CA Magazine, Fall 2018

CA

FALL 2018

CONCORD ACADEMY MAGAZINE

WHERE

LIFE MEETS

ART The passions of CA documentary photographers

26 Lili Kobielski ’06 spent two years photographing in Queens, N.Y., after Hurricane Sandy.

FEATURE S

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Where Life Meets Art

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The passions of CA documentary photographers

Heidi Koelz Associate Director of Communications

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Design

Little Blue Hope

Editor

Aldeia www.aldeia.design Editorial Board

Ben Carmichael ’01 Director of Marketing and Communications

CA alumnae/i on the front lines of HIV prevention A daily pill can prevent the transmission of HIV. Why aren’t we celebrating?

See page 26.

John Drew P’15 ’19 Assistant Head and Academic Dean

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Message from the Head of School

Alumnae/i profiles, CA’s new board president, reunion, and volunteers

Opening Remarks

Alice Roebuck Director of Advancement and Engagement

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Campus

Hilary Rouse Director of Engagement

News about students, faculty, arts, and athletics

Contact us:

Concord Academy Magazine 166 Main Street Concord, MA 01742 (978) 402-2249 magazine@concordacademy.org

DEPARTMENTS

The GSA at 30.

See page10.

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Centennial Campaign

The CA Houses vision realized

Alumnae/i

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Creative Types

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Then & Now

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End Space

English teacher Nick Hiebert

© 2018 Concord Academy

M I SS I O N

Concord Academy engages its students in a community animated by a love of learning, enriched by a diversity of backgrounds and perspectives, and guided by a covenant of common trust.

O N T H E C OV E R Zandy Mangold ‘92 captured this spectacular nighttime view during the 4 Deserts ultramarathon in Patagonia, Argentina.

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A L E T T E R F RO M H E A D O F SC H O O L R I C K H A R DY

A House of Stories “ Today, amidst the din of social media, with countless speakers yet few listeners, the Chapel continues to provide a ‘space for quiet’ in a crowded world.”

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ON ANY MORNING, before the bell rings to signal the start of the day, one can sit in CA’s Chapel, look upward, and see rough-hewn timbers intersecting at precise angles, each with its role to play — a nearly 200-year-old model of balance and precision, held together as if by a spell.

When Elizabeth Hall, CA’s famed former headmistress, purchased the Chapel in 1954, it was quite literally falling into disrepair in Barnstead, N.H. She and her colleague Doreen Young saw in it what no one else did: the dream of “a Chapel standing at the end of the Academy garden” that could provide “space for quiet in a crowded school.” Carefully dismantling and rebuilding it, beam by beam, Hall and a handful of others created this space where generations of students have stepped to the lectern to share their stories, to be truly heard.

Fay Lampert Shutzer ’65, who assumed her duties as president of the Board of Trustees in July, reflected at this year’s Convocation about her own chapel talk, 53 years ago. Concord Academy was a girls’ school then, and chapel talks were, she said, “much more reserved and formal.” There was no hug line or friend bench behind the podium, no posters or decorations, no rock or rap music of the speaker’s choice.

Shutzer recalled urging her fellow students not to wish away the days “waiting for the weekend, and then for the next vacation.”

To today’s students, she gave the same advice: “Try to capture time: Be present, aware, know where you are, hold on to what is most meaningful, and search for how to share it with

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others. When the day comes, and you stand up here, you will have that moment. Don’t waste a second until then.”

Sarah Yeh, dean of faculty, recounted the sense of peace she found sitting in the Chapel after arriving at CA as a new history teacher. “I love to sit and think about what these walls and beams have seen — in 1800s New Hampshire, and in the 60-some years that they’ve been in this place — moments of profound joy, moments of deep sorrow, acts of bravery, and endless peals of laughter,” she said. “We are all now part of the chorus, and there is no place I would rather begin another school year.”

To speak, and to be heard. Today, amidst the din of social media, with countless speakers yet few listeners, the Chapel continues to provide a “space for quiet” in a crowded world — a place where people listen to one another’s stories with openness, good humor, and respect.

This is why the Chapel remains the soul of this school. Former teacher and dean Sandy Stott once described the Chapel as a “house of stories,” and he’s right. Each year, I counsel new students to listen very closely to the stories that are shared in the Chapel, for soon enough they will have the opportunity to answer the questions, “Who am I, and what is my story?”

With this opportunity and the support of adults and peers, students become craftspersons of their own stories and their own educations. Every student and every story are essential, for they link us with one another.

They connect us with our past, and point the way toward our future.

I L LU ST R AT I O N BY A DA M C RU F T. P H OTO ( R I G H T ) BY C O L E + K I E R A

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Class of 2018!

Concord Academy’s 96th Commencement Exercises Marking a new beginning, the class of 2018 had much to celebrate and be inspired by. On her final occasion as president of the Board of Trustees, Kim Williams P’08 ’14 praised the graduating seniors for their “moral leadership” and “civic engagement through activism.” Head of School Rick Hardy celebrated their commitment to social justice and advised them to “try always to put people before politics, compassion before judgment.”

Student Head of School Kaity Goodwin ’18 recognized departing faculty members and those who had reached milestones, including mathematics teacher Howie Bloom and piano teacher Lodowick Crofoot, with, respectively, 35 and 50 years of service to the school.

“ If you let it, a lifetime of adaptability can give you empathy.”

DA M E V I V I A N H U N T, D B E , ’8 5 Managing partner for McKinsey & Company’s United Kingdom and Ireland offices and a senior partner in the firm

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Watch Hunt’s Commencement address at www.concordacademy. org/commencement2018

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A DA P TA B I L I T Y A N D E M PAT H Y

Senior Class President Jordan Hurley ’18 introduced the Commencement speaker as an inspiration in “the way she advocates for change from within a company that has its own imperfections.” McKinsey & Company’s Dame Vivian Hunt, DBE, ’85 is an expert on performance improvement, leadership, and diversity. In her Commencement address, she anticipated a “double centennial” — CA’s 100th anniversary in 2022 will coincide with the 100th birthday of her grandmother, who, she said, “grew up in the same era as this great school, out of the same atmosphere of renewal and uncertainty,” and who reinforced the lessons about adaptability and empathy Hunt learned at CA. “If you let it,” she said, “a lifetime of adapting can give you empathy — the power to imagine yourself into another person’s life, the ability to walk in their shoes. It can lead you to treat them the way you want to be treated. It can lead you to use what you learn in the world to do some good.”

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COMMENCEMENT 2018

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FAC U LT Y

Maps & Memory

HIEBERT AWARDED NEXT HAMMER CHAIR

Historical newspapers, hand-drawn city surveys, 19th-century Boston guidebooks — perusing these primary sources from a major American library’s restricted stacks is a historian’s dream. This summer, CA history teacher Kim Frederick was awarded one of two Carolyn A. Lynch Teacher Fellowships, which provide access to the Norman B. Leventhal Map and Education Center at the Boston Public Library and financial support. The object is for K-12 teachers to use the collection and online map sets to develop curricular units for broad distribution.

Frederick’s research will also benefit her Concord Academy course in American urban history in the spring. While focusing on the antebellum period, students will study the cities of Lowell, Mass., New Orleans, and Chicago as well as the railroads that linked them. They’ll gain experience with mapmaking and presenting historical data.

“We are now inundated with slick infographics and maps, and it’s really easy to lie with them,” Frederick says. “Part of what I’m working on in this class is image literacy, getting students to understand the narratives behind the images and how choices made in representing data visually affect what story is being told.”

The class will also learn about an immigration history site in East Boston, once a major receiving port that turned back immigrants who arrived ill, which was not preserved. “It’s interesting which stories are being told,” Frederick says, “and which aren’t.”

The Katherine Carton Hammer ’68 Endowed Faculty Chair changed hands this fall when the CA community celebrated the work of filmmaker and CA film teacher Justin Bull, who held the chair from 2015 through 2018, and introduced the next recipient, English teacher Nick Hiebert.

Named in honor of alumna and former Board of Trustees President Katherine Carton Hammer, the award recognizes and supports the distinguished work of a midcareer faculty member who has demonstrated outstanding talent in the classroom and inspired educational vision. Established in perpetuity, endowed funds such as the Hammer Chair make a critical difference to Concord Academy and its faculty.

“The funding has been a tremendous resource that I’ve used to think about collaboration, not just as a concept that I’m teaching students, but as a practice with colleagues across departments,” says Bull.

Hiebert plans to use the funds and time provided over the next three years to improve his inclusive teaching practices, especially his teaching of writing and the role his own white racial identity plays in the classroom. “It feels like a great gift to be able to slow down,” Hiebert says, “to reflect and think a bit more deeply about how to improve this work I care so much about.”

Visit www.concordacademy.org/hammerchair2018 to learn about the Hammer Chair and both recipients.

N E W FAC U LT Y A N D STA F F

History teacher Kim Frederick says she doesn’t, as a rule, take selfies. She was so excited to get her staff access card to the Boston Public Library that she snapped one anyway.

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CA welcomed 16 new faculty and staff members to campus this fall.

Left to right: Emma Storbeck, history teacher; Sally Johnston ’90, library assistant; Shaïnah Faustin Laforest, advancement assistant; Elizabeth Crowley, Annual Fund manager; Karina Early, nurse; Meredith Walsh, parent program officer; Jillian O’Connell, college counseling assistant; Karilyn Sheldon, Latin teacher; Destiny Polk, Wilcox Fellow in dance; Kiley Remiszewski, science teacher; Alyse Ruiz (front), director of student life; Will Tucker, science teacher; Renee Coburn, student life assistant; Tai Oney, choral director; and James Willison, performing arts technical director. Not pictured: Leah Cabrera, Wilcox Fellow in mathematics.

Read about them at www.concordacademy.org/facstaff2018

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“ I’m glad I work at a school that is so supportive of me as an artist and as a teacher.”

J O N AT H A N S M I T H Visual Arts Teacher

The unfinished painting at the end of Jonathan Smith’s Dorland Mountain residency. “It will be done when it’s done,” he says. “That’s how it is, working abstractly.”

AN AERIAL VIEW CA art teacher Jonathan Smith rents a studio at the Umbrella Community Arts Center, a short walk from campus in Concord, Mass. This summer, construction closed the building. Smith took the hurdle as an opportunity and applied for artist residencies.

With a $1,500 CA faculty development grant to defray his costs, he flew to Southern California for a four-week stay at the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony near Temecula Valley Wine Country.

Smith has worked with maps since the 1980s. “I’ve always been a map freak,” he says. Multiple orientations appeal to him — there’s no top or bottom while he’s working.

His earlier paintings more closely resemble maps; newer works are quite abstract. A recent series integrated historical property maps of Canada’s Prince Edward Island.

Until this residency, though, the closest he had come to on-site paintings was occasionally using maps of Concord, where he lives and works.

“My technique is basically collage,” he says. Starting from a city map on a rigid surface, he extends its lines by hand, then layers on Thai tissue rice paper, painting in thin, transparent glazes. It’s a time-consuming process. “In the early stages, it’s agitatingly

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boring,” he says. “I don’t feel like I’m painting. But when I start seeing how the colors layer, I fall in love with the process. I like being surprised by unusual effects.”

In Temecula, his painting — 48 inches square, comprising 16 interlocking panels — was inspired by that region. A 300-acre nature preserve surrounded Smith’s cottage. He hiked every afternoon in the hot wind, drove the roads, and even went up in a hot air balloon to observe subtle oranges and purples, light pinks, and faint greens in the landscape.

“Everything was so dry,” he says. “It all looked ready to ignite.” Indeed, in the evenings, he watched wildfires burn in the distant hills.

Smith had researched the area — a new process for him. He brought maps showing political districting, endangered species ranges, proposed bus routes, air flight patterns. Smith says, “I wanted to fuse together the intangible with what we directly experience.”

