Fall/Winter 2021: "The Education of Bernie Noe"

FA LL | WI N T ER 2 02 1

On a glowing summer night, Rose Palmieri ’20 momentarily held the center of attention on the dance floor.

made you lo ok G L A S S R E U N I O N Last summer, some 80 members of the Class of 2020 attended the prom they didn’t get in the pandemic spring of their senior year. They enjoyed dancing and music in a glittering venue — the Chihuly Garden and Glass exhibition space at Seattle Center — and their first unofficial reunion as Lakeside alumni. The

Posing for photos, off the red carpet: foursome Sarah Xu, Sandhya Thomas, Kelly Wang , and Amy Liu; pretty in pink were Georgia Joers and Elda Kahssay; couple Alex Zhang and Sasha Nelson.

colorful event was organized by class parents and guardians, led by Marianne Mowat ’85, with funding and support from the PGA (and with customary energetic help from the PGA’s program specialist, Lani Carpenter). The dance marked a return to the Chihuly Garden: Lakeside held a class dinner and a Seattle-area reunion here in 2016.

– Photographed on Aug. 16, 2021, by Zorn B. Taylor

L AKESIDE MAGAZINE STAFF EDITOR

Jim Collins ALUMNI R E L AT I O N S N E W S

Samantha Dale, Daiga Galins,

contents COVER STORY

Closing Remarks

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Interview with Bernie Noe, Lakeside Head of School 1999-2022

By Carey Quan Gelernter

Allison Conkin, Lisa Broesamle ART DIRECTOR

Carol Nakagawa WRITERS

Jim Collins, Carey Quan Gelernter, Kai Bynum,

A L U M N I F E AT U R E

INSIDE LAKESIDE

What Life Requires 3 6

From the Archives 5

For nine Lakeside graduates, this is what service looks like

Leslie Schuyler, Chris

Editor’s Note 2

Hartley, Jan Thomas,

Your Comments 3

Aaron Z. ’23 Yoon L. ’23, Eliot A y A. ’24, and Stellan M. ’23 CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

Katie M. Simmons, Tom

Head Note 4 Poetry: “Elwha” 44

Campus Briefs 6 New Students by the Numbers 7 Faculty Notes 8 Syllabus 9 Lakeside Sketchbook 10 The Lecture Series 13

By Aaron Z. ’23

Athletics 14

Distinguished Alumni Award 52

Where Alumni Live 15 ALUMNI NEWS

Kelly Allison, Dominic

Class Connections

Libby Lewis, Matt Lever, Ryanna Allen, Robert Kemp, Cora Kaiser COPY EDITOR

PAG E 1 6

Student Showcase 12

Reese, Zorn B. Taylor, Crowley, Chloe Collyer,

The first family, clockwise from left: Violet Hopper, Bernie Noe, Phoebe Noe ’09 Hopper, Sean Hopper, Kietrie Noe ’07 Páramo, Yago Páramo, Yago Páramo Jr., Killian Noe, Sebastian Noe Páramo.

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Alumni Board 54 In Memoriam 56 Alumni Calendar 61

Mark Watanabe

Lakeside magazine is published twice yearly by the communications office of Lakeside School. Views presented in the magazine do not necessarily reflect those of the school.

On the cover: Collage by Fred Birchman

F a l l • W i n t e r 2 0 2 1 1

e d i t o r's n o t e

A Celebration of Service

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Keep your student intellectually engaged this summer with forcredit high school courses, athletics camps, and an Investigative Learning Camp for middle school students focused on science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (STEAM).

Lakeside students, The Downtown School students, and children of alumni can register early, beginning Feb. 14, 2022.

Financial aid is available.

lakesideschool.org/summer

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N J A N U A R Y L A S T Y E A R , Bernie Noe, the longestserving head of school in Lakeside’s history, announced to the community that he would be stepping down from his post in June 2022, at the end of his 23rd year. He has made it clear that he is not “retiring.” As he modestly told Carey Quan Gelernter when the two sat down for a wide-ranging interview at the start of Bernie’s final school year (page 16), “There are other things I want to do.” He’s on the board of Rainier Scholars, a 12-year program that offers a pathway to college graduation for hard-working, low-income students of color. He’s eager to lend his experience to educational fundraising projects. He plans to mentor other heads of school. He wants to continue his years-long volunteer work in Nicaragua. All of which is consistent with the central message he has promoted to generations of Lakeside students: Use your education and your talents to serve others.

This issue of Lakeside magazine celebrates Bernie Noe’s legacy by looking back at his tenure at this school — and by celebrating Lakesiders who are living the school’s mission and taking to heart Bernie Noe’s message of serving others. In addition to Carey’s interview, you’ll find a Bernie Noe timeline history, an appreciation of Bernie as Lakeside’s head coach (page 14), and an excerpt from a remarkable document housed in the Jane Carlson Williams ’60 Archives (page 5): the speech Bernie Noe made to the faculty to open the 2002-2003 school year. That speech, following a difficult three-year transition period in which all of the top administrators and 50% of the faculty turned over, marked a pivotal moment in the school’s evolution and changed the nature of a Lakeside education.

To shine a light on “service,” we compiled a special gallery of alumni (page 36) who exemplify and expand the definition of what it means to serve others, to serve a community, a neighborhood, a democracy, our planet. As we put together the rest of the magazine’s content, though, we realized that service was a recurring theme throughout the issue, from the announcement of this year’s Distinguished Alumni Award recipient (Noah Bopp ’92, page 52) to the biographies of our current alumni board volunteers (page 54); from the news peppering our Class Notes section — of land conservationists, gender-affirming health advocates, climate consultants, volunteer protest medics, documentary makers using a social justice lens, and more — to the moving collection of life stories in our In Memoriam section. None of these stories was planned. They simply emerged in the normal course of finding and sharing the stories of this school and its graduates. In that way, this issue looks very much like any other issue of the magazine.

That, in itself, is something to celebrate.

— Jim Collins, Editor Jim.Collins@lakesideschool.org

yo ur c o m me n t s

Black at Lakeside

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F O U N D T H E spring/summer issue to be a candid exploration of Lakeside’s history of racism and the work that the administration is embarking on to create a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment.

As some of the articles touched on, Lakeside is a bubble of great privilege. The product of having so many wealthy, white students at one school is a general lack of awareness of the extent to which white privilege impacts school culture. Lakeside’s commitment to DEI likely won’t change the white-centric culture of the student body unless the administration provides opportunities for those students to engage in antiracism work...

—Noa R. ’22 (co-founder of the Lakeside Anti-Racist Students group), from her successful proposal to introduce guided race awareness training and workshops for Lakeside students, as a part of the school’s weekly assembly programming.

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W A N T E D T O S AY congratulations for a spectacular issue of Lakeside magazine. It was at times moving, at other times sobering, and often uplifting. I have had a couple of Black parents reach out to me specifically to comment on the issue. In a conversation with another Black parent, she said, “They see us.”

— Winston Yeung Seattle

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W A S S O G R AT E F U L to be included in

the Black@Lakeside edition. I knew it would be both cathartic and energizing. I had 43 years of untold stories bottled up!

The issue was an exceptional examination of those whose experiences have been silenced or marginalized. Thank you for finally seeing the need for this. Starting with the history of Seattle and its racial issues, to where the Lakeside school currently stands, was a beautiful depiction of progress or, in some cases, the lack thereof. The micro aggressions highlighted in the college admissions article were spot on for me, relative to some of the questions I received when I decided to attend Howard University.

Throughout the course of 2014 to 2018, while caring for my father, I had the oppor-

tunity to gather Lakeside friends as well as my Black friends. The beauty was creating my own diverse, inclusive community, consisting of information exchange from people who most likely would never meet under normal circumstances in Seattle. I now know I can say I am an inclusive person with a strong Black excellence mantra which has been cultivated by my Lakeside and Howard University experiences…. what a gift!

— Stephanie Harris ’78 Pompano Beach, Florida

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N T H E PA G E S of your latest issue [“In the Company of Covenants,” by Leslie Schuyler], I was shocked to learn that I may have grown up in a part of Seattle that may have had covenants restricting occupancy to the Caucasian race. At age 14, I was not aware of any restrictions, and my friendships with both Japanese and Black youth sports teammates were never adversely affected.

As noted by Bernie Noe in his “Head Note,” Lakeside “with few exceptions was an entirely white school until 1965.” Selin Thomas states in her article “Black at Lakeside” that Lakeside was made, in fact, for the bright, white Seattle boy, lucky in his ancestors and bolstered with expectation and guaranteeing his future. I certainly don’t remember any guarantees at all, but I do remember being expected by the faculty to work about twice as hard as all my friends at Ingraham High School!

I consider it an insult when it is implied by the Black at Lakeside presentation that our success was derived more from privilege than great effort. I would encourage Lakeside to continue to emphasize diversity of thought, but not take sides. The curriculum should emphasize college preparation and not an analysis of the student’s ancestors that suggests an apology is in order. Lakeside should teach the facts and not editorialize.

TA L K T O U S We welcome your suggestions and letters. Reach us at magazine@ lakesideschool.org; via social media; or Lakeside Magazine, 14050 1st Avenue NE, Seattle, WA 98125-3099.

FIND US

Facebook facebook.com/ lakesideschool Twitter twitter.com/ lakesideschool Instagram @Lakeside.Lions

— Jon C. Vaughters ’63, Commander U.S. Navy, Retired Surprise, Arizona

F a l l • W i n t e r 2 0 2 1 3

he ad note

A Purpose Larger Than Itself I H O P E Y O U A R E T H R I V I N G in these still-unusual times. I have missed seeing

so many of you who I have connected with at reunions, on campus, and around Seattle, and I feel hopeful about having more in-person events and meetings this year.

It is definitely a bittersweet exercise to write my last head’s note — how did 23 years go by so quickly?!

It has been a joy and a privilege to serve as head of this amazing school for a third of my life. My children grew up on campus and went to school here. My wife, Killian, opened her first Recovery Café in Seattle 20 years ago, and now there are 36 Recovery Cafés here and across many states. As a family, we are fully Seattleites now! We love it all: the rain, the running, the free-spirited vibe of the city, and the care Seattleites show for one another.

(Not the traffic, but you can’t have it all.)

As I look toward wrapping up my final year at Lakeside, I leave you with the reasons I believe Lakeside is a great school for our students. Central is that the school has a purpose larger than itself: to graduate students who want to make the world a better place for others, rather than only for themselves and their families. On the pages of this magazine, you will find stories of alumni who are using in the service of others the skills they learned at Lakeside. We emphasize with all of our students, every day in every setting, the importance of being a good person, being considerate of all others, and trying do the right thing. We offer a rigorous, dynamic, leading-edge education and understand that that education benefits the world only if practiced with wisdom, compassion, and love. The school does its absolute best to live its noble mission.

Lakeside is also a healthy, fun place for students to learn and to grow into the people they are meant to be in this world. Students have a high level of respect for one another and their teachers, and the faculty and staff have a high level of respect

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“

It has been

a joy and a privilege to serve

as head of this amazing school for a third of my life.

BERNIE NOE HEAD OF SCHOOL

for the students. Excellence of all kinds is celebrated here: academic, athletic, and artistic excellence, as well as the quirky, esoteric excellence that can be found in an individual student’s interests, in clubs, and in outside interests. There is no one mold for students at Lakeside, and I hope that never changes.

It has been a great honor to be Lakeside’s head of school. I look forward to seeing many of you in person this year.

And if I miss you, it will be a joy to say hello when our paths cross in Seattle in the years to come!

Illustration from the 2020 Numidian

inside l ake side FROM THE ARCHIVES

A Calling and a Charge "I realize that I cannot force a focus on the future and what this school can become," Bernie Noe told the faculty 20 years ago. "All of us must do that."

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S W E S I T H E R E together this morning, I believe we are at a turning point in the school’s history; that this is a time of unique opportunity for the school; and I believe that how all of us here work with this opportunity will be decisive in the direction we take Lakeside as an educational institution.

I have wrestled over the years with why I have devoted my life to teaching primarily privileged students, and at several junctures — the most recent being just before applying to Lakeside — thought maybe I should work with far less privileged kids. In the end it was not my calling to work in a different setting, and this is the mystery to me. My calling is to work with privileged children. I have never really doubted that, and I make no apologies for it. I went into teaching because of a love of learning and a joy in working with students. I went into administration because I believed I would be in a better position to make certain I worked in a school that asked itself the larger questions. I wanted to be in a school that believes it can transform the world through the students it graduates. Ultimately, that is the larger meaning for me.

This past April, at a regional heads retreat, a facilitator posed the following question: “Where are you most alive in your current work and feel you have the most integrity, and where are you least alive and feel you have the least integrity?” It was a piercing question for me. I realized that much of the work I had done at Lakeside School over the past three years was from a place where I was least alive and a good distance from the reason why I went

into administration to begin with. I did not become an administrator to “move people along.” It is sometimes necessary in every school community to help move individuals along.

But the last three years have required an inordinate amount of that kind of

“

I wanted to be

in a school that believes it can transform the world through the students it graduates.”

work. I told the Board of Trustees this past June that the charge they gave me three years ago was substantially carried out, but at a cost to the school community and to me, personally.

When I came to Lakeside School three years ago, I did so because I believed in the school’s mission statement. I can commit my life’s work to these values.

The vision for the school, I realize now more deeply than before, must come from all of the people who work at the school. All of us in this room, together with the staff, must search our hearts and minds and determine how we will live out our mission as a school together. All of us, over time, will craft this vision together. I do not fully know the process we will use in determining this common vision, and ask for your help along the way. I only know that, in the end, if the vision is

to be authentic, it must grab each of you at the gut level. You must feel, “Yes, I understand and support the direction our school is taking. I understand and support our common purpose as a school.”

I want to propose this morning that we honor the past and the achievements of so many who have worked tirelessly on behalf of the students of Lakeside School, but that today we turn a corner and begin looking to the future. That we remember respectfully the school we have been but focus our energies on the school we will become.

Going into my fourth year as the head of Lakeside School, I realize that I cannot turn this corner for the school; I cannot force a focus on the future and what this school can become. All of us must do that.

I have chosen to be a leader in an educational community, and I will continue in that role — but only in a school where there is a sense of common purpose that all had a part in shaping and all believe in. Greatness of purpose must come from all of us who work in this school. I believe that we have not yet found our great vision as a school in the historical context of this new millennium. That is the profound challenge ahead for all of us working together.

I look forward to working with all of you to discern on an ongoing basis how we can live out this mission in a community of trust and mutual respect. This is the work I want to do as the head of this school. This is where I am most alive; this is where I have the most integrity in my work.

— Excerpted from Bernie Noe’s Opening Speech to the Faculty, August 2002

F a l l • W i n t e r 2 0 2 1 5

“

inside l ake side

I can’t promise

that Lakeside will make you a better learner, or

Campus Briefs

more resilient, or more persistent, but it will change you and challenge

H E A LT H & S A F E T Y

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akeside returned to full-time, in-person education to start the 2021-2022 school year, while keeping in place mitigation strategies to keep community members safe during the ongoing pandemic. In addition to requiring vaccinations, indoor masking, and social distancing, the school is providing regular COVID-19 testing on campus. Through Thanksgiving, 6,600 tests were administered, with just 7 positive results among students and employees.

T H E D OW N TOW N S C H O O L

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akeside’s micro-school experiment — an urban high school with a focus on project-based education taking advantage of city businesses and organizations as learning laboratories — opened in the fall of 2018 with five faculty members and 45 students. Four years later, The Downtown School is near full capacity. It began the 20212022 year with 15 faculty and staff members and 151 students from 41 ZIP codes. Saluting the school’s first graduating class of 13 seniors last summer, Head of School Sue Belcher wrote, “This group has earned their title as founders, having worked to develop school culture, clubs and activities, and even parts of the curriculum.” Tuition this year is $19,000 — with financial aid available for new applicants.

E Q U I T Y A N D I N C LU S I O N V I RT UA L S P E A K E R S E R I E S

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akeside has once again joined other independent schools around the Pacific Northwest to present a yearlong series of Zoom-based lectures. Available to the public, the program creates regular opportunities to connect, learn, and engage in topics around equity, inclusion, and antiracist education and action. The series kicked off in October with a talk by Gyasi Ross (author, lawyer, and Blackfeet Nation member) and continued the following month with a discussion about the Asian American experience led by author and historian Erika Lee. For more information and the schedule of remaining speakers, visit lakesideschool.org/virtual-lecture-series.

Meanwhile, Lakeside’s equity and inclusion team and the school’s Parents and Guardians Association have created an educational series of videos and activities under the banner “We Are Lakeside,” which invites parents and guardians to actively participate in the work of making Lakeside an equitable and inclusive community. Learn more at lakesideschool.org/we-are-lakeside.

Continued on page 8

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you, and every single person in this audience is willing to help you, even if you don’t think you deserve it.”

— From the welcoming remarks of Sarah C. ’26, Convocation, Sept. 2, 2021

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173

1 new students enrolled 2021-2022

95 33 sending schools

languages spoken

ZIP codes represented

dual or foreign citizenships

PRIME NUMBERS

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national anthem singer at a WNBA Seattle Storm game

licensed chess coach children’s book author tae kwon do black belt performer in Seattle Opera’s “Aida” co-founder of a Chinese Radio Seattle youth talk program

founder of a newspaper

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inside l ake side CAMPUS BRIEFS (CONTINUED)

S E XUA L V I O L E N C E C U R R I C U LU M

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akeside is piloting a program designed to help students prevent sexual violence in their relationships and communities. During October, students in grades 10, 11, and 12 began taking part in a series of workshops that focus on the knowledge and skills students need to prevent sexual violence. The pilot program builds on what 9th graders learn about sexual violence prevention through the school’s current wellness program, including definitions of consent, signs of healthy and unhealthy relationships, and sexual decision-making.

