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LEWISTON, ME PERMIT NO. 82

HOLDERNESS SCHOOL TODAY THE MAGAZINE OF HOLDERNESS SCHOOL SPRING 2015

CHAPEL LANE PO BOX 1879 PLYMOUTH, NH 03264-1879

INSIDE: r Filling the VW Bug r Special Programs 2015 r Catching Up with Martha Kesler THE SNOW WAS DEEP THIS YEAR FOR OUT BACK, AND MSR SNOWSHOES WERE ESSENTIAL EQUIPMENT FOR THE JUNIORS. WHILE THEY OFTEN USE ESTABLISHED TRAILS THROUGHOUT THE WHITE MOUNTAINS, THE STUDENTS ALSO BUSHWHACK AND BLAZE THEIR OWN TRAILS, NOT ONLY LEARNING CRUCIAL SURVIVAL SKILLS BUT ALSO DEVELOPING AN APPRECIATION FOR MOTHER NATURE.

Holderness School Spring 2015 Holderness School Today magazine. Flat size is 11.0 inches tall by 18.19 inches wide (includes 0.19 inches for perfect-bound spine); folded size is 11.0 inches tall by 9.0 inches wide. Artwork prints in four-color process and bleeds all four sides. Cover artwork; Cover IV and Cover I.

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ARTWARD BOUND OFFERS HOLDERNESS STUDENTS THE OPPORTUNITY TO COLLABORATE WITH SOME PRETTY AMAZING ARTISTS, INCLUDING DANCER AND CHOREOGRAPHER LISA TRAVIS, WHO ALSO TEACHES BALLET FOR ATHLETES DURING THE SCHOOL YEAR. ON THE HAGERMAN STAGE LISA WORKS WITH A GROUP OF SOPHOMORES TO CREATE A DANCE SEQUENCE THEY WILL PERFORM FOR THEIR CLASSMATES LATER IN THE PROGRAM.

I’M TRUE BLUE

ARE YOU TRUE BLUE? Holderness School Spring 2015 Holderness School Today magazine. Flat size is 11.0 inches tall by 18.19 inches wide (includes 0.19 inches for perfect-bound spine); folded size is 11.0 inches tall by 9.0 inches wide. Artwork prints in four-color process and bleeds all four sides. Cover artwork; Cover II and Cover III.

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F E AT U R E S

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Filling the VW Bug If you were to drive across country in a VW bug, who would you invite to travel with you? It’s a rhetorical question members of the Holderness admission team often ask as they go about the diďŹƒcult task of selecting new students to invite into the community. Their answers are rarely simple or straight-forward. BY RICK CAREY

Special Programs 2015

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During Special Programs, the world becomes their classroom as Holderness students take the time to test their strengths and weaknesses in sometimes very novel situations. The results are always impressive, and sometimes life-altering.

Catching Up with Martha Kesler

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For many, Martha Kesler is synonymous with Hagerman theater productions. The life and laughter she brought to the the stage propelled many into theatrical careers and left the rest of us culturally enriched. BY RICK CAREY

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D E PA R T M E N T S Board of Trustees Sandeep Alva Jonathan Baum Grace Macomber Bird Christopher Carney ’75, Treasurer Russell Cushman ’80 The Rev. Randolph Dales, Secretary Victoria Frei Nigel Furlonge Tracy McCoy Gillette ’89, Alumni Association President Douglas Griswold ’66 Robert Hall James Hamblin II ’77, Chairperson Jan Hauser The Right Rev. Robert Hirschfeld, President Robert Kinsley ’88 Richard Nesbitt Peter Nordblom Susan Paine ’82 R. Phillip Peck Thomas Phillips ’75 Jake Reynolds ’86 Ian Sanderson ’79 Andrew Sawyer ’79 Jenny Seeman ’88 Harry Sheehy Gary Spiess Poppy Staub ’85 Jerome Thomas ’95 Sander van Otterloo ’94 HEADMASTER EMERITUS The Rev. Brinton W. Woodward, Jr. HONORARY TRUSTEES Warren C. Cook Piper Orton ’74 W. Dexter Paine III ’79 Will Prickett ’81

3 From the Schoolhouse 4 From the Editor 5 03264: Letters to HST 28 Around the Quad 41 Sports 48 Update: Former Faculty and Staff 50 Alumni Events: Gatherings 52 Alumni in the News 80 At This Point in Time

Holderness School Today is published three times a year by Penmor Lithographers. Please send notice of address changes to the Advancement Office, PO Box 1879, Plymouth, NH 03264, or advancement@holderness.org. © 2013 Holderness School EDITOR: Emily Magnus ’88 EDITOR EMERITUS: Jim Brewer ASSISTANT EDITORS: Rick Carey, Robert Caldwell, Stacy Lopes, Lauraine Paquin, Judith Solberg, Courtney Williamson, Amy Woods, Clay Dingman DESIGN AND PRODUCTION: Clay Dingman, Barking Cat Productions Communications Design

PHOTOGRAPHY: Emily Magnus, Ken Hamilton, Liesl Magnus ’17, Minh Tran ’16 Holderness School Today is printed on sustainably produced, chain-of-custody stock certified to Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) standards. HST is printed using only wind-generated renewable power, and inks derived from vegetable sources.

ON THE FRONT COVER: During Artward Bound, students often have the opportunity to throw pots on a potter’s wheel. Here, sophomores Logan Kilfoyle and Brendan O’Hara take on the challenge of forming the sides of a ceramic bowl.

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FROM THE SCHOOLHOUSE

Our Greatest Asset Second Visits not only coincide with one of my favorite times of the year, they also occur during my favorite time in our admission cycle.

In early April our campus sheds its winter coat, and our community returns from March break with a sense of renewal and optimism that only spring can bring. It is during this time that we welcome our prospective families and provide a window into the Holderness experience. Our students readily greet everyone with a smile and a handshake, and our teachers passionately discuss our intentional approach to programs that support both the students and the community.

Through it all, the emphasis is deliberately placed on the people. Our greatest asset, after all, is the extensive group of people who live and learn here.

Beautiful facilities are no doubt important, but the people and programs that grow and thrive within them are paramount. We have purposefully built, and continue to build, a nurturing community to support those who embody our values and mission. Whether it’s recruiting faculty, or cultivating the next generation of Holderness families through the admission process, or choosing our support staff, we focus on the dynamic relationships that sustain both the individuals and the groups within the community.

As you read through this issue of Holderness School Today, you will not only gain insight into our admission process, you will also see the very tangible results of our commitment to getting that process, as well as the process of building our community, right.

Remember the one and only Martha Kesler?

Does the name Warren Witherell sound familiar? Their stories and the very strong relationships they built with the Holderness community are within these pages.

And who are the teachers of this generation who are building community one lesson at a time? You can read about the meaningful lessons Kelsey Berry and Tyler Cabot are

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Building community isn’t always about writing mission statements and designing new programs.

Sometimes, it’s simply about doing what needs to be done in the moment. During the Cheri Walsh Memorial Eastern Cup race in February, Head of School Phil Peck shed his formal attire, pulled on his old coaching jacket, and waxed skis. In the above picture, Mr. Peck delivers the perfectly prepared skis to the start for the Holderness team.

teaching their Research Methods students, and how these lessons are later applied within our Senior Thesis program. We also hope you’ll read about Maggie Mumford and Vicky Stigum’s students; in the stem Energy course this fall, they presented several photovoltaic proposals for our hockey rink to our renewable energy consultants, making facilities construction into a hands-on academic experience!

Plus, I hope you’ll enjoy the fun and heartwarming piece about the annual bowtie party, an event inspired by Doc Overaker. This year over  students and faculty, both male and female, cheerfully mastered the finer points of

this often-maligned accessory. It was truly a community effort!

As always, we hope you finish reading this Holderness School Today inspired by the ways in which we are both dynamically moving forward and nurturing the core values, people, and programs that make Holderness truly Holderness.

Phil Peck Head of School

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FROM THE EDITOR

The Tools of a Modern Storyteller

On the job at the Plymouth State hockey arena.

A few nights ago, I ate dinner in a bar where televisions aired national sports competitions in every corner. The bright screens and flashing colors at first annoyed me, inevitably drawing my attention away from the conversation I was trying to have with the real person across the table. But when my companion excused himself to go to the restroom, I allowed myself to be pulled into the world on the screen. It was a women’s basketball game between Harvard and Yale. Exciting, yes; but for me the game quickly became secondary to what was happening on the sidelines. While the players continued to focus on the hoops at either end of the court, my attention turned to the way in which the game was being recorded. Where were the photographers? How many of them were there?

Were they taking stills or video? What stories were they trying to capture that weren’t immediately obvious to me?

As director of publications I am constantly scanning my life, and the lives of those around me, for possible angles and perspectives. The

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world coalesces into headlines and snapshots.

When Holderness installed a wood floor in the gym a couple years ago, I am sure the basketball players were excited for the feel of real wood underfoot—the grip on their shoes, the slightly different bounce of the ball. But for me, the pale color of the wood and the reflective surface of the finish meant more ambient light, which in turn meant higher shutter speeds and lower isos. In other words, I’d be able to get sharper images. And the change in the crosscountry running course? While it meant a more challenging trail for the racers, for me it was all about the number of times the runners would loop through the field for photo ops.

More time in the dark woods translated into fewer opportunities to catch the concentration on their faces and the late fall sun shadowing their muscles.

Then there are the words and conversations that work in tandem with the photos I take.

What words can I use to convey the simple exuberance of the freestyle skiers? And how can I describe the respect and awe I feel toward our alumni and their accomplishments?

Fortunately, I don’t always have to do it on my own – particularly this winter, when we discovered new sources for news. In an alumni newsletter that went out last fall, Director of Alumni and Parent Relations Amy Woods put out a request for writers who have stories that they want to share, about the school or otherwise. While we didn’t receive an overwhelming response (this was actually a good thing!), we received enough to begin a short list of stories about Holderness and the greater community.

They are the stories of our alumni and friends, told in their own words—reflecting the history of the school and the lives that have been changed by Holderness. The first of these stories is found on page , written by Dick Conant ’ about his hiking experiences in retirement. A master storyteller, Dick has added color and detail to the fabric of the

Holderness story. Look for additional stories by alumni in upcoming issues.

Then there’s Instagram—snap a picture and instantly your followers proclaim their approval. While my daughter and her friends have been on Instagram for well over a year, the generational gap and the learning curve at first didn’t seem worth overcoming. But in January I decided to give it a try, and have found it addicting. I love the minimalistic approach that Instagram requires and the challenge of selecting just the right perspective, one that will emotionally connect Holderness alumni, friends, and families with the school.

Connecting. Storytelling. That’s my job.

Find an angle, a turn of phrase, a perspective that connects, if only for a moment. The tools just keep getting better, and I am so excited to involve alumni and friends in the process as well. Thanks for helping me tell the stories of Holderness.

By the way, if you are interested in seeing our posts on Instagram, you can follow us at Holdernesstoday.

Emily Adriance Magnus ’ Editor, Holderness School Today emagnus@holderness.org

HOLDERNESS SCHOOL TODAY | SPRING 2015

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03264: LETTERS TO HST

Letters from Across the Decades Please Forgive Me On page  of the Summer  issue of Holderness School Today, your excellent article on the Kingston family is titled “The Kingston Dynasty.” On the same page appears a photograph of the three Kingston brothers, referred to as, “three great amigos.” Would it have been that much of an editorial disaster to refer to them as “The Kingston Trio”?

Please don’t mind me. Just another longretired alumni (class of , John Kingston’s class) with far too much time on my hands!

Bill Lofquist ’

A Connecting Flight So, the family and I spent Thanksgiving in North Conway with my brother and his family.

As we were boarding the plane in San Diego to get there, the first mate asked Maggie, our three year old, where we were headed, and she proudly exclaimed, “New Hampshire.” Well, that seemed to perk him up a bit, and he asked a few questions, probing what our tie to New Hampshire was. I told him that I had gone to school there, and he, of course, asked which one. As the family and I were being ushered further into the cabin by the line of travelers behind us, I said “Holderness,” to which he replied, “So did I.” We proceeded to the back of the plane, our three seats making up the second to last row, and settled in. The plane filled up, and the cabin door ultimately closed. As we taxied out to the runway, a flight attendant came back to our row, handed us Eric Prime’s ’ business card, and told us that he had told her to take care of us. She then allowed us to spread out across the entire empty row behind us (the only empty seats on the plane), brought free movie players for each of us, and then, throughout the flight, offered us complimentary food and drinks.

When we landed and deplaned, Eric waited for us, and we had a friendly chat as we made

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In honor of Out Back, Ged Smith ’71 emailed us and shared the above photo and this explanation: “Dug this up on my computer this morning, and I thought you would get a laugh out of seeing [Bill] Clough and me. Oh, and I don’t know if the tradition continued, but we built those pack frames ourselves!” EDITOR’S NOTE: Thanks for the photo, Ged. The students no longer build their packs; instead, aluminum frame packs are passed down from year to year.

our way to baggage claim. I must say, despite the five-hour drive through the snow that night to North Conway (did New Hampshire forget how to plow?), that was the most pleasant travel experience I have ever had with my wife and two daughters under the age of three.

Kevin Meier ’

Missing from the Strategic Plan I just finished reading the Winter  Holderness School Today magazine which I enjoyed very much. I am writing to add my two cents regarding the discussion of the Strategic Plan.

I am currently the Director of Human Resources for a non-profit in VT, focused on providing alternative educational options for adults outside of traditional K– systems.

What I saw missing from the Strategic Plan discussion was any mention of the need to

attract and retain excellent employees. The mission and vision that have been identified will be interpreted and reinforced by the employees with whom the students have contact.

What made my time at Holderness memorable was not the facilities or the food, it was the extraordinary teachers who conducted my classes, coached my teams, and played the role of my dorm parents. I believe the Strategic Plan needs to acknowledge that the employees needed to make the plan successful have unique qualities and attributes. Specific efforts and resources are required to attract and retain the employees you need.

The fabric of Holderness has always been and will continue to be made up by the people who work there. They need to be a focal point of the Strategic Plan. Thanks for listening.

Robert “Luke” Dowley ’

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SPECIAL PROGRAMS 2015

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SPECIAL PROGRAMS 2015

Scenes from Special Programs 2015

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SPECIAL PROGRAMS 2015

Scenes from Special Programs 2015

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SPECIAL PROGRAMS 2015

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SPECIAL PROGRAMS 2015

An Out Back group on Signal Ridge one half mile from the summit of Mount Carrigain (elevation 4,700 feet) in the Pemigewasset Wilderness of the White Mountain National Forest.

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IT’S NOT ENOUGH FOR AN ADMISSION OFFICER AT A SCHOOL like Holderness to find enough applicants; though in today’s environment, that’s hard enough. It’s all in who you find, and then who chooses to come. BY RICK CAREY

I

t was April, 2014, and the three-by-fivefoot photos were like flags raised against winter: brilliant green-grass and blue-sky images of the Holderness campus in spring perched on stakes on the brick terrace in front of Livermore Hall, above the snow that blanketed the baseball field, and against the still-cold bricks of Weld Hall.

They hadn’t been easy to install. A late blizzard had buried central New Hampshire under two feet of snow. Tony LeMenager’s maintenance crews had had to drill screw holes into the bricks of Weld and dig postholes into the icy snowbanks lining the campus paths. Emily Magnus ’88 and Courtney Williamson—the school’s director of publications and its director of strategic marketing and communciations, respectively—stared in wonder out the windows of Livermore as the photos were raised. “This is wacky,” Emily said.

But it was the weekend of Second Visits, that time when the families of newly admitted students—students who have often been admitted to several other independent schools as well, some much farther south—come back for another look before making their fateful decisions. And Director of Enrollment Management Tyler Lewis had refused to cave in to the weather. Even if it was only through the keyholes of these posters ruffling in the wind, these kids and their parents were going to see what the campus usually looks like in spring.

Emily wasn’t alone in her surprise. Many others wondered if Tyler had been pouring

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bourbon into his coffee. “But once they were all in place, well—it was brilliant,” said Emily. “There was nothing that could have so effectively illustrated who we are and what life at Holderness is like—a sense of fun and whimsy, our willingness to make do with whatever we’ve got, and our commitment to community and making our guests feel welcome.”

Tyler has been at Holderness since 2006, and his approach to his work in the Admission Office has always represented the school well, emphasizing its commitment to community. But recently, with a shift in his title—from director of admission to director of enrollment management—his focus has been renewed. In part it’s to reflect one of the goals that he has set for his department: not just to admit new students, but also to ensure that Holderness follows through on its promises and that new students stick around to become alumni. Hence, “enrollment management.”

And in part it’s also to emphasize his responsibility to this primary value of “community.” In fact, during the school’s most recent round of strategic planning—and in an accompanying debate on Holderness’s core values—Tyler argued, successfully, in favor of including Community amongst the values. Ultimately, the final draft boiled down to these simple three: Community, Character, and Curiosity.

Now it’s the task of Tyler and the Admission staff to find young men and women who answer positively to all three of

those virtues, and to ensure that they prefer Holderness to all places where the grass might reliably be greener in April. Arguably, it’s a tougher job now than it’s ever been.

Weather is the least of their worries.

WAITING FOR THE PHONE TO RING Well, it was never easy, but Pete Barnum, who served as the school’s director of admissions from 1981 to 2006, remembers when the job was simpler.

“Real estate was booming in the ’80s and ’90s, the economy was much stronger, people had more discretionary income, and if I remember right, our boarding student tuition in my first year was $5,865,” Pete says. “It used to be the rule of thumb in independent schools that your tuition should be around the cost of a Ford Taurus station wagon. Look at us now—today it costs a Lexus.”

Marketing, by necessity, was chiefly word-of-mouth. Only the most endowmentrich independent schools could afford print, radio, or television advertising.

“Somebody would contact us, and we’d send a letter, make a telephone call,” Pete recalls. “We used the same school catalogue for about twenty years. After a visit, we’d send them a thank you note, and a Christmas card. We used the same acceptance letter, I think, for all the time I ran that office. We had a blue piece of plywood hung on the wall of our office in Livermore.

It was a map of America stuck full of pins with the names of kids and their grades,

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Pete Barnum, whose original vision for the Admission Office remains in place today.

and that was our data bank for where our applicants were coming from.”

There were open houses, and some travel, and visits to regular feeder schools and placement consultants, along with the occasional alumni event that could be piggybacked into a recruiting effort as well.

But Pete had a slim budget and a small staff, who mostly had to wait and hope that the phone would ring.

That it rang so often was both a testament to the school’s good word-of-mouth reputation and the work done once the phone did ring. They operated out of sunny offices on the bottom floor of Livermore, where a hospitable Labrador

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Retriever or two helped give kids the feeling that they were visiting a friendly relative’s home.

And what sort of student were they hoping would come pet those dogs? In speaking once to a group of parents, Pete found a metaphor that summed it up nicely, and that has since become part of school culture. “We’re looking for the sort of kid,” Pete said, “with whom you could climb into a VW Bug and drive with him, or her, crosscountry. And the important thing is that at the end of the trip you’d still be friends.”

Good grades and high SSAT scores?

Sure, that helped. Potentially a running back for Norm Walker’s football teams, or

a forward for Marty Elkins’s field hockey squads? Not an impediment, no more than it would be anywhere else, in a market where good athletics command public attention. But the trump-all criteria lay buried in that cross-country travel scenario: crucially, a young person high in EQ, the acronym that would be later attached to what psychologist Daniel Goleman calls “emotional intelligence.” Another way to put it? A good Community member, well stocked with Character and Curiosity.

By the 1980s, things were looking up at Holderness. Pete Woodward—who had become headmaster in 1978—had deftly transformed the Holderness School for

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FILLING THE VW BUG

“WE’RE LOOKING FOR THE SORT OF KID,” PETE SAID, “WITH WHOM YOU COULD CLIMB INTO A VW BUG AND DRIVE WITH HIM, OR HER, CROSS-COUNTRY. AND THE IMPORTANT THING IS THAT AT THE END OF THE TRIP YOU’D STILL BE FRIENDS.” Boys into a coed school. That decade ended with a successful capital campaign, and the ’90s would end with a second such campaign. These campaigns would retire debt that Holderness had carried almost since its founding, and would build an endowment that would reach $27 million by the time of Pete’s retirement in 2001.

At the same time, college and independent school tuitions everywhere were also on their way up, under pressure from soaring health care and energy costs, rising insurance premiums, and increased emphasis in the marketplace on large and handsome facilities. As Holderness tuition began its own upward climb, Pete Barnum’s financial aid budget rose as well, but there was always a heartbreaking limit to the dollars in that bucket. And this was the part of his job that Pete never found easy or simple: inviting kids of splendid character and curiosity, but scant family resources, into that VW Bug, and not having enough financial aid money for them to afford to climb in.

“On average, about 25 percent of our enrollment received financial aid,” Pete says. “The money we had went awfully fast among all the families that came in with great kids, wonderful kids, but not a lot of money in the bank.”

Then, once the acceptances (and rejections) had gone out, there was that anxious period during which Pete and his staff awaited word—especially after Second Visits—on who among those acceptances would really come to Holderness. “I

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remember not sleeping very well during the weeks between March 10 and April 10,” Pete says, “wondering how all the dust would settle.”

Year after year, though, the dust settled pretty neatly with just enough high-EQ kids. “When Pete Barnum left that work in 2006, he did so as one of the most respected admission officers in New England,” says Phil Peck. “And I was so fortunate in my first years as head of school to have had the benefit of his experience and counsel.”

Pete, for his part, had the benefit of getting out just ahead of the Great Recession, when all the boom went out of the economy.

THE GAME CHANGERS American independent schools began as places for the economic elite to send their children—which made Holderness, founded in 1879 for the benefit of the sons of clergymen and others of modest means, such a radical experiment for its time. During the postwar boom of the ’50s and ’60s, however, nearly all such schools became affordable to the Ford-driving middle class.

In 1963, for example, the US census reported a median income of $9,300 for families with one or both parents collegeeducated. That might not seem like much, but the cost of tuition, room, and board at an Ivy League school—Harvard, let’s say— was only $2,620, and at Holderness only $2,500. These sticker prices were less than that of an economical Ford Falcon wagon, and soon both colleges and inde-

pendent schools were dependent on the middle class for a substantial part of their enrollments.

This partnership came under strain, of course, as school costs rose and as middle class income growth substantially slowed.

With the real estate bubble and crash of 2008, that income growth, stagnant since 1980, went negative, and remains so.

Which has been a game changer for independent school admission officers. “The job is more complex and challenging now than it’s ever been,” says Andy Hirt, the director of member relations at The Association of Boarding Schools (TABS). “And the competition is fiercer.” In fact, Head of School Phil Peck was sobered to hear at a TABS conference last fall that nowadays a mere one half of one percent of American families are applying to boarding schools.

However, a report from the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) includes something surprising: “The boarding school funnel shows demand strengthening in the past ten years.”

Where is the strengthening demand coming from? Look overseas, where the word-of-mouth reputation of American boarding schools remains as good as gold.

Here at Holderness, meanwhile, the number of students receiving financial aid has nearly doubled since Pete Barnum’s time, with 23.5 percent of the school budget now earmarked for financial aid. Harsh poverty is not a requirement, since the average grant now is for 67 percent of the cost of tuition—meaning that the school

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demand has been sustained, or strengthened, thanks to international applicants, demand as a whole, reports the NAIS, “is coming from less qualified applicants, fewer mission-appropriate kids, and/or growth in international applicants who aren’t really admissible or fully ready to commit.”

SELF-STUDY

Tyler Lewis, director of enrollment management, Holderness Admission, with Baxter, chief dog.

continues to try to attract and support middle-class families.

Yet the total number of families applying for financial aid has fallen—as it has across the nation. “It seems like a lot of families are just assuming they can’t get enough funding,” says Associate Director of Admission

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Nancy Dalley, who is also Director of Financial Aid. “And so they stay away. They never even look into the process.”