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E V E N TS

Save the dates for the following CA Events: December Wednesday, December 19 Concord Academy Young Alumnae/i Committee (CAYAC) Boston Holiday Party Thursday, December 20 CAYAC Pancake Breakfast February Saturday, February 9 Alumnae/i & Students of Color Conference May Wednesday, May 15 Alumnae/i & Senior BBQ Friday, May 31 Commencement June Friday–Sunday, June 7–9 Reunion MORE EVENTS www.concordacademy. org/calendar

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C O N VO CAT I O N

“ I love to sit and think about what these walls and beams have seen — in 1800s New Hampshire, and in the 60-some years that they’ve been in this place — moments of profound joy, moments of deep sorrow, acts of bravery, and endless peals of laughter.”

SA R A H Y E , Dean of Faculty Visit www.concordacademy.org/convocation2018 to read Convocation remarks.

NEW TO CA Concord Academy welcomed a diverse group of new students at the outset of the 2018–19 school year. Several are related to CA alumnae/i — a testament to the enduring value of a CA education across the generations. Languages spoken at home include Amharic, Bangla, Chinese, French, German, Gujurat, Hindi, Igbo, Korean, Papiamento, Spanish, Thai, and Yoruba!

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students have at least one parent or grandparent who graduated from CA.

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Stage Notes Restructured across three seasons, CA Dance Project is giving advanced students intensive performing experience as collaborators and original cast members, with guest choreographers. Artists on campus this fall were ballet dancers Alexander Brady and Rika Okamoto, from Twyla Tharp Dance, and hip-hop dancer Brian Washburn.

Longtime CA dance faculty members Richard Colton and Amy Spencer, both former Twyla Tharp dancers, continue to present Summer Stages Dance programming at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. This year’s presentations include legendary choreographer Twyla Tharp, in December, looking back on her early works in Minimalism and Me, and in April, What Remains, an investigation of cultural violence against African Americans that brings the poet Claudia Rankine together with choreographer Will Rawls and filmmaker John Lucas. The Performing Arts Department is working to connect CA to both of these upcoming events.

In connection with Community and Equity programming honoring the 30th anniversary of CA’s Gay-Straight Alliance (see page 10), the fall 2018 mainstage production was The Laramie Project, a play that focuses on the public reaction to the 1998 murder of gay student Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyo., which eventually galvanized legislators to address hate crimes. CA was one of the first independent schools in the country to present this play after its professional premiere.

This winter, Concord Academy will present the musical Hair on the 50th anniversary of its Broadway premiere. The groundbreaking rock musical celebrates the 1960s counterculture. CA dance teacher Richard Colton danced in the 1979 Milos Forman film, choreographed by Twyla Tharp. “In its exploration of identity, community, and global responsibility, Hair remains as relevant as ever,” says Spencer, head of the Performing Arts Department. “We’re asking students to look back and think forward.”

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Returning to Student Life Alyse Ruiz ’05, the new director of student life, brings insights into the student experience from her own days at CA. “It was unexpected,” says Alyse Ruiz ’05, who became director of student life at Concord Academy this fall, “but I knew I was coming back to a place I care deeply about.” Having grown up in central Florida, she was looking for work farther south.

But Ruiz had kept in touch with faculty and staff at CA, and it had become a running joke for them to ask if she was ready to return yet. The last time it came up, she said the timing might actually be right.

“It was a chance to come back at a really exciting time.

There was a willingness to examine student life and create new things together,” she says. “That opportunity is what drew me

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the most.” At CA, Ruiz is spending some of her time supporting other departments, including the College Counseling Office and the Wilcox Fellows program. Her interest in curriculum development has also led to her teaching in the Health and Wellness program. “From the very beginning, people were coming to me collaboratively,” she says.

Prior to returning to CA as a staff member, Ruiz spent four years as the dean of residential life at CITYterm, a semester-away program in New York. It was a newly created position, and she describes the fast pace of running two fourmonth programs back to back. “For staff, it was like fitting in two school years in one,” she says. “It was a great chance to keep responding and innovating.” Before joining CITYterm, Ruiz taught English for five years at a charter high school in Miami, where she was also the English department chair.

“At CITYterm, I was reminded of how much it means to have an adult care about you, and that’s what drew me back to the boarding school environment,” she says.

Ruiz loved being a boarder at CA; she fondly recalls the “very warm, supportive environment” of the school and getting to know peers and faculty by living together. She was never an athlete, but she valued an environment that let her casually try playing basketball or squash. What she remembers most are simple things — “spending time in each other’s common rooms,” she says, “the house faculty on duty welcoming us into their homes and making us snacks.”

Ruiz now lives on campus in Phelps House — the first boarding house she lived in as a CA student, followed by Haines and Wheeler. The flow of the building, when she arrived in August, struck her as deeply familiar, as had the feeling of walking into announcements in the Performing Arts Center when she had visited as a candidate. CA Labs, on the other hand, felt entirely new. That’s as it should be, Ruiz says: “It’s a nice balance.”

“ It was a chance to come back at a really exciting time. There was a willingness to examine student life and create new things together.”

A LYS E RU I Z ’0 5 Director of Stuent Life

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The GSA at 30 Now a presence in schools across North America and the world, the Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) had no model when it began 30 years ago at Concord Academy. During a yearlong celebration of CA’s foundational role in LGBTQ history, we look back at the GSA’s genesis.

Kevin Jennings will always remember Thursday, November 10, 1988. It was the day of his chapel talk, the day he, a young history teacher at the time, came out at CA. Jennings went on to found GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network), the leading organization working to create safe and inclusive schools for LGBTQ youth.

A prominent author, educator, and administrator, notably in the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools during the Obama administration, Jennings now directs the Tenement Museum in New York, which educates Americans about the role of immigrants in building the nation. Throughout his career, he has worked to improve life for the marginalized and persecuted.

“My chapel was a catalyst for the GSA,” he says. “I think my coming out created the space and gave the permission for LGBT topics to be addressed more directly at CA.” What follows is the story of one of the first Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs) and of the foundational role of Concord Academy in the LGBTQ youth movement.

Allyship animated the GSA from the start. Days after Jennings’ chapel, a freshman came to his office wanting to start a student club to fight homophobia. Jennings was surprised; he didn’t know Meredith Sterling ’92, who says she was “pretty visibly straight.” She was not open about the fact that her mother was a lesbian, and she was overhearing comments that bothered her. “For me, it was about being absolutely invisible,” she says. “I felt complicit. I wanted people to say this stuff to my face so I could

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“ We were breaking new ground. It’s hard for people who weren’t alive then to understand how different things were 30 years ago.”

K E V I N J E N N I N GS Former CA history teacher and founder of GLSEN

stand up and say, ‘I’m not part of this.’”

Though it hadn’t crossed his mind that someone straight could feel that passionately about inequality, Jennings saw the depth of Sterling’s commitment, recruited straight faculty to join them, and the GSA was formed.

There were no models to draw on.

“It was lonely,” Jennings says. “We were breaking new ground. It’s hard for people who weren’t alive then to understand how different things were 30 years ago.” In 1988, only one state,

Wisconsin, banned discrimination based on sexual orientation. Just 15 years after the American Psychological Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses, same-sex relationships were still criminalized in a third of the United States. In mainstream media, gay people were stereotyped as sexual predators and feared as carriers of disease.

“In some ways, GSAs had their moment then because older gays were dying or taking care of the dying,” says S. Bear Bergman ’92, among the first CA students involved in the GSA. “I had some support from older LGBT people for coming out when I was 16, but lots of my peers didn’t. That generation of would-be mentors was embroiled in the AIDS crisis.”

The GSA acted as a support group.

“It was valuable to see where others stood,” Bergman says. “The big difference, for a teenager, was between thinking everything would probably be fine and seeing that everything would be fine.” He describes CA at the time as progressive, with a “strong mandate around social justice.” As a minority Jewish kid, though, he was used to using humor and a theatrical streak to explain religious holidays. When he encountered opinions about LGBTQ people based in ignorance, he “pivoted without much difficulty to education around queer stuff,” he says. As a student, Bergman testified before the state legislature on behalf of the Massachusetts Safe Schools Program, the first of its kind. Now an author, educator, and performer, as well as the founder of an LGBTQ-positive children’s book publishing company,

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Flamingo Rampant, he has made LGBTQ education his life’s work.

Bergman is proud of his involvement in the GSA and the fact that colleges, high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools across North America now have them. Still, he’s frustrated by opposition to bills requiring GSAs to be allowed in public schools. “These are recent laws,” he says. “I’m aggravated that we’re still having the same argument.”

Given the climate of the time, there was some trepidation at CA around the founding of the GSA. “It was not an unqualified welcome,” Jennings says.

“There was a fear that it was risky, and that the school might be in danger.”

Early concerns proved unfounded. And Jennings had the courage of his convictions. He had decided to come out after referring a gay student struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts to counseling. “I realized that by remaining closeted, I was inadvertently confirming that being gay was something to be ashamed of,” he says, “and I didn’t want to do that anymore.”

Jennings was just 25 when the GSA began. “I was headstrong, fiery,” he says.

“I’m sure I was not the easiest person to manage or work with. But I appreciated that there was room at the school for me to be myself. That’s one of CA’s great strengths. Most schools are about conformity; CA is about individuality.

I know my story wouldn’t have been possible at many other schools. I got to be part of making history, and I am so grateful to the CA community for affording me that opportunity.”

“Like a lot of movement leaders, Kevin was uncompromising,” Bergman says. “It’s clear now that no other attitude would have accomplished the same thing.” He and Sterling both recall the energy of the first retreats with GSAs

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Kevin Jennings (purple shirt) with a group of CA students and recent alumnae/i at the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation. Jennings still has the photo on his wall.

from other schools, some of them still secret groups at the time. “That’s when the GSA really blossomed,” Sterling says.

English teacher Nancy Boutilier is a faculty mentor for CA’s GSA today. As a young teacher at Phillips Academy Andover, she was involved in the GSA there, which began in the same year as CA’s, and in GLSEN. “It clearly was the right time,” she says. “It was bubbling up at different places. The 1980s were a time of silence and invisibility. GSAs allowed kids who were questioning to attend meetings and not feel stigmatized. The forging of this model was an enormous game changer, and CA was a pioneer.”

A few years ago, CA students renamed the GSA: It now stands for the Gender Sexuality Alliance. “That gay-straight language was really important at the time,” Boutilier says. “Times change, though. To students today, that sounds so binary.”

As a historian, Jennings isn’t surprised by the outsized role students played in creating social change. “Young people are the ones responsible for most of the great changes in history,” he says. “When you’re young, you’re idealistic and not yet jaded or disillusioned.

You’re convinced of your invulnerability and immortality.”

X Jennings refers to READ MORE Harvard sociologist S. Bear Bergman returned to CA for a Community Charles Willie’s theand Equity assembly in ory of the necessity September. Visit www. concordacademy.org/ of a “courageous sbearbergman to read push” from the mar- about him and his storytelling. ginalized being met with a “compassionate pull” from the privileged who stand with them. “The GSA is one of the best examples in history of that compassionate pull happening,” Jennings says. “For any historic change, you need both sides.”

— Heidi Koelz

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Chapel Quilt

The bell is made from white strips of cloth tie-dyed in two shades of bluish gray.

A senior project commemorates the class of 2018 and CA’s unique tradition of chapel talks.

At the showcase of senior projects in May, Kaity Goodwin ’18 (pictured below) pointed to each handwritten quote stitched into her semester-long project — a CA Chapel quilt — and recalled the chapel talk of the classmate who wrote it. “I worked with this material a lot, so I really got to know it, even the parts I cut out because they were too long or I just couldn’t make them work,” she says.

