Holderness School Today: Winter 2013 Edition by Holderness School

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CHAPEL LANE PO BOX 1879 PLYMOUTH, NH 03264-1879

PAID LEWISTON, ME PERMIT NO. 82

INSIDE: r Our Global Community r Catching Up: Elkinses in Manila ALL-SCHOOL PHOTOS HAVE BEEN A TRADITION AT HOLDERNESS FOR OVER A CENTURY. IN THIS PHOTO FROM 1910,TO THE FAR LEFT AND STANDING IS EDUARDO EMILIO SARTI WHO IS FEATURED IN JUDITH SOLBERG’S ARCHIVAL ARTICLE “AT THIS POINT IN TIME.” THE GROUP IS STANDING IN FRONT OF KNOWLTON HALL, WHICH NO LONGER EXISTS; IT BURNED IN 1931.

r Reunion 2012

Holderness School Winter 2013 Holderness School Today magazine. Flat size is 11.0 inches tall by 18.125 inches wide (includes 0.125 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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The White Mountains have always served as Holderness School’s largest classroom. Mountain Day was a tradition

IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT WHERE YOU’RE GOING, BUT WHO YOU’RE WITH.

that brought the entire school together to scale a nearby peak. Out Back has transformed generations of students into conﬁdent leaders, and O-Hike has become our way of welcoming new students to the school, and sharing with them what it means to be part of our community. But even as these programs have evolved over time, their purposes have remained consistent. The outdoors is a place for sharing experiences, for building community, for making possible the seemingly impossible. It’s a place where anxiety is overcome by activities, interaction, and the support of friends. When you’re out there as a scared freshman on O-Hike, you’re grateful for that helping hand with your pack. And, surrounded by friends you know like family on OB, it feels natural to hold out your hand to help someone else. The outdoors changes you, but your friends make

WHILE NOTHING REPLACES THE CELEBRATIONS OUR INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS MISS WHILE THEY ARE AWAY FROM HOME, HOLDERNESS DOES ITS BEST TO CELEBRATE THE MAJOR HOLIDAYS OF OTHER COUNTRIES. DURING THE CHINESE NEW YEAR CELEBRATION THIS YEAR, BEAUTIFUL RED AND GOLD DECORATIONS GREETED STUDENTS AS THEY ENTERED WELD. AND, WHILE MOST STUDENTS WENT HOME WITH THEIR FAMILIES DURING PARENTS’ WEEKEND, THE INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS STAYED ON CAMPUS AND WERE TREATED TO FIREWORKS ON THE QUAD, THANKS TO OUR OWN PYROTECHNIC EXPERT, ROBERT CALDWELL.

0.125-inch artwork clear zone for spine.

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you better.

HELP US TO KEEP THESE PROGRAMS ALIVE NOW AND WELL INTO THE FUTURE. GIVE TO THE HOLDERNESS ANNUAL FUND. WWW.GIVETOHOLDERNESS.ORG

true blue Holderness Annual Fund

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F E AT U R E S

The World is Present Among Us Mike Tango ’49 called it “international mindedness.” We call it an old idea that has never been so relevant and valuable as now. BY RICK CAREY

ABOVE: Fiston Kahindo (standing, second from left) with the boys varsity soccer team in the fall of . INSET: Mike Tango in .

Deﬁning a Global Curriculum The Holderness strategic plan states that we need to “support a curriculum that encourages the development of students as responsible global citizens.” So what does that curriculum look like? In Part Two of a discussion of his sabbatical, Jory Macomber describes the ingredients of an ideal global curriculum. BY JORY MACOMBER

Catching Up with Paul and Marty Elkins With two different languages, two different currencies, multiple cultural influences, and plans to expand to triple its capacity, the Beacon Academy in Manila seems like it might be too complicated to succeed. But with passion and commitment Marty and Paul Elkins are doing it all and, at moments, are even enjoying their lives in their new island home. BY RICK CAREY

Holderness School Winter 2013 Holderness School Today magazine. Finished size is 11.0 inches tall by9.0 inches wide.

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D E PA R T M E N T S 3 From the Schoolhouse Board of Trustees Jonathan Baum Grace Macomber Bird Christopher Carney ’75 Russell Cushman ’80 The Rev. Canon Randolph Dales, Secretary Nigel Furlonge Tracy McCoy Gillette ’89, Alumni Association President Douglas Griswold ’66 Robert Hall James Hamblin II ’77, Treasurer Jan Hauser The Right Rev. Robert Hirschfeld, President George Macomber Paul Martini Richard Nesbitt Peter Nordblom Susan Paine ’82 R. Phillip Peck Thomas Phillips ’75 Tamar Pichette William Prickett ’81, Chairperson Jake Reynolds ’86 Ian Sanderson ’79 Jenny Seeman ’88 Harry Sheehy Gary Spiess Jerome Thomas ’95 Ellyn Weisel ’86 HEADMASTER EMERITUS The Rev. Brinton W. Woodward, Jr. HONORARY TRUSTEES Warren C. Cook Piper Orton ’74 W. Dexter Paine III ’79 The Right Rev. Douglas Thuener

4 From the Editor 5 03264: Letters to HST 24 Around the Quad 38 Sports 42 Update: Current Faculty and Staﬀ 44 Update: Former Faculty and Staﬀ 45 Update: Trustees 48 Alumni in the News 58 Reunion 2012 63 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

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.

EDITOR: Emily Magnus ’88 EDITOR EMERITUS: Jim Brewer ASSISTANT EDITORS: Rick Carey, Dee Black Rainville, Robert Caldwell, Jane McNulty, Steve Solberg, Judith Solberg, Melissa Stuart, Amy Woods, Joanne Wernig, Clay Dingman DESIGN AND PRODUCTION: Clay Dingman, Barking Cat Productions Communications Design PHOTOGRAPHY: Emily Magnus, Steve Solberg, Clay Dingman

ON THE FRONT COVER: Last fall art teacher Kathryn Field set an ambitious goal—creating 15 portraits of members of the Holderness community. The results are amazing and truly represent the diversity of our campus. On the cover is Ms. Field’s portrait of Haroon Rahimi, a student from Afghanistan. ABOVE: During the shooting of the all-school photo in 2010, Imoh Silas ’11, Gabus Maldunas ’11, Jermaine Bernard ’11, and T. Barbeau ’11 hold a Lithuanian ﬂag in honor of Gabus’ home country.

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FROM THE SCHOOLHOUSE

Preparing Students for Global Citizenship A key phrase in our current strategic plan pushes Holderness to “prepare each student for responsible global citizenship.” This edition of Holderness School Today looks at the many facets of that challenge. In the feature, Rick Carey offers a thoughtful look at how Holderness has historically included students from around the globe. World wars, life-threatening political situations, and changes in global travel and communication have all contributed over the years to the international population at this small boarding school in rural New Hampshire. Today Holderness benefits from that outreach as twenty percent of our student body holds global passports. The effects of our global student body on our community and program are palpable. Almost every week Fabián Štoček and Zihan Guo speak in Friday morning assembly about current world events to help us look outside the “Holderness bubble.” They follow the tradition of Don Henderson who made those presentations when I first started here and who served and worked extensively overseas. In addition, the artwork of Qianyi Zhang and Ximo Xiao hanging in our hallways provides inspiration and beauty; and we are all still talking about how Henry Liu, Seungwoo “Jeff ” Shin, and Zijie Wen rocked the fall concert. Finally, we have honored recent championship teams in hockey, basketball, and soccer that included many international athletes. Involving citizens from around the globe without a doubt has enriched the experiences of students and faculty at Holderness. What is taught in our classrooms also becomes more valuable when a global lens is utilized. This issue looks into our elections class and how international issues are key to US politics. Classes from ninth grade Humanities to AP Environmental Science to Senior Honors Thesis study how global systems interact. We have also improved our mathematics and science curriculum in recent

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In between visits to international schools last year, the Macombers spent as much time as possible exploring Europe. In the above photo, Jory and his daughter Anna are skiing in Meribel, France.

years in recognition of the importance of high level technical skills in today’s world. Lastly, with the help of the Pucker Gallery in Boston, the Edwards Art Gallery exhibits art from around the world and allows us to learn about other cultures. And while the Holderness faculty are working hard on campus to include global lessons in their classrooms, former faculty have taken their training and Holderness values out into the world. This issue catches up with Marty and Paul Elkins as they begin work at a school in the Philippines; the challenges they face on a daily basis are truly global in scope. And last November, I spent a day with Joe Elias, who is serving as Dean of Students at a new boarding school outside of Shanghai. In October he wrote to Phil saying, “Building a school is certainly a challenge, but doing so in China as a traditional boarding school with joined elements of New England Prep and English tradition, along with the bilingual and multicultural facets, combined with the academic restraints of the Chinese government and an

end goal of an IB program, has not only created a masterful run-on sentence here, but has made my journey much like an OB trek that includes some trail, but mostly bushwhacking through incredibly unpredictable weather.” We live in an interactive and global world, and nowhere is that more obvious, perhaps, than in watching our students from around the world head oﬀ into the snowy world of Out Back again this winter. Holderness is a unique institution that is grounded in a strong sense of place. But, as you’ll see in this issue, Holderness is also reaching out to the broader world as we “prepare students for responsible global citizenship.” I hope you enjoy reading about these eﬀorts. Jory Macomber Acting Head of School

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FROM THE EDITOR

The Best Magazines, Like the Best Leaders, Need Feedback Dear Holderness Community, In November, when I met with Phil to gather information for the article on page , we spent a lot of time talking about leadership. One of the most important personality traits of a strong leader, explained Phil, is that he or she must want to learn. He also pointed out that feedback is a critical part of the learning process. And while feedback may come in the form of a casual compliment or an unsolicited suggestion from a colleague, at least some of the feedback leaders receive needs to be deliberate and planned. Holderness School Today needs feedback as well. While letters and emails provide valuable insights and help us learn about our readers’ needs and interests, in order to lead this publication in a successful and eﬀective direction, we need more formal feedback. In January we began to do just that with the case Member Magazine Readership Survey. Created by case (Council for Advancement and Support of Education), the questions on the survey are predeﬁned as this survey has gone out to colleges, universities, and independent schools throughout the United States already. Within the Holderness Community, this survey will help us understand the role hst

plays in the school’s communications and how eﬀectively it serves the community. In addition, this particular survey, because it has been used by other schools throughout the United States, will also give us the opportunity to compare our results with those of other schools. In January, the survey was sent via email to a random sampling of our readership. For those of you who received an email and took the time to ﬁll out the survey, we are grateful. While the random sampling represents a baseline of information that will be used by case to compare our responses to those of other schools, we want to give everyone a chance to provide us with feedback. How do you like to hear about Holderness news and events? What articles do you like to read in the hst? Are there important stories you don’t think we are telling? We want to hear from you! Below is the url for the survey. It will only take about – minutes to complete, so please, go online, open the survey, and let us know what you think. The best magazines, like the best leaders, need and appreciate good feedback. Thanks in advance for your time! Emily Magnus Editor, Holderness School Today emagnus@holderness.org

Your opinion is important. As mentioned in our last issue of Holderness School Today, Holderness School would like your opinion and a few minutes of your time to help improve the eﬀectiveness of this publication in serving your needs. Our web-based survey is easy to use and takes about 15 minutes to complete. To access the survey, go to:

www.holderness.org/hstsurvey

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03264: LETTERS TO HST

Letters to HST Reflections on the Fall Issue I read the spring  hst straight through and was exhausted by all the energy that the school is exuding. Kudos on the fine spiritual life piece. I hope the trustees do take action on enlarging the chapel. It is the one building that has lost much of its dignity since . The metal chairs are ugly and intrusive, a stopgap measure that has gone on much too long. Other hst notes: [former English teacher and dean] Jay Stroud had a skill which added to the Christmas Candle-Light Service (subsequently reduced by the fire marshal to Lessons and Carols). He played the trumpet well and gave an exciting lift to the more exuberant carols. I saw the obituary for Bill Biddle. All I’d add is that Bill’s wilderness skills included being a superb chef. I did several of the back-then Lake Umbagog orientation canoe trips with him. These were out three nights—the first on the beach in Errol, the next two at Moll’s Rock. Bill traveled with two wannigans, which were footlocker-sized custom-fitted boxes that held his cooking and baking equipment. I don’t believe that most of the participants on that trip appreciated how well we ate. The picture and aroma of Bill, first up by an hour or two and baking breakfast biscuits at lakeside, still linger. I remember Ed Cayley as the first person I coached with ( JV football) and shared dormitory responsibility with (Rathbun). He was a splendid English teacher and was my model of what a schoolmaster should be. Jim Brewer Former English teacher hst founder and Editor Emeritus

“Something Always Gets In…” I wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed the spring issue of Holderness School Today. The article titled “Sacred Studies” was most interesting for me. After a long business career, I am currently pursuing a Master’s of Pastoral Counseling at Moravian Theological Seminary.

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Much as the article suggests, we all go through phases of both faith and life. While [I was] at Holderness from –, sacred studies was not emphasized, although many events in the Chapel were memorable for me. There are thoughts and feelings that carry back to that place and time. While we can never know the impact we make directly with young people, there is no doubt in my mind that, “something always gets in,” as one of my professors suggests. It gets in, rattles around, and does its work when the time is right. The time is usually God’s time, when the learning has taken its course and the person is ready. We can never always know the eﬀect we have had, but it is there and will come to fruition when it is supposed to. I commend Holderness School for the reinstitution of Chapel and recognizing how important God and spirituality are in today’s world. Warm regards to all at Holderness. Stan Theodoredis ’

Planning for the Job Program In the fall issue of hst I read with great interest the article “The Holderness Insurgency”—a remarkable account of the unique history of the school, singling it out as a very special institution committed to “character building,” a goal every bit as important at meeting academic achievements. This piece deserves a special place in the school’s archives. I was especially pleased with the attention paid to Edric Weld’s revered leadership during the mid-th century decades when the issue of “student involvement” in the curriculum was a relatively new and untested concept. Other prep schools at the time hadn’t even begun to think about the role of kids helping to run school operations. I was reminded in that piece about the importance of the school Jobs Program in setting the stage later for inviting students to engage in the decision-making process of running the everyday campus opera-

tion, heretofore an unheard of idea in the broader prep school community. I think this revolutionary feat would not have been carried out had it not been for the Rector’s genuine trust and affection for us teenage students who were given this unimaginable responsibility, and in return our deep devotion and respect for him and his leadership, along with the important support of the veteran faculty at the time. I vividly remember meeting with a handful of other students at Rev. Weld’s home in Dublin, New Hampshire, during the summer of  to sketch out the provisions of this plan. Charlie Abbey, a dedicated English master, was there to offer his support. However, an unsung hero, a man we feared until we got to know him—Mr. Wiles—very quietly and without pretension dealt with the details, the specific ways house and floor leaders would acquit themselves in meeting the goals of running the dormitories and seeing to it that other students met the everyday demands of cleaning their rooms and addressing other janitorial needs, which were directed largely by the student leaders themselves. It was, needless to say, a remarkable adventure, although I didn’t think of it that way at the time. But it had an impact on me and others who were entrusted with the job of making “adult” decisions and being held accountable for the outcomes that followed. We owe a debt of gratitude for the leadership at Holderness that ushered us through this very special educational process at the time, and I sense that this very same quality of commitment is evident in the way the school is being operated today. Keep up the good work. Frank Hammond ’

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The World is Present Among Us ONE COMMON THREAD LINKS AN IDEA HATCHED IN 1254 TO HOLDERNESS SCHOOL’S GROWING INTERNATIONAL ENROLLMENT—THE MAXIMIZATION OF HUMAN POTENTIAL. PEACE ON EARTH MAY BE A COROLLARY. BY RICK CAREY The Clarkson Award is presented each year at Commencement to “that student who has used his or her abilities to the fullest in the context of the life of the school, and who has shown that he or she can persevere and overcome difficulties.” The difficulties overcome by the school’s Clarkson winners, over the years, are never trivial, but some loom larger than others. Some are breathtaking. Consider, for example, Fiston Kahindo ’03. Fiston’s trials began long before Holderness, in 1992 with the death from poisoning of his father, Dr. Paul Kahindo, a well-known physician in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Dr. Kahindo had been active in the dangerous politics of the Congo, and his death was suspicious. A week later Fiston’s grief-stricken mother died of a heart attack. “I was eight years old,” Fiston says. “Each morning I went to my parents’ bedroom to let them know I was awake, but the room was silent. That was the beginning of my life as an orphan.” Fiston’s twenty-year-old brother Ruga demanded an investigation into their father’s death—which resulted in a failed assassination attempt on Ruga’s life. The youngsters fled together into the forest,

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enduring a three-week starvation march into Kenya, to the Walda Refugee Camp. “Suddenly we were in the midst of a dry, hot desert,” Fiston says. “The average temperature was more than 105 degrees Farenheit, and there was not suﬃcient food, water, or medicine. I saw many people die each day.” They stayed there nine months before being transferred to Kakuma, another refugee camp. But there were schools in Kakuma, and hope for a child as bright as Fiston. He received a scholarship to a local Kenyan elementary and middle school, and then to a high school near Nairobi. But he was still an orphan. “If I visited Nairobi, I was often harassed and threatened by police,” Fiston said. “It was a common practice there.” Then, after his sophomore year, came a scholarship to Holderness. He arrived in New Hampshire speaking French, Swahili, and several other African languages, but he was still limited in English and wholly unfamiliar with this new world. “I found myself feeling very frustrated, and at ﬁrst I wanted nothing more than to go home,” Fiston says. “It was the soccer team that helped most in my adjustment.

There I was able to find friends and become recognized. Of course people were very welcoming too, and my teachers very supportive, especially my roommate Austin Hayes and advisor Caroline Campbell—even if they had difficulty understanding my background.” Fiston persevered and eventually thrived. He won that Clarkson Prize, and went to Lynn University to major in international business and international relations. In his junior year Fiston was elected president of the Student Government Association, and he set about securing more scholarship aid, on-campus jobs, and extra-curricular activities for foreign students. He went on to an MBA in international business at Lynn, and these days he lives in New York City and holds down two jobs, both of which have much to do with where he came from. He’s a recruiter for the International Rescue Committee, finding the sort of people willing to throw themselves into war or natural disasters to help others. He’s also vice-president of Dream Sponsors, Inc., an NGO that in various ways helps young orphans in Africa, especially with educational opportunities.

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ABOVE: Fiston Kahindo came to Holderness as a refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He is currently a recruiter for the International Rescue Committee and vicepresident of Dream Sponsors, Inc.

Under the best of circumstances, education offers an escape from the worst of circumstances, as it has in this remarkable life. But the presence on campus of a young man like Fiston, who came from so far and from such a different sort of world, was a boon for Holderness as well. And you might say it’s ultimately thanks to an idea first hatched in Paris nearly 800 years ago—an idea that’s beginning to look more modern all the time. 5

“The University of Paris had been operating almost a century,” wrote Acting Head Jory Macomber in this magazine’s last issue, “when in 1254 Robert de Sorbon, a chaplain, said he wanted to create a college not only for teaching theology, but also for hosting and nurturing poor teachers and students.” The Sorbonne began with only twenty students, but soon its practice of safely housing its students attracted some of the best young minds in Europe. “One could argue,” adds Jory, “that the Sorbonne was the ﬁrst place to realize that an aﬀordable,

safe boarding program would help attract talented students from all over.” One could argue that the whole concept of a school that not only provides teaching to its students, but also meals and rooms, began with this Paris chaplain—at least as that idea has been elaborated in the West ever since. We experience a special shock of recognition at Holderness in learning that the Sorbonne was founded for the benefit of “poor teachers and students”—just as this school was founded to “combine the highest degree of excellence in instruction and care-taking with the lowest possible charge for tuition and board,” and so be affordable, say, to the sons of clergymen. At the Sorbonne this provision of board in addition to instruction was an early form of financial aid. Perhaps the rest of it—the ability to attract students from “all over,” and thus the selection of particularly capable students from that wider pool of applicants—was an unintended consequence, but it was consequential just the same. The Sorbonne remains today not merely one of the world’s best schools, but also among its most international. Two centuries later England’s Eton College was founded as a free boarding school for poor boys who would then go on to King’s College. Later Eton and its descendants would provide the model for New England’s secondary boarding schools, though by then all such schools served primarily the wealthier classes. But these schools made their reputations—indeed their world-wide reputations—on the successes of their alumni, and this began with the wide nets they could cast for talented applicants. In New England, however, such nets were largely limited to the Northeast during the days of railroad travel. Only a smattering of students came to the region from elsewhere in the country. Foreign students were that much rarer, and this certainly was the case at Holderness.