Not only have applications for financial aid fallen at all boarding schools, so has overall yield, with accepted students less likely than ever to enroll. So even as

So with qualified, mission-appropriate kids harder to find than ever before for schools across the nation, what’s a little school way north of Boston to do? For Tyler Lewis and his admission staff, it meant doing a bit of research and self-reflection.

“We looked around—and up—at schools we respect and admire,” says Tyler. “Schools with solid programs, reputations, and missions, and we gathered critical data about their operations: workload, staff size, attrition and yield, the size of their financial aid budget, et cetera.”

That sort of external survey was followed by an internal self-study. The whole admission process was broken down into eleven interrelated components—marketing, technology, office space, travel, the family visit, and more—and then the strengths and weaknesses of each at Holderness were candidly laid out during a full-day retreat.

Tyler also solicited feedback on his department and its work from trustees, from the school’s administrative team, and from outside consultants and visiting placement officers. In 2013 Andy Hirt of TABS was then admission director at Massachusetts’s Brooks School, and Tyler invited him to come to Holderness in May of that year. Andy spent two days on campus, interviewed a number of constituents, and provided a lengthy report on what he saw and recommended.

There was more: accepted students were surveyed on why they chose Holderness, and the parents of “attrits”— students who leave school before

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graduating—were interviewed about what had gone wrong. “They’re an especially good source of information,” says Tyler, “on the extent to which our product matches up with our promises.”

At the same time, Tyler—encouraged by Phil Peck and Board Chair Jim Hamblin ’77— composed his own vision of what was needed for the office to move forward over the next five to ten years. At last he and his staff gathered that and all the feedback and data they had collected into a strategic plan that plugged like an external power source into the school’s overall strategic plan.

“A great benefit of the process was that we were able to incorporate a lot of what we learned into our planning and daily work as we went along,” Tyler says.

“However, many of the strategies are much longer-range, and will serve as goals to pursue beyond the plan’s five-year window.”

PIXELS AND BYTES One thing that’s obviously different in this new era of admission work is the role of communication technology in marketing.

No longer is getting the word out a matter of expensive space in print media or time in broadcast media. The internet and social media have opened up a whole new world—but one that’s not only ferociously competitive, but balkanized into a myriad of discrete audiences, each requiring a different method and strategy to reach.

One of Andy Hirt’s recommendations was for Holderness to become more active and aggressive in digital marketing, and this is just what’s being accomplished with the help of Courtney Williamson, who was hired in 2012. An avenue such as email, for example, means no more waiting for the telephone to ring in the Admission Office; instead the school can take the initiative and know just who to contact.

“Thanks to the fact that Nancy Dalley is such a meticulous database person, we

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Livermore Hall, the home of Admission.

can pull very specific lists of names to which to send emails,” says Courtney.

“Nancy and Erin Colon—the new assistant director of financial aid—can do queries that let us send tailored emails to girls from Iowa, or to boys who love hockey, or to moms who live near Stowe, Vermont— and we never again have to devise a one-size-fits-all message.”

Nor are these your grandfather’s emails—well, even your older brother’s, let’s say. “Not only do we do more email, it’s of a higher storytelling quality,” Courtney adds. “Now we use HTML emails that have our school’s shield and colors on them, that feature pictures and include links to our website. The idea is to create something captivating and enjoyable to look at and read.”

Communication is also flowing in both directions across Facebook and Twitter, and the school is advertising in those venues as well. In addition, Courtney is purchasing keywords in Google’s new Adwords program—which ensures that within the right zip codes, when a certain

word is included in a user’s search terms on Google (“skiing,” for example), then a Holderness ad appears with the results, and of course the ad contains an easy link to the website.

Where previously there was no easy way to measure the effectiveness of a print ad, Courtney can avail herself of a wealth of data on the impact of these forays. “We can see, if we send out an email, how many people opened it and what links they clicked,” says Courtney. “I can see what are the average times emails get opened, which helps me know when to send them.

With Google Adwords, I can know the age, region, and gender of who sees our ads online, and I know the sites they visit when they see our ads. I can tell if my advertising dollars are effective.”

The data is instructive not only about demographics, but message content. In an email last August, for example, Courtney included a link to “Holdersense,” a student-managed Tumblr blog about the school’s dress code: “And it was the most CONTINUED ON PAGE 22

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ADMISSION FOUR POINTS The “Four Points” project was a response to the need for printed materials that were as unique and intentional as the personal connections students and families experience when they visit campus. We picked four key moments in the application cycle and designed printed collateral that could deliver a sense of personality and community into the hands and homes of our prospective students.

1. INQUIRY: VIEWBOOK When a young person (or mom or dad) first reaches out to us—by email, online, at a fair, on the phone, or even by dropping by—he or she receives a viewbook.

We pack as much information about our academics, sports, faculty, campus, residence halls, and co-curriculars as possible into this vivid, visual booklet.

2. VISIT: COLLECTOR’S CARDS These provide fun and useful bits of information. A ninth-grader from Alaska receives a card with tips on travel to Holderness that doubles as a postcard he or she can send home. A tenth-grader from Thailand receives a greeting in Central Thai, as well as an FAQ for international students. A student interested in STEM receives a waterproof card with equations used in the school’s biology wet labs.

3. ADMITTED: NOTIFICATION PACKET “The answer is yes!” Our notification packet exudes enthusiasm. Admitted students receive folders that feature a quintessential campus scene and open to welcoming photos of students, a packet of stickers, a personal letter from the director of admission, an invitation to Second Visits, and, of course, the paperwork needed to accept our invitation to attend Holderness.

4. OPENING DAY: CARE PACKAGE The first few hours on campus can be intimidating, no matter how great the fit.

New students are greeted by house and floor leaders and given a box that holds their Opening Day t-shirts and arrival paperwork. It’s a cheerful gift, and it doubles as storage for new keys, schedules, notes, handbooks, and other items that pile up in new dorm rooms during those exciting first weeks.

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ADMISSION VISITS 2013–14 NATIONAL r Multiple locations in New Hampshire r Boston, MA r Hartford, CT r Burlington, VT r Portland, ME r Providence, RI r New York, NY r Philadelphia, PA r Baltimore, MD r Washington, DC

r Miami, FL r Atlanta, GA

r Lake Tahoe, CA r Los Angeles, CA

r Hong Kong, China r Hanoi, Vietnam

r Columbus, OH r Chicago, IL

r Santa Barbara, CA r Palo Alto, CA

r Bangkok, Thailand r Kiev, Ukraine

r Minneapolis, MN r Denver, CO r Aspen, CO r Bozeman, MT r Boise, ID r Sun Valley, ID r Reno, NV r San Francisco, CA

INTERNATIONAL r Montreal, Canada r Tokyo, Japan r Seoul, South Korea r Beijing, China r Shanghai, China r Changchun, China

r Moscow, Russia r St. Petersburg, Russia r Berlin, Germany r Hamburg, Germany r Helsinki, Finland r Oslo, Norway r Stockholm, Sweden r Madrid, Spain

A TYPICAL DAY IN ADMISSION The Admission Office is a busy place, but the associates always find time to focus on their visitors—to answer questions, share their knowledge of the school, and generally make everyone feel welcome.

There’s no typical day—every season brings different tasks—but here’s a sampling of the things the admission officers do during any given day. r Answer the phone and make sure calls don’t go to voicemail. r Welcome families—and consultants and school representa-

r

r

r

r

r

tives—to Holderness with coffee, tea, a cup of hot cocoa, or perhaps just a comfy chair.

Create brochures, postcards, emails, and letters that best represent Holderness and share our mission and programs with the world.

Train and schedule students to be tour guides—their knowledge of the school and its history are the foundation of every prospective students’ visit.

Connect with prospective families and students via phone, Skype, email, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

Review files of applicants and decide which ones will contribute most to a balanced and diverse community.

Counsel families—not just on applying to Holderness but on finding a school that fits their needs and understanding what it means to be a part of the boarding school community.

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r From down the street to across the globe, our admission offi-

r r r

r

r

r

cers log many miles. From personal visits to school fairs, the admission associates travel wherever they think they might find students who want to hear about Holderness.

Coordinate meetings of prospective athletes and coaches.

Communicate with applicants—almost 500 of them!

Reach out to students who apply for financial aid and help them through the process.

Organize and host Open Houses, Second Visit days, and Opening days.

Manage the overall enrollment of Holderness students—who is staying, who is leaving, and who will be part of the next generation.

Help new students settle into their new lives at Holderness.

Finding classes, ordering books, choosing a seat at lunch— the Admission staff is there to help!

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 19 popular click—far more popular than the home page, or the admission home page.

Yes, these kids wanted to know about our community and our leadership program and our academics, but they also wanted to know what clothes they would be wearing. That’s what you’re like when you’re thirteen. I love getting insight into the mind of a thirteen-year-old that isn’t merely conjecture.”

Another thing that the internet does is blur the line between advertising and conversation, which in school marketing provides a sort of sweet spot. “The science of all this goes back to Pete Barnum saying he wanted kids he would jump in a car with and drive cross-country,” Courtney concludes. “We’re just using new ways to answer that same question. It’s still wordof-mouth—but now it’s also happening in pixels and bytes.”

While Skype also allows for conversations, sort of, in their own pixels-and-bytes sort of way, one of the reasons that the admission staff is now as large as it is—Tyler plus six other officers, twice the size of Pete Barnum’s largest group—is so Holderness people can go on the road themselves more often, and cover more face-to-face meetings with families.

Last fall, for example, Tyler or members of his staff—Nancy, Erin, as well as Cynthia Day, Marilee Lin, Woody Kampmann, and Patrick Saunders—visited the school’s New England feeder schools and consultants, as they have for decades. But they also visited Chicago and San Francisco twice, and Boston, Toronto, and Montreal as well; also Florida and Idaho; and also Russia and the Scandinavian countries. This fall Asia is on the international itinerary, with trips to China and South Korea.

Recruiting from overseas, however, is done only in a calibrated way. Since this is where that “strengthening demand” is coming from, some schools have found an

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easy way to fill beds by cashing in applications from abroad. At Holderness, of course, the surge in international applications has helped with the school’s strategic goals of becoming more diverse as a community and more global in its curriculum.

But, without an English-as-a-SecondLanguage program and with an insistence on English fluency, Holderness has chosen not to go above 20 percent for international enrollment. Currently, international enrollment counts for 16 percent of the student body, with no more than ten students from any single foreign country.

(Which meant last fall that the school had 85 applicants from China for only three available spaces.)

This means, then, that eighty percent of available spaces each year have to be filled from a market where demand has dramatically weakened. Step one is for the school’s broad-band digital marketing, its domestic on-the-road recruiting, and—yes, still—its word-of-mouth reputation to attract the attention of mission-appropriate candidates. Step two is to persuade them to come to campus for a visit and then commit to Holderness.

FACE-TO-FACE HOSPITALITY Originally the south wing of Livermore Hall was known as the Rectory. It housed the family of The Rev. Edric Weld and his wife Gertrude during Weld’s twenty-year tenure in the 1930s and ’40s. Then Headmaster Don Hagerman and his wife Ibba raised their children there, at least until a headmaster’s house was built on the other side of Rt. 175. Subsequently the Rectory has housed a series of faculty families: the Brewers, the Perkinses, the Fords.

Meanwhile, Pete Barnum was interviewing perspective families next door in the two rooms off the central foyer in Livermore, outfitted as New England-style living rooms, with colorful rugs, plush couches and easy chairs, and oil paintings

on the walls. It was much more like a home, actually, than an office.

But as the admission office began to expand, two living rooms were not enough, and the Rectory became admission headquarters. Tyler and his crew now work their magic from a place that actually was a home, with fireplaces and big windows and comfortable sitting areas. It’s just the sort of place—had you driven there from LA in your VW Bug—where you might want to set a spell.

“The experience people have when they come into the office is crucial nowadays,” Tyler says. “It’s easy to talk about a sense of community and a home-like, family-style atmosphere on campus, but that’s not going to be convincing unless people can actually feel it. And we can make sure they feel it if they’re greeted in offices that are themselves home-like and family-style.”

The expanded space (and staff) also solves a problem that had recently bubbled up as a result of the school’s more muscular marketing efforts. “The process was rupturing,” Tyler says. “We had reached a point where we were turning people away, and losing interviews, because we simply couldn’t handle the number of people who wanted to visit.”

Now, when they come, Tyler knows from his research that families are greeted with more face-to-face hospitality than they’ll find anywhere else. “We have two officers that stay with each family throughout the whole extent of their visit here—one with the parents, and the other with the kid— and that’s unique,” he says. “We spend a lot of time with these families, and we constantly hear favorable comments from them about the care and level of attention they receive here versus other schools.”

Those favorable comments have translated into favorable results. Since 2009, interviews conducted at the school have risen from 412 to 494; applications from 348 to 494. That means that the average

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“THE SCIENCE OF ALL THIS GOES BACK TO PETE BARNUM SAYING HE WANTED KIDS HE WOULD JUMP IN A CAR WITH AND DRIVE CROSSCOUNTRY,” COURTNEY CONCLUDES. “WE’RE JUST USING NEW WAYS TO ANSWER THAT SAME QUESTION. IT’S STILL WORD-OF-MOUTH— BUT NOW IT’S ALSO HAPPENING IN PIXELS AND BYTES.” number of applicants to enrollee has risen from 3.5 to 5.4. Even as the school’s boarding enrollment has climbed with the addition of new dormitories, not only have all the beds been filled, the admission office has helped the school achieve a net tuition revenue surplus for the past eight years, and also the lowest average attrition rate in the history of the school.

MAINTAINING LOFT So in a world where the competition is fiercer than it’s ever been, notes Andy Hirt, Holderness is not just staying afloat—it actually seems to be rising above. But maintaining that loft isn’t easy. In order to keep on rising, Tyler and his crew face an ever evolving to-do list.

One item has to do with a little unfinished business from 1978 and the school’s shift to coeducation. Only with the completion of the Pichette and Woodward Faculty dorms on Mt. Prospect Street has the school had the capacity for a 50/50 gender balance in enrollment. Therefore, one of the four goals of that Admission Office strategic plan produced at the end of the self-audit is to recruit enough girls to at last achieve this balance.

A second goal addresses an ongoing issue in Holderness evolution, and one endemic to rural, outdoor-oriented boarding schools: to enhance its levels of diversity, but without the easy fix of a lot more students from abroad. Diversity itself means different things at Holderness: dif-

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ferences in race, ethnicity, religion, geographic origin, socio-economic status, and sexual orientation. These days there are more students of color at Holderness than ever before, some ten percent of enrollment, but this is still not at a level that fosters a real sense of racial diversity in the community.

Admission’s third goal is to admit larger classes of entering ninth-graders. “We had an entering class of 39 in 2006, and 56 last year, which was great,” Tyler says. “Keeping it up around 50 not only allows us to graduate more alumni who have been through the full Holderness experience, but also allows us to be more selective in whom we add at the higher grade levels.”

And the last goal—perhaps the most difficult—is finding more kids who are the right fit for Holderness from families who can afford the full price of tuition. Andy Hirt suggests that Holderness awards too much by way of financial aid, that it’s too much of a strain on the budget. Admittedly, just a slight uptick in the number of students who don’t need financial aid would do much to protect accessibility for those who do.

Also among Andy’s recommendations was that Holderness plant its marketing flag on the snow sports program, that it define itself crisply as “the best snow sports school in America.” Snow sports do play an important role in the story of the school, but they will never become the common denominator that brings people here. “Families are responding to the dis-

tinctive warmth and friendliness of Holderness,” says Nancy Dalley. “They like the small size of the school, the sense of a personal touch in everything we do.”

And what’s different here is how real, pervasive, and sustained that warmth is— from the first-blush wackiness of those posters above the snow to Phil Peck’s handshake at commencement. Warmth and friendliness are essential to a crosscountry ride in a VW Bug, as are the high-EQ corollaries of Character and Curiosity. All that Tyler Lewis and his staff have to do is make sure that high-EQ families keep coming here to experience it: just orchestrate the marketing, log the airline miles, check off the strategic goals, keep the welcome mat warm, ensure that we keep our promises—all while keeping their ears to ground that’s rapidly shifting beneath them, and staying awake at night in hopes that the dust settles favorably each spring.

Whatever the complexities, things are working. Last fall, some two hundred people—a record number—attended a Holderness School open house event.

Parents and their children who were only a few minutes late found standing-room only in the east wing of Weld Hall. Meanwhile applications per enrolled student are up 43% since 2008. Word is getting out.

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Martha in costume, but also directing, during the 1991–92 Holderness production of The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Catching Up With Martha Kesler A BEAUTIFUL PERFORMANCE Martha Kesler knew a lot about music—but not so much about theater—when she came to Holderness in . When eventually she took over the theater program, though, she put a stamp on it that endures to this day. by rick carey IT SEEMS ODD—BUT SOMEHOW RIGHT—that when Phil Peck asks

Martha—a.k.a. M.K.—came to Holderness in 1979 with her then hus-

Martha Kesler about her favorite memories of Holderness, something as

band Walt, who had been hired by Headmaster Pete Woodward to revive

serene and solitary as this should rise to the top: “I remember sometimes

the school’s chapel program. He would go on to also serve as director of

sitting alone in the dark on the white fence across the road from Weld

college counseling and then assistant headmaster.

Hall,” she says. “I loved the Schoolhouse, and the moonlight on the old brick buildings, and the quiet that lay across the Quad.”

Odd because during her long career at the school, Martha was the

The Keslers moved into Upper Rathbun and later one of the new South Campus girls’ dorms. Martha—who had a bachelor’s in music education, had taught music in five previous schools, and had directed a

least solitary person, stressing involvement above all else in her role as

number of church choirs—assumed roles as a dorm mother and the leader

director of the theater program. She mounted vast musicals with casts of

of Walt’s choir.

up to a quarter of the school’s enrollment and spring senior plays that

She was a performer in those choirs as well. “Martha, I remember

drew on the talents—in one way or another—of every member of the grad-

some beautiful solos,” says Phil, who is busy calling to mind all the differ-

uating class. Rarely was it quiet in a world so full of instruments and

ent things she did during her years at Holderness. He mentions that for

voices, or dark in a life with so many hours spent under the lights of the

many years Martha was manager of the school’s bookstore, her leadership

Hagerman Center’s stage. But with so much of her life and soul poured

straddling its change in location from the basement of Rathbun to the

into those big shows and into the actors she deployed so skillfully in

lower level of Weld. “When did that happen?”

them—well, this is someone who certainly earned her moments alone at

“Don’t ask me when—ask how,” Martha laughs. “The student body did

night on the Quad.

it—box by box, shelf by shelf.”

ON A BLEAK NOVEMBER DAY, Phil and Martha’s conversation, with

asks.

“Weren’t you also the first director of the Edwards Art Gallery?” Phil all its laughter, unfolds via conference phone. Since her retirement in

Yes, Martha was that as well. When the Carpenter Arts Center was

1998, Martha has been living to Sarasota, FL—the city where she attended

renovated in the mid-’90s, it also acquired a new wing, housing an art

high school. With its sweet climate and rich arts and cultural life, Sarasota

gallery that was a gift from the Edwards family. “We suddenly had this

seems like just the right setting for this bright orchid. But back in the day,

new resource, but realized, oops, we were going to need someone to run

one might not have predicted the same sort of contentment for her at an

it,” Phil recalls. “You cheerfully raised your hand and said, ‘I’ll do it.’”

outdoorsy, ski-minded northern New England school.

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No one is left out. Students—and some faculty—fill the stage in the final curtain call for Godspell in 1989–90.

Then there was Martha’s role as a traveling companion and chaperone

“Then I also started helping students direct their senior projects if they

with Phil back in the 1980s, when Phil was teaching popular courses in

happened to involve theater. That led to doing a full-length play on grad-

Russian and Chinese history and taking groups of students during spring

uation weekend that became the senior play, with only senior performers.

vacations to both countries. Phil and Martha were in China together in

Oh, it was just great to see kids who had never walked on stage do them-

1989, and were astonished by how freely and candidly their guide spoke

selves so proud in comedy or drama.”

to them about politics. Then, two weeks later, the events in Tiananmen

When Paul Elkins and his wife Marty left Holderness (temporarily) in

Square unfolded. They were also together on a Russian airliner when

1988, Pete Woodward asked Martha to take Paul’s place as the head of

water began raining out of the plane’s overhead vents; Russian travelers

the program, and the everybody-in-the-pool attitude that Martha had

in the seats around them simply took out their umbrellas.

brought to the senior plays encompassed the winter musicals as well.

Like running the bookstore and curating the art gallery, directing the

Besides the throngs on stage, there were more students building and

theater was something that Martha learned how to do on the fly. Former

painting the sets, running the lights, assembling the props and costumes,

English teacher and Assistant Head Jay Stroud was handling drama when

and managing the stage. And the social divides that often exist in any

the Keslers arrived. Then Jay was succeeded by chemistry teacher Paul

community between, say, athletics and the arts became much smaller. “I

Elkins, who had done some theater as an undergraduate at Harvard.

remember on several occasions,” marvels Phil, “seeing two to three kids

“I used to sew costumes and help with other things for Jay, and then did more with Paul: costumes, props, dressing the set,” Martha says.

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who were team captains—and the sort you’d never expect to see on stage—playing lead roles in your plays.”

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CATCHING UP WITH MARTHA KESLER

those kids, who were out on the fringes of the community, found their way into the heart of it all thanks to martha.

And despite her on-the-job training, Martha quickly figured out how to

both. When Phil asks what it was like raising her children here, Martha

harness the students’ talents. Consider some of the actors trained by

says, “It was really like having a whole village helping every day. They

Martha and what they’ve done since. Nat Faxon ’93 starred in the FOX

were protected and safe wherever they went.”

comedy series Ben & Kate, currently stars in the FX comedy series

And where have they gone since? Nowadays daughter Martha Ellen ’85

Married, co-wrote and directed the acclaimed 2013 feature film The Way,

is teaching theater and English at Wayland Academy in Wisconsin;

Way Back, and in 2011 won an Academy Award for Best Adapted

Andrew ’88 is teaching physics at New Jersey’s Newark Academy; and

Screenplay by co-writing the script for the George Clooney film, The

Stefan ’91 is an architect for the city of Dallas, near where their father Walt

Descendants.

now lives.

Derek (Rick) Richardson ’94 has had guest roles on numerous televi-

During her years here, Martha also sang with the New Hampshire

sion series and starring roles on the ABC comedy series Men In Trees and

Friendship Chorus, an elite group that travels the world as ambassadors

the WB drama series Felicity. He has also starred in the films Dumb and

of music, and with whom Martha performed in China, South America,

Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd and Hostel (earning a 2006 MTV Movie

Australia, New Zealand, Korea, and Vietnam. She directed children’s

Award nomination for Best Frightened Performance in that horror film).

plays as well for the Plymouth Regional Arts Council. On campus, there

Currently he plays Nolan Johnson opposite the Charlie Sheen character

were also a variety of informal faculty or student or student/faculty choral

in the FX comedy series Anger Management.

ensembles and theatrical special events as well—a holiday production in

Tarun Shetty ’97, meanwhile, a successful model and stand-up comic,

the Chapel of Amahl and the Night Visitors, for example, that included

is just beginning an acting career as well, starring as the title character, a

faculty and day student parents in costumes and makeup rich enough to

wannabe star, in the 2011 independent film Bobby Khan’s Ticket to

make faculty unrecognizable.

Hollywood.

