NMH Magazine, Spring 2013

NMH Magazine

13 spring

1*'0( ɄųŷƌɄ)0( -Ʉų

Northfield Mount Hermon

Between Two Worlds Fatima Saidi ’13 came from Afghanistan to get an education. Her plan: to return home and help rebuild her country.

NMH Magazine SPRING 2013 Volume 15, Number 1 Editor Jennifer Sutton P ’14 Managing Editor/Photo Editor Sharon LaBella-Lindale Consulting Editor Rachel Morton Class Notes Editor Sally Atwood Hamilton ’65 Contributor Susan Pasternack Design Lilly Pereira 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 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

13 spring

1*'0( ɄųŷɄƌɄ)0( -Ʉų

features

18 The Road to Inuvik

Parker Peltzer ’12 pedaled 1,200 kilometers from Whitehorse, Canada, to the end of the road.

24 The Boys of Summer

It’s baseball season, so Galen Carr ’93 and Buster Olney ’82 are really, really busy.

26 Her Mission: Change

Fatima Saidi ’13 wants to get an education—for herself and for all girls in Afghanistan.

32 Iconic Images

Photojournalist Brooks Kraft ’82 documents power, presidents, and a country.

36 Remembering Mira Wilson

She led the Northfield School for Girls with a strong hand and an open mind.

departments

2 Letters 3 Leading Lines 4 NMH Postcard 6 NMH Journal 12 Movers & Makers 14 In the Classroom 16 Past Present 42 Alumni Hall 44 Class Notes 96 Parting Words << A tour guide inside the U.S. Capitol rotunda.

See story on page 32.

C O V E R P H O T O : K AT H L E E N D O O H E R TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S P H O T O : B R O O K S K R A F T ’ 8 2 B A C K C O V E R : K E V I N O U YA N G ’ 1 5

LETTERS

COMPLEXITIES OF MOODY

Many thanks to Peter Weis for his balanced, accurate, and lucid description of the Moody legacy in the Fall/Winter 2012 NMH Magazine. Peter has put his finger on the complexities—the ups and downs—of what Max Weber used to call the “routinization of charisma” in connection with the founder’s legacy, and done so better than any other attempt I’ve seen in the 35 years I’ve been associated with the school.

Ted Thornton Retired History and Religious Studies Teacher Northfield, Mass.

NMH AND CHRISTIANITY

I am writing in response to the article “The Moody Legacy: What Does it Really Mean?” authored by Peter Weis in your Fall/Winter edition.

Weis believes that our founder, Dwight Moody, would be happy with the changes that have taken place in the school since his death. Among other reasons, Weis offers this one, “Let’s be clear about one thing: Were he alive today, Mr. Moody would deprecate any efforts to promote his legacy.”

We would all agree that Moody was a humble man who never encouraged a cult of personality around himself, for it was the Lord, not Dwight Moody, whom he sought to glorify. But how

2 I NMH Magazine

could Moody not have desired the continuation of his life’s work—teaching the Gospel and bringing people to faith in Jesus Christ?

Although loving one’s neighbor is a central part of the Christian message (and love of neighbor, I am sure, is still taught at NMH today), there is much more to Christianity than the Golden Rule. (I do not count Moody’s prohibition against dancing and card playing, which your author mentions, as central to Christianity; these were minor relics of the times.) NMH has, in fact, decided to reject other, truly central elements of a Christian worldview. So I think it is quite disingenuous to imply that Moody would be pleased with the modern-day direction of the school.

Although there are surely good things happening, let’s be frank: NMH has changed in ways that take it very far away from the founder’s vision.

Linda Ames Nicolosi ’65 Thousand Oaks, Calif.

FAR-FLUNG INFLUENCE

I enjoyed your piece on the Moody legacy (Fall/Winter 2012). What has never been fully recognized, to my knowledge, was the influence of Dwight Moody (perhaps unknowingly) on the New Thought movement in this country and abroad, particularly on Religious

Science, which is my denomination.

(Religious Science is not to be confused with Christian Science or Scientology.

Our churches, which number more than 400, are known as Centers for Spiritual Living.)

When Dwight Moody and his gospel-singing sidekick, Ira Sankey, made a revival pilgrimage to England, they made a deep impression on a Scottish science teacher named Henry Drummond, who started teaching Sunday school and eventually wrote Natural Law in the Spiritual World, which became a controversial bestseller of its time.

That book influenced a man named Ernest Holmes, a philosopher who developed what is now known as “the Science of Mind,” or Religious Science, which teaches us how to use our minds to promote health, harmony, prosperity, and creativity in our lives through spiritually principled thinking.

Holmes’s book, The Science of Mind, has been called one of the most important philosophical works of the 20th century. Norman Vincent Peale credited Ernest Holmes as the source for many of the ideas he expressed in his famous book, The Power of Positive Thinking.

Bill Arrott ’43 Lake Worth, Fla.

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.

LEADING LINES

An Extraordinary Gift Jump-starting a new science and technology center

by PETER B. FAYROIAN, Head of School

Earlier this year, I had the honor of announcing to Northfield Mount Hermon faculty and staff in Raymond Hall, and then to our student body in Memorial Chapel, the extraordinary gift of $10 million in cash from Dick Gilder ’50.

(See story on page 6.) Reactions from both audiences were, as you can imagine, uniform in enthusiasm and appreciation, and I was able to capture a standing ovation on my iPhone to send to Mr. Gilder and his wife, Lois Chiles. What I haven’t been able to record is the multitudinous expressions of gratitude bubbling up on campus and from the greater NMH community. I wouldn’t have enough memory on my phone, and I can barely keep up with the congratulatory emails pouring in from around the country and the world.

As significant as this gift is for our school, one particular response from a recent alumna has stayed with me. “I’m delighted to learn of Mr. Gilder’s generous gift,” she wrote.

“Of course we should receive gifts like this.

We’re NMH, aren’t we?”

We are NMH. And indeed, we deserve this kind of support from one proud and passionate member of the largest independent-school alumni body in the country. With our rich 133-year-old history and 30,000 heads, hearts, and pairs of hands out there in the world, NMH stands tall amongst our peer schools, not just because of age and size, but also because these buildings on these hills hold a particular kind of student experience. Our mission of engaging the intellect, compassion, and talents of our students has not changed since Mr. Gilder walked our campus more than six decades ago, even though the shape of our institution has changed appropriately over the years. Most important, NMH remains committed to empowering students to act with humanity and purpose, and Mr. Gilder’s philanthropy, toward his alma mater and elsewhere, serves as testament to that goal.

P H O T O : K AT H L E E N D O O H E R

I’m pleased to announce that Mr. Gilder’s gift will provide our students and teachers with the academic and living spaces they deserve: a science, math, and technology facility that meets the needs of 21st-century learning, and faculty housing that is suitable for families and for interacting with students.

Both of these projects have been part of NMH’s master plan as the school completes its consolidation on one campus.

We look forward to breaking ground

“Mr. Gilder’s gift will help provide our students and teachers with the best possible tools for learning.” for new housing this summer, while at the same time we will begin the process of envisioning and planning for the new academic building.