This new program — which includes a component of parent and guardian education — is inspired by student activism during the 20202021 school year.

P O D C AST E R S

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ikhil D. ’25 (“The Great Footsteps I Walk In”) and Jackson B. ’25 (“Litigation and Legislation”) were selected from more than 1,500 students as finalists in the New York Times fourth annual Student Podcast Contest. The contest invites teenagers to create an original audio program of five minutes or less. Both Nikhil and Jackson received honorable mentions for their podcasts.

AT H L E T I C S H I G H L I G H T S

Volleyball: Metro League and District champions; made state quarterfinals.

Girls Swim and Dive: Metro League champions; SeaKing District 2 champions; numerous individual/relay champions.

Girls Soccer: Metro League runner-up; Div. 3A state champions.

Golf: Ky C. ’23 and James L. ’22 qualified for the state tournament, to be held in spring.

Football: Div. 3A academic state champions.

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FACULTY NOTES

News and sightings from outside the classroom

Last June, Head Strength and Conditioning Coach/Upper School Physical Education Teacher Rick Huegli presented at the National High School Strength Coaches Association’s annual conference at Wayzata High School in Plymouth, Minn. Huegli currently serves as an NHSSCA board member, representing the Northwest Region.

Upper School English Teacher Lindsay Aegerter, Middle School Learning Resources Coordinator/Middle School Student Support Department Head Meg Wolfe, and Middle School Physical Education Teacher Jon Barton attended the Stanley H. King Institute at the Fountain Valley School in Colorado Springs over the summer, learning methods and strategies focused on deep listening and advising. (Upper School English Teacher Rachel Maiorano and Upper School English Teacher/Department Head Emily Chu have attended the Institute in the past.)

In September, Lakeside’s Associate Director of Global Programs Lisa Devine captained an all-women’s sailing crew and raised more than $14,000 for the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance in the 2021 Pink Boat Regatta. Devine had learned to sail in the summer of 2020, with support from the school’s Dexter K. Strong Endowment Fund. That fund, named for Lakeside’s head of school from 1951 to 1969, “exists to enhance the individual development and personal growth of Lakeside teachers and staff members through grants for a variety of projects, including education, travel, seminars, or workshops.” Also in September, Middle School History Teacher/Faculty Equity Programs Coordinator Merissa Reed held a pop-up event in Shoreline for her Bohemian Trader “occasional marketplace” of vendors selling eclectic, vintage, and funky wares. Meanwhile, Assistant Director of Admissions and Outreach Johnpaul McLean and his 5-year-old daughter, Wilder, created an Instagram-based business called Thrift Stories. Explains the website thriftstories.shop: “We are a father-daughter duo who scour thrift stores, flea markets, yard sales, and sometimes Mother Earth, searching for treasures once owned. What we don’t keep, we sell to curious and interested buyers like you!”

Director of Athletics Chris Hartley had an article on “nonviolent messaging” published in the fall issue of Interscholastic Athletic Administration magazine. In October, Middle School Music Teacher Heather Bentley, the violist in the Heather Dio Duo (along with drummer Dio Jean-Baptiste) held a watch party in Earshot Jazz’s Second Century Series. In the midst of this terribly sad and challenging time, some wonderful news: Our congratulations and welcome go out to Lakeside babies born during the current pandemic. Proud faculty and staff members include:

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Yvette Avila (April 2021) Betty Benson (July 2021) Jacob Foran (April 2020) Janelle Hagen (August 2021) Kristen Klitz (May 2021) Genevie Moaalii (May 2021) Barbara Martin (March 2020)

• • • • • • •

Meera Patankar (January 2020) John Platt (April 2020) Sarah Quackenbush (July 2020) Merissa Reed (February 2021) Rob and Meredith Sjoberg (April 2021) Anna Vanderlugt (June 2021) Lu Yang (September 2021) Illustration: Fred Birchman

SYLLABUS

Readings in Black and White

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New trustees anti-Black, racist ideas. In the process, he suggests that racist ideas and prejudice do not precede or lead to racist policies and systemic injustice. Rather, they arise from and are used to justify racist systems that benefit some at the expense of others.

EMBERS OF LAKESIDE’S

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion team have created extensive resource lists for Lakeside’s faculty, staff, and Parents and Guardians Association. Here, Kyle Cook, Debbie Bensadon, Latasia Lanier ’90, and Merissa Reed share favorite works for adults who want to deepen their learning.

“This Book Is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How To Wake Up, Take Action, and Do the Work”

by Tifanny Jewell This book is accessible to folks of all ages and in different stages of their anti-racist work.

The book provides a strong foundation of terminology, as well as rich historical perspectives, ideas for further action, and activities that personalize the content.

“We Want To Do More Than Just Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and Pursuit of Educational Freedom”

by Bettina Love Love explains how educators and citizens can bring back abolitionist allyship by helping to overhaul long-overdue systemic inequity, as she offers a vision of educational justice.

“Stamped From the Beginning: A Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America”

by Ibram X. Kendi (Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research) Kendi’s book details the entire history of Illustration: Fred Birchman

“Seeing White” (Scene on Radio Podcast, Season 2) John Biewen and the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University This surprising podcast illuminates the role of whiteness in American history and contemporary culture, from the nation establishing itself as white supremacist to current manifestations of structural racism. This podcast is packed with “aha” moments as Biewen explores history and engages in personal reflection with guests, including regular contributor Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika. This 14-part documentary series was released in 2017.

“The History of White People”

by Nell Irvin Painter This book examines the concept of whiteness through world history by detailing its origination and subsequent propagation in European academic circles. Painter traces the conceptual spread into the U.S. Constitution via the American Revolution and through various expansions of the concept of whiteness in the U.S. “Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents”

by Isabel Wilkerson By understanding how race is transformed into caste, the reader views American history through a new lens, as Wilkerson links racism in the United States with Nazi Germany and India’s caste system. A winner of a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Critics Circle Award, Wilkerson will speak as part of the Lakeside Lecture Series Feb. 9, 2022.

With the start of the 2021-2022 academic year, the Lakeside Board of Trustees welcomes three new members.

Michelle Chang ’90 Chen has served as general counsel to the Mayor’s Office, deputy city attorney, and policy director at Seattle Housing Authority. Earlier in her career, she worked as legislative policy advisor to U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell and in the British House of Lords. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College and received her law and public policy degrees from the University of Washington. She served as president of the Korean American Bar Association. She and her husband live in Seattle and are the parents of teenagers Chelsea and Theo.

Mark Klebanoff ’80 is the chief financial officer of Rad Power Bikes, North America’s largest ebike brand, transforming how people think about low-carbon mobility. He has a 30-plus-year track record as chief operating officer/chief financial officer of successful startups, including PayScale, Appature, M:Metrics, AccessLine, and RealNetworks, where he orchestrated its 1997 initial public offering. Mark answers calls every Sunday night at the King County Crisis Connections Hotline. He has both a B.A. and an MBA from Yale University. While serving on the Lakeside board (2010-2019), he chaired the assets management committee and served on the executive committee as treasurer. Mark and his wife, Lakeside history teacher Mary Anne Christy, have three children, who are all alumni (’10, ’13, and ’16).

Nicholas Stevens ’06, 20212023 president of the Lakeside Alumni Association, joined the board in July 2021 for a two-year ex officio term. He is a senior director of product management at Zillow. Earlier in his career, Nicholas had roles at Twitter and Juniper Networks. He has a master’s in computer science from Stanford and undergraduate degrees in economics from Wharton and systems engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. He and his wife, Stef, have two young children.

See full board list on page 61.

F a l l • W i n t e r 2 0 2 1 9

LAKESIDE SKETCHBOOK

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First Day of Middle School 1 Middle school students arrive by car and bus in the morning sunshine.

2 Middle School Director Reem Abu Rahmeh confers with a colleague in the hallway.

3, 4, and 5 Ellie Freedman ’06

leads her 5th grade class in style.

6 Middle School Assistant Direc-

tor Robert Blackwell (left) and Abu Rahmeh (right) welcome students from the auditorium stage, simulcast in the gymnasium.

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7 Students work in Ellie Freedman’s class.

8 Two students take laps in the hallway during free time.

9 Students eat lunch outside on blue tarps on the field.

10, 11 Math teacher Tom Rona

’72 leads multiple classes through advanced problems.

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12 Head of School Bernie Noe gives welcoming remarks at convocation to the entire school.

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Artwork made on-site, in person by David Orrin Smith ’04, in white chalk, colored pencil, marker, acrylic paint, pen and ink on tan paper. DavidOSmithArtist.com

F a l l • W i n t e r 2 0 2 1 11

inside l ake side ST U D E N T S H OWC AS E

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AST SUMMER, in collaboration with the mentorship program Urban ArtWorks, MadArt Studio commissioned AiLi H. ’22 to paint a mural for its building in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood.

Ai-Li’s 158-by-58-inch piece graced the front of the studio from July 5 through Aug. 31. In her accompanying artist’s statement, Ai-Li wrote, in part: “This work is a continuation of my concentric circle series, which records my internal emotional state through gouache patterned circle layers within a standard outer circle. In this mural, I specifically explore the emotional journey that I experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. These layered juxtapositions create harmony or discordance, reflecting the contradictions and layers of my emotions. Each circle is a lens allowing the viewer to see through my eyes, as I reflect on the last year and a half and look towards the future.”

A couple of additional Lakeside layers lay behind Ai-Li’s mural: MadArt Studio was founded in 2009

by Alison Wyckoff ’79 Milliman. MadArt’s studio and venue manager is Katie Wood ’02.

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Photos: James Harnois (bottom, left); MadArt (top; bottom, right).

LAKESIDE LECTURE SERIES The Belanich family has asked that Lakeside rename the endowed lecture on ethics and politics in honor of Bernie Noe. It will henceforth be called the Bernie Noe Endowed Lecture on Ethics and Politics.

Dan Ayrault Memorial Lecture | March 16, 2022 Monika Batra ’92 Kashyap

L Gaechter, above, training on the East Fork of the Kaweah River, California.

Bernie Noe Endowed Lecture on Ethics and Politics

Note: this scheduled lecture has been canceled out of concern for the health of our community.

Isabel Wilkerson

I Mark J. Bebie ’70 Memorial Lecture | Oct. 20, 2021 Darcy Gaechter

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H I S Y E A R ’ S lecture series kicked off with afternoon and evening talks by adventurer and boundary breaker Darcy Gaechter, the first woman to kayak the Amazon River from source to sea. The journey required her crew to paddle more than 4,000 miles over 148 days across the widest part of the South American continent. Gaechter has achieved many first female descents of the world’s hardest rivers and has led expeditions in Africa, Asia, South America, Europe, and North America. She is the author of “The Kayaker’s Guide to Ecuador” and “Amazon Woman,” a memoir detailing her Amazon River expedition and the life challenges she surmounted to get there.

She described learning about regional politics; her interactions with Indigenous peoples; and navigating an equally complicated path toward telling her own story in book form.

Photo: Don Beveridge (Darcy Gaechter, top)

S A B E L W I L K E R S O N , winner of the Pulitzer Prize, is the author of the critically acclaimed “The Warmth of Other Suns,” which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Time magazine named it one of the 10 best nonfiction books of the decade. The New York Times Magazine named “Warmth” to its list of the best nonfiction books of all time.

Wilkerson’s latest book, “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” was a No. 1 New York Times bestseller. Oprah Winfrey chose it as her 2020 summer/ fall book club selection, declaring it “the most important book” she had ever selected. Wilkerson won the Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for her deeply humane narrative writing while serving as Chicago bureau chief of The New York Times, making her the first Black woman in the history of American journalism to win a Pulitzer Prize and the first African American to win for individual reporting. In 2016, President Barack Obama awarded Wilkerson the National Humanities Medal for “championing the stories of an unsung history.”

AKESIDE ALUMNA Monika Batra ’92 Kashyap is an immigration attorney, immigrant rights activist, law school clinical professor at Seattle University, and 9/11 cancer survivor. She began her legal career in 2001 in the immediate aftermath of Sept.

11 in New York City, where she represented undocumented immigrant youth in foster care. Upon returning to her hometown of Seattle, Kashyap worked as a removal defense attorney representing immigrants detained at the Northwest Detention Center. For more than two decades, Kashyap has been committed to representing immigrants as an immigration lawyer.

She has served 10 years on the board of one of the largest immigrant rights organizations in the U.S., the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. She has also served on the boards of two organizations dedicated to ending violence in immigrant communities: Sakhi for South Asian Women in New York City and API-Chaya in Washington state. Kashyap’s scholarship is focused on the intersections between immigration law, settler colonialism, and critical race theory. At Lakeside she will share insights from both her legal career and life journey.

Note: The 2021-2022 Lakeside Lecture Series will include evening events open only to fullyvaccinated parents and guardians of current Lakeside students. Lectures are free of charge, and registration is required using the links found at lakesideschool.org/about-us/lakesidelecture-series. Recordings of the Mark J. Bebie ’70 Memorial Lecture and the Dan Ayrault Memorial Lecture will be widely available through that same link; a recording of the Bernie Noe Endowed Lecture on Ethics and Politics will be made available to current parents and guardians.

F a l l • W i n t e r 2 0 2 1 13

inside l ake side AT H L E T I C S

Lakeside’s Head Coach C O N V O C AT I O N W A S particularly special this year. This tradition launches our

school year with spirit, energy, and inspiration. We missed it last year because of the pandemic, so it felt wonderful to have the entire school community together and happy on the Middle School field with the sun shining. My role in convocation is to help teach the classic Lakeside L-I-O-N-S cheer, and I am always called to the stage

Follow Lakeside Athletics on Facebook on Twitter at @LakesideLions

by Bernie after he delivers his opening message.

This year, Bernie reminded everyone that this would be his final convocation as head of school. As I took the stage, I was compelled to offer my thanks to him. I shared my perspective from an athletics point of view: The best, most resilient, most inclusive, most joyful teams have a set of core values that are never compromised. Those values are alive and always present. The responsibility for upholding those values rests with the head coach. For me, Bernie is Lakeside’s head coach. He has created an incredible culture, one in which individuals thrive and are challenged.

Bernie has inspired all of us to be the best versions of ourselves and to support each other. He has been an outstanding coach.

Since then, I have been thinking about what Bernie has meant to Lakeside Athletics. We can all look at The Paul G. Allen Athletics Center and recognize Bernie’s commitment to providing an outstanding facility for our student-athletes. But, when I think about Bernie’s support of athletics, I see snapshots of him immersed in the work of our teams and studentathletes.

Bernie is an avid runner. He brings that passion to our cross-country team. Each year, Bernie laces up his running shoes and heads out with a small group of our cross-country athletes. He talks with them, keeps pace with them, and shows them he admires and recognizes all of the hard work they put in each day.

Since I am now in my eighth year as 14 L AKESIDE

the director of athletics, I have a ton of Lakeside apparel. Bernie makes regular comments to me about all of my stuff. Two years ago, he told me how much he liked the all-weather jacket I had on that read “Lakeside Athletics” on the back. I asked him if he wanted one. With a big smile on his face, he replied, “Yes!” The first time he wore it was on a damp and cold evening at a football game. He and I shared a smile as he sat down with parents and guardians who complimented him on the jacket. He was now an official member of our athletics department.

Many of my memories are of watching him at sports events. Whether he was standing and talking with parents and guardians on Stimson-Carlisle during a soccer match, cheering on volleyball, basketball, or wrestling in the Ackerley Gymnasium, or talking with parent and guardian volunteers flipping burgers at tailgates, I always saw Bernie filled with school spirit

and enjoying every minute of being a Lakeside fan.

My final story focuses on our wrestling program. A few years ago, Bernie attended the one and only home meet Lakeside hosted. He was sitting close enough to some of the athletes who had finished wrestling that he could talk with them about how proud he was of their efforts. He asked why we had only one home meet. The athletes explained that the league had recently changed how it conducted meets.

Instead of having two teams compete against each other, four teams came to one site. For this to work, the team hosting the meet had to provide two mats. Without hesitation, Bernie told the athletes that the school would purchase another mat — a not-insignificant expense for a 40-by-40-foot heavy-duty piece of equipment. The wrestlers were blown away by this response. I got to work the next day getting the new mat.

No matter how Bernie shows up for athletics — running alongside athletes, cheering on a team, providing funding for outstanding facilities and equipment, showing off his Lakeside Athletics apparel, or sitting with parents, guardians, and alumni — he bleeds maroon and gold. I am grateful for his support, mentorship, and leadership over the last seven years. And, on behalf of every coach, athlete, and staff member, I send along a loud and proud, “Go Lions!” to Bernie Noe — our school’s head coach.

— Chris Hartley is director of athletics at Lakeside School.

Illustration by Samuel L-O ’22

A LU M N I S N A P S H OT

Where Lakesiders Live I N A D D I T I O N T O current Lakeside families, Lakeside magazine is mailed from Seattle to the 6,329

domestic addresses we currently have in our database. The most popular metropolitan locations for Lakeside alumni are Seattle, New York, the San Francisco Bay area, Los Angeles, and Portland, Ore.