Then she landed running in Sarasota. For eleven years she directed

With casts including talents such as these, Martha often mounted

the Sarasota Jewish Chorale. Last year she was among twelve honored by

shows that would have brought down houses that didn’t include a single

Sarasota’s famed Players Theater, a venerable, top-of-the-line community

proud parent or faculty member; the performances were about as good as

theater group that launched the careers of actors such as Montgomery

high school theater can possibly get. Martha’s novice actors (almost all of

Clift and Jayne Meadows. Martha has been managing props and helping

them skiers, basketball players, and hockey players) were mounting per-

in the costume shop there since 2000.

formances worthy of kids attending an arts academy.

“You know, when I ask people in the community what things should

Last fall Nat Faxon was singled out for a Holderness Distinguished Alumnus Award, and Martha—making her first visit to campus since

never change about Holderness,” Phil says, “Some of the things that come

2008—came up from Florida to present the honor. Nat’s television sched-

up most often are those big musicals and plays, all of them with so many

ule prevented him from making the trip from California, but he was there

people involved. And of course Monique Devine, our current theater

via Skype on the big screen in Hagerman Auditorium, where it had all

director, is keeping that tradition alive. I think we had 65 students in last

begun for him. The two talked of old times in front of a packed and

winter’s show.”

appreciative audience.

“Oh, I know,” Martha says. “I love Monique and what she’s doing.”

“It was a phenomenal experience for me to be back there again with a

These large casts have not only lured athletes to the arts, they have

great purpose like that,” Martha says. “And all the different things that I

broken down cliques all across the campus. Martha’s success in reaching

was able to do during my years at Holderness—I feel like it was a bucket

across those divides made her, away from the footlights, a go-to faculty

list all by itself.”

resource and pillar of support for students who didn’t fit into the usual

Phil asks Martha what comes to mind when she thinks about

sports-minded, outdoorsy Holderness mold. Those kids, who were out on

Holderness. Martha is silent for a moment, and then lists several things:

the fringes of the community, found their way into the heart of it all

“Generosity, warmth, involvement, trust, love…this phone call.”

thanks to Martha.

Moonlight across old brick buildings, a hush across the Quad, after the

Of course the heart of it all is where her and Walt’s own children grew

applause has died down. That’s part of it too.

up. And all three acted and sang in either Elkins or Kesler productions, or

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One Inquiry at a Time “Take a careful look through the woods,” says Ms. Berry. “What do you see? What looks like it might be man-made? What were people doing here? Why would they have settled here?”

It’s no secret that the Lakes Region and the White Mountains are great extensions of the classrooms at Holderness School. Lessons in winter survival and group dynamics are taught in the White Mountains north of campus, while lessons in Lake Turnover and water clarity are taught over the gunnels of a barge on Squam Lake. This fall history teacher Kelsey Berry found another way to use the local environment.

Research Methods, a required semester course for all sophomores, introduces students to the process of inquiry using primary resources. Students explore non-Western topics in the context of the National History Day curriculum, learning about other cultures while developing appropriate skills for conducting extensive and intensive research. The course has been taught at Holderness for many years, but this year Ms. Berry and history teacher Tyler Cabot decided to do things a bit differently.

“I grew up in the Plymouth area,” explains Ms. Berry. “But I didn’t know much about the history of the area until I was working on a Master’s in Heritage Studies at psu. One of my professors brought us to Livermore Falls and opened my eyes to the historical significance of the place. In Research Methods, Tyler and I decided to share that history with our students.”

Back in September students started the course with a visit to the Holderness Archives where Ms. Berry and Mr. Cabot introduced the students to local history. In addition to a hefty collection of Holderness School records and memorabilia, the Archives also contain several books on the history of Plymouth, photographs of local landmarks, and original letters from the Revolutionary War. Students were able to look up the names and occupations of long-time residents, read about the original settlement of Plymouth, and understand all of it in the context of world history.

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Standing below Livermore Falls in Plymouth, history teacher Ms. Berry shows her students historical photographs of the area and asks them to compare these to the current view. Above them are the remains of one of the only existing pumpkin seed bridges, named for the shape of the support arches.

“Starting in the Holderness Archives gives the students a tangible reference point and helps them to see history not as something distant but real and unfolding before them,” continues Ms. Berry. “It gives them the opportunity to be

ments in the area. Equipped with cell phones and notebooks, the students recorded their observations—the locations of cellar holes and wells in relation to the river and the falls, the age of the forest, the geography of the terrain.

Starting in the Holderness Archives gives the students a tangible reference point and helps them to see history not as something distant but real and unfolding before them. It gives them the opportunity to be investigators and understand what it means to uncover history through primary resources. — KELSEY BERRY investigators and understand what it means to uncover history through primary resources.”

Once students had an understanding of the written history of Plymouth, they piled into minibuses and rode to Livermore Falls to gather first-hand observations of one of the first settle-

Questions without answers came quickly and required the students to take what they had learned in the classroom and Archives and apply it to their surroundings. And then standing on a rocky ledge overlooking the falls, students also got a chance to compare archival

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: the pulp mill at Livermore Falls, circa 1920; Kayli Cutler in the Holderness Archives examining a letter from the Revolutionary War; a portion of what remains of the pulp mill today, showing the same section of wall that appears at center in the archival image.

photographs of the falls and its mill with the current falls and what remains of the mill.

When they returned to campus, the students again relied on technology to help them create maps of Livermore falls, “focusing on remnants of past uses and modern views of the historic pictures.”

Ms. Berry then tied their findings to bigger world events including the Belgian Conquest of

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the Congo for which there is an absence of native testimony.

“We’ll also look at the role of memoirs in history during our study of Apartheid South Africa using Mark Mathabane’s Kaffir Boy,” says Ms. Berry. “Just as we did when looking at the scrapbooks and journals in the Holderness Archives, we will discuss the reliability of sources, especially sources couched in memory.”

It is a process that often creates more questions than answers, but that’s fine with Ms. Berry who hopes that many of the students’ questions will motiviate them to pursue answers through their National History Day projects later in the course, or perhaps through their senior theses two years from now.

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A New Rink: Designed with Holderness in Mind This past summer, when Holderness School discovered the rink roof was damaged and beyond repair, it was hard to be positive. What did this mean for the upcoming hockey season?

How would our hockey teams practice? Could the home games be rescheduled? And if the games weren’t played at home, who would cheer for the Bulls?

But Holderness has a history of turning challenges into opportunities, and as the community digested the facts, the administrators were already rolling up their sleeves and making plans.

Athletic Director Rick Eccleston quickly made some phone calls, found alternative practice ice for the teams, and rescheduled the home games at other local venues. Transportation for practices and games would be logistically challenging, but it was nothing that couldn’t be solved with a few rented vans and some creative scheduling. coo Steve Solberg was also busy; it was his responsibility to find the best way to demolish the old rink before construction could begin.

Ultimately Holderness hired North Ridge Contracting, a company out of Deerfield, NH. While it would take them longer to clear the site, up to  of the building materials would be recycled. From the plywood on the roof to the steel beams to the fluorescent lights, North Ridge committed to finding homes for all the building materials. In addition, the school made arrangements for the rink’s bleachers and scoreboard to be relocated to Holderness Central School.

With the immediate needs of the hockey teams taken care of and the deconstruction phase well under way, others began envisioning the future. The thought of raising enough funds for an indoor hockey rink seemed insurmountable, but the final product didn’t seem to suit the school’s needs anyway. For decades, Holderness athletes had proudly played hockey in all weather in their outdoor rink, undeterred by howling winds and sub-zero temperatures.

Spectators never faltered either. No matter the temperature, if there was a game on a Friday

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A view of the proposed rink from Mt. Prospect Road with Gallop Gymnasium in the background.

night, students’ hooded faces ringed the plexiglass sideboards, their mittened hands banging on the glass whenever one of ours scored a goal.

So as plans for the new rink began to form, it was quickly decided that fresh air and open space were crucial to the design. The plans do, however, include design features that will make the New England winters a bit more bearable.

Team boxes will be protected from the weather by wall panels, while the spectator bleachers will be heated. In addition, several walled panels will be installed on the northwest corner of the building to block the bitter winter winds.

“It’s going to be a place that makes a statement about who we are,” says Rick Eccleston.

“We’re staying true to our roots with the outdoor design, but the look and overall concept is modern and forward thinking.”

Improved foot-traffic patterns and a wide plaza with a central fire pit will invite family and friends to the Bartsch/Gallop complex.

The current plan also calls for the installation of photo voltaic (PV) solar panels on the new roof. Holderness students in last fall’s science elective, stem Energy, conducted research and

proposed three different designs (more information on page ). Such an installation could produce enough energy to match the electrical needs of the new facility. In addition, efficient led lighting and a much improved refrigeration system will further limit the rink’s energy usage and will further support Holderness’s commitment to sustainable building practices.

The building is also being designed for use during the off-season for strength and conditioning as well as team practices. One version of the plan proposes replacing the ice with astro-turf for the spring sports seasons. It could mean the end of shoveling the baseball diamonds and tennis courts!

In  when the rink was first installed under the direction of Rip Richards, it was exciting and new. Students proudly assisted with the laying of the ice and the care and maintenance of the rink. It was their rink. Next winter when the new rink receives its inaugural layer of ice, the students probably won’t need to spray it on with a garden hose, but it will be their rink, one of which they can be very proud.

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Strategic Planning Score Card by phil peck We’ve been saying all along that one of the things that will make the  Strategic Plan unique is to renew our commitment to measurement and to create a new level of transparency throughout our community.

Fortunately for us, it’s an interesting time when it comes to theories of measurement. The rise of big data and the ability to track digital metrics has paved the way for a lot of new thinking about how organizations chart progress and learn from experiences and feedback.

In his book The Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver says, “We must become more comfortable with probability and uncertainty,” and this is a big shift. Being comfortable with probability means being curious and open-minded about the results of our research and learning from the data we gather. We also have to be courageous enough to make changes along the way. As we try new things and analyze the outcomes, we need to ask “What did we learn?” instead of “Were we right?”

The  Strategic Plan is ambitious, and to get where we want to go we need to commit to doing four things: benchmark, define outcomes, measure, and iterate.

I’ll use Senior Thesis as an example because it is a program that is going to help us advance one of our strategic objectives: strengthening our alumni network. As many of you know, we started doing research on how to conduct a senior capstone project almost ten years ago. Chris Day did a master’s thesis on senior capstones and visited exemplary programs in independent schools and colleges around the country.

Through his research, we learned as much as we could about best practices and things to avoid.

This allowed us to benchmark the industry standards for senior thesis programs, and then armed with this information, set about designing a program that would not only be as good as that benchmark but better. (We are actively doing this now for our proposed new science

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It’s the first inning, so to speak, of the new Strategic Plan. It’s time to check in and figure out the score.

facility, our leadership program, as well as our proposed athletics programs.)

Next, outcomes. We are only beginning this discussion, but possible desired outcomes for Senior Thesis in the next five years might include: an established stewardship process and digital networking platform to sustain and grow our alumni mentor pool; respect for and understanding of the program by – of the colleges who most often admit our students; and a pilot summer internship program developed out of the Senior Thesis mentoring program. These are all hypothetical outcomes, but these examples reflect the ways in which it will be possible for us to take something we are already doing well and make it better.

So how will we measure our progress? There are a lot of possibilities here, too. We might decide to look at how many of our students choose majors in college in subject areas related to their senior theses, or how the program has supported their work in college. We might ask seniors what skills they learned during their March field work and how that list compares to the list of skills they thought they would learn.

Or, we might ask our alumni about the structure of the mentoring process—what worked and what we can do better. Part of our work this year will be to figure out the questions we need to ask in order to help us effectively measure the progress of Senior Thesis.

Then, for me, the last part—iteration—is the best part. Instead of giving up when an idea seems not to work, or checking off a goal when it is reached, we will continuously reflect on what we discover, paying attention to the journey not the end point. This means that whatever we learn can help us build and advance to the next level. The results are never certain, but it’s an exciting and positive process.

And with the strong vision outlined in the Strategic Plan to keep us focused, I’m confident we will go far.

So, that is what this “Scorecard” series is going to be about. In each issue of Holderness School Today, I plan to present an example, like this one, about how we are progressing on our strategic vision for Holderness School. I hope you will find this an engaging and informative process.

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STEM Energy: From Classroom Lessons to Field Experiences Let’s begin in a science classroom in early fall.

Students are sharing what they have learned about photovoltaic cells and which ones will be ideal for installation on the Holderness hockey rink. The pitch of the roof, the types of cells, the return on investment, the environmental impact, and the cost of the project versus the savings over time are all part of their evaluation process.

Flash forward a month and students are sharing their knowledge of photovoltaics with vendors, teachers, students, professionals, and the general public during the Ammonoosuc Solar Forum at the White Mountain School.

“We learned a lot about the use of solar photovoltaic arrays in schools and the building of net zero homes, where they only consume the amount of energy produced,” says senior Lizzy Duffy. “We also listened to a very informative session in which a professor talked about the new laws that are being developed.”

Flash forward another two weeks and the same students are gathered outside of Hagerman testing solar cookers they have built out of cardboard and aluminum foil. The temperature is well below freezing and the sun isn’t cooperating, but the students remain determined and hopeful. Suspended at the centers of their solar cookers are marshmallows, waiting for the concentrated rays of sun to heat them. Unfortunately, the clouds win for the day, but each time the sun finds a narrow slit of clear sky, the temperature inside the solar cookers rises—perhaps only by a degree or two but enough to demonstrate the potential energy of the sun and the success of their solar cookers.

This is stem Energy Solutions: Energy Flow and System Design, a new course at Holderness offered to juniors and seniors and team taught by science teacher Maggie Mumford and math teacher Vicky Stigum. At the center of the course is the concept of stem—an educational acronym that stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics and asserts that none of the subjects should be taught in isolation. Nationwide, stem courses attempt to

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Senior Carson Holmes presents her group’s photovoltaic proposal for the hockey rink.

address the lag in Western achievement in science and math, and rather than teaching facts, require students to break down problems into parts and create solutions.

“Holderness science and math courses have been utilizing stem principles for many years,” says Dr. Mumford, “but this course offered an

many. Everyone in the class might come up with a different answer to a specific problem, but all solve the matter sufficiently. New doors are always being opened, and new knowledge is always needed to solve problems.”

Senior Jake Rosencranz agrees. “I used to always approach problems believing that I

Holderness math and science courses have been utilizing STEM principles for many years, but this course offered an opportunity for us to focus much more attention on collaboration and design rather than on traditional laboratory experiments. — DR. MAGGIE MUMFORD opportunity for us to focus much more attention on collaboration and design rather than on traditional laboratory experiments.”

But because the course doesn’t utilize a textbook or neatly packaged science units, answers don’t come easily.

“In stem Energy,” says senior Kai Lin, “there is never just one solution to a problem, but

would find an answer immediately,” he says.

“When we created our solar cookers, our group struggled immensely. Frustration drove through all of us as the deadline approached; however, we sat down, analyzed our project, and figured out what the problem was. Dr. Mumford stressed the importance of learning from mis-

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takes and how engineers conduct many trials before they reach their final solutions.”

And while Dr. Mumford and Ms. Stigum have a wealth of knowledge on renewable energy, they also reached out to other experts to provide the students with additional information. For example, during their first project when students were asked to design a photovoltaic system for the new rink, Dr. Mumford and Ms. Stigum invited a local residential net zero designer and a consultant of commercial solar installations to talk with the students. And when it came time to put their ideas on paper, a stem innovator from Groton School, Jon Choate, paid a visit and taught students about design software.

Up next Dr. Mumford and Ms. Stigum hope to tackle wind and biomass energy.

Always looking for ways to incorporate engineering and design into each unit, they hope to look at the shapes of different blades and how they affect power generation. Next year they hope to create D models of the blades on a D printer. Meanwhile, the biomass system at Holderness is taking shape, and there will be plenty of opportunities for the students to help.

Case in point, next year, once the system is up and running, students will be monitoring the moisture content of the woodchips and using the biomass plant’s data acquisition system to monitor their efficiency.

But so far for the students, their favorite project remains the design of the photovoltaic array for the rink. “This project required us to do extensive research and learn how to present our ideas to the Holderness board of trustee and the people at the Ammonoosuc Energy Forum,” says Kai. “It would be neat to come back to Holderness some day and see solar panels on the roof of the new rink.”

Jake agrees. “It was fun to work on the development of the rink,” he says. “This project can truly change the history of Holderness School, which is why I devoted so much time to it. I wanted to make a difference.”

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Ready to roast marshmallows? Students test their solar cookers on a frigid November morning.

A marshmallow waiting for the rays of sun to turn it golden brown.

Their interest in the project was not wasted.

Their solutions ultimately were viable and were very similar to the professional proposals Holderness received. The exercises then, teach far more than stem principles and include les-

sons in group dynamics and perseverance as well—both of which are important for addressing that lag in Western achievement in science and math.

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Outside the Holderness Bubble Students often talk about feeling as if they live in a bubble at Holderness, so busy in their daily lives that it’s hard to pay attention to what is going on in the rest of the world. This fall, however, we were fortunate to hear from several speakers who brought the world and its concerns to us. While we can’t print everything they shared with us, below are some of their insights.

The Rt. Rev. A. Robert Hirschfeld Bishop of New Hampshire, on All Saints’ Day As a celebration of Baptism, All Saints’ Day is a feast when we remember that death has no power to separate, alienate, divide. The defeat of death means that relationships we had with those who have gone over to the other side continue, though they have changed. We notice them. We notice how their lives have changed ours, and we wonder how our lives might have changed theirs. We notice. And that’s what saints do. They notice…All those whose portraits are displayed in The Chapel of the Holy Cross have worked with the vision that all humanity, indeed all creation, is inextricably bound together in a fellowship of love, justice, and truth. They did not accept the neat and tidy boundaries and divisions that too often serve to keep the hungry, the poor, the suffering, the oppressed separate from us. As we notice them, they notice us, as if to ask, “Do you see to the other side, do you notice your neighbor, even the one you would rather not see?”

Jerry Ashworth ’59  Olympic gold medalist in the Xm relay, during the Fall Athletic Awards Assembly Savor all the opportunities you have to compete in every sport, and set realistic goals.

Andrew Herring Former Army Captain and the Assistant to the Head of School, on Veterans’ Day Vulnerability is fundamental to the human experience. To apply to college, to stand at this podium, to ask someone for a walkback, to live.

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CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: Philip Riteman; Rev. Hirschfeld; Andrew Herring; Jerry Ashworth; Lieutenant Freeman.

Everything that we do exposes us to the possibility of being wounded. Such is the case of the veteran. The very act of going to war introduces the prospect of true harm. The warfighter is willingly, at least in a now all-volunteer force, confronting an enemy in the defense of the values and the way of life that we all hold so dear.

Dr. Philip Riteman Auschwitz survivor, during a talk at Plymouth Regional High School I am a survivor of Auschwitz. I did not speak about it for thirty, forty years, but I’m here today to make sure it doesn’t happen to you guys. I am the last generation, from my time….It’s you guys; you’re going to take over the world. Your children, you make sure they live in a good world.

Don’t teach them to hate…You live in Heaven; you are the luckiest people in the world. Don’t ever give away your values.

Lieutenant Jeanne Freeman Naval Nuclear Power Training Officer, in a panel discussion at a Friday Assembly One of the things I love about my job is when the people who work for me succeed. It’s such a proud thing to see them excel, to get promoted, to receive awards, to qualify to new watch stations. The thing that’s amazing is that when they succeed, you succeed because their performance is a reflection of your leadership.

That’s really humbling. They always thank me, but really I should be thanking them because they are working hard for me.

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A Beginner’s Guide to Holderness Style It’s the Head’s House on a Tuesday evening in the fall. Sixty-plus boys and a dozen girls are jockeying for space in front of every mirror in the house. Plates of brownies sit on the table untouched, and gallons of ice cream remain in the freezer uneaten. The students aren’t styling their hair or flexing their muscles, and study hall is the next thing on their agenda. So why do they remain fixated in front of the mirrors, expressions of deep concentration and determination on their faces?

It’s Mr. Peck’s annual bow tie party. English teacher John Lin, Associate Director of Admission Patrick Saunders, former language teacher Lew Overaker, and a crew of experienced students are on hand to teach anyone who is interested how to tie a bow tie.

“You can choose any bow tie you want,” explains Mr. Peck, gesturing at a table of options, “but before you leave tonight, you must learn how to tie it, and then you must wear it at least three times during the school year.” The students nod and return to work. While there are copies of written instructions for individuals who prefer to learn on their own, most students are relying on their teachers and friends. It’s a community effort.

First occurring six years ago, the bow tie party was originally established at the request of Mr. Peck. As a relatively new head of school, he attended several black tie events and did not like the idea of wearing a clip-on bow tie. He couldn’t figure out the twists and folds of a proper bow tie on his own, so he decided to enlist the help of Lew Overaker.

For those who know Lew Overaker, it will come as no surprise that the private lesson turned into a party; Dr. O wanted to share his knowledge not just with Mr. Peck but with any faculty member who was interested. The gathering was a success. By the end of that first bow tie party, Phil Peck and several other faculty— including Dean of Academics Peter Durnan—learned to tie bow ties and continue to wear them to this day. The others? Well, let’s

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ABOVE: Students in the living room of the Head’s House, practicing their bow tieing techniques.

RIGHT: President of School Charles Harker, who first learned to tie a bow tie during his sophomore year, passes his knowledge on to his classmates.

just say there are still several faculty on campus who prefer the bow tie’s longer cousin.

Once Phil Peck had mastered the art of the bow tie, he started to inspire others. Jules Pichette ’, then a sophomore at Holderness, was curious. Could students learn also? The next year, with donations from parents, Mr. Peck purchased  bow ties and invited students to his house for dessert and a short tutorial. Since then, for the past four years, boys, as well as a few girls, have filled his living room eager to learn.

And while the bow ties are usually new, this year they come with a history. Charles Forker, a dear friend of Dr. Overaker’s, was a Shakespearean scholar and often visited English classrooms at Holderness, sharing his passion for and insights into Shakespeare. And, like a proper scholar, Dr. Forker never went anywhere without a bow tie. Sadly, Dr. Forker passed away late last year, but he left his collec-

tion of  bow ties to Dr. Overaker with instructions to share them with the students of Holderness School. Sixty students now proudly wear the vintage bow ties of Dr. Forker.

We are happy to report that by the end of the evening this fall everyone in attendance had learned the folds and twists of a perfect bow.

And throughout the fall a whole new generation of Holderness students proudly walked to class with style that would impress even Winston Churchill.

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The Fall Concert

CLOCKWISE, FROM ABOVE: Virginia Bonsal ’17 and Netta Johnson ’18 sing with the school chorus; Keegan Penny ’18 and Will Harker ’18 make their debut on the Hagerman stage with “Wagon Wheel;” Peter Reynolds ’18 playing guitar; Carter Bourassa ’17 on drums; and Anna Soderberg ’16 and Kai Lin ’15 on trumpets—all are part of the school band, directed by David Lockwood.

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Scenes from the Fall Play: Dearly Departed

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MEMBERS OF THE CAST, CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: Aaron Harmatz ’16 and Dave Leclerc ’16; Lydia Fisher ’16, Liam O’Reilly ’15, Maggie Barton ’16, and Kai Lin ’15; Charles Harker ’15 and Jack Brill ’17; Maggie Barton ’16 and Celia Fleckner ’15; Becca Kelly ’15 and Charlie Day ’15

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Tony Time Walk into Bartsch at any time of the day and Tony is there—early mornings, before and after classes, after dinner, during study hall. Moving quickly between students, he offers advice and instructions in quick sound bites. He tells one student who has sprained her ankle to stand in a bin of rice and walk in place, lifting her toes in order to strengthen but not strain her ankle.

Another student complains to Tony about his sore back, and Tony quickly helps him determine the cause of the pain and what stretches he needs to do. Minutes later he is talking pressure points with another student, showing her ways to alleviate her headache. All the while, he holds his cell phone in his hand, checking the time and counting the minutes until the Eastern alpine skiers need to rotate to new stations.