The young alumna closed her email by saying that she looked forward to helping with NMH’s efforts in the future. For that, I am grateful. Yes, we deserve Mr. Gilder’s gift, but we have much work to do in order to see his vision—our vision—come to fruition. I ask for your support as well.

I’m excited to join you in the work ahead, which will give our students and teachers the best possible tools for learning, teaching, and living lives with humanity and purpose.

spring 2013 I 3

NMH POSTCARD

H O T O : Magazine MICHAEL DW YER 4 I PNMH

NMH JOURNAL

EN PLEIN AIR Students painting at Shadow spring Lake. 2013 I 5

NMH JOURNAL

A Transformational Gift The Northfield Mount Hermon community celebrated in February when former trustee Richard Gilder ’50 donated $10 million to help build a new science, math, and technology facility on campus. Gilder’s donation is the largest cash gift in NMH history and among the largest cash gifts from a living donor to any New England boarding school in five years.

Head of School Peter Fayroian announced that Gilder’s gift will jumpstart the school’s plan to create a new facility “that will meet the needs of 21st-century, inquiry-based science education.” The $10 million will be invested while the school works with architects to design the project and raises the remaining funds necessary to complete it. The building could cost approximately $50 million.

Meanwhile, the investment proceeds over the next two years will support another priority project for NMH: the construction of faculty housing on campus. “It has been almost 10 years since the school consolidated on one campus, and we still have teachers living five miles away,” Fayroian says.

“That is not meeting the full needs of a boarding school.”

Gilder, whom The Wall Street Journal has called one of New York City’s “most notable philanthropists,” says he made the gift simply because “four years at NMH changed my life and I wanted to repay the school.”

Gilder has supported NMH for decades, serving as a trustee from 1968 to 1976. He has made substantial contributions to the Richard Glider ’50 school’s capital campaigns, lecture programs, and reunion gifts. His last gift came in 2011, when he gave $1 million to the arts and theater program, and asked that the 225-seat theater in the Rhodes Arts Center be named in honor of his wife, the artist and film and stage actress Lois C. Chiles.

6 I NMH Magazine

“The most meaningful time of my life was during my years at NMH,” Gilder says, explaining his long-standing support of the school. “It was a wonderful period.”

Gilder, 80, is the founding partner of the New York brokerage firm Gilder Gagnon Howe & Co. LLC, and his innovative philanthropy has enriched New York City institutions for nearly 40 years. He helped establish the Central Park Conservancy, of which he is now a trustee; he also is a trustee of the American Museum of Natural History and the New York Historical Society. He is co-founder of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, which sponsors national educational programs in American history. Yale University, Gilder’s other alma mater, awarded him an honorary degree and a Yale Medal for his service. In 2005, President George W. Bush honored him with the National Humanities Medal in recognition of his contribution to the understanding of history.

Fayroian calls Gilder’s $10 million gift “transformational” for NMH, and says he hopes it will inspire other alumni and parents to support the new projects. “It will have an enduring impact on our science and math program and the students and faculty who benefit from it,” Fayroian says. “This is a new chapter for NMH, and we are excited to begin the work ahead.”

PHOTO COURTE SY OF RICHARD GILDE R

Students perform in the winter dance concert, “Heart and Soul.”

Power Up In October 2011, a snowstorm swept across New England right before Halloween, and much of the NMH campus lost power for two days. Alumni Hall and the O’Connor Health and Wellness Center carried on with backup generators, but classes and many activities were cancelled.

That event set in motion the purchase of “The Lamplighter,” a new 1.25-megawatt, 13,800-volt generator, which arrived on campus in late December 2012. It has the capacity to supply emergency power to the entire campus, according to Devin Lockley, assistant director of plant facilities. “We want to be able to keep students on campus and not upset any of the functions that take place here,” Lockley says.

“This was a great New Year’s present for the school.”

P H O T O : D AV I D WA R R E N

F O R T H E R E C O RD

“I am a firm believer in living an adventurous life. You might ask for the definition of ‘adventurous,’ but that’s like asking for the answer to a math problem. Those of you who’ve had me in class know that I’m not interested in your answer—it’s your solution I want to see.”

VICKY JENKINS, math teacher and crew coach, spoke at the 2013 Founder’s Day ceremony in February.

spring 2013 I 7

NMH JOURNAL

where Poets Every

came to , and siblings grandparents , ds da s, asses om it When m ys—to vis cl NMH Family Da r fo ar ye ey is th th — campus and friends ren’s teachers ild ch r ei The th t e. and mee the experienc haikus about ite wr to ass cl ed ng vit were in ght-provoki topics as thou ch su d ws re ve vie e co th poems es at games, ring on athlet ee few ch a s, e on ar si discus e idea. Here el—you get th ap Ch l ia or em from M . of our favorites

math class Humbled by er’s face e my daught I watch, se lifting The mist is serves Everyone de ucation ed Beautiful ke this li In a place

umni m Lunch at Al r, ice crea s, noodle ba ie French fr carbs A delight of

Luck, Moody Style This spring, a 90-year-old Northfield Mount Hermon ritual became available to every student who sets foot in Memorial Chapel. The bronze bust of school founder D.L. Moody was permanently installed in the chapel’s northeast corner, so students attending all-school meetings and events have a weekly opportunity to rub Moody’s nose for good luck.

The bust originally was placed in Sage Chapel on the Northfield campus in 1919. In 2002, it was moved to the Birthplace Museum in Northfield, and made occasional appearances in Memorial Chapel for special events such as matriculation ceremonies for new students, Founder’s Day, and the prize assembly at the end of each year. NMH carpenters settled the bust in its new home in April, which allowed student fingertips ample time to make contact with Moody’s nose before finals, as so many of their predecessors have done before.

8 I NMH Magazine

Northfield Campus Changes Hands At the beginning of the year, Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., the owner of the Northfield campus, announced that it would give the property to the National Christian Foundation (NCF), a nonprofit charitable organization based in Alpharetta, Ga. The NCF is now spearheading the search for a permanent owner for the Northfield campus.

The NCF, established in 1982, is the largest Christian grant-making organization in the world. It has received other Hobby Lobby properties in the past. “We’re thrilled with the opportunity to further preserve the heritage of the Northfield campus,” said NCF Vice President of Communications Steve Chapman.

In order to focus resources on its educational program, Northfield Mount Hermon sold the 217-acre core campus in 2005 to Hobby Lobby, the arts-and-crafts retail chain based in Oklahoma City. Hobby Lobby’s goal was to donate the property to a Christian educational institution, and it invested more than $5 million to renovate campus buildings.

In the 2005 sales agreement, Northfield Mount Hermon retained ownership of numerous properties on or near the campus. In March, as part of the school’s ongoing consolidation to one campus, the board of trustees listed several of them for sale: The Homestead; Green Pastures; the golf course, including the pool, four houses, and adjacent vacant land; and approximately 22 acres of land just south of the Northfield campus. NMH continues to own 2,000 acres in Northfield, most of which is forestland. The board of trustees is exploring how to best steward Round Top, which is co-owned with Moody’s descendants (the Powell family) and the Birthplace.

Visit www.nmhschool.org/about-nmhnorthfield-campus/northfield-campus-faq.