We're working to make our database of alumni addresses more complete and inclusive.

If you need to update your address — or know a classmate who is likely missing from our records — we'd love to hear from you. Contact: alumni@lakesideschool.org An additional 113 Lakesiders live abroad. Here are the five most popular countries.

England

Denmark

Germany

Canada France Graphic: Erick Ingraham

F a l l • W i n t e r 2 0 2 1 15

X

I N T E RV I EW BY C A R EY Q UA N G E L E R N T E R P O R T R A I T S B Y K AT I E M . S I M M O N S & T O M R E E S E

Closing Remarks

T

he path that led Bernie Noe to Lakeside was unlikely.

A self-described weird kid who read Machiavelli and St. Augustine but “didn’t give a rip” about school, he grew up in central Massachusetts in a blue-collar community where few went on to college, then wound up teaching children of movers and shakers at some of the world’s toniest schools. Arriving at Lakeside in 1999, the new head of school lost no time launching into what became a steady

stream of changes, programs, initiatives, and fundraising to carry out his vision of how a forwardthinking, community-minded school should educate its students to contribute to the world.

In a couple of long conversations at the start of Noe’s 23rd and final year at the helm, former Lakeside magazine editor Carey Quan Gelernter returned to the school to ask him to revisit some of the highs, lows, and laughs along his unusual journey, and to share what he sees next for himself and for Lakeside. Here are condensed, edited excerpts of the conversations. You can find an expanded transcript at lakesideschool.org/magazine.

16 L AKESIDE

Photo: Katie M. Simmons

In his final year as head of school, Bernie Noe finds a quiet moment with his grandson, Sebastian. The family’s French bulldog, Alma, is all eyes.

F a l lF•aW l l i•nW t ei rn t2e0r 2210 2 117 17

X Closing Remarks What’s your first recollection of hearing about Lakeside?

I remember the first moment. It was at a basketball game at Sidwell Friends School. The school had a new student who had gone to Lakeside and whose older sister had graduated from there. I was sitting next to their mom. She said the daughters had gone to a school in Seattle called Lakeside, and that it was really strong academically, a really good school. For whatever reason, she added, “The head of school’s house is really nice.”

A year later, a headhunter called and said Lakeside was looking for a head.

Had you ever visited Seattle?

When I came to interview here was the very first time.

I’d hardly even been to the West Coast — just a couple of trips to San Francisco and Los Angeles to fundraise for Sidwell.

First impressions?

After I accepted the job, I came back in April for three days for a board retreat. I went for a run in Myrtle Edwards Park. It was barely light out, 6:30 a.m. I noticed a young woman standing on a rock, kind of out in the water. It struck me because you wouldn’t run in the park in the semidark in D.C. I thought, This must be a really safe city that a woman would be out there. I ran by her and then I heard an enormous splash. I thought she’d jumped in the water. I turned back and there was a gigantic orca, right off the bay. I stood on the rock with her for a few minutes. That whale came up a second time right beside me and looked right up at me — like I could see in its mouth.

I took that as a sign: “Think big. Come here and think big.”

Did you know anyone in Seattle?

(My wife) Killian had one friend, who had been her classmate at Yale Divinity School.

The move was gigantic for Killian. She’d started a mind-blowing organization in D.C., Samaritan Inns

(addressing homelessness and addiction). She said it would be like you starting a school and it’s going really well — and then you leave.

She came because she knew I really wanted to come.

I’d had other offers. She said if it was going to be anywhere, she knew this would be the school.

You owed her big time.

Yes. As it turns out, now she wouldn’t want to leave Seattle. And she came to that before I did. She wrote a book the first year, about working with people experiencing homelessness, “Finding Our Way Home.” Then she decided to open Recovery Café. There are 36 cafés in the Recovery Café network now.

When the headhunter approached you, you were assistant head at Sidwell. Were you happy there?

I started at Sidwell in 1992. First two years, I thought I’d made a terrible mistake. Then I loved it. Sidwell is a unique school. Super intense. Off-the-charts intense.

More than Lakeside?

Oh, yeah. The family I told you about, when I was in process for this job at Lakeside, the mother came to my office with her older daughter. (Their younger daughter had been at Sidwell three years by then.) I asked the older daughter how she would describe the difference between the schools. She said Lakeside was about 10 to 15% less intense. That turned out to be accurate.

One of my first meetings there was with Hillary Clinton, to talk through whether Chelsea was going to come there. The whole media elite sends their children to Sidwell. One of the very first people who showed up in my office at Sidwell was Bob Woodward. He said to me, “You know, Bernie, there’s a lot of drinking here, and I want to help you address this.”

How did you first decide on becoming an educator?

The year before I graduated college, I got a job leading bicycle trips in the summers for high school kids, and I really liked working with the kids.

My first two years after college, I took pottery, recorder

Bernie’s Time 1998:

At a November 1998 assembly, Jill Ruckelshaus, president of the Board of Trustees (shown at right, with former head Terry Macaluso), and George Hutchinson, head of the search committee, announce Bernard “Bernie” Noe from 18 L AKESIDE

Sidwell Friends School in D.C. has been hired as the new head of Lakeside. Ruckelshaus says, “No other candidate in the pool was even close.”

1999: The Board of Trustees,

Noe, and a consultant write a charge for the new head. It stresses revitalizing a culture based on “a commitment to a global perspective and a

Timeline photos: Jane Carlson Williams ’60 Archives

Noe makes a final adjustment, 2015. His bow tie became a sartorial signature.

sense of solidarity with the global community that crosses all racial and economic boundaries and that leads to a sense of responsibility for contributing to peace and justice in the global community.”

2000:

At Noe’s insistence, Lakeside School introduces a nonEuropean language (Chinese) to its

Photo: Katie M. Simmons (top)

world language offerings.

Lakeside’s endowment in March 2000 stands at $44,519,196.

2001: Following several years of

rancorous discussion, research, and a pilot program in the Middle School, Lakeside becomes one of the first schools in the country to adopt the F a l l • W i n t e r 2 0 2 1 19

A pensive moment, 2014.

One of the ongoing challenges at Lakeside, Noe discovered, is bringing a practice of quiet reflection to a culture of striving achievement.

20 L AKESIDE

xxxxxxxxx Photo: xxxxx Tomxxxxxx Reese

X Closing Remarks lessons, read like crazy, I ran the Boston Marathon. I worked bits and pieces of jobs, in restaurants. I was living in Boston in the winter with nine other people in a communal household. It was awesome, it was the ’60s, early ’70s. But I knew eventually I had to figure out what I was going to do. I’d done the bike trips for three summers. I thought: Why don’t I try teaching? I went back to grad school, to Boston College.

I’d been a political science major at Boston University. At Boston College, I was getting an MAT — Master of Arts in Teaching; it was half history, half education classes. I’m one course short of finishing. Isn’t that ridiculous?

My advisor at Boston College called me one morning and said, “The headmaster of The American School in Switzerland is here, and I told him about you; why don’t you clean up and come over?” I did. He hired me.

I taught three years in Switzerland. That was just the most awesome job. I was 25 years old. They had a fleet of vans and, with another faculty member, if you had eight kids who wanted to go, the school would pay you to travel. Every January the school moved to St. Moritz so everyone could ski.

I thought, Wow, this international teaching thing is a good thing. I applied to the American School in Israel. I flew to Rome to meet the head at the airport, talked to him for 30 minutes. He said, “OK, you’re hired.” That’s the way it worked in those days.

Why Israel?

Switzerland was so controlled, I wanted to go somewhere more free form. Actually, I had first applied to Beirut, but then the civil war in Lebanon started.

By comparison, it seemed to me that the Israelis lived more for today. The school was 16 kilometers north of Tel Aviv.

The U.S. ambassador and a lot of the ambassadors lived there. It was a fabulous life. On my second or third day there, I met Killian. I saw her running on the beach and thought, She looks American. One of the kids, the next day, said the woman who takes care of us during the week asked about you. Killian was working with kids whose parents were doing relief work in places that didn’t have schools, so

Bernie’s Time

use of laptop computers for grades 7 to 12. A $10 million gift from the Paul G. Allen Foundation helps make the program possible.

2003: Mission Focus:

Noe gathers 130 Lakesiders over six months to design an initiative, going xxxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxx

they went to my school and lived in a dorm. Their parents were doctors or in social service working with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. So I got to know Gaza pretty well.

Two years later, I decided to try for the foreign service.

When we were there, Killian was close to the wife of the U.S. ambassador to Israel, so we met every luminary in Israel. We got invited to every embassy party. That life looked really interesting to me.

That led you to Georgetown?

Yes, I was going to get a Ph.D. in international relations.

Once I got there, I realized foreign service is very hierarchical — you don’t get to ambassador’s parties right away. We had been outside of the ranks, so they didn’t have to follow any kind of protocol; we were smoking cigars and having a great time.

I got a master’s but decided not to go for the Ph.D. Then I got a letter in the mail from Landon School in Bethesda, Maryland. I had forgotten I’d registered with a teacher placement agency years before. They were looking for a history teacher.

Landon describes itself as “ranked as one of the best private schools in the D.C. area.”

Fair enough. The mission of the school was, in effect, “All boys will play football and go to college.” I never thought I’d work in an all-boys school, not my cup of tea, but I loved it.

Landon was so upfront about what it was. No BS. If someone called and said, “I have a really artistic son,” they’d say, “This is probably not the school for you.” It was actually the last job I had where I was one of the gang. It was just fun.

At what point did you decide to become an administrator?

I loved teaching. I’d been pretty much a department head and teacher for 13 years. I’d been at Landon seven or eight years. Around year five, I found myself thinking, “Do I want to be doing this at 65?” I was 38 at the time.

A member of the history department walked into the office one day and said his father, who was head of Sidwell, had

beyond the 1999 mission to commit to areas of specific focus. A consensus approach is borrowed from the Quaker culture of Sidwell Friends School; 100% consensus is reached, cementing the final three elements as “academic excellence, diversity, and global citizenship.”

F a l lF•aW l l i•nW t ei rn t2e0r 2210 2 121 21

X Closing Remarks been looking for an upper school director. He said he’d told his father a little about me, and he said if I was interested to give him a call. I didn’t call.

What did you know about Sidwell?

It was a liberal progressive Quaker school. And they weren’t as good at sports as Landon.

And you cared about that?

“I sort of cared, I guess. I didn’t know enough about the school. A week passed. Killian said, “For heaven’s sake, at least call them.” When I finally called, they said they had closed the search, but I could apply the next year. And then just before I got off phone, he said, you know what, why don’t you come down and we’ll just meet. We had a really good rapport. In four days, start to finish, they hired me.

It must have been a hell of an interview.

It was just fate, destiny, call it what you will. That was warp speed for a Quaker school.

How did you like being an administrator?

As a teacher — and I think I was a pretty good teacher — students would thank you for class; alumni would come back to see you. Then you become a principal, and nobody says anything. I was also teaching 9th-grade European history, and my students would be affirming. But otherwise, it was the affirmation wasteland.

So why do it?

I realized I could have an institutional impact — just being able to shape an institution, to sort out what’s right for the kids.

And, amazingly, I really loved working with their parents, too. I understood they were going to be irrational every now and then, but that’s all right, that’s the world. Good for you if you’ve got a couple of adults irrational about you. They made me assistant head. I liked that. I was in the job for seven years.

No one had that job for more than five or so years.

Because of the pressure?

So flipping much pressure.

From the parents, upper administrators?

From parents, the kids. Only now, 23 years later, is the intensity around college starting to be the same here at Lakeside as it was there. And, as much fun as it was, I was starting to do the same things over and over again.

You like challenge, you like change.

I really do.

Where does that come from, Bernie?

Who knows? I lived in the same town in Massachusetts for 18 years. My whole family, grandparents, had lived there.

They’d been there like 100 years. I knew I wanted to leave.

It’s just a restlessness I’ve always had. Anyway, I knew I eventually would leave Sidwell.

Before we go down that road, go back a bit to your upbringing. You didn’t go to college right away. You worked in a factory, right?

Two days after I turned 16, I started working in a factory that made aluminum chairs.

I knew it helped the family that I took no spending money from them, from the time I was 9 years old. I had a paper route, I caddied, and then this factory job. During high school, I worked 30 hours a week, except I’d go out for track in the spring.

Summers I worked there full time. The people I worked with included prisoners from the Worcester House of Corrections. We unloaded trucks together, side by side; they were in their orange jumpsuits.

Did your dad work at the same factory?

My dad was in a different factory, a textile mill. My mom was the baker at the high school cafeteria. I have a sister; she was a by-the-book straight-A kid. I was not that. She went to college, became a nurse in Boston.

Bernie’s Time 2004: Living Our Mission: The Lake-

side Campaign is launched to raise funds to achieve the Mission Focus goals. The campaign raises $135.6 million.

2005: Lakeside launches its Global Service Learning program with international trips to Peru, India, and China.

22 L AKESIDE

Closer to home, 8th graders spend two weeks at the Makah Indian Reservation near Neah Bay on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula.

2009: Lakeside debuts its summer

school. Some 340 students — 40% from other schools — participate in academic classes and sports camps. xxxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxx

Did anyone encourage you to go to college?

My teacher for “Problems in Democracy” said to me, “You’re a smart person; if you would apply yourself, you could make something of yourself.” An English teacher said the same thing. Maybe 20% of my class went to college. I wasn’t thinking of going to college.

My dad had gone to 8th grade, mom to the 10th. They were so pro-education. I didn’t give a rip about doing well in school. But I did like reading philosophy and some theology.

I was reading St. Augustine and Machiavelli my sophomore year. In high school, I was a painter; I did art. I was terrible at it, but I loved it. You couldn’t be the weird kid that I was and end up in the same place anymore. It was a different time.

By senior year, reality set in. I worked at the factory for a year after high school. Then I went to Boston University. At BU, I was completely out of place. A lot of the kids came from New York; a lot had traveled, spoke foreign languages. I’d done none of that. I realized the in-crowd was wearing Topsiders. I’d never seen a pair. Someone explained that you wear them on your boat, and I thought, “Well, there are no boats here.” I kept a low profile. I found the other working-class kids at BU. How did you do that?

I can do it to this day. Recently, I was on a board with four college presidents, six or eight school heads. Within a few hours I could tell who grew up as I did. By the way they carried themselves.By their attitude: You don’t expect to get any breaks. By their attitude about how the world worked.

By the time you got to Sidwell, you had been with all these uppercrust people. You’d gone far beyond the confines of your early workingclass world.

Oh, yes. When I lived with those nine people in the communal house in Boston, they were from different backgrounds — that was kind of the introduction. Then the boarding school at Switzerland, where the parents were counts, industry moguls, glitterati, then in Israel, with the embassy people. I met these people and really enjoyed them, kind of surprisingly. I thought: These folks are just people at the

Noe and former English teacher Brian Culhane share a laugh at an early-2000s Rummage Sale.

Opposite page: senior portrait, Northbridge High School, Whitinsville, Mass.

2010: The Pacific Northwest Asso-

ciation of Independent Schools accreditation report calls Lakeside “a magical place” and observes that “exemplary leadership from the head of school is widely evident.”

Photo: Jane Carlson Williams ’60 Archives (top)

2011: Along with nine other inde-

pendent schools, Lakeside helps found the Global Online Academy. Former Lakeside Middle School assistant director Michael Nachbar is named executive director.

F a l lF•aW l l i•nW t ei rn t2e0r 2210 2 123 23

X Closing Remarks end of the day. It kind of normalized it for me.

But you knew Seattle would be very different from D.C., that the movers and shakers in Seattle and Lakeside would include tech powerhouses rather than politicians. Did you worry that you wouldn’t understand them and the culture?

Not exactly. Before I left Sidwell, one board member who had lived in Seattle said, “You’ll find Seattle to be quite different from the East Coast. People in Seattle will never ask you what you did before you came to Seattle or where you went to school.” That turned out to be true.

But you knew Lakeside had just done a big capital campaign, and you knew these people would be important, and you didn’t come from the tech world, right?

What I knew was — and I did consider this — is that even if Lakeside didn’t have tremendous resources at the moment, it had the potential to have the resources that you could do really interesting things with, if we could garner everyone’s will to do it.

Will — and money?

And money; it was going to take money. I could tell from the board that they were up for it. Several board members were in their 30s when I came. On their game. Funny. I thought, This is a good group. It turned out to be an accurate assessment. They were very entrepreneurial. They had a kind of go-for-it attitude.

The most important part was I was amazed by the students.

They asked me to speak to 150 kids at Fix; I think it was a free period, and anyone could come meet the head candidate. It really struck me: All day long, kids would get up from the middle of the quad and run over to talk to me. They’d say things like, “Hey, I really hope this works out for you.”

That wouldn’t have happened at Sidwell?

No. I loved Sidwell kids, but the East Coast is kind of inyour-face intelligence.

Bernie’s Time 2011: A community-wide diversity and inclusion initiative is launched, establishing six goals: inclusive pedagogy; faculty hiring; access and affordability; eliminating boundaries among Lakeside adults and between the school community and families; and making time for students to reflect and discuss issues of

24 L AKESIDE

One other thing: At the same time I was interviewing at Lakeside, I was offered the headship of another school.