While Tony Mure has been offering advice in the Bartsch training room for years, his job became more formalized this year when Holderness asked him to become a full-time strength and conditioning coach.

“We did a nation-wide search, and Tony was one of four finalists,” says Athletic Director Rick Eccleston. “Ultimately, Tony’s familiarity with the school and kids, along with his passion and energy, made him the leading candidate.”

Using the fitness tests conducted by Director of Snow Sports Georg Capaul, Tony hopes to develop a four-year plan for all students that will begin in ninth grade with an introduction to the weight room. By senior year, Tony hopes his program will help prepare students for collegiate athletics, both physically and mentally. Modeled after Dartmouth College’s Peak Performance program, Tony’s program is also meant to educate Holderness student-athletes about nutrition, sleep, and physical conditioning.

“When I graduated from Holderness  years ago,” explains Rick, “I went off to Hobart College with aspirations of being a Division III college hockey player. I had no idea what it would take to be a college athlete. I don’t want this generation of Holderness athletes to make

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Strength and Conditioning Coach Tony Mure at work in his office.

the same mistake. By having access to a resource like Tony Mure, our athletes will be prepared to step onto any college campus, whether it’s Division I or III, and they will know what it takes to compete at that level.”

“There are afternoons when I’ve got  kids in here working at five different stations with two to three coaches helping,” says Tony. “The number of athletes we’re able to serve is impressive.” From hockey players to alpine

Are we more like matter or energy? When all we do is pay attention to the matter, the physical, we don’t tap into our internal energy. Most of us utilize only a small percentage of our potential power. — TONY MURE Tony has already begun to transform the weight room with fresh paint on the walls and Holderness crests above the mirrors. A chalk board for writing down workout schedules has been added between the windows, and new equipment has arrived as well. Additional bumper plates, Olympic racks, and benches help Tony meet the needs of a wider variety of student-athletes. There are also plans for eight Keiser spin bikes, a trx system, and more plyometric equipment.

skiers, basketball point guards to endurance runners, Tony is adept at creating plans for individual athletes.

And while his exercises at first may appear eclectic, they are drawn from the principles taught by Igor Burdenko. “The Burdenko Method is all about studying how the body moves cohesively as a unit,” says Tony, who holds level one certification. “Most Americans focus on strength and agility. Burdenko focuses on flexibility and balance. Without flexibility

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and balance all the strength in the world doesn’t do you any good.”

To demonstrate, Tony stretches out on a bench and shows how he combines and layers exercises. He begins with a basic bench press.

“Laying on your back, lifting weights perpendicular to your chest will make you stronger,” Tony explains. “But you can do better.

Lift your feet off the ground as you press the weight up, and suddenly you are not just strengthening your arms but your lower core as well. Balance and coordination also come into play as you drop one leg while keeping the other parallel to the floor.”

And it isn’t just the physical training that interests him. After losing his father at age six, Tony says he began a spiritual journey that he has continued to pursue to this day. Every year, he says, he reads two to three books on motivation. The names of spiritual gurus like Deepak Chopra, Tony Robbins, and Ralph Waldo Emerson intertwine with his thoughts about physical training.

“Are we more like matter or energy?” he asks. “When all we do is pay attention to the matter, the physical, we don’t tap into our internal energy. Most of us only utilize a small percentage of our potential power.”

He cites Holderness senior Charles Harker’s success in cross-country as an example. In the days leading up to his championship race, Tony recalls seeing Charles and noting that he was jittery and nervous. Tony took Charles aside and worked with him.

“For each of us there is an internal reference point and an external reference point,” he explains. “Your external reference points are the people, events, and situations that you encounter. Your internal reference point is your spirit. If you allow external reference points to guide you, you’re screwed; but with your internal reference point, things become much clearer. With Charles, he was so nervous about the event and the people he would be racing against, he couldn’t focus. I talked to Charles

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Ally Trask ’18 walking in rice to rehabilitate her sprained ankle--per instructions from Tony.

about running his own race and finding his own frequency. This helped calm him and helped him run his best race ever—:.”

So what does Tony see as a Holderness athlete’s biggest impediment to success? Time.

“Holderness is an incredibly busy place,” he says, “and it’s hard for students to find time to train for top-level athletics. I’m constantly looking at their schedules and trying to find more time for them.”

It’s a challenge that appeals to Tony and his sense of efficiency. And as the school begins a time-motion study this year, Tony will be personally invested, making sure that Holderness student-athletes not only receive high-quality individualize training plans that address both their psychological and physical goals, but that they also have time in which to carry out those plans.

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Neighbors with the US Ski Team If all goes well, the US Ski Team will be Holderness School’s next door neighbor in . In October, the US Ski Team announced that the Mittersill Race and Training Slopes at Cannon Mountain Ski Area in Franconia will be an official training site for the United States Ski and Snowboard Association (ussa). Joining ski areas in Idaho, Colorado, and California, Mittersill will be just one of four sites across the nation with this official designation.

Julia Ford, who graduated from Holderness School in  and was a member of the  US Ski Team at the Sochi Olympics, notes that as a competitive skier coming from the East it is inspiring to see a facility developed in this region.

“For years I have been preaching, to whoever will listen, how amazing the skiing at Cannon Mountain is,” she says. “Now, with the addition of the Mittersill training center and the US Ski Team’s designation, the training at Cannon will be over the top, ideal.” The hope is for on-snow training to begin in , an event that will impact , ussa alpine racers.

Here’s a look at the training facilities. With a vertical drop of , feet and a slope length of , feet, Baron’s Run has few intersections— and therefore few interruptions—and will be an ideal speed venue for super G and giant slalom.

In October, construction on Baron’s run was completed and included tree clearing, stumping/grubbing, grading, and re-vegetating. In addition, Cannon purchased a high-capacity compressor that will improve the snowmaking capacity for the whole mountain by .

The  phase of the project will include Echo Lake dam construction (required by the mountain’s  water permit) and the installation of a snowmaking loop. In addition, with a vertical drop of  feet and a slope length of , feet, Taft will be widened to  meters and will be perfect for slalom and giant slalom.

The final touch will be the Valar T-bar that will be installed next to Taft. According to Holderness School’s Director of Snow Sports

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A Sikorski S61 helicopter flies to the top of Mittersill with concrete for the lift tower footings of the new double chair in the summer of 2010.

Georg Capaul, what athletes do while they are going up hill is nearly as important as what they do going down: “You need to do both fast…training intensity and concentration is better when you have less time between runs.

Repetition is important.”

This boon for competitive skiing, as well as for the Holderness School Snow Sports Program, is the result of a public/private partnership between the State of New Hampshire, Franconia Ski Club, and Holderness School— all of which have a rich history in the sport.

Along with Cannon, Mittersill was one of the first prominent ski areas in the East, opening to the public in . Mittersill closed in , and for decades, its trails were kept a secret, skied only by locals who were willing to walk to the top and ski the ungroomed slopes with little guidance.

Recently, however, locals have worked in partnership with the State of New Hampshire and the US Forest Service to reopen the trails; the – season witnessed their official reopening, with a new double chairlift added a year later.

Governor Maggie Hassan lauded the project, stressing how important collaboration has been.

“We’re proud to have fostered this partnership with the Franconia Ski Club and Holderness School to create a world-class training venue at Cannon Mountain,” she says. “The fact that the ussa has also pledged its support is a testament to the importance of this project, both for youth racing and the positive impact it will have on skiing in New Hampshire.”

It’s the kind of neighborhood where Holderness skiers will have plenty of amazing role models and plenty of room to thrive; Baron’s Run and the Taft Slope will provide a place for a whole new level of training.

But there will still be other spaces reserved for those who prefer the silence of the New Hampshire forest. Beyond the groomed snow of Baron’s Run and Taft, the remaining trails on Mittersill will be left undeveloped, perfect for backcountry skiers and a few Bicknell Thrushes—a small threatened songbird that nests above  feet on Mittersill and whose habitat will remain protected from the projects on the slopes below.

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SPORTS

BEFORE LAST NOVEMBER, KATHY LIECH ’18, WHO IS FROM Kenya, had never seen snow, but that didn’t stop her from trying out for the nordic ski team. In January she completed her first race with a little help from her teammates, who waited for her and cheered loudly as she crossed the finish line.

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Winter Sports

CLOCKWISE, FROM ABOVE: Luke Randle ’15 looks for a teammate to receive his pass during a game against Brewster; snowboard teammates past and present, Chris Allen ’10, AJ Jarabek ’17, James Mitchell ’16, Karina Bladon ’17, and Christina Raichle ’15; Conner Mayes ’18 and Spencer Bernard ’17 smile for the camera during a JV2 basketball game; coach Woody Kampmann talks strategy with his varsity players during a game against Brimmer and May.

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SPORTS

ABOVE LEFT: Dan Cabassa ’17 reaches for the net during a game against Brimmer and May. ABOVE RIGHT: Varsity hockey coach Chris Day, sporting his best Holderness garb, studies a game against Worchester Academy at the PSU hockey arena. BELOW LEFT: Sarah Gillis ’17 skis the final gates of a slalom course during the Macomber Cup at Waterville Valley. BELOW RIGHT: Freeskier Henry Hall ’16 jumps with style during a competition at Loon Mountain.

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Winter Sports

CLOCKWISE, FROM ABOVE: JV hockey player Lindsey Houseman ’15 fights for possession of the puck against a player from KUA; coach Maggie Mumford discusses a GS course with Hannah Benson ’16 during the NEPSAC Championships at Cannon; Sydney Parker ’17 aims for the Middlesex goal during a varsity game at PSU; Sarah Alexander ’15 and her varsity teammates celebrate her first goal of the season during a game against North Yarmouth; the girls’ nordic ski team lines up with smiles before a race on their home course.

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CLOCKWISE, FROM ABOVE: Varsity athlete Aly Axman ’16 fights for possession of the ball during a game against Proctor; school team skier Jesse Ransford ’16 leans into the final gates of a GS course during this year’s NEPSAC Championships at Cannon; members of the boys’ varsity hockey team and their fans celebrate a goal against Worchester Academy; Storm Tompkins ’17 dribbles toward the basket during a JV game against Brewster.

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IT’S A DAILY ROUTINE FOR MANY Holderness students—riding north in a bus to one of two ski areas, running gates and perfecting jumps, enduring long hours bundled against the cold New Hampshire winters. But on days late in the season when the weather breaks and the temperature rises above freezing, there’s no better place to be. At Cannon Lexi Black ’16 discusses the NEPSAC GS course with coach Maggie Mumford.

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UPDATE: FORMER FACULTY AND STAFF

Warren Witherell: In Memoriam

Warren Witherell—author of How Racers Ski, founder of Burke Mountain Academy, and former faculty member of Holderness School.

january , –may ,  Warren Witherell was in many ways a perfect fit for Holderness School when he came here in . He was young, bright, and athletically gifted. Quickly he established himself as a favorite teacher and an outstanding coach.

But after only two years, Warren left to pursue a master’s degree in American Literature at the University of Hawaii. Despite the distance, however, Warren kept up a lively correspondence with many members of the Holderness community. His letters, which we are lucky to have preserved in the Holderness Archives, contain friendly ramblings to his former students, as well as more serious exchanges with Head of School Don Hagerman. In addition to sharing stories from their daily lives, the two entered into lengthy discussions about the theology courses at Holderness and how the curriculum should be organized. With so much in common with the community and its vision, it seemed likely that Warren would return to Holderness.

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Yet, there were no vacancies when Warren decided to return from Hawaii a year later, so his search for employment took him elsewhere.

Of course, Don Hagerman wrote a strong letter of recommendation for the young lad, who ultimately went to work for Northwood School in Lake Placid, NY. That could have been the end of the story.

But it wasn’t; Warren Witherell’s indirect influence on the Holderness community remained strong. Generations of Holderness skiers and coaches know and still read his books about skiing—How Racers Ski and The Athletic Skier—and many Holderness administrators have been inspired by his leadership at Burke Mountain Academy. When he died on May , , he left behind a wealth of knowledge and scores of athletes who owe their success to his coaching and guidance.

Born in Albany, NY, Warren’s first passion was for water skiing. Most notably, he was the first person to ever jump  feet. Other firsts include the double wake cut, making two-trick passes on a single ski, and winning the very first Masters Tournament in  in slalom. In the s Warren was also a critical member of the American Water Ski Association Rules Committee, and in  was inducted into the Water Ski Hall of Fame.

Warren did not snow ski until he was , but quickly he understood how to make alpine skis work for him rather than vice versa. After teaching English and history at a number of schools throughout the s, Warren moved to Burke, VT, to coach alpine skiing part time during the winter of . For one young skier, however, weekend coaching wasn’t enough.

Martha Coughlin, who had dreams of making the US Ski Team, wanted a full-time coach and convinced Warren to take on the challenge of not just coaching her but educating her as well.

Others soon followed and according to a  People magazine article, Witherell decided, “If there are kids willing to work hard at being the best, some adult has to provide for that. You

can’t compete with the Europeans skiing only on weekends” (Kahn, February , ).

That same year, Witherell founded Burke Mountain Academy and remained the school’s headmaster until his retirement in . During his time, according to the Burlington Free Press, “over  students and alumni of the school were named to the US Ski Team, and  to Olympic Teams.”

However, Witherell wasn’t satisfied with just producing world-class skiers; he wanted his athletes to achieve academic success as well. In , Warren wrote a letter to Holderness Head of School Phil Peck in which he said, “The bottom line is that schools should work for kids, not the other way around…Children meet our expectations of them, and most schools’ expectations are way too low.” In addition to contributing many skiers to national ski teams, in recent years Burke has sent its alumni to top colleges throughout the nation—including Columbia University and Williams, Middlebury, and Dartmouth Colleges. The school’s matriculation list is a living testament to Warren’s founding principles.

In  Warren was honored nationally a second time when he was inducted into the US Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame—becoming the only person to be inducted into both the water skiing and alpine skiing halls of fame.

Warren’s knowledge stretched far beyond Burke Mountain, influencing coaches, skiers, faculty, and students at every level. As US Olympic skier Mikaela Shiffrin shared on Twitter shortly after his death, “Warren’s impact on generations of high schoolers and ski racers, including myself, is immeasurable. I owe Warren my gratitude, for founding the school that gave me a chance to pursue my dreams.”

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paul and marty elkins were part of the Holderness community for a combined forty-one years.

Through teaching, coaching, and dorm parenting, they tirelessly gave to students, faculty, and friends. But the Elkins didn’t stop giving to Holderness when they moved on. Instead they became members of the Balch Society, supporting the school for as long as the doors of Schoolhouse remain open.

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marty and paul elkins with daughter cordy elkins

the balch society honors a group of forward-thinking individuals who support Holderness School by combining charitable giving goals with estate and ďŹ nancial planning goals.

When you make a planned gift, you creatively support the school, yourself, and your loved ones, while inspiring generosity in others. Joining the Balch Society involves no dues or solicitations, but members will be included in Balch Society communications and invited to participate in special events.

The most important beneďŹ ts? Giving Holderness School strength and providing educational opportunities for generations of students. Design a plan today that works for you and your family.

For more information, contact Pete Barnum, Director of Leadership Giving, at 603.779.5221 or pbarnum@holderness.org.

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ALUMNI EVENTS

Gatherings

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This winter Holderness organized several gatherings throughout the Northeast. In December alumni and friends of Holderness celebrated the holiday season in both New York City and Boston, and later at the Head’s House on campus. Then in February another group of alumni skied an snowshoed a section of the Maine Huts and Trails system. Stay tuned for more events this spring!

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ALUMNI IN THE NEWS

The Discovery of Things Not Seen Jonathan Sherman ’95 and Emilie Lee ’99 The paintings of Jonathan Sherman ’—and those of Emilie Lee ’—open windows into a new (and also very old) way of seeing.

“Painting,” wrote Cennino Cennini, one of the masters of the Italian Renaissance, “calls for imagination, and skill of hand, in order to discover things not seen.”

Cennini and such brethren as Raphael and Leonardo Da Vinci were dedicated to close observation and the precise representation of the visible. But that is exactly where the unseen is to be found, believes Jonathan Sherman, who lived in Florence for six years, studying not just the techniques of these masters, but their lives and philosophies.

For the better part of a century, painting at its highest levels has been dominated by the modes of abstraction and expressionism. An Edwards Art Gallery exhibit in April, however, celebrated the work of two alumni artists— Jonathan and also Emilie Lee—who are challenging that orthodoxy in portraits, stilllifes, and landscapes whose commitment to naturalism harks back not just to earlier times, but to a different way of seeing and experiencing the world.

It’s not coincidental, perhaps, that Emilie left Holderness with not just a precocious talent for art, but also a passion for rock climbing.

Jonathan also had a hunger for the outdoors, but in his case it was focused on snowboarding.

“I went to Lewis and Clark for two years, where I started a major in studio art,” says Jonathan. “Then I went to the University of Vermont for a year—and then I dropped out.”

He moved to Squaw Valley, hoping to snowboard professionally, training there with such other alumni shredders as Andrew Parkhill ’ and Kip Garre ’ (who would die in an avalanche in ). By , however, Jonathan’s passion for studio art won out—

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which required another radical change of address, this time to Florence.

“I wanted to learn the language of the art that was practiced in the th century in Italy,” he says, “and there was no one in this country who knew that language.”

It was a language whose grammar was built from the physical world, whose syntax was the interplay of light, shade, texture, and proportion. And each of the great painters of that time and place gazed so deeply into the physical that the result was not only a glorious catalogue of art, but also, Jonathan believes, a sort of spiritual illumination.

“Raphael was a perfect example of the transformative effects that the proper practice of art has on a human being,” Jonathan says. “His being was so radiant and gentle that it was said that all people who were in his physical presence were uplifted and freed from negativity.

People said the same for Leonardo and Michelangelo. They were playful and joyous and laughed a lot.”

Jonathan returned to the United States in  and established a studio in Marblehead, MA: “The various aspects of the craft within the studio, such as making or preparing paper, are designed to awaken the individual and connect them to the source of what lies beneath the materials, allowing them to create works of art in alignment with this source—God.” The craft in itself—Cennini’s “skill of hand”—is crucial to this awakening. What’s even more essential, however, is passion, as he told Holderness students in an assembly after the exhibit had opened. “It has been my experience that once you are aligned with your passion,” he said, “your thirst for learning increases, and you begin to absorb information easily, and to thoroughly enjoy it.”

Then, as you explore that passion, whether it’s bound to art or something else, you also learn more about yourself. “And what has been true for me,” Jonathan continued, “is that the more I learn and know about myself, the

Jonathan Sherman’s “Portrait of a Young Girl.”

more I am able to value other people and their experiences.”

And here lies the discovery of “things not seen”—the capacity for empathy, beauty, and knowledge, when mixed together in a human soul, to kindle a radiance that bathes the world.

Jonathan showed slides of the work of Raphael et al. to the students and said, “I can assure you that the artists who created these magnificent works had the well-being of others held in their hearts. That is one of the key ingredients that makes these works so special and powerful, and allows them to endure for centuries.”

Will the works of Emilie Lee and Jonathan Sherman endure that long? Well, they share in common a sense of joyousness, and a radiant breath of well-being, that spans space and time, which suggests indeed that they might.

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“As the sirens did Odysseus” Kyle Carey ’03 A second CD by Celtic-Americana singer/songwriter Kyle Carey ’ hits the top of the national folk charts and has reviewers bewitched.

The website Lonesome Highway (“a music portal for hard-core country, folk, bluegrass, roots, and Americana music”) starts with her bio: “[Kyle] Carey has lived a colorful life as a citizen of the world and absorbed traditional influences from various sources: living in an Eskimo village in the Alaskan Bush, studying language and music in Cape Breton, Canada, the Isle of Skye, and New York City. So we are given a truly transatlantic artist who includes both American and Celtic styles into her songs.”

The occasion for the review last September was the debut of her second CD, North Star— three years after her initial offering, Monongah, trumpeted her arrival on the international folk scene. The success of that first album provided Kyle the “street cred” to assemble an all-star cast to back her on this follow-up: producer Seamus Egan, founder of the Celtic super group Solas; multi-instrumentalist Dirk Powell, who has toured and recorded with Emmylou Harris, Joan Baez, Steve Earle, Kris Kristofferson, among others; Juilliard-trained cellist Natalie Haas; famed Irish traditional singer Pauline Scanlon; rising British folk stars Ben Walker and Josienne Clark; and other luminaries besides these.

Nonetheless, in a genre where major-label backing is particularly absent these days, Kyle had to mount a Kickstarter campaign to finance her album. A number of her backers came from the Holderness community, and the whole process had a certain upside, Kyle said in a November interview with Jason Peverett of the Peverett Phile: “I think it meant a lot to my friends and fans to be part of the process. It’s a wonderful feeling to make an album with a community.”

And the outcome? According to the number of airplays from folk-oriented radio DJs across

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Kyle in Scotland where she went to learn Gaelic and explore the roots of folk music as it exists on both sides of the Atlantic.

the nation, North Star debuted at No. . Among single tracks, Kyle’s cover of Kate Wolf ’s song “Across the Great Divide” hit No. .

All the songs—with the exception of the Kate Wolf cover—are original, and two are in Scots Gaelic, an ancestral language in which Kyle is fluent. “The arrangements possess great harmonies, and the melodic feel of the many musicians used here translates into a very smooth listen,” says Lonesome Highway.

FolkWords agrees: “One of those special albums that offers its own inherent magic…With a richly emotive voice that I could listen to for hours, this lady breathes life into every phrase.” A reviewer for Johnny’s Garden was also spellbound by her voice: “Kyle affects me as the sirens did Odysseus.”

Americana-UK addressed the themes of the album: “North Star explores, through reimagined traditional folk tunes and original compositions, the age old relationship between the Celtic fringes of the British Isles and the new world of the east coasts of America and Canada, hence the Carey-penned and American-centric ‘Casey Jones Whistle Blow’

sitting alongside the arguably more esoteric ‘Sios Dhan an Abhainn.’…The release breaks further ground by exploring the female experience of this ancient international exchange, an aspect of the human experience, certainly in music, that has been less explored.”

The hard work now lies in performing in support of the album. Kyle is booking tours across the United States, Canada, and Europe but is most looking forward to the European venues. “I play bigger venues [in Europe],” she said in an interview with Jason Peverett, “and the entire thing is much more sustainable. Europe and Canada have a much friendlier society and culture when it comes to the arts. Everything in the United States is set up to make leading an artistic life as difficult as possible.”

It’s rather a paradox that an American artist should find a more enthusiastic reception abroad, but in the worlds of American folk music, blues, and jazz, that has traditionally been the case. It’s another sort of “ancient international exchange,” but one that Kyle has mastered with rare talent and depth of soul.

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Leaning Strong Into Winter Here’s a sampling of young alumni athletes who enter the – winter sports season with high hopes and expectations.

Magazines that come out towards the end of a winter sports season are written right at the beginning, when hope shines bright in every locker room. As we lean into the – season, we have our eyes on several Holderness alumni athletes who—by virtue of what they accomplished in the previous season—have particular cause for hope, and perhaps have already gotten off to strong starts by this deadline in early December. There are quite a few, actually.

Up in Aurora, Ontario, Andy Munroe ’ is the goaltender for the Aurora Tigers, who sit atop Ontario’s Junior A hockey league with a record of -, and who are ranked No.  nationwide in Canadian junior hockey. Last season Andy combined with fellow backstop Kevin Entmaa to post a league-low total of  goals against, and in November Andy was among several Tigers selected to play in the Central Canada Cup All-Star Challenge.

In Brunswick, ME, Bowdoin College’s women’s ice hockey team is undefeated through five games. Forward Ariana Bourque ’ had two assists in a - win over Nichols College, and is tied for the team lead in scoring. Bourque led the Polar Bears in scoring last year, and was twice named the New England Small College Athletic Conference Player of the Week.

