NMH, Fall 2015

NMH Magazine

15 fall

volume 17 • number 2

Northfield Mount Hermon

NMH Magazine FALL 2015 Volume 17, Number 2 Editor Jennifer Sutton P ’14 Contributors Sharon LaBella-Lindale Susan Pasternack Harry van Baaren Design Lilly Pereira Class Notes Editor Kris Halpin Class Notes Design HvB Imaging Director of Communications Cheri Cross Head of School Peter B. Fayroian Chief Advancement Officer Allyson L. Goodwin ’83, P ’12, P ’14 Archivist Peter H. Weis ’78, P ’13 Northfield Mount Hermon publishes NMH Magazine (USPS074-860) two times a year in fall and spring. Printed by Lane Press, Burlington, VT 05402 NMH Magazine Northfield Mount Hermon One Lamplighter Way Mount Hermon, MA 01354 413-498-3247 Fax 413-498-3021 nmhmagazine@nmhschool.org Class Notes nmhnotes@nmhschool.org Address Changes Northfield Mount Hermon Advancement Services Norton House One Lamplighter Way Mount Hermon, MA 01354 413-498-3300 addressupdates@nmhschool.org

NMH Magazine

15 fall

volume 17 • number 2

features

20 The World Needs You

At Commencement last spring, Harvard Professor James Engell ’69 issued a powerful call to action.

26 The Last Hurricane

A short story from Now We Will Be Happy, the award-winning collection by Amina Gautier ’95.

30 The Pioneers

In the early 1970s, Northfield graduates helped break down gender barriers in the Ivy League.

36 Game On

Fifty years ago, there was a football game, a fire, and a photograph that made history.

departments

3 Letters 5 Leading Lines 6 NMH Postcard 8 NMH Journal 14 Movers & Makers 16 In the Classroom 18 Past Present 42 Alumni Hall 46 Class Notes 96 Parting Words < < L I VI NG COL OR Inspired by the Hindu festival called Holi, students participated in a “Color Run” last April, throwing colorful powdered paint to celebrate spring.

C O V E R I L L U S TR ATI O N : J O E L H O L L A N D TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S P H O T O : G L E N N MINSHALL

NMH showed us the way forward.

Now we give back.

NMH taught us to live in the world with purpose and make it a better place. Now we are making a difference in professions and communities everywhere. As we look ahead with conviction, we also need to give back to NMH. Only with our support can NMH inspire the students of today and tomorrow. Every single gift matters.

You can direct your gift to the area of NMH that means the most to you.

Find your giving options at www.nmhschool.org/nmhfund.

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LETTERS

TEACHER, INFLUENCER

I appreciate the difference that teacher Charlie Malcolm is making in the educational lives of students (“War and Peace,” Spring ’15) by helping them connect history to current events. I was once in their position; I had a history teacher at NMH who sparked my curiosity in the interconnection of historical events, and in their impact on current events. He initiated the development of my critical thinking skills and inspired me to pursue a career in foreign affairs.

Malcolm, like my teacher, might not know what his enduring impact will be on his students’ lives. After NMH, I obtained a bachelor’s degree in history and political science (Macalester) and a master’s in Russian Area Studies (Georgetown), and later, a master’s in National Security Strategy (National War College/National Defense University). In my U.S. government career, I served on assignment in seven foreign countries, traveled to numerous additional countries, including war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, and worked on assignment in Washington, D.C. It all started with someone like Malcolm.

I wish I could thank the teacher who inspired me, but that is no longer possible. It is possible, however, to pay it forward and thank Malcolm for inspiring a new generation.

Perhaps one of those students will be motivated to make a life’s work of foreign affairs as I was.

Jeff Miller ’68 McLean, Virginia TALKING ABOUT FERGUSON

As a septuagenarian who has seen how far we have come, I am happy to note NMH’s response to recent events (“Talking About Ferguson,” Spring ’15) and shifts

in social attitudes (“Beyond Unisex,” Spring ’15).

When I attended Northfield in the 1950s, there was pride in the diversity of the student body and the many countries it represented. But the concept of diversity was narrow then. Racial and gender issues, as well as sexual orientation and identity, were taboo subjects.

As a woman during the ’60s and ’70s, I often felt diminished by the way men talked down to me or excluded me from conversation. The worlds of men and women were separate and unequal. Women struggled with their self-esteem. I learned that our self-image is deeply affected by how others perceive us. But our selfimage also profoundly affects how we see others.

Many courageous voices, young and old, are resonating with calls for dignity, forgiveness, peace, and equal opportunity. We are becoming more empowered to be ourselves and speak our truth. The journey ahead requires courage, trust, a deeper understanding of ourselves, and greater awareness of how we exist with others. Thank you for integrating this inquiry/conversation into the NMH community.

Ayo Oum Shanti ’61 New York, New York It was with great sadness that I read your article, “Talking About Ferguson” (Spring ’15). During my NMH days, faculty encouraged vigorous discussion on the Vietnam war, racism, and social issues. We were open to opposing facts. Having to support our views with facts, not just “feelings,” advanced our learning and growth.

That seems lacking at NMH now.

Reality seems not to matter if it conflicts with stereotypes of blacks as perpetual victims. Why ignore continued on next page

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fall 2015 I 3

LETTERS

Keep Calm and Carry On

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Visit the NEW and IMPROVED online store for great gift ideas.

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evidence conclusively showing that Michael Brown fought for the cop’s gun? Why ignore the public release of all evidence, or the work of the multiracial grand jury, or the state and federal governments’ findings that vindicated the cop?

Your article inferred that Michael Brown died because of race. Absent the video, would you deny the robbery he’d just committed? The article also paternalistically assumed that blacks can’t make good choices — that whites are responsible, like parents of misbehaving children, that blacks acting like Mr. Brown presumably lack the judgment, power, and good sense to know better.

Tell that to millions of black people working hard daily, making good choices, and raising children as productive citizens.

At NMH, I learned the value of factbased discussion. Banning disagreement and ignoring factual realities discourages critical thinking. Yes, racism persists today. As a black man raised in segregated Alabama, I saw it daily. I lived it at NMH, Brown, and Harvard Law School. But closed-mindedness damages students. “Diversity” shouldn’t exclude diversity of thought. Hopefully, NMH hasn’t passed the tipping point.

Daniel Thompson Jr. ’66 Atlanta, Georgia I was not only dismayed but also upset about comments published in NMH Magazine (“Talking About Ferguson,” Spring ’15). To state that the Michael

Brown/Darren Wilson case was racism and insinuate that Mr. Brown was killed for robbing a store was both inflammatory and proven to be untrue. Both local authorities and the U.S. Department of Justice fully investigated every aspect of this case and concluded that the officer was completely without fault and that there was absolutely no evidence of civil rights violations or wrongdoing. Mr. Brown was not killed for robbing a store. He was killed because he chose to physically assault a police officer over recognizing and complying with the officer’s command. He had a choice before the robbery and after it, and in both cases, he chose aggressive confrontation over civility and the law. I would encourage you to read the DOJ’s final report — which is enlightening and sometimes frightening — and put yourself in the officer’s position.

This was certainly a tragedy because a young man lost his life and another man’s will be forever changed. In our society, as in others across the globe, there is evil and racism in many forms, across color, religion, and culture, and it is awful to see. But we have an excellent judicial system in the United States, and I would encourage everyone to review the facts of events such as Ferguson as they are brought to light before making such irresponsible and incendiary statements.

Tim Goff ’81 Manchester, New Hampshire

WHAT DO YOU THINK? NMH Magazine welcomes correspondence from readers.

Letters and emails may be edited for length, clarity, and grammar, and should pertain to magazine content. Reach us at NMH Magazine, One Lamplighter Way, Mount Hermon, MA 01354, or email us at nmhmagazine@nmhschool.org.

www.nmhschool.org/summer One Lamplighter Way, Mount Hermon, MA 01354 413-498-3290

summer_school@nmhschool.org

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LEADING LINES

Our House

NMH is building for the 21st century.

by PETER B. FAYROIAN, Head of School

In the next five years, you’ll see several exciting building projects taking shape on the NMH campus that will help us meet the changing demands of a 21stcentury boarding-school education. The Gilder Center for Integrative Math and Science Education, a fitness facility, a boathouse, and a childcare center for faculty and staff children — these projects will replace dated facilities that are less than ideal, but more important, they will serve our mission, which has never wavered: to educate the heads, hearts, and hands of our students.

Let’s rewind for a moment. When NMH embarked upon the recent construction of six new faculty homes, our three criteria were to meet the needs of our mission, serve our teachers and students, and make sure the buildings reflected our commitment to stewarding the natural beauty and resources of our magnificent campus. We dug into the demographics of faculty families, toured other schools, and created homes in which our teachers’ families would be comfortable and where students would be welcome.

That project followed in the tradition of Headmaster Elliott Speer, who in 1933 toured the spartan faculty apartments in Overtoun and, appalled, proceeded to build forward-thinking and comfortable living quarters for teachers.

Before that, James Gymnasium, constructed in 1910, was held up as a model for boarding school facilities, along with Crossley Hall and beautiful Alumni — then West — Hall, with one of the largest unsupported roofs in the country. In the past decade, NMH has continued this mission-centered building with the renovation of Cottage Row and construction of Shea and Mackinnon dormitories, Bolger Admission House, and the Rhodes Arts Center, which is hailed as the finest of its kind among our peer schools.

Now, looking forward: The Gilder Center for Integrative Math and Science Education will reflect the collaborative, student-centered teaching for which NMH has become known. Behind its design will be more than a year of pedagogical research and input from our own teachers as well as experts in higher education and beyond. It’s fitting that the new building will rise near the site of former Silliman Hall, the science building that burned 50 years ago (see story, p. 36).

A new boathouse will further propel one of the country’s best high school rowing programs and will sit on the most enviable reach of water of any school

PHOTO: MICHAEL DW YER

crew program. The new fitness center (along with renovations to James and Forslund gymnasiums) will serve the health and wellbeing of our entire community in what is now our laundry building, with its beautiful natural light, ample space, and a view of the Connecticut River Valley. And I’m pleased to announce that we will finally move the school’s childcare and nursery school program from the other side of the river; in both proximity and design, it will better meet the needs of the fine teachers NMH must attract and retain.