P H O T O : D AV I D WA R R E N

NMH JOURNAL

P EOP LE WAT C H

Spike Albrecht ’12 (in photo) caused a media sensation when the Michigan Wolverines battled the Louisville Cardinals for the NCAA men’s basketball championship in April. Albrecht came off the Michigan bench to hit multiple threepointers and was named to the Final Four All-Tournament team. The real slamdunk: NMH was the only high school in the country to have players on both teams. Mike Marra ’09 played guard for Louisville, though a knee injury kept him off the court this season.

The historian Dr. Eric Foner, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and longtime Columbia professor, visited NMH in April in conjunction with the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. Foner spoke to the NMH community about Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, and what he calls “perhaps the most misunderstood of the documents that have shaped American history.”

“The proclamation often disappoints those who read it. It is dull and legalistic; it contains no soaring language enunciating the rights of man…

Nonetheless, the proclamation marked a dramatic transformation in the nature of the Civil War and in Lincoln’s own approach to the problem of slavery…Lincoln asked the nation to confront unblinkingly the legacy of slavery. What were the requirements of justice in the face of this reality? What would be necessary to enable former slaves and their descendants to enjoy fully the pursuit of happiness? Lincoln did not live to provide an answer. A century and a half later, we have yet to do so.”

IDEAS

Dr. Ainissa Ramirez is an engineer, an inventor, a former Yale professor, a TED speaker, and a self-described science evangelist whose mission is to get people excited about science. In April, she delivered the annual “Science for the 21st Century” lecture: “Weird Metals: Science Inspired by Terminator 2.”

After her father was diagnosed with stage-III cancer, Hannah Green ’14 started an outreach group called the Cancer Team, which quickly became one of NMH’s largest and most successful volunteer efforts. Through bake sales, T-shirt sales, coin drives, and a local breast cancer fundraising walk, it raised more than $6,000 for cancer research and for the Baystate Children’s Hospital in Springfield, Mass.

When Matthew Jackson ’03 returned from Afghanistan, after leading more than 100 combat patrols, he wanted to help fellow soldiers with major injuries.

He entered three ultramarathons and raised $33,000 for the Wounded Warrior Project, which supports rehabilitative efforts for veterans injured in the line of duty. “I run the way my buddies served—with determination, tenacity, and purpose.”

P H O T O S , C L O C K W I S E F R O M T O P : D A N I E L L A Z A L C M A N , E R I C B R O N S O N , G L E N N M I N S H A L L , C O U R T E S Y O F M AT T H E W J A C K S O N , B R U C E F I Z Z E L L

I9

NMH JOURNAL

7 " U 7 / U W H Y

The 80-Minute Class More time, more depth, and a better education

Between 10:10 and 11:30 on a Tuesday morning, physics teacher Tabatha Lotze covers a lot of ground.

She discusses the lab reports her ninth-grade students are handing in, goes over the previous night’s reading assignment on Newton’s laws of motion, guides the class through a lab experiment involving toy-like cars traveling different distances and speeds on a ruled track, gives a lesson on the math behind the lab—force equals mass times acceleration—and coaches the students through a few practice problems at the whiteboard.

What’s special about this picture?

For one thing, Lotze spends 80 minutes with this one group of students—almost twice as long as a typical class at other

longer class periods means teachers and students go deeper into a subject every day. Filling a semester with a year’s worth of material makes a class more challenging. Fewer classes each semester enable students to perform better on their homework assignments, and allow teachers to devote more attention to each student.

“A school’s schedule is how we show what we care about,” says Silbaugh, who also is an English teacher. “To build a genuine learning relationship with students and among students, teachers need time. Students get more of us and better of us in an 80-minute class than they would in a 45-minute class.

Teachers are always thinking about the tension between depth and breadth

If NMH’s schedule is so good for students, why aren’t more schools doing the same thing? high schools. And besides physics, these students are taking only two other major courses this semester. This is Northfield Mount Hermon’s College Model Academic Program (CMAP) in action.

Instituted in its current form six years ago, CMAP is a way of scheduling class time to give students more fullcredit courses every year—six instead of the five they would get at many other schools. It’s also a philosophical approach to education, according to Dean of Faculty Hugh Silbaugh. Having

10 I NMH Magazine

when they’re designing a curriculum, and this schedule allows for depth, which we think is more valuable.”

In a traditional schedule, the school day is divided up into 40- or 45-minute periods, with five or six classes to study for each night. “That means students are doing a daily triage of what things to do well and what things to do poorly and what things to blow off,” Silbaugh says. “At NMH, students are doing three assignments a night. They have fewer masters to make happy. But we have ambitious students and ambitious

teachers, and the work expands to fill the available space.” CMAP also mimics a college schedule, giving students a clearer roadmap for their post-NMH education.

The question is: If CMAP is so good for students, why aren’t other schools adopting a similar schedule?

“Because it costs more,” Silbaugh says. “If a student takes five classes a year somewhere else and six classes a year here, we pay to staff that sixth class.” And NMH’s classes are small— an average of 12 students in each one— which benefits students but requires a bigger faculty.

There are other trade-offs, too.

Because NMH classes last a semester instead of a year, teachers have fewer nights to assign homework. And the time gap that occurs between classes in which material is learned in sequence—math, for example, or a world language—raises questions about students’ ability to retain material. But teachers plan varying amounts of review time into their syllabi, and, as Silbaugh points out, all schools must deal with the “forgetting curve” of summer vacation.

The bottom line, he says, is that schools are “fundamentally pretty conservative,” and CMAP represents an educational shift. But he considers the extended class time and the greater intensity of academic experiences worth it. “Our goal,” Silbaugh says, “is to provide maximum learning and maximum enjoyment for students and teachers working together.”

NMH JOURNAL

Triple Crowns It was a banner season for three winter sports teams: girls’ alpine skiing (see photo, right), wrestling, and boy’s varsity basketball.

The wrestling team captured its fourth consecutive New England Championship, the first team in the league to do so. The wrestlers went on to the national prep school tournament in Lehigh, Penn., and tied for eighth place out of more than 120 teams. This was the team’s fourth time placing in the top 10 at nationals.

The boys’ varsity basketball team wrapped up the winter sports season with an exclamation point, winning its first National Prep Tournament championship at Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, Conn. This was NMH’s fourth time at the tournament, in which the top eight prep school teams in the country go head to head. Playing three games in two days, NMH beat its perennial rival, Brewster Academy, 78–73, for the title.

The girls’ alpine ski team crushed the competition in the Mount Institute Ski League (MISL) in western Massachusetts, finishing an undefeated season with a record of 39–0 and capturing the first MISL championship in NMH history. In their final race of the winter, the skiers took four of the top five finishes, including tri-captain Kinsey Crowley ’13, above, who won the race. With an overall record of 48–2, the team had its best season in 25 years.

THE SHOT

F OR THE RECOR D

“Many athletes would say the best part about playing sports is winning. I used to think the same thing. But after my experience playing with my brothers on the basketball team, I think the best part of sports is seeing yourself and your teammates grow during the course of the season.”

ZENA (KINSLEY) EDOSOMWAN ’13, who spoke at the Winter Athletic Banquet, will attend Harvard in the fall.