Thanks to several fires, the school’s enrollment records are incomplete from its early decades, but unofficially, Holderness’s first foreign student was Walter H. Russell, Class of 1900, who came from a place easily accessible by rail—Port Arthur, Ontario, Canada. Quite likely there were previous Canadians. And points of origin requiring a steamship? Well, there was Woodford H. Plant, Class of 1905, who arrived from Shanghai. Aside from that home address, however, Plant sounds very American. Perhaps the first exotically foreign students in school history were members of the Sarti family—Eduardo, Class of 1910; Victor, 1912; Luis, 1915—from San Carlos, Guatemala. There were also other students during the first two decades of the 20th century from Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Italy, Austria, Japan, and of course Canada. A modest surge in the school’s international enrollment occurred in the ’30s and ’40s thanks to World War II. Gus Mattersdorf, an Austrian, came as a refugee from Nazi oppression. He stayed to become an American citizen and carve out a brilliant career in academia. Terence and Colin Mitchell came from England to flee German bombers. Like Gus and several others, they stayed with the family of The Rev. Edric Weld during school vacations. Bill Koyama ’46 was a refugee from an American sort of oppression, though he was himself an American. His parents were among those Japanese-Americans sent to internment camps during the war. Grateful not only for their son’s freedom, but also the financial aid that allowed him to attend Holderness, they wrote to Edric Weld, “We can see such changes in William by his letters nowadays, and we know he owes these all to Holderness and to your Reverence and to all the faculty members…. Once again, the grace of the Great Providence

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THE WORLD IS PRESENT AMONG US

AT TOP: a detail from a letter written by Bill Koyama’s parents to The Rev. Edric Weld, thanking him for the help he has provided them. PHOTOGRAPHS, CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP LEFT: Bill Koyama (front row, second from right) in the school basketball team picture from 1945; Gus Mattersdorf in 1947; Terence, Colin, and Clemency Mitchell in London in 1994; Terence Mitchell with archivist Rachel Saliba at a reunion event in 1998.

Safe Port in a Storm A late discovery in our archives provided more detailed information about students who came from abroad (or American internment camps) before or during World War II. Colin ’44 and Terence ’45 Mitchell came specifically to Holderness because of a family connection to the Welds. Terence was admitted as an eighth-grader, as was fellow refugee Al Meisel ’44—the only such two in the school. Like many families in England, the Mitchells feared a German invasion, and Terence and Colin sailed here aboard the second to last ship to leave from England loaded with children. The last ship, with 700 children aboard, was sunk by a German U-boat. Gus Mattersdorf ’44 and Al Meisel ’45 were both Jewish children fleeing the Holocaust. Al went on to executive positions in the Peace Corps, VISTA, and at the National Archives. Besides Bill Koyama, Dante Tahara ’44 was also a Japanese-American student whose parents were confined to an internment camp on the West Coast. And Jimmy Lim ’45 came from China. His father was the Surgeon General in Chiang Kai-Shek’s government and a friend of Jerome Webster.

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ABOVE: Mike Tango in 1949. AT RIGHT: Sung-Min You poses with Warren Buﬀet. Sung-Min came to Holderness School from South Korea. Afterwards, she studied the ﬁeld of biology both in college and graduate school and now works for Morgan Stanley’s healthcare division.

and the American way of life deeply touched our hearts.” Later a now anonymous alumnus wrote to Weld from the European front of that war. “One of my most respected schoolmates has presented himself to me in image many times recently, and through my respect for him I cannot force myself to believe that despite the color of their skin, our present foes are all bad,” he wrote. “Bill Koyama is probably one of the ﬁnest boys I shall ever know, and yet ‘over there’ our boys are merely ﬁghting those ‘dirty yellow—,’ without any real thought as to a decent cause. I hope and pray that Holderness will remain untouched and continue to send into the world its small number of young men trained in the right way, to respect all people and the rights of all men.” Mike Tango ’49 was entirely Japanese, one of a very few to escape the squalor of post-war Japan for a sojourn among those

who had recently rained bombs on his homeland. Mike received a warm welcome at Holderness, but sometimes oﬀ-campus it was a diﬀerent matter. During vacations he stayed with teachers Archie and Eleanor Stark, and one summer day Mike went with Archie to help a Plymouth farmer pitch hay. This was a man who during the war had lost a son, a victim of the Bataan Death March. The farmer looked at Mike and growled, “Is that kid a Jap?” “No,” Archie lied. “He’s Chinese.” If lies can be white, that would be one. The hay got in that day, during which the farmer and Mike became good friends. Mike went on to Tufts and an executive position with Japan Airlines just as that airline was opening international routes in the early 1950s. Mike retired in the 1970s and began a second career as a professor at Japan’s International College of Tourism, and then its International College of Medical Service.

“All through my life, my ability in English, which I learned at Holderness as well as elsewhere in the States, helped me immensely,” he told HST in 1999. “But more than the language itself, I must say that I learned the international-mindedness that has enabled me at least to try to understand the people of diﬀerent nationalities, races, colors, religions, and ways of thinking. And I have treasured this for my life.” 5

Mike Tango’s experience points to one other neat, and time-honored, advantage of the boarding school setting—diversity. Holderness, of course, was an early pioneer of economic diversity. The school didn’t exclusively pursue the less well oﬀ, like Robert de Sorbon had. It merely wanted to be available to them as well. And economic diversity was not the point, per se—just a bonus.

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ABOVE: Han Min Lee (in uniform) with family, admits he began his Holderness career as “a chubby 260-pound Asian.” However, by his senior year, under the guidance of Norm Walker, Han Min was a captain of the varsity football team. He is now a ﬁrst lieutenant in the Korean air force.

In the 1950s Japan Airlines was following the rest of the airline industry in opening up international routes. The world began to shrink rapidly as those routes proliferated and communications speeded up. And as it shrank, the world began to beat a path to New England’s prep schools—especially the most famous. “Kids from abroad wanted to go to the bigger schools whose names were known overseas—Andover, Exeter, Hotchkiss, and so on,” Pete Barnum told HST in 1999. Now Director of Leadership Giving, Pete was then Director of Admissions. “It was hard for Holderness to compete against that sort of name recognition.”

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Some of the less famous schools competed by offering English-as-a-SecondLanguage programs to foreign students, and/or advisors assigned exclusively to them, but Holderness chose not to. “We wanted our kids to be already fluent in English and ready to fit in,” said Pete. By the 1980s what we now call globalization was in full swing—economic boom times, cheaper air fares, and a world-wide computer network that allowed families to familiarize themselves with more than just the big brand names in education. At the same time the school’s lack of an ESL program became less of a handicap. “Something like that can be a doubleedged sword,” Admissions Associate

Heather Cameron told HST in 1999. “Many of the families that come to us are really looking for an American education, a rigorous immersion experience, and in their eyes our having an ESL program would weaken that experience.” That year the school’s international population amounted to six percent of total enrollment. It’s a lot higher today. “Our enrollment is now 19 percent international, up from an average 10–12 percent over the past twenty years,” says Tyler Lewis, the school’s current Director of Admission. “In our strategic planning, we established a goal of raising our international student population to 20 percent, and we were able to essentially achieve

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ABOVE: Clancey Houston, a native of New Hampshire, graduated from Holderness in 1989. Shortly after receiving her degree from Middlebury College, Clancey accepted a temporary position in China and has been living there ever since.

that number in two years. That’s partly thanks to our international reputation, which is extremely strong. During my last trip to China, for example, I was in hotel lobbies in Beijing and Shanghai until 11:30 at night, meeting with families who had ﬂown in speciﬁcally for that interview.” This for a school that—besides no ESL program—is located in the wilds of northern New England and embraces such articles of culture shock as Out Back, the Jobs Program, and daily required team athletics? “Well, we are more of an anomaly to urban kids, but that’s true both domestically and internationally,” Tyler admits. “But proximity to airports with direct international access, like we have in Boston and Manchester, is a plus for these families.”

And given that, there are things that trump such discomforts as OB in today’s very sophisticated marketplace. “My parents speciﬁcally wanted a small school that had a family-like feel to it,” said Sung-Min You ’01, who came here from a town outside Seoul, Korea. In 1999—speaking to HST—Sung-Min confessed to crying when she had to leave home after a long vacation. “But I was very comfortable at Holderness,” she says now. “I loved it, and when I went on to college, I chose Dartmouth because it seemed like a bigger version of Holderness.” Han Min Lee ’05, also Korean, came to America for academic reasons, and chose Holderness because his cousin—Sunny Chung ’04—liked it here. “American schools

give more academic freedom than Korean schools,” he says. “Korean schools require students to concentrate 99 percent of their energy on studying, while American schools let students manage their time and figure that out for themselves.” Once here, however, he liked that “family-like feel” best. He describes arriving as “a chubby 260-pound Asian” and signing up for JV soccer in the fall—until English teacher and football coach Norm Walker implored him to play football. “By senior year, I was one of the captains of the Holderness Bulls, yelling, ‘Fifty-oki, fiftyoki!’ at the huddle. Any time Mr. Walker introduced me to his friends, he said I was his adopted son. And this principle to treat students as if they were family members applied not only to Mr. Walker, but to every faculty member in the community.” Nonetheless, Han Min did not feel that Holderness was a very diverse community in international terms when he arrived in 2001. “However,” he continued, “by my senior year we had kids from everywhere, including Lithuania, Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, et cetera.” Since graduating from Holderness, Han Min earned a degree in computer science from Carnegie Mellon, and then returned home to Korea. He is now a first lieutenant in that nation’s air force. Meanwhile Sung-Min took her degree in genetics and cell biology to Massachusetts General Hospital, and also to MIT’s graduate Biomedical Enterprise Program. She wrote four published papers during that time, one that appeared in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association. She went on to Harvard Medical School and is now living in New York and working in Morgan Stanley’s healthcare division. 5

This sort of diversity, gathering students from diﬀerent nations, is diﬀerent from, say,

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“LIVING IN A COUNTRY DIFFERENT FROM ONE’S OWN REQUIRES GREAT HUMILITY,” MARESA SAYS, “AND I DO BELIEVE THAT HOLDERNESS’ STRUCTURE AND CLIMATE INGRAINED IN ME A SENSE OF HUMILITY THAT WOULD ENABLE ME TO LEARN FROM OTHERS WITH AN OPEN MIND AND HEART.”

AT LEFT: The Silitch family, near their home in France. ABOVE: After graduating from Bowdoin in 2009, Maresa Nielson spent time teaching science and social studies in Uganda. She is now living in Vermont teaching kindergarten and completing a Master’s degree in Teaching for Social Justice.

racial or ethnic diversity in one important respect—it can very literally be a two-way street. As people from diﬀerent nations and cultures become a larger part of the community, the borders between nations and cultures become that much more porous for all members of the community. Mike Silitch ’79 and Nina Cook Silitch ’90 represent diﬀerent decades in the life of the school, but both eras were characterized by the presence of only a few students from abroad, and also the traditional grousing from American students everywhere as to why there should be a foreign language requirement for a diploma. “We both took French from Lew

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Overaker at a time when you wondered why you were learning this language,” says Nina, who was herself a Clarkson Award winner. “But it came in handy.” Holderness taught them primarily not the love of French, however—though they liked French better than they thought they would, thanks to Dr. O—but rather the outdoors. For both, Out Back led to work with Outward Bound and the National Outdoor Leadership School. They discovered all they had in common through the pages of this magazine, which led to marriage. And Mike’s expertise and ambition as a skier and mountain guide led them overseas to the French Alps, and also to the world’s

oldest (almost two hundred years) and most exclusive guiding organization, the Compagniedes Guide de Chamonix. A 2009 feature in Outside Magazine documented Mike’s years of effort to become a full-time member of this company (“The Apprentice,” January ’09). Finally, in 2011, Mike became only the third non-Frenchman—and the ﬁrst American—to be admitted. Meanwhile Nina is head of the girls’ outdoor program for an international school, Aiglon College, and competes at the top levels of the World Cup ski mountaineering circuit. Their two boys are ﬂuent—of course—in both French and English.

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“OUR ENROLLMENT IS NOW 19 PERCENT INTERNATIONAL, UP FROM AN AVERAGE 10–12 PERCENT OVER THE PAST TWENTY YEARS,” SAYS TYLER LEWIS, THE SCHOOL’S CURRENT DIRECTOR OF ADMISSION.

THE WORLD IS PRESENT AMONG US…

16.3

PERCENT OF HOLDERNESS STUDENT BODY FROM OVERSEAS, 2002–12

…AND WE ARE PRESENT IN THE WORLD.

11.5

PERCENT OF HOLDERNESS ALUMNI OVERSEAS, GRADUATING 2002–12

Clancey Houston ’89 attended Holderness during the same era as Nina, but her road overseas began with Phil Peck’s Sino-Soviet history class. “China’s history was fascinating,” Clancey says. “And then the trip to China organized by Phil and so many great faculty members gave us the chance to connect that history to the reality of a newly-opened up China. What a brave group of teachers to shepherd 26 teenagers across such a foreign place!” At Middlebury Clancey studied Mandarin Chinese, and then went to work as an analyst with a consulting firm that helped American businesses gain a foothold in China. In 1995 she was offered a temporary assignment in Shanghai—“So off I went with a garment bag and a briefcase.” And she’s still in Shanghai, where she is now managing director of inVentiv Health Communications’ China division.

“It’s a fast-paced, rapidly changing, always challenging, often confusing, yet incredibly motivating environment in which to work and live,” she says. By the time Maresa Nielson ’05 attended Holderness, the school was going through that transformation described by Han Min Lee. She went on to Bowdoin College and a year of overseas study in Botswana. There she made connections that led to a job after Bowdoin teaching science and social studies at the Aga Khan Primary School, an independent day school in Uganda. While it was not until she was at Bowdoin that she became interested in sub-Saharan Africa, Maresa credits Holderness with teaching her a quality necessary for success abroad. “Living in a country diﬀerent from one’s own requires great humility,” she says, “and I do believe that Holderness’ structure and climate

ingrained in me a sense of humility that would enable me to learn from others with an open mind and heart.” How? “Whether discussing Toni Morrison in a freshman English class, considering the best ski techniques in a Nordic hunt, washing dishes in pantry, or attending a sit-down dinner with unfamiliar faces, my teachers, coaches, and peers encouraged me to listen deeply to the voices of others,” she says. “In such a small community as Holderness, one must learn to speak kindly to others, to ask forgiveness when necessary, and to put forth one’s best effort in all that one does.” Maresa came back from Uganda for graduate school study that would prepare her for work in international development. “But I learned I didn’t want to work for an organization that promoted Western idealism and capitalism, or merely Western models of education, which the majority of NGOs and non-profits inadvertently do,” she says. Instead she lives today in Vermont and teaches kindergarten. She’s finishing up the program that she started in international development, but is focusing on a Master’s in Teaching for Social Justice at Marlboro College Graduate School. “I hope I’ll be able to teach my students a sense of critical consciousness and an awareness of the non-dominant narrative,” she says, “both of which I believe are lacking in American schools today.” 5

In Maresa’s case we’re left with the irony that the cross-cultural listening skills she

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learned at Holderness ﬁnally played a large role in discouraging her from working abroad. But her point is that she’ll have the most impact transforming the way we understand “global citizenship” by working locally in the United States. And in truth the United States, set oﬀ from the rest of the world and protected on both sides by those oceans, has gotten a late start on this whole “global citizenship” thing, or the “international-mindedness” described by Mike Tango. According to the demographic trends tracked by the National Association of Independent Schools, however, we’re catching up. Since 2011, notes the NAIS, the number of American adults with handheld computers has quadrupled. As communication gathers speed, and as more and more information circulates unfettered and uncensored, our various forms of tribalism have begun to weaken. The percent of interracial marriages in the US has jumped from 6 percent to 15 over the last three decades, and American society, says the NAIS, “is more accepting of all kinds of diversity than we used to be, and the younger generation the more accepting.” In particular, Generation Z (born after 2000) is “more global than previous generations, more comfortable in and demanding of multicultural settings.” By no means have racism and parochialism disappeared from American life, but Generation Z is frankly amazed by what happened to Bill Koyama’s parents. These are trends that have helped American independent schools become all the more a desired destination for families from other countries. According to Tyler Lewis, even day schools are responding to this opportunity. “You see more and more of them arranging for home stays with American families,” he says, “and some schools are even converting hotels into housing for international students.”

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One burgeoning source for international applicants is that fast-paced, rapidly changing country where Clancey Houston lives. In 2005, says the NAIS, there were 65 students from mainland China in American independent schools. Now there are nearly seven thousand. This makes China an important stop on the global itinerary for Tyler and his staff, and Holderness is one of the few American schools offering Mandarin Chinese as an elective. But Tyler wants to stay ahead of the curve—his office has travel planned to six continents next year (not Antarctica—not yet), and he sees a strong emerging market in South America, where the Sarti family came from so long ago. “We’re coming back with kids who make us stronger as a community in some very direct ways,” Tyler adds. He notes that international students have played a large role in expanding the school’s math curriculum with their demand for post-AP level courses. He cites a similar role in the recent athletic successes of the school’s soccer, basketball, ski racing, and crosscountry running teams, as well as striking contributions by internationals in the arts and music. More important are the indirect benefits that derive from this sort of diversity—a breadth of perspective, a range of talents, a cross-fertilization of ideas, and that fusion of empathy, respect, and humility described by Maresa Nielson. Of course these are exactly the benefits anticipated in the school’s Diversity Mission Statement, which begins, “Holderness School is committed to live as a community that celebrates diversity in its many forms because multiple perspectives and experiences are vital to educational excellence and strengthen our community.” National origin is just one dimension of diversity, but it’s one that is embraced now in several ways within the community. “For example, we’ve adopted a policy of calling foreign students by their given

names, rather than by any Americanized version,” says Director of Communications Steve Solberg. “In a community where we stress knowing everybody’s name, this is an important part of that. And we celebrate the special holidays of each nation in our community— Chuseok, Chinese New Year, Tet Holiday, Canadian Thanksgiving—in ways that bring a wide range of kids together to share meals, fun, and friendship.” Bringing young people together from “all over” and providing them meals, fun, and friendship is the opposite of the silent room that greeted young Fiston Kahindo after the deaths of his parents, and that refugee camp where death stalked every hut and tent. Ultimately, on the other side of the world, Fiston found his way to a community where no one is an orphan, where everyone, in some way, is the adopted son or daughter of its adults. And Mike Tango’s “international-mindedness” is in its essence a recognition of the speciousness of all our presumed barriers, and the wealth in human capital that results from discarding these and refusing to allow one narrative to dominate another. Someone among us fought in the most terrible war in human history, a war waged primarily on behalf of issues of race and nationality, and this man was very glad to have been taught by Bill Koyama the folly at the bottom of that. Holderness is all the more determined now “to send into the world its small number of young men [and women] trained in the right way, to respect all people and the rights of all men.” We do so now, in all humility, with more of the world present among us.

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Preparing Holderness students for global citizenship: Fabián Štoček (Czech Republic) and Thao Nguyen (Vietnam) review for a test in their second year of Mandarin Chinese.