There, they said, “Killian — Mary will take you shopping while Bernie and I talk about the contract.” That infuriated Killian. At Lakeside, George Hutchinson and Jill Ruckelshaus were the two heads of the search committee, and when they offered me the job they said, “Killian and Bernie, let’s go talk about how this is going to work out.”

Going back to this entrepreneurial board: Did you voice your ideas to them?

Yes. They brought me out for a two-day retreat. They talked about where they thought the school should go and where I thought it should go. I was really, even in those days, very committed to diversity. Sidwell was very into diversity, and it was a big part of my whole belief about education that independent schools shouldn’t just be for the privileged and wealthy. They listened to all that.

The board wanted faculty evaluations, they wanted laptops.

They felt the school was really stuck. They were open to innovation, diversity. They clearly wanted Lakeside to be a leading school.

What was your overall vision?

I just read this in a file yesterday — it was in the very first speech I gave to the Lakeside faculty. I knew global education was the future. At Sidwell, I was in charge of global education. I’d lived overseas for six years. I knew there was a whole world out there, coming on strong. And technology was going to level the playing field; the internet was just getting up and running. And I knew you couldn’t be a great school if you don’t have all kinds of kids from everywhere.

What did you see as the biggest challenges in achieving your vision?

The very first day of the academic year, I went to the language department; they had just finished a two-year study that concluded they didn’t need to offer any non-Western language. Literally the first day, I told them, “You have until November: It can be Japanese or Chinese, but you’re going to do it.”

race and socioeconomic class. The fulltime position of director of equity and instruction is created.

2012: A newly renovated Allen-Gates

Hall reopens, adding 4,000 square feet to the science and math building, including three classrooms, a chemistry lab,

Developing relationships with Lakeside alumni has been a crucial part of Noe’s success — and a source of personal satisfaction. Here, Noe poses for a 2013 reunion photo with Bill Gates ’73.

and a community space.

2012-2014: Noe charges each

academic department to come up with two “bold and doable” ideas to help ensure that the curriculum remains “relevant and futurefocused.”

In January 2014, The Paul G. Allen Athletics Center opens. Construction of the Photo: Jane Carlson Williams ’60 Archives (top)

F a l lF•aW l l i•nW t ei rn t2e0r 2210 2 125 25

On a recent fall morning, Noe talked outside the WCC with his “advisory.” In addition to teaching a course on the Holocaust, Noe has always met regularly with student groups.

X Closing Remarks I left that room, went to the English department and said, “You need to change the curriculum and offer literature of the world, not just the British-American canon.” That was a battle because they said, you cannot teach anything in translation.

That same day, I went to the history department and said, “You’ve got to start teaching non-Western history. Just teaching European and American history is not going to cut it.” We came to agreement — and then a month later, they said, we met and decided we’re not going to do it. I removed the department head and put a new person in.

Your predecessor, Terry Macaluso, described faculty resistance. To quote her, “Anything connecting to the 21st century was an invasion.” She described a “club

Bernie’s Time

atmosphere” and said she was not in the club. Were you in the club?

I was not in the club. The fact that I came from Sidwell kind of interested people. They knew Clinton was there, and it had a national reputation. That gave me some credibility.

But it was not an easy thing.

Demanding changes could not have been fun.

The board didn’t know how deep the problem was. Hence, I didn’t know.

A word about Terry — Terry did yeoman’s work. There was no policy manual when she took over; she wrote one. She fixed the buildings. She put a super-solid board together.

She did a campaign that took a $6 million endowment to

63,535-square-foot-building took 11 months and cost $22.1 million.

2018: Lakeside introduces “Our Work

Together,” a more comprehensive initiative aimed at institutionalizing the school’s work in diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Lakeside opens an affiliated micro-school, The Downtown School, near Seattle Center. Following a no-frills model of 26 L AKESIDE

education with few electives and no sports or extracurriculars, the new school offers intensives, internships, and the city as classroom. Its tuition of $17,500 is about half that of Lakeside’s.

2019: Noe initiates a fundamental

re-envisioning of Lakeside’s educational program, focused on teaching competencies and mindsets. The goal of the re-envisioning, Photo: Tom Reese (top)

something like $46 or $48 million.

The faculty later told me: “We were so worn down fighting with Terry. When you arrived, you were fresh and we were tired.” They started to concede. In my first three years, 50% of the faculty left.

You told the faculty you were going from an approach based on complete individual freedom, as championed by Rousseau, to a form of representative democracy, along the lines of John Locke. There was representation — certainly in the Mission Focus work, which we’ll get to later. But Lakeside always seemed to me to be definitely “Bernie’s school.” People always said, “We’ll have to see what Bernie says.” You interview and approve every hire. There was a little bit of fear in people. Was that your intent?

It wasn’t deliberate. But when a new head shows up — and at the end of first year, the entire administration leaves, and that needed to happen, and then over a three-year peri-

are 213 people who work here, 20 people a year turn over on average. So, it’s not that many.

In the early days, I wanted to hire people who were globalists and committed to diversity, good community people. When I came in, in 1999, there was zero collaboration. People never talked to their colleagues. Teachers did whatever they wanted. No one checked on you. Reining that in was painful. If I had known, I may not have taken the job. I didn’t sign up for that. But because of that, when we did the Mission Focus in 2004, we were ready to do it. The people who stayed were down for having this place be collaborative and be global.

You were confident the Mission Focus, which called for consensus — something that was your idea — would go where you wanted?

No. I really didn’t try to control the outcome. We were not changing the mission of the school, but we were deciding which pieces to focus on the next five to 10 years. We needed buy-in from everyone.

2017

2011

od, 50% of the faculty leaves — I don’t care how benign you think you are, that makes people fearful. There are people who started here two years ago. They know all about that period. I didn’t tell them. That gets passed down.

Do you like that?

It’s not a question of liking. I don’t think I do anything to nurture that. I don’t think of myself as draconian. I don’t know any school where everyone feels like: Don’t worry about the head. I feel like I’ve had a lot of very warm relationships with people here over the years.

The thing about being Bernie’s school: If you’re 20 years as a head, that starts to happen. It is true that I sign off on every hire. For a school this size, that would be normal. There

2018

2021

That was a big risk, wasn’t it?

This sounds terrible to say, but had it gone the way it could have gone a couple of times, I probably wouldn’t have stayed.

What were the other possibilities?

One of the big ones was that we become an environmental school. That’s a worthy cause, just not my cause.

Your style seemed different with students. You’ve always taught at least one class — your Holocaust class, which was always popular — and you had advisory groups.

I still have an advisory group. I didn’t meet with them during COVID. Instead, I met with the entire student body, and

says Noe, “… is to do what Lakeside has done so well for 100 years: Prepare our students to live joyful lives of meaning and service in the world they find when they graduate.”

2021 Lakeside’s endowment reaches $212 million.

In January, in the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic, Noe announces his retirement, effective June 2022. His 23-year

tenure as head of school will be the longest in Lakeside’s 102-year history. In a letter to the community, Board Chair Carey Crutcher ’77 Smith writes: “In many ways, it seems impossible to imagine Lakeside without Bernie at the helm. But it is his commitment to progress — also held by former Lakeside heads like Robert Adams, Dexter K. Strong, Dan Ayrault, and Terry Macaluso — that will guide us through this upcoming transition.”

F a l lF•aW l l i•nW t ei rn t2e0r 2210 2 127 27

The move from D.C. to Lakeside was a big decision for Bernie and his wife, Killian.

“She came because she knew I really wanted to come,” he says.

X Closing Remarks that was 700 kids over the last 18 months, in groups of 20. I taught until my 19th year.

The direct line you had to students, was that a deliberate part of your leadership style?

Absolutely. And also, my first 10 years, I met with one student group every week for Breakfast with Bernie.

Were there important insights you gained as a result?

My first year, just for example, kids would say, “Why can’t we switch into different sections?” And I would ask why they wanted to. One kid taking European history said he spent the entire year studying the Greeks “because our teacher loves the Greeks.” That’s how I learned there was no consistency in departments.

It’s almost like having, well, maybe “spies” is not the right word, but …

It’s on-the-ground intelligence. I’ve done it everywhere.

The rule was: Don’t mention a specific teacher’s name or course. Middle School kids would say, “Why do I have to take French? I want to take Spanish.” I talked to the language department, and they said we have to fill the French sections. All the time it came down to jobs.

Kids tell you everything. They would also tell me when their parents were obnoxious. I would go back to their parents and say, “The problem is you guys. You’re driving them nuts with this stuff.”

28 L AKESIDE

Going back to you as a change agent, you made a lot of changes in curriculum over time. Can you take us behind the scenes a bit?

The biggest one by far was the Mission Focus. It set the direction we’re still following, almost 20 years later. It’s still the right mission: To work on being successfully inclusive and diverse, to work on being global, in the best sense of the word, and to provide academic excellence.

A lot of the things afterward stemmed from one of those three major directional shifts. Starting the Global Service Learning program was very much related to being global.

The “Bold and Doable” initiative was pretty significant.

But the one we’re doing now, competencies and mindsets — that’s a fundamental shift in how things will be taught.

That will be an amazing thing for the kids. The North Star is always what is good for these students. It was always clear to me: If some adult wants to do something, I ask myself, is it good for them or for the kids? If it’s good for both, great, but if it’s not for the kids, I say no.

It’s hard to believe now that there could have been so much controversy in 2001 over requiring laptops.

Before I came, in 1998, the board launched a pilot laptop program in the 7th grade. When I came, the board said let’s continue it. The faculty said it was a nightmare and didn’t want to do it. That was my second year. It was bad. The national tenure for independent school heads is three years. I told Killian, “Don’t unpack the rest of the boxes.”

Photo: Katie M. Simmons

I said we’ll do it; it’s the future. But we had no money to do it. We thought we’d have to hardwire all the buildings. We told parents they were required to spend $2,200 on their child’s laptop. It was a full-on rebellion. The faculty, kids, and parents all went off at the same time. There were three meetings at the chapel — 300 people in there, everyone yelling. People said, “You’re new. You don’t understand the spirit of the school. You’ll turn it into an Orwellian place. Kids will be looking at screens all the time.”

Ironically, what they were worried about ended up happening with iPhones.

You did, later, try to address that. Students came up with a “phone-free day” in 2017, and then you tried to have the technology-free lunch zones in 2018, which didn’t work.

That was three years too late.

How did the laptop controversy work itself out?

Within my first two months at Lakeside, I was fortunate enough to attend a dinner that had been set up for some of the school’s most faithful and generous alumni to meet the new head. At the end of that dinner, one of the people there, Paul Allen, said to let him know if we needed assistance, and how he could be helpful. He gave us $10 million for the laptop program. The community was still outraged; but I thought at least we can do it now. The other thing Paul said — which was mind-blowing — was, “There’s this new thing called wireless. My company is on the forefront of it.” He sent his team to install wireless in the school. His $10 million generates $400,000 per year to spend on instruction and technology. Everything would have been different, if that hadn’t happened.

Lakeside so owes him.

Did you get support from other parts of Seattle’s tech world?

Oh, yes. A lot of the tech leaders loved Lakeside and loved what we were imagining. After the Mission Focus, we added up what it was going to cost to do what we wanted to do, and it was something like $132 million. To increase the socioeconomic diversity of the school: $52 million. To keep LEEP [the Lakeside Educational Enrichment Program] fully funded and free, $5 million. The summer school needed a $5 million endowment; Global Service Learning needed $20 million. But the campaign was the whole community — there were many hundreds of others who made gifts.

There were wealthy families that gave money to the school knowing it would mean it could be harder for their grandchildren to get in. It was pretty noble. I was really moved by it, actually.

That leads us to admissions. How do you balance expectations and keep the support of alumni, trustees, donors, from the traditional

The Bernie Noe Reader

O

ver the years, Bernie Noe has regularly advised Lakeside students to cultivate the practice of lifelong reading. In his own practice, Bernie goes back to a dozen or so books that he continually rereads and rediscovers, finding something new each time as the circumstances of his life change. Several of these books, he told last year’s graduating class, have helped him stay centered through the stresses of the COVID pandemic. “They are like wise old friends,” he said, “always there with good and relevant advice to offer.” Here’s his list.

•

“Man’s Search for Meaning” Viktor Frankl (1946)

•

“The Consolation of Philosophy” Boethius (523 CE)

•

“The Nicomachean Ethics” Aristotle (c. 340 BCE)

•

“The Tao Te Ching” Laozi (c. 600 BCE)

•

“The Analects of Confucius” Confucius (c. 500 BC)

•

“The Courage to Be” Paul Tillich (1952)

•

“The Responsible Self” H. Richard Niebuhr (1810)

•

“Meditations” Marcus Aurelius (171-175 CE)

•

“Reverence” Paul Woodruff (2001)

•

“Letters to a Young Poet” Rainer Maria Rilke (1929)

•

The Holy Bible F a l l • W i n t e r 2 0 2 1 29

X Closing Remarks Seattle elite with the desire to be more inclusive — which means inevitably less privilege to those traditionally privileged?

I would just say to people when we’d have these discussions, “Who is Lakeside for?” I’d say, “It’s for all the kids in the city who are smart enough to be here and thrive.” Honestly, they just understood it.

There’s still an advantage to being connected (parents or guardians are alumni or employees; applicant had or has siblings at Lakeside). That’s always kind of a trade-off with keeping alumni support, I guess?

About 16% get in unconnected, 40% connected.

We see it in colleges, too.

It’s the way it works. Until the world is different and everything’s free.

And if we’re honest, part of the cachet of Lakeside or schools like Lakeside is proximity to families of privilege and power — which is probably more important for people who don’t have that background. Studies show attending an Ivy League school does more for the less privileged.

Connections do matter. You’re going to get as good an education in a lot of places but you’re not going to get the same connections.

Let’s talk more about diversity. I think it’s fair to say that the path has not been smooth.

Less smooth than ever.

In the most recent issue of Lakeside magazine, Director of Communications Amanda Darling wrote that, “while Lakeside has made progress in making the school more inclusive and equitable, it’s stalled in some areas.” She cited faculty hiring, a significant percentage of Black students leaving before graduation, and students still reporting racial aggressions.

You have written about initiatives including the 2011 Diversity and Inclusion Initiative and Our Work Together, launched in 2018, and promised more, concrete changes. What might some be?

Until two months ago, if there was an opening in a department, the department hired the person. That will not happen going forward. We identified 40 employees who will be trained in equitable hiring and serve on hiring committees. A DEI (staff) person will be on all the committees. If there is an opening in physics, five people on that hiring committee will represent other departments and one person will be from the science department. Science will have a say, of course: they’ll say if (the candidate) knows physics. We’re doing that because we’re not hiring enough candidates of diverse backgrounds quickly enough. I think it will bring about some significant change.

We’ve developed a bias reporting tool for adults and students.

30 L AKESIDE

Upper and Middle school directors, me, and our head of diversity and inclusion will meet with the Black Student Union three times a year and parents of color three times a year. We heard from kids last year that the curriculum is finally diversifying. When reading about — especially African American students — they’re not just reading about stories about the subjugation of African Americans but also reading success stories. They said, “Enough with the enslaved people.” That’s important, but let’s also talk about what’s working well with people of color so that there’s hope for the students as well.

Why after all the other initiatives will this be different?

I have a more optimistic view than some. We’ve gone from 24% students of color to 64% students of color. Until you get more diverse, you can’t do a lot of the other stuff. A lot of groundwork has been laid.

We now have an African American Upper School director, African American associate director in the Middle School, African American associate director in the Upper School, a Jordanian woman as the Middle School director, an African American admissions director — a lot changes when the administration changes. They’ve experienced what the kids have experienced, so they’ve been instrumental in moving things along.

Yet the culture of the school today still does not reflect the true diversity of the student body. That’s a challenge. I don’t know if I could have met that more, or if the zeitgeist was not ready for it. I compare it to when the school went coed in 1971. Today you wouldn’t pick up in any way that this was once a boys school; it made such a successful transition. I just told this to the new faculty — you’re building your legacy now. I’m going to come back in 10 years and see that Lakeside has become a successfully inclusive school, so multicultural that it will be hard to believe it was once a homogenous culture. That’s the work ahead.

At one point, you felt that growing up working class gave you more of an understanding of racial diversity.

Later you changed your thinking.

Growing up working class, I forever did not like the white privilege idea. I thought — ironically, this is the way a lot of Americans feel right now, too — that no one handed me anything. But they actually did. My parents paid my tuition to college. Going to BU in 1970 was $2,800 a year, and that was with room and board.

I didn’t grow up in a connected family, or a family where people were opening doors for me, or frankly could even show me where the doors were. So, I resisted that idea of privilege forever. But then I realized: I went to a decent public high school. My parents took care of us, paid our tuition.

And just being white, period. It’s like Steve Sundborg (recently retired president of Seattle University) says, it’s like all the games are home games and you have friendly refs.

A dozen years after they first met in person, Kai Bynum and Bernie Noe reconnect at Lakeside in the spring of 2021 during Bynum’s introduction to the Lakeside community.

A Lasting Legacy of Leadership I N 2 0 0 8 , I W A S A Y O U N G A D M I N I S T R AT O R at a school outside of Boston and eager to explore some new programs focused on diversity and inclusion and global education. I knew Lakeside was advancing some initiatives in these areas, so I arranged a day visit with Bernie Noe and some administrators, students, and teachers. The day was amazing. I immediately felt the energy of the community as people throughout the campus projected a vibrant and forward-thinking culture I found inspiring.