Wanting the project to be participatory, she waited for as many quotes as she could gather from her classmates — around 70, of their own choice and in their own writing — before beginning the artistic work of assembling the Chapel image. Lines from her own chapel talk form the narrow sides of the steeple.

Nina He ’17, who for her senior project painted a series of all her classmates’ portraits, had challenged Goodwin to focus her senior project on the entire class. Goodwin knew she wanted do something with fiber arts. With her senior project faculty advisor, Peter Boskey ’08, head of the Visual Arts Department, she began trying to refine a big idea.

They met every other week. “We had lots of creative energy,” Goodwin says. “We think the same in a lot of ways, but we come from different places, so it was a productive balance.”

They first considered a tapestry of the campus, with each building constructed from written memories of student experiences. When that concept proved too visually complicated, Goodwin began to home in on “one place on campus that could encapsulate the CA experience for everyone,” she says. It was clear that was the Elizabeth B. Hall Chapel.

Quilts have historically served as vessels for collective memory. What better form to use to allude to the continuum of shared experiences of senior chapel talks? These exchanges of generosity, attention, and respect are what shine through the image of the Chapel for the Concord Academy community.

At the presentation, Goodwin enjoyed listening to students guess which seniors had written which words. The finished quilt invited engagement, just as the process of creating it had engaged her.

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The border visually alludes to the varied-width railing in the upper Stu-Fac— a suggestion from Goodwin’s senior project faculty advisor, Peter Boskey ’08.

Goodwin selected memorable words and phrases from her classmates’ chapels; Emily Marquis ’18 gave hers on Halloween.

oodwin ordered the G fabric that depicts CA buildings from a custom printer.

Quilts have historically served as vessels for collective memory.

What better form to use to allude to the continuum of shared experiences of senior chapel talks?

“It was nice to get a chance to reread people’s chapels,” Goodwin says. “CA students care, but there’s just not enough time, so we don’t often revisit them. Being able to do that was really cool. It brought me closer to my class.”

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P E R FO R M I N G A RTS

The Concord Academy Performing Arts Department presented Membra, a beautiful piece of music theater, in the dance studio in May. CA Singers and Dance Company co-created the cantata for singers and dancers, featuring the music of Dietrich Buxtehude, a Baroque Dutch-German organist and composer. Amy Spencer, head of the Performing Arts Department, called the music “amazing” and “challenging in many ways to our students, but in the best way.”

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AT H L E T I C S

Go Green!

CA enjoyed a banner spring season, with nearly every team posting a .500 record or better. Multiple teams contended for Eastern Independent League (EIL) titles, and four competed in New England Preparatory School Athletic Council (NEPSAC) tournaments.

Order on the Court

The girls varsity tennis team posted another outstanding season after a thrilling run to the NEPSAC tournament championship in 2017. This spring, the squad earned a share of the EIL title, resulting in a banner raised to the gym rafters to honor the achievement. After being seeded third in the NEPSAC tournament and cruising to the semifinals, the team fell to the eventual champions, St. Luke’s, in an incredibly close match. Since only two players have graduated, the program has its sights set on another shot at a NEPSAC championship next year.

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final races of the season won by the coed varsity sailing team

Winning Throws

At the NEPSAC track and field championship, Sam Welsh ’18 set a New England discus record — it was the No. 1 high school throw in the country in 2018. In June, he capped an incredible season by facing the top high school throwers in the country at the New Balance High School Outdoor National Championships in Greensboro, N.C., where he won the national title.

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single loss during the season qualified the coed varsity Ultimate Frisbee team for the competitive NEPSAC B bracket

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Down to the Last Out

The varsity softball team had a breakout season that began with the squad inaugurating the new home softball field on the main campus. Although the team had not finished in the top half of the EIL in recent years, this spring it contended for the league title down to the last out of the season’s final game, losing a nail-biter to the eventual champions, Portsmouth Abbey.

personal bests and

5

new school records for the CA track and field athletes at the NEPSAC championship meet

5

game winning streak for the varsity baseball team

Second place EIL finish for the boys varsity tennis team on the strength of a

Sprint to the Finish

8–2 record

4

game win streak to end a succcesful season for boys varsity lacrosse

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X

For highlights from spring and fall athletics and news about all of CA’s dedicated student-athletes, visit www.concordacademy.org/athletics.

The track and field team battled both league opponents and the elements at the EIL championship meet. In a cold rain, both the boys and girls finished fourth, narrowly missing the podium. It was a true team effort, with 15 boys and 10 girls scoring points in individual and relay events, victories in all three throwing contests, and second- and third-place finishes from the program’s first-ever pole vaulting entrants. At the NEPSAC championship meet, CA athletes posted a dozen personal bests and five new school records. The boys’ team finished in seventh place.

15

B Y

H E I D I

K O E L Z

WHERE

LIFE

→ Lili Kobielski ’06 shot this portrait while on assignment for Vogue.

MEETS T

ART +

18 Zandy Mangold ’92 20 Lili Kobielski ’06 22 Frances F. Denny ‘03 24 Jonathan Moller ’81

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Several Concord Academy graduates have gone on to careers in documentary photography, capturing everyday life and historic events. Here are stories from four alumnae/i whose images help us see our world differently.

C O N C O R D ACA D E M Y M AGA Z I N E

he photographers featured here use digital cameras now, but they learned the magic of manipulating film in the long-established photography program at Concord Academy. “I believe all young photographers should learn that process,” says Lili Holzer-Glier Kobielski ’06, who started taking pictures at CA. “The most important thing about high school for me was the sense of community I had working in that darkroom with friends, sharing music. It was a very communal, safe space for me to go.”

It was at CA that Jonathan Moller ’81, now a human rights activist and photographer, learned the power images can have. The enthusiasm of his teacher and slideshows of the history of photography were formative. Moller says, “It was hugely fundamental for me to be exposed to the range of what was possible.”

Frances FitzGerald Denny ’03, whose work investigates female identities, first took up photography at CA, under current and longtime teacher Cynthia Katz. She didn’t know that she’d make it her career. Denny advises others to figure out what is most important to them, and how they can use the camera to explore it. “Keep shooting,” she says. “It’s like a muscle you need to use to keep strong.”

For professionals who aren’t outgoing by nature, photography opens doors. “I wouldn’t know 99.9 percent of what I know if it weren’t for a camera,” says photographer and endurance athlete Zandy Mangold ’92. “Every day is a field trip to something I never would have experienced otherwise.” He enjoys returning to campus to talk with CA students. “I tell them it’s OK to have dreams and to tell people about them, as long as they put in the work to pursue them,” he says. “It’s so important not to get discouraged if you’re passionate.”

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17

TRAILBLAZER

→ Pete Kostelnick runs past a massive wall of rock in Yosemite Park during his record-setting transcontinental run in 2016. Zandy Mangold was embedded with Kostelnick for two weeks during his run, sleeping on the floor of his RV and running much of the course with his camera in order to best document the experience.

G ROW I N G U P in the New Hampshire woods, Zandy Mangold dreamed of becoming a photographer or an athlete, or both. Coming from a small town and lacking publishing connections, Mangold knew photography would be a hard field to enter. So he took some risks.

While studying abroad in Chile in college, he interned with a newspaper. Assigned to photograph former dictator Augusto Pinochet, Mangold got the shot that ran by finding a vantage point off-limits to the press. “Everyone else followed the rules,” he says.

Nine years ago, Mangold got a life-changing assignment with Racing the Planet, which hosts spectacular 155-mile footraces across the world’s most inhospitable terrain. Before photographing ultramarathoners, he never dreamed of being one himself. “I thought anything longer than a marathon was crazy,” he says, “but I was happy to be shooting in places such as Antarctica, Madagascar, and the Gobi Desert.”

At the Atacama Crossing in the Chilean desert, Mangold raced to frame shots with 35 pounds of equipment on his back. He found himself running faster than competitors. “That was the spark,” he says. “I saw that some of the runners were sponsored, and how rewarding racing could be.”

In 2010, he finished his first ultramarathon, dead last.

It was a rude awakening, but he persevered. Seven years later, he broke the finish-line tape in the race he had first photographed. “Winning the Atacama was so satisfying,” he says. “It was my personal Mount Everest.”

In top form now after years of injuries, Mangold recently won a 100-miler in Florida and followed that up with a Badwater 135 finish in California. He still completes adventure-based commercial photography assignments around the world. “I love the chance to work and work out at the same time,” he says.

I love the chance to work and work out at the same time.

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C O N C O R D ACA D E M Y M AGA Z I N E

M A N G O L D

→ Pete Kostelnick passes through a long, hot stretch of Nevada desert on his recordsetting run across the United States. Kostelnick ran from San Francisco City Hall to New York City Hall in 42 days, 6 hours, and 30 minutes.

’ 9 2

+ See more of Mangold’s work online at zandymangoldnyc.com and on Instagram: @run_n_shoot

← Human rights worker and trail runner Stephanie Case fights through a bout of nausea en route to a sub-24-hour finish during the fabled Western States 100-mile race in California. Western States is the oldest 100-mile race in the world.

↑ Professional trail runner Sally McRae on a training run in British Columbia, Canada.

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STORYTELLER

A PRO FESSO R told Lili Kobielski she should pursue photography only if it’s the only language she speaks. Kobielski is a writer, too, but that didn’t deter her.

She earned her master’s in photojournalism at Columbia University, takes assignments for Vogue, the New York Times, and the New Yorker, and teaches photojournalism at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, her alma mater.

Journalism and photography have gone hand-in-hand in making her a stronger storyteller. “It’s my world,” Kobielski says. “I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

Inspired by street photographers, Kobielski’s images call attention to societal problems. After Hurricane Sandy hit New York, she spent two years walking around Queens, meeting people and taking pictures.

Vogue picked up the photos, and Kobielski secured a book deal. Her 2015 book, Rockabye, documents the hurricane’s aftermath along the Rockaway Peninsula.

Her forthcoming book grew out of a collaboration with the digital publication Narratively and the Vera Institute of Justice. It focuses on mental illness among inmates in Chicago’s Cook County Jail.

Kobielski grew up on a farm with thoroughbreds in upstate New York, where she now runs a small farm herself. “I value flexibility,” she says, “being able to do several things.” She has covered the Kentucky Derby for five years. Many of her images look beyond glitz and glamour to elements more human.

“There are many places I would never have gone without a camera,” Kobielski says. “I’ve learned so much from talking to people. Photography has really expanded my access to the world.”

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C O N C O R D ACA D E M Y M AGA Z I N E

↓ Lili Kobielski documents the Preakness Stakes and the surrounding Baltimore neighborhood while on assignment for Narratively.

H O L Z E R - G L I E R

+ See more of Kobielski’s work online at lilikobielski.com

← A view from inside Chicago’s Cook County Jail.

↑ For years, Kobielski has photographed the Kentucky Derby for Vogue. ← A flooded street in Queens, N.Y., in the aftermath of Hurrican Sandy.

This image appears in Kobielski’s book Rockabye.

K O B I E L S K I FA L L 20 1 8

’ 0 6

There are many places I would never have gone without a camera.

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EXPLORER

FRA N CES Denny calls her work “creative nonfiction.” Her latest series, Major Arcana: Witches in America, consists of portraits of women around the United States who identify as witches in various capacities. While researching her previous series, Let Virtue Be Your Guide, which focused on her ancestry in New England, Denny discovered a family connection to the Salem witch trials. A grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts jumpstarted the project, and for nearly three years she traveled from Maine to New Orleans to San Francisco to make the portraits. The series reflects her subjects’ diversity, and Denny lauds their courage in trusting her to represent them. “I’m grateful to my subjects for being brave,” she says. “It’s easy to forget that there is risk in publicly identifying as a witch in parts of the world even today.”