T O P P H O T O : R I S L E Y S P O R T S P H O T O G R A P H Y; B O T T O M P H O T O : D AV I D WA R R E N

spring 2013 I 11

MOVERS & MAKERS

Jesse Mayhew ’01, co-founder of CitySprout

Farm to Web to Table

by JENNIFER SUTTON

As a student at Northfield Mount Hermon, Jesse Mayhew ’01 was a selfdescribed “farm kid”: He fed horses, hauled hay, and helped make maple syrup and cider every year. More than a decade later, he’s still ensconced in the world of agriculture, albeit in a more 21st-century kind of way. He’s a co-founder and the communications director of CitySprout, a company that connects farmers and consumers in a new online marketplace for local food. Think Ebay plus Facebook, then add some locally grown tomatoes and a dozen organic eggs— that’s CitySprout.

12 I NMH Magazine

“More and more people recognize the value of eating local food in terms of health, the freshness of ingredients, supporting the local economy, and environmental purposes,” Mayhew says.

But making that recognition a reality isn’t always easy. For consumers, farmers’ markets might be inconveniently located or scheduled, and a CSA (community-supported agriculture) program usually requires hundreds of dollars to join. If you’re a farmer, a market means packing up goods to sell on a speculative basis, and running a CSA compels you to spend more time on marketing your produce and less on actually growing it.

CitySprout’s goal, Mayhew says, is to lower those barriers. The company’s website (www.citysprout.com), which launched last year, invites consumers to set up no-cost, online “communities” in their cities and towns; farmers and other food producers are then able to find ready-made markets for their goods. Once a community is established, food producers send out regular group emails that describe the “offers” available—a dozen ears of corn, say, or an heirloom chicken. Community members decide what, if anything, they want to buy, and they make their purchases immediately with a credit card. (CitySprout takes a 15 percent commission on each transaction.)

The farmers pack up and deliver what they’ve already sold, meeting customers at specified locations.

“We’re applying lessons from the tech industry to the slow food and

P H O T O : C O U R T E S Y O F R E P U B L I C A N N E W S PA P E R S J O H N S U C H O C K I

BRIGHT LIGHTS

“People don’t typically associate technology and social networking with the concept of local food, but we see it as the missing link.” farm-to-table movements,” Mayhew says. “People don’t typically associate technology and social networking with the concept of local food, but we see it as the missing link.”

CitySprout, which is based in Northampton, Mass., currently hosts 260 communities at its website, connecting more than 2,000 consumers with more than 40 food producers.

“We’re trying to grow CitySprout, both as a company and as a network of local-food communities around the country,” Mayhew says. After starting out in Northampton, Cambridge, and Brooklyn, CitySprout zeroed in last fall on Austin, Texas, to test its business model when the growing season wound down in the Northeast. With a year-round growing season and more than 400 small farms within a 100-mile radius, Austin is now home to nearly half of CitySprout’s communities and roughly a quarter of its members.

But that, Mayhew hopes, is just the beginning.

Chinese Grammy for Chung It was while he was a student at NMH that Henry Chung ’95 heard Eric Clapton’s “Unplugged” album and discovered the blues. He picked up a harmonica a few years later, and today is considered one of the top jazz and blues—and gospel—musicians in Asia. Chung’s latest honor: He and his brother, Roger, who live in Hong Kong and perform together as “The Chung Brothers,” won the 2012 Chinese Golden Melody Award (aka the “Chinese Grammy”) for “Best Jazz Artist of the Year.”

Chung first made a name for himself in Washington, D.C., where he attended law school, worked as an attorney, and, at night, played blues harmonica alongside legends such as B.B. King and Joe Louis Walker. He returned to Asia and in 2009, he and Roger released “The Chimes,” the first gospel album made in Hong Kong. Next came “The Chung Brothers Sing the Gospel Songbook of Benjamin Ng” in 2011, which combined jazz, rock, pop, and Christian music in a tribute to the “godfather of gospel” in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong magazine CASHFLOW pronounced the versatile Chungs as “ready to bridge the gap between traditional and new gospel music”….“[as composers] they do not make any distinction between gospel and non-gospel music because committing to a fixed model would limit creativity.”

Everyone Still Loves Lucy Sirena Irwin ’88 has a big mouth.

A big, beautiful, stretchy mouth that she put to good use in her most recent theatrical role as the iconic Lucille Ball in I Love Lucy Live on Stage. The show, which premiered in Los Angeles in September 2011 and recently ended a run in Chicago, honors the Emmy Award-winning television show by recreating the experience a studio audience would have had in the 1950s, with an emcee, two completely reconstructed episodes, and commercial jingles in between.

The Los Angeles Times described the show as “a hilarious real deal.” The Chicago Tribune called Irwin “funny, vibrant, and physically adroit” as Lucy. Irwin, who has appeared in films, television, live sketch comedy, and as multiple voice-over characters in “Spongebob Squarepants,” will next take I Love Lucy Live on Stage to Washington, D.C. She credits David Rowland, the soonto-be-retired director of NMH’s theater program, with getting her started. “He really ignited my interest and passion for theater, so I am eternally grateful to him,” she says.

Sirena Irwin ’88 in I Love Lucy Live on Stage.

PHOTO: ED KRIEGER

spring 2013 I 13

IN THE CLASSROOM

Every semester, history teacher Jim Shea reads and discusses the Declaration of Independence with students in his Government and Civil Liberties class. Then he asks them to rewrite it.

“It’s a brilliant piece of writing,” Shea tells each class. “I want you to think about what Thomas Jefferson was trying to say, and translate those ideas into a dialect or a situation of your own.” The students have two options: re-create the conflict between the Colonists and the British using new words or invent an entirely new declaration of independence between new entities. “There are lots of different ways you can go,” Shea says. “This is your chance to think outside the box.”

VICTOR UDOJI ’14 To remain excited through the long bus rides to basketball games, I listen to a lot of rap music. I also like doing my homework while listening to music because it takes my mind off the length and/or the difficulty of the assignment. But this was crazy. How was I supposed to rewrite the Declaration of Independence? I reclined my bus seat and turned up the music and then it hit me: I’ll write as if the Founding Fathers lived in an urban black community.

Top to bottom: Victor Udoji, Eddie Yankow, Ashley Miles, and Erin Moore.

14 I NMH Magazine

See, like when dudes aren’t down with the crew no more, they have to peace out. With their God-given rights, they can live their own life without having to report to the OGs. We all Equal, but we ain’t thinking the same. If you ain’t tryna show love, then we gotta peace out. And everybody has to know what’s up.

Feel me?

By the laws of Christ, we all equal. That’s my right; shoot, I came into the world with my rights. Even if we got beef, you gotta respect my Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness; we all gotta eat, bruh. We gon make a government that respects these laws, and if they don’t do that, then they gotta bounce. Whoever running things gotta make sure we all safe and happy, or they gotta bounce. We all human, and we don’t mess with that dictator, king, queen, ruler crap, nope.