The conversations I had with Bernie that day have resonated with me throughout my career. He talked about the complexity of managing a school through times of change and the importance of focusing on the people. I was particularly taken by his entrepreneurial spirit and his willingness to try new things. He gave me a glimpse into his world as a head of school, and that view has profoundly influenced how I see my own. Bernie helped me imagine how a leader can epitomize the values of the school. He helped

me realize how the spirit of innovation is aligned with community engagement and global curiosity, and he showed how essential diversity, equity, and inclusion are to the cultivation of a leadership team. We discussed many difficult decisions he had made during his tenure, and he helped me understand how much courage and strength it takes to guide a school with care and resolve.

As I think back to the meeting 13 years ago and the work at Lakeside that followed, Bernie’s examples of leadership in action have allowed me to assess the space between risk and belief.

How risky is the idea that you have and how strongly do you believe in the ideal impact that it represents? In answering those questions, through his actions and attributes, Bernie has established a lasting legacy of leadership at Lakeside.

He has encouraged me to leave the fear of failure aside and try to develop something meaningful that will have a positive impact on the school community. I am deeply thankful for his guidance.

— Kai Bynum, who will succeed Bernie Noe as head of school on July 1, 2022

Photo: Tom Reese

F a l l • W i n t e r 2 0 2 1 31

“There are three types of leaders,” Noe has said. “The affable, the pragmatist, and the visionary. A visionary turns an institution on its head — and often gets fired within three years.” Noe’s vision prevailed.

Photographed in The Paul G. Allen Athletics Center, 2014.

X Closing Remarks That’s an invisible advantage to a lot of white workingclass kids.

Global Service Learning (GSL), which you launched in 2004, has become a signature Lakeside program.

Looking back at its development, any surprises or lessons learned?

The idea was always for kids to be living in a village with a family and doing service. One thing we learned over the years is that, while students are going to do some service, because that’s important, the service isn’t the main event. (The communities) don’t need our services so much. They have 32 L AKESIDE

plenty of labor. The kids are learning a ton just being in the village, seeing how people in different parts of the world live, becoming part of a family structure in different parts of the world. It makes them very reflective about their own lives.

What do you foresee for GSL, given COVID-19?

The program is suspended for now; it’s going to be challenging. We might go to a country like Rwanda, which is very controlled. One of the things we’ll do anyway is offer some domestic programs. Because this country has become so polarized, kids from different areas don’t understand each other. And there are lots of needs in this

LEEP, of course, is free. We’re now doing it for both 6thand 9th-grade students, so they can be more successful in middle school and high school. We’ve completely redone the program in the last five years. It’s a good program.

Still, that’s only 100 kids a year.

When we established Summer School Programs, we raised an endowment. There were 650 kids in summer school this year, and we were able to provide financial aid to 30 percent.

Global Online Academy is just unbelievable. There are 1,000 kids a year taking classes. GOA provided professional development for 40,000 educators around the country on how to teach courses online.

Downtown School is at full enrollment.

But for all this, there is more to do. I said this to the faculty last Monday, that in my time, we’ve raised $250 million.

And every time I asked someone for money — and I’ve asked every single person I know for money — I’ve asked myself: Am I just making this school for privileged kids, or are we doing something beyond that? Fortunately, we’re doing something beyond that, and it’s amazing for kids here, but we’re also using the resources elsewhere. I believe that a school like Lakeside has a responsibility to the city to be a good citizen. I hope we open another micro-school in the South End. The board hasn’t formally approved it, but we’re well into discussion.

There’s just a lot of need educationally in Seattle and elsewhere.

In 2015, you told the faculty the special focus for the school year would be “being intentional in our efforts to broaden our definition of success for students.”

You said at the time: “There’s a palpable sense in America right now that this generation won’t be as successful as their parents,” and many “Lakeside parents and to some extent students are terrified about that.” Do you still think that’s true, or have the past 1 ½ years of political and COVID trauma changed that?

country, too: Appalachia, Eastern Washington. We have trips ready to go, to Mississippi and New Orleans, but both those places aren’t doing well, and we had to pull back.

You’ve had a goal of providing a Lakeside-type education to more students. Summer School, Global Online Academy (GOA), an expanded LEEP, and especially The Downtown School — along with plans to expand Lakeside itself — were all, in different ways, meant to do that.

How satisfied are you that they’ve met your goal?

Each program itself is doing well. Do I think Lakeside has concluded that goal? No, I don’t. We’ve made a good start.

Photo: Tom Reese

No, it’s truer than ever. COVID brought home more than ever the fact that there are two educational systems in America. One that has a lot of resources and operated through COVID — and one without and that didn’t. That frenzy around a closing window of opportunity for kids is stronger than ever. The demand to get into selective colleges is stronger than ever. Honestly, we have not really moved the dial on that. Despite all the rhetoric, admonitions, and encouragements to think of life in broader terms, there is still a tremendous emphasis on getting into a selective college and on to a good career once you’re out of college.

People are not wrong in thinking that the top 10% is doing a lot better than the bottom 90%. And the top percent — if you read the book, “The Trap of Meritocracy,” which is a really good book — the author’s point is that you once had a hereditary class people were born in to; now it’s a hereditary meritocratic class, where very successful parents use their resources to make sure their child is getting every F a l l • W i n t e r 2 0 2 1 33

X Closing Remarks conceivable advantage, education, and experiences.

That problem has been exacerbated by COVID. So that must mean even more admissions pressure than ever on Lakeside?

Schools like Lakeside are expensive; that narrows who would apply. The Downtown School had more applications than ever before. The tuition is $18,000 at the Downtown School, instead of $38,000 for Lakeside. More families can afford that. A lot more.

I went to a public school. I believe in the public schools. But they are underfunded and over bureaucratized.

Did you ever think of working in public schools?

No. It’s just not my gift. Everyone has to do as best they perceive their gift. For someone who didn’t know independent schools existed until college, they are kind of my milieu.

The speakers series is another special part of education here. The selections have sometimes caused controversy, as recently as Gen. John Kelly, former chief of staff and secretary of Homeland Security in the Trump administration, a year and a half ago.

The only speakers who get people furious are conservatives. If you bring in Gen. Kelly, who turned out to be a quite reasonable guy, everyone is shocked.

I had someone say, let’s bring Rachel Maddow as a speaker. We do that, and no one bats an eyelash. I said, “Oh, sure, maybe with Sean Hannity.” She said, “No, not Sean Hannity!” I said — they’re like the extreme of the left or right. Both shade stories. I worry about this, on behalf of the kids, because it’s easy to demonize people you’ve never interacted with.

In just about every commencement speech, you’ve told seniors that those lucky enough to get a Lakeside education justify that privilege by doing good in the world. Have you seen changes, over the years, in how the seniors responded to your message?

We did a survey four or five years ago, the Mission Survey, to find out if our graduates actually live the mission of the school. We asked them questions like: Do you have diverse friends, do you learn for the intrinsic value of learning, are you involved in your life in anything global? A high percentage responded and said yes. An alum said to me once that having gone to Lakeside is like having a third parent on your shoulder telling you to do that right thing. I could not have heard anything that made me happier.

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Why retire now? What led to your decision?

The plan was for me to stay one more year than I’m staying. This year and next, we were going to grow the size of the school by 220, build another academic building on the former softball field, raise $55, $60 million, and launch Lion Term (a minisemester in the middle of the year).

Then COVID hit. I think the plans to expand are on hold for five years to wait and see what happens to Seattle and the world. I thought: Let me stay long enough to get the school through this whole thing as well as possible, launch competencies and mindsets, and then let the next person come in.

I just turned 70. So, there’s also that. How long are you going to keep going? I could have; my health is good. But there are other things I want to do. I’ll still be in Seattle.

What else do you intend to do?

If Lakeside opens another micro-school — which I hope it will — I will raise money, help behind the scenes, if they want. I just went on the board of Rainier Scholars. I might become someone who works with school heads on how to be a successful head.

I will work on strategic planning with people. And then there are days I think, I might just be reading “War and Peace.”

We’ll live in Spain part of the year. One of my daughters married a man from Spain. A year from today, we’ll leave for Spain. Walk the Camino. Probably stay in Sevilla for a few months. Try to get our Spanish down. Whatever I do, I want to be able to do it from anywhere I am in the world, so that if I do want to be in Mexico, or Spain, or Nicaragua, then I can do that.

How might you sum up your tenure at Lakeside?

Looking back on 23 years, it’s just been kind of joyful. I feel so unbelievably fortunate to have ended up here, at a school that has been completely consonant with my personal values. I’ve been fortunate to have boards supportive of doing the right thing.

And, as it turns out, that Sidwell parent was right: the head’s house is really an amazing house. And for 23 years, the school has done all the maintenance and repairs!

Without sounding too woo-woo, I honestly feel this is where I was meant to be and what I was meant to do with my life. I’m looking out right now at the kids sitting out on the quad. What else would you want to be doing with your life?

Journalist Carey Quan Gelernter retired from Lakeside in 2019 after nine years as Lakeside magazine editor.

Photo: Katie M. Simmons

In a January 2021 letter to the community, Noe wrote: “It is time to move on to new adventures: playing a role in the many changes to come in the world of independent school education, being a loving and present grandparent, and running in road races hopefully into my 80s!”

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Ask Lakeside alumni to define service and — no surprise — you will likely get as many different answers as there are people in the room. For those who carry the spirit of Lakeside’s mission and Service Learning Program beyond graduation, service is both deeply personal and unique.

WHAT LIFE REQUIRES R E P O RT I N G BY JA N T H O M AS, J I M CO L L I N S, A A RO N Z . ’23, A N D YO O N L . ’23

I

F T H E K E Y TA K E A W AY from service learning in the Middle School is that one person can make a difference, the takeaway from the Upper School program, where 80 hours of service and a capstone project are required to graduate, may well be the invaluable sense of ownership that comes from deciding where and how to serve.

“Service had to move from being a box students checked to something that is embedded in their character,” says Zinda Foster, Upper School service learning coordinator. “It’s something they do and believe in. I think that it can be part of them long after they leave Lakeside. It can stay part of who they are.”

Because Upper School students are responsible for selecting their service assignments — choosing either an organization or activity on their own pending school approval or a pre-approved option from Lakeside’s list of more than 300 organizations — Foster believes service learning teaches leadership in a way that

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classroom courses alone cannot. “They have to contact the people. They have to show up. They have to make arrangements to get there. And after they’ve done the service, they have to make time to reflect on it,” she says.

While school-required service ends with commencement, the discipline developed by doing service and the memories of satisfaction earned by making the world better serve Lakeside alumni well when they see opportunities to serve elsewhere.

During his 2021 commencement speech, Head of School Bernie Noe foreshadowed the call to serve that we all face eventually. Referencing author and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, he asked the graduating seniors, “What will life require of you? What needs will you meet in this world? How will you use your unique talents to meet a need that maybe only you can meet?”

Here are examples of how alumni across the decades are responding to that call.

— Jan Thomas

Photo: Kelly Allison

O

“

The pandemic shut everything down.

I thought: ‘I’ve got some digital and social media skills. There’s got to be something I can do.'

”

N E O F T H E V E R Y F I R S T things Curtis Midkiff ’92 did was recognize the isolation and anxiety brought on by the COVID outbreak in the late winter of 2020.

Borrowing skills from his digital-marketing day job with the Weber grill company, Midkiff convened a virtual daily prayer meeting for people of all faiths and backgrounds. For three months — 30 minutes every day starting at 7:30 in the morning — the People’s Prayer Circle created a space for pastors and prayer leaders to offer spiritual support and reflection while churches around the country scrambled to move their in-person services online.

At one point, 600 members were a part of the Facebook group. Midkiff helped HBCUs (historically Black colleges and universities) organize their virtual events and reunions. He created a digital platform — called SMOGO TV (“SMOGO” for the “Show Must Go On”) — to make sure Black producers, directors, actors, and content providers continued to have an outlet for their work. Programming included a faith and family channel, a marketplace for Black-owned businesses, and a “Justice Sunday Series.”

“I was just trying to help fill that initial gap,” he says. “It’s all about the uplifting use of the arts and technology. It reminds me of what Lakeside encouraged us to do.”

F a l lF•aW l l i•nW t ei rn t2e0r 2210 2 137 37

“

For me as a teenager, poetry was the place where I could talk about what was really going on.

I want young people to know they can use poetry as a tool — if they want to — for dealing with difficult things in their own lives.

”

A

RIANNE TRUE ’09 found comfort growing up amidst the language and mentors she found in Seattle’s Richard Hugo House and the city’s Youth Speaks program. As a poet, she’s now helping young people find their own voices through the same types of programs that had made a difference for her.

Her work with teenagers in the Seattle Arts & Lectures Writers in the Schools (WITS) program, she says, has been especially rewarding. “Most high school students don’t think of themselves as poets,” she says. “They think poetry is fancy and high-minded. I try to show them that poetry is for everyone — for everyone who has something to say.”

True, part of the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations, received a Hedgebrook residency and an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts. An active participant in the larger Seattle arts community, she volunteered for the Pride Poets Hotline during Pride 2021, writing custom poems for strangers over the phone.

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Photo: Libby Lewis

I

N 2 0 1 7, M E R I C O S H E C T O R R H O D E S ’ 1 0 started Spoon Full Farm with four of his friends. They began raising cattle in the Kittitas Valley, 80 miles east of Seattle, growing no-till produce and practicing farming techniques that store carbon in the earth to build healthy, living soil. Rhodes recalls that his journey into ecologi-

cal farming was inspired by farmer Joel Salatin, who runs an organic grazing farm in Virginia. Salatin appeared in the documentary “Food, Inc.” A week after watching the movie, Rhodes attended a lecture Salatin gave at his college. He saw Salatin run across the stage, talking about microbiology and cattle.

Inspired by Salatin’s unbridled enthusiasm and the idea of doing tangible work on climate change, Rhodes started farming.

WHAT LIFE REQUIRES

“

I think at a fundamental level there is a beautiful possible relationship between humanity and nature. Working on farms, it’s a difficult but beautiful challenge to keep cultivating that relationship.

”

T

H I S PA S T FA L L , Erick Matsen ’96 was among 33 researchers nationwide selected to share in a $300 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute — the largest biomedical research institution in the country — to “chase their wildest scientific ideas.” Matsen, a mathematician and computer scientist, oversees a team of researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. His wild idea is to analyze huge data sets of protein sequences, using machine learning to create algorithms that can flexibly and continually absorb updated, real-time information and accurately infer the spreading of viruses — for instance, of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

This idea of “optimizing the likelihood” of something in the future — as opposed to the current approach of looking at a sample from the past and determining how it changed, then extrapolating — is radical, enormously complex, and, potentially, a dramatic shortcut to tracking and reacting to the spread of a deadly disease.

Members of Matsen’s team include Lakeside alumna Anna Kooperberg ’17 and current senior Tanvi Ganapathy ’22.

“

I love science. I love learning about new things and coming up with new ideas. But I’m glad I’m using my brain for something useful.

”

Photos: Dominic Crowley (Rhodes); Chloe Collyer (Matsen)

F a l lF•aW l l i•nW t ei rn t2e0r 2210 2 139 39

“

To push back on oppressive narratives related to reproduction, people’s bodies, and the ways in which oppression has been forced upon people of color… That’s incredibly meaningful to me.

C

”

H R I S T I N E D E H L E N D O R F ’ 9 2 directs the reproductive health program at the University of California, San Francisco. Her work focuses on person-centered healthcare, especially for underserved populations.

As someone who provided and received reproductive healthcare, Dehlendorf witnessed how clinical health was often prioritized over patients’ own preferences. This was especially true in abortion care.

Because of the stigmas and conflicting attitudes around reproductive health, abortion patients often expected the system to treat them badly. In Dehlendorf’s experience in her personal practice, patients were happily surprised when they received respectful, compassionate healthcare.

This discrepancy between the ideal of what healthcare could be and the reality of stigma-laden, uncompassionate treatment inspired Dehlendorf to work towards healing the system. Her work now centers on reproductive autonomy and racial justice in medicine.

Through person-centered research designed to understand peoples’ preferences and interventions implemented to support those preferences, Dehlendorf aims to support the kind of practice where people can feel respected while having the family they want to have.

40 L AKESIDE

“

The current systems of communication that we have are not going to do this. We need new ways of engaging for our democracy to work.

E

”

U G E N E Y I ’ 0 4 is the co-founder and director of Cortico, a nonprofit organization established in 2016 that uses machine learning to facilitate deeper conversations and healthier community decision-making against the polarization of modern social media. Cortico created the Local Voices Network, a joint project with the MIT Center for Constructive Communication.

The initiative aims to create new civic infrastructure that brings underheard voices into local politics and binds people together in a more human-oriented fashion. The effort utilizes technology that can more accurately assess public opinion than analyzing the polarized climate of social media.

It saw significant use during the 2020 Madison (Wisc.) police chief and the 2021 Boston mayoral elections. Yi lives in the United Kingdom with his wife and daughter and is working part-time on a Ph.D. — examining the dynamics of emergent digital governance — at Oxford University.

Photos: Matt Lever (Dehlendorf); Ryanna Allen (Yi)

WHAT LIFE REQUIRES

“

Tarrah and I are sure this approach to our land will survive way after we’re gone.