Defining a Global Curriculum In Part Two of his sabbatical discussion, Jory Macomber takes us on a tour of several international schools and identiﬁes the essential ingredients necessary for implementing a global curriculum. Jory Macomber

uery: what do john mccain, mitt romney, and

If there’s a recipe for creating such a curriculum, most international

Barack Obama all have in common? The ﬁrst response is usu-

schools would start with students from all over the world. International

ally: they are all presidential candidates. But here is a second

school administrators work hard to recruit their students come from

similarity: they all experienced a global education. John McCain was born in

forty or ﬁfty different countries. The strongest international schools also

Panama and did not go to school in the United States until he was fourteen;

managed those numbers. Le Rosey in Switzerland, a boarding school of

as a teenager, Mitt Romney spent over a year in France working on his

400 students, does not accept more than ten percent of its students

mission; and Barack Obama lived in Indonesia for several years as a youth.

from any one country; the 39 US citizens made up the biggest group at

In the last issue of Holderness School Today, I described my experiences

the school. Likewise, the Frankfurt International School and the

during last year’s Chair Program project through the lens of this ques-

Yokohama International School both limit the number of German and

tion: “How does a school create a productive and caring community

Japanese citizens in their schools to less than thirty percent.

when its students come from all over the world and from different cul-

All of this population engineering is geared towards creating a mixed

tures?” My goal here is to look at an equally important question that I

population that informs classroom discussions and student conversations.

asked of international school administrators and faculty: “How does a

For example, I observed a religion class at Aiglon College in Switzerland

school deﬁne and implement a global curriculum?”

in which an American teacher was trying to explain the difference

Let me take a step back ﬁrst and answer an even more basic question:

between Shia and Sunni Muslims. A student from St. Petersburg, Russia

“Why have a global curriculum?” Schools traditionally focus on state and

was confused by the explanation, and eventually a girl from Saudi Arabia

national goals; in fact, the New Hampshire House of Representatives

stepped in front of the class and started to give her own explanation. All

passed a bill last fall that would have forbidden globally focused curricula

of a sudden a student from Ireland had an almost audible “ah-ha”

in the state (fortunately, the bill did not pass the State Senate).

moment and started talking about the Catholic-Protestant tensions in his

However, the twenty-ﬁrst century is marked by an increasingly inter-

home country. That kind of cultural interaction happens often in interna-

connected global economy, unprecedented global migration of people,

tional schools.

international political challenges, and a growing need for global environ-

The second most common ingredient that goes into a global curricu-

mental stewardship. As our strategic plan states, we need to “support a

lum is the International Baccalaureate. The IB program was founded in

curriculum that encourages the development of students as responsible

1968 by the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) “to create a

global citizens.”

better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and

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Defining a Global Curriculum

respect” (from the IB mission statement at www.ibo.org). The IB is also

mote outside learning experiences as well. In fact, the Director of the

the largest and fastest growing international curriculum in the world

United World College-Maastricht remarked that “all of the important les-

with about 3,400 member schools in 144 countries, including over 1,400

sons occur out of the classroom.” The UWC program has over 14 campuses

member schools in the United States.

on ﬁve continents and uses that network to enhance student exchanges.

The IB curriculum pushes schools to take an international perspec-

The Leysin American School also has required travel components for stu-

tive and to use international sources. For example, instead of offering

dents and faculty. Some of the trips are for language immersion, while

US History, most IB schools have a course called History of the Americas.

others focus on cultural lessons and service opportunities. The underlying

Teachers are required to search for and use data from an international

goal, however, is to provide opportunities for personal contact with peo-

database, and the professional development programs always include

ple from different nations and different cultures.

networks of teachers from all over the world. In addition, the IB program gives a school credibility and academic rigor. While the IB courses use a more international approach when design-

On the ﬂip side of personal contact, many schools believe information technology is also a key component of an international education. Recent events such as the Arab Spring, the controversy over funding for

ing curriculum, the underlying pedagogy used to teach courses is similar

the Komen Foundation, and the digital campaign surrounding Kony

to Holderness School’s: small, student-centered classrooms, varied assess-

2012 are all examples of the power and concerns of digital citizens.

ments and teaching styles, close relationships between teachers and

Social media has become a powerful tool for international citizens, and

students, an emphasis on creative thinking, etc. Independent schools in

it exists in a dimension that has much less oversight than twentieth cen-

the United States can learn a lot from the curriculum designed by the IB

tury national citizenship. Many schools are asking, “What does it mean

program, but their underlying approach to education resonates with what

to be a digital citizen, and how do we teach our students to be that type

US independent schools have sought to do for generations.

of citizen?” While information technology continues to evolve, the

While much of the IB curriculum is standardized, several schools

underlying message here is that in order to become global citizens, stu-

have unique approaches to their global curricula that connect to the spe-

dents need to learn to make use of the new digital tools in productive

ciﬁc missions of their schools. I visited some schools, such as the

and meaningful ways.

Amman Baccalaureate School (ABS) in Jordan, that were committed to

Perhaps the most important ingredient of the global curriculum recipe

bilingual education. The IB requires proﬁciency in a second language,

is faculty training. The skills and experiences required of a teacher in a

but all the core courses can be taught in English. ABS, in contrast, had

global curriculum are evolving very quickly. Much of what is important

students study all subjects in English and in Arabic at different times

today did not even exist ﬁve years ago. As a result, the best international

during their K–12 journey. The school wants its students to be ﬂuent in

schools are putting more resources into faculty training and retraining.

both languages, not just proﬁcient, and that means being able to study

For instance, the Zurich International School has ﬁve full time profes-

physics, for example, in English and Arabic.

sional development personnel for a school of 1,500 students. ZIS is

The Yew Chung International School (YCIS) in Beijing also has a fascinating approach to global teaching. Their mission aims to fuse

committed to getting and keeping their faculty up to speed. Through all of my travels my favorite deﬁnition of a global curriculum

Eastern and Western educational philosophies. In math class, for

came from the American School of London (ASL). At ASL they aim to

instance, we in the Western world are familiar with a math teacher’s

develop students with “the capacity and disposition to understand and act

demand to “show your work;” Western students are expected to write

upon issues of global signiﬁcance.” There are some key terms here that

down each step of a mathematical solution. At YCIS, math students are

deserve further exploration. Capacity means that students have the habits,

sometimes asked to write down their work, but at other times they are

skills, and content necessary to understand an issue, while disposition means

told to do the work in their heads. That is, the students are given a

that students are asked to personally care about these issues and possess a

problem and then asked to think silently until they come up with an

drive to learn more. Act is a critical term because it gets at the idea of citi-

answer. The YCIS teachers from China call it doing “mental math.” In

zenship and the need to not simply read and learn about issues; a global

Eastern educational philosophy, it’s important to be able to compute in

curriculum is more than an intellectual exercise. Finally, significance is a

your head, so the YCIS students learn both the written process and the

subjective term that pushes schools to deﬁne what types of global issues

mental process.

are important and prioritize accordingly.

While the classroom experiences can do a great deal to prepare stu-

As I studied all of these programs, I also asked the question, “What is

dents for global society, most international schools point to travel and

missing?” In a word, my answer was “science.” All the programs, of

immersion programs as additional necessary parts of their global curricu-

course, included science education, but the international nature of sci-

lum. Just as Holderness uses the Special Programs to extend learning

ence felt left out to me. From a research point of view, science is one of

beyond the four walls of the classroom, leading international schools pro-

the most globally cooperative ﬁelds, and in many ways could act as a

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Defining a Global Curriculum

Maame Arthur grew up in Ghana and became a student at Holderness in 2011. In the photo above, Maame participates in a discussion with US History teacher Kelsey Sullivan.

model for what these schools hope to accomplish. As I alluded to in my

the elite have access). Poverty and educational access have historically

last article, there are over 1,000 scientists from all of the major coun-

been the most signiﬁcant global issues and cannot be ignored if global

tries of the world working together on nuclear research at CERN outside

citizenship is truly a strategic goal. I ﬁnished my sabbatical believing

of Geneva. CERN is a prominent example of global cooperation; scientif-

that, above all, it’s important for US independent schools to provide

ic issues and scientiﬁc advances do not pay attention to national borders.

socio-economic access as part of its global curriculum.

As John F. Kennedy once said about the impact of science: “Man holds

While Holderness does not claim to be an international school, its

in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and

mission and strategic plan make ﬁrm commitments to looking beyond

all forms of human life.” Instinctively, I felt that the global curricula of

our front doors and embracing others. Currently, twenty percent of our

these schools could put more emphasis on the study, ethics, and power

students come to us from other countries, while forty percent of our stu-

of science.

dents are on ﬁnancial aid. In addition, our curriculum continues to

Underneath all of these features of a global curriculum is the issue of

evolve and include more international perspectives. While it is not part

financial aid. Most international schools do not offer significant financial

of the formal curriculum, each summer several teachers also travel with

aid, and I could feel the difference between schools that did not offer

Holderness students in order to share with them the languages and cul-

much aid and schools such as the United World College-Maastricht and

tures of other countries. We can, however, do more, and it will be

Robert College in Istanbul where aid was offered to over thirty percent

Holderness School’s challenge in the future to continue to expand our

of the students. The two main tragedies of education are mass education

thinking beyond our classrooms and our campus while at the same time

(every student receives an identical program) and elite education (only

maintaining our traditions and close community.

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

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: Paul and Marty Elkins in 2012 at Beacon Academy; a scene from the Beacon Academy campus; Marty and Elk’s bungalow ﬁfteen minutes from the Beacon Academy campus.

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Catching Up With Paul and Marty Elkins Last summer Marty and Paul Elkins packed their bags and headed to the Philippines. And while most independent school teachers were settling into relaxing summer vacations, Marty and Paul began an adventure of a lifetime; on July , they began building a new school. by rick carey CONSIDER ALL THE CROSS-CURRENTS THAT MEET AT THE

The Beacon School is an international school, but not in the sense of

doorstep of the Beacon Academy, which is just outside Manila in the

having students from all over the globe. Rather its students are almost all

Philippines. There are the islands’ two diﬀerent languages, English and

Filipino. The school itself, however, is built around the curriculum devel-

Filipino; also two diﬀerent currencies, the American dollar and the

oped by the Geneva-based International Baccalaureate Organization,

Filipino peso; also a stunning juxtaposition of First World wealth and

which began in the 1960s when a group of teachers were looking for a

Third World poverty, not to mention an international secular ethos and a

way to ensure that the multinational students of their school—the children

conservative Catholic culture—and inside those doors, the several diﬀer-

of diplomats, businessmen, NGO executives, etc. at the International

ent educational and value systems wielded towards helping students to

School of Geneva—were qualiﬁed for admission to universities all over the

straddle not just all that diversity, but the diversity of the world beyond

world. The eventual result was an internationally standardized set of

those islands.

courses and assessments.

Consider also that this school is only four years old and still ﬁnding its

According to the IB mission statement, “These programmes encourage

way. So are you. You and your spouse have more than thirty years experi-

students across the world to become active, compassionate, and lifelong

ence in independent education, but you’re entirely new to this part of the

learners who understand that other people, with their diﬀerences, can

world, and when you step oﬀ a plane in Manila in June, it’s so hot that

also be right.” The IB’s subject guide adds there is more to the curriculum

you feel like you’ve been dropped into a blast furnace.

than information—i.e., “the development of attitudes and values which

Welcome to Beacon Academy, the high school portion of the Beacon

transcend barriers of race, class, religion, gender, or politics.”

School, a K–12 independent day school. Grades 9–12 are situated on a new

As such the curriculum is both popular and controversial in the

campus, but its second academic building is still unﬁnished. The board of

United States. According to a 2011 editorial in U.S. News and World

trustees is wondering how to pay for it, and how to get electricity to it.

Report by Emmett McGroarty of the conservative American Principles

Access to the internet depends on the weather, and you have to lean out

Project, there are now nearly thirteen hundred IB schools in the U.S.

a window for cell phone reception. The high school has 109 students and

(“International Baccalaureate Undermines U.S. Founding Principles,”

plans to quickly expand to 300 and have more money for ﬁnancial aid.

5/26/11)—schools that, according to McGroarty, oﬀer a “curriculum crafted

You’re in charge. Have at it.

in Europe with a decidedly non-American and non-Judeo-Christian out-

Such is the situation—“adventure,” they would say—of Paul and Marty

look on the world.” In the Philippines there is just one such school—the

Elkins. Paul taught and coached at Holderness from 1979 to 2002, while

Beacon School (beneath the umbrella of Beacon Academy)—where the IB

Marty began in 1981 and left in 2001. They were at another school in

is described on the school’s website as “an inquiry-based, student-cen-

1988–89, and since leaving Holderness have worked together or separate-

tered, globally minded and comprehensive curriculum” preparing the

ly at the Groton School, Worcester Academy, and the New Hampton

school’s alumni “for both local and overseas colleges and universities.”

School. They had been thinking of teaching abroad, and then this oppor-

In other words, it’s a way oﬀ the islands for those who wish it, but ide-

tunity was dropped into their laps by members of the Beacon School’s

ally only a temporary one. “We have twenty-two seniors this year,” says

founding board, people who are alumni of Groton, Exeter (Marty’s alma

Marty, “and many will be applying to schools in the U.S., Canada, Europe,

mater), and St. Paul’s (Elk’s alma mater).

Hong Kong, and elsewhere. But then we hope they’ll return to help the

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Paul and Marty Elkins at Holderness in 1984.

Philippines become more of a First World country, with the integrity and

nonetheless some students hesitate at the threshold of that sort of rela-

ethical standards you expect in such countries.”

tionship with a teacher, particularly those who have come from a diﬀerent

The website also promises that the Beacon program “exhibits the best

elementary school. The same is true for some of Beacon’s faculty mem-

aspects of the Filipino ethos,” and this is where the straddling act begins.

bers, most of whom are Filipino. But thresholds abound in a school where

The school implements their curriculum by means of the Harkness

both Filipino and English are spoken, and where, out of respect for the

Method, which took shape at Exeter Academy in the 1930s and involves—

local ethos, Filipino is also a required course—“Even though some stu-

ﬁrst of all—replacing the traditional classroom’s rows of desks facing the

dents resist that,” says Marty.

teacher with a round table at which everyone, teacher and students alike,

A local ethos of conservative Catholicism means that students are typ-

has an equal place. It’s an arrangement that better fosters discussion, par-

ically from very large families, and that some things just aren’t talked

ticipation, and the sharing of ideas. The method builds on this by

about. “There is just so much humanity crushed together in metropolitan

encouraging students to take more responsibility for their learning, and

Manila, and the population pyramid is like it was in South America ten or

teachers to become more like facilitators. Several Holderness courses are

ﬁfteen years ago; there’s a huge cohort aged between zero and twenty,”

taught this way, in fact.

says Elk. “In fact there’s a ‘reproductive health’ bill in the legislature now

Philosophically, the Harkness Method is a smooth ﬁt with the IB cur-

that would limit family size, but it’s not going to get through. Meanwhile

riculum but is much less so with the traditional conduct of an Asian

there is no sex education in the public schools, and you have girls getting

classroom. “This is a culture more comfortable with the industrial model

pregnant with no understanding of how or why that happened.”

of education,” says Marty, “with the teacher at the front of the room and very much the sole authority.” Elk describes the parents at Beacon as “progressive, but not all of them are liberal.” They largely endorse the Harkness Method, but

This lends an element of dramatic suspense to the material on reproduction that Elk will teach his seniors in his biology course later in the year. “I really don’t know how they’ll respond,” Elk laughs. “But if I can’t get them at least interested, I’m not much of a teacher.”

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AT LEFT: Elk works with students on a lab experiment in 1999. AT RIGHT: Marty talks with a student in her role as Dean of Students for the girls in 1995.

Marty is teaching as well. Famous here for her nuanced and challeng-

Elk is as busy as Marty with his teaching, his duties as Dean of

ing course in Middle Eastern history, she now ﬁnds herself teaching world

Students, soccer coach, and advisor to the student leadership program.

history from an Asian perspective. She’s struggling to get up to speed with

“But I’m more insulated from the local politics than Marty is, and I’m

that, and speaks frankly about the all-consuming nature of a job at the top

frankly surprised by how much fun this is,” he says. “That’s because kids

of a new school that pushes the envelope in many diﬀerent directions.

are kids, and these kids are just bursting with creativity, initiative, and

“It’s turned out to be a hundred times harder than I thought it would

spirit. The national tourist board has this slogan, ‘It’s more fun in the

be,” says Marty. “You get pushed in so many diﬀerent directions, and you

Philippines,’ and that might certainly be true for the kids. But I noticed

have to be sensitive to all these diﬀerent political and cultural currents.

this even at Holderness—in some ways the Asian kids were less inhibited,

You have to do a lot of listening, and you have to take enormous pains to

more willing to take risks and put themselves out there. Anyway, you’d

understand the complexity of every issue that comes to your desk.”

love kids like this—full of energy and life.”

Home life is comfortable, though. The school’s trustees found Elk and

We spoke on Skype the day after the American presidential election.

Marty a large bungalow-style house just ﬁfteen minutes from the campus.

Barack Obama is much admired in the Philippines, and Marty reported

It’s more room than they need, actually: three bedrooms, plus quarters for

that her students were cheering in the halls as the results came in. “I

a maid and a driver. They don’t have a maid, and only use a driver to get

tried to describe how the electoral college works in America during one

to special school events in Manila. When they drive themselves they stay

of my history classes this fall,” Marty laughs. “It was a challenge.”

mindful of the NASCAR ethos that rules Filipino roads. The food? “Well, a lot of it’s stewed, or cooked in a pot with rice,” says Marty. “Meat is often cooked in vinegar to keep it fresh.” Elk remembers

Some of the barriers are low, and some of them are high, but the Beacon Academy stands by its faith that they can all be transcended. And at the end of the day, as Elk says, kids are kids.

the ﬁsh heads they were served for lunch: “They eat stuﬀ here most Americans never see, or would choose to throw away.”

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Holderness Celebrates democracy (with a lower-case d)!

In November during the school’s Mock Election Kaleigh Lazarro, Sarah Bell, and Mackenzie Maher could be heard across campus cheering and cajoling people into voting during their lunch break.

In the US Presidential election the voter turnout in New Hampshire was around . Minnesota had the largest number of voters with . of the state’s residents ﬁlling out ballots. But due at least in part to the dedication and passion of Mrs. Macomber’s Election class, the voter turnout at Holderness School was even higher. With enthusiasm and a commitment to their civic duty,  of the students voted for the next President of the United States. Fortunately, the students and faculty were well-informed as well. During one assembly in October, students in the Elections class organized and presented a mock presidential debate, complete with security guards (thank you, Logan Twombly). Michelle Hofmeister and Stepper Hall presided over the debate in which Orion Olsen

(playing Governor Mitt Romney) and Mackenzie Maher (playing President Barack Obama) shared their views on the national debt, women’s health issues, and energy resources and consumption. Next Mrs. Macomber made sure that everyone at the school had a chance to hear the real candidates in person. Fortunately, because we are located in a battleground state, both candidates spoke at rallies close to campus. On the Sunday before the election, three micro-busses ﬁlled with students drove to Concord at : am to hear former President Bill Clinton and President Barak Obama speak. In a report for The Picador, seniors Iashai Stephens and Xajaah Williams-Flores described their experience: “[Obama] stood there not only pointing to the crowd, but also

pointing to us. His energy, combined with the energy of the crowd, created a momentous feeling. It all became clear that voting for him meant taking part in a movement much bigger than ourselves.” And on Monday night, on the eve of the national election and into the wee hours of Election Day,  students attended a Romney rally at the Verizon Wireless Arena in Manchester. Mr. Romney spoke to the crowd of over , people at : am. Mrs. Macomber reported, “Many kids were really inspired and others were keen observers. One student had connections that got us into the vip section (on the ﬂoor of the arena), and as a result the kids were in the front and many got to shake Mr. Romney’s hand.” When the bus from Manchester pulled into campus at : am, it is fair to say all were tired and changed. They had witnessed democracy in a spirited, peaceful political rally. And then it was time for the few lucky ones to really vote. On Tuesday, November , Election Day, Mrs. Macomber took all eligible -year-olds to the town hall in Holderness to vote. In the Head of School’s blog, Mrs. Macomber described the scene: “Two of the kids at one point opened the curtains and nervously scoped the room until they made eye contact with me. I signaled to them from across the room full of townspeople that they were on their own now, alone with their own political views and knowledge, a pencil, and the ballot (yes, in Holderness we still have paper ballots and pencils!).” And you can be sure that their votes truly contributed and counted. Not only because they followed through and physically marked the boxes next to their chosen candidates, but also because their votes were based on thoughtful decisions. Thanks to Mrs. Mac, they genuinely knew for what they were voting.