With all due respect, we can’t mess wit y’all redcoats no more; you can’t control free people, that ain’t happening. Y’all been disrespecting our rights for too long. Y’all been forcing it with these pricey taxes on tea. You taking our cotton, tobacco, and we ain’t get nothing in return. We don’t even have a say in the government y’all running. For a long time, we been asking for y’all to respect our natural rights, and to no avail. Your time is up.

It’s more than evident y’all tryna compromise, so we, the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, gon start a revolution to restore the power of the government to the people.

We coming to get our personal rights back that y’all have been violating for too long.

So we declare, as the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, our independence from y’all crazy redcoats.

PHOTOS: GLENN MINSHALL

EDDIE YANKOW ’13

ERIN MOORE ’14

I’ve played two Shakespearean roles in theater productions, and I’ve read Shakespeare in class, too. I used my knowledge of Shakespearean theater—how men played female roles, and how the atmosphere of the Globe Theatre was boisterous—to create an actor’s declaration of independence from Shakespeare himself. I think I got the iambic pentameter nearly perfect! (Excerpt)

Converting the ideals of the Declaration into the modern language of a Twitter feed was challenging for the first few posts, but it became easier as I went on. I tried to summarize the most important concepts of equality and violations of rights. I read each one out loud as I wrote it, being as “valley girl” as possible.

These men, us actors, hereby separate hence.

In unity, life is of such high sorrow That proceeding wouldst blacken our hearts, Vanquish our souls, and furthermore, murder Our joy, and slay our reasons to live on.

Thus we doth present forth our griefs in sooth.

For in the company of truthful men, The sun doth burn brightest and behold: joy!

Though fie upon such paradise. Tis dreamt.

Aye, we but dream so. Pray harken our call.

Lord, we doth speak the selfsame truths of them: Of Shylock, of Juliet and Romeo And akin to Othello, Ophelia plus Lady Macbeth, Hamlet and Caliban.

Doth not your care for these masks include actors?

Good Lord Shakespeare harken anon for we speak!

Aye we speak our words saying nay to yours!

ASHLEY MILES ’14 I love poetry, and I had done a presentation on Walt Whitman in another class. It seemed like the flow and length of “O Captain, My Captain!” could relate to what I wanted to accomplish with the actual Declaration of Independence, so I replaced words and counted syllables, making sure I didn’t lose the essence of the poem. (Verse one of three) O Britain! Great Britain! do you fear our people have won?

For we have weathered through every attack and now there’s a new song to be sung.

The day is clear and the time’s drawing near, the people close to bursting, For you have driven us through the course of events, the time has come and gone for carousing; So now we speak! We owe it! To you!

O world of control and despair!

Where on the land we were born, We follow you? Au contraire.

USA Free of the UK @ColoniesNoMore E’rbody has the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness! #willsmith #jadensmith USA Free of the UK @ColoniesNoMore All guys are defs equal, and if you’re treated any other way u tots have the right to take a stand!

SPECIALLY if it’s the government.

USA Free of the UK @ColoniesNoMore U really are incompetent #bigword, more soldiers, more taxes, cutting off our trade, btw ur supposed to protect r rights not limit them.

USA Free of the UK @ColoniesNoMore It’s not like we wanna fight. Take it from #Miley, nobody’s perfect, but we need a gov who doesn’t violate r rights e’ry 2 seconds.

USA Free of the UK @ColoniesNoMore We tried to negotiate wit u, we told u how it’s goin’ down. #brotherfromanothermother USA Free of the UK @ColoniesNoMore OMG jk we’re brothers from the same mother!

USA Free of the UK @ColoniesNoMore It’s obvi u can’t play nice!

USA Free of the UK @ColoniesNoMore It’s obvi u can’t be trusted to uphold the needs of the colonies, considering ur approximately 3236 miles away. #smartypants USA Free of the UK @ColoniesNoMore But most of all, it’s obvi we need to take the reins of the pony to get our natural, God-given rights back. #REVOLUTION USA Free of the UK @ColoniesNoMore As of now, consider r Independence declared!

spring 2013 I 15

PAST PRESENT

To Constantinople and Back

by PETER WEIS ’78, P ’12

What do a ceremonial suit of chain mail, a camel’s saddlebag, and a silver loving cup inscribed in Greek— (“A man fitted to accomplish great things”)—have in common? They document the life and career of Frank L. Duley, class of 1893, who came to Mount Hermon from tiny Lanesville, Mass., on the coast near Gloucester, and who, six years after graduating, found himself appointed by President William McKinley to be Marshal of the Consular Court at Constantinople, Turkey.

16 I NMH Magazine

While the title was impressive—the chain mail was a ritual gift symbolic of the position—Duley was destined to dedicate his life’s work not to American interests abroad, but to Northfield and Mount Hermon. He arrived in Gill as a student in 1891 with his head full of Caesar, Cicero, and Xenophon’s Anabasis. He went on to Williams College, and in the spring of 1897, he rejoiced to friends at Mount Hermon about his upcoming appointment to teach Latin at Robert College in Constantinople, observing, “I shall have time to see Europe, and make some progress in eastern languages, especially Modern Greek.”

Two-thirds of the way through his three-year teaching term, he was asked to take on the consular post. There seems to have been little heavy lifting associated with the office, and perhaps this respite was a good thing, because from Duley’s return to the U.S. in 1901 until his death in 1937, he had little time for rest.

Why Duley chose to come back to his native Massachusetts is unclear, but a childhood friend from Lanesville, Blanche L. Steer, may have had something to do with it. They were married

PHOTOS: COURTE SY OF NM H ARCHIVE S

FROM THE ARCHIVE

“Duley arrived in Gill with his head full of Caesar, Cicero, and Xenophon’s Anabasis. Six years after graduating, he found himself appointed

by President William McKinley to be Marshal of the Consular Court at Constantinople, Turkey.”

on August 21, 1901. By the end of that same month, they had taken up residence at Mount Hermon, and Duley was busy teaching Greek and Latin; he also found time to organize a faculty golf club and set up a “links” on campus. In 1905, coinciding with the birth of their son, a new cottage was provided to the Duleys in the southwest corner of the campus. A Dutch Colonial Revival, it stands at the top of “heartbreak hill” and still bears the name of its first occupants: Duley House.

Duley found campus life inspiring, enough so that he wrote “A Hermon Hymn,” set to the tune of Franz Joseph Haydn’s “Austrian Hymn” and sung for the first time on Thanksgiving Day in 1909. (It can be found in the Northfield and Mount Hermon hymnal, No. 225). However, after teaching on the west bank of the Connecticut River for more than a decade, Duley followed his Mount Hermon friend and colleague, Charles Dickerson, to Northfield. Dickerson had migrated the previous year to take up the reins as principal, and when he had a sudden need for a Latin teacher in 1912, Duley stepped in and began a busy 25-year career at Northfield.

He completed a master’s degree in history in 1915; taught Greek, history, and Bible classes at Northfield in addition to Latin; and at various times headed both the classics and history departments. In 1925, when Dickerson abruptly resigned, it made sense to give the interim position to the man whose life was the busiest, but whose friendliness was noted as his outstanding characteristic. Duley thought he might serve a year, maybe two, but it took three years to find the right principal in the person of Mira Wilson (see page 38), and another before she could come to Northfield. Duley worked tirelessly to ensure a smooth transition, then happily went back to the classroom for eight more years.