”

I

N FA R N O R T H E A S T E R N O R E G O N , John Baker ’60 and his wife Tarrah had a decision to make on the ranch they’d lived on since 2003. The Wallowa River, running through fields the Bakers farmed for hay, home to threatened species such as chinook, bull trout, and steelhead, a tributary to the Grande Ronde and Snake rivers, was gradually eroding the land, taking a bit of acreage with it each year.

The Bakers could armor the banks to straighten the river and save the fields, or, as Ian Wilson, a fish biologist with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, suggested, choose to “forego the haying, let the river do what it wants, and restore the fish habitat in this section of the valley.”

In 2012, when the river took more land and hundreds of feet of fencing, the Bakers moved forward with an ambitious engineering and conservation plan that would expand the river’s flood plain and create braided side channels to return that section of river to a higher-quality rearing habitat. With funding of almost $1,000,000 from Bonneville Power Administration and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife department, with years of permitting completed, construction began in 2017. The Bakers gave up half of their productive acreage in the bargain — and have no regrets. “It’s gratifying to know we’re contributing our small effort to the fish and wildlife here,” says Baker.

Photo: Robert Kemp

F a l lF•aW l l i•nW t ei rn t2e0r 2210 2 141 41

I

SABELLA MCSHEA ’16 is a volunteer at Camp Agape Northwest, a nonprofit organization founded on the Kitsap Peninsula in 1997 to serve children with cancer and their families. She started volunteering for the camp in 2013 to meet Lakeside’s service hours requirement — and has continued the work for the past eight years.

Several Lakeside alumni have followed the same pipeline. In normal years, the camp accommodates entire families for a week by providing a counselor for the child going through cancer treatments, special activities for their siblings, and time for their parents to be together. These past two pandemic summers, McShea and the camp at large have been running programs via Zoom and sending various toys and games to simulate a typical camp experience. Inspired by her time working with Camp Agape, McShea is now pursuing a career as a therapist.

“

The goal is to have children with cancer feel normal, for siblings a chance to feel special, and for parents and guardians a time to be together.

”

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Lakesiders who have volunteered at Camp Agape over the years include Isabella McShea ’16, Arianna Vokos ’08, Sophia Vokos ’12, Quinton Hayre ’19, Reilly Pigott ’19, Sam Frohlich ’20, Blake Pigott ’21, and John McShea ’21.

Photo: Cora Kaiser

I

N T E N T H G R A D E at Lakeside, Steffan Soule ’79 started three major projects: a service project where every person had to serve the school in some way (clean the chapel, plant a garden, do something to improve the campus); a lecture series challenging faculty members to give talks on something that mattered to them (unemployment, death, Zen, love); and magic. He earned academic credit for his independent magic project in his senior year and worked at a magic shop (between Second and Third streets, on Seneca) in exchange for full access to every magic book the shop carried.

Soule now works as a professional magician, touring schools and producing tutorials on ideas that matter to him: environmentalism, water conservation, bullying. In his shows, he says, magic gets students to see things in new ways — and new vision can turn into new behaviors. It gets people excited about good ideas. His value-based work brought him to start the Golden Rule Project, with which he has toured for seven years, using magic to inspire people to treat others the way they, themselves, want to be treated.

WHAT LIFE REQUIRES

“

I turned down the titles ‘anti-bullying’ or ‘anti- this’ or ‘anti- that’ because magic is not anti-anything. The Golden Rule is a positive statement. As a magician, you could go with a positive statement: practice this, and bullying will disappear.

”

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p o e t ry

Elwha The heat of sleep, dry over the face — it pours out the October: it surprises us as it dawns.

Past the sleep-suffused tents, past the sky-suffused breaths.

Through dew and uneven ground, I walk to the shed across the field. / What didn’t we want but to love and be loved in the weight of an oatmeal bar. What dissipation of heat to recollect in chirping boughs of a cedar tree.

What did I want to say but good morning?

What did I want to requite but everything? / Spilled across seats, buried in the crack, laughter in the bus. We drove by yellow fields and evergreen roads, ocean highways, and felt the weight of shoulders and leaned on each other. We wove straw mats — it came easily to you.

The weave was tight and exact, and you opened your hands to show me. /

Shivering and digging, huddled close atop a mountain. It pulled the air gossamer and grey and emptied into the valley.

Burlap and grass nursery. I shivered and dug.

And when we grew old, we squatted on the ridge and looked down the cliffside, our breath blown down the mountain. / Around daybreak, we woke. On the beach at dawn, shadowed students murmured.

They listened (to whom), they moved closer to each other.

They stood in the frigid water. / This pitch walked through the forest at night, wrapped us together, huddled along the pavement. / As I walk to the shed across the field, I watch the O of October break from the Pacific. The hard c's toss up as the tow eddies and pulls at our waterprints. And the cool expands around the still-sleeping tents.

— AARON Z. ’23

Written in reflection of an 8th grade Global Service Learning trip to the Olympic Peninsula’s Elwha River watershed, a version of this poem received a national silver medal in the 2021 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.

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Classes of 1989, 2013

CLASS CONNECTIONS A D V O C AT E S

Although they graduated from Lakeside more than 20 years apart, Dr. Amy Weimer ’89 and

Lane Kantor ’13 have forged a connection through their shared passion for gender-affirming health care. Their paths have continued to parallel each other even after high school, with each attending Brown University, studying neuroscience, and providing gender-affirming health care through the UCLA Gender Health Program, which Dr. Weimer co-founded in 2016. Since Kantor began studying medicine, Dr. Weimer has served as mentor and collaborator. Their most recent project has been changing UCLA’s medical records to reflect the identities of gender-diverse patients. “Lane is very inspiring to me,” Dr. Weimer says. “They are exceptionally bright, composed, and articulate.” Kantor — currently a Master of Public Health candidate at Harvard — is equally acclamatory: “Dr. Weimer has modeled the kind of physician I would like to be…. She is someone I admire in basically everything she does.”

— Eliot A. y A. ’24

Photos: Barnet Photography (Weimer), Jodi Hilton (Kantor)

F a l l • W i n t e r 2 0 2 1 45

CLASS CONNECTIONS

Some 17,000 acres of land across Washington and Idaho have been preserved under the leadership of Chris DeForest ’78 (above).

Artist Storme Webber ’77 stands by her installation at the light rail station on Capitol Hill.

1977 Storme Webber’s installation, “In This Way We Loved One Another,” was dedicated on June 26 in the Cathy Hillenbrand Community Room, Station House Building, on the plaza of the Capitol Hill light rail station.

The installation includes portraits, photos, text, quotes, and a developing oral history collection from BIPOC activists — gay, lesbian, gender-diverse, socialists, poor people, sex workers, and spiritual leaders — who came from other radical movements to care and advocate for people with HIV and AIDS. Storme is the only Seattle-based BIPOC contributor whose work now becomes a permanent part of the AIDS Me-

morial Pathway. To learn more about the public art of the AIDS Memorial Pathway, visit theamp.org .

In October, Storme also dropped by The London Plane restaurant in Pioneer Square (owned by Katherine Alberg ’89 Anderson) for a gathering of folks who contributed to the summer issue of Lakeside magazine. Attendees included Jazmyn Scott ’97, Khatsini Simani ’10, Paul Johnson ’84 and Asha Vassar '89 Youmans.

1978 In October 2020, the Inland Northwest Land Conservancy announced the purchase of a 95-acre parcel of land along the

Little Spokane River. The land, part of the ancestral home of the Spokane Tribe of Indians, provides beautiful wildlife habitat and is home to ideal spawning grounds for native fish. Less than a year later, for the first time in more than a century, chinook salmon swam in the Little Spokane.

Fifty-one hatchery fish were introduced in a modest but hopeful step toward the sustainable reintroduction of salmon into the Upper Columbia River watershed. A key architect of the purchase was the conservancy’s longtime conservation director, Chris DeForest. You can read more about Chris’s career and the important work of the Inland Northwest Land Conservancy at: spokesman.com/stories/2018/dec/23/ chris-deforest-helps-property-ownersprotect-their/

1979 Bill Holt shares, “Even with COVID and extra busy times at Mutual Materials, DeWayne Higgbee and Travis Kelkenberg of DRH Enterprise installed 2021 bricks. This year’s logo was inspired by Zoom. While installing the bricks I enjoyed hearing students’ comments (many have connections back to previously installed bricks and logos) and showing them where their

S E N D U S Y O U R N E W S Events big and small, personal or professional, chance meetings, fun adventures,

a shoutout to a classmate for a recent accomplishment… they’re all of interest. Share your baby announcement and photo, and we’ll outfit your little lion with a Lakeside bib. Photo guidelines: high resolution, ideally 1 MB or larger. If sending from a smartphone, be sure to select “original size.” Email notes and photos to alumni@ lakesideschool.org by April 15, 2022, for the Spring/Summer issue.

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Photo: Mel Ponder (Webber)

Mason Travis Kelkenberg of Mutual Materials in Bellevue adds another layer to the 2021 section.

The Class of 2021’s wall of bricks, complete with Zoom-inspired class numeral.

“Mark,” multimedia: acrylic and graphics on paper and canvas, 2015, by C.J. “Siege” Pirtle ’81.

class would be installed. I look forward to the Class of 2021 coming back and seeing their bricks in person. In July, 425 Magazine reached out to Matt Johnson at Mutual Materials to learn about the Lakeside Bricks and wrote a nice article.” You can find out more about the annual tradition, including where the bricks come from, at: 425magazine.com/arts-entertainment/ lakeside-school-has-a-tradition-worth-its-

weight-in-bricks/article_bc9e2ece-7cea59c9-ad08-9a872557770f.html

1981 C.J. “Siege” Pirtle staged a one-man art show at the Lynnwood Convention Center, titled Siege: An American Painter. The retrospective celebrated 30 years of fine art and ran from July 6 to Dec. 17. C.J. shares: “Major honor, my thanks to the staff, and to

Photo album

The Baker brothers got together recently for a gathering in Olympia at the beach property owned by John. Pictured from left: Sam Baker ’57, Joel Jr. (Jay) Baker ’56, John Baker ’60, and Martin Baker ’65.

Their father, Joel, was the head of the Lakeside Board of Trustees at the time of the school’s merger with St. Nicholas in the early 1970s. Inset: Same lineup. Earlier time! (Courtesy of John Baker).

Members from the Class of 1982 gathered in Mazama for a little golf.

From left to right: Tyler Johnson, Steve Owens, Marc Kretschmer, Paul Hasegawa, and Cam Seibold.

F a l l • W i n t e r 2 0 2 1 47

CLASS CONNECTIONS

A Ryan Glant family selfie: son, Evan; daughters, Maya and Corinne; and wife, Alison.

Scott Reed at the Lakeside Lions microphone. the many who lent their original artworks, including the city of Kent.”

1985 After 10 years of announcing roller derby contests far and wide, Scott Reed has decided to try his hand at talking about sports that involve balls, nets, and a shocking lack of roller skates — as Lakeside’s new announcer for varsity sports.

1991 Laura Altieri recently joined Clif Bar in Emeryville, California, as counsel. Clif Bar is a purpose-driven organization and one of the original B Corporations, measuring its effect on various stakeholders beyond

shareholders. Taking up her new employer on the option to work remotely, Laura and her son spent a few weeks at a summer camp in the Keats of Northern Italy last summer. Archery and Barolo!

Cover art for Ryan Glant’s recently released single.

The last time we saw Ryan Glant on campus, he was playing the piano in front of McKay Chapel for baccalaureate. He is still finding time to make music, recently releasing his first single, “Son Rise,” dedicated to his 3-year-old son, Evan. During the finals of a national talent competition over the summer, Howie Mandel, a judge for “America’s Got Talent,” called “Son Rise” “a beautiful, touching song.” “Son Rise” is available on most streaming platforms and a sweet video is available on YouTube.

Stay tuned for more releases from Ryan, including a tender song dedicated to his daughters, Maya and Corinne. When he’s not singing, Ryan spends much of his time as CEO/president of Pacific Iron & Metal (a legendary business in the Seattle recycling industry), Pacific Fabrics (for 60 years the go-to place for Seattle seamstresses, quilters, and crafters), and Seattle’s Doorhouse. Follow Ryan’s music at @ryanglantmusic

started the job around the beginning of the administration — so still relatively new.

Lauren Sanchez ’07 and I have worked closely together and with similar pathways for years. I started at the State Department as a climate negotiator in 2013, and she joined in 2015. In 2017, I left to work for Gov. Inslee, and went to work for CalEPA — then this year Lauren joined the Kerry team just a few months after I did, and now has gone back to work for Gov. Newsom in California!”

1996

2003

Laura Altieri ’91 and son strike a power pose.

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We reached out to find out what was new with Reed Schuler, senior advisor to John Kerry, the special presidential envoy for climate. Here’s what he told us: “I actually

On the shelf

and illustrated by Julia Kuo, tells the story of Wong Kim Ark, whose life story is the reason behind birthright citizenship in the United States. “Into

“Roadways to Justice: Reforming the Criminal

the Bloodred Woods,” a young-adult novel about a pair of siblings com-

Justice System"

peting for a throne, subverts a bunch

Ronald Clark ’62

of classic fairytales.

Clark examines the complex issues of America’s criminal justice system from his experience as a career prosecutor and an educator of prosecutors. “Roadways to Justice” offers inspiration, practical solutions, and paths to how a flawed system may be improved. Clark is currently a distinguished practitioner in residence at Seattle University Law School, where he teaches trial advocacy, pretrial advocacy, essential lawyering skills, and visual litigation and technology.

“Wingbearer” Marjorie Liu ’96 Marjorie Liu’s March 2022 release, a middle-grade graphic novel, is about a little girl named Zuli, who has been raised by mystical bird spirits.

When a sinister force threatens the life-giving magic of her world, she must leave home and go on an

“I Am an American: The Wong Kim Ark Story” “Into the Bloodred Woods”

adventure bigger than anything she could have imagined. Liu received Lakeside’s 2020 Distinguished Alumni Award.

Martha Brockenbrough ’88 Martha Brocken-

“The Right Swipe”

brough, whose

Henry Pedersen ’04

picture book from

Published under the pseudonym

last year, “This Old

J.D. Ellis, “The Right Swipe” is a fast-

Dog,” was a finalist

paced political thriller. Drawing on

for a Washington

his experiences as a Green Beret in

State Book Award,

eastern Europe, Pedersen uses the

has two new books

complex setting of Latvia to explore

coming out for young readers this year. “I Am an

questions of identity and warfare in the social media-

American,” written with Newbery medalist Grace Lin

driven 21st century.

2007 In August, a CNN documentary aired about the underwater exploration and documentation of sunken ships from the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The story about the organization, called “Diving With a Purpose,” was a first collaboration between CNN and director Charles Todd (left), creative director of Scheme Engine, which describes itself as a BIPOC-owned creative studio and production/post-production company. “We were

trying to find stories that we didn’t feel were properly reflected in the landscape of media,” Todd told a reporter from The Seattle Times, shortly before the documentary came out. “Within those stories, we were curious if we could find a story that had to do with reclaiming from a Black narrative lens.”

2008

Anne Burton graduated from Cornell University with a Ph.D. in economics and is now an assistant professor of economics at the

University of Texas at Dallas. Last summer, she enjoyed hanging out with Kiet Vo ’07 and his wife, Phuong Pham, at her cousin’s wedding in Walla Walla.

Alex Pascualy writes: “In seeing the magazine’s request about alumni and service: a string of Lakeside graduates each served in the U. S. Marine Corps: James Lambert ’07, me, and Quinton Allen ’09. We each did something different (infantry, communications, and human intelligence). We are all Continued on page 51

F a l l • W i n t e r 2 0 2 1 49

CLASS CONNECTIONS

The artist

Seattle-based artist Nina Smith ’76, shown here with two panels of her Ocean Series, holds master’s degrees of fine arts and architecture. She says, “I loved Mike Falk’s metal-working class at Lakeside. It was amazing to get to weld and forge as a teenager.”

“Ocean Series One” (detail), oil on canvas triptych, 66.5x70 inches, 2019, below.

Nina Smith ’76 I am an avid swimmer, swimming year-round for decades. I love seeing the water, being near the water, and being immersed in the water. Snorkeling to me is blissful. When I’m painting, I think about seaweed and kelp, beautiful fish and starfish and turtles. The motion of all these creatures and plants are in my mind as I paint. Sometimes with the large bands, they’re almost like petals or fish swimming upstream. I strive to re-create that feeling of movement yet inherent balance of activity that nature provides: active and in constant motion, yet restful, balanced, and calm.

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Photo: Spike Mafford/ Zocalo Studios (Ocean Series One)

From left : Larkin Lucy, Kallin Spiller '17 (Lakeside) and Sis Ambrose '61 Woodside (St. Nicholas).

Farewell S M I L I N G FA C E : Kelly Poort (second from right), shown with members of Lakeside’s development team.

I

n early September, Lakeside bid a fond and bittersweet farewell to

Kelly Poort, longtime alumni relations director. For 13 years, Kelly brought creativity, fun, and engaging programming to the alumni community (think Classes Without Quizzes, Beers with Bernie, alumni book groups, and many others). She helped build the Lion Link alumni network, welcomed countless alumni back to campus for reunions, and capably supported the Alumni Board in its many activities.

We miss Kelly’s wisdom, humor, and warmth, and we wish her the very best as she spends more time with her young family!