You will hear more about these projects and the strategic plan that guided their design, because we can’t do any of this without you. Since D.L. Moody procured the funds to purchase land for his schools in 1878, NMH has relied upon its alumnae, alumni, and families to provide the resources necessary to “engage the intellect, compassion and talents of our students” and empower them “to act with humanity and purpose.”

You’ll hear about our desire to raise endowment funds for financial aid — after all, we need to help all the fabulous students who will bring life to our new facilities. You’ll hear how we constantly strive to strengthen our operating budget, which is always our first priority.

So stay tuned. NMH is entering the “quiet phase” of an ambitious capital campaign that will turn all of these plans into reality, and my colleagues and I invite you to join us as we prepare to build on this green and pleasant land. [NMH]

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NMH POSTCARD

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NMH JOURNAL

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NMH JOURNAL

Taking a Stand Isabella DeHerdt ’17 has been pretty busy this fall. She’s taking French, honors chemistry, and U.S. history. She sings in several NMH ensembles, and got a part in the fall musical. And though she hadn’t planned on it, she also spent a couple weeks teaching the music industry about sexism.

DeHerdt, 16, is a day student from Ashfield, Massachusetts. When she’s not at NMH, she sings and plays guitar in a rock band with two local friends, both 14. Their band, Kalliope Jones, won third place in a Battle of the Bands for young musicians at the Tri-County Fair in Northampton, Massachusetts, in September, but

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when the judges wrote comments about the performers — all of whom were between the ages of 12 and 16 — they suggested that Kalliope Jones would fare better if the girls “used their sultry to draw in the crowd.”

The girls got annoyed. Their parents did, too. The judges, when questioned, stood by their comments. Did any of

the boy bands receive similar advice, DeHerdt and her bandmates wanted to know? The answer from the judges was “No, it’s a completely different thing.”

The three girls went on Facebook and vented to their friends. “To be told that we need to be more sexy in order to make it as musicians goes against everything we have been taught,” they wrote. “A woman’s sex appeal, or anyone’s, for that matter, should not be the defining factor in their success in the music industry. In addition to that, we are children!”

The Facebook chatter quickly went viral, and Kalliope Jones’s small circle of fans got a whole lot bigger. Within a few days, their story was featured

Singer and guitarist Isabella DeHerdt ’17 (center) with her Kalliope Jones bandmates Alouette Batteau (left) and Amelia Chalfant (right).

on the websites of New York Magazine, People magazine, MTV, and the British newspaper The Independent. “Teen Girl Band Fights Sexism,” declared “The Today Show” website.

One of the band’s songs is titled “Speak Up,” but “we did not expect this,” DeHerdt says. “It was insane how it grew. It was pretty daunting because we hadn’t faced anything like that before.”

The band has been careful to state that they believe the judges meant no harm. “We were grateful for the opportunity to play at the fair, and we don’t want to demonize anyone,” DeHerdt says. “We just want to bring awareness to something that happens far too often to females in the music industry — that they’re judged differently than male musicians. People don’t even realize they’re doing it. It’s like racism or homophobia: it’s so internalized.”

Within a couple of weeks, the hubbub died down, which was a good thing, according to DeHerdt. She wants to focus on her music, both with Kalliope Jones and at NMH — not to mention get her homework done.

Still, the band is proud. “We accomplished a goal that we hadn’t even set for ourselves,” DeHerdt says.

“Originally, we just wanted to tell people what happened at the fair. But we got our message out there in a much bigger way, and even if it helps just one 9-year-old girl who’s starting to play music — so she can see girls saying, ‘It doesn’t matter what you look like, just play your music and do what you love’ — then that’s enough.”

DID NMH CHANGE YOUR LIFE? One of the school’s most loyal graduates wants alumni and parents to think about the future — specifically math and science education and financial aid at NMH. Former trustee Richard Gilder ’50 will invest $5 million over the next five years in a matching-grant program that has been dubbed the Gilder Challenge for Innovation and Opportunity.

Gilder, a New York philanthropist, will match every dollar given to the new math and science center, up to $5 million, to create an endowed scholarship fund for promising students. “My experience at the school changed my life, and I imagine this is true for most of our alumni,” Gilder says. “I hope that my gifts to NMH will inspire gifts of all sizes, confirming our appreciation of this school.”

When NMH began planning cutting-edge changes to its math and

science curriculum two years ago, Gilder gave a $10 million lead gift for a new facility to support those changes. It was the largest cash gift in NMH’s history. The new building and curriculum advances are part of a fiveyear strategic plan, which went into effect at the beginning of the year.

Gilder, 83, has committed a total of nearly $19 million to NMH, making him the school’s top living donor.

His gifts helped build the Rhodes Arts Center, bring notable speakers to campus, renovate Alumni Hall, and bolster reunion funds. “In the fundraising world, Dick Gilder is an iconic and discerning philanthropist,” says Head of School Peter Fayroian. “The fact that he wholeheartedly supports all aspects of NMH is an indication of the strength of our educational program, our faculty and staff, and our students.”

NM H I N 3 -D

A B ET T E R BI RD’ S -E Y E V I E W Explore Northfield Mount Hermon’s campus in 3-D detail with the school’s new interactive map and online “tour” at www.tinyurl.com/nmhmap.

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NMH JOURNAL

HEAVY HIT T E R S

Former head basketball coach Bill Batty ’59 and current NMH coach and former player John Carroll’ 89 were inducted into the New England Basketball Hall of Fame in August.

Carroll earned the honor as an NMH and Assumption College player and as a prep-school coach; Bill Batty was honored as a prep-school coach.

In May, pitcher Oliver Drake ’06 made his major league debut with the Baltimore Orioles, and made numerous trips back and forth between Camden

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Yards and the Triple-A Norfolk Tides, where he lowered his ERA to 0.68.

Pro basketball player Tony Gaffney ’04 helped lead the Hapoel Jerusalem Basketball Club to a historic national championship in June. Gaffney’s Jerusalem team won the Israeli Basketball Premier League title for the first time in the team’s 72-year history.

Last summer, Tessa Gobbo ’09 was a member of the US Rowing women’s eight squad that took home two 2015

international titles — the World Rowing Championship in June and the World Rowing Cup II in August — which qualifies her for the U.S. National team that will compete at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

Duke University men’s basketball manager Ryan Kelly ’12 worked behind the scenes to help the Blue Devils win the NCAA National Championship in April in Indianapolis.

NMH JOURNAL

FOR THE RECORD THE SHOT

CHAMP IONS Last spring, Caroline Sullivan ’15 (pictured here) broke her second NMH track and field record (one that had held for 30 years) when she became the NEPSTA Division I champion in the 1500m race with a time of 4:41:74. At the 2014 NEPSTA championships, Sullivan broke the 3000m record with a time of 10:34, breaking a 22-year-

“!I’m not gonna go full cheese and say that I’ve found my ‘true home’ at NMH, but it’s the closest I’ve ever come.”

GRAHAM FORRESTER ’16, in a “Moment of Silence” reflection he delivered in an all-school meeting in Memorial Chapel on Sept. 14.

old record.

Sidi Abdoulaye ’15 came into the NEPSTA Division I championship meet undefeated in the 1500m and 3000m races. He won the 1500m by over four seconds with a time of 4:03.69, and the 3000m by almost 8 seconds, with a time of 8:57.81. Abdoulaye became the first boy to win both championship races in more than five years, and remained undefeated in any race 1500m or longer throughout his NMH career.

Hannah Solis-Cohen ’11 helped the University of Virginia’s women’s four boat capture the 2015 NCAA championship last May. NMH has joined Andover, Exeter, Choate, and Deerfield in a new athletic league named The Five Schools League. The schools already compete within the larger New England Prep School Athletic Council (NEPSAC). The new league will not only provide more opportunities for competition, but will also recognize sportsmanship among teams, individual

A President and a Preacher, Connected By A Name On a stormy night in Texas in October 1890, a woman whose maiden name was Ida Stover gave birth to a son. She named him Dwight, after Dwight L. Moody, who at the time was a well-known spiritual leader but had not yet founded Northfield and Mount Hermon schools.

Decades later, that baby boy grew up to become a five-star general in the United States Army, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe during World War II, and the 34th president of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower.

President Eisenhower explained the connection himself in a 1966 letter catalogued in the NMH Archives.

“My mother often spoke of Dwight L. Moody,” Eisenhower wrote. “It was my understanding that she gave me my name, Dwight, because of her admiration for the evangelist.”

The letter is addressed to a Mrs. Powell — Emma Moody Powell, Dwight Moody’s granddaughter — who had sent Eisenhower a newspaper clipping about her famous relation. The Powell family, which includes David S. Powell ’48, donated the Eisenhower letter to NMH years ago, and it has been a part of the Moody Museum in Northfield ever since.

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NMH JOURNAL

NMH JOURNAL

WHO• WHAT •W H Y

A Fan Leads to Love

by SARA KARZ REID

Have you ever made fun of a “Grand Poo-Bah”? Or thought “the punishment should fit the crime”? If so, you’ve referred to The Mikado, Gilbert and Sullivan’s Victorian-era comic opera, written in 1885 and set in a semi-imaginary feudal Japan. The play satirizes British government and politics, with a convoluted plot that includes red tape, executioners, royalty in mufti, and young lovers.

The singers in The Mikado make exuberant use of Japanese folding fans, snapping them open and closed in time with the music and lyrics.

This prop fan, found in the NMH Archives, was used in Northfield and Mount Hermon’s 1962 production of The Mikado. It is signed by more than 50 members of the cast, making it more than just a pretty object.

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Folding fans like this one were used by the entire cast from the start of rehearsals. The size of the fan indicated the rank of the individual character.

“The fans made a fine ‘snap’ when opened with vigor, and this could be used to drive a point,” reports Eric Erlandsen ’63. The student-actors had to practice opening the fans in one quick motion, damaging more than one in the process.

Tony Cantore ’65 was a member of the crew, charged with moving props and scenery during the performance while in full costume and makeup.

“Once Mr. Raymond heard my off-key singing, he instructed me to mouth the words, but not to sing!” Cantore says. Scott Calvert ’62, in the role of Ko-Ko, the “Lord High Executioner” for the Mikado (the emperor), declares

he had “the time of my life prancing about while muttering great amounts of disingenuous drivel.”