In Hanover, NH, Gabas Maldunas ’ was having a breakout season last year for Dartmouth College’s Big Green men’s basketball team. A '" forward-center, named to the AllIvy second team as a sophomore, Gabas was leading Dartmouth in scoring, was second in assists, and was topping the Ivy League in rebounding when a torn acl sidelined him after his fifteenth game. Dartmouth is off to a slow start this year, - after five games, but Gabas is playing himself back into shape, averaging . points per game, . rebounds, and providing plenty of rim protection with ten blocks already.

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ABOVE: Leading scorer Ariana Bourque on the ice for Bowdoin. AT RIGHT: Gabas Maldunas mans the low post for Dartmouth.

In Providence, RI, Amanda Engelhardt ’ is waiting for the ski areas to swing into full gear and for Brown University’s women’s ski season to begin in January. But last winter, Amanda posted four meet wins in slalom for the Bears and finished first overall in the slalom at the Eastern Collegiate Ski Conference championships. She also finished second in the giant slalom to claim the event’s overall title, leading Brown to the team championship. She finished th in the GS at the United States Collegiate Ski and Snowboard Association championships at Lake Placid, and was named to the Academic All-Ivy Team.

Finally, in Geneva, NY, a quartet of alumnae are helping to build a brand new women’s ice hockey program at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. In just its second year of competition in the tough Eastern College Athletic Conference, and playing a schedule front-loaded with road games, the William Smith Herons were -- at the end of the first week in

December, but the future looks bright thanks to four freshmen from Holderness: forwards Morgan Bayreuther ’ and Sarah Garrett ’, and defenders Hedi Droste ’ and Rebecca Begley ’. All four have notched two or three points in the scoring column, and together they account for more than a quarter of the team’s scoring so far this season.

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This Way to the Top

Chris is still active in all aspects of the ski industry, and still manages to find deep powder way off the trails as well.

Chris Davenport ’89 Chris Davenport ’ isn’t just one of the pioneers of skiing’s new disciplines. He’s also a former world champion, a continuing innovator, and a newly minted Hall of Famer.

Usually a candidate for an athletic Hall of Fame has to fade away into the shadows of his or her chosen sport and then stand by for the judgment of history. Sporting immortality is rare for those who, in one way or another, are still active. Think John Elway in football, an ’ Hall of Famer who received recognition for his record as a quarterback and is still doing well as general manager of the Denver Broncos.

It’s a short list, but in April we can add Chris Davenport. Chris will be one of a class of ten luminaries inducted into the US Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame in Ishpeming, MI. “Each of these inductees has been a pioneer contributor to our sport in America,” says the hall’s October announcement. Indeed, Chris arrives with strong credentials.

l Today magazine. Finished size is 11.0 inches tall by9.0 inches wide.

He began his career in the early ’s just as alpine skiing was breaking out of its narrow spectrum of standard gate-to-gate disciplines, and Chris’s daring and success in backcountry, big mountain, and extreme skiing did much to popularize the new pursuits.

In  he won the World Extreme Skiing Championship in Valdez, AL, and four years later—after landing on the podium in each of the year’s tour events—was the International Freeskier’s Association’s World Freeskiing champion. He also earned a bronze medal at espn’s  Winter X Games and won the  Hours of Aspen, an event in which racers ski laps of the mountain from one sunrise to the next.

In  Chris became the first person to ski all  of Colorado’s ,-foot peaks, a feat that produced both a popular film and a book authored by Chris, Ski the ers (Capitol Peak, ). He has skied and guided on Everest, bagged first ski descents of mountains all around the world, and in  published a second book—Fifty Classic Ski Descents of North America—with Capitol Peak. That book, said

Wildsnow.com, “could be to ski alpinists what a relic is to religious fanatics.”

Meanwhile Chris has been a featured performer in more than thirty films by Warren Miller and Matchstick Productions, and on television he has been an announcer and expert commentator at Olympic, World Cup, and X Game events for espn, abc Sports, and Outside Television.

Skiing successfully for so many years so far outside the gates on steep and untracked slopes is a testament not only to the Hall of Famer’s athleticism and skill, but also to his judgment and the care he lavishes upon his equipment.

So it’s not surprising that Chris also lectures on risk management as it relates to business and sports, and that he’s helped in the development of such products as Kastle’s fx- mountaineering ski and Scarpa’s freeride ski boot.

Unlike football, skiing is a lifetime sport, and one of its glories is how open its invitation remains to participants of whatever skill level, whatever accomplishments, whatever age. Well into his forties, Chris Davenport continues to work in the industry and in the sport at a Hallof-Fame, top-of-the-mountain level. He currently lives in Aspen with his wife and three boys and recently joined the ownership group of Kastle. He continues to work as a ski guide and camp operator, and just for the fun of it, he still takes time to find very steep slopes of fresh powder deep in the backcountry.

The induction ceremony in April will be in Steamboat Spring, CO. But despite the beauty of that location, and the many other exotic places Chris has visited throughout his career, this New Hampshire native is one of those Hall of Famers who has never forgotten where he came from. “I give lots of credit to Holderness for setting me on a path that led to this honor,” Chris said in a December email to Phil Peck.

“As I write this, my oldest son Stian is sitting next to me working on his application to Holderness. Wouldn’t it be cool if he ended up there?”

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Beautiful All the Way

Hall of Fame ski coach Brud Folger stands outside the cockpit of a Cessna 208 Caravan, one of the planes he has been using to get around the islands of Penobscot Bay.

Brud Folger ’56 Brud Folger ’, who retired from coaching in , was inducted into the Maine Ski Hall of Fame last October. Retirement, though, was merely the start of a second career.

Until recently, in December each year, Brud Folger did a pretty fair Santa Claus imitation— not by donning a beard and red suit, but rather by climbing each day into a single-engine Cessna and making sure that the US mail and packages from FedEx and ups were delivered to North Haven, Vinalhaven, and other such island communities off the Maine coast. The Cessna

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belonged to Penobscot Island Air, and sometimes Brud would fly it across the Atlantic waves as far as Matinicus, seventeen miles out, an island whose ferry service to its fifty yearrounders dwindles in winter to twice per month.

But first there was the skiing. “My parents didn’t ski, but all the kids in Farmington [Maine] did,” Brud remembers. “The Titcomb Memorial Ski Slope ran lights on the slopes starting on Wednesday each week. We’d be there all night, every night, and then all day on the weekends.”

Brud was captain of a Farmington High School ski team that won both state and New England championships, with Brud himself winning the downhill. Then he did a PG year at

Holderness, winning the downhill again at the New England Prep School Championships, and taking a second in slalom, leading Holderness to the nepsac title.

But why Holderness for Brud? “I just wasn’t ready for college,” he explains. “Don Henderson grabbed me by the nape of the neck, and by the time he was done, my sat scores had come up  points. I’ll always be grateful for everything he and Mr. Hagerman did to guide me, organize me, educate me.”

Brud went on to Middlebury, where he meant to build a resume for joining the national team, but instead a knee injury ended his collegiate racing career. “I was racing [future national team member] Jack Beattie down a

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slope for the fun of it,” Brud says. “Just a couple of foolish kids.”

His enrollment in a Reserve Officer Training Program at Middlebury earned him a second lieutenant’s commission in the US Army after graduation, and he began to ski competitively again when he was assigned to the Army ski team. But then the Cold War intervened, and he spent the rest of his threeyear military career as commander of a tank platoon on the East German border.

“I applied to flight school, and I could have gone if I had extended my enlistment,” Brud says, “but Vietnam was heating up by then, and I don’t know if I’d be here if I had chosen that.”

Instead he chose civilian life in Foxboro, MA, where he and his wife taught high school together, and where Brud quickly earned a pilot’s license.

By then it was too late to ski competitively at the top levels of the sport, but not too late to coach. Early in that second year in Foxboro, in , Brud got a call from the University of Maine in Orono, where there was a ski team coaching vacancy—head coach, in fact.

Over the next  years, Brud’s Black Bear teams—which trained at Sugarloaf Mountain—won strings of state ski championships and sent a host of athletes to all four downhill events at the ncaa Division I championships. He served two years as president of the Eastern Intercollegiate Ski Coaches Association, and in  he coached the United States fis University women’s team at the World Games in Lake Placid. There his skiers claimed two gold medals.

Coaching at the collegiate level, Brud found, had special satisfaction. “I enjoyed working with student-athletes, because at that time in life it’s not just about skiing,” he says. “You also have the pleasure of helping these young people develop and mature into adults.” His old ski coach Don Henderson couldn’t have said it better.

After his retirement from coaching in , Brud joined forces with Warren Cook—then

l Today magazine. Finished size is 11.0 inches tall by9.0 inches wide.

Life isn’t all Maine ski slopes and blue skies. Sometimes Brud slips away to Key West, FL, for a break.

owner of Sugarloaf, and long-time chair of the Holderness School board of trustees—in founding the Sugarloaf Foundation, a nonprofit that oversees the resort’s various educational, cultural, and athletic activities. Brud then served as the foundation’s president for two years.

In October , when Brud was inducted into the Maine Ski Hall of Fame, it was noted that, “Brud has been a local Sugarloafer whose stories about local characters make him a popular speaker. More than fifty years devoted to developing ski competitors and promoting Sugarloaf have earned Brud Folger a place in the Maine Ski Hall of Fame.”

For the most part, though, retirement for this man was simply a quick, carved turn into another lofty and adrenaline-fueled pursuit.

During the summer of , he put his pilot’s license to use in one of the world’s iconic settings for small-plane operators, the Alaskan Bush. He flew Cessnas and muscular DeHavilland Beavers, all equipped with floats, to remote, airplane-or-boat-access-only loca-

tions in southwest Alaska for the Bristol Bay Lodge in Dillingham.

He did that for another season as well, and a few years later—while attending a flight instructor’s clinic hosted by Penobscot Air in Maine—he was offered a job flying on this side of the country. Brud went on to spend five years as Penobscot’s chief pilot, and is now the airline’s director of operations.

Skiing and flying have elements in common, he believes, and it’s not just the adrenaline. “I think about putting on a pair of skis, and looking around to see some snow resting on a pine bough that is backlit by the sun,” he says. “Or how beautiful Penobscot Bay is when flying over it on a really cold winter morning, and the sea smoke is rising off the waves, and the rising sun is lighting it up. There’s a lot of excitement in both, of course—but there are equal amounts of beauty and serenity.”

Still going, on out to far-off Matinicus, and beautiful all the way.

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Summiting New England’s Highest Peaks

Author Dick Conant on top of Jay Peak, Vermont, a New England Hundred Highest peak.

by dick conant ’ Mt. Washington is famous not just for its recordbreaking weather but also for its crowded summit.

And while most hikers find it a bit over-populated, Dick Conant ’ has a different perspective.

On August  of this past year, I hiked Mt. Washington in the company of two of my three sons to complete, all in one fell swoop, the ,-footers of the White Mountains, the ,-footers of New England, and the  highest peaks of New England.

When I started this madness upon my retirement in , I had only about  peaks under my belt—most of them hiked with the Holderness Outing Club back in the early ’s.

I owe my life-long love of hiking to that time and to the outing club director, Mr. William “Bill” Biddle, who taught English at Holderness for many years.

I still recall my first hike with him and the Holderness Outing Club in the fall of ,

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when we did Mts. Flume and Liberty in the southern Franconia Range on a beautiful Columbus Day weekend. After that initial hike, I did a scattering of peaks with the Outing Club and on my own in the next decade, but then life and work took me first to Florida and then western New York and finally southern Connecticut. While I was working full time and raising a family, I never could find enough time to hike (or ski for that matter). It wasn’t until I retired that I started doing both activities in earnest.

I hiked over  peaks that first summer in . After polishing off most of New Hampshire and Vermont, I started venturing into the wilds of Maine, where I summited Katahdin with my eldest son as he finished the Appalachian Trail. The summer and fall of  progressed with memorable hikes through the Crockers in Maine—where I surprised a bear on the trail—and a trip into Canada, where I hiked Border Peak on the international boundary. In October , my eldest son (Mr.

AT) came east from Ogden, UT, to help me hike the more intimidating bushwhacks in northwestern Maine.

Which left the hike up Mt. Washington. On a gorgeous, late summer day we started early up the Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail. As the shortest path up Mt. Washington, the Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail passes several beautiful waterfalls and provides majestic views of the Presidential Range once you get above tree line.

When we reached the summit, the craggy peak was crawling with people. As I waited in line to have my picture taken at the true summit, I started grumping to my sons about how I was probably the only one who deserved the honor in the crowd of flip-flop clad tourists.

I then remembered something Mr. Biddle had said to us on a hike way back in . It had been a nice fall day, and we had come upon a vantage point that looked towards the southern Presidentials and Mt. Washington. We could see a cog train heading up the mountain spewing coal smoke. One of the boys observed how awful it was that Mt. Washington had been defiled with the cog railway, the carriage road, and the “city above the clouds” that crawled with tourists.

We all expected Mr. Biddle, given his background, to agree heartily, but he proved to be the contrarian that day, saying something to the effect, “Boys, think of all the people who would never be able to access the summit of Mt. Washington without the railway or road. Most of those people take away a new appreciation of the White Mountains, and maybe they will be encouraged to explore further, even on foot. If that happens, then all is well.”

I have often thought of those words over the years as I have progressed from being a casual visitor in the Whites to gaining a more intimate relationship with them through my hiking experiences. In the end, maybe it’s not important how you accomplish the experience; it’s that you have had the experience in the first place.

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Milestones IN MEMORIAM

MARRIAGES

Earl A. Damon ’40 November 5, 2013 Warren Witherell (former employee) May 26, 2014 James R. Finne ’37 August 24, 2014 Leverett Brainard Davis, Sr. (former employee) August 27, 2014 David Boynton ’58 September 17, 2014 Ed Beattie ’49 October 5, 2014 Chris Hoyt ’59 October 30, 2014

Alexander Smith ’01 and Damla Tuncel, Saratoga Springs, NY, May 14, 2014 Tony Mure (employee) and Trisha Demers, June 7, 2014 Sam Rigby ’03 and Laura French, Fairlee, VT, June 15, 2014 Will Richardson ’96 and Devon Rodonets, York Harbor, ME, June 28, 2014 Amanda French ’01 and Dana Greenwood, Holderness, NH, June 28, 2014 Jeff Nadeau (former employee) and Sarah Mongan, July 12, 2014 Dan Shin ’95 and Isabella Boylston, Sun Valley, ID, July 19, 2014 Andrew Walter ’99 and Sarah Cullicutt, July 26, 2014 Tyler Stearns ’07 and Lauren Maggart, August 2, 2014 Mike Schnurr ’00 and Tracy Wang, August 9, 2014 Emily Riehle ’99 and Samuel Martin Dixon, August 16, 2014 Mattie Ford ’04 and Vincent Rocco DiNapoli, August 16, 2014 Evan Mullen ’00 and Jenny Lyckland, Portsmouth, NH, August 23, 2014 Nick Smith ’07 and Alexa Elmlinger, New York, NY, September 6, 2014 Nina Barker ’89 and Michael Brogna ’91, September 6, 2014 Zachary Zoulias ’02 and Brianna Brothers, September 13, 2014 John Van Slyke ’96 and Elizabeth Ann Sayers, September 20, 2014 Peak Hanson ’91 and Sarah Lawton, Park City, UT, September 27, 2014 Ben Tyler ’07 and Sophia Davis, St. Louis, MO, October 11, 2014

BIRTHS Jon Conant ’96 and Karen Demattio: Maz Sander Conant, February 23, 2014 Haleigh Weiner ’11: Rori Hannah Weiner, June 13, 2014 Abbey DeRocker ’95 and Gregg Kawecki: Kwinn Emmelia Kawecki, June 26, 2014 Quentin McDowell ’99 and Lauren McDowell: Rooney Clyde McDowell, July 2014 Karen Boutwell (employee) and Kelli Robinson: Kinley Elizabeth Boutwell-Robinson, August 8, 2014 Hacker Burr ’98 and Stephanie Burr: Hardwick “Hacker” Hall Burr, Jr., September 24, 2014 Peter Bohlin ’02 and Karen Bohlin: Abigail Kenley Bohlin, October 1, 2014 Jay Connolly ’03 and Nicole Connolly: John Benson Connolly, October 17, 2014 Rachel Goldberg Nissi ’01 and Nordo Nissi: Harrison Robert Nissi, November 11, 2014

Former Holderness Athletic Trainer Jeff Nadeau and Sarah Mongan were married this summer with lots of Holderness folks in attendance.

Holderness Technology Support Specialist Karen Boutwell and partner Kelli welcomed Kinley Elizabeth Boutwell-Robinson into their family on August 8, 2014.

Rory Clifford ’06 and Brittania Nicol, October 11, 2014 Tyler Gosselin ’07 and Jessica MacMinn, October 11, 2014 Nathaniel Campbell ’97 and Jennifer Wilson, October 25, 2014

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’35–’44 Want to connect with your classmates? Consider becoming a class correspondent and encourage your classmates to reconnect in the HST Class Notes. For more information, contact us at alumni@holderness.org. Thank you!

’45 (reunion) CLASS CORRESPONDENT Harry Emmons ’45 emmonshr@gmail.com

’46 Want to connect with your classmates? Consider becoming a class correspondent and encourage your classmates to reconnect in the HST Class Notes. For more information, contact us at alumni@holderness.org. Thank you!

’47 CLASS CORRESPONDENT Bill Briggs ’47 maggiebriggs24@ymail.com

’48 Bart Chase is doing well in the Northwest, with two daughters and five grandchildren nearby.

“Life is good, despite the age of 85+ years,” Bart reports. “Enjoyed a 35-day cruise across the North Atlantic. Life is good for our entire family. We always work to keep our wellness level as high as possible. Best to all classmates.

Still have so many special memories of those great years at Holderness.” … Rik Clark writes, “1948 classmates were deeply saddened with the news of the death of Alice Jane Hinman on May 11, 2014. Alice Jane and Coach Hinman were a loving, caring, and effective presence in our daily lives at Holderness. Very special people, both of them!

Sandy and I continue to be blessed with decent health and the ability to remain active and travel. Golf, both social and competitive, continues to be very satisfying. Staying in close contact with Holderness through Head of School Phil Peck and others is very rewarding. A two-day visit to campus in November has helped keep us in the Holderness loop.

Our 70th reunion in 2018 is not that far in the future.” … After the 65th reunion, Bess and Paul Wilson were kept very involved saving their family clothing store from a financial closing. A community fundraising effort rescued the store, and it remains in business in Wickford, RI. … John Codman, Mike Goriansky, Dave Hapgood, Tom Loemker, and John Tewksbury have not been heard from recently but are presumed to be doing okay. … Dean Mullavey writes, “After graduating from Holderness I attended Syracuse University, graduating magna cum laude in 1952 with a BFA in art education. I became very interested in the making of pottery while there and decided to continue in this field at Tulane

SHARE YOUR NEWS! Have you recently encountered a milestone in your life?

Share your news with your classmates! Please contact Amy Woods at alumni@holderness.org.

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University, receiving my MFA in ceramics in 1954. Since then it has never been boring. I spent several years in Japan working for the US Army; taught at Mary Washington College in Virginia; was a freelance potter at the Clay Art Center in Port Chester, NY; taught pottery at the Brooklyn Museum; and have been exhibiting pottery in many exhibitions over the years. I moved to Canada in 1961 to teach ceramics and retired in 1995, but I have kept busy making pots, buying and selling antiques, and avidly collecting just about everything. At age 87 I manage to keep busy. I have left out a lot of in-between happenings too numerous to list. I forgot to mention that I took part in the Holderness alumni exhibition of 2010 and participated in a workshop with Franz Nicolay’s pottery class; it was great fun to be back at school!”

not to mind the length of the trip. Their son Henry attends the Landmark School in Massachusetts and is doing well there. Their daughter Megan is a day student at Proctor Academy.

(Perish the thought! Just kidding.)

She loves it there. Squidge and I stay put pretty much all of the time. We don’t travel anymore except for an occasional road trip to York, ME, to take in the refreshing sea air. My only exercise is a daily five-mile bike ride during the summer months, weather permitting. And, finally, we continue to be in relatively good health.” … Douglas Rennie stays busy with local affairs, golf, and travel. The Rennies are close to their three daughters and eight grandchildren and have been married for 611⁄2 years. “My how time flies,” he says. … Bill “Chico” Laird writes that he is settling into retirement in Franklin, TN.

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Rik Clark ’48 capeclarks@aol.com

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Frank Hammond ’50 fhammond64@comcast.net

’49

’51

Bill Baskin, Jr. writes, “Judy and I aren’t very mobile but we are enjoying the attention and support our children and grandchildren lavish on us. The latest joy is experiencing freshman college years with our two oldest grandchildren.”

Bill Summers is having chemo treatments, which started in Florida and have continued in New Hampshire. He and Faith are hoping to get to their reunions this year.

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Bill Baskin ’49 wbaskin.td53law58@aya.yale.edu

’50 (reunion) Frank Hammond writes, “We continue to enjoy condo life here in New London after handing our house over to our daughter Bebe and her family. Her husband Jim commutes to Boston and appears

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Bill Summers ’51 bfparadise@earthlink.net

’52 CLASS CORRESPONDENT Al Teele ’52 859.734.3625

’53 Want to connect with your classmates? Consider becoming a

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class correspondent and encourage your classmates to reconnect in the HST Class Notes. For more information, contact us at alumni@holderness.org. Thank you!

’55 (reunion)

’54

’56

Tales out of school … Bill Lofquist reports from langorous Honolulu that life could be better but not by much. After graduating from Middlebury College, he extended his education for two years in the US Army, one of which was spent at the Eighth Army Headquarters in Seoul, Korea. This was followed by five years in New York City in unsuccessful stints at two Madison Avenue advertising agencies. But by day and night he earned an MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business; he also met and married the former Toshiko Sugiyama, and moved to Arlington, VA, where he worked for the US Department of Commerce in Washington, DC. Bill’s 33 years as either an industry economist at the US Postal Rate Commission or a senior analyst at the US Department of Commerce came to a close in 1999, as did retirement in Reston, VA, in 2009. Leaving son James and two grandchildren in Broadlands, VA, and daughter Lisa in Richmond, VA, he and Toshiko moved to Oahu. Bill was elected to Waikiki’s Neighborhood Board and his condominium board, spends mornings on his lanai with Kona coffee and the local newspaper, and gazes at the vast Pacific.

Brud Folger was recently inducted into the Maine Ski Hall of Fame. He was the head ski coach at the University of Maine for 28 years. His teams competed in EISA Division I in the East and many of his skiers qualified for the NCAAs every year. In 1976 Brud was the women’s alpine team coach for the US team when they competed in the FIS World University Games held at Lake Placid, NY. …

After proofreading the above, Dick Meyer added, “I hadn’t kept up with Brud’s career, so I didn’t know he had been the ski coach at U Maine. However, his college roommate at Middlebury was Al Lamson, a member of my restoration team at the Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum in Portland, ME. We restore the wooden rolling stock of the remaining cars of the historic Maine two-foot gauge railroads. Al and Brud skied together in college and at least Al almost made the Olympic ski team.”

CLASS CORESPONDENT Bill Lofquist ’54 btlofquist@hawaiiantel.net

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Bill Byers ’55 wbyers1@comcast.net

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Dick Meyer ’56 richard419@roadrunner.com

’57 Steven Hall sent a quick note to say, “I am still working for Reliance Industries; they’re on their third expansion to their refinery in Jamnagar. We are based in Navi, Mumbai. My end date is March 31, 2015.”

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Frederick Ellison ’57 greatspeak03@yahoo.com

l Today magazine. Finished size is 11.0 inches tall by 9.0 inches wide.

Spike Hampson ’60 and Kathy Palmer (sister of Chris Palmer ’59) in Snoqualmie, WA; Spike’s yurt in Utah that is no more.