— Daiga Galins

Continued from page 49

out of the military now, with both James and Quinton working as consultants in Seattle and Washington, D.C., respectively, and me as an attorney here in Seattle.” Alex and fellow Marines Corps veteran Andy Bench ’04 spoke to students in November at an Upper School Veterans Day assembly.

2013 André Mattus shared: “Since the beginning of Seattle BLM protests last summer, I have been volunteering time as a protest medic. I was there during the Eastern Barricade, the rise and fall of CHOP, and in mobile marches since then. I have also been vaccinating people against COVID-19.”

2017

André Mattus volunteered to be a medic on hand during the Seattle Black Lives Matter protests.

Kallin Spiller shared: “On their recent visit to Honolulu in early September, I had the pleasure of having dinner with my great aunt, Sis Ambrose Woodside ’61 (St. Nicholas), and my second cousin, Larkin Lucy. Sis and I were able to talk about our respective experiences at St. Nicholas and Lakeside, and it was especially interesting to compare our very different experiences as high school basketball players!”

2018 Kaitlyn Paulsen shared: “I just published an episode of a podcast that some peers and I have developed featuring former Lakeside English teacher Tom Doelger. My peers and I are majors in human-centered design, and we developed a podcast bringing in guests for free-form conversation surrounding one or more topics of the design process (outside the world of design). Tom Doelger was featured for his incredible insight on reflection and storytelling. He was a teacher at Lakeside who left an incredible impact on me, and I would love to share this with other current or former students who may be interested in hearing from him again. The podcast ‘The Hive 5’ can be found on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.”

F a l l • W i n t e r 2 0 2 1 51

d i s t i n g ui s h e d a lum ni awa r d

Noah Bopp ’92 On Nov. 3, Noah Bopp was presented the 2021 Lakeside/St. Nicholas Distinguished Alumni Award during an afternoon assembly at the Upper School gymnasium. Alumni Association President Elizabeth Richardson ’85 Vigdor read the following citation:

N

O A H B O P P clearly remembers the moment he decided to become a teacher: It was 9th period, and he was sitting on Tom Doelger’s couch in Moore Hall. Says Bopp, “Mr. Doelger inquired, ‘What do you want to be doing in 10 years?’ No one had ever asked me that question. I thought for a moment and then said, ‘I’d like to do what you do, Mr. Doelger.’” Bopp had already been coaching his younger brother’s soccer team, the Thunderbolts, for several years. He had worked on Tatler with advisor Susan Saunders, learning how journalists — and teachers — uniquely set the community agenda for what’s important.

A Shakespeare lover, he would soon direct a one-act version of Julius Caesar. “I was interested in motivating groups to be more than the sum of their parts.” Little did he know how well his experiences would come together in a holistic, innovative, and influential career as an educator.

At Oberlin College, along with captaining the men’s basketball team, Bopp focused on the humanities: earning a double major in philosophy and law and society, plus a minor in English, in 1996. “What drew everything together was that I was really interested in ethics,” he says. He put his degrees to the test at his first job, a political consulting firm in Seattle that focused on the election of women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ community to public office. But he couldn’t shake the vivid memory of that afternoon on Doelger’s couch that kept nudging him toward his ultimate calling. In 1998, he received a Master of Arts in Teaching at Duke University, and joined St. George’s School in Newport, Rhode Island, where he taught history and philosophy and chaired the Community Service Council.

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Bopp finished his world history class, turned on the television and, like so many, witnessed a seismic and visceral global shift. “The next day, I had to stand in front of my students. They were scared and confused and making all kinds of assumptions, and I realized the world had changed,” he says. “I started asking myself, ‘What is my part in that change? How can I help create post9/11 American leaders?’” It was a question that drove the rest of his career. From 2002 to 2005, he headed the history department at the Mountain School of Milton Academy. From 2002 to 2007, he founded and ran the Duke University Talent Identification Program Global Dialogues Institute, a summer program for motivated high school students. And in 2006, he received a Master of Arts in private school leadership from the Klingenstein Center at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Bopp was methodically working toward his end goal: To create a new generation of ethically strong, internationally

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Visionary educator Noah Bopp leads a discussion during an English class at The School for Ethics and Global Leadership, Washington, D.C.

aware post-9/11 leaders. In 2009, Bopp opened The School for Ethics and Global Leadership (SEGL) in Washington, D.C. SEGL’s hands-on curriculum emphasizes leadership development, ethical thinking skills, and international affairs. Students study conflict resolution by meeting with leading Israeli and Palestinian negotiators. They study speechwriting in a master class with Hillary Clinton’s longtime top speechwriter. They defend policy documents at the State Department, Pentagon, or White House. They hear from a veritable who’s who of leadership, politics, and media, from both sides of the aisle: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power, FBI Director James Comey, and President Barack Obama. Today, SEGL has three campuses: in Washington, Johannesburg, and London. Above all, Bopp sees SEGL as a convener — of ideas, of students, of points of view. “Just like Lakeside when I was there, I designed it to be supremely student-centered, a place where the robust exchange of ideas will bring future leaders closer to truth,” he says.

Bopp is developing leaders who can listen, engage with, and constructively disagree with others — a critical and undervalued skill in our collective civic life these days. For his unwavering dedication to nurturing the next generation of leaders and his brave vision for a more ethical world, the Lakeside/St. Nicholas Alumni Association is proud to honor Noah Bopp ’92 with the 2021 Distinguished Alumni Award.

Photo: Greg Kahn/GRAIN for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Your gift supports faculty excellence, academic excellence, and all aspects of a great Lakeside education.

Make a tax-free gift to Lakeside from your IRA. If you are 70 ½ or older, you may contribute directly to the Lakeside Fund from your IRA without having to pay income tax on the money.

“Making my contribution to Lakeside through my IRA was a beneficial way to use my retirement assets, satisfy the required minimum distribution, and make a meaningful gift.”

— Bob Helsell ’55

Learn more!

Visit lakesideschool.org/IRA or call Carol Borgmann at 206-440-2931.

F a l l • W i n t e r 2 0 2 1 53

a lum n i n e w s The Lakeside/St. Nicholas Alumni Board is pleased to welcome nine new members for 2021-2022.

Get to know these new representatives from the alumni community: Sebastian Alfonso ’19 • Work: Student • Education: Stanford University • Hobbies: Fly-fishing; running long, steady distance • Fun fact: I am building a cedar-strip kayak in my garage.

• Favorite Lakeside memory: Turning Tatler issues into paper hats and wearing them to cross-country meets

Mirutse Amssalu ’13

Evelyn Spence ’94 Callahan

OFFICERS

• Work: Freelance adventure and travel writer

❚ Nicholas Stevens ’06

• Education: Williams College, Brooklyn College

❚ Elizabeth Richardson ’85

• Hobbies: Skiing, hiking, camping, biking, and reading • Fun fact: I once won a log-rolling competition.

• Favorite Lakeside memory: Going to Canoe Island for Winter Projects

Asha Dean ’98

President Vigdor Immediate Past President

❚ Ishani Ummat ’13 Mission and Governance Chair

❚ Piper Pettersen ’03 Activities Chair

❚ Nate Benjamin ’07 Connections Chair

• Work: Medical student at University of Washington School of Medicine

• Work: Director of Enrollment Management, Seattle Girls’ School

• Education: Occidental College

• Education: University of Arizona

❚ Sebastian Alfonso ’19

• Hobbies: Growing indoor plants, cooking, biking, running, and playing with my Doberman German Shepherd named Kobe

• Hobbies: I enjoy hanging out with my husband and school-age children.

❚ Bruce Bailey ’59

• Fun fact: I have biked from Seattle to L.A. • Favorite Lakeside memory: The boys cross country team making it to state

Jay Bensal ’12 • Work: Code wrangler / Software engineer • Education: University of Illinois • Hobbies: Anything sports-related (especially if it’s soccer), skiing, reading, and watching way too much reality TV (and sports) • Fun fact: My favorite professional tennis player doesn’t even like tennis (that much!).

• Favorite Lakeside memory: Listening to Chip Mehring’s and Mr. Doelger’s stories on Quest!

• Lakeside family ties: Sister, Shelly, is Class of 2014.

• Fun fact: Between my 7 years as a student at Lakeside and 14 years coaching cross country/track and field... Lakeside has been my home for over half my life!

• Favorite Lakeside memory: Time spent driving my carpool to school; we would laugh, talk about schoolwork, and have fun. Those girls are still two of my dearest friends.

• Lakeside family ties: Sister, Courtney, is Class of 2004.

Joe Hampton ’97

❚ Mirutse Amssalu ’13 (Honorary Lifetime Member)

❚ Teryn Allen ’04 Bench ❚ Jay Bensal ’12 ❚ Evelyn Spence ’94 Callahan ❚ Kate Coxon ’01 ❚ Stephanie Saad ’94 Cuthbertson

❚ Asha Dean ’98 ❚ Gigi Ryan ’80 Gilman ❚ Joe Hampton ’97 ❚ Adam Hinthorne ’14

• Work: Senior Project Manager, Seattle City Light

❚ Erin Kenny ’89

• Education: University of San Diego, Seattle University

❚ Mark Middaugh ’02

❚ Ric Merrifield ’84 ❚ Reid Rader ’03

• Hobbies: Gardening, coaching youth sports, bike rides with my family

❚ Nina Smith ’76

• Fun fact: People have said I look like The Rock Dwayne Johnson and I accept that.

❚ Kiet Vo ’07

• Favorite Lakeside memory: Senior sailing trip • Lakeside family ties: Niece, Alana, and nephew, Jaylen, are current students.

54 L AKESIDE

MEMBERS

❚ Kallin Spiller ’17 ❚ Sean Whitsitt ’05

Adam Hinthorne ’14 • Work: Product Implementation, Data Skrive • Education: Pomona College • Hobbies: Coaching football and baseball at Lakeside • Fun fact: I play tenor saxophone.

• Favorite Lakeside memory: Catching for Ben Hinthorne ’17’s first varsity start on the baseball team • Lakeside family ties: Brother, Ben, is Class of 2017.

Kallin Spiller ’17 • Work: Marketing graduate student and college basketball player • Education: Columbia University, University of Hawai'i • Hobbies: Spending time with friends and family, traveling, coaching, and going to the beach • Fun fact: I was awarded the “Bleeds Lion Pride” superlative by the Class of 2017.

• Favorite Lakeside memory: Winning the 2016 state championship in volleyball • Lakeside family ties: Brother, Justin, is a current student

Kiet Vo ’07 • Work: Resident Physician • Education: Whitman College, Columbia University, University of Washington School of Medicine

I N T E R E ST E D IN SERVING?

The Alumni Board works to help members of the alumni community connect with each other and with Lakeside School. The Board meets monthly from September to June.

Members have the opportunity to hear about Lakeside today from current students, teachers, and administrators, as well as attend classes at the Upper and Middle schools each year. If you’d like to learn more about serving on the board, email the alumni relations office at alumni@ lakesideschool.org to be connected to a current board member.

• Hobbies: Gardening! Watching/playing sports and spending time with family.

• Fun fact: I have the absolute best spouse and kids (2-year-old son and 4-year-old Goldendoodle).

• Favorite Lakeside memory: During a particularly wet and cold football practice, as we huddled prior to a play, Anthony Woods ’06 and I muddied the football so we could end practice early.

Turns out, muddy football is just part of the game.

F a l l • W i n t e r 2 0 2 1 55

i n memori a m

ST. NICHOLAS ALUMNAE Cordelia Kearl ’46 · April 23, 2021 Lynne Brokaw ’74 · May 2021

LAKESIDE ALUMNI Howard Richmond ’65 · July 19, 2021 Howard E. Richmond Jr. passed away on July 19, 2021. Howie, as he was best known, was born and raised in Seattle. He graduated from Lakeside School, Middlebury College in Vermont, and University of Puget Sound Law School in Tacoma. He practiced law for over 25 years. He also became a cattle rancher. Howie lived a long, happy life, but passed too young, at the age of 74. His love for law, farming, golf, Mexico, and his laid-back lifestyle will be greatly missed.

He leaves behind his wife of nearly 50 years, Shirley, and his four children and six grandchildren: Casey (Kate), Cole, Grace; Woody (Cat), Skye, by ex-wife Marija; Howard III and son Jackson; Carley (Jason), Sophia, and Brady. A celebration of his life will be held at a later date.

Bill van Amerongen ’64 · March 26, 2021 William Gerard van Amerongen died unexpectedly on March 26, 2021, in Tucson, Ariz., from complications following back surgery.

Known to friends and co-workers as “Van,” he was a solid, compassionate rock of a man who loved his family and loved his work in the defense industry. He was never afraid to share his conservative viewpoint, and often described his political leanings as “slightly to the right of Atilla the Hun.” Yet he did so with a characteristic chuckle, letting you know he was always open to opposing viewpoints, even though he knew they were wrong.

Van was born in Seattle on Aug. 26, 1946, to William J. A. and Louise van Amerongen. His father worked as a contract administrator at Boeing

I F Y O U H AV E A R E M E M B R A N C E

and impressed upon Van the importance of hard work before he succumbed to diabetes and cancer when Van was just 16. It was his father who steered Van toward a military education and set him on his path to the Air Force Academy. Tall, strong, and focused, Van excelled in sports at Lakeside School, where he was a star fullback on the varsity football team, a solid varsity basketball player, and set a school record in shotput. He carried his love of sport throughout his post-graduate life and was eager to referee soccer matches and volunteer as an usher at major athletic events. Following his graduation in June 1968 and his commission as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force, he was stationed in Seattle as a military contract administrator at Boeing. It was there that he proposed to Nancy Moore, and they were married in 1971 at St. Thomas Church in Medina. Their four children, Krista, Erik, Jan, and Toby, all graduated from college and continue to pursue successful careers as attorney, pharmacist, clergyman, and collegiate athletic trainer, respectively. Van’s career as an Air Force liaison to industry took him and his family to various domestic locations across the United States. After his promotion to the rank of captain, he maintained his service to the country in the Air National Guard, as he continued his work at Boeing as a contract administrator and regulatory compliance officer for domestic and foreign military sales. He also advanced his career with other private companies, including Infineon, Export Control Community, and International Rectifier, which dealt in semiconductors. His international work took him to Holland, Denmark, and Germany. At age 70, he retired with Nancy to Hermosa Beach, California, and more recently to Marana, Ariz. He and Nancy held a long-time affection for the Pacific Northwest and enjoyed the solitude of their small waterfront cabin on Whidbey Island.

Duane Hagadone ’51 · April 24, 2021 Duane Burl Hagadone was born in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, in 1932 to Burl and Beverly Hagadone. He spent his life investing in various projects in his beloved hometown, most notably the Hagadone News Network, Coeur d'Alene Resort, Coeur d’Alene Resort Golf Course, and Hagadone Marine Group. He died peacefully at his Palm Desert winter home at the age of 88. In 2004, Duane was honored with the Horatio Alger Award by the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, recognizing “outstanding Americans who exemplify dedication, purpose, and perseverance in their personal and professional lives who have often achieved success in the face of adversity.” Often quietly, Duane and Lola

to share about a St. Nicholas alumna or Lakeside

alumna/alumnus for the next magazine, please email the alumni relations office at alumni@lakesideschool.org or call 206-368-3606. The following are reprints of paid notices or remembrances submitted by family members. All remembrances are subject to editing for length and clarity. The submission deadline for the spring issue is April 15, 2022.

56 L AKESIDE

Hagadone were major contributors to charity. There are few causes in Coeur d’Alene that have not benefited from their generosity. Duane is survived by his wife, Lola; his children Brad and wife Teresa, and Todd and partner Adam; his stepchildren Dennis Spurlock and wife Lynn, and Paige Leifer and husband Steve; his grandchildren Taj Hagadone and wife Kandis; his great-grandchildren Trace Hagadone and Koraline Hagadone; his step-grandchildren, Morgan Leifer, Bo Leifer, Reilly Spurlock, Madison Spurlock, Teena Frank (deceased) and son Jaxon Frank, Shaila Macioseck and children Peyton Graham and Bo Macioseck; his sisters Kay Wellman and husband Roy, and Joan Kellner and husband David; and numerous nieces and nephews. A celebration of life will be held at a later date. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to Boys & Girls Club of Coeur d’Alene.