In 2012, during the 50th reunion for the class of 1962, members of the cast gathered in the Rhodes Arts Center to sing through the production once again. At the end of the opera, the young lovers Yum-Yum and Nanki-Poo (the son of the Mikado) marry. Karen Ann Zee ’62, who played Yum-Yum, and Eric Riedel ’62, the Nanki-Poo understudy, dated as students — a sweet parallel — but went their separate ways after graduation. They re-connected at the reunion and married in 2014, with several members of the Mikado cast in attendance. “I never got to play the lead in our production,” Reidel says, “but I ultimately got the girl.”

Sarah Karz Reid is an archaeologist and an assistant archivist in NMH’s Schauffler Library.

PH O TO S: X X X

THE FINEST HOURS Less than a decade after Bernard Webber ’48 was a student at Mount Hermon for a year, he played a leading role in a daring Coast Guard rescue mission considered one of the greatest in Coast Guard history. That rescue will soon be the subject of a Disney drama, The Finest Hours, due in theaters in January.

In the winter of 1952, Webber was the coxswain of a 36-foot motor lifeboat in the Chatham Coast Guard station on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. During a terrible nor’easter in mid-February, the news came that two U.S. Navy tankers had split in half amid 60-foot waves, XX miles offshore. Webber and his three-man crew braved hurricaneforce winds and blizzard conditions to rescue 32 of the 33 mariners stranded in the stern of one of the ships, the U.S.S. Pendleton, before the wreck went down in the frigid Atlantic. All four Coast Guardsmen were awarded the Gold Lifesaving Medal for their heroic actions.

Webber had enlisted in the Coast Guard after World War II, after training with the joined the Merchant Marine Service at the age of 16 following his year at Mount Hermon. The Disney film is based on a book by Casey Sherman and Michael Tougias, which was published in 2009, the same year Webber died.

READING LIST

Peace Corps Fantasies: How Development Shaped the Global Sixties Molly Geidel ’98 Univ. of Minnesota Press September 2015

A Space Oddity Larry Andrews ’49 Tate Publishing December 2014

As a Sailboat Seeks the Wind Marian Kelner (former faculty) Booksmyth Press March 2015

Good Rabble, Bad Rabble: A Fifty-Year-Old Prep School Mystery Richard E. Waltman ’63 Amazon Digital Services May 2015

Natural Sustenance: Selected Poems Nick Fleck (former faculty) Human Error Publishing November 2014

My Helsingfors: Andreas Larsson Bengstrom Welcome to NMH In September, NMH launched a redesigned website that not only showcases the school’s new branding initiative but also is more visual and interactive.

The website serves as school’s “front door,” says Cheri Cross, director of communications. “Now it more effectively says, ‘Come in.’”

Ed Sundt ’54 CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform October 2014

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MOVERS & MAKERS

The Producer Bred on Hitchcock and Hepburn, Gillian Bohrer ’96 creates films for a new generation.

by LORI FERGUSON

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Gillian Bohrer ’96 grew up in the tiny town of Erving, Massachusetts, eight miles south of Northfield Mount Hermon and a world away from Hollywood. She was raised on classic Hitchcock and Hepburn movies, but as the new co-president of production at Lionsgate Motion Picture Group, she is equally at home with 21st-century vampire romances and post-apocalyptic science fiction During the time she was a studio executive at Summit Entertainment and then at Lionsgate, which acquired Summit in 2012, Bohrer oversaw the Twilight and Divergent franchises as well as other films — The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Warm Bodies — that collectively grossed more than $4 billion worldwide.

Tapping into the zeitgeist of today’s movie-going public might seem an unlikely ambition for someone who came of age without cable TV at home. But Bohrer says she never felt deprived because her father, a film professor at Fitchburg State, was always bringing movies home. “We were constantly watching American films from the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, and for many years, I didn’t realize this was anything unusual. I assumed these were the movies that everyone grew up watching!” Bohrer counts the 1940 hit The Philadelphia Story among her favorites, as well as thrillers from the 1980s and ’90s like The Firm and Seven, which she calls “a shockingly perfect movie.” “And every couple of years I indulge myself in a Hitchcock marathon,” she says.

Bohrer’s original career goal for many years was law school. “I was very argumentative as a child,” she says, “and people were always saying, ‘She’s going to be a lawyer!’”

She earned a history degree from Yale, and during college, she went to the movies all the time, got involved in theater, and discovered a love of producing plays. As her senior year approached and the time came to apply to

PH O TO : M A X G E R B E R

BRIGHT LIGHT

THE CONNECTOR

law school, Bohrer realized the process could consume her final year of college. She had second thoughts. “I wanted to be able to enjoy my senior year,” she says. At the same time, she began considering other options, among them a master’s degree from the Peter Stark Producing Program at the University of Southern California. “I decided that law school would always be there,” she says. “Wouldn’t it be great to take some risks first?”

While at USC, Bohrer secured an internship at Jersey Films, the now-defunct production company that made Pulp Fiction, Get Shorty, and Erin Brockovich. When Jersey broke up, Bohrer’s internship supervisor went to Summit, and that was Bohrer’s first call after graduation. The chief operations officer at Summit needed an assistant.

“I interviewed and was hired on the spot,” Bohrer says.

Because Bohrer was working for almost no money, her boss gave her as much exposure to the business as possible, arranging for her to work in every department in the company over the course of a year. Bohrer drafted notices for the legal department, tracked royalty invoices, and most important, read scripts, compiled movie reviews, and reported on film festivals for the creative department. “It was a lot of odds and ends,” she recalls, “but it gave me a comprehensive understanding of what went into running the company.” She has never left. “Every time I get to the point where I’m feeling the need for a change, the company transforms and I’m presented with a new challenge.”

Now, with the third installment of the Divergent series set to open in March 2016, Bohrer maintains that her remarkable ascent in the film industry comes simply from hard work and an eye for opportunity. “I got into this career because I love movies,” she says. “From the outset, I’ve wanted to be a producer and I sought to be wherever people would let me do that. Now I’m just interested in figuring out how to make better movies, wherever that leads me.” [NMH]

“!I’m just

interested in figuring out how to make better movies, wherever that leads me.”

John Park ’90 likes to make stuff. At home, it’s pizza and gourd shakers and a “tea timer” he built from an old toaster. “The teabag hangs from the toaster lever and a mug of hot water sits in front of it,” he explains. “You push down the lever, the tea is infused for about two minutes — controlled by the toast darkness dial — and then the toaster pops the teabag up and out.

No more over-brewed tea!”

At work, Park operates at a considerably higher level. Last year, he became a technology transfer producer for Disney Research at Walt Disney Imagineering — one of only five in this position in the entire company. He brings together Disney’s research scientists, whose specialties range from computer graphics to behavioral science to robotics and artificial intelligence, with Pixar Animation Studios, Marvel Studios, Lucas Films, and other Disney divisions. “My job is to assess the needs of the creative professionals who create Disney’s animation, movies, and rides, and connect them with the researchers who can help solve their problem,” he says.

Park has midwifed projects such as Medusa, the technology invented at Disney’s Zurich research lab that captures a highfidelity 3-D image of an actor’s face that can be grafted onto a CG (computer graphics) character. Medusa allows directors to create stunning visual effects as well as live-action film stunts too dangerous for humans. It’s popular at Marvel and Lucas Films, Park says, and was used in Disney’s Maleficent to capture the facial expressions of the three actors playing fairies in the movie. “The technology enabled their performances to be re-targeted onto CG models of their smaller, differently proportioned pixie versions,” Park says.

Turning a childhood fascination with building things into a college major, Park started out studying Russian and foreign affairs at XX, then followed his love of prop building and performing into the theater department. After graduating, he took a summer job at a company that created role-playing games. “I was hired to pack boxes in the warehouse, but I saw their computer graphics division and I talked my way in there instead,” he says. Jobs at IBM and Sony Pictures Imageworks followed, and Disney beckoned 11 years ago.

Park’s current role demands both creative and quantitative skills, and requires him to nurture relationships across the sprawling Disney conglomerate. “The joy of creative collaboration has been a through line in my career, and I can trace it back to my years with the NMH Singers and Sheila Heffernon,” he says. “I loved singing with that group. I learned a tremendous amount about working hard with others to make something.”

—Lori Ferguson

PH O TO : E VA N G R AY

fall 2015 I 15

IN THE CLASSROOM

Beginnings At the school year’s opening faculty meeting, a veteran teacher recalls his first day on the job.

by GARY PARTENHEIMER

“Oh, the terror of beginnings!” sighs Codi Noline in Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Dreams. Having dropped out of med school to care for her ailing father, Codi takes a job at her old high school and anxiously wonders what kind of teacher she’ll be. But the real story is what she learns in Arizona at the nexus of different intermingled cultures and distinct ways of understanding and being in the world.

So, Monday, September 12, 1977: Come with me to Sanda Countway Room 6 on the Northfield campus (second floor, first door on the left) to relive the second most embarrassing moment of my first day at NMH. After the obligatory tedium of orientation week, I was more than eager to meet my first class at 8 am — 14 well-scrubbed and wide-eyed ninth graders — until I realized I’d left all of my books, notes, and class lists back in the dorm. Oh, the terror of beginnings….

Deep breath. Improvise. I strode confidently to the board and wrote “RELIGION” in huge capital letters. “Let’s just go around and say the first word that comes to mind.” Long nanosecond pause, until someone offered, “Church?”

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I wrote it on the board. Someone else said, “Belief!” and up it went.

Then the words came tumbling out, almost faster than I could record them: “God … Bible … rabbi … priest … prayer” — “BRRSHIM ...” in a muffled voice quite unlike the others.

I balked for another excruciating nanosecond, then wrote “bullshit” under “prayer,” which inspired a ripple of titters from the desks behind me.

The boy from Korea was the only non-native speaker in the class.

“BRRSHIM,” he repeated, when our eyes almost met.

“That’s OK, there’s room for different ideas here,” as I underlined “bullshit” to a renewed chorus of giggles. The boy next to him, his American roommate, whispered in his ear, and a flash of frightened recognition crossed his face. “He said, ‘worship.’”

I quickly erased “bullshit” and replaced it with the correct term.

I remember little else from that first class hour, save that I tried calmly to reassure Chil-soo that it was my mistake (which was true) and the laughter was about me not him

(which was true), and that his English was very good (which was true), but I have no idea what he made of his first American teacher in his first American class almost 7,000 air miles from home. This was likely the first conversation I’d ever had with a person from Korea.