Est difficile discedere et vos omnes relinquere. (“It is difficult to leave and to leave you all.”) With these words, Frank Duley retired in 1937. Returning with Blanche to his beloved Lanesville, Duley finally had time to engage in the pastime that previously had filled only a few spare moments—whittling. Sadly, retirement would last only six months.

Duley died December 28, 1937. He was 65.

DULEY’S TREASURES Top to bottom: A chain mail byrnie from Turkey, a camel saddlebag, a silver loving cup given by Mount Hermon students, and a chain mail aventail.

spring 2013 I 17

THE

ROAD

T O

INUVIK

BY PARKER PELTZER ’12

18 I NMH Magazine

P H O T O : PA R K E R P E LT Z E R

A L ONE ON A BIK E IN T HE C A N A DI A N A RC T IC spring 2013 I 19

BY

the time the pneumatic hiss of brakes announced Whitehorse, the Yukon Territory town at the end of the Canada bus line, I had been riding a Greyhound for four days and 6,000 kilometers. As quickly as my stiff legs would allow, I made for the door, then hefted my boxed-up bike onto the cold concrete. In the gray midnight of late summer, I cut away the packing tape I had put on in Montreal; remounted the pedals, racks, and wheels; got the saddle and the bars just right; and then went across the street to a 24-hour Tim Hortons doughnut shop. Waiting for sunup, I stretched out my map.

My plan was to ride the one thin line that was printed in red on the mapâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;1,200 kilometers north to the town of Inuvik, above the Arctic Circle.

First, I would follow the Klondike Highway, then the Dempster, Canadaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s northernmost highway, which connects a strand of small communities to the rest of the continent to the south and to the Beaufort Sea to the north. The road roughly follows the trail once used by Mountie patrols, and is named for their Inspector Dempster, who made the trek many times by dogsled.

I had learned about the Dempster Highway from a friend at Northfield

20 I NMH Magazine

Mount Hermon. The images I found online showed a dirt road shining with recent rain as it pitched down to a twisting river, the far hills blanketed with black spruce and gold larch. My first thought was how remote and alluring it looked, probably the farthest, most challenging place I could bike. I had been looking for an adventure to take on between the handful of jobs I was working in the year before I went to college. Now I knew what I was going to do.

I was not worried about the riding or the distance. When I was a freshman at NMH, Outdoor Program coach

P H O T O : K AT H L E E N D O O H E R

My plan was to ride the one thin line that was printed in red on the map—1,200 kilometers north to the town of Inuvik, above the Arctic Circle.

Steve Allison talked me through the restoration of an aging Raleigh Pursuit.

A month later, with minimal training, I did my first century ride. Since then, I’ve understood how far just a little fitness and determination can go when paired with a bicycle. Motivated largely by the joy I got from riding and fixing bikes, I made plans: In August, I would ride roughly 300 kilometers from my home in Wilder, Vermont, to Montreal as a sort of shakedown, then travel west by bus to Whitehorse. Back on my bike, I would head north and race the end of the seasonable weather to Inuvik.

IN

Whitehorse, I bought bear spray and stove fuel, stowed my bike box with a man I met on the bus, and set out, with a view of frosted mountains and the rushing Yukon River before me. Propelled by a brisk tailwind, I covered 50 kilometers and camped at the bulge in the river known as Lake Laberge, made famous by Robert Service’s poem, “The Cremation of Sam McGee.” The next morning, I passed a sign that said, “You Are Now Leaving the 911 Service Area.”

Four days on the Klondike Highway got me to the Dempster Highway

Junction, where a campground offered washing machines and showers, neither of which I’d used since Montreal.

I was excited to spend the night somewhere besides just off the side of the road, and the prospect of company was good, too, since I had gone a couple of days without speaking anything more than greetings to inquisitive motorists.

In the morning, I continued north, and soon after I passed the foreboding road signs that read “Next Services 379 Km” and “Inuvik 736 Km,” the pavement ended. The highway is dirt because it has to be. Dirt is flexible, and, when laid down thick, it insulates

spring 2013 I 21

My goal for the trip was simple.

Through that simplicity, no matter what else happened, I felt extraordinarily peaceful.

the permafrost below, preventing the road from sinking and shifting. What is good for maintenance, though, can be bad for cyclists and bikes. In dry weather, a passing truck can throw a half-kilometer trail of salty, metallic dust that must be rinsed out of one’s mouth with a drink; when wet, the surface is unbelievably like cookie dough in consistency, making every pedal stroke an effort. It accumulates thickly on bike components, stripping their lube and leaving rust flecks in mere hours.

But in light traffic and perfect weather, I rode without incident into a narrowing cut in the Ogilvie Mountains, heading toward the Great Divide. All day I stayed in low gear and climbed. After a glimpse of the eerie, leaden spire of Mount Tombstone, the rain started, but I figured that if I was biking over the Great Divide, I might as well see some flowing water. A few minutes later, when my wheels tipped back downhill, I did. I made camp at the headwaters of the Blackstone River, in a beautiful trough between mountains, too high up for anything to grow but the red and gold shrubs that spread across the valley floor.

22 I NMH Magazine

The next day, I rode out of the valley through a barren cut in the gravelly mountains called Windy Pass, and the day after that, I climbed Seven Mile Hill, which took me all morning on account of its steep and constant grade. From there, on the eastern edge of the high and wind-buffeted Eagle Plains, I looked out over a dizzying drop and watched a powerful storm roll through the Ogilvie River’s basin below. Near the Dempster’s midpoint, a gray wolf followed me closely for 10 kilometers, until I found a long downhill. During an otherwise slow and muddy week, I crossed the Arctic Circle just before more heavy rain made me dive for my tent.

Some days I rode 120 kilometers, and on others, when there was driving rain and deep mud, I could only manage 30. My goal for the trip was simple: ride to Inuvik. Through that simplicity, no matter what else happened, I felt extraordinarily peaceful.

Every day, I would work toward my goal by riding as far as I could; then I’d make camp, eat my split peas and rice, read one of the books that filled half a pannier, either write a letter or in my journal, and go off into the deep sleep of a bike tourist. There were times when the routine was less idyllic than it sounds; it could get lonely, even occasionally miserable, but even through those hours, it was peaceful.

P H O T O : K AT H L E E N D O O H E R

AS

I descended through the Richardson Mountains, a mounting wind began to dry the road, and a sudden blast of it caught me by surprise on the soft gravel. I was instantly on the ground, sliding with my bike down the hill. When I stopped, my back felt hot. I started coughing. The recognizable scent of peppers was all around; my bear-spray canister had burst when I hit the ground, and I started to feel the effects of capsaicin soaking my new road burn. The dizziness and the broken helmet in my hands told me I also had hit my head.

I got a lift to a highway maintenance camp, where I was examined by the road crew’s EMT; though bruised up, I was fit to ride. I made camp near Fort McPherson and stayed for three days, recovering, waiting for the rain to stop, and running into town to loosen up and call home. An old fellow from a tribal interpretive center—Robert—gave me some smoked fish and vegetables to eat, a welcome change from my usual, and I spent a day reading his books.