Peter Bovingdon ’97 · June 25, 2021 Peter Geil Bovingdon died peacefully at home on June 25, 2021, after a noble fight against brain cancer. He was surrounded by his family, including his two beloved dogs, Pancho and Lefty. Peter was born in 1969 in the Laurelhurst neighborhood of Seattle, with a childhood marked by long summers spent swimming and sailing in Lake Washington. He was a graduate of Colorado College and moved to Montana in 1995 for law school. There, he met and fell in love with his wife, Ali, a law school classmate and Chinook, Montana, native, and quickly made Big Sky Country his new home. He earned his law degree at the University of Montana in Missoula. Peter got his start in the legal profession as a law clerk for Montana District Court Judge James Purcell before moving to the public defender’s office. Peter was dedicated to his clients and saw their fundamental humanity through the difficulty of their circumstances. He went on to be an assistant attorney general, while also contracting with the state to represent abused and

neglected children in Lewis and Clark County, for which he was recognized with a community service award in 2008. Peter also worked at the Montana Law Enforcement Academy, teaching constitutional law in the classroom and high-speed pursuit driving on the track. He enjoyed besting the lap times of his students and earning their respect. Most recently, Peter was the chief legal counsel of the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services. He helped lead an investigation into a troubled youth home found to have a history of abusing children. Through his investigation, Peter helped secure the permanent revocation of the facility’s license. Peter was a devoted father, husband, friend, and an accomplished lawyer. He was also thrilled by the world and had an adventurer’s spirit. He was a helicopter pilot, a hang glider, a diehard skier, and even a crop duster. Peter’s greatest adventure was his daughter Gillian. Whether rock climbing, mountain biking, playing songs, or watching her karate lessons, he wanted a life full of challenge and fun for her. Just before his illness last fall, Peter watched Gilly achieve her black belt. His affection for and pride in his daughter were ever present. Peter is survived by his wife of 21 years, Ali Sheppard Bovingdon; his daughter, Gillian Bovingdon of Helena, Montana; his sister, Margaret Bovingdon and Margaret’s husband Jamie Moran of Seattle; his niece Pliny Stevens of New York City; his brother Gardner Bovingdon, Gardner’s wife, Sara Friedman and daughter Madeleine Bovingdon-Friedman of Bloomington, Indiana; and his mother Margaret Gardner Judson of Seattle. He is also survived by many loving extended family members in Montana. He was preceded in death by his father, George Bovingdon. Memorial contributions may be made to CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates for children) of Lewis and Clark and Broadwater counties.

John Irwin ’64 · July 8, 2021 John Irwin was born on March 26, 1946, in Tacoma to Ples Lee and Marcia Irwin. He spent his early childhood in Tacoma and Bothell before the family moved to Troutdale, Oregon. John excelled academically and was a proud member of Mensa. After graduating from Linfield College in 1968, he enlisted in the Navy and served on a rescue boat in the Vietnam War. Once back home in Oregon, John began a career as an accountant at the Albany Democrat Herald, where he worked until he retired. John loved German culture and became fluent in the language, which he used during numerous trips to Germany. He loved to tinker and used his passion for chemistry to make his own fireworks for the Fourth of July. He loved spending quality time with his children and taking them on road trips to the places he visited as a child. He is survived by his wife, Angela; sons George and Alex; stepdaughter Natalie; grandchildren Theo and Brynn; sisters Anne, Victoria, and Jill; and stepbrothers Rodger and Ron. He was preceded in death by his father Ples Lee, mother Marcia, stepmother Bonnie, and brother David.

Continued on page 59

F a l l • W i n t e r 2 0 2 1 57

IN MEMORIAM IN MEMORIAM

Suzuki (front row, center, in Jim Naiden’s class) was a serious student and a pioneer.

Paul Suzuki '55: First student of color

W

H E N Y O S H I O PA U L S U Z U K I transferred to Lakeside for his junior year of high school in 1953, he entered a school hardly recognizable to the Lakeside of today. His class had only 35 students. It was still an all-boys school. Students were required to dress in a blazer and tie. But most notably, Paul entered Lakeside as the first recorded student of color in Lakeside’s 34-year history.

Just 11 years before he enrolled at Lakeside, Paul and his family had been sent to Minidoka, an internment camp hastily constructed in Jerome, Idaho, to hold Japanese Americans as the United States fought with Japan during World War II. Despite living through that potentially scarring event at the ages of 5 and 6 , Paul never showed signs of trauma, recalls his younger brother, Bob. “I think my brother was too young to really have that as an overbearing issue in his life.”

After the war concluded, Paul and his family moved to Spokane before eventually settling in the Leschi neighborhood of Seattle.

Paul attended Garfield for his first two years of high school, then his parents swayed him to switch to Lakeside, in hopes that he would have an experience similar to that of a New England prep school. Bob (Class of 1959) followed him there.

Though he entered Lakeside as the only nonwhite student at the school, Paul’s biggest challenge in his transition to Lakeside wasn’t any racial barriers he faced — it was leaving behind the friends he had made at Garfield and trying to establish himself at Lakeside in just two years. But in his limited time at Lakeside, Paul took full advantage of the school’s extracurricular activities, becoming secretary of the Ski Club and the senior class, the copy editor of the Numidian, and one of the winners of Lakeside’s annual Gold Star

58 L AKESIDE

award for academic achievement.

Paul appeared to be an active member of his class, though Bob has a different memory of his brother at that time: “If you know you’ve got two years, you’re not going to try and assimilate into the culture or the history or the traditions.” According to Bob, Paul wasn’t as connected with Lakeside as his senior yearbook would suggest.

Bob remembers Paul as studious and private — “straight as an arrow” — making it difficult to become close with him. After graduating from Lakeside, Paul went on to attend Pomona and a four-decade career as a dentist. While Paul didn’t stay connected with Lakeside after his graduation, he expressed his appreciation for the school in a 2005 letter to a Lakeside 5th grader as part of a letter exchange program between alumni and middle schoolers: “If I have any regrets,” he wrote, “it may be that I was not able to be there as long as you.”

When Paul passed away from natural causes in January 2021, he left behind an important legacy at Lakeside, where now nearly twothirds of the student body identifies as people of color. As it says in his senior yearbook, “Paul Suzuki gave to the class some original and delightful ideas which we were in need of.”

— Stellan M. ’23

Continued from page 57

Frank Youngman ’41 · June 2021 Frank Youngman was born in 1923 in Milwaukee to Marie Leavens and Frank Nourse Youngman. He lived with his family in Vancouver, British Columbia until 1932, when they moved to Portland.

He attended Riverdale, Ainsworth, and Lincoln High School in Portland. He graduated from Lakeside School. Following a year at Dartmouth College, he transferred to the University of Washington for the U.S. Navy’s V12 program. He joined Alpha Delta Phi fraternity and became president. After graduation he became an ensign in the Navy and served on the destroyer escort USS Buckley DE-51 as a combat information center officer, lieutenant junior grade. In 1944 he married Marilyn Truby Crawford. After World War II, they settled in Portland, and started a family. Frank went to work at the American Can Company and later at the Great Western Chemical Company in sales. In 1973 he started his own business selling metal finishing equipment and supplies, naming it after himself: The Frank N. Youngman Co. Always interested in sports and the outdoors, Frank was an Eagle Scout and a Scoutmaster. He was an excellent fly fisherman and waterfowl hunter, as well as an avid gardener. He enjoyed being a member of the Racquet Club, the Arlington Club, and the Multnomah Athletic Club, where he played competitive volleyball. He was a charter member of the Fly Fisher’s Club of Oregon and the Deer Island Duck Club. He was also an original member of the St. Thomas More Catholic Church and worshipped there all his life. He served as an advisory board member of the Providence Child Center. A lifelong Republican, he served as a precinct committeeman. In recent years he and his wife resided at the Willamette View Retirement Community. A devoted husband and beloved father, Frank is survived by daughters Beth Baylin (Eric) of Brooklyn New York, Patricia Smith (Stamford) of Langley, Washington, and Marilyn Blick (Andrew) of Danville, California; sons Frank Youngman III (Mary) of San Diego, James Youngman (Kathryn) of Pendleton, Oregon, and John Youngman of Portland; 10 grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by daughter Susan Long in 1992. His sister Mary Holland died in 1971. His wife of 76 years, Marilyn, passed away earlier this year. The family suggests contributions to St. Thomas More Church or the Willamette View Retirement Community's Blue Heron Foundation.

Robert Bell Jr. ’59 · April 29, 2021 Robert Sterling Bell Jr., known as “Wabi” to many, was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1941. He was a visionary, designer, and artist who had varied interests. He was passionate about many things: contemporary design, Japanese culture, modern art, eclectic music, foreign and exotic automobiles, and obscure technolo-

gies; he created dozens of proposals for art, sound, and light installations all around the country. He grew up in Richland, Washington, went on to Seattle to finish high school at Lakeside School, followed by a couple of years at the University of Washington. He then obtained an interior design degree in Denmark, where he lived and worked for nine years. After a stint in Portland, he eventually settled in north San Diego County, where he was somewhat of an afficionado in the arts community. He will be dearly missed as a brother, uncle, friend, and father. In January 2022, near what would be his 81st birthday, there will be a celebration of Wabi’s life on Zoom, and if you would like an invitation, please send email to his sister, J. Belle Bell, in Ashland, Oregon: belle336@protonmail. com. Bring your stories and smiles.

John Morse ’47 · March 2020 John Moore lived his 90 years to the fullest, personally and professionally. He was born in San Diego but spent the majority of his youth in Oregon. He attended Lakeside School, graduating as the student body president and valedictorian, before attending Stanford and achieving his bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering and a master’s in civil engineering. John was also an officer in the Navy and served during the Korean War. After his career in building, which included an apartment in Palo Alto, California, and a stilt home in Mill Valley, John moved into a successful career in finance. His first foray was in investing, and he started a business called Mitchell, Morse, and Schwab. After selling his share of the business, John received an MBA from the University of Santa Clara, while working full time as head of investor relations at Memorex. John then had a few decades as a successful technology start-up chief financial officer and consultant. He retired at the age of 80 and focused on flying. He was a bit of a daredevil who loved to fly everything from hang gliders to Cessnas, and he flew his light sports plane until just before his 89th birthday. John was married to the love of his life, Nettie, for 54 years, and he enjoyed spending time with his family. They had many weekends at their property in Big Sur, where he liked to hike and fish, and he took his family to Hawaii for vacations, where he spent many hours snorkeling. He was a great storyteller and often shared words of wisdom with friends and family. John is survived by his wife, Nettie, his daughters Jennifer Morse and Teri McFadden, son-in-law David McFadden, and his grandchildren Scott Freitas, Spencer McFadden, and Patti McFadden. John's love, light, and laughter will live on in his family. He now has his own wings and is assuredly making good use of them.

Chad Fong ’15 · May 26, 2021 Peter Neurath ’60 · June 6, 2021 Peter F. Neurath, 78, a reporter at the Puget Sound Business Journal for 30 years, died of kidney failure. The son of Dr. Hans Neurath and Hilde Bial-Neurath, Peter was born in 1942 in Durham, N.C., where his father was professor of biochemistry at Duke University.

In 1950, the family moved to Seattle,

F a l l • W i n t e r 2 0 2 1 59

IN MEMORIAM where Hans chaired the newly formed biochemistry department in the University of Washington’s Medical School, a position he held for 25 years. Peter grew up in Seattle’s Laurelhurst neighborhood and graduated from Lakeside School, where he developed lifelong friendships. He attended Pomona College, from which he received a bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1964. An intellectual and academic at heart, Peter then went to the University of Washington for a master’s in history, the first of three master’s degrees he would earn at the university. Peter returned to Lakeside, his high school alma mater, to teach history. Seeking a new role in education, he received his second master’s in counseling and guidance. He worked for two years as a school counselor before earning his third master’s, this one in public administration. Friends remember Peter for his discipline, focused commitment, and lifelong dedication to physical fitness and the spirit and practice of karate. Best known for his journalistic career, Peter covered health care, law, and banking at the Puget Sound Business Journal.

“Peter was a highly dedicated professional, in the office never later than 7 a.m. and to a large degree responsible for the image of integrity and quality characteristic of the Journal,” said Mike Flynn, former editor and first publisher of the Puget Sound Business Journal. “Peter was highly respected as a journalist; people trusted him, and they were willing to talk, to discuss issues. Learning was vital to Peter,” Flynn added. “He never really got over being an academic. After covering a beat and learning all he could, he would come to me and say, ‘I want a different beat. There’s nothing left for me to learn in this industry, and I need to keep learning.’ Peter was simply the finest reporter who ever worked for me in my 24 years running the Business Journal.” Always athletic, in later life Peter exercised and walked several miles a day. He also enjoyed ballroom dancing and was a frequent attendee at dances throughout Seattle. Having no surviving relatives, he has bequeathed his estate to the University of Washington. Peter’s estate is designated to establish the Hans Neurath Endowed Chair in Biochemistry and the Hans Neurath Foundation to advance the teaching of and research in biochemistry.

FACULTY AND STAFF Will Bascus • Sept. 12, 2021 William Robert Bascus died at home in Seattle with his family by his side, from complications of Parkinson’s disease with Lewy body dementia. Will was born in Brawley, in the Imperial Valley of California, and lived with his parents and three siblings near his grandparents, cousins, and other family members. He made lifelong childhood and high school friends, some of whom traveled long distances to see him before he died. During high school he loved being in the Future Farmers of America, where he raised a sheep and a steer. He also participated in varsity football, baseball, basketball, and track. He earned both all-state and

60 L AKESIDE

all-American honors in basketball his senior year. Will attended the University of Montana, Missoula, on a basketball scholarship, playing for coaches Jud Heathcote and Jim Brandenburg. He made lifelong friends in Montana and married Isobel Swift in 1973 while finishing his degree. After returning to Brawley Union High School to teach physical education and be the assistant basketball coach at his alma mater (1974-1977), Will and Isobel moved to Seattle, where Will began teaching physical education at Meany Middle School. He was also Al Hairston’s Garfield High School assistant basketball coach (1977-1982). Isobel and Will had two sons during this time and bought the house they lived in until he died.

In 1982, Will joined Bush School as the high school physical education teacher and head boys basketball coach. He loved teaching classes and coaching the talented Blazer teams in the Sea-Tac B division, taking them to the state tournament several times.

Following Bush, Will was an assistant men’s basketball coach at three Division I colleges: Eastern Washington University (19881990), Montana State University (1990-1992), and University of Washington (1992-1993). He thrived on coaching and scouting. He joined Lakeside School in 1993, teaching middle school physical education until his retirement in 2014. He enjoyed the Lakeside community — faculty, staff, parents, and students, most especially the students. He shone as a physical education teacher and was adored by many students and their parents. Will's Lewy body dementia symptoms were subtle, and it took until March 2020 for a formal diagnosis. He handled its gradual but relentless progression with grace and dignity, and he retained the ability to remember and recognize his close friends and family until the end. Will is survived by his wife, Isobel; sons William Bascus and Michael Bascus (Caitlin); grandchildren Marina and Rosalind; brother Wayne Bascus (Nancy); sisters Amelita Yancy and Jackie Stuart; and several nieces and nephews. A memorial is being planned for 2022.

2 02 1 -2 02 2 c a le nd a r

January

25

SAVE THE DATES

Bay Area Alumni Reception, Perbacco, 6 p.m.

16 April

26

9

T.J. Vassar ’68 Alumni Diversity Celebration, The Downtown School, 6 p.m.

Bernie Noe Endowed Lecture on Ethics and Politics: Isabel Wilkerson * (See page 13.)

March

8

Seattle Area Alumni Reception, MOHAI, 6:30 p.m.

New York Area Alumni Reception, location TBA, 6 p.m.

May

25

February

8

Dan Ayrault Memorial Lecture featuring Monika Batra ’92 Kashyap * (See page 13.)

Arts Fest, Upper School campus, 6 p.m.

10

❚ Carey Crutcher ’77 Smith Chair ❚ Artemios “Tim” Panos ’85 Vice Chair ❚ Bertrand Valdman Immediate Past Chair, Treasurer ❚ Sean O’Donnell ’90 Secretary

June

9

2021-2022 Lakeside Board of Trustees

50th Reunion Reception, Upper School campus, 11:30 a.m.

❚ Amy Crichton Honorary Trustee

Class of 2022 Commencement, Upper School campus, 2 p.m.

❚ Dr. Sarah Barton

All-Alumni Reunion hosted

by Lakeside, Upper School Campus, 6 p.m.

11-12 Reunion 2022 class gatherings

❚ Michelle Chang ’90 Chen ❚ David de la Fuente ❚ Lloyd Frink ’83 ❚ Mark Klebanoff ’80 ❚ Michael Larson ❚ Kathleen M. Murray

*Lectures are open to parents and guardians of current students. All lectures will be recorded, and a video will be shared following each lecture.

Dates to be announced for Alumni Cooking Class, Trivia Night, and Classes Without Quizzes. For more information on all alumni events, visit lakesideschool.org/alumni.

Questions? Please contact the alumni relations office of the Lakeside/St. Nicholas Alumni Association at 206368-3606 or alumni@lakesideschool.org.

❚ Michael Nachbar ❚ Nicholas Stevens ’06 Alumni Association President ❚ Bridgette M. Taylor ❚ Katie Hosford ’93Traverse ❚ Brandon C. Vaughan ’06 ❚ David M. Victor

GET READY FOR JUNE 10, 2022!

Join us for the All-Alumni Reunion on Friday, June 10, 2022, to celebrate 100 years of Lakeside! All classes are invited to the quad on the Upper School campus to enjoy a complimentary reception.

Reunion planners are needed from classes ending in 2 and 7 to organize individual class events. If you are interested in volunteering, please contact the alumni relations office at 206-368-3606 or email alumni@ lakesideschool.org.

F a l l • W i n t e r 2 0 2 1 61

14050 1st Avenue NE Seattle, WA 98125-3099 lakesideschool.org

Save the date!

ALL ALUMNI REUNION Friday, June 1O,

Celebrating 1OO Years of Lakeside Alumni from all classes, as well as current and former faculty and staff, are invited!

6 p.m.

The Quad, Lakeside’s Upper School Campus

All additional details and a link to register will be shared in January via email and at lakesideschool.org/alumni.

To update or share your email address with Lakeside, please contact the alumni relations office at alumni@lakesideschool.org or 206-368-3606.

Images courtesy of Lakeside School’s Jane Carlson Williams ’60 Archives and Benjamin Benschneider.