’58

’59

Charlie Kellogg says he is, “close to being fully retired but am very involved with a few not-for-profit organizations: The Manchester Essex Conservation Trust, the Chebacco Land Management Committee, and the United States Biathlon Association. I am also trying to be a good grandparent to four grandchildren, three girls and a boy. For recreation, I am running, biking, and kayaking, with skiing in the winter, usually in Jackson, NH.” … Don Latham reports, “With both of us retired, Jen and I plan to head for warmer weather this winter, stopping in the Philly area to celebrate Christmas (and all the December birthdays) with our two children, their spouses, and five grandchildren. We will be holed up in Key West during the month of March if you find yourself in the area.

Very best wishes to all.” … Brooke Thomas writes, “Shirley and I had lunch with Louise and Michael Kingston this past summer in Newport, VT. As expected, we had a good time rehashing stories of the school and classmates and the routes we have traveled over the decades.”

Jerry Ashworth enjoyed a river cruise from Amsterdam to Basel, Switzerland, in September. He attended Steve Barndollar’s daughter’s wedding and spent some time with Dave Sleeper and Chris Palmer watching their grandchildren play various sports.

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Charlie Kellogg ’58 cwkellogg@globalpartnersinc.com

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Jerry Ashworth ’59 ashworth@maine.rr.com

’60 (reunion) While on his way to Canada for his granddaughter’s birthday, Gerald Shyavitz wrote, “I marvel in the magic of having a beautiful wife of 47 years, two wonderful daughters, and four wonderful grandchildren.” … Once again Spike Hampson is this issue’s champion notes writer. Obviously, he takes the academic imperative to publish or perish seriously: “My life continues to be more of the same, but at a slower rate. I’m still teaching online courses at the University of Utah and doing a bit of ski instructing at Deer Valley in the winter. But for both activities my enthusiasm has waned, and I give increasing thought to the idea of giving them up. The boating life, however, still has me in its grip: I just returned to the Dominican Republic where Kobuk has been in storage for the past

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The Holderness Bulls during a 12-0 win over Berwick Academy in the fall of 1961. The team was 4-2-1 that year, including a win against traditional rival Proctor Academy.

ten months, and in a few more days I hope to set off for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. I doubt I’ll get any farther than that before the winter winds set in, but probably I’ll return to carry on in the spring. I can’t remember whether I told you before, but well over a year ago I bought a small sailboat—a 25-foot Cape Dory—with plans to do more deep-water cruising, but this time in a vessel designed for such conditions. The sailboat is in Rockport, TX, and I’ll spend some of the winter there. It’s a good thing I now have two boats to shuttle between, because my yurt in Utah is no more. This past July, I accidentally started a fire that burned it down, along with all my possessions. With nothing left to tie me down, it makes little sense for a vagabond like me to seek out a new fixed place of residence, so at least for now I will continue to be a homeless water rat. This past June–July, a German friend and I spent six weeks in Brazil travelling and watching World Cup matches on big screen televisions in bars and restaurants and public spaces set up for crowds (we watched the Brazil–Mexico match on Copacabana Beach with tens of

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thousands of onlookers, for example). One piece of Holderness-related news has to do with the family of Chris Palmer ’59, who graduated a year before us. He was from Plymouth and our parents were very good friends. I can remember spending time with the family on a number of occasions before going off to Holderness. I never knew Chris well, but I did know his younger sister Kathy who was/is about our age. In any event, once in college I never saw either of them again until a couple months ago when I connected with Kathy, who has lived for decades with her husband Phil in Snoqualmie, WA. After the yurt burned, I took a month-long road trip to the Pacific Northwest in the hope that some hiking and car camping would give me a chance to regroup. While out there I located Phil and Kathy and spent a couple days with them. A reunion after half a century is a satisfying thing, for some mysterious reason.

Chris still lives somewhere back East, but I have yet to cross paths with him. Kathy, though, is doing fine and sometime not too far back (maybe 5–10 years) she did a trail ride with two companions the full length of the Pacific Crest

Trail, from Mexico to Canada. I continue to do some writing, but the internal clock seems to be ticking slower and slower these days, with a resulting decline in productivity. I have a draft of a book about the boat trip (covering the passage from Prince Edward Island to the Bahamas) and also a draft of a mystery novel set in Utah and Mexico, but for some reason I never find the time to clean them up and get them finalized. I say “finalized” since I have no immediate plans to market any of my writings—only to get them into printed or self-published form. I also have over half of a book written on how to ski, but it has been sitting idle and unfinished for about three years. I keep thinking that one of these days I will become so physically incapacitated that all I’ll be able to do is write and edit, so I’ve rationalized putting off any sense of authorial urgency on the theory that there will be time enough for that later.” … Your humble and obedient class correspondent also heard from Ross Deachman, Alan Dewart, and Don “Soko” Sokoloski, none of whom had much in the way of news, but sent along best wishes. At least we know they are still breathing.

Speaking of breathing, I had what the docs call an acute exacerbation of my chronic pulmonary problem that has been a real nuisance of late. A few days in the hospital fixed me up for the time being, so I look forward to harassing you well into the future. Said condition did not prevent me from attending my 50th reunion at Cornell, where Maureen and I visited with Pam and Charley Witherell. That was most enjoyable except for the sad news of his brother Warren’s death at age 79 on May 26, 2014. More recently I was able to exercise my usual lack of maturity by doing some high-performance driver education at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, a first-class track near Mansfield. It was great fun, and I plan to pursue further training next year at Watkins Glen, MidOhio, and our local track called PittRace.

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Len Richards ’60 lenrichards@mac.com

’61 Want to connect with your classmates? Consider becoming a class correspondent and encour-

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age your classmates to reconnect in the HST Class Notes. For more information, contact us at alumni@holderness.org. Thank you!

’62 Dick Gardner went ziplining at Acadia National Park with his two daughters and says, “Cheers to all.”

Want to connect with your classmates? Consider becoming a class correspondent and encourage your classmates to reconnect in the HST Class Notes. For more information, contact us at alumni@holderness.org. Thank you!

’63 CLASS CORRESPONDENTS Dave Hagerman ’63 david.s.hagerman@dartmouth.edu

’64 The turnout for our 50th reunion was as good as anyone could expect. With help from Jeff Hinman, Jim Ricker, Terry Morse, and Craig Blouin, we beat the drum for weeks leading up to the grand event. The weather cooperated and we enjoyed seeing folks who, in several cases, had not been back to campus since graduation in 1964. After a cocktail reception in Livermore, we proceeded to Weld Hall for for dinner. Through some last-minute negotiations, we basically took over the after-dinner program and presented awards to deserving attendees. Handcrafted Holderness Bull trophies were given out as follows: First to Retire—Jeff Hinman; Closest Distance Traveled—Dave Stamps; Furthest Distance Traveled—Bill Baxter; Most Published—(recalling that we have several authors in our midst) Rich Seltzer; First Return to a Reunion—John

Butler; Best Questionnaire Response—Terry Morse; Certificates of honorable mention went to runners-up in each category. On Saturday we had a chance to participate in a forum with students that gave us a good look at how the school has changed to meet current challenges. The rest of the day was taken up with an outside barbeque lunch, sports games, a hike or golf, or simply more talking.

Another dinner, this time at The Common Man restaurant in Plymouth, and dancing went on until we began to fade. There wasn’t enough time to cover all the stories that needed to be retold, but we gave it a good try.

I’m sure that those who were there enjoyed themselves. If you want to know what it’s like, then come to the next one! In the meantime, go to the school’s website and peruse the pictures that were taken. A big thanks to the school for making this happen, and thanks to all who attended.

Sandy Alexander reports, “After a rewarding reunion gathering, I am wrapping up the summer season in New Hampshire, getting ready to head west to Colorado for the winter.”

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Sandy Alexander ’64 salex88@comcast.net

’65 (reunion) Bill Carter has started a non-profit organization to raise money to send people who have served in the military to Hippocrates Health Institute. His website is www.saveyourlife.co. … Terry Jacobs recently designed a building in Saudia Arabia for the Saudi FDA laboratory. He also points out that the 50th reunion is coming up, and we need to get our class mobilized.

l Today magazine. Finished size is 11.0 inches tall by 9.0 inches wide.

Peter Whitney ’67 and Graham Hill ’67.

Jim Hollis ’67 and Graham Hill ’67.

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Terry Jacobs ’65 haj3@jacobswyper.com

’66 CLASS CORRESPONDENT Peter Janney ’66 pj@apllon.com

’67 Charles Hurburgh writes, “I suppose I am one of your long lost alumni. I live in Iowa; I am the grain science leader for Iowa

State University and own farmland in Iowa. Agriculture is becoming a leading industry in the country; I guess I am part of the big agriculture that is viewed with some skepticism on both coasts. I recall a lecture series where we heard, shall we say, controversial views of the issues.

Independent thought is what this country is lacking. I would be willing to perhaps give a view of agriculture and what it means to the country.”

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Larry Jamieson ’69 and wife Ellen.

CLASS CORRESPONDENT John Pfeifle ’67 603.938.5981

’68 CLASS CORRESPONDENT John Coles ’68 j.coles@rcn.com

’69 Larry Jamieson recently retired after 39 years as a clinical psychologist. He and Ellen live in Virginia for half the year and spend the remainder at their lake house in Maine. … Henry “Max” Maxfield writes, “My latest news is I have Parkinson’s disease. It was undiagnosed for about five years, but I have been under treatment now for two years. Now before you go feeling sorry for me, please understand that this is a slowly progressing disease, and I still play tennis and golf, go wogging (walk/jogging), biking, and skiing—you get the idea. So I am leading a rather full life. My daughter Laura’s new short film, A Girl A Cat A Bomb, premiered in Portsmouth as part of the New Hampshire Film Festival. It was terrific, and can be found at: vimeo.com/maxflyfilms/videos.

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Our son Max just received his master’s in education. He is now teaching in his first year at High Tech High in San Diego, CA. My wife Tina is working on producing two new songs and her third music video. Just Google Tina or Christine Maxfield or look her up on YouTube. I hope the rest of my former inmates are doing well.”

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Jon Porter ’69 jwoodporter@cox.net

’70 (reunion) CLASS CORRESPONDENT Peter Weiner ’70 prepco@ncia.net

’71 Want to connect with your classmates? Consider becoming a class correspondent and encourage your classmates to reconnect in the HST Class Notes. For more information, contact us at alumni@holderness.org. Thank you!

’72 Will Graham writes that he finally reconnected with buddy Cash Hoyt this year. Cash and Molly

visited the Grahams last spring in Los Olivos, CA. The “Chillicothe kid” has not lost what Mike Weese used to call Hoyt’s “ever present coolness,” Will says. “I am pretty sure he could still throw a football, but he could not get me to run long or short routes with my new right knee.” Will also caught up with David “Big Nick” Nicholson, of Grafton, MA, while attending his dad’s memorial service last summer. His father was a 10th Mountain man in World War II. The celebration of his life and the tributes from the Nicholson family were inspiring, Will says. David recently called to say the oldest of his three sons, Dave, is engaged, Will adds. In August, Will met Loretta and Morgan Dewey ’77 and Ki and Bill Clough ’57 for a Sunapee Lake tour in New Hampshire with Morgan at the helm. Will continues as headmaster at the Midland School in Los Olivos, CA. … Lucy and I caught up with Miriam and Peter Kimball this summer, who treated us to lunch at their tennis club in Chatham, MA. Peter, who lives in Sherborn, MA, continues to do development for Harvard University in Cambridge, MA, my late brother’s alma mater. I am still employed at The Republican newspaper in Springfield, MA, as an online content producer for our website, MassLive.com. The company I work for, Advance Internet, is currently promoting its digital-first process whereby news stories appear online before they get into print. We have many news organizations around the country including ones in New Orleans; Portland, OR; Cleveland, OH; Newark, NJ; and Syracuse, NY, as well as others in Michigan and Alabama. On the family front, Lucy and I became grandparents on November 16, 2013, when Elizabeth Avery Shepard was

born to Jessica and Ted Shepard, of Duxbury, MA. CLASS CORRESPONDENT Dwight Shepard ’72 shepdb@comcast.net

’73 As I write this, the wind is gusting up to 40 knots, and it is 39 degrees outside with snow falling just inland of here. Looks like ski season should be starting up in New England in a few weeks! As for my news, I did the Hartford marathon a few weeks back, and although it rained from start to finish, I had a good clean run and am encouraged to maybe do the Providence and New York City marathons next year at the ripe old age of 60! I have also recently decided to take up acoustical guitar. I never did any type of instrument back in my school days, and I’ve always wondered if I have any ability. One of our cats weighed in with an opinion last week by coughing up a hair-ball into the guitar case while I was butchering chords! … I’ve heard from a number of you. In the “Where is Waldo” category, Matt Kamarck writes, “I am the lead teacher with a small group of teachers starting an American program for Knowledge Link at Guiyang No. 1 High School here in south central China. This makes my fourth country on my third continent as my travels as a teacher continue. I am teaching physics and astronomy, coaching basketball, and playing chess.

And per a request from the head of school, I will start a softball program, which will include helping to design and build the facility, ordering the equipment, and training the players and coaches.” … Stan Theodoredis recently graduated from Moravian Theological Seminary and has

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Jack Sanderson ’75 paddling on Long Island Sound.

accepted a position at Caron Treatment Centers. He will be working at their main location as a family counselor with his own case load and also with families when they come in for the Family Education Program. … Peter Garrison writes that he feels the need for some of that polar vortex in North America, so he is selling his condo in Panama and returning home to New Hampshire. I’m sure we all wish him the best, although I will miss his snarky, gloating notes about conditions in the tropics as we all freeze up in the northern climes. … Tim Scott says that all is well up his way in beautiful downtown Jackson, NH. He also had a great visit with Pat and Don Henderson early in the fall at their Vermont home. He relates that at 90 and 88, respectively, Don and Pat look simply like slightly older versions of themselves. Peter’s news of the Hendersons provoked a flurry of remembered “Donisms” from some of the rest of us: Mike Mixter will never forget Don’s adage, when assigning large volumes of history reading: “If you want to read faster, read faster!”

Geoff Klingenstein recalls the memorable, “And don’t forget

boyssss, never do your reading notes in pencil as this might happen,” as Don licked his hand and smudged someone’s diligently taken notes done on the prior night’s reading assignment! And finally, Peter Terry adds the classic, which he always says to his own students to this day: “Get your money’s worth, boysssssss!” … Since we are on the topic of the Hendersons—and by the way that was a great article in the Holderness School Today magazine—I will relate probably my most embarrassing moment at Holderness. During the 1970–71 ski season, the Holderness rec skiing and alpine teams were still using Tenney Mountain. After an afternoon of skiing, we boarded the bus back to campus. When I climbed up the stairs into the bus, Mr. Henderson had already assumed his rightful position in the front seat and had taken off his ski boots. I guess I didn’t see his feet sticking out, and I stepped on his toes with my ski boots. His response was immediate, as you might expect, and was something along the lines of “Damn boy, watch where you are going!” I think I mumbled an apology and slunk to the back of the

l Today magazine. Finished size is 11.0 inches tall by 9.0 inches wide.

Hunter Ten Broeck ’75 on top of Lindsey Peak (elevation 14,024 feet) in southern Colorado this past summer.

bus to be razzed by my schoolmates for stepping on Mr. Henderson’s toes! I’ve never gotten over the embarrassment. …

That’s all for now. Enjoy the winter, wherever you plan to spend it, and I hope to hear from some more of you next time around.

CLASS CORRESPONDENTS Dick Conant Jr. ’73 rconantjr@msn.com

’74 CLASS CORRESPONDENT Walter Malmquist ’74 wmalmquist@kingcon.com

’75 (reunion) Mac Jackson is building a barn at his new place in Waitsfield, VT. …

Tom Carney says he is “not retired, not even close to it since I have four boys, 16 and younger.

But I like what I do, so I probably wouldn’t retire anyway. We split time between northern New Hampshire and the coast of Maine (paying taxes in both—no one has ever accused me of being smart). John Putnam once asked for the coordinates of our house in Maine. I finally got myself a

really good GPS so here they are: N43˚54.254' W070˚00.070' Stop by! Bring cheese, I’ll pay. Reunion planning anyone?” … Baird Gourlay spent most of last summer converting a 40-foot container into a summer cabin, complete with electricity, two sinks, outdoor shower, king-size bed, and party deck. He still lives in Sun Valley and skis over a hundred days a year. He says, “I sold my rental ski shop last year, so now I guess I’m retired, except I don’t seem to have much time, between golf, skiing, travel, and mountain bike riding. Charlotte (28) lives here, and manages at Grumpy’s (Perry and Putnam’s favorite spot). Ben (25) just got back from two years in Mongolia (Peace Corps) and is looking for a job in the music industry. And Ainsley (23) lives in Breckenridge and teaches third grade. Meaning Chelle and I are empty nesters.

Come join us any time, except Christmas.” … Hunter Ten Broeck reports, “I’m still in Albuquerque, designing landscapes for our company, Waterwise Landscapes.

Barb and I have two grown daughters in Colorado and Oregon. We hike whenever we can in the west and east. My

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Jono Sexton ’75, his wife Karen, daughter Lily, and son Justin (6' 9").

other passion these days is photography.” … Ed Cudahy says that he and his patient wife Susan (35 years) are still in Denver. Three of their four children are married and living close by; they have a couple children of their own, which makes Ed a grandpa! He is still involved in three businesses and looks forward to a day when he can goof off. Give him a shout if you’re in Denver. … Tom “Fuzzy” Phillips writes, “I had two boys go through Holderness relatively unscathed. Both are in college, majoring in every vice we did. I am married and living between Connecticut and Woodstock, VT. George Fox and I had a spirited breakfast the other week. It seems like it’s all working out pretty well for him. He did, however, comment on my total separation from every single folicle on my head (fuzzy no more). If anyone is rolling through Woodstock, Putnam or I will receive you for beers or chow.” …

John Putnam comments, “I went to a Middlebury reunion the other day, but never again because my classmates, except Perry and Susan, are now old farts. What’s all this retirement stuff? I can’t even play golf better than Keegan, who I taught to ski, and my kids are now all in physical rehab for motorcycle and skiing-related injuries. My oldest daughter is heading south to the islands on a Bristol 30 with (get this) a diesel that won’t start!

Never mind getting old, come milk the cows, and I’ll take off in

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your private jet and see you when I get back. Make sense of that.” …

Jack Sanderson reports, “Well, I guess I’ll bite on the old fart updates. I live outside of Boston with my wife of 30 years. We have a 25-year-old daughter in graduate school studying elephant cognition and a 23-year-old son in his last semester at Ithaca (One last tuition payment and I’m done!). I work for a medical device company (pacemakers, heart stents, surgical devices) and travel on business to sites in India, China, and the Philippines.

I still play lacrosse year round on an over-40s masters team, although each year it gets a little harder to get back on the fast breaks like I used to. I’ve also played a couple of times on the Middlebury alumni team with a number of Holderness grads including Will Graham ’72, Duane Ford ’74, and Fred Beams.

In 2002 I took five years off from the corporate world to build rowing shells and racing kayaks for Olympic athletes and did a windmill blade startup. In the summers you can find me paddling in Long Island Sound off the Connecticut shores.” … Chris Carney is married with two daughters, Liz (28) in Washington, DC, and Annie ’08 (25) in Boston. He left Fidelity Investments in Boston and now lives in Falmouth, ME. He does some real estate investing and a lot of volunteer work.

He is on the board at Holderness and led Out Back groups in 2010 and 2011. He is also on the board of Maine Huts & Trails where Charlie Woodworth ’76 is the executive director. He sails and crews on an Etchells in the summer, plays some golf, and is a patroller at Sunday River in the winter. He says, “I see Henry Bliss ’76, Jack Thomas ’74, and Steve Morse ’74 in Maine and keep up with Tom Cargill.

After a 102-mile bike ride, current trustee Andy Sawyer ’79, P ’18 and David Parker ’78 met up with Kirk Siegel ’78. Together they traveled to Tim Scott’s ’73 cabin for showers, sustenance, and great cheer.

Recently I visited with Eleanor Bright, Nick’s wife. Life is good.” … Linda Fogg Noyes has spent a lot of time on the water over the years. She reports, “Pike and I have spent the last six years bringing our boat down to Florida and the Bahamas for the winter.

Summer usually has seen us on the coast of Maine or Canada.

This year we put the boat to bed and are building a barn/garage in Bethlehem, NH. We are planning to sell our Marblehead home, store the stuff in the barn/garage, and probably get back on the boat for a bit. Last time we were building here (just us, with no help), the garage became the house because we ran out of time and energy. So, our home up here is small and a bit like living on a boat! This time we have some help, hopefully enough help, so that the barn ends up as a barn.

Last January we sailed with a friend from the Canary Islands to Antigua—19 days of sailing downwind in lovely weather! Our oldest daughter (30) is married and living in Greenwich. Our youngest daughter (27) lives in Marblehead and works at the local veterinary hospital. Hope to

get some skiing in this winter!” …

Andy Holman has been living in Burlington, VT, since 1995. He has gone through several iterations of employment, but fortunately, his wife’s law firm is thriving. She is currently the president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Andy’s daughter just graduated from McGill University and is currently applying to get her master’s in publishing. His son is a sophomore at Colorado College and leading the life of which we are all jealous. Andy is still skiing (telemark) and cycling avidly. “They keep me thinking young,” he says. … Jim McDonald writes, “I’ve been at Southern Utah University for seven years as dean of humanities and social sciences—after 13 years at UT-San Antonio as an anthropology professor and in various administrative positions. Before taking the job here, I don’t think I’d ever set foot in Utah. It’s an amazing place. SUU is in the very southwest corner of the state, in close proximity to Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks—the place, basically, is one big hiking trail. I also manage to strap on snowshoes and get a kayak out

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and about. My wife Jan is our director of financial aid. It’s good that someone knows where the money is! I’ve got three grandkids, the oldest of whom is now a freshman at SUU majoring in psychology. Latinos are the boom demographic in Utah and Nevada.

We have a thriving Hispanic Center that’s part of my college— lots of community outreach as well as organizing students on campus. We’re seeing increasing numbers of Dream Act students who pose a particular challenge since they aren’t eligible for institutional funding of any sort (though in Utah they are eligible for in-state tuition if they’ve gone to high school here). It’s an uphill battle, but we’re working hard at it. Among other things, I’ve also been working on rural development and governance projects in Mexico and Guatemala. And retirement, no way. Having way too much fun.” … George “Foxey” Fox reports, “Okay, so working backwards. I moved home to Ridgefield, CT, 20 months ago after 30 years in Kittery Point, ME, to transition my failing mom.

We coerced her into assisted living, where she broke her hip, then went through rehab. She is now in a nursing home, and we are sifting through her 5,500-square-foot horde that is filled with treasure.

I’ve been visiting Chris Garnett in upstate New York, helping him construct his dream shop/studio.

Not unlike our school daze building Arpinum, we’re up to the same shenanigans and still taking the edge off. I’ve stayed current with Ted McElhinny and Mason Boucher, sometimes with Tom Cargill and Mat Rowley too. I have spearheaded the restoration initiative of the historic Wood Island Life Saving Station at the mouth of Portsmouth Harbor (see SaveWoodIsland.com, and coming soon, TreeboTreehouse and

Krakmando). Speaking of daughters, my oldest is a doula and a cranial sacrel therapy instructor.