Even months after the trip ended, I can reride every kilometer and see the faces of the people I met—every one of them as kind and open as Robert. The few nights I stayed in campgrounds, the other travelers and I would make a fire in the communal

cooking shelter, share a meal, and talk late into the night. Sometimes, motorists would offer me a snack, and later, when I was on my way back to Whitehorse, hitchhiking was easy, too. As I retrace my path, I whisper my gratitude again and again for each meal and lift and place to stay, and each bit of advice or company I received.

I had one additional bit of fortune before the end of the ride. Two days south of Inuvik, just past the Mackenzie ferry crossing, I was pedaling up the road, in the middle—the only travelable lane, since the dirt gets soft and steeply falls away on either side. Consequently, when I passed a shrub and saw a black bear behind it, I was perhaps three meters away from it instead of the one meter that I would have been had the left side

P H O T O : C O U R T E S Y O F PA R K E R P E LT Z E R

of the road been more solid. A second black shape was on my other side—a cub. The cub looked curiously at me, but the startled mother dove for the bushes as I rode away, white-knuckled.

E

ighteen days after leaving Whitehorse, I felt the pleasing tingle of asphalt beneath my tires as I rode into Inuvik. This town of 3,500 people is an impossible-seeming place. Established by the Canadian government to manage and supply the northernmost part of the Yukon and Northwest Territories, the town constructed buildings (as well as the water and sewer lines) on pylons to protect the permafrost. Many are brightly painted—schoolbus yellow, emergency red, and even tropical teal—to force color between the gray sky and brown earth. Milk costs $9 a gallon. Fruit is

affordable only when the fruit truck from Edmonton comes every two weeks. The sun is up through most of June and July, and in December and early January, it does not rise at all.

For three days I stayed in Inuvik, in awe of the challenge of maintaining a town in such a place, but also seeing how the harshness could be compelling to its residents. When it was time for me to hitchhike back to Whitehorse, and there, catch the bus for home, already in my mind was a line from another Robert Service poem, “The Spell of the Yukon”: “I want to go back, and I will.” Preferably, that going-back will be on a bicycle, where there is no windshield, no protective frame, where everything around is absolutely and inseparably part of the journey. [NMH]

spring 2013 I 23

BY JENNIFER SUTTON

t

Boys

of

SUMMER baseball

It’s season, which means GALEN CARR '93 a BUSTER OLNEY '82 are really, really busy.

WHEN GALEN CARR ’93 WAS 7 YEARS OLD, HE CAUGHT A FOUL BALL AT FENWAY PARK IN BOSTON.

he travels around the country and the world, looking for talent to bring back to Boston.

Every couple of weeks, he talks It was one of his first visits to Fenway, Galen Carr to Buster Olney ’82, the ESPN more than 30 years ago, yet he tells baseball analyst who covered the the story as if it happened yesterday.

Yankees for a decade for The New “I’m all suited up, I’ve got my Red Sox York Times and who now writes for ESPN: The uniform on,” he says. “The ball comes up off the bat Magazine and ESPN.com, and is a commentator and I stand on my seat. My glove is out, it’s a crowd on ESPN’s “Baseball Tonight.” Despite the fact of hands, and the ball hits the glove. I open it up and that they work on opposite sides of an industry— there it is—the pearl, sitting there. I turn around and baseball management and journalists aren’t always see my mom laughing hysterically. She can’t believe it.” cozy—Carr and Olney’s common NMH experience Carr spends most of his waking hours thinking about keeps them connected. baseball. As a special assignment scout for the Red Sox,

24 I NMH Magazine

P H O T O : M AT T H E W T H O R S E N . C O M

“People who aren’t into will say, ‘WELL, EVERY GAME’S t SAME.’ But every game is completely different. Each game is like a human hand.”

baseball

observer, too, with decades of staThey return to campus most tistics stacked up in his brain, but winters to lead the school’s as a journalist, he takes a more annual Hot Stove League discuspanoramic, questioning view of sion, in which local baseball fans players and teams. waiting eagerly for the coming “It’s like a chess game—the season gather to evaluate teams, more information you learn, the statistics, and the latest dramas, more it leads you to other things which this year included players’ you want to find out and undersalaries, Hall of Fame nominees, stand,” Olney says. “It might be the questionable merit of onewhy a particular pitch is thrown game playoffs, and performancein a particular situation, or why enhancing drugs. a decision is made by any given “Baseball never gets boring,” team. How does a team allocate Carr says. “I probably see 130 or money? What are the politics 140 live games every year, and involved? Galen mentioned narwhen I’m home, I’m watching rative, but soap opera is more games, just like Buster is. Every like it for reporters who cover game has its own narrative; even the sport on a daily basis. What if you’re sitting in the same stakind of mood is the pitcher in? Does he get along with dium, watching the same two teams for four days in the catcher? Is the shortstop paying attention? Two a row, there’s something incredibly unique about each years ago, the Cubs had this terrific young shortstop, setting, each pitch, each out, each inning.” an incredible talent, but during a game, ESPN cameras “It’s a series of crossroads, constantly,” Olney says. literally caught him with his back turned as a pitch was “People who aren’t into baseball will say, ‘Well, every being thrown. He was like a kid looking at flowers in game’s the same.’ But every game is completely different. the outfield.”

Each game is like a human hand.”

Which is just what Carr and Olney once were.

Olney began writing about baseball soon after he They grew up 75 miles apart in rural New graduated from Vanderbilt University, covering England—Carr in Walpole, New Hampshire, the Triple-A Nashville Sounds for the Nashville Olney on a dairy farm in Randolph Center, Banner. From the San Diego Union-Tribune Vermont. They listened to games on the and The Baltimore Sun, he moved to the radio and went to Fenway Park once Times and then ESPN. He also has or twice a year. “That first time written two nonfiction books—The you go into a big league park and Last Night of the Yankees Dynasty that expansive green opens up—you and How Lucky You Can Be: The never forget it,” Carr says. “And then Story of Coach Don Meyer—and is at Buster Olney you get to go into a park like that every work on a third. day. It’s pretty special.”

Carr played baseball at NMH and Still, when baseball becomes your Colby College, and found his way first job, you stop being a true fan. “Once I started coverinto an internship with the minor-league Burlington ing sports, that totally went out the window,” Olney (Vermont) Expos. After teaching humanities at NMH says. “I don’t care who wins anymore. I just root for for a year and working at Smith Barney in Boston for interesting stories. But I would love to almost get a another, he joined the Red Sox. restart button. At some point in my life, I hope that I Carr is an observer, taking in every detail about a can just turn on the television and watch the games and player; he weighs strengths and weaknesses, speculating root for teams the way I did as a kid.” [NMH] what that player can do for the Red Sox. Olney is an

P H O T O : N I C O L A S S TA F F O R D

spring 2013 I 25

Her Mission:

Change Fatima Saidi ’13 wants a good education—for herself and for all girls in Afghanistan.

BY M EGAN TADY

O T O : KMagazine AT H L E E N D O O H E R 26PIHNMH

spring 2013 I 27

When 18-year-old Fatima Saidi first encountered the Atlantic Ocean last summer, she was shocked to see so much water in one place.

