13 minute read
Winterim Adventures Recalled
Alumni and faculty share memories from 50 years of Winterim trips
by Joe Sheppard
Winterim has been part of the Lawrence Academy experience for half a century, and it’s safe to say that almost every LA graduate during that time learned from or was somehow affected by at least one of their Winterim courses.
Since the beginning of the program, some people have viewed the existence of Winterim’s big “travel programs” alongside usually lessexpensive, campus-based courses as a conflict between the “haves” and the “have-nots.” While financial considerations do figure into many students’ Winterim plans, the real — and important — difference between the options is not one of value or prestige, but of purpose. The travel programs are certainly educational; they must meet strict criteria in order to be approved. Campus-based Winterims, on the other hand, have always been designed to teach a new skill or explore a particular area of knowledge in depth.
Over the years, Winterim courses in quilting, bookmaking, television production, and EMT training have done the former, while new knowledge has been gained through courses on choosing a college, exploring New England history, local forestry management, and more. All that said, a high point of many an LA student’s high school years is the Winterim program.
To help celebrate Winterim’s anniversary, we’ve collected memories and anecdotes from both alumni and faculty who traveled during Winterim. As you read them, we hope you’ll gain a new appreciation for this unique program and, perhaps, rekindle a few memories of your own Winterim experience. Peter D. Onanian ’73 shares this story of a 1972 Winterim trip to Greece with classmate Anna Koules:
My favorite Winterim memory is of the trip to Greece and Crete in ’72 with co-leaders John and Marylou Curran. It may have been in Athens that Anna Koules and I noticed some handmade wool sweaters being sold in an open market, and we wanted to take one home. Anna spoke Greek but was hesitant to barter with the ominous-looking shopkeeper. She asked if we could do it together, and I agreed. I said, “Look, I’m Armenian and I don’t think I have paid retail for anything in my life, so I will negotiate and you translate.” So we selected our garments and Anna asks, “How much?” I don’t recall the exact amount, but let’s say he wanted the equivalent of $50. I said “Bulls--t!” Anna, looking worried, said she didn’t know how to translate it into Greek. I said, “Don’t worry, it’s universal and he gets it.” So we left the sweater shop paying $10 each. Anna and I should have partnered after high school — we would have owned half of Groton by now!
Starting in 1978 — on the day of the infamous Blizzard of ’78 — former faculty member Tanya Sheppard P 93’, 94’ led the first of eight trips to Russia and the Soviet Union (which collapsed not long before her final trip in 1992). She recalls some of the more memorable moments from those times: Astonishment on LA students’ faces upon disembarking onto the tarmac and being greeted by two 16- or 17-year-old Russian soldiers holding Kalashnikov rifles on either side of the stairway. NO SMILES! One year, a student was asked at customs to step into a room with two officers. He came out 10 minutes later, red-faced. He was asked to open his suitcase, and a whoopee cushion fell out! They wanted to know what it was, but to show them risked angering them, so the boy just shrugged his shoulders, saying he did not understand. Russian hotel food left a lot to be desired — hot dogs and peas for breakfast? Red salmon roe, a delicacy, was not touched, so I ate as many portions as I could. Our first stop outside of Russia was usually Helsinki, Finland, which necessitated an immediate trip to McDonald’s. In Armenia, we visited a dental polyclinic, but before we could tour the place, one of our students was pulled away to be passed around to all the departments so they could see his braces and dental work. He had to hold his mouth open for an hour.
Clockwise from top left: Tired in Tallin, Estonia, 1978. Front row, R. Natalie Barnard ’78 (other students are from another school) Soviet monument “Workers and Peasants,” Moscow, 1983 “hot dogs and peas for breakfast?” Tsar Pushka: world’s biggest cannon, in front of the Kremlin, 1978 Selling apples at an Armenian market, 1985 Laura Graceffa ’83 shared this memory of her trip to the USSR:
While all my Winterims were life-shaping, my 1981 trip to the Soviet Union was especially so. It was my first trip, ever, overseas. We were still in the Cold War, and everything in my life leading up to the trip conditioned me to be fearful. I came home feeling less fearful …We spent three days in Kyiv. My journal records that most of the streets were still cobblestones (although they were paved in the Russian part of the USSR). We spent time at “Pioneer Palace,” an after-school program for children, which I recorded being very impressed by.