Denny’s passion for photography was ignited at CA, where she recalls first seeing the work of Sally Mann. “I didn’t know it was possible to represent one’s family in such an evocative way,” she says. Denny took a few photography classes in college, but it wasn’t until she began assisting photographers that she decided to pursue an MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design. “It was a slow burn,” she says. “It took me a while to realize it’s what I really want to do.”

In addition to her personal projects, Denny contributes editorial photography to the New Yorker and the New York Times. She also collaborates with an art director, photographing for emerging brands and campaigns. She finds the two modes complementary. “My art work requires me to be pretty solitary,” she says. “That feeds one side of my personality, but I also love collaborating.

My editorial and commercial work force me to grapple with challenges that I wouldn’t otherwise.”

↑ Judika (Brooklyn, N.Y.) from Major Arcana: Witches in America. Courtesy of ClampArt (New York, N.Y.). → Edith, with a portrait of her ancestor (Milton, Mass.), from Let Virtue Be Your Guide (2014).

Courtesy of ClampArt (New York, N.Y.).

I’m grateful to my subjects for being brave.

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F .

D E N N Y

’ 0 3

+ Denny’s solo show Major Arcana: Witches in America is on view at ClampArt in New York through November 24.

See more of her work online at francesfdenny. com and at Instagram: @francesfdenny

↑ Leonore (Montpelier, Vt.) from Major Arcana: Witches in America.

Courtesy of ClampArt (New York, N.Y.).

← Shine (New York, N.Y.) from Major Arcana: Witches in America.

Courtesy of ClampArt (New York, N.Y.).

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WITNESS +

→ Juana Crisante holds the military service ID that belonged to her husband, Fortunato.

Around the date that Fortunato was disappeared, 11 residents of Hualla were detained, held in the barracks of the Canaria military base, and then disappeared.

Between 1983 and 1984, more than 50 people from the town were disappeared, never to be seen again. Hualla, Ayacucho Region, Peru, 2009.

See more of Moller’s work online at jonathanmoller.org

↑ Reynalda Andagua talks about her son, Martín Roca Casas, who was disappeared in 1993. In the mirror you can see the reflection of Javier Roca, Martín’s father, next to an altar dedicated to the memory of their son. Martín was detained by members of the naval intelligence service while returning home from a class at Universidad Nacional del Callao on the evening of October 5, 1993. Lima, Peru, 2009.

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C O N C O R D ACA D E M Y M AGA Z I N E

M O L L E R

→Ailyn is 23 years old and lives with her two children, Ashly and Alex.

Havana, Cuba, 2015.

’ 8 1

↑ Susana, Hugo, and Juanito were all born in hiding in the jungle.

Cuarto Pueblo 1 settlement, Communities of Population in Resistance of the Ixcán, Quiché, Guatemala, 1994.

I N T H E 19 9 0 S in the mountains of Guatemala, Jonathan Moller encountered sights that changed him: heavily armed soldiers, corpses. At clandestine gravesites, he photographed a forensic team’s exhumations of the disappeared — victims from indigenous villages. His pictures show survivors’ struggles and assist in bringing former military officials to justice for genocide.

“Through my work,” he says, “I hope to bring a face to the people, to bring their stories about what happened into the light.”

Soon after Moller became active in solidarity work in the late 1980s, he traveled to Nicaragua to work on a project with Salvadorans in exile.

He arrived in Guatemala in 1993, toward the end of the country’s 36-year-long civil war. He ended up staying for seven years, deferring and eventually abandoning plans to attend the San Francisco Art Institute.

In Guatemala, Moller photographed sporadically, but he wanted good images enough to lug a medium-format camera on two-day walks into the mountains to the Communities of Population in Resistance. He had the idea of eventually using his pictures in a book, but his immediate priority was contributing them to human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and the Soros Foundation.

After returning to the United States in 2001, he began selling and donating prints to museums.

Moller has since traveled to Peru to photograph forensic anthropologists’ investigations of human rights violations and to Cuba to document the growing diversity of young people there. He sells his books about Guatemala and Peru to benefit displaced communities in those countries. His latest book, Young Cuba, will be released this fall.

I hope to bring a face to the people, to bring their stories about what happened into the light.

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CON

COR

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AG AZ

ACADEMY

IN

E

LITTLE

BLUE

HOPE

A daily pill can prevent the transmission of HIV. Why aren’t we celebrating?

PrEP 1

01

What is PrEP? Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is an oral medication for HIV-negative individuals. Taken consistently once a day, it is extremely effective in preventing infection with HIV. Truvada is the only brand currently available; it’s been FDA-approved since 2012.

How does it work?

Truvada combines tenofovir and emtricitabine, antiretroviral drugs developed to treat HIV/AIDS. It works by blocking an enzyme called reverse transcriptase, which HIV uses to replicate itself.

BY HEIDI KOELZ • ILLUSTRATION BY CHRIS GASH

PrEP is making it into the hands of only a few who could benefit from it most.

2018 FALL

27

t was a sunny day three years ago in South Beach, Miami, when John Byrne ’99 tested HIV-positive.

He’d been taking a pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for a year.

The drug, Truvada, is known to be miraculously effective at preventing HIV infection, and Byrne was stunned.

As he cycled through shame and guilt and fear, his physician ordered a second test. Eventually Byrne learned he’d had a false positive.

The experience, which he wrote about in the Atlantic, didn’t undermine his confidence in PrEP. It spurred him to action. “It helped me understand the emotional and psychological devastation and self-blame, and recognize some of the challenges HIV-positive people have,” Byrne says. “After that, I became aware that there was really no marketing for PrEP in Miami.” He took it upon himself to launch a nonprofit campaign, Prevention305.

Southern states have been hit disproportionately hard by HIV, and “The 305” (Miami’s area code-inspired nickname) sees new HIV infections at an annual rate of 47 per 100,000 residents — three times the national average and more than any other U.S. city, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Florida alone accounts for 10 percent of HIV cases in the U.S., and more HIV infections progress to AIDS there than in any other state. The diversity of the state’s residents also means prevention campaigns struggle to reach across urban and rural divides, as well as those of race, ethnicity, gender identity, and sexuality.

Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved PrEP for highrisk populations in 2012 and it’s been a central prong of HIV-reduction campaigns from San Francisco to New York State, the little blue pill is not reaching the majority of Americans, especially people of color, who could benefit from it most. In the U.S, young gay black men have an almost 50 percent chance

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of contracting HIV in their lifetimes; gay Latino men have an almost 1 in 3 chance. By the CDC’s estimate, twothirds of those at high risk are AfricanAmerican or Latinx, but they account for the smallest percentage of prescriptions to date.

Prevention305 targets Latinx immigrants and transgender women in Miami, where around 60 percent of the population is foreign-born and, as Byrne says, in South Beach alone “the HIV rate exceeds that of sub-Saharan Africa.”

Byrne, publisher of the news site Raw Story, began underwriting the campaign in 2015. Now funded by Gilead Sciences, the biopharmaceutical company that manufactures Truvada, and AIDS United, Prevention305 has a remote staff of six. With no office, there’s low overhead. “It’s a way to do more with less,” Byrne says.

As awareness of PrEP has increased among higher-risk populations, Prevention305 has focused on education and access. “Peer navigators” triage for clients, make appointments, and arrange transportation to federally qualified treatment centers where the uninsured (about 20 percent of Floridians) can get PrEP for free. For those with higher incomes, insurance foots the bill.

“The cost of the drug is more of a psychological hurdle,” Byrne says. “Some people have it in their heads that it’s expensive and rule it out. So a lot of our work is teaching people that they can get it without insurance. The health care system is daunting, and it’s doubly so if you didn’t grow up in the U.S. Even legal permanent residents are worried that they’ll test positive for HIV and be deported.”

Prevention305 partners with the Miami-Dade Department of Health, the University of Miami, and Miami Beach, whose city commissioners designated $250,000 to establish a mobile PrEP clinic. Outreach has expanded from posters and brochures to dating apps and social media, and Byrne says

Instagram has been a surprisingly robust source of referrals.

Nationwide, according to Gilead, approximately 163,000 people are taking Truvada — nowhere near the 1.1 million the CDC estimates are at highest risk.

In Miami, around 1,500 people are currently on PrEP, Byrne says. In the past six months, Prevention305 has helped around 140 start treatment.

A Hard Pill to Swallow?

Truvada combines two antiretroviral (ARV) medications, tenofovir and emtricitabine, long used in treating HIV; it works by preventing the virus from replicating in the body. For people with normal kidney function, PrEP’s side effects of nausea, headaches, and weight loss are generally uncommon, minor, and short-lived.

BY T H E N UM B ERS

1.8

In 2016, there were

M I L L I O N new cases of HIV worldwide; nearly

40,000 of them were in the United States.

1.1 17 More than

M I L L I O N people in the U.S. are living with HIV today;

in of them don’t know it.

“ A L O T O F O U R W O R K I S T E A C H I N G P E O P L E T H AT T H E Y C A N G E T P r E P W I T H O U T I N S U R A N C E . T H E H E A LT H CARE SYSTEM IS DAUNTING, AND I T ’ S D O U B LY S O I F YO U D I D N ’ T G R O W U P I N T H E U . S .”

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38% 50% of the U.S. population but over

JOHN BYRNE ’99

Clinical trials demonstrate that Truvada is more than 90 percent effective in preventing HIV-negative individuals from sexually acquiring HIV. Studies that monitored usage suggest that when taken correctly — every day, without fail — its efficacy could be as high as 99 percent. Inconsistent dosing lowers protection. For IV drug users, the figure is closer to 70 percent.

Southern states account for

In his career in global public health,

Adil Bahalim ’02 has supported com-

munity health following the Ebola crisis in Liberia, developed strategy for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and consulted for the HIV/AIDS department of the World Health Organization.

Now he is finishing a doctoral program in public health at Harvard University

P H OTO BY R I CA R D O SA L A Z A R

of new HIV diagnoses.

Figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

29

and directing business development for UrSure, a Cambridge, Mass., startup that has introduced a tool for improving PrEP adherence. The noninvasive diagnostic test measures the tenofovir in a patient’s urine and identifies individuals who need more support to ensure that they take the pill as prescribed.

A major challenge is patients “not understanding how the disease and the drug work, or the importance of staying on it,” Bahalim says. As well as providing an objective measure of adherence, the test reassures patients, who might not feel different when taking the medication, that they’re protected.

“There are hurdles from distrust and poor healthcare literacy that need to be overcome through better PrEP education and support,” says UrSure co-founder Giffin Daughtridge.

“Without peace of mind that the drug is in their system and protecting them, many people don’t have enough motivation to take it consistently.”

Irregular use is not a minor concern.

Daughtridge is a physician, as is the company’s other co-founder, who ran a clinic that continued to see patients contract HIV while using PrEP haphazardly.

UrSure is betting that by making adherence easier, it can help realize PrEP’s promise of near-perfect efficacy.

Currently, UrSure’s test requires analysis in a partner laboratory with a three-day turnaround. Within the next year, Daughtridge expects to roll out a point-of-care test, similar to a pregnancy dipstick. “Our goal,” he says, “is to show results right in the doctor’s office, so discussions can happen immediately with patients who need more extensive adherence tools.”

UrSure has raised around $2 million from small-business innovation research grants from the National Institutes of Health, startup incubators, and Harvard University innovation challenges. It’s focused on the U.S. market but is assessing the feasibility of expanding into international settings. UrSure is also piloting marketing to individuals for home-based tests and developing a

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smartphone scanner so that patients can upload and relay results to their physicians in real time.