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Team Dynamics and Two Winning Records

LEFT: Lindsey Houseman and other members of the varsity ﬁeld hockey team gather around Ms. Brewer during a game this fall. ABOVE: Senior Fabián Štoček ﬁnishes a Lakes Region race on the Upper Fields at Holderness.

Let’s start with the statistics. This fall the varsity field hockey team celebrated its th year of post-season competition. Goalie Paige Pfenninger only allowed  goals all season and succeeded in leading the team to eight shut-out games. The team was undefeated in regular season play against  teams in the nepsac league; its only loss of the season came in the nepsac tournament semi-finals against Winsor with a final score of -. The cross-country team’s record was no less impressive. The girls remained undefeated all season, while the boys lost only one race. Both teams won their Lakes Region Championship races, and the boys went on to finish in third place at the nepsac Division  Championship,

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losing to second place Greens Farms Academy by only three points. Although it is easy to quantify the end results of these teams’ seasons, the reasons for their successes have less to do with statistics and numbers and a lot more to do with friendship and passion. “It’s not always easy to get a group of girls to all like each other, but these girls do,” explained head ﬁeld hockey coach Doonie Brewer. “The leaders on this team [Macy Jones, Mackenzie Maher, and Michelle Hofmeister] were amazing, and there were a lot of things in which the coaches were not even involved.” To start, the ﬁeld hockey’s pre-game rituals are historic. In a journal that began in  and

has been taped back together and added to several times, the girls choose a player each game to recognize and write about. Before each game the commendations about the girl are read; she receives the book and is then in charge of choosing and writing about another girl before the next game. And if you have ever watched a ﬁeld hockey game, you know that the coaching the girls receive is exceptional as well. Both Doonie and assistant coach Kathy Weymouth have decades of experience coaching both at Holderness and other New England prep schools. From the sideslines Doonie’s voice can be heard constantly encouraging and guiding her athletes. Never CONTINUED ON PAGE 26

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The boys cross country team pulls away from the start of their race on KUA Day in early October.

TEAM DYNAMICS, CONTINUED FROM PAGE 25 impatient, the words “please” and “thank you” are included in all her instructions. And this year Doonie and Kathy were also joined by Kelly Hood, who graduated from Holderness in  and went on to play for Dartmouth. “Kelly has a ﬁeld hockey mind,” explained Doonie. “She opened my eyes to things I didn’t think the girls could do, and she also has a wealth of knowledge about skills and drills.” Although Kelly was unable to make it to many games or practices due to graduate school commitments, she too noticed how special this team was. She told them at their end-of-year team dinner that the years of intense college play had taken away her love of the game; it was more like a job for her. But, she told the girls, they had renewed her passion; their love of the game was contagious. The cross-country team has a similar proﬁle: passionate athletes guided by strong

coaches. For the ﬁrst time this year, the crosscountry team was so big that head coach Pat Casey decided to create a junior varsity team. Made up of passionate, seasoned runners; athletes using cross country to get in shape for their winter sports; and beginning athletes who are new to the sport, it has been diﬃcult in the past to satisfy the training needs of the whole team. With both a junior varsity and varsity team, the runners were able to train at appropriate levels. And although some of the varsity athletes wanted to train hard, improve their splits, and win races, Pat said that that was not the focus of the team. “I think it’s important to acknowledge that running isn’t fun,” Pat explained. “We play a lot of games to avoid injuries and keep things fun, but ultimately overcoming challenges feels good, and that’s what keeps the athletes going.”

And the challenges this season were not always expected, or even occurred on the race course. On many Saturdays the teams hiked ,-footers in the White Mountains. Twice, once on Osceola and once on Lafayette, the weather turned and the team faced wind and driving rain on the exposed mountain peaks. “It was cold and wet and even a little bit scary,” Pat explained, “but I really got to know the runners on those days. Those were my favorite days of the season.” And although key athletes from both teams will be graduating this spring, they hope to continue their winning records next year, not so much because they care about the statistics or the ﬁnal results, but more because they love what they do and ﬁnd joy in doing it well.

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Tweets, Text, and Sketches about A Visit from the Goon Squad

ach summer, the holderness community is invited to

read a novel that is chosen by Mr. Durnan and the Secret and August Committee. The members of the committee are always anonymous, and their choices are varied and challenging. This year the selection, A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, was particularly challenging for many and caused a great deal of discussion on and off campus due to its graphic portrayal of the punk rock scene, as well as its non-traditional approach to story-telling. “A Visit from the Goon Squad was discussed voraciously among students and faculty, inside and outside the classroom,” senior Maddy Cicoria wrote in an essay defending the reading of Goon Squad. “The racy topics, such as when Kitty is interviewed and almost gets raped, led students to passionately express their opinions. The book was even tweeted about numerous times by Holderness students over the summer, before classes had even begun. Not many books can do that.” The discussions continued when the students returned to school in September; in the classrooms, in Friday assembly, and even on a Saturday morning, students had the opportunity to hear from members of the community and learn about the book. And the assignments they submitted to explore their own opinions and thoughts on the novel, showed impressive insights and thoughtful reflection. Below are just two students’ final projects. In the chalk drawings, Lea Rice highlights important themes and moments in the novel. In the written piece, Hannah Durnan has rewritten a chapter of the book from a different character’s perspective.

Hannah Durnan reads her own version of Chapter 12 of Goon Squad during a Saturday morning discussion of the book.

A Visit from the Goon Squad Chapter 12 — “Great Rock and Roll Pauses” Bernadette a revision by hannah durnan Sasha didn’t expect her life to be like this, standing on hot asphalt with Ally and Linc (her kids —who’d’ve believed that she’d be a mother) after Linc’s ballgame. The heat was the kind that seeped up through the soles of her shoes, wornout Old Navy flip-flops (fifteen years ago, wearing those would’ve been a deadly sin). Ally’s still at the age where she worships everything her older brother does, even if Linc’s only a year older. Right now her arm’s around his neck—more a choke-hold than a hug. And when Linc’s teammates walk by, she replies to their hellos before he gets the chance. Sasha can see Linc’s scowl, even in the twilight.

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Ally reaches down to touch the pavement (sometimes Sasha wonders if she should be tested for attention disorders, the way her daughter gets distracted), so Sasha reacts on instinct and watches Ally’s face fall when she hears her snap. Sasha can feel Ally’s annoyance as she drives home in the suv Drew insisted they buy— another thing Sasha wouldn’t have imagined before him, something that seems out of place even now. Finally, Ally speaks. “Why do you have to repeat people’s exact words when you say goodbye to them?” “What are you talking about?” Ally’s response reminds her so much of Drew that Sasha laughs. It’s bittersweet; the unwritten rule of their family: Ally is Drew’s, and Linc belongs to Sasha. Drew doesn’t understand Lincoln, and Ally—well, Sasha is fairly sure that Ally has a list going of everything that annoys her about Sasha.

“Any chance of easing up on the scrutiny, Ally?” “Not a chance.” At home Alison follows Lincoln to the living room, and Sasha hears the first few notes of “Bernadette” drifting through the hall. It reminds Sasha of Pakistan—the song that was playing in Drew’s run-down apartment the first day she arrived. It was the first time she has seen him since the funeral. After Rob died, Drew went through medical school—Sasha went through therapy. But none of that mattered, after a fivehundred dollar plane ticket and the thousandmile distance from the East River. So now “Bernadette” reminds her of Rob and Pakistan and the hours she spent alone in Drew’s apartment after she flew around the world for him. (But by then, it was too late to go back.) And of all the songs Lincoln plays, Sasha still likes “Bernadette” the best. CONTINUED ON PAGE 28

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GOON SQUAD, CONTINUED FROM PAGE 27 Linc and Ally always notice when Drew works late. She can see it in Linc’s face when Sasha goes into his room alone to say goodnight, and even more in Ally’s when she asks Sasha when Drew will be home. All is forgiven when Drew is home—he tries to listen to The Frames with Linc, even though he doesn’t understand it, and loses his patience after the first ten seconds of the pause —and he swings Ally up on his shoulders and calls her Allycat, making her whole face break into a smile like it never does when he’s gone. It’s times like that when Sasha doesn’t regret flying to Pakistan, marrying Drew (she never, never regrets Ally and Linc). But Drew isn’t home, and Ally’s alone in her room, computer screen glowing. Sasha can’t reach Ally at times like this, when she’s working on her “slide journal.” She goes in anyway— tries unsuccessfully to pry Ally away from the screen. Finally, Ally just slings old-school computer-tech slogans at Sasha, who laughs, because she knows this is the best conversation they’ll have all day. She doesn’t want it to end yet, so she runs her fingertips along the apricotshell toy horse she and Drew got when they were living in Pakistan—one of the few outings Sasha can remember from the years there. “I never looked back,” she tells Ally. It’s not a lie— even Pakistan was better than New York, walking by the East River day after day. (It’s even more true when she tells Ally how much she loves that horse—it’s a reminder of Ally and Linc, the two parts of her life for which she will always be grateful.) And it works. Ally slides her laptop closed silently, pulls out a book (the one Sasha bought but hoped Ally wouldn’t read) and turns straight to the page with Sasha’s picture. So Sasha just tells Ally she doesn’t want to talk about it. She says she was struggling—she doesn’t say that she never stopped. Sasha and Ally talk again when Sasha goes to say goodnight. She wonders if two conversations in a day is their new record. Ally wears a hint of a smirk when she asks Sasha about

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every bad thing she’s ever done—the question hits Sasha hard, a lightning-quick punch to the stomach. Where to begin, she wants to say. Instead, she says “You can’t.” She thinks Ally and Linc have fallen asleep when she hears scuﬄing from upstairs. Then Linc yells and Sasha pulls together her last strings of patience before heading up the stairs. They’re both in bed, but Sasha still feels Ally’s presence when she works on her collage. She tells the kids that she’s working with “found objects” (and they are, mostly—a grocery list, a recipe, a ticket stub) but she doesn’t tell them about the scraps that are hidden in the corners, the kind that make guilt and excitement twist in her stomach (a fake ID from the baby-faced freshman at the bar down the street, a business card with a phone number on the back that wasn’t meant for her. Even, once, a check— written in blue ink, seventy-four dollars and eighty-nine cents.) Sasha puts the collage away before Drew gets home. The next night, she doesn’t have the chance to work on it—Drew’s home early, barbequing chicken with a smile plastered-on and a glass of gin, half-empty. They sit down at the too-small picnic table and Sasha keeps her arm around Drew (if he’s never here, why not enjoy one night?). Ally and Linc are excited to eat Drew’s chicken—even though Sasha made the same thing two nights ago (not that Drew would know). Ally says something that makes Drew laugh his big barking laugh and her face lights up— another reminder that Ally is Drew’s, not Sasha’s. Then Ally asks Drew why he decided to become a doctor and Sasha knows where the conversation is going (Drew should too, but he doesn’t, of course). “Bernadette” is playing in the background when they talk about Rob. Sasha answers all the questions—after all this time, Drew still doesn’t know how.

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But Drew’s even more clueless when he starts to talk to Lincoln—he almost smiles when Linc talks about “Supervixen,” but not quite. Drew whispers to Sasha like the kids can’t hear: “Should we be encouraging this?” His brow is furrowed, emphasizing the barely-visible lines across his face (stress lines, not laugh lines). Sasha talks him down—she always does —but not before she notices Ally listening. Linc is too, but he’s more subtle—not a difficult feat, with Ally staring blatantly at Drew (he doesn’t notice). Sasha raises her voice slightly to end the conversation: “Drew, it’s music.” So Drew tries—she has to give him credit for trying, even a little bit—but Lincoln hasn’t even pressed play on “Rearrange Beds” before Drew snaps and Lincoln crumbles. It feels like Sasha is electrified as she leans forward (she shouldn’t have to explain Lincoln to his own father) and tells Drew just why the pause is important—he didn’t have to ask. He didn’t know to ask. And here’s Lincoln sobbing on the picnic table while Drew just stares at Sasha blankly. There’s a pause (two seconds, like the one in “Long Train Runnin’”—one of Lincoln’s favorites). Then Drew’s jaw tightens as he pulls Lincoln into a stiff embrace, and Sasha wonders how the two boys who look so alike could be so different. She’s not surprised when Lincoln fights his way out of Drew’s arms. She follows him up to his room (Drew’s not going to). The electric anger is still buzzing beneath her skin when Sasha goes back downstairs. Ally and Drew are gone—the buzzing intensifies when she realizes where Drew took her. At least the car is still in the driveway, after Drew’s two and a half glasses of gin. So Sasha just goes back upstairs and puts “Bernadette” on repeat. She’s lost count when she hears Drew walking up the stairs—during the pause she can hear him talking with Lincoln. She turns up the volume.

Lea Rice (above) describes the chalk drawings (facing page) that she created in response to an assignment on Goon Squad.

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“I Rathbun You”—Rebuilding with an 8:1 Ratio in Mind

CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: Finn Lewis (son of Renee and Tyler Lewis) admires the fall gourds during the Rathbun open house; pumpkins carved by dorm leader Fabián Štoček and dorm parent Judith Solberg decorate the faculty entrance to Rathbun; pamphlets and buttons await the arrival of guests before the open house.

“I Rathbun You,” read the lapel pins created by senior Fabián Štoček to celebrate the renewal of Rathbun Dormitory. Larry Rathbun, a trustee of the school for  years, was a dedicated servant of Holderness School who believed deeply enough in the school to support the construction of Niles Dormitory. As a verb “Rathbun” implies the same sort of dedication and devotion to building community and sustaining the core values of Holderness. It is this dedication in which the original dormitory was constructed and in which the renovated dormitory was rebuilt. With an : student-faculty ratio, “Rathbun is more connected than ever before” (school Vice-President Jesse Ross ’). During Parents’ Weekend in the fall, the renovation of Rathbun Dormitory was celebrated. While students began living in the dormitory in September, Parents’ Weekend was the ﬁrst opportunity many members of the community had to tour the renovated dorm rooms, the new common living space, and the new faculty apartment.

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A Room for Sean Glew

ABOVE: Molly, Sean, Mason, and Nicki Glew explore Waterville in 2009. RIGHT: Sean and Nicki pose with Meredith Bird (sister of Elena Bird ’13), Max Lawrence (former Eaglebrook student), and Sam Macomber ’11 on the day of their arrival at Holderness in 2008.

Down the hall from the Head’s office and across from the faculty lounge, there is a classroom that is filled with light. Maps and historical documents decorate the walls, and historical textbooks and novels overflow from the bookcases. On one wall there is a small plaque, placed there recently in memory of Sean Glew. Most people at Holderness never got a chance to know Sean when he became a teacher and the head of the history department at Holderness in , but his memory lives on in the lives of many of his students, the few who got to know him at Holderness and the countless students he taught, coached, and advised at Eaglebrook School in Massachusetts. It is for this reason that a room in Schoolhouse is now dedicated to his memory. Sean didn’t immediately turn to teaching when he graduated from Colby College. He first worked for Nike in Portland, OR, organizing their grassroots marketing efforts. There he met Nicole Woodward, who was a professional runner for Nike. Nicki will tell you that at first they were unimpressed by each other and their individual accomplishments. Eventually, however, they became friends through conversations about books and politics.

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“Even then he had a passion for learning and talking about history and the current aﬀairs of the world,” Nicki explained. Shortly after they got married, they decided to return to the East Coast and both found jobs at Eaglebrook, Sean teaching history and Nicki teaching Spanish. It was there that Sean discovered his latent gift. “Sean was able to take the most unreachable and unlikable child who had burned every bridge on campus and make a connection,” Nicki recalled. “He was able to draw out any kid and help him succeed.” The students at Eaglebrook were attracted to Sean and his passion for life. During the last summer of his life, Nicki set up a website where friends, family members, students, etc. could describe their memories of Sean. Among the countless memories were many from members of the Eaglebrook community. “Whether we were playing ultimate frisbee in the rink or broomball on the ice, Sean`s true character shined through,” wrote Eaglebrook colleague David Goodrow. “He showed the students and me that it was alright to play as hard as he could. He threw his body around without concern for his own safety all the while being careful not to hurt others. His intensity astonished me. As I grew to know Sean, I realized

that this was how he lived his life, fearlessly. He was open-minded, friendly and fair, but he was also incredibly tough.” One of Sean’s students also responded: “I made some great friends at Eaglebrook,” explained Jacob Weiner, “Sean among the very top. I now see how his personality was able to unite the school as I received ﬁve separate calls today, including one from Oxford, England, telling me to check my email… That’s just how important Sean was to all the people that had the pleasure of being with him.” Another one of the students Sean connected with was Sam Macomber, son of Jory Macomber, who at the time was the Dean of Faculty at Holderness. After seeing both Sean and Nicki interacting with his son and other Eaglebrook students, Jory invited them to Holderness to interview for jobs in the history and Spanish departments. Although Sean and Nicki visited Holderness on a miserable, snowy morning in April, they still decided to follow Sam north and become part of the Holderness community. “Sean was excited by the idea of teaching at the secondary level,” explained Nicki, “But at the end of the day he wanted nothing more than to spend time with [his children] Molly CONTINUED ON PAGE 34

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The Best of Hagerman: The Fall 2012 Performances The format of this year’s fall theater production in October was a bit different than past years. With a large contingent of young actors available, Theater II students wrote a short play titled “Inconspicuous Café.” The premise of the play is based on what people do when the lights are out or when they think no one is looking. An assorted cast of characters gathers at the Inconspicuous Café for an open mike night featuring, Cale Dru and Maggie Peake, but they all get more than they bargained for when the lights go out during a storm. A second cast was assembled to perform the British farce, “Black Comedy,” written by Peter Shaffer. Lovesick and desperate, sculptor Brindsley Miller ( Jake Barton) has embellished his apartment with furniture and objects d’arte “borrowed” from the absent antique collector next door hoping to impress his fiancé’s pompous father (Charles Harker) and a wealthy art dealer (Zach Baum). The fussy neighbor, Harold Gorringe (Drew Houx), returns just as a blown fuse plunges the apartment into darkness, and Brindsley and his roommate, Kurker (Alex Lash) are left to keep everyone in the dark! Other members of the cast included Molly Madden, Raquel Shrestha, Nick Connor, and Charlotte Freccia. The musical talent this year has also been impressive and diverse. From pianos to cellos, from drums to vocals, the students continued to pursue their individual interests while at the same time preparing together for a concert in November. Several funky jazz tunes (many written and arranged by Mr. Lockwood himself ) and multiple covers of popular contemporary artists made the final program, and the musicians kept us smiling, tapping our feet, and appreciating what it takes to get up in front of a large audience and perform. Highlights from the evening included a soulful rendition of “Little Talks,” performed by Claire Caputi and Elena Bird, and a rousing version of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” performed by Maggie Peake and Shihao Yu.

ABOVE: Tommy Chau and Perry Kurker-Mraz enter into a deep discussion during a performance of “Inconspicuous Cafe.” BELOW: Claire Caputi and Elena Bird sing “Little Talks.”

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The Best of Hagerman: The Fall 2012 Performances

CLOCKWISE, FROM ABOVE: Zjie Wen plays backup for Cale Dru; Charles Harker provides light on the “darkened” stage of “Black Comedy”; actors in “Black Comedy” sit in their living room during a blackout; English teacher John Lin plays his violin with the school band; members of the band ﬁll Hagerman with their lively tunes.