Tanya Sheppard led this trip for LA, and when I look through my journal, I can see where she gently corrected my spelling of any Russian names — so I know she read every page — very dedicated!
Another former teacher, Don Padgett, sponsored the popular Sports Journalism course for ten years. Here are some of his favorite recollections:
Ted Williams I think it was 1988 when we went to Winter Haven for Spring Training, but there were no ballgames. The players were on strike and locked out of the training camp. This obviously put a big crimp in our Winterim plans! Somehow we got word that some of the Red Sox players were working out at the Winter Haven High School baseball field. We went over to the school one morning, and sure enough, there were half a dozen players there, including Marty Barrett, Dennis Lamp, the irrepressible Oil Can Boyd, and couple of touted rookies named Todd Benzinger and Scott Cooper. The players were at first not thrilled to be “found out” but were nevertheless gracious. A couple of the Lawrence students had brought their lacrosse sticks with them. This caught the attention of Todd and Scott, a couple of Midwest boys who had
never played or even seen a lacrosse game. Don’t let anyone try to tell you that baseball players are not really athletes. Within five minutes, Todd and Scott were throwing a lacrosse ball around as if they had played the game their entire lives! On a personal note, my highlight was (very briefly) talking with Ted Williams and getting his autograph on a photo that is framed and hanging in my home in New Hampshire. I would also say that by far the two nicest men in uniform that we encountered were Johnny Pesky and Mike Easler. It was Johnny who got me in contact with Dick Bresciani, the PR director for the “My highlight was talking with Ted Williams and Red Sox, on our very first Sports Journalism Winterim. A wonderful Mike Easler moment came when he was talking with one of our journalists an hour or so before a game. getting his autograph on a Mike was at the edge of the dugout; our LA correspondent was in the grandstand area. photo that is framed and They were talking through a chain link fence hanging in my home.” when Mike said, “I can’t talk with you like this. Come on down here.” And they sat in the Red Sox dugout and chatted.
Jack Horsman ’18 was grateful for the chance to become “immersed” in Hawaiian culture during his senior-year trip to our newest state, led by faculty members Kevin Potter and Chris Margraf. He recalls a daily ritual for the group:
If I had to pick a favorite part of the trip, it would probably be swimming in natural hot springs. For the first few days, we camped across the street from a traditional Hawaiian charter school that we were helping/learning at, and right next to our tents was a natural hot spring pool. We would swim there morning, afternoon, and night. It was so calming and peaceful, and the views looking out across the Pacific right next to us were incredible.
As often happens on Winterim trips like this, a group of students who may have had little in common before the experience became close friends. Jack explains:
Some of us were already good friends, while others we had only really talked to passing in the halls or class. We began referring to ourselves as “ohana” [a Hawaiian term used with family members and close friends].
Jack Horsman ’18 and friends
Many students choose on-campus Winterim courses for their underclass years, capping the LA experience with a trip as seniors. Nancy Fitz Sumner ’84 recounts a memorable senior-year trip to Europe:
We started flying into Rome, went to the Coliseum, and had a tour of the Vatican City. My neck hurt from staring at the Sistine Chapel. From Rome we went to Florence, a beautiful city. We even saw the David — what a beautiful statue. We were supposed to travel by train from Italy to France, but there was a train strike in France, so we had to find a train that would take us to our chartered bus. We got a train that took us through the Swiss Alps during the day. I remember running to both sides of the train to see the beautiful mountains.
We met our bus in Lausanne, Switzerland, to go to Paris. I am very afraid of heights, but decided I needed to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower. It was amazing. A couple of years ago when Notre Dame burned, I explained to my family how she is on an island and is huge. You could see how the fire engine ladders didn’t go very far up her sides. From Paris we went to Dijon, then over the Channel from Calais to the White Cliffs of Dover. From Dover we went to Canterbury and then to London. In London we saw Singing in the Rain; the balcony we sat in was very scary to sit in.
This was an incredible trip, one that I will always remember. A two-week tour of Europe is fast but, I loved it.