Controversy and Its Costs Historically, PrEP’s loudest critic has been Michael Weinstein, founder and director of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest and most controversial AIDS organization in the world. He has taken an unorthodox position in decrying PrEP as a “party drug” that will lead to a decline in condom use and a catastrophic surge in risky sex, and in lobbying against measures to mandate PrEP education.

More recently, AHF has softened its stance on PrEP and has created a walk-in PrEP clinic in partnership with Broward County, Fla. However, the Prevention305 staff still contends with the consequences of this campaign.

“Weinstein runs the biggest HIV testing center in southern Florida,” Byrne says, “but they won’t necessarily mention PrEP during HIV testing, even to those who admit to inconsistent condom use.”

Prevention305 steers people to centers where they’ll be thoroughly counseled.

Though they have long been the gold standard in HIV prevention, condoms aren’t foolproof. According to the CDC, 68 percent of HIV infections occur among men who have sex with other men. When used correctly, condoms reduce their risk of acquiring HIV by around 70 percent — that’s highly effective, but less than what’s possible on Truvada.

The CDC is clear that using condoms along with PrEP provides greater protection — it’s not a zero-sum game.

But PrEP might have the advantage of meeting many who shun condoms where they are.

Byrne says it’s time to acknowledge reality. “In my experience, no one is using them,” he says. “We don’t expect straight people to, especially in monogamous relationships. And, because of the politics of the AIDS epidemic, there’s a question tied up in that double

“ A M A J O R CHALLENGE IS PAT I E N T S N O T U N D E R S TA N D I N G HOW THE DISEASE AND THE DRUG WORK, OR THE I M P O R TA N C E O F S T A Y I N G O N I T.” A D I L B A H A L I M ’0 2

standard of whether gay people are entitled to intimacy.”

For Byrne, the fact that gay men on PrEP have stopped having to ask their partners about HIV status is a giant step toward ending the stigma associated with HIV. “In Miami, people are still dying of AIDS,” he says, “but to say we’re not

P H OTO BY C O L E + K I E R A

going to deploy an intervention that will prevent that because some people are being irresponsible, that’s not good public health.”

A recent review in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases suggests that PrEP could be contributing to increased rates of other sexually transmitted diseases.

It’s true they’ve been on the rise, but because the PrEP treatment protocol includes testing every three months, it’s also possible that infections are simply being caught earlier. Regardless, UrSure’s Daughtridge says their impact can’t be equated with that of HIV. “HIV is a chronic, lifelong infection that costs $500,000 to $1 million per patient over a lifetime to manage,” he says. “Many other STDs are not very difficult to treat. If there’s a choice to be made, we should choose to prevent HIV.” “When I was at the WHO in 2011, we weren’t yet sure about PrEP, if it would be as effective as early trials promised it might be,” Bahalim says.

Now, he says, the benefits are clear: “This is as close as we can get to a vaccine. It’s absurd for anyone at high risk not to use PrEP.” Concerns about adherence may eventually be addressed by other medical advances. Long-acting forms of PrEP — injections, implants, vaginal rings — are being developed. And because transmission in the United States is largely confined to specific demographic groups, efforts that focus on high-risk populations have the potential for outsized impact.

At Prevention305, the staff reflects the demographic it serves: Latinx, immigrant, under 35. Byrne intends to one day hand over the reins. “I’m not of the target population,” he says, “and people assess the legitimacy of an organization based on whether they see people like them leading it.”

He hopes to begin reaching out to Miami’s African American community, but he recognizes that a new targeted approach has to be an independent program. “Cultural literacy is crucial,” he says.

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PEER-TO-PEER PREVENTION Wendy Arnold ’65 has been facilitating peer-to-peer efforts at preventing HIV since the AIDS crisis began. While working at the AIDS Project of Los Angeles in the mid-1980s, she was recruited to start a prevention program for teens in France. “The most effective strategy was teento-teen,” Arnold says, “to break down intergenerational barriers of communication around the sensitive subjects of sex, relationships, body, and health.”

She stayed for six months, starting L’Association “Jeunes” Contre le SIDA (Youth Against AIDS), then began similar programs in countries in Eurasia, Africa, and the Americas. In 1990, she founded the Peer Education Program of Los Angeles (PEP/LA), which runs 25 satellite programs in Southern California. PEP/LA and PEP/International have a dual mission: to slow the rate of HIV transmission in adolescents and to increase compassionate care, hope, and respect for people living with HIV/AIDS. In 28 countries, Arnold has run two-week training sessions for teens and, separately, for diverse groups of adults — clergy, sex workers, medical professionals, nonprofit directors, prison staff. During her trips, she stays with local residents, sometimes in remote rural villages, sleeping on mats with women in Uganda, helping write grant proposals in Vladivostok, or connecting a group in Kathmandu with international funding. She respects cultural, ethnic, and economic differences, and she praises her trainees for successes: “These programs work because they get credit for running them.”

Arnold stays in touch and returns when communities want to organize additional training programs.

“Over the last 10 years, we’ve made a lot of progress dialoguing about embarrassing and taboo subjects, both locally and internationally,” she says. “When teens talk honestly and openly about risk-taking behaviors, it reduces the number of them getting infected.”

Arnold is cautiously optimistic about the fight against HIV/AIDS, particularly recent strides in reducing maternal-infant transmission.

In cultures that won’t consider barrier methods of contraception, she works to influence social norms — encouraging personal protection, self-respect and respect for partners, honesty, and faithfulness. “You can’t go against the culture as an outsider,” she says. “You have to work with locals, within the culture.”

As HIV has become more manageable, Arnold has noticed that young people are no longer as concerned about acquiring AIDS. “I find that extremely worrisome,” she says. “They think they can just take the ARVs and it wouldn’t be a big problem.” The treatment regimen no longer requires dozens of daily pills, but they still have side effects, missing doses can lead to drug resistance, and the medication can be expensive without health insurance.

Arnold sees some clear benefits of PrEP. “It can be incredibly liberating for couples with mixed HIV status,” she says, affording them “relief and optimism.” But she thinks most people aren’t taking sufficient precautions. “Without condoms, Truvada can give a false sense of security,” she says.

She is especially concerned about intravenous drug users, among whom HIV infections are surging. “Drugs make people take everything they’ve learned and throw it out the window,” she says. “They’re the bane of AIDS education.”

In many developing countries, particularly in rural communities and other areas where she still encounters fundamental misunderstandings about how the virus is spread, Arnold also sees barriers to PrEP’s usefulness — of cost, transportation, accountability, and communication.

“It’s very complex,” she says. “There’s no simple solution.”

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C E N T E N N I A L CA M PA I G N

I

Room for Residential Life The CA Houses initiative is part of the Centennial Campaign for Concord Academy, a continuum of investments that will ready the school to enter its second century with strength and powerful momentum.

The Sylvia M. Mendenhall Common Room in Bradford House

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I

Sylvia Mendenhall (standing, center) with fellow members of the Concord Academy English faculty during the 1960s.

The Sylvia M. Mendenhall Common Room Honoring an extraordinary teacher The dedication of the new Sylvia M. Mendenhall Common Room in Bradford House on October 4 was, in a way, the passing of a baton.

Those who knew Mendenhall during her more than 30 years of service to Concord Academy felt her influence strongly, and she continued her mentorship long after her official retirement in 1992. Before she passed away in 2016, she joined other longtime teachers in including CA in her estate plans, making a bequest of her private home in Chelmsford, Mass., the sale of which provided funds to make the common room possible. This extraordinary teacher’s living legacy continues to animate the CA community.

Now her name will inhabit the very structure of the school.

“ Questions, rather than correct answers, are often the best route to knowledge.”

SYLVI A M EN D EN HA L L ( 19 2 7 – 2 016 )

33

ABOVE: The Stone Soup Common Room was named, at the request of the donors who enabled its renovation in Phelps House, by the students on the Boarding Council. The name refers to the “stone soup” folk tale — a pot with water and a stone becomes a rich soup, thanks to the contributions of many — to emphasize the values of inclusivity, community, resourcefulness, and many contributions coming together to make a better whole.

BELOW: Architectural renderings of Haines-Hobson Commons from Main Street and from campus (inset). This dividable, multipurpose common room will have a kitchen and space to accommodate the entire residential population of both houses. With limited impact to existing structures, the addition will also create two much-needed additional faculty apartments suitable for housing families and increase the capacity of two existing house-faculty apartments.

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House Revitalization Concord Academy’s residential houses have long anchored this unique living and learning community. They reflect the human scale of the school, orient students in positive, enduring relationships, bring together students from diverse backgrounds, and integrate CA into the historic town of Concord, Mass. CA Houses is one in a continuum of interconnected initiatives charted seven years ago as part of the school’s strategic plan, a vision for strengthening and sustaining Concord Academy as it nears its 100th year.

The $13 million invested in the residences that give CA its distinctive character represents the single largest campus capital project ever undertaken. Improvements begun in all houses, and completed this summer in four of the six, will benefit CA’s culture and community in lasting ways.

Bradford House underwent extensive renovations and an expansion that created a large, airy, multi-use common room and an accessible, welcoming entrance facing the quad. Retrofitting the existing floor plan carved out space for three much-needed faculty family apartments, while repurposing original columns and molding in the extension honored the building’s historical style. During an August open house for faculty and staff, while the construction crew completed its work, science teacher Susan Flink could already be found by the oven and induction range in the new common-room kitchen, planning her Chemistry of Cooking class.

Common rooms in Wheeler, Admadjaja, and Phelps were also expanded as student rooms were reconfigured. Work began ahead of schedule on the new commons building connecting Haines and Hobson, which will be finished for the 2019–20 school year. This will be a campus-facing, multipurpose space that invites participation from the entire community.

“The improvements completed this summer, along with the work begun on Haines-Hobson, mean that we will now have rooms large enough to finally gather all residents in comfort and meet pressing needs for space on campus,” says Don Kingman, director of campus planning and construction.

Overwhelming philanthropic support funded this entire initiative and will continue to support maintenance through a dedicated endowment. Thanks to that generosity, CA is poised to enter its second century strengthened and emboldened.

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“ We are — day and boarding faculty — so much more available to all students because we are a boarding school.

There is a ‘continuous life’ to CA. Whether you live on campus or not, you feel it and know that the residential component of the school benefits all students and faculty.”

SA R A H YEH, D EA N O F FACU LTY

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Learn more about the CA Houses initiative and the Centennial Campaign at www.concord100.org

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D O N O R P RO F I L E S

As CA nears its 100th anniversary in 2022, many generous individuals and families have stepped up to invest in the missiondriven priorities of the Centennial Campaign for Concord Academy.

Here, two of these generous donors explain why they choose to support CA.

BY ABIGAIL JENNEY

DERRICK PANG ’93

MARTHA TAFT ’65

Derrick Pang ’93 is a loyal CA supporter in so many ways. In addiMartha Taft ’65, the only boarder among the 20 members of her tion to his generous gifts to CA’s Annual Fund, he and his family class, made lifelong connections with her day-student peers have donated to the Residential Life endowment, directed toward during her time at Concord Academy. That’s why in 2007, she the faculty, and given unrestricted support to the Centennial pledged to establish a scholarship fund at CA that supports a Campaign for Concord Academy. Pang proudly supports the local day student. “This is a small way of saying thank you for school because, he says, “I gained so much from CA, and I love the welcome and hospitality that so many of the day students to give back, to be able to continue to improve the offered to me,” she says. Taft fulfilled her generous lives and experiences of the students, faculty, and all pledge to the Local Day Student Fund in 2010 and the members of this community.” continues to add to her scholarship every year. “I Pang, the third child in what he describes as a tradiknow CA is now an international school,” she says, tional Chinese family, came to Concord in 1989. Prior “yet it is still important for it to remember its roots.” to that, he remembers having difficulty distinguishing Taft has also supported Concord Academy’s his own voice from the voices of his father and older endowment through gifts to the Doreen Young siblings. However, over the course of his four years at English Department Head Chair as well as unreCA, Pang found it. He explains, “I learned about my stricted gifts to the Campaign for CA in the late own strengths and weaknesses; we all learned about 1990s. She remembers Doreen Young as an outourselves, and how to be ourselves, and came to standing person: “I was sorry that I never actually understand the value in our differences.” had her as a teacher, but we became good friends; Academically, Pang excelled in math and science, she was great fun and quite unconventional.”

Derek Pang ’93 but at CA he also discovered a joy in creating art.

Taft was the daughter of a member of the U.S. “I still remember Jonathan Smith coming to me in Foreign Service who was posted in Mozambique.

Painting I,” he says, “and looking at my painting — During her time at CA, travel home was expensive which I thought looked like stick figures compared to and difficult, and as a result, she spent vacations the work of my peers — and he said, in a very sincere and holidays with school friends. “I had a lot of day way, ‘That’s a great painting; let’s work on it.’ It was friends, including some who lived very close by in this side of myself, the other side, that I didn’t know Concord,” she says. “I spent a lot of time at their until I came to CA.” houses for lunch and on weekends, and we had After graduating in 1993, Pang earned a bachelor great times canoeing, riding bikes up Nashawtuc of science degree from the University of California, Hill, and skating on the meadows. Concord encourBerkeley, and a master’s degree in engineering from aged independence, teaching us things like how to MIT. He currently resides in Hong Kong, where he is manage bank accounts, take responsibility for our the chief executive officer and chief operating officer mistakes, and generally stand on our own two feet.

Martha Taft ’65 of Asia Allied Infrastructure Holdings Limited, a propIt also taught us to follow our dreams and not to feel erty development and construction company. restricted by our gender, or anything else.”

A former member of CA’s Board of Trustees, Pang has visited After Concord, Taft attended Bryn Mawr, where she studied geolcampus regularly. “I love coming back,” he says. “I have spent a lot ogy, then pursued a master’s of science at St. Andrews in Scotland. of time in the U.S. I went to high school here, college here, got my “I had a wonderful two years and also met, and eventually married, master’s here, and I often work here, but the one place I have in my Mike Golden, another geologist,” she says. “We spent several years mind and my heart is CA. What really makes me smile is the people: teaching geology and doing research in Scotland, Scandinavia, and So many of the same faculty members are still teaching, and that Africa before settling down in Surrey and raising five children.” speaks volumes about the school. It’s really the people who make Taft still lives in Surrey, which is just outside of London. She the CA experience unique.” hasn’t been able to visit CA in quite a while, but she says she has Pang says he is especially grateful for one particular insight he followed its growth and progress, and she treasures the connecgained at CA. “It is easy to get lost in the world today,” he says. tions she made there and the education she received. “My first “It is important to take a step back and understand other people’s roommate is still one of my best friends,” she says, “and my years realities, and that we’re all different.” at Concord were some of the happiest of my life.”

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Accidental Entrepreneur A skater, coach, and business leader

After years as a nationally competitive figure skater, Carey Tinkelenberg ’01 founded a skating school in Northfield, Minn. Taking notice of how quickly her program grew, U.S. Figure Skating invited Tinkelenberg to develop training resources for skating directors, and she has since traveled nationwide, training instructors. She coaches an international group of student-athletes at Shattuck-St. Mary’s School in Faribault, Minn., and has presented seminars in Mexico and Iceland, places she never imagined skating would take her.

Carey Tinkelenberg ‘01 on the ice in Northfield, Minn.

You were already a competitive figure skater when you arrived at CA as a sophomore. How did CA help you pursue this passion? From a young age, I was attracted to the balance of sport and art that I found in figure skating. Ideologically, this emphasis on balance aligns well with CA’s values. On a more practical level, CA helped me find ways to balance my time between skating and academics. I was able to leave campus as needed for skating sessions or competitions. The faculty and administration trusted me to figure out a way to meet all my academic obligations, and I rose to the occasion by keeping up with my classes.

What inspired you to start your own skating school? After choosing to go to college instead of accepting a role with Disney on Ice, I believed I’d made a decision to leave skating behind. But a couple of years into college, I found I missed it and decided to pursue coaching. I was in Northfield, Minn., attending Carleton College, and there was no existing program in which I could coach, so at the age of 22 I started my own skating school.

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Did your CA background influence your approach to starting a school? CA helped me form the philosophy that underlies my skating school: developing life skills through sports. Our slogan at Northfield Skating School is “Building skills and confidence for skating and for life.” Sports alone don’t teach life skills; coaches do. I am constantly talking with my staff about leadership and how we can best use our own skills to guide and empower our athletes, and each other. I trace those values back to my years at CA. What have you learned along the way? Starting a whole new program required me to know far more than just how to be a good coach. Since I founded the school, I’ve learned how to run a business, how to work with city government, how to form a cohesive team of colleagues. I manage our marketing. I design parent education programs. I’ve served on national governing boards, and I’ve grown comfortable with a lot of public speaking. I consider myself an accidental entrepreneur, and yet all of those skills have benefited me in ways beyond just the skating school. Take my side business, Natural Bliss Handcrafted Essential Oils — I’ve discovered that I have a passion for leadership and social enterprise, and I’ve applied those same skills to other parts of my life. — Nancy Shohet West ’84

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All Concord Academy alumnae/i are automatically members of the Alumnae/i Association.

by Laura McConaghy, Alumnae/i Association president

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G E T I N VO LV E D N OW

UNMISTAKABLY CA When I returned to Boston nearly a decade ago, it was the CA community that wove together my passions and interests as I reconnected with a city I hadn’t called home for many years. Dinner with my CA advisor shifted my professional trajectory. A reception at the International Poster Gallery reminded me of the creativity of CA alumnae/i and also reconnected me with an old teammate from Ultimate Frisbee, a sport that has filled many of my evenings since.

A few years later, I was thrilled to join the team of alumnae/i interviewers who extend the reach of the Admissions Office on select Saturdays throughout the year. I later coordinated that team and joined the Alumnae/i Association Steering Committee. I have loved this volunteer opportunity, and I continue to be so inspired by the school and community that have played such a formative role in my life.

In this letter, my first as president of the Alumnae/i Association, I have the honor of introducing an updated mission statement, [see sidebar], developed by the Alumnae/i Association Steering Committee over the past year to more closely reflect Concord Academy’s enduring values and vision. This mission is setting the school’s approach to alumnae/i engagement, and you could pick it out of a lineup — it’s unmistakably CA. We alumnae/i know what we mean when we say, “That’s so CA!” From chapel talks and enduring connections with advisors to core values that inspire us well beyond graduation, I take great pride in CA being distinctive, in being

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my school. Smart and self-effacing, individualistic and community-minded, focused and wildly creative, intense and warmly caring, rigorous and fun-loving — these qualities remind me every day of the power of my own CA experience, and how it set me on a course I am proud to call my own.

As we approach an incredible milestone — the 100th anniversary of Concord Academy — reflecting on a century of history, culture, and community is an exciting and inspiring undertaking. While there are some new buildings on campus, some enviable new academic courses, and some amazing new faculty, the essence of the CA we knew as students — whether that was five years ago or 50 — remains the same. We have a chance to celebrate that together during a pivotal time in the school’s history.

The voices of alumnae/i are of critical importance and influence as we near the centennial in 2022.

Planning is underway to bring the Alumnae/i Association mission alive in innovative, creative, and exciting ways. I encourage you to play a key role in this process, and I invite you to attend our annual meeting.

M I SS I O N

The Alumnae/i Association fosters lifelong connections between Concord Academy and its alumnae/i community.

The association facilitates meaningful opportunities to preserve and promote a love of learning, service to others, and a commitment to diverse perspectives and backgrounds. Through involvement in the life of the school, within the community, and through service to the greater world, the association strives to renew and affirm the core values instilled while at CA. WAYS TO G E T I N VO LV E D • Interview prospective students.

• Nominate someone for the Joan Shaw Herman Award.

• Contribute to a CA cookbook.

See page 45 for details.

• Sign up to help on your reunion committee.

• It’s never too early to support your alma mater.

Make your Annual Fund gift today! www.concordacademy.org/give • Submit your class notes. Class secretaries will be in touch soon.

If you are interested in getting involved or have any questions, please be in touch with your contacts in the Advancement and Engagement Office: Hilary Rouse, director of engagement, hilary_rouse@ concordacademy.org or (978) 402-2217, or Emily Walberg, alumnae/i program officer, emily_ walberg@concordacademy.org or (978) 402-2248.

S AV E T H E D AT E S

A N N UA L M E E T I N G

REUNION

The Concord Academy Alumnae/i Association

Are you a member of a Concord Academy class that ends in 4 or 9? This is your year!

F R I DAY, J U N E 7, 20 1 9 Join fellow alumnae/i, students, faculty, and staff to help set Concord Academy’s approach to alumnae/i engagement and chart a course for CA at 100.

J U N E 7– 9, 20 1 9 Make this reunion weekend the best yet for your class by joining your reunion committee. If you are interested in participating, contact Emily Walberg (see above).

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I N T RO D U C I N G CA’S N E W B OA R D P R E S I D E N T

Fay Lampert Shutzer ’65 When CA celebrates its centennial in a few short years, it will do so with a deeply dedicated and caring alumna at the helm of the Board of Trustees. In speaking of CA, Fay Lampert Shutzer ’65, who became president of the board in July, enumerates the enduring values that define this community: respect for the individual, a commitment to cultivating and nurturing curiosity, an interdisciplinary approach to the arts and sciences, and devotion to people. Jen Burleigh ’85, a fellow trustee, says, “I can’t think of anyone who embodies the wonderful qualities of CA better than Fay. She is, first and foremost, a warm, caring person who matches a vital intellect with tremendous compassion and creativity. Those personal qualities, together with her professionalism and strong vision for the school, are a powerful combination.”

Shutzer, who has served for over 10 years on the board, most recently as first vice president, is eager to take on new challenges alongside her fellow trustees and the administration. “We have a great group of people, among the faculty, staff, board, parents, and alumnae/i, who care deeply about the school and increasingly are focused on not only the CA of today, but the CA of the future,” she says. “We’re a school that prioritizes values and culture over image. That’s the school I loved as a girl, and that’s the school I found once again when I finally came back to it as an alumna.”

“I think CA affirmed much of what is innate to Fay,” says Rick Hardy, head of school. “She is a person of deep integrity, and CA, I think, has always sought to impress upon its

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students the importance of integrity — humility, respect, both for oneself and for others, and above all, love. I think in Fay one sees the perfect match between a person and a community.”

Burleigh says having an alum at the helm “who understands the school in a deep and comprehensive way” as it nears 100 is ideal. “When you hear Fay talk about CA, it is clear that she cherishes its history and is passionate about its future,” Burleigh says. “I am so excited to see Fay bring that energy and vision to bear as we move toward the centennial.”

Amy Cholnoky ’73, first vice president, is also enthusiastic about Shutzer’s new role. “She brings both depth and breadth of experience as an alumna and a longtime trustee who has served in leadership roles for many years, but she brings way more than longevity: a sensitivity to the issues before us, a willingness to learn and listen, and a totally collaborative approach to problem-solving,” Cholnoky says. “Her leadership style could be described by some as ‘quiet,’ but her intellect and personal strength are evident in every word. And maybe most importantly, Fay has total clarity about CA’s mission.”

Much of Shutzer’s professional life has been shaped by her experiences at CA. She grew up in the small town of Topsfield, Mass. In Concord, she says, her roommates’ support made her feel she could find success in the world away from home. Classroom encounters also influenced her future — for example, an interdisciplinary course introduced her to Selma Fraiberg’s book The Magic Years: Understanding and Handling

the Problems of Early Childhood. “That book changed my life,” Shutzer says.

“It sparked my lifelong fascination with developmental psychology.”

Encouraged by their teacher, Shutzer and a classmate continued exploring child development case studies the following year. “I had no idea at the time where it would take me,” Shutzer says. It led to her majoring in psychology at Mount Holyoke College, becoming a teacher, then a school psychologist, and, later, a psychologist in private practice with children, adolescents, and families.

A full 25 years after graduating from CA, Shutzer returned to another early passion: painting. She was interested in art before coming to Concord, but at CA she learned techniques that laid a foundation for her later success as an artist. When she talks about learning shading techniques at CA, her eyes light up. “That was just incredible,” she says. “The tools I learned at CA were wonderful. My drawing skills improved immensely.” Today, her work is exhibited in New York and on Cape Cod. It was Jake Dresden who refocused Shutzer’s attention on CA when he left his position as head of Collegiate in New York, where her son was enrolled, and came to CA in 2000 to serve as headmaster. After years away, she realized CA was a school she still recognized — and one she loved.

That love is rooted in relationships.

“The investments we are making in people are the most important thing,” Shutzer says. “When I talk about why CA is important to me, it always comes back to the people that made it happen — to my chemistry teacher, or

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“ I have a great feeling of anticipation.

Something special is going to happen.”

FAY L A M P E RT S H U TZ E R ’6 5

to the teacher who was willing to teach a one-credit course to me and to my friend. These courses, and these people, shaped my life.”

Looking ahead, she is excited. “I have a great feeling of anticipation,” she says.

“Something special is going to happen.

We’re part of figuring that out. That ability to support our kids and inspire them — that’s why we’re here.”

“Fay leads the way a good teacher leads — by facilitating discussion and enabling all voices to be heard,” says Hardy. “She is committed to building a better community and a more civil world, and that commitment is grounded in an abiding faith in humanity. She brings a real appreciation of CA and its history, first as an alumna, but more profoundly as a steward who has vision, who will honor the school’s past while keeping her focus on its future.

She is humble, wise, kind, and strong, and she is the leader that CA needs at this moment in its history.”

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P H OTO BY C O L E + K I E R A

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Milestones During a beautiful New England spring weekend, around 275 old friends and mentors reunited at Concord Academy. The weekend included CA Houses tours, samples of current CA courses — American women’s poetry with English teacher Sabrina Sadique and computer-aided machinery with science teacher Max Hall — and a walking tour of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery guided by former History Department head Bill Bailey P’87 ‘88 ‘91, GP’21 ‘22. In the Performing Arts Center, Catherine Saalfield Gund ’83 accepted via video the 2018 Joan Shaw Herman Award for Distinguished Service. With nearly 30 members celebrating their 50th reunion, the class of 1968 organized a nonpartisan forum that drew nearly twice that many alumnae/i to discuss how to create a stronger and more vibrant democracy in this politically polarized time.

“ We weren’t encouraged to dabble but to go deeply into our interests.”

M EG G R AS E L L I ’68

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Visit www.concord academy.org/reunion 2018-arts to read more from the panel discussion.

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On Following Your Passion

The field house on the Moriarty Athletic Campus filled for a panel discussion with alumnae/i working in the arts, moderated by Ben Stumpf ’88, who teaches computer science, film, and graphic design at CA. Panelist Grady Gund ’08, a freelance theater director, went straight from college to New York. Colin Levin ’03, an opera singer, recalled the support he received at CA for entering a creative field that can be difficult to break into.

“It was incredible to have someone believe in me at that early stage of development,” he says. Architect

Becky Seamans Egea ’93

discussed the 3D-modeling software that has opened her work to unprecedented collaboration. And Meg Grasselli ’68, curator of old master drawings at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, described how digitization of art images has completely altered art history research.

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Visit www.concordacademy.org/ reunion2018 for more photos.

REUNION 2018

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IN MEMORIAM

Daphne Heath Chapin ’53 Sister of Cynthia Heath Sunderland ’51 and aunt of Emily Sunderland ’86

Edith Chase Keller ’70 Sister of Helen Chase Trainor ’67, Mary Chase Nicholson ’73, and Lucy Chase Osborne ’73

Cynthia Maxim ’60 Diana Murfitt Meyer ‘55 Sister of Caroline Murfitt-Eller ‘58

Mary Chase Nicholson ‘73 Sister of Helen Chase Trainor ’67, Edith Chase Keller ’70, and Lucy Chase Osborne ’73

Susan Noble ’59 Sister of Eleanor Noble Linton ’60

Caroline McGlennon Stride ’50 Mother of Caroline Stride ’73 and Katharine Stride Hawkins ’74

Virginia Woodward Former faculty

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NEW TRUSTEES In May 2018, the Concord Academy Board of Trustees elected several new members.

Including Sunredi Admadjaja ‘90, P’15 ‘20, 12 members of his immediate and extended family have attended Concord Academy.

Admadjaja brings to the Board of Trustees an intimate understanding of this institution that spans four decades, as well as years of experience in both corporate and private business.

In 2006, Admadjaja founded the Selaras Group, a privately held commercial real estate development company with a portfolio of office buildings and hotels in Jakarta and Bali, Indonesia; he has been the CEO since its inception. Prior to this venture, Admadjaja spent 12 years in investment banking, first at Morgan Stanley and later at HSBC. He earned a B.S. in management science from MIT and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Admadjaja, an Indonesian citizen, lives in Jakarta with his wife, Debby Katharina Setiawan. They have two sons, Arick ’15 and Aidan ’20. In his free time, Admadjaja enjoys scuba diving and fishing in the numerous incredible locations Indonesia has to offer.

Harvey J. Berger, M.D., is a physician-scientist, entrepreneur, and biotechnology executive.

Today, Berger is a governing trustee and member of the board of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston. He earned a B.S. in biochemistry from Colgate University and an M.D. from Yale School of Medicine. He then began his academic career on the Yale faculty and as a tenured professor at Emory University School of Medicine.

Over the course of his career, Berger oversaw the development of seven new medicines and one diagnostic test — six of these have already been approved for use in patients with many difficult-to-treat diseases in cancer, immunology, and cardiology. In 1991, Berger founded ARIAD Pharmaceuticals and served as its chairman and chief executive officer until 2015, when he took on emeritus status.

Berger led ARIAD from a startup, as the initial employee, to a global company with more than 600 employees based in 15 countries.

Under his leadership, the company developed five new medicines to advance the treatment of patients with challenging diseases, utilizing ARIAD’s novel platform of computational drug discovery. Approximately two years ago, Berger became the executive chairman of Medinol, a global medical-device company in Israel. In 2013, he was awarded the Ernst &

Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in New England and the Gold Stevie Award as the executive of the year in pharmaceuticals.

Berger previously served on the Board of Trustees of CA from 2000 to 2005.

Karen E. Liesching P’21 is a managing partner of Prides Crossing Capital, a private debt fund that provides debt capital to businesses throughout the United States. Prior to co-founding the fund in 2013, Liesching spent 14 years at Housatonic Partners, a Boston-based private equity firm. She previously spent 12 years at State Street Corporation in commercial banking.

Liesching holds a B.A. in economics from Tufts University. In her prior role as a private equity investor, she served on the boards of several private companies. Currently, Liesching serves on the Women’s Leadership Council of Lahey Health and as a trustee of the Belmont Day School, where she previously served as treasurer, vice chair, and chair of the school’s board.

Liesching lives in Winchester, Mass., with her husband, Timothy, and their daughter, Madison ’21.

Andrew Ory P’16 ’21 is one of the co-founders of 128 Technology and has served as the company’s CEO and as a board member since its inception. Previously, Ory co-founded Acme Packet in August 2000 and was CEO and president until Oracle Corporation acquired the company in 2013. Ory also founded Priority Call Management and served as its CEO and chairman until its sale to LHS Group in 1999. Ory is involved in several educational and philanthropic organizations: He is a trustee at the Fenn School in Concord, Mass., the board chair at the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard University, and a board member of the Lincoln, Mass., Historic District Commission and the Lincoln Historic Committee. He holds a B.A. from Harvard University.

Ory lives in Lincoln, Mass., with his wife, Linda, and their children, Abigail ’16 and Tyler ’21.

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R EC I P E S WA N T E D

Kerry Hoffman P’14 ’20, president of CA Parents, ex-officio, has worked as a trial lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice for 10 years, handling criminal antitrust cases in Washington and Atlanta.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in history from U.C. Berkeley and a J.D. from U.C. Hastings. Since moving to New England, Hoffman’s volunteer efforts have focused on the arts, education, and the environment. She taught as a gallery instructor at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston for five years. She served as co-chair of CA’s 2017–18 Parent Annual Fund. She also sits on the council for Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law firm based in San Francisco.

Hoffman and her husband, Paul, live in Lincoln, Mass. They have two children, Martha ’14 and Samuel ’20.

Matt McCahill ’95, co-chair of the Alumnae/i Annual Fund, ex-officio, is a litigation partner at the New York law firm Kaplan Fox & Kilsheimer, where he focuses on civil and criminal antitrust cases. He graduated from Rutgers College and Fordham Law School. Following graduation from CA, McCahill spent a year in public service at City Year Boston, and he continues to volunteer to help Marine Corps veterans in benefits proceedings.

He is also active with several cultural institutions in New York, including the U.S.S. Intrepid Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Municipal Arts Society.

McCahill lives in Manhattan with his wife, an English professor.

Laura McConaghy ’01, president of the Alumnae/i Association, ex-officio, is the director of philanthropy operations at the Boston Foundation, Greater Boston’s community foundation, where she is responsible for day-to-day oversight of operations within the development and donor services team. Additionally, she manages corporate and foundation relations and is responsible

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Left to right: Sunredi Admadjaja ‘90, P’15 ‘20; Harvey J. Berger; Karen E. Liesching P’21; Andrew Ory P’16 ’21; Kerry Hoffman P’14 ’20; Matt McCahill ’95; Laura McConaghy ’01; Claire Moriarty Schaeffer ’05.

for fundraising strategy development and implementation for impact-area aligned partnership efforts.

McConaghy joined the foundation in January 2010 to coordinate the Haiti Fund, and also spent three years as program associate supporting the arts and culture strategy. Previously, she worked at the Experiment in International Living and Commongood Careers, and she spent a season working on an organic farm in Lincoln, Mass.

McConaghy earned her B.A. in Latin American history and Spanish from Bates College and completed a certificate in nonprofit management and leadership at Boston University.

Claire Moriarty Schaeffer ’05, co-chair of the Alumnae/i Annual Fund, ex-officio, owns and operates a small real estate development company, High Tide Homes, which focuses on vacation rental homes on Nantucket Island. She graduated from Bowdoin College with a bachelor of arts in anthropology and completed her master’s in visual anthropology at Goldsmith College, University of London, in 2010. She previously worked in advertising and development.

Schaeffer and her husband, Justin, live in Boston and spend a lot of the summer — her busiest season — on Nantucket.

There, she is involved with the Nantucket Boys & Girls Club and is co-chair of the club’s largest fundraiser, the Summer Groove.

Schaeffer’s sister, Kate Graham ’02, and brother, John Moriarty ’07, are also CA alumnae/i.

Food, Friends, Memories Help Create a CA Cookbook As its centennial nears, Concord Academy is collecting and commemorating shared experiences of community life, particularly the life of CA’s residential houses.

Have you ever tried to recreate the meals your house faculty cooked for you at CA? Do you fondly recall favorite dishes or hacks from the Stu-Fac? You can help the school create a collection of recipes as well as food-centered memories, photographs, and artwork that celebrate the traditions and evolution of Concord Academy and its six student houses.