She’s often in Peru, assisting with the ceremonial administration of indigenous medicine (now proving effective with veteran PTSD), as she’s a budding shaman. After a childhood stacked with minibikes, I have developed adult-onset motorcycling syndrome with a ’76 Sportster XLCH and an ’03 Police Road King. I lived on Nantucket from 2000– 2004 and bumped into Chris Fraker a bunch. Let’s all do the 40th and I’ll round up my posse.” … Perry Babcock contributes, “My daughter once gave Baird’s daughter the chicken pox and that was the last time I got invited to Sun Valley! Putnam nearly killed me this summer. He picked me up on his old sailboat and made me drink beer, wine, and other things until I started talking nonsense. I think he has seven or eight kids, mostly from the same woman. My daughter, Hannah ’80 (28), is an administrator at a private school. Molly (24) manages a local tavern, and Perry III is at U Maine for the second year. All my sports equipment is over 20 years old, except a hockey stick someone gave me last year. I still play hockey with the young guys; sometimes they pass me the puck if I promise to buy them beer after the game. And, my wife still loves me.”

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Mac Jackson ’75 skifarmer@live.com

’76 CLASS CORRESPONDENTS Charlie Bolling ’76 chasgolf7@aol.com Biff Gentsch ’76 eventproducts@aol.com

l Today magazine. Finished size is 11.0 inches tall by 9.0 inches wide.

SANFORD M. TREAT III ’78 PHOTO FROM SANDY’S SENIOR PAGE IN THE 1978 EDITION OF THE DIAL

SEPTEMBER 3, 1959–JANUARY 8, 2015 After a battle with cancer, Sanford Morris “Sandy” Treat III, class of 1978, died on January 8, at his home in Edwards, CO, surrounded by family. He was 55.

Sandy was gifted in soccer, baseball, tennis, and golf, but snow skiing was his compelling addiction and his reason for attending Holderness. Sandy was an eight-time National Masters Champion in snow skiing, and was the overall fastest super-G competitor at the Western Regional Championships in Park City, UT, in February 2014.

After graduating from the University of Denver with a degree in construction management, Sandy started buying houses in Denver, fixing them up, and selling them. Later he moved his business to the Vail Valley, and Summit Habitats was born. His wife Kathy proved an able partner, as her flair for interior design launched a distinct look for Summit Habitats, enhancing Sandy’s reputation for superior workmanship and integrity. Their extensive work in downtown Edwards received multiple architectural awards.

All the while, the Treats together—including their two sons Sandy IV and Andrew—have had a knack for making everyone they meet feel good about themselves. Sandy was always animated and smiling and made whoever was with him want to see him again or just be around him more.

Sandy will be sorely missed, his legacy far-ranging. In his last months, Sandy had a special reunion with his close Holderness friends, most of whom then wished him goodbye at a celebration of his life in Colorado. In lieu of flowers, please consider a contribution in Sandy’s honor to Ski Club Vail Scholarship and/or the “Treat Life Right” Pan Mass Challenge Bicycle Team (www.pmc.org/TT0172) on behalf of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. — John Hollister

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A gathering on Long Island, Squam Lake, in July: Bob Zock ’85, George Samaras ’82, Mark Cavanaugh ’82, Peter Coolidge ’82, Headmaster Emeritus Pete Woodward, Peter Wensberg ’84, Walter Dodge ’83, Charley Hansen ’83, and Jamey Gallop ’83.

They write, “To all animal lovers: the raccoon hats are synthetic!”

’77 Mike Granger has retired from the Air Force after 26 years in the Guard and Reserve but is “still flying the Airbus. I pretty much only fly island day trips, so I am home most nights. The islands are pretty much hassle-free with no de-icing and no big cities! I wish we were able to overnight down there more often, but that is not the case. I still have a house back in Maine and get up there as much as possible in the summer and fall.”

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Peter Grant ’77 pete@grantcom.us

’78 CLASS CORRESPONDENT Luther Turmelle ’78 lturmelle@spc.global.net

’79 From Hinesburg, VT, Doug Henson writes, “My oldest daugh-

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ter Melissa is a pre-K teacher on Cape Cod. My middle daughter Megan is traveling around Europe with her fiancé, completing her college degree online. My youngest daughter is a senior in high school and is looking forward to a “gap year” next year, hopefully in the south with her horse doing some serious eventing. She has done quite well around here and in Canada, so it is time to broaden her horizons a bit.

Shelley, my wife of 29 years, is a preschool teacher in Shelburne, VT, with a master’s degree in special education. I have been working for a small civil engineering and land surveying firm for 25 years and am now a partner in the firm. I am a licensed land surveyor and have passed the first half of the engineer’s exam. After quitting sailboat racing when our children were born, I got back into it this summer and spend Wednesday evenings and some weekends back out on Lake Champlain as a crewmember on a J-30. Last school year, we hosted a junior from Austria for the

Mark Aldrich ’87 and Austin Eaton ’87.

entire school year, and this year we have a senior from Italy. This is an awesome experience, both for my daughter and for Shelley and me. I enjoyed seeing Lew Overaker at Reunion 2014.”

Want to connect with your classmates? Consider becoming a class correspondent and encourage your classmates to reconnect in the HST Class Notes. For more information, contact us at alumni@holderness.org. Thank you!

’80 (reunion) CLASS CORRESPONDENT Greg White ’80 ggnh@aol.com

’81 CLASS CORRESPONDENT Bill Baskin ’81 william.baskin.law.90@aya.yale.edu

’82 Junior Achievement of Central Maryland honored “edupreneur,” mentor, and investor Frank Bonsal III at “JA Jams: An Evening with Kenny Loggins,” on November 7, at Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. Frank was Towson University’s first director of entrepreneurship, EdTech Maryland’s co-founder, and a venture capital and angel investor. He is a special adviser with New Markets Venture Partners and a long-term partner with Bonsal Capital. As an angel and through his role at New Markets, he has invested in over 25 private education companies. He previously has served as a teacher, adviser, coach, and administrator to middle and high school students.

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Chris Pesek ’82 chris.pesek@am.joneslanglasalle.com

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Polly Spencer ’90, Hilary Taylor ’93, and Hilary’s daughter Sadie in San Diego.

The wedding of Nina Barker ’89 and Michael Brogna ’91.

Xavier (5) and Logan (3), children of Tamsen Plume Anderson ’89.

Cara Cargill ’89, Tamsen Plume Anderson ’89, and Lindley Hall van der Linde ’89 on Rattlesnake Mountain during Reunion Weekend.

will join in for the 30th reunion next year.

Chris Davenport ’89 and Theo Jordan ’02 at the Colorado Avalanche Information Center last fall.

’83 Jud Madden reports, “I turned 50 this year. I suppose I should be grateful to hit that mark, but wow, it seems like we were just getting out of Out Back a few years ago. I love having my own law practice so that I can handle cases all over Ohio yet also have time to serve as a township trustee. I also enjoy working our hobby farm, raising egg and meat chickens, Angus beef, and dairy goats. Making maple syrup in our sugar shack has been a highlight every year as well. The maple syrup effort brings regular contact with Hank Lovejoy who has the same activi-

ty going on at his New Hampshire farm each spring.”

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Jud Madden ’83 justin.madden64@gmail.com

’84 CLASS CORRESPONDENT Fred Ludtke ’84 ludtke4@gmail.com

’85 (reunion) Jean-Louis Trombetta went out fishing and diving with Nicholas Dorion in the Caribbean and has been in touch with Gillian Kirby.

He hopes that many classmates

l Today magazine. Finished size is 11.0 inches tall by 9.0 inches wide.

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Jean-Louis Trombetta ’85 jeanlouistrombetta@gmail.com

’86 Want to connect with your classmates? Consider becoming a class correspondent and encourage your classmates to reconnect in the HST Class Notes. For more information, contact us at alumni@holderness.org. Thank you!

this winter. I played golf with Mark Aldrich for the first time since our Holderness graduation 27 years ago. He hasn’t lost a step.

It was great to catch up. Norm Walker would have loved seeing us together again.” … After seven years at a pharma company, Andy Twombly took a global role with BP as the regional crisis, continuity, and emergency response coordinator for the Americas. He will be traveling everywhere between Canada and Brazil. He is looking forward to working out of New Jersey, which brings him closer to New Hampshire and Holderness.

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Kathryn Lubrano Robinson ’87 kathryn.robinson@gmail.com

’88 Lauren O’Brien Smith reports, “We have moved this fall to a new home in Duxbury, MA. We just finished up three months of construction and camping out in a home without heat, a stove, beds, or hot water. My Holderness days prepared me well for this!”

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Alex MacCormick ’88 alexmaccormick@yahoo.com

’87 Austin Eaton writes, “My family and I moved to the Minneapolis area about a year ago. Chip (eight) and Mason (seven) have adapted well. We will be busy with karate, skiing, and basketball

’89 Class Correspondent Jennifer Murphy Robison had an amazing 25th reunion with her fellow class

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CLASS CORRESPONDENT Courtney Fleisher ’90 courtneyfleisher@alumni.bates.edu

’91 CLASS CORRESPONDENT Michael O’Keefe ’91 mphok@hargray.com

’92

Kwinn Emmelia Kawecki was welcomed into the world by proud parents Gregg Taft ’95 and Abbey DeRocker ’95, and big sister Kate.

Katie Lyman ’95 and son Henry with Dean of Faculty Chris Day, P’15, ’17, ’18.

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Jen Murphy Robison ’89 jennifermrobison@yahoo.com

’90 (reunion)

Tyler Hamilton ’90 and Ben Eaton ’90, at an event organized by Brooke Moran ’91 at Western State Colorado University in Gunnison, CO.

of ’89ers! … Brad Greenwood concurs: “Had a blast at reunion seeing everyone both on and off campus! We have a special group that will always be tight. I just returned from a Helly Hansen sales meeting in Alicante, Spain, where we saw the start of the Volvo Ocean Race—the world’s biggest, baddest sailing regatta.

We are outfitting team SCA, the all-women boat from Sweden.

Very cool experience. It has one US stop—Newport, RI—in May. Come down and check it out.

Family is good; girls are back in school—having fun and learning new things all the time. Our

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youngest daughter Charlie rode her pedal bike for the first time yesterday which was exciting for everyone! She switched from a balance bike right to pedal bike— no training wheels—highly recommend it.” … Nina Barker Brogna and Michael Brogna ’91 got married on September 6, having reconnected 27 years after they first met at Holderness and 22 years after they dated in college. Holderness alumni at the wedding ranged from Nina’s father Bill ’62, to members of the class of ’92.

After years of following classmate Pepper deTuro’s entries, Erik Ormberg was compelled to write in: “I am a high school guidance counselor and head football coach at Medfield High School in Massachusetts. I missed seeing Pepper this summer when his kids were in Walpole at the hockey camp. I wish him and all members of the class well.” We welcome Erik’s wife Joan and two boys, EJ (nine) and Dylan (five) to the 1990 Holderness School class and hope they will join us in the fall of 2015 for our 25th reunion! … Courtney Landau Fleisher loves life back in New England: “We have finally put down roots, as we bought a house in the greater Burlington, VT area. I enjoyed hosting three Holderness students from China over Thanksgiving in 2013 and welcomed Paul Sampson ’17 this year after returning from a trip to the Virgin Islands in November.”

Nicole Ash has encountered lots of alumni recently: “Some of the work girls put together an ice hockey team for the annual Black Ice Pond Hockey tournament in Concord in January. I ran into Bret Pfeifle there; it was great to see him. I also saw Kristin Graton at a softball tournament—in which our kids were playing—and Kelly Mullen Weiser. If anyone is in the area, we just built a house and have plenty of room! niciash12@gmail.com” … Kelly Mullen Wieser is managing the Invest New Hampshire Regional Center, an EB-5 Visa Regional Center approved by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service to encourage foreign investment and to create jobs in the northern tier of New Hampshire—Carroll, Coos, and Grafton counties. She is excited about the opportunities this program will bring to New Hampshire. … Jake Norton has been busy: “Life is great here in our new town, Evergreen, CO. Our kids are growing up too quickly, with Lila now seven and Ryrie just about five. I’m keeping busy with a mix of climbing, guiding, photography, and filmmaking.

In 2013, I made my first film— working with co-Director David Morton (brother-in-law of John Spiess ’94)—called High and Hallowed: Everest 1963. The film tells the story of the American Mount Everest Expedition of 1963, with a special focus on the first

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The Chalmers family. Their insurance business won the Maine Family Business Award in 2014; Jim Chalmers ’98 speaking at the award ceremony.

ascent of the West Ridge by Tom Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld. The film won many awards worldwide and will be available soon online for purchase. Those interested can check out the trailer here: highandhallowed.com. I’m now working with Pete McBride on a film telling the story of the Ganges River in India. In the fall of 2013, Pete, Dave Morton, and I followed the Ganges from source to sea. We started with an attempt on an unclimbed, 6900m peak at the head of the river, and then followed the river for over 1500 miles to its terminus in the Bay of Bengal. Our challenge now is to tell the river’s story in a comprehensive, authentic way.

Information will be posted on my website and social media when the film is close to ready. Looking forward, as ever, to connecting with friends from the Holderness family. If you’re in the Evergreen area, let me know!”

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Kelly Mullen Wieser ’92 kelly@wiesermail.com

’93 CLASS CORRESPONDENT Lindsay Dewar Fontana ’93 linds_dewar@yahoo.com

’94 CLASS CORRESPONDENTS Sam Bass ’94 samuel.g.bass@gmail.com Ramey Harris-Tatar ’94 rameyht@yahoo.com

’95 (reunion) Bryan Erikson is having a great time teaching and is entering his third year as the head hockey coach for Wareham/Carver High School: “We went 0-18 in our first year—one point shy of the state tournament last year (9-10-1)—and we have high hopes for next year.

Next year Alex (12) will enter the first seventh grade class at Xaverian Brothers High. He is playing a lot of hockey and video games, of course. Brady (eight) will enter the third grade and is hooked on hockey and every other sport that requires my wife Megan and me to get up super early. I still see John Coyle a lot and miss all of you from Holderness.”

CLASS CORRESPONDENT John Farnsworth ’95 jpfarns@yahoo.com

’96 Heather Pierce Roy writes, “We are still living at The Fay School, a boarding school outside of

l Today magazine. Finished size is 11.0 inches tall by 9.0 inches wide.

Tara Walker Hamer’s ’98 three daughters: Vivian (six), Lola (three and a half), and Etta (nine months).

Boston, where my husband teaches and where I have coached lacrosse for the past couple years.

Raising our five-year-old and three-year-old here has been the best! In January 2014, I joined Ava Anderson Non Toxic and have begun educating folks about toxins in their everyday products.

I’m educating others, helping my family and the country become less toxic, and still able to be home with my two kids!” … John Van Slyke reports, “We spent the summer being chased around the woods by our two very enthusiastic Jack Russell Terriers and just returned from a trip back home to get married by Dr. Chris Haas.

I’m still with Amazon and my (now) wife is managing the US foster care adoption program for WACAP.” CLASS CORRESPONDENTS Emily Evans MacLaury ’96 emaclaury@gmail.com Heather Pierce Roy ’96 heatherbpierce@hotmail.com

’97 Meg Rapelye-Goguen reports, “My family moved to the DC area in August, and I just started a new position as executive director of Phoenix Bikes, a nonprofit youth development program that operates a sustainable community bike shop in Arlington, VA.” CLASS CORRESPONDENT Putney Haley ’97 putneypyles@gmail.com

’98 Tara Walker Hamer writes, “We were lucky to have had Mom with us long enough for her to know and love on all three of our girls. I think of Holderness often, especially when recalling my childhood for my daughters. I am so thankful for all the special friends who have shown their support over the last five important and difficult years.”

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Tara Walker Hamer ’98 taraphotography@gmail.com

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Evan Mullen ’00 married Jenny Lyckland in Portsmouth this summer.

’99 Jon Boyle writes, “My wife Maggie and our three kids—Susie, Jack, and Ryan—have been living in Ann Arbor, MI since March 2010. After getting out of the Army, I took a job with Avfuel Corporation, a global distributor of jet fuel and aviation services.

The job has taken me around the world and is typically a lot of fun.

We have really enjoyed Ann Arbor and of course have become big fans of the University of Michigan. Football Saturdays in Ann Arbor are an event that everyone should experience at least once! I hope everyone is doing well. Let me know if you are ever in Michigan!” … Brooke Aronson McCreedy and her family moved back to Massachusetts in July: “We had intended to stay another year in Ireland, but my husband took a new position back in Boston. We were able to pack up and move in a matter of weeks. We have settled back into our home and our ‘normal’ life fairly seamlessly. We miss our friends back in Ireland and the many adventures we were able to take while living in such close proximity to so many amazing

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places, but we are very grateful for the opportunity we had and the many memories we made as a family. We are looking forward to a more relaxing year and enjoying all of the things we missed about home.” … “Life is good,” says Bret Ingold. “After 10 years of nomadic caretaking, sailing, and adventuring with my wonderful wife, life has settled into a nice rhythm! We split our time between working on sculptures at the Johnston Art studios in Abaco, Bahamas; leading service trips and building playgrounds out of recycled tires in the developing world with our grassroots nonprofit, RISE Now (www.rise-now.org); and living simply in the woods of New Hampshire, gardening and practicing natural building. I got to reconnect with Wes Lowrie when we both lived in Seattle and have been working regularly with Nate Bonneau ’98 who is a cofounder of RISE Now.” … Emilie Lee reports, “My latest news here in NYC is that I’m helping to launch a new collaborative workspace for artists called the Grand Central Atelier. This project is the latest in the evolution of the Water Street Atelier/Grand Central Academy community. In our new

Harrison Robert Nissi, son of Rachel Goldberg ’01 and husband Nordo Nissi (brother of Taylor ’03 and Molly ’06).

Harrison Robert Nissi (son of Rachel Goldberg ’01 and Nordo Nissi) proudly shows off his new Bulls hat! Go Bulls!

space we have more square footage for artists’ studios, and we are opening a gallery at the end of October. The space is also hosting workshops, lectures, and events. It’s an exciting time to be part of something new! Last summer I was traveling in Greece, and I spent a week with Joel von Trapp and his wife Anna. It was amazing to see where they live and explore the mountains and beaches around their home!” …

Quentin McDowell writes, “We had our third child, Rooney Clyde McDowell, in July and moved into a great new house on the Mercersburg Academy campus.

This is my eighth year at Mercersburg, and I am currently the senior associate director of admission and the head boys’ soccer coach. At the time I am submitting this update, we are ranked No. 5 in the nation for prep school soccer and are preparing for the league championship game against The Hill School (PA). Most importantly, we are all happy and healthy.”

’00 (reunion)

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Brooke Aronson McCreedy ’99 brooke.mccreedy@gmail.com

Jason Rowe is back on the road and hoping to make it to campus sometime this year: “I got engaged this past summer, and we took some time away in San Juan, PR. Other than that I am still scouting for San Jose and am sure I’ll be seeing the Morminas on the road this winter. Hope everyone is well.”

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Andrew “Sully” Sullivan ’00 myireland20@gmail.com

’01 John Ziadie writes, “Living the dream! Married to my beautiful wife Lauren but no kids just yet.

We do have a ‘dogta’ (daughter) who’s probably smart enough to enroll in any college. I’m currently working as a product/platform trainer for Thomson Reuters, but I do have dreams of one day owning a chain of jerk chicken/beef patty restaurants on or around every ski mountain in New England. I currently reside in Westchester, NY, and couldn’t be more grateful for the life with

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which I’ve been blessed.” … Craig Wright ’fesses up: “This year I finally grew up and got married to Tammy Kelly. Tammy is from Dublin, but we met in Scotland and tied the knot near Edinburgh.

We’re moving into our new home next week and the next chapter begins! I’m writing this from my desk in Paris on the Champs Élysées, so you can tell I get about a bit these days. I hope all of my classmates and teachers are doing well. Thanks again for making my time at Holderness so incredible.

Maybe one day I’ll make it back!” … Evan Kornack and his wife Kinsey live in Boston. Evan works in venture capital and Kinsey in finance. They spent a lot of time on the water this summer and are now looking forward to ski season. … Tyler Stubbs reports, “I was involved in a serious bicycle accident on Labor Day in San Francisco. Now I have seven titanium plates in my face. I’m almost fully recovered and will only have a couple scars to show for it. The marvels of modern medicine are extraordinary. I was overdue for an accident as I can’t tell you how many miles I’ve put on bicycles during my life, many of which can be attributed to the coaching of Phil Peck and Jeff Nielson. Also, I got to travel across the country from west to east in a MINI Cooper for work this summer on MINI Takes the States 2014. Over four hundred MINIs went the whole way, hitting 18 states and 15 cities in two weeks; it was all documented with BuzzFeed. It was great.” … Amanda French is loving her work as an elementary school counselor: “We live on the west coast but are lucky enough to go back East and spend 4–6 weeks between Campton, NH, and Cape Cod,” she says. “I got married in June at the Chapel of the Holy Cross at Holderness School—easily the best day of my

Alexander K. Smith ’01 and Damla Tuncel (from Istanbul, Turkey) were married May 24, 2014 at the Saratoga Polo Club, Saratoga Springs, NY.

life!” … Karyn Hoepp Jennings writes, “Not much new to report from me. My husband and I had a busy summer with family events and weddings. All is good here!

Really, I just wanted to write in so that I can win the champagne flutes! Hope everyone is doing well! XOXO.” … Rachel Goldberg Nissi works for T.J. Maxx buying runway and contemporary women’s apparel. She and her husband welcomed their son Harrison Robert Nissi on July 11, 2014, and are very happy living in Charlestown/Boston.

CLASS CORRESPONDENTS Karyn Hoepp Jennings ’01 karynpjennings@gmail.com Adam Lavallee ’01 a.l.lavallee@gmail.com

Amanda French ’01, Joy Domin ’01, and Sophie Moeller ’01 at Amanda’s wedding.

Amanda French ’01 on her wedding day with husband, Dana Greenwood.

program. Just turned 30 (yikes!) and am running road races and spending time with my chocolate lab and girlfriend.”

closer to Burlington as well as my new teaching job in Montpelier.

I’m still teaching middle school science. Just the other day I broke out some Holderness apparel, and of course that resulted in a conversation with someone who has a Holderness connection. I’m looking forward to our 10-year reunion!” … Han Min Lee got married! … Kevin Daly has had a busy year: he and his brother bought a farm in Maine, Kevin got married in May, and he and his wife are expecting a son in February … Hannah Hickok is living in Brooklyn, NY, and keeps in touch with “Holdernessies” when she can. She recently moved into a new job where she is now an associate editor at Dr. Oz The Good Life (health/lifestyle magazine). Her previous job was as an assistant editor at Redbook magazine. … Pete Schlech writes, “I’m in the US Air Force and fly KC-10s for the 76th Air Refueling Squadron based out of McGuire AFB in New Jersey. I have been on the road most of this last year: Portugal, Italy, Germany, Alaska, Hawaii, the Middle East, Diego Garcia, and Japan, among other places. I live in Philadelphia, PA. I go back to flying for my airline in

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Betsy Pantazelos ’02 b.pantazelos@gmail.com

’03 Nicole and Jay Connolly had their first child on October 17. Jay reports that John Benson Connolly is healthy and doing great.

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Nick Payeur ’03 ndpayeur@gmail.com

Sophie Moeller ’01

’02 Betsy Pantazelos writes, “I have just moved to New York City as the retail district manager for Patagonia and am enjoying taking on this new challenge and locale.” … Kate Vlahakis reports, “Life and work are great. I’m living in Westchester County, NY, and working as the head women’s basketball coach at Manhattanville College. I am also an adjunct professor in our sports studies

l Today magazine. Finished size is 11.0 inches tall by 9.0 inches wide.

’04 Ashley Crook is in school fulltime at NYSID completing a degree in interior design and loves it.

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Ryan McManus ’04 rbmcmanus@gmail.com

’05 (reunion) Brie Keefe reports, “In July we moved to Richmond, VT, to be

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Mattie Ford ’04 takes a moment with her siblings after her marriage to Vincent DiNapoli. (L–R) Julia ’08, Mattie, Lily ’12, and Willie ’05.