A few days later, when I asked about the reading, someone yelled, “Worship!” and it went viral: quiz tomorrow … “worship!” … paper due next Tuesday … “worship!” … tests returned … “worship!” We had inadvertently created our own quasireligious ritual and enacted it regularly — to my horror and delight — with the gusto of true believers.

But I’m still here, 38 years later, the second most distinguished old guy on the faculty. And like just about everyone else in this room, whether this is your first or forty-first year, I still have those teacher dreams at the start of a new school year: You can’t find your classroom, or you’ve forgotten your trousers, or no one knows you. In fact, it’s a good ice-breaker in these next few weeks. As you meet new colleagues in the dining hall, ask them about their teacher dreams; share your own.

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“I was more than eager to meet my first class at 8 am, until I realized I’d left all of my books, notes, and class lists back in the dorm.”

More important, of course, Chil-soo was still here after that “unorthodox” beginning. He was an excellent student who made up for his reticence in class with beautiful papers, and his writing and speaking improved dramatically during the year.

He moved to Mount Hermon as a sophomore, so I saw little of him until May of his senior year, when I turned at a tap on the back in the busy dining hall.

“Worship, Mr. P!” a glowing Chil-soo chanted, and then launched into an unexpected bear hug. “Thanks for a great class — it was my favorite at NMH,” he said. “See you at graduation!” And he disappeared into the crowd.

I think it was his way of forgiving me, of assuring me that terrifying beginnings quite often lead to happy endings, if we’re willing to live their painful lessons with our eyes on the

prize. A few days later Chil-soo was inducted into the Cum Laude Society and received the Mehrkens Prize for contributions to religious life, honoring his four years as a deacon in the NMH chapel. At graduation he led “Jerusalem” in proud unison with his four-year classmates.

So, too, our teacher dreams are only a preview of the 600 or so dreamers now headed our way, wrestling with their own terror of beginnings, but coming to us nonetheless. So, grab a ballet slipper, a soccer ball, a graphing calculator, a flash card pack, a beaker, a poem, a whole wheat pizza — whatever are your wands of wisdom and hats of humility — and let’s go meet them once again for the Great Miracle: yesterday strangers, tomorrow students, athletes, artists, leaders, neighbors, advisees, friends.

May the spirit of Mr. Moody inspire us to provide an education for the whole person — the Head, the Heart, and the Hand — but let it be the Heart which distinguishes life at NMH. Welcome aboard, new colleagues.

Welcome back, veteran friends. See you at graduation. [NMH]

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PAST PRESENT

A Voice Like Hers In January 1955, Marian Anderson became the first person of color to sing at the Metropolitan Opera.

Ten months later, she sang in Northfield’s Auditorium.

by PETER WEIS ’78, P’13

Arturo Toscanini, the legendary musical director at La Scala, the Metropolitan Opera, and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra described the singer Marian Anderson this way: “A voice like hers is heard only once in a hundred years.”

He was clearly in a position to know, and his oft-quoted plaudit appeared in virtually every news story about Anderson, including one on the front page of The Hermonite in October 1955 under the headline “Marian Anderson, Famed Contralto, Will Perform Tonight in Auditorium.”

Anderson was born in Philadelphia in 1897, and became one of the most revered singers of the 20th century even as she struggled quietly against racial prejudice throughout her career. She gave a famous open-air Easter concert at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 — to a crowd of 75,000 and a radio audience of millions — after the Daughters of the American Revolution barred her from singing at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., yet she was more interested in the opportunity to sing than in protesting. Four years later, when the DAR invited her to sing in the venue it had previously prevented her from entering, she said she felt no sense of triumph, only joy in performing in a beautiful hall.

In 1955, Northfield was preparing to celebrate its diamond jubilee, and much attention was focused on securing the finest entertainment possible. How it happened that Anderson was invited to sing, and that she found time in her schedule to come to Western Massachusetts is unclear. It may have occurred through the influence of baritone Todd Duncan, who knew Anderson and whose nephew and namesake was in the class of 1956 at Mount Hermon.

The younger Todd Duncan attests that it was fitting for Anderson to sing before the students at Northfield and Mount Hermon, because, without fanfare, the schools had been setting an example of racial, ethnic, and religious acceptance among peer institutions. “In the sociopolitical climate of the 1950s, exclusion was the norm, but new challenges to

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that were building, in the arts and elsewhere,” Duncan says.

Anderson’s performance was part of the schools’ tradition of inviting well-known scholars and artists to visit campus for an annual series of campus lectures and entertainment. Amelia Earhart once flew in for an event, landing in a farmer’s field next to the Connecticut River. Dancers from the then-new Alvin Ailey dance company performed, and the poet Carl Sandburg made an appearance. These trusteefunded events became an opportunity for students at the two schools to share a social evening together.

When Anderson came to campus, she was in the twilight of her career.

“My memory of hearing her is one of pride, exhilaration, and sadness,” Duncan says. “I knew what a great artist she was, and I was thrilled to hear the incredible quality of her voice, but sad, too, because I knew her voice was past its prime, and I intuited the terrible but dignified pain of her journey to this moment.”

Anderson sang compositions by Mozart, Schubert, and Verdi, and the spirituals “Roll Jordan Roll” and “Go Down, Moses.” “Her voice was amazing,” Benita Pierce ’56 recalls. “Not high pitched, but velvety warm.”

PH O TO S : C O U R TE S Y O F N M H A R C H I V E S

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Her voice was amazing. Not high pitched, but velvety warm.â&#x20AC;?

fall 2015 I 17

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TEXT BY JAMES ENGELL â&#x20AC;&#x2122;69 LETTERING BY JOEL HOLLAND

Northfield Mount Hermon Class of 2015: Congratulations. Again, and again, congratulations. And, by the way, the world needs you..

H

fall 2015 I 21

E

ducation needs you, for the

ominous gap that grows is not only the one between top salary earners who hold great wealth and the rest of the population. Just as stubborn and troubling is the gap between those with a college degree and those with none. Between those two groups the differences in income, health, children born out of wedlock, divorce, crime, smoking, and life expectancy expand each year. It seems responsible of those with more education not to reap their harvest alone but to open the field to others, to help them plant, and to make that field affordable.

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:

Government needs your help and service. Idealism requires your devotion, compromise your patience and skill. In this country, the citizens, who are supposed to be sovereign, rate their national representatives an approval score hovering around 10 percent, yet we return most incumbents to office. Our party politics are besotted with money. Our polarized politics exhibit a stunning ability to define problems yet to blame others for them, failing to find the reconciliation and solutions that will benefit all.

If political principles are so pure that they prevent compromise, then they’re as useful as a scheme of house cleaning when family members do nothing but squabble. You are needed, needed to pick up the broom and start, and needed to persuade others to pick up the dust pan while you sweep. Otherwise, we’re in for a household of dirt—and dirty money. The sick and infirm, and an aging population, implore physicians, nurses, and caregivers to look into their eyes and see a whole human being, a soul, and not a digital record, an isolated diagnosis, or list of medications. Yes, improve the digital tool, refine the diagnosis, and target that medication, yet you will be needed most to honor your patient as a person, not an impersonal encounter.

Technology needs you to advance it so that it serves us all, poor and rich, so it will avoid the unintended consequences of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice and instead open a fairer world of productivity, health, recreation, and sustainability—without becoming the vicious treadmill that makes us march ever faster, barely to keep pace with our own ingenuity.

Business needs the disruption and entrepreneurship you can provide.

Commerce and technology accelerate. One app mates with others to yield a hybrid spawn that speeds our ability to know, to buy, to sell, to share. The competitive market is a marvelous thing.

Law and regulation need your young wisdom, too: a society not under the whim of individuals but guided by diligence and rules, the wise restraints that make us free. The market is a marvelous thing, but, like all marvelous things, requires maintenance and care to keep from gyrating out of balance. The flash boys and girls of financial trading need you to set a higher standard, to show that shaving a nanosecond off a stock trade contributes little to common welfare and even mocks the bedrock principles of capitalism laid down by Adam Smith. Good business needs you to make certain it’s a social as well as a personal good.

The disenfranchised and poor cry out for your aid not only because they need it, but because they hope, above all else, for that day when they will no longer need it. In this society that aspires to democratic ideals, its two most fundamental underpinnings, early education and health, don’t yet offer anything close to equality of opportunity. Changing that equation needs your help.

Civil disobedience may need you. Wise restraints and regulations that make us prosperous may perversely turn and place us in the hands of unjust laws, or unjust enforcement of them. Then it may be necessary to disobey an unjust law, to protest civilly. There may come punishment, but

P HOTO: X XXX

what you do to incur that punishment will be as a liberation to others.

Your gender, whatever gender you identify as, needs you.

It needs you to look after the needs, rights, and education of your gender here and elsewhere, even in places far remote.

Your gender, gentlemen in particular, needs you to treat others not of your gender with the respect, dignity, and fairness due every person as a person, inherently and inalienably; your gender needs you to honor the consent of intimacy within the roles of gender and sex that we as individuals choose to follow.

The beauty in art, song, poetry, story, dance, and design needs your gift — your audacity and imagination—to represent the world as it is, as it might become, even as it ought to be. It needs your inspiration and your technique to provide that pure pleasure in apprehending something new, something that breaks the shackles of habit trapping our senses and perceptions, something that makes the familiar world strange in order to reveal the startling, miraculous reality that it is.

The social bonds without which all these endeavors would be hollow and dispiriting need your help. Family, community, and parenting are tasks and joys whose value posts no

fall 2015 I 23

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dollar equivalent. You have made your parents parents, they would not be so without you. And if you have children, they will create you as parents, too. Your parents need you. Your parents need you in ways you cannot yet imagine. It’s a stiff challenge in a fast-moving, confusing world to hold in place a precious bond between two people, let alone three or more.

Such bonds need all the strength that you can give, and more, and you are needed to find that added strength.

Your faith, whatever faith you hold, needs you as you need it. For without you and others, that faith is nothing, its practice dead on the page. It lives only in and through you, and is kept alive as you live it, and in no other way. When you doubt, and all faith confronts doubt, your faith may change, and to change it will need your compassion, your reform, and your tolerance, as do the faiths that you do not hold, but that those sitting near you do. As Paul said to the Athenians nearly two thousand years ago, so it remains altogether true today, no matter what your faith may be: God has made of one blood all peoples of the earth (Acts 17:26).