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GLEW, CONTINUED FROM PAGE 31 and Mason, and he believed Holderness would give him that freedom.” Although Sean almost immediately learned he had cancer and spent most of the year in and out of the hospital, he immediately embraced the Holderness community, and when he could, he taught and shared his knowledge with his students. “Sean came back into the classroom in January,” explained Head of School Phil Peck, “overcoming everything to do what he was born to do: teach. Sean taught not just because it was a job, a vocation, something that he was good at. He taught because it was his avocation, something that he loved.” Even during his final semester at Holderness, he submitted all his grades and comments, taking the time to acknowledge the work of each of his students even as his health failed. For this reason in  the first-year history prize was renamed the Sean Glew History prize. When Sam Macomber awarded the prize the first year, he explained, “Teachers convey information. Good teachers create an environment in which students experience discovery. Great teachers are able to instill in their students a passion for learning, purely for the sake of knowledge. Sean Glew was one of those great teachers. He approached learning with a contagious tenacity that would lead our Latin American history class from indigenous cultures, to Che Guevara, to the UN, and wrap it up with the Chilean public transportation system, all in forty-five minutes.” Sean loved to learn and he loved to share his knowledge with his students. In this spirit, the Sean Glew Classroom is a place for learning, for sharing knowledge. The new paint job, the new chairs and tables, the small plaque placed there in Sean’s honor are just a backdrop for the true spirit of the dedication; in Sean’s classroom the quest for knowledge is palpable, questions are pondered with deep intellectual curiosity, and ideas are discussed with passionate and diverse voices.

Art is For and About the Human Journey

Sitting in the Edwards Art Gallery where the fragile light of the fall sun filters through the large floor-to-ceiling windows, it is hard to imagine a more peaceful place to spend an afternoon. Occasional strains of music can be heard drifting through the walls of the music rooms, and voices echo from the art room above. On pedestals around the gallery, pots of all shapes and sizes stand at attention, reflecting light along their elegant curves. These pots were part of an exhibit that was on display in December and were on loan from the Pucker Gallery in Boston. Formed by hand and fired in an open pit, the pots carry details of their makers’ heritage and talent. They were not only beautiful to look at, but their designs informed our understanding of the culture and history of several South African regions. Fortunately, it is not unusual for the Edwards Art Gallery to display such culturally significant works of art. Throughout the last decade, due to the generosity of the Pucker Gallery, Holderness School has had the opportunity to display world-class ceramics by famous artists including Brother Thomas, Phil Rogers, Shoji Hamada, Hideake Miyamura, and many others. In addition, in the spring of , in conjunction with Facing History and Ourselves, the Pucker Gallery helped organize an exhibition of paintings by Samuel Bak, a

Lithuanian-born Jew who survived the Holocaust. This relationship between the Pucker Gallery and Holderness School began when John ’ and Gretchen Swift worked at Holderness from –. John and Gretchen were patrons of the Pucker Gallery and through them, a connection to Holderness School began. Now, once a year, Holderness art teachers Kathryn Field and Franz Nicolay choose an exhibition from the Pucker Gallery to exhibit in the Edwards Art Gallery. When Bernie and Sue Pucker opened their original gallery in , it was in the basement of an unassuming building on Newbury Street in Boston. Initially they exhibited art from Israel, as well as Modern Masters like Chagall and Picasso. Eventually, they bought the building and expanded the gallery throughout all ﬁve ﬂoors. While many galleries focus on contemporary art and their displays morph and change as styles change, the Puckers have chosen to focus on art that is more enduring. “We have rarely stopped representing an artist,” explained Mr. Pucker. “We are open to what comes and prefer to continue to learn from the artists we work with.” The artists in the gallery now span multiple centuries and their chosen mediums vary

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FACING PAGE: South African clay pots on display in the Edwards Art Gallery this fall. FAR LEFT: Art teacher Franz Nicolay welcomes visitors to the opening of “West of Washington: Between Nature and Time” last spring. MIDDLE: a Lori water vessel in clay. ABOVE: Bernie and Sue Pucker.

from photography to oil paints, from stone to clay, from primitive to modern. Although the actual collection is impressive, it is the relationships the Puckers establish with each artist they represents that make their collection unique. “Once Bernie decides to represent an artist,” Franz explained, “he is committed. He knows all the artists he represents personally and has been to many of their studios. When you work with Bernie and Sue, you become part of the extended Pucker Gallery family.” Perhaps the best example of this relationship is the one he established with Brother Thomas, a Benedictine monk and potter who is known for his original glazes and perfect forms. After being introduced to him in , Mr. Pucker and Brother Thomas became close friends and corresponded every day by fax until Brother Thomas’s death in . A similarly close relationship has developed between Mr. Pucker and Holderness School. While they do not fax each other every day, Franz and Kathryn and other members of the Holderness community are often invited to art openings at the Pucker Gallery. Mr. Pucker has also allowed Holderness to use the gallery for alumni gatherings and fundraising events. And numerous times, members of the Pucker Gallery have spoken at Holderness and shared their knowledge of their collection with students, faculty, and the general community.

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“Bernie doesn’t see his job as a gallery owner as a profession but more as a lifestyle,” explained Franz. “He sees the gallery not just as a place to sell art, but as a place through which he can serve the community and deepen its cultural awareness. His dedication to education is rare among gallery owners.” In addition to working with many educational foundations, the Puckers often invite patrons to the gallery for dinners and openings. He says he intentionally invites visitors with diverse backgrounds whose only connection to each other may be the art they are viewing. “Art is for and about the human journey and remaining engaged,” explained Mr. Pucker. “These dinners are amazing opportunities for people to learn from each other and inform each others’ experiences.” While the dinners provide the Puckers with one opportunity to share their passion for art, their work with Kathryn Field and Franz Nicolay provides another. Each year, explains Mr. Pucker, in a mutually respectful conversation, Franz and Kathryn and the Puckers engage in a discussion about art and what pieces will best suit the Holderness gallery and the purpose of each exhibit. “Franz and Kathryn bring a sense of joy and passion that inform their choices,” Mr. Pucker explained. “The works they choose and the way

they choose to display them in the Edwards Gallery is beautiful.” While students from many different courses around the campus go to the Edwards Art Gallery and study these exhibits and use them as sources of knowledge and inspiration, the exhibits also attract people from the town of Plymouth and beyond. Residents throughout the region come to the art openings to meet the artists and learn about the exhibits. And Terry Downs, the director of the gallery at Plymouth State University, and many of her colleagues often bring their university students to the Holderness gallery to view the collections as well. “Because of the Pucker’s generosity, the profile of the Holderness gallery has risen,” explained Franz. “Bernie took a big leap of faith in us, and in turn we have much more to offer our community.” On a fall afternoon in the Edwards Art Gallery, the enduring quality of the Pucker collection is clear. Not only are the pots as beautiful as the day they were made, but their stories that have now been passed on to a new generation of students at Holderness endure as well. And with mutual vision and passion, this simple relationship between a Boston art gallery and a New Hampshire boarding school will hopefully stand the test of time as well.

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Senior Honors Thesis: Learning to Follow a Passion

Last spring two afternoons were set aside in our busy schedule to hear from our Senior Honor Thesis students. Above, Drew Walsh shares his presentation, “Army Rangers: The Leaders of Our Military.”

Senior Project. Intellectual Odyssey. Capstone. It’s been called many things and has accomplished an array of educational goals since its inception in the ’s. Some years the majority of the senior class participates and other years only a few; in the ’s it looked as if the program might fade away all together due to lack of interest. But thanks to the guidance of people like Phil Peck, Chris Day, and Steve Solberg, lately Senior Honor Thesis (its current nomenclature) has experienced regeneration with about a third of the seniors choosing to do projects in the spring of . In addition, it has increasingly sought to challenge students intellectually through a balance of real world experience and rigorous academic research. And looking ahead, the school plans to renew its support of the program even further.

While many of the long-term details are still unsettled, by the spring of , all seniors will be required to complete a senior thesis. Why does the school feel so strongly about every student completing a senior thesis? First, the skills that are taught are crucial. Although many incidental and personal lessons are learned along the way, the program intentionally targets the following six skills: forming an essential question, conducting research, planning experiences, engaging experts, writing for an academic audience, and engaging an audience. In addition, the school’s current Strategic Plan asks us to “align the school’s academic curriculum to intentionally build and thoughtfully practice the skills required to succeed within the Senior Honors Thesis program.” As such, the program is built on skills that are ﬁrst taught in ninth grade and

continue to build throughout a students’ career at Holderness. Then in the spring of their senior year, the students have the opportunity to bring together all they have learned during their time at Holderness and practice and develop these skills before heading off to college. As Steve Solberg, Director of Senior Honors Thesis states, “Colleges and universities are more and more looking for students who have not only important baseline knowledge, but also— and more importantly—the maturity and skills to put this knowledge into practice. Senior Honors Thesis intentionally works to help students on both fronts.” Second, learning to follow a passion and finding ways to develop it through research and knowledge is valuable. In the last issue of hst, we told you about Will Humphrey, who two years ago began the spring of his senior year with a general admiration for a handicapped skier. Through the Senior Honors Thesis program, he learned more about adaptive skiing and what it means to be handicapped. But when his project was complete and his assignments graded, he found that he wasn’t done. He has continued to study adaptive sports, fueling his interest in them through his college courses and through the filming of a documentary. The skills Will began to develop at Holderness have allowed him to follow a passion that has a strong foundation in careful research and methodical intellectual discovery. So Senior Honors Thesis thus begins by asking students what they want to learn. For most of their educational careers, students are told what is important and what they need to know. Led by a teacher, the students learn within the parameters set by the course. In Senior Honors Thesis, however, students, for the first time, are given complete control over what they learn. Teachers act as guides and mentors, pushing students to delve deep but never telling them what direction to go or what to think. It is a bit unquantifiable but sht lets students know that their ideas matter and that pursuing their pas-

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sions couldn’t be more important. It also teaches them how to take a passion, however inconsequential it may seem at first, and learn from it and develop it. As seniors develop their ideas and take part in their experiences, the focus continues to be on the process rather than the outcome; in other words, while their final public presentations matter, it is the skills and knowledge that they gain along the way that make the Senior Honors Thesis program worthwhile. Mentors work one-on-one with students to decide how each will measure success along the way. For some, it will mean reading and digesting complicated articles written by experts in their field; for others, it will mean journeying to new places to interview experts; and for some, it will mean learning about the technology needed to put together an online video documentary. There is scaffolding and specific benchmarks students need to meet throughout the semester, but within that structure the students use the process in ways that best fit their goals, their strengths, and their needs. While the skills presented and practiced in Senior Honors Thesis are important, the timing of the program is critical as well. In the spring of their senior year, most seniors are into college and they fall into the notorious senior slide. In her book Crossing the Stage, Nancy Sizer explains the unique situation that seniors find themselves in as they approach the end of their high school careers. Few high schools respond to this reality, she found, leading to a period of high stress and often a noticeable slide: “High schools charge ahead with the same old schedule and the same old program, seemingly uninterested in the number of new challenges that have been added to the seniors’ lives…The result is emotional chaos, which seniors try to simplify by calling it stress. There is too much to do; seniors are living at least two lives at once, and in neither can they do as well as they would like” (Crossing the Stage). While many courses and lessons can seem irrelevant as seniors head off to college, Senior Honors Thesis allows them to experience some

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LEFT: Salamarie Frazier describes the anatomy of vocal chords and explains what she learned about vocal training. RIGHT: Owen Buehler uses liquid nitrogen to demonstrate the eﬀect of extreme temperature on the laws of magnetism.

of that real world and some of the autonomy they will experience in college. Seniors begin the semester working independently on the research portion of their project, reading the latest literature on their topic and conducting interviews with experts. Then in March they are required to leave campus and test their academic research in the real world. Last year, for example, after learning about non-proﬁts and how they raise money, Sam Lee staged a Relay for Life at Holderness and learned ﬁrst-hand what it takes to motivate a group of people to give and raise money. Salamarie Frazier, on the other hand, took her knowledge of voice training and worked with a coach to put those theories to work on her own voice. The spring of senior year, rather than being an end to their high school careers, became a bridge to life after high school that not only provided them with valuable skills but also created a point of beginning.

As Nancy Sizer explains, “High school seniors need to live productively in the present even as they prepare intelligently for the future.” Senior Honors Thesis does just that. It gives seniors the time to pursue their passions and use their last year of high school in ways that matter to themselves and to the world beyond. The name of Holderness’ senior program has evolved, and so have its goals. And in the spring of , when all seniors will be required to complete a senior thesis, Holderness will accomplish a long-term goal set out in its Strategic Plan. But more importantly, all our seniors will be engaging in projects that challenge them intellectually and give them the freedom to pursue their passions. For some the projects will even mark the beginnings of lifelong passions.

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Girls Varsity Soccer by kelsey sullivan The girls varsity soccer team had an exciting season. While they did not make play-oﬀs, they were in the mix for a potential bid. They had many nail-biting games, and the girls often outmaneuvered the top teams in the league. The girls’ home game against soccer rival Brewster Academy ended in a - tie, while their game against New Hampton under the lights was a wonderful - victory in front of a big Holderness crowd. Overall they ended the season --. The team is losing two seniors— captain Nicole DellaPasqua and Celine Pichette—who have played crucial roles on the team for four years. Other seniors—captain Sarah Bell along with Kelly DiNapoli and Elena Bird—have also brought sweat and love to the game. Fortunately, the team has retained many strong players, and we look forward to working toward an even better season next fall.

Girls JV Soccer by eric ely The girls JV soccer team finished a successful  season with a winning record of --. Led by a solid group of senior captains—Molly Madden, KJ Sanger, Elain Wang, and Abby Abdinoor—the girls meshed quickly and bonded as a team even before they stepped on the field for their first match. With poise and confidence, first-year players Samantha Smith and Julia Thulander successfully ran the central midfield. They had help on the outside from Lizzy Duffy, Samantha Benoit, and Charlotte Bates; it was impossible to tell that the girls were all playing together for the first time. The Bulls defensive effort was led by three of the captains—Abby, Elena, and KJ. Added to the mix were two first-year players, Adrianna Quinn and Coach’s Award recipient, Laurel Sullivan. With injuries and illnesses seeming to run rampant in the defense, the girls were often asked to play different positions and lines. Goal-keeping duties were shared by Molly Madden and Caroline Mure, both of whom

Matt Gudas maneuvers around a player from Proctor during a game this fall.

had a number of outstanding games and seemed to enjoy working together. Outscoring their opponents - this season, the oﬀense was led by Sarah Alexander and Christina Raichle. Sharing time at the forward positions were Tram Ngoc Dao, Rhyan Leatherwood, and Thao Nguyen who received the Most Improved Award from her coaches.

Boys Varsity Soccer by craig antonides The boys varsity soccer team went into the season knowing it would be hard to match its record and level of play from the past couple years. With a reasonably large turnover last year, we realized we would need a year to rebuild. The team weathered a tough schedule with many road games and ﬁnished with a - record. Tying Andover early in the season let us know that we could match any team on our schedule, and our wins over kua, va, and New Hampton were all memorable with last-minute heroics. Our six ties are best described as battles; the team clearly played well enough to win but came up just short of success. We improved

throughout the season with the great leadership of our captains and left the pitch both satisﬁed and disappointed after many games. The team’s eﬀort throughout the season was commendable, and we have many great memories from the season.

Boys JV1 Soccer by george negroponte The boys JV soccer team had an excellent fall season and came a long way from where it started in early September. Our overall record was --, with several disappointing ties early on to teams we later beat. The highlights of the season included a two-win start, an incredible late tie on kua Day against a potent team on their home field, and finally a - loss to kua the following week at home. A loss does not sound like a highlight, but for ten to fifteen minutes during the first half, our boys came together and dominated the field, scoring three goals in quick succession. The loss was tough to swallow as kua came back in the second half and snuck away with the victory, but it marked the turning point in our season. After that

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game, we did not lose another game, replicating that ﬁfteen minutes of play for more and more of each game. A special thanks goes to our captains, junior Willem Brandwijk and senior Zygimantas Sirvydas. Congratulations to junior defender Taichi Okada, who earned the Coach’s Award, and ﬁrst-time goalkeeper Terrance Amorosa, who earned the Most Improved Award.

Boys JV2 Soccer by john lin The boys JV soccer team ended its season with a - record with a . gfa ( total goals for) and a . gaa ( total goals against). Our losses were by one or two goals only, and in each of those losing games, we were right in the mix. Aidan Kendall and Logan Twombly, both captains and four-year players on the Deuce, led us through the season in true Deuce form, mixing fun and camaraderie with good soccer. A season highlight, which shows the heart in this team, was killing the beep test on our second try—upping our team average from . to ., making us the most ﬁt JV team in recent memory. Congratulations to Coach’s Award winner Joey Casey, who epitomizes hustle, and our Most Improved Award winner, Alex Lash, who stepped into the goal on the ﬁrst day, equipped with only a very positive attitude. Go (silent) Bulls!

CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: Jesus Sanchez carries the ball through Kents Hill’s defense this fall; Lizzy Duﬀy cradles the ball to the ground during a win against Proctor; the varsity football team sets up for a play during a victorious game against Tilton.

game against Cardigan Mountain. After an early season loss, the boys had had this game circled on their calendars. Harrison Alva scored twice in the - victory, while Jack Sullivan earned the shutout. At the end of the season, ninth grader Aaron Harmatz earned the Most Improved Award, and classmate Bao Nguyen took home the Coach’s Award.

Boys JV3 Soccer by frank cirone After a fruitless  season, this fall’s edition of the JV boys soccer team had nowhere to go but up. With ﬁve returning players leading the way, they found themselves in contention at every game. Sophomore co-captain Jack Vatcher took charge with two early-season goals that helped to inspire the team. After a mid-season tie on the turf, the boys earned their ﬁrst victory against a previously undefeated team from Holderness Central School. The winning goal was credited to ninth-grader Henry Hall. The win was gratifying, but the boys wanted more and found success again in a

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must also be granted to the offensive line; Gordie Borek, Matty Thomas, Adam Pettengill, Christian Bladon, and CJ Sansing were able to open holes for the backs on a consistent basis. William Tessier, Charlie Day, Andy Zinck, Jake Rourke, and Bailey Walsh also saw action in the backfield. With  players returning next season, the coaching staff is already excited for the  season to begin!

Varsity Football by rick eccleston First, we owe special thanks to Coach Tom “Bosco” Eccleston for coming out of retirement and running one of the best defensive units in the league. It was a great season! The  Holderness varsity football team ended the season -. The oﬀense was led by the powerful running attacks of seniors Seery Donnan and Jesus Sanchez, who punished tacklers on every play. Seery led the team in rushing with  yards and averaged  yards a carry. Jesus rushed for  yards. This tandem made the Holderness oﬀense a tough unit to stop. Praise

JV Football by evan rosenstein Although the JV football team was not successful in competition, each member of the team improved a great deal. Young and inexperienced, the boys dedicated themselves to learning the game and building a solid repertoire of plays. Dave Leclerc received the Most Improved Award, while Will Tessier received the Coach’s Award; both players will be strong contributors to the varsity squad in the coming years. The boys were a pleasure to coach, and

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LEFT: Allie Solms in the NEPSAC quarterﬁnals against KUA. RIGHT: Cayla Penny runs through the fall leaves during her ﬁnish on the Upper Fields.

we look forward to working with many of them again next fall.

an undefeated record—it was an historic season in many ways.

development, heightened ﬁtness, and overall growth as a team.

Varsity Field Hockey

JV Field Hockey

Cross-Country Running

by doonie brewer While coaches would not allow the “u-word” to be used during the season, after the Tabor victory in OT, the team was proudly saying, “We’re undefeated!” With strong leadership from captains Macy Jones, Mackenzie Maher, and Michelle Hofmeister, the team improved daily and earned shutouts in eight games. For the th year in a row, the Bulls made it to postseason play. After defeating kua in the quarterﬁnals (-), the girls lost to a strong defensive team from Winsor (-). This was their only loss. The Most Improved Award went to Paige Pfenninger, who saved  of the  shots on goal during the regular season. The Coach’s Award went to Tess O’Brien, who has great passion for the game and an uncanny ability to see her teammates and quickly make smart decisions. Twenty years of playoﬀs, countless alumni cheering from the sidelines,

by kelsey philpot The JV field hockey team finished the season -- with prominent wins against Andover and kua. Senior co-captains, Kendra Morse and Libby Aldridge led the team dutifully and became strong mentors and role models for the young group of  athletes. The Coach’s Award was earned by sophomore Hannah Stowe for her admirable drive to improve and her selfless acts on the field. The Most Improved Award went to a newcomer (of the sport of field hockey and of Holderness), Grace Lawrence for her athleticism and eagerness to try new positions from forward to goalie. Many girls contributed to the success of the season—most notably, Lily Hamblin and Emily Clifford on the offensive line, and Celia Fleckner and Caroline Plante on defense. Although frustrated with many ties throughout the season (especially on Tabor Day), the girls demonstrated enormous skill

by nicole glew The  season was a memorable one for the Holderness cross-country team. The crew of novice and seasoned runners achieved wonderful synergy by the end of the fall and clinched both Lakes Region Championship titles on Proctor’s difficult course. The infamous trio of Fabian Stocek, Rion O’Grady, and Drew Houx snagged podium spots, while Charles Harker and Dan Do expertly displaced runners from our rival teams. Greta Davis and Cayla Penny (who ran despite a painful and debilitating hip flexor injury) had gutsy performances finishing rd and th overall. Senior Marissa Merrill had a breakthrough day which helped the team to assert its dominance and secure a convincing win. With two Lakes Region Championship titles under its belt, the team headed to Connecticut for the nepsac Championships. The boys ran away with third-place honors,

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SPORTS

LEFT: The rock climbers scale the cliﬀs in Rumney. RIGHT: The mountain bike team poses for a picture before a ride in Meriden, NH, on KUA Day.

which was the best ﬁnish we’ve seen in decades and was a proud moment for the school. The girls team got great exposure to the big race environment and left the championship race with lofty goals for next year. Coaches Pat Casey, Nicole Glew, and Chris Stigum were honored to work with such a terriﬁc and diverse collection of athletes and look forward to next fall!

Rock Climbing by erik thatcher The Holderness Climbing team had a completely new cast of characters this fall. I am in a new position running the program, my assistant coach Ms. Disney is new to the school and the sport, and all six of our climbers were new. This dynamic led to a season-wide trend of growth. The season, as usual, revolved around trips to the nearby sport-climbing mecca of Rumney Rocks, where students mastered basic vertical movements and explored a multitude of area cliﬀs. Many of our best days were on granite cliﬀs, where students learned to love

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bullet-hard rock, crack-climbing techniques, and traditional gear that is used to ascend the cliﬀs cleanly. Two days spent at Echo Crag in Franconia Notch opened their eyes to jamming and removing traditional gear in a fun single pitch environment. Four of the students then got to travel to North Conway to climb on Cathedral Ledge, doing such multi-pitch classics as Thin Air, Upper Refuse, and Bombardment. We were also lucky enough to have time to hike a number of the awesome local mountains on days oﬀ. The Coach’s Award this year went to Celeste Holland for her constant enthusiasm and willingness to help out. The Most Improved Award went to Alex Lehmann for throwing himself at every challenge he could from learning new techniques to getting up ever-harder climbs.

Mountain Biking

work and then proceeded to charge up the most difficult terrain in the region. The beginners improved daily, and within a month the distinction had disappeared. We are blessed with a great selection of trails in our area, but we set aside one day every week to improve our on-campus trail network. The pick and shovel work provided some rest for the boys’ legs, and the bridges and jumps we constructed should be fun next season. This group of seven guys was particularly enthusiastic about the speed and airtime involved in downhill riding, so we took trips to nearby lift-serviced downhill parks in Burke, VT and Northfield, NH. On our final day, we suited up in full-face helmets and pads and tackled the extreme terrain of Highland Mountain Bike Park in snowy conditions. We will be sorry to lose our captain, Jeff Hauser, but we are already excited to get back on the bikes next fall.

by andrew sheppe This year’s mountain bike team included veterans and raw recruits. We spent one day introducing skills at a well-established trail net-

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Developing Potential Leaders: Phil Peck’s Sabbatical Research When Phil first came to Holderness as a history teacher, Don and Pat Henderson gave him a piece of advice that Phil has never forgotten. They told him that if he loved teaching and loved working at Holderness School, then he should find opportunities to leave every seven or eight years, get a fellowship, teach in another country, be a guest coach of the US Team, or do something to enhance his perspective. Phil understood the value in this advice and has taken advantage of several opportunities throughout his time at Holderness. This year continues that pattern. Phil recognized that to be the best possible Head of School, he needed to leave Holderness and finish his doctorate. “I’m in a unique position,” Phil explained. “I taught at Holderness for  years before becoming the head of the school for the past twelve years. That’s a long time to work at one school. If I’m going to stay at Holderness for perhaps another ten years, the school will benefit from me having a transformative leadership experience outside of Holderness.” So when Phil asked the Board for a year to finish his doctorate, the Board fully supported him. “It’s been the hardest thing that I have ever done, but I feel incredibly blessed to have this opportunity. The Board has been very supportive,” explained Phil. In July, Phil packed his things, moved out of the Head’s house, and found an apartment in New York City. Over the summer, he began his sabbatical working alongside the Klingenstein Center Chair, Pearl Kane, teaching a class about leadership. This is not new for Phil who has been working at Columbia’s Teachers College each summer for the past twenty years. After receiving his Masters in , Phil began teaching a class for young history teachers during the Klingenstein Summer Program. More recently he has taught students in the Klingenstein Leadership Academy—from which Duane Ford, Steve Solberg, and Jory Macomber have all graduated. This summer

(and in ) Phil taught a course titled Private School Leadership. When school opened in the fall, Phil removed his teaching hat and settled down in earnest to work on his doctorate. He began by taking three classes—one that dealt with how adults learn and two that dealt with conducting research. In conjunction with his classes, Phil has been gathering data about what qualities are essential in prospective leaders and how schools can help develop these qualities. He has found that the feedback he has received from surveys and interviews mirrors much of the literature on leadership development. While his results are still preliminary, he has many important trends to share. First, individuals identified as potential leaders share many personal traits, including empathy, optimism, integrity, open-mindedness, and good judgment. As Phil has been quick to point out (referencing Carol Dweck and her work in defining a “growth” mindset instead of a “fixed” mindset), none of these traits are static. All can be developed through hard work and practice. Second, potential leaders have a strong work ethic. They are willing to volunteer, to work long hours to get the job done, and to take initiative in addressing issues. And the work they do is focused, thoughtful, purposeful, and in support of something greater than themselves. This is in line with research by thinkers such as Daniel Goleman (who sees motivation and “a propensity to pursue goals with energy and persistence” as a critical part of emotional intelligence) and Jim Collins (who defines Level  leaders as those who are humble but “driven to do what’s best for the organization”). Professional competence is the third trait that has emerged in Phil’s research. Potential leaders demonstrate organizational savvy, are collaborative in their approach, are committed to education, communicate well, and are organized. For these folks, how you get there is as important as where you’re going.

Phil and Robin Peck in Central Park.

Finally, potential leaders are those who demonstrate an interest in growth, whether through attending graduate school, actively seeking feedback, volunteering, or taking on new leadership responsibilities. “Quiet leadership,” as identified in Joseph Badaracco’s book Leading Quietly, is an essential part of what makes good organizations work. So, how do we develop these potential leaders, once they are identified? While there is plenty of literature and research on developing leadership in the business world and the public school world, there is little being done to understand the development of leaders in the independent school world. In order to define the process, Phil interviewed the country’s top head search consultants and association directors, and identified ten heads whose schools are “pipe lines” for headship. This winter he will interview those ten heads and then their most recent protégés who have gone on to become heads themselves. In the meantime, Phil has found that schools that nurture future leaders most likely

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provide individuals with leadership opportunities, support them in seeking professional development, mentor them openly and deliberately, and provide consistent, direct, and specific feedback about their work. Unfortunately, most schools do not recognize the importance of providing these opportunities. Holderness, in fact, is a bit of an exception. Its unique professional development program, particularly the van Otterloo, Henderson, Brewer Chair Program, provides one or two members of the faculty each year with the opportunity to spend time off-campus pursuing graduate or professional work. While these opportunities provide recipients with new experiences and new knowledge to bring back to the school, it also gives faculty members and administrators opportunities to temporarily take on new responsibilities as they fill in for their colleagues. Mr. Cirone, for instance, is serving as Acting Director of Residential Life this year while Mr. Ford is away on the Chair Program. This combination of “on-the-job” training as well as formal education through graduate school and workshops works well in preparing future leaders. Phil’s sabbatical has provided similar opportunities. Jory Macomber has had the opportunity to fill in for Phil and understand the duties and responsibilities of a Head of School first hand, while Kathy Weymouth and Chris Day have taken on roles as the Assistant Head of School and the Dean of Faculty respectively. “I have been really impressed with the leadership of Jory and the administrative team this year,” Phil said. “They are not only doing a great job running the school, but they are also moving forward on a number of important initiatives. I am incredibly thankful for all they are doing.” Through his research, however, Phil recognizes that there are other things Holderness can do. “There is both an art and a science to developing leadership,” explained Phil. “We don’t want to lose the art form involved in developing leaders, but at Holderness we do

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Phil poses with Neal Frei ’03 and his girlfriend during a study break this fall.

need to be more deliberate. We need to make sure we intentionally support the leaders in our community, give them real responsibilities, and provide them with speciﬁc feedback. You can’t be a leader without being a learner, and you can’t learn without feedback.” While Phil still has many more months of researching, thinking, and writing ahead of him, he is beginning to plan for his return to Holderness in the fall. When he returns, he hopes to focus his attention on the leadership of the school. For the faculty, staﬀ, and administration, he wants to set aside time and provide opportunities for developing their leadership skills. For the students he wants to continue to tweak the leadership program so that they are given authentic tasks with real responsibilities and are given feedback from both the students and adults in the community. “We need to be more deliberate about the alignment of leadership development through-

out the entire organization from the new ninth-grader, to the teachers and administrators, all the way to the board chair,” Phil emphasized. In the meantime, Phil will continue with his research, interviewing heads of schools throughout the country and trying to understand how best to support and train the next generation of heads of schools. His work will be challenging and complicated, but in the style of a true leader and in Phil’s unique way, he will take pleasure in the hard work and in the fact that he will be better prepared to lead Holderness in the coming years.

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Ed Cayley: In Memoriam May , –August ,  “There is a Closeness and a Feeling of Good Will Between Faculty and Students.” “If you were to see Mr. E.C. Cayley coming down the steps of the United Nations Building, you would think he was a British diplomat. He has a pleasant face complimented by a pair of striking, light blue eyes with a friendly twinkle, and a mouth with a thin mustache, which breaks from time to time into a slightly sheepish smile. Every once in a while he will pause in the middle of one of his crisp sentences to choose just the right word to convey as accurately as possible a particular thought.” The above quote is pulled from The Bull in , when Ed Cayley began teaching at Holderness. And although the students had just begun to get to know him, they already had an accurate understanding of who he was. Passionate about order and tradition, Mr. Cayley also relished the warmth and sincerity of Holderness. When he and his wife, Norma, retired from Holderness in , it was written in the Alumni News, “The Cayleys are as comfortable with the youngest Holderness student as the oldest school alumnus. The Cayleys know how to listen and understand. Their warmth and sympathy for people somehow coexist with their love of tradition and form.” Born in Toronto in , Mr. Cayley received an education at Trinity College School and Trinity College at the University of Toronto. He served with distinction in the Second World War as a submariner in the Royal Navy, achieving the rank of lieutenant commander. It wasn’t until  that he found his true calling in education, ﬁrst at Trinity College and later at Holderness School. Mr. Cayley also was the headmaster at Stanstead College in Stanstead, Quebec for four years in between his years at Holderness. Mr. Cayley came to Holderness to serve as the assistant headmaster under Don Hagerman

Ed Cayley with his wife, Norma, in front of Schoolhouse in 1975.

but became much more than just a teacher and administrator. He coached, oversaw a dorm, advised students about college, and perhaps most importantly, became a moral compass in the Holderness community. Perhaps his strongest defense of Holderness and its morals occurred in  when the assistant chaplain at that time said in an interview in the student newspaper that “the people who are the least aware of students’ problems are the faculty that live right on top of them.” Mr. Cayley responded to the interview in the next issue: “I reject unequivocally the premise that the school is not concerned with the individual nor personoriented. There is a closeness and a feeling of good will between faculty and students which, I think, is not found in too many other schools.” Although Mr. Cayley and his wife retired and left Holderness in , they continued to

keep in touch and returned to Holderness when they could. In , after receiving a fund-raising letter from then Treasurer of the Board, Peter Kimball, Mr. Cayley wrote back explaining that as a retired school teacher he had little to contribute to the Annual Fund. He did, however, send along his congratulations on a job well done; in the margins of the letter, Mr. Cayley had written a large A+! After retirement Mr. Cayley lived in Toronto with Norma and was surrounded by friends and family. He died on August , . His years of service to Holderness were invaluable and undoubtedly contributed to the school’s consistency during some of its most tumultuous years. Mr. Cayley need not concern himself with his ﬁnancial contributions to the school; his contributions to the moral and educational fabric of the school were priceless.

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Answering Three Big Questions Jim Hamblin Selected as the Next Chair of the Board of Trustees At just about the same time that Jake Barton learned that he had been selected as President of the School for the – school year, Jim Hamblin was asked to be the Chair of the Board of Trustees. Neither man sought his position, but both, with the help of similar election procedures, were selected by their peers to be the best person for the job. “Many boards have an inner circle from which they choose their next leader,” explained Will Prickett, who will finish serving as the Chair this spring. “This Board does not; everyone is on a level playing field.” A decade ago, the Chair was largely chosen by the previous Chair and the Head of the School. But when Gary Spiess became Chair of the Board, he recognized that it wasn’t an appropriately transparent process and decided to involve all the trustees in selecting their leader. He and the next Chair, Piper Orton, created a formal process in which all the members of the Board are interviewed by members of the Governance and Nominating Committee and asked three questions. First, they are asked to identify the challenges they believe Holderness School faces in the near and long term. Second, they are asked to identify the qualities that they believe the next Chair will need in order to effectively lead the Board through these challenges. Third, they are asked which current Board member or members they believe have those skills and will be the most effective leaders of the Board. From that process, a clear standout usually emerges. Last spring when the current Board members began the process, there were several possible candidates. “The greatest need for the school in the upcoming years will be maintaining the sustainability of the school’s financial plans and goals,” explained Will. “The person will also need to be able to keep both eyes on a lot of moving parts.”

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Will Prickett

Jim Hamblin

As the Governance and Nominating Committee carried out the process, Jim Hamblin ’ became the clear and unanimous choice of the Board. Jim has been the school’s treasurer for the last four years, and his extensive business background, most recently as the ceo of Garnet Hill, allows him to think strategically as well as operationally. As Jim transitions into his new role on the Board, he will have the help and guidance of his predecessor, who is also a very capable and accomplished leader. Will began serving on the Board in  as the President of the Alumni Association and became the Chair of the Board in . He was instrumental in making the board’s vision of an : student/ faculty ratio in the residential dorms a reality. His background as a trial attorney was also crucial in creating policies and protocols that have helped the school navigate the world’s current legal culture. And although Will’s term as Chair should have ended a year ago, he agreed to stay on another year in order to provide consistency during Phil’s sabbatical and in order to provide guidance to Jim. “Will’s calm but deliberate demeanor has allowed him to provide dynamic leadership as

well as a steady hand on the helm,” Head of School Phil Peck explained. “He led us through our most recent strategic plan and constantly keeps the board and the administration focused on achieving that vision.” And although both Will and Jim rely on their experiences in the business world to inform their leadership on the Board, they also rely on other experiences as well. Both Will and Jim graduated from Holderness and now both have children who attend the school. “I have an emotional connection to Holderness that enables me to make my work on the Board a priority,” Will explained. “It has also helped me balance discussions on the Board and help others see the big picture; it is never about one issue but many.” Jim also ﬁnds his perspective as a graduate and parent valuable to his work on the board. While his perspective as an alumnus has given him knowledge of the past, he explained that his role as a parent helps him understand the school’s current issues. This combined knowledge, in turn, helps him look into the future and understand the direction the school needs to follow. CONTINUED ON PAGE 46

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HAMBLIN, CONTINUED FROM PAGE 45 And what is the direction the school needs to follow? “In some respects it hasn’t changed,” Will explained. “The school remains strong because of its programs and the faculty and staff who work here. However, the world has changed.” “The business of education is more competitive,” Jim added, “and Holderness has become more complex; there are more offerings and more scaffolding than there used to be.” In the complex balance between tradition and growth, Holderness still remains a school where sit-down dinners are required and teachers go out of their way to help students learn. Even the new buildings on campus were built to enhance the traditional values of family and community. But new technology and teaching methods have changed the way Holderness teachers teach, and the faces of the students reflect the school’s change to a more global approach to education. But even though the issues that Jim faces as the new Chair of the Board are complex, he is prepared. Will has not only left the school in great shape, he has also worked carefully with Jim to help him understand the job that is in front of him. In addition, Jim has the support of the rest of the Board. They have already, through the votes they cast last spring, let him know that his leadership is valued. It is the same vote of confidence that Jake Barton received from his peers last spring as well. There may be other selection processes that work for other schools, but at Holderness, the leaders we have selected have taken care of and continue to take care of this school, sustaining its tradition and values while at the same time encouraging its growth and improvement. With this in mind, we are grateful for all that Will Prickett has done for Holderness School over the past  years, and we are confident that Jim Hamblin will continue to provide the Board with strong and steady leadership.

Three Parents and Two Graduates Join the Holderness Board of Trustees In the fall, as Holderness students began classes, six new recruits joined the Board of Trustees. Three of them are parents of current Holderness students, while two graduated from Holderness themselves. One of the Trustees was also a former President of the School. With diverse personal interests and careers, their knowledge and skills complement the needs of the Board and provide leadership in a variety of areas. Jon Baum, for example, is Chairman and Chief Executive Oﬃcer of The Dreyfus Corporation and a member of its Board of Directors; he serves as Chairman of mbsc Securities Corporation, the distributor of the Dreyfus Family of Funds. Additionally, he is a member of the Operating Committee of bny Mellon and the Executive Committee of bny Mellon Asset Management. An alumnus of Bucknell University, he is active in the Investment Company Institute and serves on its Board of Governors. In addition to being an active trustee of Holderness School, Jon is involved with a variety of charitable organizations, including Fisher House Foundation and Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Because two of his sons have attended Holderness (Austin ’ and Zach ’), Jon has a sense of commitment to the school that goes beyond his involvement on the Board. “Holderness has become part of our family,” Jon explained. “It’s nice to get away from a business setting and be involved in education and in the lives of children, but it is also a way for me to give back.” As a Trustee at Holderness, Jon is serving on the Investment Committee and the Finance and Audit Committee. One of Susan Paine’s sons also attends Holderness and will graduate with the class of . In a diﬀerent era, Susan was in the second graduating class of boarding girls at Holderness in . Later she graduated from University of Pennsylvania and Hastings

College of the Law. She and her husband, Dexter Paine ’, have three children. Susan enjoys working with teenagers and animals and is serving on the Intellectual Life Committee and the Buildings and Grounds Committee. Although Harry Sheehy does not have any direct or familial ties to Holderness, his work in higher education makes his leadership on the Board invaluable. Harry graduated from Williams College in  and is currently the Director of Athletics at Dartmouth College and serves on the ncaa’s Championship Cabinet. Mr. Sheehy previously served as the Director of Athletics at Williams College (–). Prior to that, he was the Head Men’s Basketball Coach at Williams (– ). Harry is a member of the School Life Committee and the Board of Governance and Nominating Committee. While his son is still too young to attend Holderness, Jerome Thomas is a  graduate of Holderness and was the President of Holderness during the – school year. He currently lives in New York City and is a managing director at Babson Capital Management llc, a global investment management ﬁrm. He also serves on the Board of scan-ny, an organization dedicated to providing support to at-risk families and children living in multiple communities within New York City. Jerome holds degrees from Columbia University and Harvard University. Although Jerome only attended Holderness for two years, he describes his time here as pivotal. “When Holderness was ﬁrst described to me as a ‘prep school,’” Jerome explained, “I understood that to mean it was designed to prepare its students for college. Was I ever wrong. I graduated academically, spiritually, culturally, and socially enriched. I was prepared for life.” Jerome explains that he has many goals as a trustee. For example, he decided to join the

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New members of the Board of Trustees, clockwise from left: Rev. Robert Hirschfeld, Jerome Thomas, Jon Baum, Jan Hauser, Harry Sheehy, and Susan Paine.

School Life Committee because he would like to enhance school diversity in its complete definition and application, including “increasing ethnic, social, socio-economic, geographic (domestic and international), and spiritual diversity.” Jerome is also a member of the Investment Committee. Jan Hauser is a partner in the National Office of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). She is also a member of the Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Council, the Institute of Management Accountants’ Financial Reporting Committee, and a past member of the Emerging Issues Task Force. Jan and her husband, Bill, live in Mendham, New Jersey, and also have a home in Ludlow, Vermont. Their oldest son, Jeff, is a member of the Holderness class of . Jan and Bill also have two younger sons, Matt and Daniel. As a member of the School Life Committee, Jan says she wants to focus on creating and strengthening the positive high school experience

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for Holderness students. “I would like for current and prospective parents to know that their children will thrive at Holderness,” Jan explained. “I believe this is fundamental to the Holderness experience, but can always be improved; a happy student will accomplish more and be motivated to reach his or her potential.” Jan also said she is looking forward to her new role and the frequent visits she will need to make to campus. “I feel so energized about the great work being done at Holderness and the sincere caring exhibited by faculty and staﬀ,” she said. “I also love being on campus and watching the interaction between the students. There is a genuine bonding and friendship that cannot be artiﬁcially created.” Bishop Rob Hirschfeld is also delighted to be a part of the Board of Trustees because he believes it supports students in their spiritual journeys toward lives of meaning, purpose, and service. The Bishop grew up attending the Episcopal Church in Cheshire, Connecticut.

While attending Choate Rosemary Hall in nearby Wallingford, he was supported in his spiritual questionings and theological ruminations by a strong department of philosophy and ethics. Though the chapel at Choate in the mid-s was rarely used for religious purposes, he traces his initial vocation to ministry in the church to those years. Prior to becoming the tenth bishop of New Hampshire, Rob served as priest in three academic settings: Christ Church, New Haven; St. Mark’s Chapel at the University of Connecticut; and Grace Church, Amherst, Massachusetts. He is married to Polly Ingraham, and they have three children: William, Cora, and Henry. Bishop Hirschfeld serves ex oﬃcio as the President of the Board of Trustees. It is with pleasure that we welcome the newest members of the Board of Trustees to Holderness, and we look forward to their guidance and leadership in the years to come.

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ALUMNI IN THE NEWS

Like Father, Like Son—Eventually Bill Clough ’86 Last September Bill Clough ’ was named Head of the Nichols School. Heads of School run in the family, but the younger Bill got around to that only after washing a few windows. Bill Clough’s mother Ki once told him while he was young that he would make a great teacher. “So by the time I got to Colby College,” Bill says, “the only thing I knew for certain about my career plans was that I did not want to be a teacher.” The problem wasn’t with the job itself. It had more to do with being young and ﬁnding out who he was—and having that process complicated by the circumstance of sharing his name with a father who had built, let’s say, quite a name for himself as a teacher. Young Bill Clough was a “faculty brat,” the son of Bill Clough ’, who taught and held administrative positions at Holderness for two decades—from  to , with one year three-year hiatus in between—before leaving Holderness to become the long-time Head of Gould Academy. Of course for much of young Bill’s time here, education was beside the point. “I thought Holderness was just a big playground that had been built for me and my friends,” Bill says. “It had a hockey rink, a basketball court, trees to climb—I was generally oblivious to the fact that it was a school. As I got older, I began to understand that I was growing up in an extended family of teachers, and I just can’t imagine a better place to grow up.” Bill did his best, though, to not just grow up, but to grow away into what he describes now as “that other life.” He met a girl while he was studying history at Colby—Nannie, now his wife—who traveled the country with him in an old Toyota after graduation. Once they reached the Paciﬁc Northwest, they set up a windowwashing business—work-force of two, with a ladder and some squeegees and soap. The best thing about that enterprise was its portability,

and it went with Bill and Nannie as they wandered from Portland to Seattle to Boulder. They liked the Rockies well enough for Bill to take a “real job,” he says, in  with the Colorado Rockies, the Major League Baseball club then in its first year of operation. Bill was in marketing and sales, trying to persuade local businesses, for example, to buy blocks of seats. “I drove into the office before light, drove home after dark, and I found that I lacked the patience to sit at a desk all day,” he says. By then he was thinking that Mom might have been right. He remembered all the things his father had done at Holderness besides sit at a desk. He remembered the satisfaction his father had taken in working with kids, and also with like-minded adults, in being part of an independent school’s extended family. So he and Nannie came back East for a teaching job at the Kents Hill School, and then at Tabor Academy. He earned Master’s degrees from Harvard (in education) and the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury. In  Bill joined the Berkshire School as the Dean of Faculty and a year later became the Assistant Head of School. During that time, Berkshire experienced what has been described as a renaissance in its fortunes: three fully-funded building projects, a doubling of the school’s endowment, a growth in application numbers by  percent, an increase in annual parent giving by  percent, an increase in annual giving to over . million, and the assembly of a highly regarded faculty and administrative team. “Well, the truth is that any success we have had at Berkshire has been because of the efforts of so many great people,” Bill says. “It’s been a team effort all the way, and most important, it’s been a great deal of fun.” And it’s that sort of fun that helped him to become—like that other Bill Clough—a Head of School. In September the Nichols School of Buffalo, New York, named Bill its twelfth Head beginning on July , . “Bill’s personal ease

Bill Clough.

combined with his thoughtful answers impressed each of the advisory groups,” says Jane Cox Hetrick, president of Nichols’ board of trustees. “In his initial letter to the committee Bill wrote, ‘Young people won’t risk anything worthwhile unless the adults in their lives model the way, so their teachers must be risk-takers themselves, committed to excellence, willing to try and even fail.’ This deep commitment to students and to teaching resonated with all who met Bill.” Founded in , Nichols is a co-ed day school with an enrollment of , and one not unlike where he grew up. “It has the same combination of high achievement on the one hand, and this real sense of humility, on the other hand, that you see at Holderness,” Bill says. At this point in his life, Bill Clough is no less grounded himself. He took some risks and gave that other life a good college try. He got into the Toyota, he wielded that squeegee, he jockeyed that desk. But his commitment to excellence led him back to his old playground, or some good facsimile of it, and an extended family big enough for two great teachers with the same name.

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ALUMNI IN THE NEWS

Not So Unknown Anymore Rob McKersie ’82 Dr. Rob McKersie ’ is board president of a volunteer nonprofit whose under-the-radar work in rural Nepal is the subject of a prize-winning new documentary film. So yeah, Rob’s in the movie. “During the end of March and early April last year [], I had the good fortune of combining my medical training as a second-year family medicine resident with a long-held ambition by being one of four doctors who hiked into the seldom trekked north-central area of Nepal bringing medical care and supplies to two remote villages. Our trek, which lasted six weeks, was supported by six cooking staff, forty-one porters, and five medical assistants from Kathmandu. During this fortnight of many very memorable experiences, our medical team saw over  patients, partook in two helicopter rescues, and walked through some of the most beautiful scenery in the world.” So wrote Dr. Rob McKersie in the spring  issue of Holderness School Today. Since then Rob has fulfilled that ambition many times over, making repeated treks into remote parts of Nepal to provide volunteer medical services. He’s authored a book about his experiences—In the Foothills of Medicine: A Young Doctor’s Journey from the Inner City of Chicago to the Mountains of Nepal (iUniverse, ), and now he’s one of the subjects of a prize-winning documentary film, Hearts in the Himalayas, directed by Debi Lang for Caring for the World Films. The real subject of the film is Himalayan HealthCare, a volunteer-driven nonprofit founded in  expressly to provide primary health care, community education, and economic development to rural Nepal. hhc’s track record of success and low public profile made its work a natural subject for Caring for the World Films. “We search the planet for sustainable, relatively unknown charitable organizations which have limited resources and

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A detail from the movie poster for Hearts in the Himalayas, Dr. McKersie’s ﬁlm.

a compelling story to tell,” says the film company’s website. Director Lang filmed her documentary very much from a Nepalese perspective, with nothing staged or scripted and with dozens of local villagers trained to participate on the film crew. But Rob, himself a long-time volunteer for hhc, is now that organization’s board president, and he shares camera time with hhc founder Anil Parajuli in telling the story of hhc’s Megh Bahadur Parajuli Community Hospital, which became a beacon of hope for , people during Nepal’s – civil war. Hearts in the Himalayas premiered in Boston this fall. Since then it has been screened in New York City, in Buffalo, at Dartmouth College, and at the University of Colorado at Boulder. It’s also been racking up awards: two Silver Omni Awards in the categories of Documentary and Public Service Media; two Bronze Omni Awards for Director Lang in the categories of Directing and Cinematography;

and an Award of Merit in the Women Filmmaker from the Best Shorts Competition. “What hhc is doing in Nepal can be replicated in other developing countries,” Rob says. “Hearts in the Himalayas objectively and accurately showcases the success of our sustainable three-prong approach that empowers the people of this young democracy, and we are excited to make it available for all to see.” But you don’t have to wait for the ﬁlm to come to your local megaplex. Just go to the hhc website—http://www.himalayanhealthcare.org—click “play,” and prepare for inspiration.

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ALUMNI IN THE NEWS

Yep, Clooney Owes Him Big Time…

The cast of Nat Faxon’s sitcom “Ben and Kate”: Echo Kellum, Nat Faxon, Maggie Elizabeth Jones, Dakota Johnson, and Lucy Punch.

Nat Faxon ’93 After collecting an Oscar for co-scripting The Descendants, Nat Faxon ’ landed a leading role on “Ben and Kate,” a Fox Network sitcom. Nat Faxon was in the news so much last fall that we hardly know where to begin. So where do we…? After years of struggling to survive— but surviving!—as an actor/writer/producer/ director/comedian in Hollywood, something pretty nice fell Nat’s way last February when he and his friend Jim Rash both won Oscars for writing the adapted screenplay for The Descendants, a ﬁlm starring George Clooney. Long before that Nat had auditioned—one of his many auditions—for the male lead role in the pilot episode of a sit-com then in development. No doubt it was a good audition, but it could be that the Oscar helped as well. The very next morning Nat’s phone rang with the news that he had the part. The sit-com got picked up by the Fox Network and debuted in prime time on October .

The show is “Ben and Kate,” and it co-stars Dakota Johnson, the daughter of actors Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, and whose credits include the films  Jump Street and The Social Network. Here’s how The Boston Globe (“‘Ben and Kate’ finds something extra in the ordinary,” //) describes the show’s premise: The show “is about a brother and sister who take care of each other, when they’re not accidentally screwing up each other’s lives. Kate is a responsible single mother working as a waitress, raising sweet -year-old daughter Maddie. She hasn’t had time for romance, since she got pregnant with Maddie her senior year in high school. She’s in a major rut. Ben is a screw-up and a drifter, who always seems to be running away from or into trouble. He’s a man-child who’s obsessed with his ex-girlfriend. [In the first episode] Kate reluctantly decides to let Ben live with her and share parenting duties. Thus, an odd couple is born. She needs to loosen up; he needs tighter focus.” The chemistry on the set is good. “We are close enough now that Dakota feels it’s okay to

say how long my ear hair is, out loud, to a large group of people,” Nat told the Post. And one of the reasons the E! Network loves Nat (“‘Ben and Kate’ preview: Five reasons we love Nat Faxon,” //) is that he’s got George Clooney on speed dial. Will Clooney do a guest shot? “It feels like he should, you know,” Nat told E! “After everything that I’ve done for him, it just feels like he should.” E! admits that Nat was joking, but: “Put in the call, Faxon. Make it happen.” It’s tough for a new sitcom to last, even with a Clooney guest shot. “Ben and Kate” might already be a footnote in television history by the time this article appears, but Nat may still be our role model. He and Jim Rash (who currently has a role on the nbc sitcom “Community”) spent the past summer on Massachusetts’ South Shore directing The Way, Way Back, a film they had co-written. Starring Steve Carell, the film will play on the festival circuit next summer. Oh, and there was an article about that too, in some media outlet called The New York Times: “Coming of age, from script to screen,” (//). editor’s note: Well, it happened. As hst was going to print in January, Fox Television pulled the plug on “Ben and Kate.” Remaining episodes are being pushed to a later date, airing possibly next summer, said the Hollywood Reporter (“Fox officially cancels ‘Ben and Kate,’ shuts down production,” //). “Comedies, particularly those on Tuesday, have not fared especially well on any network this season,” continued the Reporter, citing a number of other cancellations. But on the other hand, the new film that Nat co-wrote and co-directed with Jim Rash, The Way, Way Back, received a standing ovation after its debut at the Sundance Film Festival. The film was quickly snatched up by Fox Searchlight for summer distribution. “A fantastic and heart-warming film,” said Firstshowing.net. More about that in our next issue.

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ALUMNI IN THE NEWS

Out There at the Limits of What’s Possible Nikki Kimball ’89 Nikki Kimball ’ runs a very long trail, breaks a speed record, stars in a film, and raises money for young runners. If you happened to be hiking Vermont’s famous Long Trail in the latter part of last August, a blur might have blown by you in tank top and running shorts. If you happened to have been on a part of the trail with good camera values, there might have been a film crew there too. That blur would have been Nikki Kimball, who continues to chalk up impressive feats as one of the world’s top ultra-runners. She is a three-time winner of the North American Ultra-Runner-of-the-Year Award, three-time winner of the Western States  Mile, and winner as well of the Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc race. It’s a resume that already places her among the greatest distance runners of her generation. But this particular feat in August involved breaking the speed record for the Long Trail, a -mile footpath traversing the vertical length of Vermont, through its back woods and across the peaks of the Green Mountains. The Long Trail, according to the Green Mountain Club’s guide, is “steep in some places, muddy in others, and rugged in most.” She started on August  at Troy, Vermont, up near the Canadian border. Five days, seven hours, and  minutes later she crossed the Massachusetts border near Williamstown. That bested the previous woman’s record by better than two full days. Nikki is a Vermont native, but these days she lives in Bozeman, MT, and the film crew was from Fours Five Productions, also based in Bozeman. Working in partnership with Montana pbs, the film-makers followed Nikki through every step of her preparation for the run, and then through many steps of the run itself. The company says on its website, “Our

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Nikki Kimball smiles for the camera before her attempt to run the Vermont Long Trail in record time.

film will show how Nikki survives this incredible ordeal, in her quest to push the limits of what people consider possible, both physically and psychologically.” Entitled “The Long Trail,” the one-hour film will be broadcast on Montana public television later this year. Let it be noted that Nikki’s ordeal had another impressive dimension as well. It was a fundraiser for Girls on the Run Vermont, a nonprofit organization that teaches pre-teen girls self-respect and healthy lifestyles through running. “For a first attempt, I couldn’t be more pleased,” Nikki told The North Face, the athletic clothing manufacturer that helps sponsor her running. “The overall experience was amaz-

ing, and I learned so much about myself, the trail, and my crew. But the bigger goal for me was to inspire women and girls of all ages, and to show that there’s an equal place for women in professional sports. I hope I did a little bit of that today.” Nikki does a little bit of that every day, actually, just by being who she is. But then she keeps exceeding that.

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ALUMNI IN THE NEWS

Back From the Dark Side Tyler Hamilton ’90 Tyler Hamilton’s insider’s account of the corruption of professional bike racing is the best book treatment of that yet, says The New York Times and others. In  Tyler Hamilton won America’s first gold medal in cycling at the Athens Olympics. As an athlete then he was famous not only for his racing prowess, but for his ability to endure pain. “In  he crashed near the start of the three-week Giro d’Italia and fractured his shoulder,” writes Ian Austen in The New York Times (“Bicycle Thieves: World-Class Cycling’s Drug Trade,” //). “He finished second overall but needed  teeth recapped. A year later he further enriched his dentist by continuing to ride, and grind his teeth after breaking his collar bone during the first stage of the Tour de France.” That ability to endure pain has been tested ever since, because later that year Tyler tested positive for blood doping and was banned from racing. He denied the charge and spent more than a million dollars defending himself. In fact he denied the charges with such ferocious conviction that it seemed like there might be something to his charges of incompetence on the part of the test handlers. Well, in fact there was: they accused Tyler of transfusing another person’s blood, when in fact he had doped his own, injecting a cloned human hormone—erythropoietin, or epo—into his bloodstream. Wrong-headed or not, the test results stood, and later Tyler was stripped of his gold medal. He might have quietly dropped into obscurity then, but lately he has opted for a different sort of anguish on the world stage—that of a confessed cheat, as related in harrowing detail in a book co-authored with journalist Daniel Coyle: The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-Ups, and Winning at All Costs (Bantam Books). Coyle is also the author of Lance Armstrong’s War (Harper, ), and The New

York Times calls his and Tyler’s book “the broadest, most accessible look at cycling’s drug problem to date.” In it Tyler describes how his and Lance Armstrong’s cycling team—once it attracted the US Postal Service as a sponsor— moved “from the cycling backwater of the United States to racing in Europe in .” There epo use was already rampant. The hormone stimulates the creation of oxygen-rich red blood cells, “boosting performance by about five percent, or, according to the book, ‘roughly the difference between first place in the Tour de France and the middle of the pack.’” Eventually Tyler saw only one way to stay on that team. “After a series of humiliating results, Mr. Hamilton accepted a ‘red egg,’ a capsule of less powerful testosterone, from the team,” says the Times. “He viewed it as a ‘badge of honor,’ a sign that the team thought he was worthy of doping. Syringes filled with powerful epo soon followed. Mr. Armstrong joined Mr. Hamilton on the Postal Service team after his recovery from cancer. They became neighbors, flew around in private jets to doping rendezvous, injected epo together, and regularly talked shop about doping, according to Mr. Hamilton.” The Secret Race debuted in September near the top of the New York Times best-seller list, and the book has attracted widespread attention. Tyler was Author of the Week in the September  issue of The Week. There he elaborates not only on the importance of confessions such as his, but also his contention that too much effort has gone into punishing individual racers, and too little into gauging the roles of team owners, sponsors, race organizers, and the sport’s bureaucracy. “Before we move forward, we have to address the past,” he says in The Week. “It’s been addressed to a point, but people only wanted to go so far. The whole truth needs to be told. Cycling needs to be weeded out from the top.” The New York Times charges that “Mr. Hamilton lets himself off lightly,” but Sports Illustrated, in its review of The Secret Race, is

Tyler Hamilton.

more sympathetic (“Guide to a Broken Tour,” //). The sports magazine says that the most valuable contribution of Tyler’s book “is to demonstrate how understandable it was for a pro bike rider in the mid-s to go to the dark side…. Even as Hamilton expresses his regret for his decision to dope, the reader fully grasps how and why he made it.” editor’s note: You might have heard that in January Lance Armstrong—in an interview with Oprah Winfrey—confessed to the use of performance-enhancing drugs. In a January  interview with Yahoo! Sports (“Switching gears: Tyler Hamilton’s feelings about Lance Armstrong change”), Tyler said that he no longer hated Armstrong, but neither has Hamilton apologized to him. “He doesn’t need to call me, doesn’t need to apologize to me,” Tyler said, adding that Armstrong’s admission was “a great step for Lance Armstrong and the sport of cycling. Not a huge step, but a very signiﬁcant one because he basically got the ball rolling.”