“I did not think the ocean was this big,” she says.

She was fresh off a plane from her hometown of Kabul, Afghanistan. She had come to the United States to study English at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, before settling down as a one-year postgraduate student at Northfield Mount Hermon.

While Zahra, a classmate from Afghanistan who now attends St. George’s School, ran ahead into the waves, Saidi hung back at the water’s edge. She wrapped her arms around herself and looked out at the horizon. “I am quite jealous because in some parts of my country, because of global warming, there is no water for people,” she says. “Is it fair, this big ocean that no one is using, only swimming in?

But on the other side of the world, people are dying for a drop of water?”

If Saidi doesn’t dash playfully into the ocean, perhaps it’s because she knows that on the other side of the world, a country is watching her—and waiting for her. Girls and women in Afghanistan have been denied human rights for years, including access to education, and even in today’s post-Taliban regime, going to school remains out of reach and dangerous for many.

By 2007, just 6 percent of Afghan women over the age of 25 had received formal education. According to the United Nations, there were 185 documented attacks on schools and hospitals in 2011 by armed groups who oppose girls’ education. Last fall, a 14-year-old Pakistani girl named Malala Yousafzai was shot by the Taliban after she spoke out in support of women’s education. “There are a thousand Malalas that no one knows about,” Saidi says.

Saidi is one of the lucky ones. Most girls her age in Afghanistan are already married with children. Her own mother was married at 13. Yet her parents made the uncommon decision to keep her in school when she was a young girl instead of pulling her out to prepare for an early marriage. Now she is among a small fraction of young women from her country who are traveling to the U.S. to continue their education. The opportunity is precious, the pressure enormous.

“I’m the first girl in my family to go to school,” Saidi says. But she arrived on the NMH campus last fall with more than a desire to make her family

28 I NMH Magazine

proud. Her goal is to go to college, and then to help blaze a trail toward educational equality for women in Afghanistan. “My mission is ‘change,’” Saidi says. “It is a big word, and I know that I cannot change everything, but at least I can open the way.”

Saidi is the oldest of seven children. In 1997, when she was 2 years old, her family fled their home village of Jaghory in the Ghazni province of Afghanistan to live in Pakistan and avoid the Taliban. In 2005, they returned to live in Kabul. The American war in Afghanistan was well under way, and Saidi spent her teen years watching her country navigate a U.S. occupation, insurgent fighting, and reconstruction efforts.

Fortunately, she was in school— despite the fact that her first suitor had visited the family’s home when she was in first grade. “My father could have easily said, ‘You don’t need to go to school,’” Saidi says. But he had grown up during Afghanistan’s civil war and had lived as a refugee; somehow, that made him choose a different path for his daughter.

“I’m thankful for that decision,” Saidi says. “Slowly, I figured out that girls can be in first position.

Girls can do this. Girls can talk.

School turned me into a very strong feminist.” In 2008, when the Ministry of Education organized a student debate, to take place in front of Parliament on the topic of democracy and Islam, Saidi was the only girl among 10 boys invited to participate.

She won first place.

Her performance caught the attention of a nonprofit group called School of Leadership, Afghanistan (SOLA), which operates a small private school for girls in Kabul, offering them a safe space to study, extra classes in addition to those available in public school, and help in finding

educational opportunities abroad.

In 2010, Saidi joined SOLA, first as a day student and then as a boarding student. SOLA connected her with an American mentor who happened to be familiar with NMH. Saidi captivated the NMH admission committee, according to Dean of Enrollment Claude Anderson, who also is one of her advisors on campus. With a goal of returning to Afghanistan and starting her own business, Saidi viewed a year at NMH as a chance to learn not only about new academic ideas, but also new ways of understanding and interacting with people of different cultures. “One person [on the committee] said she could be president of Afghanistan someday,” Anderson says.

“She was influencing people before she even got here.”

When Saidi arrived on campus, she was in awe. “I never saw so much green in my life. I fell in love,” she says. She is no shy wallflower; as she sinks into a chair in the admission office to conduct an interview for this story, she offers tea as if she owns the place. Her megawatt smile is infectious, and she is quick to exchange hugs with the admission staff.

Before she dives into talking about her life on campus, Saidi wants to discuss Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, which she read in her English class.

“I don’t like this story,” she says.

“How can someone kill themselves for someone else? It is not acceptable.

You are killing yourself for a man?

Why would you do that? You are worth more than that.”

That is how Saidi operates: examining each new idea as if she is trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube. At NMH, she catapulted herself into classes and activities. “I need to see everything,” she says. “I need to know everything.”

She learned how to use a calculator in math class. She ate turkey on

P H O T O : K AT H L E E N D O O H E R

“

I’m the first girl in my family to go to school. I know that I cannot change everything, but at least I can open the way.

”

spring 2013 I 29

Thanksgiving, hurled a bowling ball down a lane, hiked a mountain, and petted a dog—all of which she had never done before. She joined NMH’s Concert Choir, even though, she says, “When I first came here, I didn’t like to shout because I grew up in a country where girls are not even allowed to talk loud.

But now when I go into choir, I shout as much as I can. And I don’t feel bad.”

Coming from an educational background that favors rote memorization, Saidi struggled with concepts such as critical thinking, and with the various technology tools available to students at NMH. “It is like I am in a running match and the other people are so far ahead of me, but I have to run with them,” she says. Yet her mastery of languages is impressive; besides English, she speaks Hazaragi—her native dialect—as well as Dari, Pashto, and Urdu.

At NMH, she began studying Chinese.

Anderson marvels at her open-mindedness. “She says things like, ‘If you’re going to work with people, you’ve got to understand them,’” he says.

“That’s coming from a teenager,” he says. “Sometimes I want to ask her, ‘Who are you?’”

Saidi sometimes wonders that herself. The NMH community was quick to embrace her—“She draws people to her,” Anderson says—and that helped her acclimate. Back in the fall, she made instant friends with her American roommate, who hung an Afghan flag on their door to welcome Saidi when she moved in. Yet fitting in with her peers is often a challenge.

“I’m experiencing two different things that you can’t compare,” Saidi says. “While I’m talking about Afghanistan, I have to think like an Afghan girl.

I should not forget those things. How girls should behave. How a girl should not smile. I have to train myself. On the other hand, I have to be a happy American girl to be accepted in this society, too. I have to push these two worlds to the middle.”

There are some things she just can’t get used to at NMH. “When people eat in the dining hall, they pick up a lot of food, but they never finish it,” she says.

“In the other part of the world, poor people don’t have a piece of that bread to be alive. Some of these things make me think and even cry.”

Sometimes Saidi struggles to convey her perspective to NMH classmates, and it makes her feel lonely and far from home. She gestures to the towering trees on campus. “These trees and I, we have become quite close,” she says.

“I tell them things that people cannot understand.”

One person who does understand much of what Saidi is experiencing is Shabana Basij-Rasikh, the managing director of SOLA, who dressed as a boy to attend school in Afghanistan during the Taliban regime. After the fall of the Taliban, she attended high school for a year in the U.S. through the State Department’s Youth Exchange and Study (YES) program and then went on to Middlebury College. In 2008, while still an undergraduate, