Letter from Alumni Board President

from SPARK Magazine // Fall 2021

Highlights of Fall 2021

ALUMNI NEWS

LETTER FROM

SARAH PAXTON

I am so proud of your Alumni Board. For the last two years, this Board has been working with purpose and pride to evolve and update the way that we relate to and communicate with all of you.

Let me extend a huge thank you to Pettus LeCompte ’71, who led us through the first unknown year of COVID-19 as the previous Alumni Association President. I am also so grateful to have Jasmine Turner ’11 alongside me as Vice President, bringing her enthusiasm and intelligence to the position. Together, with them and with the rest of your Alumni Board, we want to ask and encourage you to engage with Collegiate School.

Our current Alumni Board brings together a diverse group of individuals that share a love for Collegiate. We are diverse in age; we have Board members from the classes of the 1960s through the 2010s, including two recent college graduates as our youngest Board members serving to date. We are diverse in ethnic background. We are diverse in our professions and interests. We are diverse in where we live; Zoom meetings have allowed and encouraged us to have active Board members not only in Richmond, but also in Georgia, California, Washington, D.C. and more. Lastly, we are most definitely diverse in who we are, how we remember Collegiate and what our past Collegiate experiences were like. (See page two for a full listing of our Board.) It is the diversity of each of us — each of you — and our individual memories of this School that I want to focus on now.

Each one of us remembers and thinks back on their time at Collegiate differently. Some of us treasure the traditions, some the sports, some the theatrical performances, but that’s not usually what we talk about when we see each other after many weeks, months or years. What we discuss are the laughs we had in Senior study, the tricks we played on each other (all in good fun, of course) and how hard some teachers pushed us to do better and be better. In other words, it is the camaraderie and shared values and experiences that make us reminisce.

With that in mind — and on behalf of the Alumni Board — I am asking you to look backward and forward when you think about Collegiate. Celebrate all of the differences that make up your class and look at the unique, curious and bright student body we have now. Engage with your classmates and those from other classes, visit campus — either virtually or in person — and experience all of Collegiate’s vibrant activity.

With warmest regards,