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ALUMNI IN THE NEWS

Frantic, Punky, and Larger Than Life Hairless giants of the manly arts During his recent world tour, Franz kept a blog of his experiences on the road. Below is an excerpt from an entry he wrote during his travels in Mongolia in October 2012.

Cover artwork from the latest album by Franz Nicolay

Franz Nicolay ’95 The new CD by Franz Nicolay ’ is hot in the blogosphere, and Franz’s reflections on a life on the road are breaking into print. In our fall issue we reported that Do the Struggle, the third CD by punk troubadour Franz Nicolay had just been released and had garnered some fine early reviews. The reviews are still coming in and continue to be just fine. “Franz Nicolay is a grown-ass musician,” says Mike Ostrov of “Nine Bullets.” “He’s a monster lyricist and a virtuoso showman. Like Peckinpah or Degas or Cather, Nicolay’s art is near relentless—the listener is advised to be patient and pay attention. Like Jonathan Richman or David Berman, his perspective covers  degrees: he doesn’t miss a nuance or mix a metaphor. But he’s also a genius with melody, fusing together punk polkas and klezmer discos and Appalachian show tunes into something catchy and changed.” “He’s a great storyteller and wordsmith,” says Jimmy Norville of “Punknews.” “He paints pictures of scenes in between coming up with slogan-esque lyrics like, ‘Never trust a man without a horror story,’ and the slightly lengthi-

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If there was ever a song I didn’t expect to hear crackling through the overmatched PA at the Nomad Olympics in Ulan Bataar, Mongolia, it was Aerosmith’s “Mama Kin.” It was no stranger than anything else happening on the stadium field, though: the annual Naadam Festival celebrates the so-called “three manly arts” of horseracing, wrestling, and archery; as well as the manly diversion of sheep anklebone shooting, which took place in a nearby pavilion. We had bought the tourist-priced tickets to the opening ceremonies in the local ,-ish stadium, involving the marching in of the Mongol “flags,” which looked like nothing so much as Muppet wigs on sticks. The PA announcer had the guttural, nationalist enthusiasm of a wrestling play-by-play man, which was appropriate, since the field was now full of giant, hairless Mongolian men in light blue Speedos and what I can only describe as skin-tight, lavender or red arm coverings tied across their bare chests with a bit of string. (At one point in the past, wrestlers wore full shirts. After a woman was found to have competed in a match, the uniform was altered to expose their, in some cases still pretty womanly, chests.)

er ‘Joy/Like love and sleep/ Evades its pursuer/ But it lets itself be found.’” Adds Miss Dolly Mod about the CD in “My Old Kentucky Blog,” “As should be expected, it’s a doozy. Frantic, punky, and larger than life, as is the man himself, the album is the dramatic culmination of the countless styles of music this gypsy-hearted troubadour does best.” This past summer and fall Franz toured through Europe, Russia, and Mongolia. vice Magazine has published an excerpt from Franz’s tour diaries (you can read a sample in the accompanying sidebar) and Franz is cur-

rently working on a book about that experience. He is also one of the contributors to The Road Most Traveled by Chuck Ragan (Milner Crest, ). That book is a collection of essays by touring musicians.

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Blankets and Diapers, Water Tables and Ecoysytems

Three Saba girls (Jessica ’06, Ashley ’05, and Brooke ’05) with Ben Tomaszewski ’06 at Family Day 2005.

Jessica ’06 and Brooke Saba ’05 They worked on opposite sides of the globe, but sisters Jessica ’ and Brooke Saba ’ both helped people and communities regain equilibrium in the wake of natural disaster. The common theme this past fall for sisters Jessica and Brooke Saba was “hurricane”—and its aftermath. For the past two years Jess has been a volunteer for SparkRelief, a platform for community-supported disaster relief that helps connect people with resources in areas aﬀected by natural disasters. “We work to make disaster relief more eﬃcient,” says Jess. “And there are so many phases to the process: preparation, search and rescue, relief, recovery, rebuilding, social policy, and so on.” Jess lives part of the year in Brooklyn, NY, and in October disaster became a local phenomenon when Hurricane Sandy pummeled

the New Jersey coast and the New York City metropolitan area. She also writes a blog that she posts to The Huﬃngton Post—impressionmuseum.tumblr.com—and a November  posting, for example, begins, “It may not seem far, but the -mile trip from Brooklyn to the Rockaways on a dwindling supply of gas carries weighted uncertainty.” The car contained Jess and three of her neighbors; also—“trays of hot meals donated by local restaurants, ﬂashlights, diapers, paper towels, blankets purchased from dollar stores, and cans of cat food.” This was nine days after the hurricane, and the hard-hit Rockaways was a particular concern of the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, since a number of Williamsburg businesses have expanded in that direction. Jess carried donations both public and private to a place where a number of those businesses were washed away, and where displaced home-owners were doing their best to

rebuild. Meanwhile gas was hard to find all through the area. “The gas—however sparse—is worth the trip to the Rockaways,” Jess wrote. “Gather supplies, fill the car, hand donations directly to the people who need them, and provide hope with your kindness and compassion. Speak to people—ask their needs and gather contact information, and spread the word.” Meanwhile Jess’s sister Brooke has been volunteering for a project called Sadhana Forest, which began in  after a cyclone destroyed crops and flattened homes in an area on the outskirts of a village called Auroville in India. This project was begun not merely to rebuild this community, however—rather it was to rebuild it as a model of sustainable living. Over the past decade volunteers have stabilized water tables, restored the ecosystem, and brought about the cultivation of a wide variety of edible foods. “Our goal,” say project founders Yorit and Aviram Rozin, “is to create a closed-loop community with all resources utilized sustainably.” In September the Rozins accompanied Brooke to campus, where they were guests in Reggie Pettitt’s environmental science classes. And Brooke spoke to the school community in Friday Assembly about her work with Sadhana Forest. “It was the most exciting thing I’ve done in my life around service, a commitment that began while I was here at Holderness,” she said.

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speak the truth about holderness school today Seriously. Please tell us what you think about Holderness School Today; we want your input. Tell us what you like. Tell us what you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t like as much. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll use your feedback to continue to improve the magazine and make it serve its audience (you!) that much better. And, you can do it all from the convenience of the internet. All it takes is 15 minutes. Thank you! Go to:

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ALUMNI IN THE NEWS

IN THEIR OWN WORDS: The School of Hard Pucks

Seniors on the 2011–12 hockey team pose for their picture. TOP ROW (L–R): Drew Walsh, Nate Lamson, Gavin Bayreuther, Parker Sutherland; BOTTOM ROW (L–R): Matt Kinney, Connor Loree, Andrew Munroe, Shawn Watson, and Alex Leininger.

Alex “Knuckles” Leininger is one of four members of the Class of ’ who took the road less traveled after commencement into the competitive world of Junior Hockey. In Alex’s own words, here’s how he and his classmates are faring. In the normal course of affairs, Holderness School prepares its graduates for immediate admission into college. Four members of the Class of , however—Gavin Bayreuther, Andrew Munroe, Shawn Watson, and myself—took a course much different from that. All of us are now playing Junior A hockey. College will just have to wait for a year or two. Gavin Bayreuther, from Canaan, NH, is currently playing for the Fargo Force in the United States Hockey League and is one of the top-scoring defensemen with five goals and  assists in  games. Though he is a dominant player for Fargo, Gavin wasn’t always a member of that team. Instead he was acquired through a blockbuster trade early in December, one that

sent defenseman Justin Wade to Cedar Rapids for Bayreuther. Gavin now lives in Fargo, ND, with a host family. Gavin spends his days playing the newest Call of Duty and Halo video games with his teammates while also keeping up with a rigorous on-ice and workout schedule. In addition, he keeps in touch with former and current Holderness students through Facebook and Skype. Gavin will be attending St. Lawrence University next fall. Andrew Munroe, a native of Newmarket, Ontario, is playing for the Pembroke Lumber Kings in the Central Canadian Hockey League. In fact “Munzy” is tearing up the cchl with , minutes played and earning—as a goalie—an impressive  wins and  losses. He has recorded a . goals-against average, a . save percentage, and is currently tied for second in the league’s statistical rankings for goalies. Andrew spends his days listening to country music, keeping his ﬂow and signature moustache in order, and maintaining his workout

regimen with his goalie coach and team. Munzy has the perfect job for a night owl—working the graveyard shift at Home Depot twice a week. He will return to Pembroke to play for the Lumber Kings next year and then is looking forward to committing to one of many colleges that are interested in him, including Princeton University. Shawn Watson, who is from Pointe-Claire, Quebec, is playing for the Bracebridge Phantoms in the Greater Metro Hockey League. Shawn is one of the team’s top scorers with  goals and  assists in  games. The gmhl is a league consisting of teams mainly in the greater Toronto area. Shawn lives there with two teammates and is also taking math and science classes at the local college. Shawn is looking at both Division  and Division  colleges but will play another year of Junior A before heading back to school. As for myself, I hail from Newtown, PA, and am playing for the Hawkesbury Hawks in the Central Canadian Hockey League. In the world of Junior A Hockey, I’m the sort of player they call a “suitcase;” I’ve played on three different teams since starting the year off with the Janesville Jets in the North American Hockey League. I was traded twice between different leagues before ending up in Hawkesbury. Meanwhile I’ve scored two goals and  assists in  games for three different teams, and I’ve been named a team captain. I spend my days working, taking online classes, and keeping in contact with friends from Holderness. I live in Pointe-Claire, Shawn’s home town, with his parents Grant and Ruth. At the end of this year with Hawkesbury, I’ll attend the Milwaukee School of Engineering. Even though all four of us are enjoying a life that consists almost entirely of playing hockey, we still miss Holderness. Both Shawn and Gavin have said, “It was truly the best experience of my life.”

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ALUMNI IN THE NEWS

IN THEIR OWN WORDS: Thoughts on Holderness Almost 40 Years Out In September, Phil Peck received the following letter from Tim Scott who graduated from Holderness in . Tim is currently the Director of Development at Fryeburg Academy in Fryeburg, Maine and was recently honored by isanne for “changing the face of fundraising” at Fryeburg Academy. In fact, he is so talented and so deserving of the award that it was renamed the Timothy G. Scott Leadership in Advancement Award. Congratulations, Tim! Forty years ago this week I was busy preparing to begin my senior year at Holderness. This is both remarkable in its individual clarity in my memory, and wholly unremarkable in the realization that forty classes of students have experienced, more or less, exactly the same thing over the intervening years. So what is it about being  or  and a senior at Holderness? How do I feel about it all a half-alifetime later? What is it about the essence and experience of Holderness School that resonates among most of us still? I sat reading hst a few nights ago and was struck once again by how unique a school ours was then, and remains today. By assembling an interesting and unconventional group of faculty on a relatively remote New Hampshire campus, and then by inviting a varied group of youngsters to scale the academic, athletic, and artistic heights, the powers that be have continually oﬀered, and endlessly tweaked, the program of a golden-rule school that is all at once countercultural, endlessly thoughtful, and deeply spiritual. I didn’t always ﬁt in in my early days, but I think I always wanted to. After all, it is good at any age to have noble aspirations. So what is it about Holderness that draws my thoughts back, year after year, autumn after autumn, even as my own son has long passed through his high school and college years? Perhaps it is the obvious—the start of September and the inevitable slant of afternoon light that heralds the end of summer. For any-

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one in the school world, the arrival of Labor Day marks the beginning of the “other” New Year, the fresh start, the clean slate of time. Perhaps too it is the increasing and visible challenges of the modern world that draw me back to the fundamental things I learned there and which I call upon still—we are all in this together, kindness and listening always matter, and a little challenge is always good for the soul. As Don Henderson always said, everything, from a test to a ski race, is an opportunity to show yourself and the world what you are made of. Good advice, indeed, then and now. It is evident that over the years the bar has been raised; the standards of admittance and the expectations of Holderness students have escalated to a place where many of us wonder if we’d ever have made it through, let alone gotten in. Such is the yin and yang, the creative tension of a successful school. And yet as I read about the talents, and courage, and curiosity of so many younger (than we) graduates, and current students as well, I cannot help but think that the simpler paths we helped clear so many years ago have been well trodden by those who have followed. In any moment in time, all we can really know is the present—about how we feel and about how we will overcome obstacles and accomplish whatever task it is that we have set out to do. It is here that I realize that maybe we were the right students for our time there, just as today’s students are just right for today. And it is in that moment that I feel a little less self-conscious, and just a little more proud.

Tim Scott.

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REUNION 2012

Reunion 2012

CLOCKWISE, FROM ABOVE: Friday Night Cocktail Party with Class of 2007 members Jamie Leake, Sarah Morrison, Jaime Dusseault, and Betsy O’Leary; Class of 1962 dinner celebration; members of the Class of 2002 at registration: Betsy Pantazelos, Suni Dillard, Chris Nielson, Joe Sampson, and Kaitlin Sampson; Alumni enjoying the athletic games: Betsy O’Leary, Henry Holdsworth ’07, Todd Davis ’07, Chris Roche ’07, and Mike-Ice Heyward ’07; Robert Johnson ’97, wife Alanya, and 14-month-old son Bruce; the Reunion Challenge Bowl.

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Reunion 2012

CLOCKWISE, FROM ABOVE: Sam Shlopak ’07 and Taylor James ’07 reminiscing about their days on the athletic ﬁelds; Classes of 1957 and 1958 members Dave Boynton ’58, Ron Crowe ’57, Bob Weiss ’57, and George Pransky ’58; Class of 1997; Class of 1992; Class of 1982.

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REUNION 2012

Reunion 2012

CLOCKWISE, FROM ABOVE: The Class of 2012; Class of 1962 campus tour led by Andrew Sheppe ’00 and Dan Do ’13; Class of 1947 members Jack Armstrong ’47 and Bill Briggs ’47; Todd Hopgood ’87; Class of 2007; the Lesneski Family, Reid ’87, Dawn, and Zoe; The Class of 1962 celebrates its Fiftieth Reunion.

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REUNION 2012

Reunion 2012

Bulls in Action! Come back and play with us! Saturday, May 25, 2013 SCHEDULE r 11:30 AM:

girls lacrosse

r 12:00 NOON: cycling group ride CLOCKWISE, FROM ABOVE: 2012 Distinguished Service Award presented posthumously to Dave Goodwin ’37. Accepting the award on Dave’s behalf were daughter, Marilyn Soper (and spouse, Bruce Soper) and

r 1:30 PM:

baseball and boys lacrosse

If interested in participating, please contact

son, Charlie Goodwin (with spouse, Jaye Goodwin); Eric ’62 and Karen

Melissa Stuart (mstuart@holderness.org) or

Werner celebrate the Class of 1962 Fiftieth Reunion; Peter Bohlin ’02

Lance Galvin (lgalvin@holderness.org).

and Karen Bohlin.

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REUNION 2012

Reunion 2012

CLOCKWISE, FROM ABOVE: Jack Armstrong ’37 trying on the Holderness Flylow Jacket he won at Saturday night’s Alumni Silent Auction; Tracy Gillette ’89, Todd Hopgood ’87, and Janice PedrinNielson; Dan Do ’13 leading members of the class of 1962 through Alfond Library; Kenerson Family: Dan ’87, Lynn, Dan, and Jed; Class of 1962 spouses Joan Fitzgerald, Gardi Hauck, Susan Barker, Jane Floyd, and Mary Ann Meigs.

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AT THIS POINT IN TIME

The Roots of a Global Perspective

In the above photo of the Holderness football team in 1909, Eduardo Sarti stands in the back row, second from the left. His brother, Victor Sarti, we believe, is standing on the far right leaning against the pillar.

by judith solberg In “The World is Present Among Us” Rick Carey mentions the Sarti family, which sent some of the earliest known international students to Holderness School. Unfortunately, time has obscured some of our knowledge of this family; we know that there were at least

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ﬁve Sarti boys who traveled from Guatemala City to our distant campus in New Hampshire, and we believe that two of them (Eduardo and Victor) were brothers. How closely related the other three—Luis, Fernando, and Alexander— were to the two brothers, we may never be able to discover. Though we don’t know much about the Sartis’ lives in Guatemala, we do have

unusually rich documentation of their time at Holderness School. Eduardo in particular was a remarkable person, and is mentioned often in our records. He came to Holderness in the fall of —one can imagine how truly foreign that ﬁrst winter must have felt to someone whose childhood had been spent in Central CONTINUED ON PAGE 64

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Eduardo Sarti, circa 1909.

SARTI, CONTINUED FROM PAGE 63 America. We know that Eduardo almost immediately became involved in the school: he contributed a few pieces of artwork to The Argus (a student publication that, in its day, served as a combined monthly literary magazine, yearbook, and alumni newsletter); gained high marks in English, Latin and algebra; and tried his hand at American football. Coach Smith assessed him that year somewhat dismissively as “a steady and hard playing man, but small and inexperienced.” It took only a single year, however, for the coach to come around, and praise Eduardo as “the hardest kind of a player;” Smith noted admiringly that it was “about impossible to play against him successfully, as he continually shifts his style of play.” Eduardo also became a recruiter of sorts for the school and appears to have spread the word about Holderness to friends at home; in his sophomore year, records indicate that he went to Boston “to meet Joseph L. Cordova, who had come from Guatemala City, Guatemala, C.A., to enter the school.” By Eduardo’s senior year, nobody could dismiss his contributions to the community. By then he was editor-in-chief of The Argus, president of his class, held the highest academic average, belonged to the on-campus fraternity Phi Delta Sigma, and finally, capped his Holderness career by receiving the school’s most prestigious award: the Frost Award. After commencement, Eduardo went on to attend mit. Eduardo was a passionate student, and he clearly made the most of the new experiences offered at Holderness School to develop his own abilities. But, as with so many students from other cultures who have followed in his footsteps, his presence impacted others as well; Eduardo’s global perspective shaped and enriched the school. Consider this exhortation to his peers, printed during Eduardo’s senior year: “We, students, are offered a helping hand through the education we receive and, consequently, are better fitted to do our part toward the betterment of man’s existence than the uneducated citizen, who never gets the chance we do

to develop and show forth what good is in him, thus being unable to make himself as useful as might be to the community in which he lives, to his state, his country, and thereby to the world at large. We must not, therefore, waste our time in idleness, but make of it the best we can.” Although Eduardo was probably not the only student to recognize his civic responsibilities, for many of his American peers his passionate rhetoric was probably surprising. Eduardo also contributed several short stories to The Argus. “The Legend of San Antonio,” “The Heroine of the Andes,” “When Christian and Infidel Met,” and “Ghosts and Rivalry” (chronicling the adventures of characters such as Don Paolo and Donna Bianca) showcases his dramatic, romantic voice, quite unlike that which appears in other student works of the time. Furthermore, we know from our own diverse campus today that his richly dissimilar background likely permeated school culture in less lofty ways that are not visible through the haze of years. It is very difficult to quantify what value this kind of “difference” brings to a school like Holderness. Was it the Sartis’ presence that raised awareness of global political issues, and led headmaster Lorin Webster to invite a speaker to discuss the “Mexican situation” with the student body in ? How much do we have the Sartis to thank for the admission of students who came to Holderness not long afterward from Cuba or Mexico? Did early exposure to different cultures help temper the emotions of alumni who fought in the Great War, as it would later help the wwii soldier who remembered Bill Koyama as “one of my most respected school-mates”? We may never know. But it is safe to say that mutual exposure to diversity (of opinion, of race, of experience, of culture—of most anything) is always an opportunity for growth. And schools, at their core, are about growth.

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The White Mountains have always served as Holderness School’s largest classroom. Mountain Day was a tradition

IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT WHERE YOU’RE GOING, BUT WHO YOU’RE WITH.

HELP US TO KEEP THESE PROGRAMS ALIVE NOW AND WELL INTO THE FUTURE. GIVE TO THE HOLDERNESS ANNUAL FUND. WWW.GIVETOHOLDERNESS.ORG

true blue Holderness Annual Fund

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CHAPEL LANE PO BOX 1879 PLYMOUTH, NH 03264-1879

PAID LEWISTON, ME PERMIT NO. 82

r Reunion 2012