly amusing.”

I see a secondary long road as well in Jack’s career, namely flying. His mother’s brother, Hamilton Coolidge 1915, served with distinction as a pilot in the Rickenbacker squadron in World War I, that is, until the nearimpossible happened when toward the end of the war his plane was hit directly by an anti-aircraft shell. Jack’s older brother Tudor ’34 flew dive bombers from carriers in the Pacific in combat during World War II. Jack followed with a number of years’ service in the U.S. Air Force as a multiengine pilot. After leaving the military he maintained his interest and his skills as a member of a group of senior wizard pilots who had access to a small plane. I was a beneficiary myself in 1992. Jack brought the plane to meet friends in Buffalo and then to the major airshow at Oshkosh, where I had had the good fortune to have organized

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Groton School Quarterly

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Spring 2014

a ride in a Mark IX two-seater Spitfire. After all these events, Jack flew us home.

Jack as a teacher was a leader. He had already been both as captain of the Harvard track team, which under him had an unexpectedly fine year. Besides delivering his running abilities directly, Jack always tried to do whatever would help his teammates be more successful. Indeed, Jack’s record of affecting others for their betterment is extraordinary. Some of his successes can be identified, but there were a great many more. Nor were his contributions limited to Andover, where his career spanned 40 years.

Having been a summer counselor in 1949 at what was then the Groton School Camp, Jack kept this responsibility as one of his “extra” activities. When Groton withdrew from the camp business, Jack helped form the modern Mayhew Program for this enterprise. Listen to one of his fellow trustees, Al Cantor: “Jack was the heart and soul of Mayhew. Far more than a mere venerable link to the past, he was deeply involved with the program throughout his life. One of Jack’s greatest contributions was his recruitment of staff.” Moreover, in 2011 a large group of Jack’s fans came together to raise funds and build a new staff quarters, to be known as “Jack’s Shack.” Almost Augustan for Mayhew, one might say, save that Jack was entirely surprised by what had been done.

At Andover, Jack taught history. Borrowing from Cicero, I omit to mention that at various times during his tenure from 1957 to 1997 he also served as dean of students and faculty, as the head of a dormitory, as a cluster dean, and as head coach of the track team. He focused on Russia in its many configurations over the centuries. Jack’s knowledge of details, his skill, and his ways of presenting material in order to involve the class made quite a mark.

After his death one of his former students wrote on the school’s website that Jack was “… the ambassador for the satisfaction that comes from learning.” Does anyone want to know, for example, about autocracy as practiced by Peter the Great? The book Jack co-authored paints quite a picture—here is one set of details:

Jack Richards ’50, and with his wife, Wendy. Of all his accomplishments, Jack was perhaps most proud of his five children — Laura, Pam, Chris, Tim, and C.C.— all of whom were inspired by their father to pursue careers in education and coaching. Chris and Tim started their careers as interns at Groton.

Walk Photos by A.

er Stockly

“During freezes of 15 to 20 degrees below zero, six thousand obscure martyrs, martyrs without merit, martyrs of an involuntary obedience—for this virtue is innate and forced in the Russians—were shut up in rooms heated to 86 degrees in order to dry the walls more quickly. Thus these wretches on entering and leaving this abode of death—now become, thanks to their sacrifice, the home of vanity, magnificence, and pleasure—underwent a difference in temperature of 100 to 108 degrees … . The unfortunate ones who painted the interior of the hottest rooms were obliged to put a kind of ice cap on their heads in order to keep their senses under the boiling temperature they were condemned to endure while they were working.”—Report by a French nobleman, the Marquis de Custine, on the building of St. Petersburg during the winter (see Vaillant and Richards, “From Russia to USSR: A Narrative and Documentary History,” Independent School Press 1985, pages 113-14).

Details like this never leave the reader.

I have not yet addressed a major contribution Jack and Wendy together made to Andover. In short, they gave over a substantial segment of their private lives to the particular benefit of the students in their dormitory each year. I have firsthand evidence. Some years ago, my wife and I attended the wedding of a daughter of friends of ours. At dinner after the ceremony, a considerably younger couple was seated with us and the others at our table. It turned out that the

A Son’s Inspiration

time — he already knew the material by heart; he had literally written a textbook on the subject matter he taught. He explained to me that though he had taught that same material many times, it would be the first time he had taught it to that particular class, and he wanted to make sure that he was as prepared for those students as he had been for every student in his previous classes.

He was a model of consistent

devotion to the art, and that and other accumulated lessons he taught me either directly or indirectly were sources of inspiration for me as a young professional. His lessons resonate with me some 35 years after I asked him that one pivotal question.

— Pomfret Head of School Tim Richards, Jack Richards’ son; originally published in Pomfret Magazine

www.groton.org

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in memoriam

Everyone has had sparks of inspiration at one time or another. If inspiration is “something that makes someone want to do something” (MerriamWebster online dictionary), then I had countless sources of influence that drew me to education and ultimately brought me to this great school. The first true source of inspiration

was my dad, who was a lifelong teacher and administrator at Phillips Academy. I remember as a child that he would spend hours preparing for his classes, reviewing and refining his plans for the next day. He had been teaching for almost 25 years when I finally asked him why he spent so much time preparing to teach a lesson he had taught so many times before.

To my young and naïve mind it was not the best use of his

lady had graduated from Andover. When I told her I knew the Richards, she delivered a perfect paean to the joy found, the support available, and the general growing up accorded by or to students in that dormitory. It was a most remarkable declamation of Jack’s and Wendy’s talents!

Later in his tenure Jack introduced a new arrangement for the teaching of Russian history. A segment of the Andover faculty traveled to Russia for two weeks with Jack leading them from place to place and pointing out what they might well not have understood. This démarche was seen to have favorable effects and was repeated by the school in the case of China.

In summary, does it surprise anyone that four of Jack’s former students are now teaching in the History Department at Andover? Or that Jack gave much organizational strength to the Form of 1950, served twice for substantial periods as our secretary, and coped regularly with the labor of many reunions? And he was a strong friend to a great many persons in everything he did. It remains to polish all of our superlatives and send Jack and Wendy the best salute, with the best thanks we can muster!

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.

Harnessing Resources to Values

T

YPICALLY a donor establishes a charitable gift annuity to generate retirement income for him- or herself. But Malcolm “Mike” Peabody ’46 had a different idea.

Instead of steering the distributions to himself, Mike designated his longtime housekeeper, Teresa Mercado, as the beneficiary. And Groton School will receive the remainder from his annuity after Teresa’s lifetime.

Before her retirement last year, Teresa had worked for the Peabody family for 35 years. She is beloved by the entire family: Mike; his wife Pam; their two sons, Carter and Payson ’82; and their three grandchildren, including current Groton Fourth Former Claire Peabody.

“It struck me as a good way of supporting the School with a donation, while at the same time providing Teresa with a pension, which she deserves for her devoted service,” Mike says. “Ultimately the School, which has done so much for our family over several generations, will receive the full benefit of the gift.”

As the grandson of Groton School’s founder, Endicott Peabody, Mike is keenly aware of the School’s steadfast ideals, continuing generation after generation. “Temba and Vuyelwa Maqubela are carrying on the very best components of my grandparents’ approach: forging very close ties with the students,” he says. “From my granddaughter who is at Groton now, I hear how much Temba and

Mike Peabody ’46, his granddaughter Claire ‘16, and longtime housekeeper Teresa Mercado, who inspired his unusual approach to a charitable gift annuity

Vuyelwa embody that value–creating an environment where everyone is known, where adults and students work closely together.”

Mike takes satisfaction from knowing his charitable gift annuity will strengthen Groton School in the long term, while in the near term providing a more comfortable retirement for his loyal longtime housekeeper. “This approach,” Mike says, “is the perfect way to harness my resources to my values.”

Surprisingly Simple Gift Annuities MANY PEOPLE assume that gift annuities are complicated and only available in very large sums. They’re neither. Gift annuities are straightforward and can be arranged with as little as $10,000.

Setting up a Groton School gift annuity does not require a lawyer or trust officer. A donor writes a check or transfers stock to Groton School and, in exchange, Groton issues a signed

promissory note guaranteeing to pay the donor a set amount each quarter for the rest of the donor’s life. The quarterly payment amount is locked in for life. It’s that simple.

Rates are based on the age of the beneficiary, which is typically the donor but can also be the donor’s spouse or anyone the donor chooses, provided he or she is at least 50 years old. Right

now, a 72-year-old beneficiary locks in a 5.4 percent return rate. To find out the rate available to you, visit www.groton.org/planned_giving, or contact Director of Major Gifts Elizabeth “Betsy” Ginsberg at 978448-7584 or eginsberg@groton.org.

Groton School is happy to provide information in confidence and with no obligation.

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Groton School • The Quarterly

Groton School

Groton School The Quarterly • Spring 2014

BACK SCHOOL ARCHIVIST Doug Brown ’57 pulled this photo (c1950) from an album that belonged to former Headmaster John Crocker and his wife Mary. The canine culture continues today. Assistant Head Craig Gemmell recently gave a Chapel Talk in the voice of campus critters; he reports that 36 dogs live on campus, as do 23 cats, two guinea pigs, and a rabbit.

Do you know any of the unidentified people (or their dogs!)?

Let us know at quarterly@groton.org.

Spring 2014 • Volume LXXVI , No. 2

From left, James Waugh, Ernst Loewenberg, Harvey Sargisson, William Cushing, Phil Nash, (two women and young boy unknown), Richard Pleasants, Mary Crocker, standing (person on far right unknown).

A Face of the Syrian Crisis Diana Sayegh, Form of 2014 Retiring, Inspiring: John Tyler, Ann Emerson Groton Plays at Fenway