To contribute to the book, visit www.concordacademy.org/ ca-cookbook. Contact Abby Jenney at abby_jenney@concord academy.org or (978) 402-2232 with any questions.

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THE ANNUAL FUND’S

IMPACT Over the last five years,

2,147 alumnae/i have generously donated over

$5.5 M I L L I O N to CA’s Annual Fund.

The Annual Fund provides

11%

of CA’s operating budget — the impact is an average of

$7,600 per student.

25%

of students at CA receive financial aid, but each year qualified students do not enroll because of lack of funds.

CA

Giving Matters, Every Year Alumnae/i Annual Fund co-chairs take on new leadership role Concord Academy is built on strong relationships, in classrooms and in houses, in studios and on playing fields. Those lifelong connections extend to the network of over 5,400 alumnae/i around the world, and CA needs its community of graduates to join in ongoing support of the people and the programs at the heart of this school.

Imagine CA without one-on-one advising.

Without a seat in the Chapel for every student.

Without the ability to admit families needing financial assistance. Imagine CA’s talented faculty making the difficult decision to leave for positions elsewhere because their compensation or teaching resources are insufficient.

Concord Academy’s uncommon and highly individualized program requires a significant annual fundraising effort. Tuition covers only 77 percent of CA’s annual operating revenue.

CA’s Annual Fund provides 11 percent — nearly equal to the amount provided by the endowment. Without a robust Annual Fund, CA simply cannot fulfill its mission.

GIVE TODAY

Through the annual giving program, every Concord Academy graduate can contribute to this meaningful and vital endeavor.

www.concordacademy.org/give-now

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ALUMNAE/I LEADERS

This pivotal time in Concord Academy’s history requires a rethinking of leadership roles.

Who better to put the case for annual support to the alumnae/i community than Matt McCahill ’95 (left) and Claire Moriarty Schaeffer ’05 (right).

Consistently generous, they have volunteered, in their new roles as Alumnae/i Annual Fund co-chairs, to act on the responsibility they feel as beneficiaries of CA to carry forward the work begun by previous generations.

Schaeffer has contributed to the fund since her early days as an alumna, when she co-chaired CAYAC, the young alumnae/i committee. “I found it fascinating to see the inner workings of the school, and it opened my eyes to why alumnae/i participation and fundraising are so important,” she says. After CA, she attended Bowdoin College, then earned a master’s in visual anthropology at the University of London, whose focus on the arts and independent learning reminded her a great deal of the culture at CA. She

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ON CAMPUS, THE ANNUAL FUND SUPPORTED

now lives in Boston and Nantucket, working in real estate development and volunteering with the Boys and Girls Club. A natural community galvanizer, Schaeffer raised her hand when she saw the potential to make a significant impact by helping Concord Academy carry out its mission. Her energy, positivity, and joy are infectious.

McCahill has contributed to CA financially year after year since his graduation.

When approached about getting more actively involved, he said yes immediately, beginning with interviewing prospective students and continuing with the Annual Fund. McCahill grew up overseas, with a father in the State Department. “CA was the first place I really considered home,” he says.

“Being a boarder helped me find my own place in the world when I was only 13. It gave me roots, and a chance to make lifelong friends.”

Following a gap year with City Year in Boston, he completed college in three years thanks to CA class credits.

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He interned in a D.C. think tank, attended law school at Fordham, and now works as an antitrust litigation partner at a firm in New York City. As co-chair, McCahill brings a holistic perspective on the role of a CA education in fostering citizenship and responsibility — influences he feels this school is uniquely poised to instill.

What do you wish your fellow alumnae/i knew about the Annual Fund?

Schaeffer: A lot of people think tuition pays for everything. It doesn’t. Annual Fund donations are part of the school’s operating budget, and there’s no excess in that budget — every dollar counts. Whether it’s $20 or $20,000, every single gift matters.

McCahill: So much of the CA experience is dependent on contributions. The school’s endowment is not that big, but its expenses are significant. I’d like to see more participation especially among alumnae/i my age, those who graduated in the 1990s. I think as we all enter our 40s and begin to establish ourselves more firmly in our careers, this is the time to start contributing in a

more significant way. There’s a gap, and we need more people to step up.

What’s at stake?

McCahill: We’re competing for both money and volunteer time with other nonprofits that people may perceive as having more pressing needs — helping refugees or addressing poverty, for example. But here’s the thing: CA is one of the few places in America where you find teenagers who are having informed conversations about the broader world and their role in it. It’s a place where young people gain insights they later act on as adults to help their fellow citizens. CA graduates can contribute to this school knowing their broader interests will be satisfied by the generation of alumnae/i that is shaping this country’s future. CA needs to continue to be the kind of place where those conversations happen.

Schaeffer: Some people may feel that they already paid for CA when they attended and wonder what they owe the school now. I feel such gratitude for my education and loyalty to CA. We all had these amazing experiences here, and it’s our

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chapels; close to

12,000 student-advisor meetings;

70+ 30+ student clubs and organizations;

athletic teams, as well as intramural sports; and

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opportunities for off-campus studies.

responsibility to keep that going for current and future students. So much is really up to us. If we who have benefited from this school are not going to invest in it, who will?

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COMPILED BY LIBRARY DIRECTOR MARTHA KENNEDY

Creative Types B O O KS

Critical Hours: Search and Rescue in the White Mountains

rough patch in their relationships. How couples manage these demands is at the heart of de Marneffe’s work as a psychotherapist. Serving as a sounding board, de Marneffe has guided hundreds of couples seeking resolutions to their marriage woes. By embracing life’s lessons, individuals learn to grow and acknowledge changes in their partners, to face changes together instead of turning away or pursuing new relationships.

Sandy Stott (former faculty)

University Press of New England, 2018 Late June 1900. Members of the newly formed Appalachian Mountain Club scale Mt. Washington for a field meeting. A freak ice storm ravages the summit, claiming the lives of two robust members caught in the maelstrom. More than a century later, a signal beacon mobilizes an entire chain of responders, as an experienced solo hiker finds herself in the midst of a horrific winter storm. What began with a humbling recovery of bodies morphs into a precision team of emergency dispatchers, technical climbers, and an intricate web of law enforcement divisions, all trained to respond at any hour to seek, find, and rescue.

Vagabond Quakers: Northern Colonies

Olga Reigeluth Morrill ’67

Morrill Fiction, 2017 Two young Quaker missionaries make the treacherous passage to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, determined to take on the gross injustices placed upon the Society of Friends by the entrenched

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May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem Imani Perry ’90

University of North Carolina Press, 2018

Puritan hierarchy. Challenged at every turn, Mary and Alice draw strength from a deep devotion to their beliefs and find support among other Friends who nurture and offer comfort amid New World hostilities. Morrill seamlessly blends the historical context of the Quaker experience in colonial New England with a compelling read in which the language, customs, and mores of her fictional characters ring true

to the troubling intolerance of the times.

The Rough Patch: Marriage and the Art of Living Together Daphne de Marneffe ’77

Scribner, 2018 In midlife, a multitude of daily stresses including careers, child rearing, and aging parents pull couples in many directions, ensuring nearly all will experience a

The song “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was penned in 1900 by poet James Weldon Johnson and set to music by his brother John Rosamond Johnson for schoolchildren to sing at a celebration of Lincoln’s birthday. It soon became known as the Negro National Anthem. For more than a century, the song has brought pride and connection to those struggling, during the bitterness and viciousness of Jim Crow, the fight for civil rights, and the rise of Black Power, as well as during this generation’s Black Lives Matter

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T H E S PY W H O DUMPED ME Susanna Fogel ’98, director and co-writer Lionsgate, 2018

This action comedy stars Mila Kunis and Saturday Night Live’s Kate McKinnon as friends who unwittingly become entangled in an international conspiracy when an ex-boyfriend turns out to be a CIA agent.

movement. Not without controversy, the anthem remains relevant because of its ability to stir strong emotions and collective memories.

O! Relentless Death!: Celebrity, Loss & Mourning, A Collection of Images & Essays Lee Fearnside ’92 and Andrew Fearnside

Chimera Project, 2018 Faced with an onslaught of celebrity deaths in 2016 and the fallout of that fall’s

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presidential election, the Fearnside siblings found solace in art. With the help of writer friends, the pair created a celebratory volume honoring 17 notable people who, in their own spheres of existence, created art that made the world a

more livable place. Crisp linocuts accompany essays eulogizing the likes of David Bowie, Prince, Elie Wiesel, Muhammad Ali, Gwen Ifill, Alan Rickman, Carrie Fisher, and so many others who passed in a year filled with heavy loss.

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CALLING ALL CREATIVE TYPES Have you published a book or released a film or CD within the past year? Please contact martha_kennedy@concordacademy. org, and consider donating a copy to the J. Josephine Tucker Library’s alumnae/i collection.

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FIELD DAY REVIVAL

On May 4, Concord Academy revived a once-beloved school tradition that lapsed in the 1970s. Following a surprise announcement, classes were dismissed, and students, faculty, and staff donned red and blue to face off in friendly Field Day competition. The afternoon of three-legged races, obstacle courses, and lawn games ended with a tug-of-war tiebreaker.

The blue team triumphed, but the entire school celebrated.

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X Then: Dorrie Arnold ’63 and M.A. Rowland Swedlund ’63, from a 1962 Concord Academy scrapbook.

Now: Theo Nunez ‘18, student vice head of school, and Kaity Goodwin ‘18, student head of school.

P H OTO BY C O L E + K I E R A

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See more photos and read about Field Day at www.concordacademy.org/ fieldday2018

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01. New Yorker covers: These two school-related covers were done by Chris Ware, one of my favorite cartoonists.

we hosted — rap group Blue Scholars [left] and comedian Hari Kondabolu [right], a friend of mine.

02. “ The Wood” map: I really like maps. This one is of Wildwood, from the series

by Colin Meloy of The Decemberists, by his partner, Carson Ellis.

05. “Love Poem for Bruce Lee”: A letterpress poem by Anhvu Buchanan. I didn’t know his work when it arrived in my mailbox unexpectedly from a secret writers’ postal club.

03. Wow!!!! English!! cat graphic: My advisees made this for my chapel talk a few years ago.

06. Thoth, scribe of the gods: My parents gave me this postcard from one of their trips to Egypt with their students.

04. P osters: Former students of mine designed these posters as advertisements for shows

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07. Inkstand: A gift from my inlaws, who restore antiques.

08. M ary Oliver passage: ”No poet ever wrote a poem to dishonor life….”

09. K nitted mandrake: My partner, Ellie, made this little guy, from Harry Potter.

10. Pink Post-it note: During the first Spring Session, a group in the next room punked us, and my students left them this note: “We would like to inform you that we are above making fun of your Spring Session as a group that yearns to discuss progressive masculinity.”

11. Postcards: Writers I like and places I’ve been.

12. Label: I found this label that [former English teacher] Sandy Stott had left behind: “File folder request for winter 13/14 accidents.” He was working on a book [see page 48], but I kept it because it was ominous and intriguing.

13. Photo of street vendor’s wares: A guy selling “lovely poems with no hard words in them.” Those are some of my favorite kinds of poems.

WHAT WILL YOU MAKE

POSSIBLE?

CONCORD ACADEMY remains committed to nurturing and inspiring students to lead lives of character, learning, leadership, and service.

Tuition does not cover the cost of CA’s distinctive and exceptional education. Your generosity is vital to the daily operations of the school and impacts every facet of the CA student experience.

Each gift to the CA Annual Fund provides critical support for academics, the arts, athletics, faculty, student programs and financial aid.

www.concordacademy.org/give

STAY CON N ECTED

Please invest in an education that makes a difference with a gift to the 2018–19 CA Annual Fund

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