The act of forgiveness needs you. We’ve all colluded with error. As humans we can’t help it. If we can’t learn to ask forgiveness, we can’t forgive, and the world needs forgiveness.

Without it, the world smolders and catches wildfire. When we’ve cheated, mistreated, or short changed, even a little, even unintentionally, then the only way out, the only remedy for conscience, is atonement—a word that comes from its own parts, at one ment—the way is prayer if you pray, asking forgiveness. And when offended, forgiveness is harder to give than to receive: it’s not meant to change the other person so much as it changes ourselves. Forgiveness is a gift, and it’s needed.

Not only the romance of another person, which is a blessing, but, as Dante said in his Divine Comedy, the love that moves the sun and stars needs you. And it’s no stretch to say that those other worlds need you as well. The remarkable joining of human contrivance and human vision placed a person on the moon the year I graduated. Only a matter of time remains until we walk on Mars and land on asteroids.

When the Star Trek of my generation becomes the truth of yours, then, as the astronomer Carl Sagan predicted years ago, we’ll leave this terraqueous globe, some of us, though as Earthlings never forget its shockingly lovely existence as our native home.

Your better self needs you. At some time in the future it will beg your help, but it will be spurned by another side

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of you, a side that drinks too much, or turns to drugs, or endless work, or meaningless sex, or callousness, each a way to deal with inner conflict or trauma that’s not been healed.

Your better self will need you to respond with all your will, with self-reconciliation, self-forgiveness, and reform. This is the easiest need to ignore or deny. But when your better self implores that it needs you, no other need can be met until that one is.

Your mother...your mother Earth needs you. The world’s ecosystems now fall under our domination. Even deep Pacific ocean trenches feel the touch of some radioactive nucleotide or human waste; we have warmed the seas to great depth; we are conducting a vast, uncontrolled experiment not only on our climate but on the climate of all creatures, animal and plant, the results of which we cannot predict, but now know beyond any reasonable doubt that our fossil-fuel experiment will give every living thing a different, more disruptive world by the time you gather for your later reunions. The solid, south-facing roofs and open spaces at NMH are waiting for their solar panels. Is the money you give to this school invested sustainably? Neither fate nor destiny decree how much disruption there will be. It depends on what you do, how well you lead.

The natural world has no choice but to ask your help; for generations we have often ravaged it by what Rachel Carson calls “man’s habitual tampering with nature’s balance.” And now the largest scale, the globe itself, is tipping. An astonishing transition must happen in the next very few decades.

Will you, will this school, meet that need, or will the inertia of rest and its old forces triumph and pronounce a harsh sentence on posterity?

Your success, the success of what you serve, and the success of whoever needs you, become inextricably united. The wonderful American author Willa Cather had this engraved on her tombstone: “That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.” You’ve received a liberal, a generous education. You now possess something priceless, the opportunity to be liberal and generous with it.

This great and good school needs you. (You’ve already been approached for a class gift — it will never stop!) And, as it needs you, this school is not only a collection of bricks and computers, classrooms, locker rooms, and cottages. It is a sacred trust of one generation caring for — and needing — another; it’s those who have gone before who have given, so that the young might thrive; it is a compact between the

living and the dead and those to come, and it survives and improves no other way than by your help.

Finally, this day needs you. It needs your celebration, laughter, and joy. There are days set aside for honor, for leave taking, and for commencement, and this is one day dedicated to them all. We who are older need you. So the young poet Wilfred Owen asked if it were possible to “Fill the void veins of Life again with youth, / And wash, with an immortal water, Age?” (“The End”) It is possible, and you will transform the fossil blood of fossil veins to living arteries.

There’s no need to ask if you’re wanted. You are desperately needed. So is the classmate beside you, perhaps the one you’ve never known well, who may still seem a stranger. You are all so desperately needed and wanted.

The name of this need in its widest scope is love, and one of its instruments is knowledge. If you dare to make it so, this love connects your finger touching those near you — infant, grandmother, partner, spouse, or stranger — with the untouchable stars that one day we will touch together.

And it connects us even with what is holy. Such love and knowledge connect this place, here and now, our school, this

culminating day of youth, with the commencement of all later days.

No matter what trials your young life has seen, no matter what ones may later come, the agent of this love is you: intellectual, physical, spiritual, and bodily, the agent who will transform this world, or not. This world, always threatening to become old, can dawn again under the gentle yet irremissive pressure of your hand, the promise of your head, the rhythms of your heart.

No piece of paper makes this true. These ancient hills declare it so: Your diploma comes written on russet, red, and golden leaves in this valley, and on today’s green grass. Its ink is the sap that rises in farm maples of March, its seal the mist that floats on lower playing fields. Connecticut’s mild waters flowed by every night of your sleep and have kept faith with you, and now they send you on your way. There’ll be no more Mountain Days. Yet Monadnock’s granite face shines on you, and will forever shine. The memory of this school and of your teachers and friends, whom you now will know for life, will give you strength, and grant you peace, for what is needed ahead. And you are needed. [NMH]

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THE

LAST HU In the award-winning story collection Now We Will Be Happy, author Amina Gautier ’95 chronicles the lives of Puerto Ricans — native islanders, U.S. mainlanders, Afro-Puerto Ricans — as they navigate their cultural identity and one another.

STORY REPRODUCED FROM NOW WE WI LL BE HAP P Y BY AMINA GAUTIER, BY PERMISSION OF UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS. COPYRIGHT 2014 BY AMINA GAUTIER.

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P HOT O BY LI A & FAHAD

RRICANE A SHORT STORY BY AMINA GAUTIER ’95

HURRICANES THAT HIT Puerto Rico have Americano names like Alice, and even when they name one Hugo the weathermen don’t pronounce it correctly. Hurricanes never have the names of your children or relatives.

Names like Milagros or Rafael.

When they find out that another hurricane is coming your way, your relatives on the mainland — in New Haven, Hartford, Philadelphia, Newark, and New York — always call and ask if you are ready. If you need anything.

They want to send you and the children things to help you cope.

But you know the truth. fall 2015 I 27

They want to send you and the children things to ease the guilt that they feel as they sit in their safe condos and co-ops with central air and all the other amenities, as they put their feet up to watch the news for the weather report, smug that they are safe and warm while you are ... not. “What will you need?” they ask.

Clean water.

Hot water.

Ice. Electricity.

None of which they can provide.

They want to send blankets, powdered milk, deodorant, diapers. “This is not St. Croix,” you say. Besides, your children are too old for diapers. Your relatives have watched one too many news reports. The winds of the last hurricane that hit your town knocked out all the power lines for days, and you had no light, no heat, no phone. It really wasn’t that bad because you live in Carolina, near enough to San Juan and the turistas so that the problem was fixed pronto. But you heard that the people who lived farther out where the turistas hardly ever went had it real bad — no power for almost three weeks.

Imagine if you lived there.

THE LAST HURRICANE knocked over the two coconut trees in front of your house and wiped out the crab and chicken pens in the backyard. You heard the chickens squawk as the winds carried them away as you sat in the dark with the wind howling in your ears and your hijo Rafael crying because it was his job to bring the chickens in and he forgot.

You tried to shush him by reminding him that he was your jibarito, but Milagros was louder than you as she called him tonto and slapped at whatever parts of him she could find in the dark.

During the time of a hurricane, it is not good to be alone.

Which is why you are glad you still have the hijos. Although it is dark and you cannot see their two faces, you cross from one end of the room to the other after you have sent them to bed, sitting by their sides and placing your palms on their foreheads. Your hijos smell sweet in the darkness; the scent of the tembleque they had for dessert lingers in their partly opened mouths. On a night like this, you don’t bother them about brushing their teeth before bed.

“Esta bien,” you say.

“Calmase.”

“Estoy aqui.”

You trace their worried cheeks. You pinch their noses for fun, to cheer them up, glad that you cannot see their eyes in the dark. You will sleep lightly tonight because your children cry in their sleep whenever the winds pick up and the rains fall heavily, fearing the coming of a hurricane or tropical storm. They have every right to be fretful. The last hurricane’s

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winds reached a new high, hitting so hard that its name was retired. The hijos were too young to truly experience the last hurricane. All that your children remember is that it raged outside with their father in it. They remember that it took him away for good.

TROPICAL STORMS BECOME hurricanes when the winds pick up. But the power of the storm, the strength of it, is represented by a central pressure reading instead of wind speed even though it is the winds that are terrible, deadly.

The winds picked up and uprooted the banana tree that crushed your husband’s limbs beneath its trunk and buried his face under its wet, soggy leaves.

Hurricanes know who they want.

You could not get the last one to take you. You stood outside for hours, getting drenched. Raindrops fell with a forcefulness you could not describe. The storm within you was more frightening. It raged, picking up speed and swirling uncontrollably, pressing hard against your ribs, plummeting down to your stomach only to rise again and again. The beads of water slapped and pelted you, but the winds would not pick up around you and the stubborn trees clung to their muddy roots, uncooperative. When you finally dragged yourself back into the house, back to your hijos, you felt as if you had been in a fight and lost. So you decided to wait for the next hurricane. They come every five or six years, so by then the children would be old enough to take care of themselves.

The last hurricane knocked the power out of all the generators. With the children, you waited in line for over three hours for a block of ice. You carried your ice around the corner, where the boys raised their guns to your head and took your block of ice away, the same as they had done to the people who had been in front of you, the same as they planned to do to the people coming after you. Nothing personal.

Later — if you have the money — you can buy it back.

So when your relatives on the mainland — in New Haven, Hartford, Philadelphia, Newark, and New York — call to tell you that they have been watching the latest reports and say that the tropical storm is growing and it looks like it will be a big one and ask you how you are doing, you say, “Estoy bien.”