Sam Rigby and Laura French at their wedding on June 15, 2013. (L–R) Jamie Gallagher (former faculty), Tom Valeo ’93, Sam Rigby ’03, Laura Rigby (French), Grace Nehring ’03, and John Leavitt ’04.

a few months and working part time for the Air Force.” … Willie Ford is still loving his work as the marketing director for POC. The company recently moved to Park City, UT, and Willie reports that there are quite a few people from New Hampshire representing. …

In June, Jenn Calver left Vermont Academy and went to the University Liggett School, a private day school in Grosse Pointe, MI. She is working in admissions and coaching lacrosse. “The Midwest has taken some getting used to, but I’m starting to settle in,” she says. “Be sure to reach out if you’re ever in the Detroit area!” … Noah Andersen-David lives in Stavanger, Norway. In March he finished three years of study to become a real estate agent. He had an exciting first

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year and is enjoying family life with his wife and two children.

He says to let him know if you are visiting Stavanger.

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Brie Keefe ’05 brie.keefe@gmail.com

’06 CJ Vincent recently moved across the country to take a job with Apple, Inc. and work in their industry leading supply chain. He is enjoying the California lifestyle so far! … After four years at Vineyard Vines, Jesse Straus has joined Nourish Snacks, a startup healthy snack company: “Launched in May 2014, we’re exploding and it’s

super exciting. Now an uncle of two, soon to be three!”

Want to connect with your classmates? Consider becoming a class correspondent and encourage your classmates to reconnect in the HST Class Notes. For more information, contact us at alumni@holderness.org. Thank you!

’07 It is still hard to believe how quickly the time is going by, and while our Holderness days seem so recent in some respects, they seem like a lifetime away in other ways. This year, we have a number of classmates who wrote in with exciting news of engagements, marriages, and children. I just moved to Beacon Hill from

Cambridge, MA and am really happy to be here. Summer was great and flew by. One of my highlights was the wedding of Mattie Ford ’04, during which I caught up with many of my favorite class of ’04ers and some faculty as well. … Taylor James ran the New York City Marathon on November 2; she and Sam Shlopak are still living together in the city. … Kory Himmer has been in Boston since 2011 and recently moved to the Fenway area. Kory is working as an analyst at a software company downtown and is taking commercial real estate courses at Boston University. … Sarah Morrison reports, “I am still living in Brooklyn and loving every minute of it! I continue to work at Foothold Technology, which provides electronic health records to human services agencies; however, I have transitioned into a more outward facing role, focusing on our events, partnerships, and client relations. I can also be spotted doing odd jobs around town to keep busy (working the door at events, putting together prop stylings for fashion shoots, or promoting vintage store deals to other local businesses). On a less professional note, I bleached my hair platinum blonde (and am obsessed with it!) and have spent the last few months dog sitting the cutest little beagle named

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Nick Smith ’07 and his bride, Alexa Elmlinger, at their wedding in New York City, September 2014.

Animal. I am also counting down the days until our 10th reunion after seeing many familiar ’04 faces at their reunion this year!” …

Josh Hoar is still working in car sales and has just started in a position at Dealer.com in Burlington. … Olga and Mike Heyward relocated to New York City from Holderness; Mike now teaches fifth- and sixth-graders at Harlem Academy, a private independent school in Harlem. … Tad Skelley writes, “I’m in year two on the coaching staff at the University of Notre Dame. I am also recently engaged to Josie Hill, and we are getting married next summer. I look forward to every August when I am able to catch up with a bunch of my Holderness buddies at the Travis Roy Wiffle Ball tournament in Vermont. It is always a good time to reminisce about our days at Holderness.” … Stephen Martin reenlisted in the Marine Corps and has been assigned as an explosive ordnance disposal technician. He and his wife Kourtney Brim Martin are kept busy by their one-year-old son, Mitchell Martin, and are expecting a daughter in January 2015. The

Martins moved twice this year— spending most of 2014 living at Eglin Air Force Base, FL, but now are stationed at Camp Lejeune, NC. … Tyler Gosselin writes, “Jess and I got married on October 11, in Blowing Rock, NC. We had an amazing time with all of our family and friends, and it was great to have Jeff Rudberg ’06 and Kory Himmer there, both of whom we have been very close with while living in Boston. Kelsey Smith also made the trip for the wedding, and it was great to have her there too.” … Nick Smith married Alexa Emlinger in New York City this past year. The ceremony was at the Brick Church on Park Avenue, and the wedding reception was at the Union Club. Nick works for Bessemer Trust at Rockefeller Center.

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Annie Hanson ’07 annie.e.hanson@gmail.com

’08 Haley Hamblin is working at Anthropologie as their New York/New Jersey event photographer. She is also still working with

l Today magazine. Finished size is 11.0 inches tall by 9.0 inches wide.

Ben Tyler ’07 married Sophia Davis in St. Louis on October 11, 2014. After the wedding, the party travalled to New Hampshire for a service on Cannon Mountain.

VII Photo agency. … Hannah O’Brien is in her second year at St. George’s School in Middletown, RI. This year she took on the role of fourth-form dean and works in the Dean of Students Office. She also teaches US History and Modern World, coaches varsity field hockey and ice hockey, and lives in a girls’ dormitory with her puppy Winni. … Baird Meem writes, “I’m pleased to say that I’m still loving life in NYC and working in account management at Young & Rubicam on the Dell account.

This year I also became a volunteer for New York Cares and have thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I am thrilled that I have many Holderness friends in the city. I stay in touch with Greg Ramey, Polly Babcock, Dan Marvin, Andrew Grace, Haley Hamblin, and Ax Hayssen ’07.

They are all doing well!” … Miles Sellyn is entering his second year as an account director at Vancouver-based creative agency, Drive Digital. He recently became a part owner of the business and also got engaged. He will marry in Montreal next summer.

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Jessica White ’08 white.jessica.madigan@gmail.com

’09 Sophia Schwartz is living in Steamboat, CO, and training and competing in freestyle mogul skiing. “This will be my first year doing the full World Cup circuit which is exciting,” she writes. “I head to Finland for my first event on December 1!” … Meredith Peck reports, “Currently I am completing my last undergrad semester at Johns Hopkins and will receive my diploma from Smith College in January. At Hopkins, I’m working in a biophysics lab studying protein interactions and will present work at the Biophysical Society meeting in February. I’ll continue my work in the lab while applying to medical schools. I also coach a U12 girls’ soccer team and volunteer at a health clinic in Baltimore.”

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Cole Phillips ’11, Sumner Ford ’09, Colton Ransom ’11, and Ian Ford ’12 atop Taylor Mountain in Wyoming at 10,352 feet, ready for a 4,000-foot ski descent.

CLASS CORRESPONDENTS Meg McNulty ’09 mmcnulty@mail.smcvt.edu Allison Stride ’09 astride@elon.edu

’10 (reunion) Congratulations to Karen Abate, who graduated in May with a degree in elementary teacher education/special education. She is working towards a May 2015 completion date for her master’s in autism/severe disabilities at the University of Delaware. She also reports that she lost 50 pounds this last year! … Wesley MitchellLewis certainly covers a lot of ground: “While at the University of Vermont, I studied global sports management in London during the Olympics; I backpacked in Nepal focusing on global and regional studies; and then I went to Austria to study international management and

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ski. I have since graduated and have begun working full time for Red Bull as a field marketing specialist based out of Providence, RI.” … Gabbie Raffio is a business development representative for NetSuite, a software company in Boston. “I have enjoyed living in Southie and running into some Holderness friends throughout the city,” she writes. “This summer I spent some time in Steamboat Springs, CO, with Madde Burnham ’11, doing adventurous things like downhill mountain biking and exploring the hot springs! I look forward to what comes next in my sales career.” … Jeff Wasson is working on a master’s in history and then plans to join the Army to work in intelligence. … Tizzy Brown graduated in May from George Washington University with a degree in American studies and stayed at GW to pursue a master’s degree, also in American studies, with an emphasis on women’s

studies. Since graduation, she has been working at Third Way, a centrist think tank that writes policy recommendations for Congress. …

Ashby Sussman graduated from Cornell University in May and started working as a business consultant at Sapient Global Markets. “For training, I went to Bangalore, India, for nine weeks, where I learned about a variety of topics relevant to my job.

Aside from training, I traveled every single weekend I was there—both inside and outside India. I am now back in Boston working full time and have really enjoyed it so far!” … Abigail Alexander recently graduated from Bates College and moved to Boston for a research position at McLean Hospital where she will study autism under a Harvard Medical School professor.

CLASS CORRESPONDENTS Abby Alexander ’10 abigail.jane.alexander@gmail.com Ashleigh Boulton ’10 amayboulton@gmail.com John McCoy ’10 jmccoy@students.colgate.edu Em Pettengill ’10 pettenge@garnet.union.edu

’11 Cecily Cushman writes, “I am a senior at Connecticut College and am getting ready for my final season of lacrosse! I am hoping to find a job in Boston after I graduate, so I can be around other Holderness grads!” … This summer, Klaus Vitzthum interned with a tech startup called iSpecimen in Lexington, MA, before returning to Burlington for his senior year. … Catherine Powell is a senior at UVM and is “currently studying my brains out

in psychology and gender studies.

I have interned at a forensic assessment practice and am also interning with a school psychologist at a local elementary school.

I’ve basically turned into a hippie: fighting social injustices, eating local, occasionally showering. I’ve also become an avid brunch-er, coffee addict, TED talk viewer. I’m currently involved in the Evolving Economy/ Economic Coalition at UVM (we are essentially challenging the current system of economics in the US and how it creates injustices in every aspect of our lives all the time—except for the rich white men). I’m trying to figure out my life post-college at the moment (no seriously, this very moment I’m reflecting on it).

I’m sure my Holderness peers are as well. Hope to see everyone soon!” … Madeline Burnham accepted a job offer in Boston and expects alumni in the area to hit her up! … Haleigh Weiner writes, “The first baby from the class of 2011 was born June 13, 2014! My daughter Rori Hannah is a beautiful and happy little girl who loves to laugh and play.” … Chris Merrill reports, “My internship is going great so far. I study computer science at school, and Yahoo has provided me an opportunity to put those skills to use for the first time in a practical setting. I’m learning a ton about corporate structure, corporate culture, and the production process. It’ll all be helpful when I (hopefully) end up in this area next year as a full time software developer.” … Cole Phillips writes, “Colton Ransom, Ian Ford ’12, myself, and another friend from the St. Lawrence University Outing Club drove out to Wyoming for two weeks of our Christmas break. We toured in both the Idaho/Wyoming Pass and the Grand Teton National Park.”

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CLASS CORRESPONDENTS Cecily Cushman ’11 ccushma1@conncoll.edu Mandy Engelhardt ’11 amanda_engelhardt@brown.edu Sam Macomber ’11 sammac@adelphia.net Jamie McNulty ’11 mcnultyj@union.edu

’12 Jules Pichette is two years into his degree at the University of Richmond and reports that he is currently jumping between Quebec, New York, California, and Virginia. … Hannah Halsted recently got back from a Peru study abroad program where she took classes at The School for Field Studies. … Stephanie Symecko had a great summer interning for Pfizer Consumer Healthcare, spending time with her family, and CrossFitting. She finished an exciting field hockey season during which her team made it to the NEWMAC playoffs for the first time since she has been at WPI. Starting in the new year, Stephanie will be living in Hong Kong for a few months, working on a project involving microplastic pollution. … Erica Steiner will be studying abroad at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, Italy, next semester. … Haley Mahar loved spending a semester in London during which she studied English and history at Queen Mary University. She got to spend a day catching up with fellow 2012 graduate Keith Babus. While exploring Germany, Haley also saw Kristina Micalizzi who is also studying abroad, but in Madrid, Spain, at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. “I have only been here for a month,”

A bunch of Holderness alumni from the Class of 2014 gathered at Merrimack College to visit with Terrance Amorosa ’14 as his Clarkson hockey team took on Merrimack College.

Kristina writes, “but am enjoying the city. My Spanish is improving quickly since all of my classes are taught in Spanish. I have had the opportunity to travel around Europe since my arrival and ran into Haley Mahar and Bee Crudgington at Oktoberfest in Munich. I also spent time in Lisbon, Portugal, which is one of the most beautiful places to which I have ever been. I am excited to be coming back to Boston/New Hampshire for Christmas break to see my family and friends, but am very happy that I will be abroad all year.” …

Isabelle Zaik is studying marketing at Westminster College in Salt Lake City. She started a mountain bike club this year which has kept her busy; she is also taking business courses and interning at Discrete Clothing which is a “badass local Salt Lake brand!” …

Abigail Guerra reports, “I have been studying abroad in Auckland, New Zealand, this semester with Keith Bohlin. We

l Today magazine. Finished size is 11.0 inches tall by 9.0 inches wide.

have seen and done the most incredible things: bungie jumping, hiking, skydiving, holding koalas, getting SCUBA certified on the Great Barrier Reef, and so much more. I ran the Auckland half marathon on November 2, the day after my 21st birthday. This semester has been the best experience of my life. I am looking forward to my last three semesters of Naval ROTC and to being on the BU triathlon team when I return.” …

Benedicte Crudgington is loving her time studying in Madrid, Spain: “I am majoring in health and exercise science and psychology and am minoring in art history. I want to go on to get my master’s in nutrition and then also counseling. I plan to become a nutritionist and work with patients who have chronic diseases such as diabetes and gastrointestinal issues.” … Peter Ferrante is majoring in journalism at CU Boulder and snowboarding as much as possible. He has seen Pippa Blau and Justin Simpkins.

… Nicholas Renzi reports, “Family is doing great. My little sister (Allie ’14) is starting as a freshman on the BU field hockey team.

I am still in engineering but actually don’t know what I want to do when I graduate. Club hockey is a lot of fun; we took a trip to Florida to play FGCU recently.” …

Josie Brownell is studying in Mongolia! She is learning Mongolian and will be conducting an independent study project on the relationship between land conservation and pastoralism before returning to Colorado College for the second semester. … Owen Buehler is taking a semester off from Cornell to do an engineering coop. … Miguel Arias Zuger is having the time of his life in London. … Eliza Cowie writes, “I have been enjoying my sophomore year! I have been busy working in admissions, training with the alpine ski team, and working at Bittersweet Farm, a local organic farm.”

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Celeste Holland ’14 riding at The Prouty with Tim Rice (father of Lea Rice ’14) and Ron Houle (father of Carson Houle ’11).

CLASS CORRESPONDENTS Peter Ferrante ’12 pferrant4@gmail.com Matthew Kinney ’12 mnkinn12@stlawu.edu Alex Leininger ’12 alexbleininger@yahoo.com Kristina Micalizzi ’12 ksm48@georgetown.edu Stephanie Symecko ’12 srsymecko@wpi.edu

’13 Sarah Bell writes, “Sophomore year is pretty awesome so far. I live in a suite with seven of my best friends, and it’s great knowing the ropes and knowing what to expect in school and in lacrosse. I’ve decided to major in BEO (business, entrepreneurship, and organizations). It’s basically a mix of economics, engineering, and sociology classes. I love that I’m getting a well-rounded experience and taking classes in a lot of different fields. Our first fall ball tournament is this Sunday at Harvard, and I get to take down former teammate/roommate/

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enemy, Mackenzie Maher, which is always a good time. Looking forward to returning to the old stomping grounds in the near future! Go Bulls!” … Hannah Foote writes, “Last year I started an annual school-wide dodge ball tournament (because I missed the yearly dodge ball tournaments at Holderness) to raise money and awareness for the women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo who have been raped and tortured. I look forward to organizing the annual dodge ball tournament this year as well! I am now an environmental science major and a peace and justice minor. I might soon be double minoring in art as well. I have also joined the women’s rugby team; it has been a struggle trying to pick up a game I have never seen or played before, but having a challenge in my life gives me something to work towards. It feels good to be back on a team that is encouraging and supportive.” … Fabián Štoček reports, “I just decided to become a neuroscientist. I completed the VT 50-mile run over the weekend and am excited to learn more about consciousness, Buddhism, and neuroscience at a conference

Admission Associate Woody Kampmann visits with families in Beijing, China this past fall. Pictured are current parents Li Wang P’16, John and Helen Liu P’15, Tong Mu P’18, Hua Zhang P’18, Yan Wei and Xiaozhong Yang P’17, Zhaoxia Xie and Xianlin Yu P’16, Chenglan Tang, and Jiazheng Zhang P’15.

with the Dalai Lama coming up.” … Olivia Leatherwood has decided to major in political science and minor in Spanish language and business law. She has been enjoying the sun (and studying) since transferring to the University of Miami. … University of Montana second-year student Steve Page recently was selected as the inaugural artisan designer for Boston-based retail shop HUDSON. The HUDSON Discovers program showcases emerging artisan-designers from across the country in the retail shop HUDSON as well as online at hudsonboston.com. Steve will be the first artist to be featured.

although I miss the Holderness community, it has been a very exciting and fun time here at college. Not much other news as of now, but I’m sure there will be more to come!” … Hedi Droste reports, “I’m taking Spanish, calculus, women’s studies, and a freshman seminar about sustainability called ‘Consuming the World.’ My schedule is crazy with schoolwork, hockey, and sleep!

Hope all is well back at Holderness. I can’t wait to visit when I get some time.”

CLASS CORRESPONDENTS Kelly DiNapoli ’13 kelldinap@gmail.com

Samuel Paine ’14

CLASS CORRESPONDENTS Tess O’Brien ’14 tmobrien@uvm.edu

Garrett Phillips ’14 gwphil14@stlawu.edu

Olivia Leatherwood ’13 olivia.leatherwood@gmail.com

Elizabeth Powell ’14 epowell@conncoll.edu

’14 Elizabeth Powell writes, “Just starting my fourth week at college! I have definitely had a lot of ‘firsts’ in this past month, and

Conner Clemens ’14 conner.clemens@hws.edu Stephen Wilk ’14

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SAVE THE DATE HOLDERNESS SCHOOL HOMECOMING AND REUNION WEEKEND

SEPTEMBER

l Today magazine. Finished size is 11.0 inches tall by 9.0 inches wide.

2015

25–27

REGISTER AT WWW.HOLDERNESS.ORG/REUNION2015

#COMEBACKFORBLUE

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AT THIS POINT IN TIME

Dear Phil

Rip Richards and a crew of students flood the rink in preparation for the winter hockey season. In the background stands the rink house, Dick Stevens’ original winter home.

The following is excerpted from a December  e-mail from Dick Stevens, former director of buildings and grounds and a Holderness employee from –, to Phil Peck.

Hope all is well. I really do need to stop by and say hello. Gail and I were returning from Waitsfield, VT, the other day and couldn’t help notice all the activity on campus. Looks like you are keeping Tony [Tony LeMenager, current Director of Facilties] busy. I was drawn up Mt. Prospect Road when I saw men taking the roof off the rink. I had heard that this was going to happen, but I can’t say I was prepared for it.

The real shocker was when I looked for the rink house. My winter home away from home was gone. It was like I had lost a friend. In fact, two friends. Those compressors were a part of me as I am sure they were of Rip [Rip Richards, Director of Facilties prior to Dick Stevens]. I spent many, many hours with them cursing, praising, and thanking them. I would give them

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a little pat at the end of a long day on my way home, ask them to keep running, and let them know that I would be back to check on them during the wee hours of the morning. Even after I left Holderness, if I was passing through, I would sneak in and give them a little pat and ask them not give Donne too hard of a time.

As you probably know, the rink was my first job at Holderness. The first year I was terrified of those two compressors; there were very few safety devices, all the gauges were made of glass, and there was always an ammonia leak in a packing somewhere. I used those gas masks countless times.

My favorite ammonia memory was when we were changing the tubes in the chiller, and I was slowly bleeding off the excess ammonia.

Thinking that I would speed up the process a little, I cracked the valve open a bit more and went home to have some dinner. I no sooner stepped inside the door when the phone rang.

It was Pete Woodward telling me that there

was a major ammonia leak and that the fire department was on the way. By the time I got back across the street, I was met by an excited fireman literally jumping up and down and running around in circles. He immediately told me I could not go near the building. I tried to explain that I had caused the problem, and it would only take a minute to fix. Nothing doing. He wouldn’t hear of it. Just then Holderness Fire Chief Dick Mardin arrived. I explained what the problem was, and we calmly walked into the building and shut down the valve. We had a good laugh, and he asked that I not open the valve quite so much the next time.

Of course there are many more memories, including ones from before we built the roof and put in the concrete slab. The ice had to go down on a sand bed, and we watched the weather continuously, waiting for just the right conditions.

Once we started flooding we had to keep going until the ice was thick enough to put a piece of snow removal equipment or the Zamboni on it.

If snow fell on the too thin ice, it was everyone out to remove it by hand before we could start flooding again. Those were the days when faculty and students would sign up for flooding shifts throughout the night, and we would flood around the clock until the ice was thick enough.

I can still see Rip out there, pipe in mouth, gently swaying that old fire hose back and forth with just the right motion to make perfect ice.

As time went on we improved the ice-laying process, and now Donne does the whole thing himself, just him and the Zamboni. Now it is time for a major improvement again. I have to say it is a little sad watching from the outside, and for sure I will miss checking on the “little Frick” and the “ X ” when I drive by. But I am sure their time has come. There are many more stories and perhaps they will be told someday.

For now I will savor my memories and remember all the wonderful times, both good and bad in that little rink house.

Best of luck with the new rink. I look forward to seeing the completed project.

HOLDERNESS SCHOOL TODAY | SPRING 2015

Holderness School Spring 2015 Holderness School Today magazine. Finished size is 11.0 inches tall by 9.0 inches wide.

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ARTWARD BOUND OFFERS HOLDERNESS STUDENTS THE OPPORTUNITY TO COLLABORATE WITH SOME PRETTY AMAZING ARTISTS, INCLUDING DANCER AND CHOREOGRAPHER LISA TRAVIS, WHO ALSO TEACHES BALLET FOR ATHLETES DURING THE SCHOOL YEAR. ON THE HAGERMAN STAGE LISA WORKS WITH A GROUP OF SOPHOMORES TO CREATE A DANCE SEQUENCE THEY WILL PERFORM FOR THEIR CLASSMATES LATER IN THE PROGRAM.

I’M TRUE BLUE

ARE YOU TRUE BLUE? Holderness School Spring 2015 Holderness School Today magazine. Flat size is 11.0 inches tall by 18.19 inches wide (includes 0.19 inches for perfect-bound spine); folded size is 11.0 inches tall by 9.0 inches wide. Artwork prints in four-color process and bleeds all four sides. Cover artwork; Cover II and Cover III.

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Draft 3 (08APR15) NONPROFIT US POSTAGE

PAID

LEWISTON, ME PERMIT NO. 82

HOLDERNESS SCHOOL TODAY THE MAGAZINE OF HOLDERNESS SCHOOL SPRING 2015

CHAPEL LANE PO BOX 1879 PLYMOUTH, NH 03264-1879

INSIDE: r Filling the VW Bug r Special Programs 2015 r Catching Up with Martha Kesler THE SNOW WAS DEEP THIS YEAR FOR OUT BACK, AND MSR SNOWSHOES WERE ESSENTIAL EQUIPMENT FOR THE JUNIORS. WHILE THEY OFTEN USE ESTABLISHED TRAILS THROUGHOUT THE WHITE MOUNTAINS, THE STUDENTS ALSO BUSHWHACK AND BLAZE THEIR OWN TRAILS, NOT ONLY LEARNING CRUCIAL SURVIVAL SKILLS BUT ALSO DEVELOPING AN APPRECIATION FOR MOTHER NATURE.

Holderness School Spring 2015 Holderness School Today magazine. Flat size is 11.0 inches tall by 18.19 inches wide (includes 0.19 inches for perfect-bound spine); folded size is 11.0 inches tall by 9.0 inches wide. Artwork prints in four-color process and bleeds all four sides. Cover artwork; Cover IV and Cover I.