In 1980, the popular Outward Bound Winterim, this time under the leadership of science teacher and outdoorsman Bill McInvaille, traveled to the Great Smoky Mountains and the Joyce Kilmer National Forest in North Carolina. Ted Przybylo ’80, one of the 10 hardy hikers, shared this recollection:
Our last night in the mountains before heading back to Groton, we pitched our tarps on a ridge between two peaks. It was a wet, misty night. When we awoke, the tarps were covered with ice, and starting a fire for breakfast was difficult. After packing everything up, we began our hike down the mountain to the trailhead and our ride home. The day’s hike was incredible. We experienced different ecosystems, vegetation, and temperatures all the way down. What started with cold rain and snow ended with ferns and humidity. The whole trip was a memory-maker!
Class of ’80 seniors on Outward Bound Winterim, 1980. L to R: Chris Russell, Ted Przybylo, Mike Meegan, Ellen Shoen, John Lord, Pat Warner (with staff), Dean Packard, David Klotz (red bandana). Kneeling: Todd Jennison, Christopher Smith. Faculty: Bill McInvaille.
At least one Winterim trip has provided the inspiration for a long and successful career. Damon Corkin ’95, founder and owner of Andean Discovery, an Ecuadorian travel company that specializes in adventure and educational travel in Ecuador, Peru, and the Galapagos, credits his decision to start the business to a Winterim trip to Ecuador led by Jerry Wooding P’88, ’90, ’95 and Jim Serach P’07. Writing for the Academy Journal a few years ago, he recalled:
In the spring of 1993, I was fortunate to be accepted to the Ecuador Winterim, which was led by Jim Serach and Jerry Wooding, two of my favorite faculty members, who are extremely knowledgeable about Ecuador and its tropical ecosystems. Little did I know at the time that this trip would plant the seeds for an incredible life journey that has been enriched with language, travel, and lots of Salsa dancing …
I was in my second year of Spanish with Donna Mastrangelo P’15, ’18 at the time, and when I landed in Ecuador, it was surprisingly fun to put my language skills to the test. I chatted with our driver, our guides, hotel staff, and pretty much anybody who had enough patience to listen to my beginner Spanish, which was strongly diluted by an unmistakable, thick, gringo accent. Luckily, the Ecuadorian people tend to be extremely patient and enjoy speaking with foreigners. This friendly and open demeanor of the Ecuadorians encouraged me to speak in Spanish more and more as we traveled through the Central Andes and the Amazon rainforest.
By the end of the trip, in addition to appreciating Ecuador as a country, I also realized that nothing in the world was as cool as traveling to a foreign land and speaking to the people in their own language. I learned that Spanish was much more than learning grammar and memorizing vocabulary. It was a profound cultural and personal experience. In short, I was hooked on Spanish. I returned to Lawrence that spring more excited than ever to continue my Spanish classes with Donna. The two-year foreign language requirement at LA was no longer, to me, a requirement at all; it had become my favorite class. My Winterim experience inspired me to take Spanish during all four years at LA.
I continued taking Spanish at the University of Colorado and tried to immerse myself in Spanish-speaking cultures as much as possible. I practiced Spanish with my Latino classmates, took Salsa and Merengue dance lessons, and did two study-abroad programs in Spain for a year and a half.
After college, I was eager to get a job that would allow me to continue exploring the world and speaking Spanish. My passion for travel, ignited by my Winterim experience, led me to accept a position at EF Education as a tour consultant.
EF is a Boston-based travel company that specializes in educational tours for high school and middle school groups. Because of my Spanish skills and travel experience, I was put in charge of their Puerto Rico program. During my time at EF, I traveled to Puerto Rico, worked with local teachers, and coordinated cultural exchange programs with other U.S. schools. It was a wonderful
experience and made me realize how much I had benefitted from my high school and college education …
In opening Andean Discovery, my idea was to harness my experience in adventure travel and in educational travel to offer a broad range of travel programs to individuals, high school groups, and universities … I couldn’t help but reflect on my sophomore year Winterim and digest how meaningful that experience was for me.
Whether you traveled to Europe for two weeks, explored Boston, made a quilt, or built a canoe, your Winterim experience did more than relieve the drudgery of mid-March school days — it left you with something that, at that time of your life, you probably couldn’t have found anywhere else. It’s as much a part of being an LA student as math class or Mountain Day — but more fun.
Vickie (Triplett) Coleman ’83 made this cabinet and jewelry box during her woodworking Winterim.