This is the answer you give because they really don’t care and they don’t know anything about being a Puerto Rican in Puerto Rico anymore. When it is too cold on the mainland, they take paid vacations to fly over. They spend their money in the mall in Isla Verdes, buying clothing that is too tight for them, buying makeup that is now too dark for their wintry-pale Americana faces. They ask you to go to the cine with them and you sit there in the theater in San Juan, watching movies in English with Spanish subtitles, wondering if the very irony of the situation escapes them, sure that it does. You and your hijos give up your beds to your

relatives, who sleep blissfully, full of the pasteles, empanadas, and morcilla they have begged you to prepare. They eat your mangoes and papayas as though they are going out of style, excusing themselves by reminding you that mangoes are so cheap here, that they often have to pay almost two dollars for one back at home (home is what they now call the mainland) that is half as sweet. The hurricanes and tropical storms can wipe the mangoes out for seasons at a time so that they become as rare as the coqui and there aren’t any to be had by anyone except by the turistas, and you sometimes have to pay much more than two dollars for one.

That is not what your relatives want to hear.

You have become a postcard to them. Beaches and good food, exotic fruit and salsa clubs; they are no better than the turistas. But you can’t tell them so because they are familia.

The last

hurricane’s

winds reached a new high, hitting so hard that its name was retired.

All your children remember is that it raged outside with their father in it.

WHEN IT IS time for them to leave, you take them to the airport, proud that it is really in Carolina even though it is listed as being in San Juan. They don’t allow family members inside or anyone who is not getting on the flight. You cannot walk your relatives to their gate. You drop them off at the curb. As you drive away, you catch your hijos’ eyes in the rearview mirror. You hold their gazes and drop your voice to a whisper. You point at your relatives’ retreating backs and warn your hijos not to ever become like them. You tell them that if they do, a hurricane will come and sweep them away and they will end up like their father. [NMH]

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Imagining the Lives of Others Award-winning author and college writing professor Amina Gautier has a piece of advice for aspiring writers: Pick up that pen and paper.

“When you write on a computer, your instinct is to revise as you go, and you end up self-correcting with every sentence,” she says. “Starting a project by hand takes that away. You can really get into your scene or your description. Just write until your hand hurts.”

Gautier hauls notebooks with her everywhere; she finds airplanes and Amtrak trains particularly hospitable for writing. “I like those little desks that fold out in front of you,” she says.

Gautier’s second short-story collection, Now We Will Be Happy, published last fall, won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize just two years after her first book, At Risk, won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction.

Over the past 15 years, while publishing stories in journals such as Antioch Review, Kenyon Review, and Iowa Review, Gautier also earned a Ph.D. in English literature and taught creative writing, American literature, and African American literature at several universities before settling at the University of Miami in 2014.

As a child growing up in New York City, she won citywide poetry contests; at NMH, she devoured one English class after another. After landing at Stanford’s graduate creative-writing program, she turned from poetry to fiction writing. “I realized that my real passion was telling a whole story — the plot and dialogue and character development, the setting, the tone. I like building characters and figuring out who they are and what complicates them.”

Gautier’s stories are set mostly in the late 1980s and early 1990s, in predominantly black and Puerto Rican Brooklyn neighborhoods like the one where she grew up. But she emphasizes that her stories are fiction, not memoir. “When people read a story and ask the writer, ‘Is this you?’ it feels like they’re implying that we don’t have the imagination to make something up,” she says.

“These questions haven’t always been asked. Did anyone ask Mary Shelley if she really dug up a corpse and created a monster? It was understood that these were not her real experiences.

“One of the reasons I like fiction writing is that it gives you a chance to live in someone else’s skin, so you’re not just writing about your own experiences,” Gautier says. “You have Hawthorne writing from the point of view of a Puritan woman [The Scarlet Letter], or Harriet Beecher Stowe writing from the point of view of a male slave [Uncle Tom’s Cabin]. That’s the precedent I try to follow: writers imagining lives that are different from their own.”

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Judith Gibbs Shaw ’70 (left) and Stefani Danes ’70, in 2015 and as Northfield seniors

P H O TO : J E FF W O O D WA R D

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When the last all-male Ivy League schools began admitting women 45 years ago, Northfield graduates helped break down the barriers.

S

Pioneers B Y

S A L L Y

A T W O O D

H A M I L T O N

â&#x20AC;&#x2122; 6 5 fall 2015 I 31

When Dartmouth College first went coed

in 1972, a group of male students would sometimes sit in the back of a dining hall with a stack of placards in front of them. Each time a female student passed by their table, the men would flip up a placard showing a number from one to 10, announcing their physical assessment of the student.

“It was juvenile,” says Judy Burrows Csatari ’72, one of the 177 freshman women to enter Dartmouth that fall. She tried to ignore the taunting. “I didn’t like it, but I felt like drawing attention to it and attacking the men for doing it would only make matters worse.” Csatari had given little thought to the possibility that students at the 200-year-old all-male college might be unhappy with women arriving on their doorstep. But being a trailblazer didn’t faze her. She’d already been through one transition when Northfield and Mount Hermon merged and became a single school, and she was confident she could navigate another.

From left: Judith Burrows Csatari ’72, Virginia Tyson ’69, Marcia Sprague ’73

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Dartmouth was the last Ivy League institution to admit women. Yale and Princeton had gone coed in 1969, and the other five schools had either enrolled female students throughout their history or partnered with women’s colleges. The final Ivy push into coeducation arrived on the heels of the social upheaval of the 1960s, changing cultural attitudes toward women, and the unprecedented growth in higher education as baby boomers reached college age.

The women from Northfield and NMH who accepted offers from

Yale, Princeton, and Dartmouth in the first and second years of coeducation had a distinct advantage over most of their peers in those early classes. Their years at NMH prepared them for the intellectual challenges of elite education, taught them time management, and made dorm life second nature; but more important, the women possessed the strength to disregard negative behavior from unhappy male students and the confidence to seek their own path in the midst of turmoil.

“

Conversations about losing tradition proliferated around campus and women became the outlet for the anger.

” P HOTO: CO U R TESY O F NMH AR C H IVE S

As these institutions founded before the Revolutionary War considered accepting female students, each first examined the idea of a sister college. Yale and Princeton explored possible partnerships with Vassar and Sarah Lawrence, respectively, but neither women’s college was interested. Dartmouth briefly flirted with starting a sister college, an idea preferred by alumni, but it failed to gain support from the faculty or administration.

With more applicants coming from public high schools than all-male prep schools, Yale and Princeton feared losing top candidates to coed institutions and then falling into mediocrity. Professors were convinced that enrolling women would improve education; administrators believed they could not exclude half the population if they expected to educate leaders of the future. Within six months of each other (with Yale leading), both

schools announced that to keep up with the changing times, they would accept women for the fall of 1969.

Dartmouth lingered another two years, announcing in November 1971 that it would go coed the following fall. Administrators expressed public concern that young men maturing with limited contact with women might be ill-prepared to work alongside them in the future.

Quietly, they hoped women would help moderate the Greek tradition that ruled social life in Hanover.

The decisions these three schools made had a profound effect on colleges and universities across the country. The Ivy League “was the gold standard of education, the best and most prestigious — and they had kept women out,” says Susan Poulson, professor of women’s history at the University of Scranton and coeditor of Going Coed. “Once they accepted women, it eliminated the idea that single-sex education was superior.”

fall 2015 I 33

From left: Betsy Bullard Morse ’73 Barbara Deinhardt ’69

The schools initially instituted quotas for female students and — to placate alumni, who were ardently opposed to coeducation — pledged not to reduce the number of men they accepted.

Despite this tepid opening of doors, when the fat envelopes arrived at Northfield, then NMH, there was little debate about whether to accept the offers. Barbara Deinhardt ’69, who had wanted to go to Radcliffe, decided to attend Yale instead after reading a New York Times story about the first class of women there. “It made them out to seem like superwomen,” she says. “One had been in the Bolshoi, and another had built a submarine in her backyard. It was so special. How could I turn it down?”

Virginia Tyson ’69 also joined the 250 women in Yale’s inaugural coed class. She recalls, “I was afraid that Yale would be an experiment, and it would turn out badly. My brain said, ‘If you go and it’s a success, you will be in the first class of women. If it’s not a success, you will be one of the few women who went to Yale.’ It was a win-win.”

Stefani Danes ’70 had lived briefly in the town of Princeton as a child and

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decided then — at age 7 or 8 — that she would attend college there. No one disabused her of that notion. So when her application to join Princeton’s second coed class was accepted, it was unthinkable to turn it down. Danes’s Northfield classmate Judy Gibbs Shaw ’70 felt the same way. And Shaw’s mother viewed it as retribution, since she had once worked at Princeton but not been allowed to do graduate work there while her husband earned his Ph.D. Danes and Shaw joined the 178 women in the class of 1974.

For the Dartmouth women, place was important. Betsy Bullard Morse ’73 had fallen in love with rock climbing at NMH and she was drawn to Dartmouth’s outdoorsy nature. So was Marcia Sprague ’73, who had grown up in Vermont. They joined the 271 women in Dartmouth’s second coed class. Like Csatari, they predicted that having survived the NMH merger, they’d be fine.

All came to believe that their colleges intentionally chose confident, independent women who would be able to stand up to men — a Darwinian exercise in helping women find a place in the Ivy League.

Although faculty and undergraduates at all three schools had voted overwhelmingly to go coed, vocal minorities of upperclassmen made women feel uncomfortable. At Princeton, students voiced their displeasure by hanging banners that proclaimed, “Bring Back the Old Princeton.” At Dartmouth, where the women were branded as cohogs — short for “coed hogs” — similar banners declared, “Cohogs Go Home.”

Dartmouth’s deep-rooted Greek tradition controlled the campus’s social life; heavy drinking at weekend fraternity parties was the norm and sexual assault sometimes followed. “Greek life was entrenched,” says Sprague, “and while it might be good for some people, it was not the best social life for everyone. We needed other options and there weren’t any.”

The practice of busing women in from other colleges for weekend mixers and dates continued. The first time she saw such a bus arrive at Dartmouth, Morse felt betrayed. At Yale, Tyson says the women protested that their social fees were being used to host women from other schools; eventually, Yale allowed students to specify where their social fees would go.

Csatari, Morse, and Sprague joined the Glee Club at Dartmouth, where it was standard practice before a performance for the director to flash a sexually suggestive photo from inside his jacket to break the tension and help the men settle down. That stopped when women joined the group. “There was some resentment there,” says Csatari. “They’d say, ‘Now what are we going to do?’” Conversations about the fear of losing tradition proliferated

around campus. “Women became the outlet for the anger,” Csatari says.

Academic acceptance came more easily because women were considered intellectual peers. Tyson recalls some Yale professors asking the often lone woman in a class to provide “the woman’s point of view” during discussions, but generally, the faculty seemed prepared and treated the women and men equally.

Danes, however, had an experience with a faculty member that changed her years at Princeton. As a freshman, she was required to take physical education; she chose a basketball class. “I think it would have been tough no matter what, because I had no ball skills,” she says, but the coach made it unbearable. “He hated the idea of having women at Princeton. He made it clear that I was not welcome.” It didn’t take Danes long to remedy the situation. She elected to take sophomore standing, which had been offered when she was accepted, so she no longer had to fulfill the requirement.

Instead, she spent three years at the university and graduated with the first class of women.

More than 40 years after finishing college, Deinhardt says she felt courageous going to Yale. “I felt I had a mission. I spent a lot of time and emotional resources on making things better for women there.” She joined Yale’s committee on coeducation, which first focused on the school’s physical plant, making the gyms and dorms more female-friendly, and then turned to recruiting more female faculty, establishing a women’s studies program, and increasing the number of women accepted each year. She helped produce a resource publication

“

I felt I had a mission.

I spent a lot of time and emotional resources on making things better for women at Yale.

” for women and convinced Yale to provide space for a women’s center.

Despite all this, she felt distant from the school and after freshman year moved off campus, where her life and relationships revolved around “women’s lib,” she says, and Vietnam War protests. Today, although Deinhardt says she “wishes the battles hadn’t been there to fight,” she’s proud of the changes she helped bring about at Yale.

Sprague created her own world at Dartmouth, “choosing places and people and things to do where I knew I’d be accepted,” she says. She got

involved with Oxfam America and the Tucker Foundation, a campus socialaction organization through which she spent a summer working with children in Jersey City.

Csatari quietly took note of her male classmates’ inappropriate behavior, but says, “I just moved on from it.

I didn’t let it get in the way of accomplishing what I wanted.” After graduating, she experienced more hostility from older alumni; they said that she had “taken” the spot their sons should have had, and that she was wasting her education by having children.

She responded by taking a leadership position in an alumni group, which she says, “put a lid on the negativity because they were seeing a competent woman doing a good job.”

At Princeton, Shaw was surprised by how easy it was to be in the minority. “I felt accepted from the beginning, except for the intermittent students who wished we weren’t there.

It was easy to ignore them. There were plenty of men who did want us there.”

The men in the early coed classes were actually protective of their female classmates, Shaw says; they, after all, had applied to a coed school. The older students had not.

The quotas that Princeton, Yale, and Dartmouth initially established were quickly abandoned, and today, undergraduate women have reached parity with men at Ivy League institutions — not to mention at hundreds of other colleges and universities. They owe much to the determined women of the late 1960s and early 1970s who crossed the barrier into male bastions of education.

“I still love to tell Dartmouth undergraduates that I was in the second class of women,” Morse says.

“I felt like I was a pioneer.” [NMH]

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GAME ON The sTOry of a Fire and a photograph AN ORAL HISTORY

PHOTOS COURTESY OF NMH ARCHIVES

fall 2015 I 37

N

ovember 20, 1965, was, in the words of Suzie Steenburg Hill ’66, a “quintessential New England prep-school football day.” But at Northfield and Mount Hermon, a muchanticipated season-ending game against Deerfield Academy was only the beginning of the day’s drama.

Partway through the first half, Silliman Hall, the science building adjacent to the field, caught fire. Robert Van Fleet, a newspaper executive and the father of one of the Mount Hermon football players, was standing in the bleachers with a camera in his hands, and he snapped a photograph that has become an American sports pop culture icon. The image of the building burning behind both the game and the clusters of fans was published in hundreds of newspapers around the world; it was selected as the Associated Press Sports Photograph of the Year in 1965.

Deerfield won the game that day, to the chagrin of many, and over the years, people see Van Fleet’s photo and ask the same incredulous question: How could a high school sports game go on with a fire blazing just yards away? It made sense at the time, observers recall; school administrators wanted to keep students and spectators safe. And that instinct made sports history.

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Jim Van Fleet ’66 It was the big rivalry game: the Deerfield game. Mount Hermon had a two-year undefeated streak going, so every game that fall had an increasingly feverish pitch, with everyone hoping we could pull off yet another undefeated season. For my teammates and me, football was in the forefront of our minds much of the week leading up to that Saturday. All of us understood what was on the line. And my dad [the photographer] knew it was the last game of the season, so he wanted to be there.

Bill Haslun ’46 We had followed the team around New England that season (wife Jane Everett ’46, John Elliott ’46, his wife Barbara Miller ’45, and a combined six children), and we took our seats in the top rows of the hillside bleachers. When the Deerfield buses arrived, the Deerfield boys marched out onto the field in twos, in blue blazers and with London Fog-type raincoats neatly and uniformly folded over their arms. After the game began, I was watching some students, possibly a cleaning crew, in the attic window of Silliman, having a forbidden cigarette. They disappeared, presumably to finish their labors, and I saw a wisp of smoke waft out the window where the boys had been. I stood up, pointed, and shouted, “Fire!”

The Mount Hermon marching band performed at haltime, but spectators only had eyes for the fire in Silliman Hall.

Roy Taylor ’67 I remember with crystal clarity sitting in the stands, my attention split between the field and the Northfield girls who had come to visit and watch the game. At a certain moment, Jack Baldwin (English teacher), who called the play-by-play for home games, said, “Flash Clark is in on the tackle and … Silliman is on fire!” That’s when everyone saw smoke pouring from the top floor.

“FLASH CLARK IS IN ON THE TACKLE AND …

SILLIMAN IS ON FIRE!”

Steve Webster, biology teacher I had bought an old 1926 Buffalo pumper, put a paint job on it, and formed a little volunteer fire department with a few of the students. All we did was put out fires at the dump down by the river, give rides at kids’ birthday parties, and for the football games, we carried the cheerleaders down onto the field.

We had taken all the hoses off the truck for the cheerleaders, so when

smoke started coming out of the roof of Silliman, I had to race to get the hose. No other fire trucks had arrived yet, so we hooked up to the nearest hydrant and started pumping water.

Some students came over and helped.

Jim Van Fleet On the field, our attention had been riveted on the game, but all of a sudden, everything stopped. I believe Deerfield had the lead at the time.

fall 2015 I 39

Firefighters from several surrounding towns joined the tiny Mount Hermon volunteer fire department in a valiant attempt to save Silliman.

been used in the parade before the game, and it was the first fire apparatus on the scene for an eternity. By the time Greenfield ladder engines arrived, the entire attic was engulfed. My father, Fred Torrey, the assistant headmaster, was part of the adult huddle deciding to keep the football game going. They wanted to avoid students being drawn into danger as volunteer firefighters. We fac brats all assumed Deerfield — the enemy — had set the fire. At the time, it felt like our Hindenburg — “Oh, the humanity!”

Jim Van Fleet We were asked fairly quickly to resume the game. We weren’t told why, but it seemed normal to us, because there wasn’t much else we could do. It was only after the fact that we learned that fire officials felt it would be safer for everyone if the game continued and kept the attention of the fans. So while we were dumbstruck by the building burning and it certainly put a pall over everything, we were pretty focused as football players and we wanted to keep going. And in the second half, we started to come back.

None of us knew what to make of it.

The game officials were talking with the coaches, and we were standing around on the field, wondering what was going to happen. There were people who were leaving the stands to go over to the building. I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but apparently some of them ran into the building before anyone got a chance to stop them, to rescue some of the science materials.

40 I NMH Magazine

David Torrey ’73 I was a 10-year-old faculty kid sitting on the acorn-covered slope behind the Hermon bleachers. From the first shout of “Fire!” and all the arms pointing eastward from Chapel Hill, the view was riveting, with smoke seeping out eerily between the slate shingles at the peak of Silliman’s roof. Mr. Webster’s antique fire truck, loaded with freshmen, had minutes before

Jim Watson ’66 I was on the varsity cross-country team and the race against Deerfield started before the fire was discovered and was supposed to finish during halftime, with the finish line somewhere in front of Silliman. Near Shadow Lake, people started appearing on the side of the course, saying that the race had been shortened but not saying why.

I didn’t recognize any of them and initially thought it was some kind of Deerfield trick. It wasn’t until after the race ended that we realized what was going on.

Tim Hartshorne ’66 I was in the band, and we performed at halftime, the game continued, and it all made sense at the time. I don’t recall any controversy about

“WE WERE DUMBSTRUCK BY THE BUILDING BURNING AND IT CERTAINLY PUT A PALL OVER EVERYTHING, BUT WE WERE PRETTY FOCUSED AS FOOTBALL PLAYERS AND WE WANTED TO KEEP GOING.” it among students. If the game had been stopped, the crowd would have watched the fire instead.

Steve Webster I spent the rest of the afternoon keeping that pump going. It ran off the main engine of the truck, so I had to watch the temperature gauge on the engine to make sure it wasn’t overheating, and the pressure gauges to make sure we didn’t blow up any of the old hoses. I was so focused on keeping the truck pumping that I missed the football game.

Somebody decided to keep the game going so that all the people wouldn’t go over and get in the way of the firefighting effort. It seems like it was the right call. It felt like there was nothing to panic about. The only people who came over during the fire were alumni — and I’ll bet some of the other science teachers were there, too — who formed a bucket brigade, passing everything they could get their hands on out of that building. Fortunately, the lower floors never got involved in the fire.

Bill Haslun The volunteer fire departments from Northfield, Gill, Bernardston, and

Greenfield tried valiantly to stop the spread, to little avail, but at the time, the loss of both the game and the undefeated season was most important. Especially because it was the “evil” Deerfield.

Jim Van Fleet I remember talking with Dad as we were standing around after the game. He said he had taken some pictures of it all, and he was going to try to get the photos on the wire.

So he had a plan.

Steve Webster By the end of the afternoon, it was all over, and we started to think, “OK, what next? How do we teach science classes?” We moved biology up into Social Hall. We still had all our microscopes and most of the stuff we needed to get through the rest of the year.

Sheila Raymond Hazen ’60 I was living in Cambridge, England, at the time of the fire, and I heard about it from my parents, Al [NMH’s longtime choral director] and Ginny Raymond. They had attended the game with my uncle and aunt, Nelson and Doris Raymond. My father said Nelson was the first person to notice

that Silliman was burning. I remember seeing a picture of the fire in a British publication and being very surprised to see news of my school on the other side of the Atlantic.

Warren W. Ayres ’65 I was an exchange student at Cheltenham College in the United Kingdom at the time of the fire.

The student who was head of my residential house showed me a London newspaper with the famous picture, and forced me to admit that this picture had been taken at my old school. He and my other British classmates were incredulous that an American football game would continue to be played while a building burned only a few yards away. This put me at great disadvantage in our ongoing debates as to whether the society and education system with the greatest number of peculiarities was American or British.

David Clark ’66 What was left of Silliman remained standing for months. One January evening, walking back to my dorm from the Forslund Gym parking lot after an ice hockey practice at the Deerfield rink, a teammate and I slipped into the dark building. We walked up the stairs to the second floor. We weren’t sure if the stairs would collapse under our weight.

We finally considered the stupidity of what we were doing and turned around, went down the stairs, and walked out the front door.

Steve Webster I still keep that picture on my refrigerator door, and every now and then a guest will see it and say, “Oh, my, what was that all about?” And I say, “That was the time I owned a fire truck and the science building burned down and there happened to be a football game going on.” [NMH]

fall 2015 I 41

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GAME ON The sTOry of a Fire and a photograph AN ORAL HISTORY

PHOTOS COURTESY OF NMH ARCHIVES

fall 2015 I 43

ALUMNI HALL

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Reunion 2015

Secure your future ... and the future of NMH

“!The only thing that mattered was being

surrounded by people who shared with me one of the best growing experiences of my life. I loved being back, it felt like home, and I wish I could do it again every year.”

Some parts of NMH’s reunion weekend remain reliably the same: the lobster dinner for the 50th reunion class, a intellectual roster of alumni seminars, an emotional Alumni Convocation in Memorial Chapel.

But there always is something new to celebrate. This year brought the first annual Pie Ride, a 30-mile benefit bicycle race that raised more than $2,100 for the NMH Fund; a thumping “Jerusalem” remix from DJ Donnie Dee Blackwell ’05 at the “Tron Tent”; and the momentous announcement that former trustee Richard Gilder ’50 had donated $5 million to to create the Gilder Challenge for Innovation and Opportunity, which will support the school’s soon-to-be-built math and science center as well as a new endowed scholarship fund.

A few other highlights: The 1964–65 undefeated football, wrestling, and cross-country teams were inducted into NMH’s Athletic Hall of Fame.

Alumni said goodbye to retiring teachers Dick Peller, Hughes Pack, Bob Cooley, and Ellen Turner — whose combined tenure at NMH totaled nearly 150 years. And a handful of alumni were feted for their extraordinary contributions to the school.

A charitable gift annuity gives you: • • • • •

Fixed lifelong payments Favorable annuity rates A secure investment Tax benefits A gratifying legacy

Sample rates based on a single life CGA* Age 68 73 78 83 Rate 4.9% 5.5% 6.4% 7.4%

Visit nmhschool.org/plannedgiving

NMH Fund Welcomes Record Gifts The Class of 2015, with the help of a few anonymous donors, raised the most money for its senior class gift than any other class in NMH history. The Senior Gift Committee motivated 95 percent of the class to make gifts totaling $2,438.78 to the NMH Fund. Including the anonymous donors’ contributions, the Class of 2015 gift was more than $13,000.

It was a welcome addition as NMH wrapped up its hunting and gathering for the fiscal year. And, success: more than $3.5 million for the NMH Fund alone — the largest NMH Fund total ever — plus an $9.2 million in cash and $13.8 million in cash and pledges. Alumni donated more than 77 percent of the total amount, up 6 percent from last year; current students and their families contributed nearly 16 percent of the total; and friends of the school gave just over 6 percent of the total. The average gift has increased 29 percent over the last five years, from $543 to $700.

PHOTOS: X XX

or contact:

Jeff Leyden ’80, P ’14 Director of Capital and Planned Giving 413-498-3299 jleyden@nmhschool.org

Sue Clough P ’06, P ’08 Senior Associate Director of Planned Giving 413-498-3084 sclough@nmhschool.org *Rates displayed are for illustrative purposes only.

fall 2015 I 43

REUNION 2015

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ALUMNI HALL

Alumni Awards During each reunion, the NMH Alumni Association presents awards to alumni and NMH community members who have made extraordinary contributions to the school and the world.

LAMPLIGHTER AWARD Mark Henry Jander ’50 (posthumously)

COMMUNITY SERVICE AWARDS Arlene Finch Reynolds ’45 Elias Thomas ’65

WILLIAM H. MORROW AWARD Sheila Louise Heffernon (choral director and performing arts department chair)

YOUNG ALUMNI AWARD J. Peter Donald ’05

ALUMNI CITATIONS K. Peter Devenis ’45 Elaine Rankin Bailey ’55 Warren W. Ayres ’65 Sally Atwood Hamilton ’65 Neil Kiely ’70 Kristin Steele ’90

2014–15 ALUMNI COUNCIL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE www.nmhschool.org/alumni-get-involved Caroline N. Niederman ’78 President thedoc@txequinedentist.com Dorrie Krakower Susser ’56 Secretary dksusser@gmail.com Carolyn “Ty” Bair Fox ’59 Molly Talbot ’93 Nominating committee co-chairs Stuart Papp ’93 Strategic advisory chair J. Peter Donald ’05 NMH Fund chair

P HOTOS: GLEN N MIN SH AL L , C L AIR E B AR C L AY

Dave Hickernell ’68 Awards committee chair Wendy Alderman Cohen ’67 Reunion advisory chair Heather Richard ’91 Donnie Smith ’07 Diversity committee co-chairs Kate Hayes ’06 Young alumni committee chair Marggie Slichter ’84, P ’10, P ’11, P ’12 Ex-officio, staff liaison

fall 2015 I 45

PARTING WORDS

Goodnight Clock, Goodnight Moon

A recent graduate remembers an old landmark as she starts a new life.

by CAROLINA GOMEZ ’15

I have lost count of how many times I have confused the Memorial Chapel clock for a full moon. When walking out of my dorm on the way to the library, a dim yellow full circle catching the corner of my eye. When peering out of my bedroom window, searching for other rooms with their lights on, wondering if anyone else on campus is as restless as I am. When playing Capture the Flag on Thorndike Field on a Friday night.

At first, I was frustrated with myself for repeatedly confusing a clock for a moon. I mean, they are two pretty different things. One is in the sky, and the other is only a couple hundred feet above my head. One comes and goes, stead²y drifting in and out of sight, wh²e the other one never moves. One is somewhat unreliable; the other is always there.

And that is when I realized that I subconscÑusly wanted to confuse the chapel clock for the moon. Now I bet you’re thinking, “Great, this girl is delusÑnal.” But this is where I can thank the NMH English department for teaching me to make far-out — potentially a little overshot — connectÑns like this one: The chapel clock w²l always be there, even after I’ve left campus. It w²l st²l chime every 30 minutes. On a cloudy night, when

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the moon is invisible, the clock will be completely clear. And next year, when I look up at the real moon wishing I was still perched on that beautifully secluded hill, there will be an NMH student looking at the clock, watching those ticking hands, counting down the minutes until they graduate.

Underneath that chapel clock is where we all started. Together. Over time, we became busy. We all changed.

We decided what we were going to do, and where we were going to go. While we lived our racing lives on campus, learning, maturing a little more each day, that chapel clock changed not one bit. It patiently sat there, watching us as we found ourselves.

We didn’t appreciate it in the beginning. We didn’t think about the day when it would no longer serve as our meeting place, bringing us together.

When we wouldn’t be able to listen to its chime, knowing that somewhere across campus, our friend was listening to that same chime. We sometimes disregard what we have and, instead, long for what we don’t have. We all looked up at that clock’s hands, waiting to get one day closer to vacation. One day closer to graduating. One day closer to leaving for good.

So I encourage you to think about that chapel clock. Take a mental picture; wait for its bells to chime in your head, and take note of the feeling you have. Think about how thankful you

“Underneath that chapel clock is where we all started.

Together.” were for all those times its half-hour chime saved you from being late for sign-in, and for its photogenic-ness, making every picture of it an amazing Instagram. Think, too, about how grateful you are to have been a part of the NMH community. Every single moment, every single cycle those hands completed during your time at NMH, you made some sort of impact upon this community.

In the coming years, when you are out walking at night, wherever you may be, and the moon catches your eye, maybe you will confuse it for the chapel clock. Maybe you will be reminded of the life you lived up on that hill.

Maybe you will remember who you were when you first got to NMH, and how you grew into who you are now.

Maybe you will break into a smile. I know I will. [NMH] This is a slightly edited version of a speech Gomez delivered at an all-campus meeting in May 2015.

PHOTO: COUR TESY OF ROY TAYLOR

GIVING BACK

Dig Deep “YOU DON’T KNOW YOUR CAPABILITIES UNTIL YOU’RE CHALLENGED.” Ask David Belletete ’76 why Northfield Mount Hermon holds such a special place in his heart and he doesn’t miss a beat. “I wouldn’t have met my wife Nancy if it weren’t for NMH,” he says. Nancy’s brother-inlaw, classmate Mark Duprey ’76, introduced the two. Belletete also says he came away from NMH with an appreciation for the importance of challenging oneself.

“I went to NMH from Jaffrey, New Hampshire — a very small town — and going to a bigger school was a life-changing experience, with tremendous opportunities athletically, academically, and socially. I encountered stiff competition and it forced me to dig deep. I learned that if you work hard, you will succeed. You don’t know your capabilities until you’re challenged.”

That lesson is one the Belletetes feel their daughters Celia ’12, Camille ’14, and Lillian ’17 have learned at NMH as well. “NMH taught our daughters to be independent and take charge of their lives,” Nancy observes. “They learned that they had to be organized and manage their time wisely. The faculty and staff are always there for the students, but they must advocate for themselves.”

The Belletetes believe that supporting the NMH Fund is the best way to maintain the quality of students, faculty, and facilities that make the school special. “A robust financial aid program helps maintain the diversity of the student body, which we believe is one of the school’s greatest assets,” says David. “I enjoyed NMH tremendously 35 years ago — it was a great place, with wonderful students and a great campus — but it’s even better today, and we want to do our part to keep it strong.”

—Lori Ferguson

PHOTO: MICHAEL SEAMANS

NMH

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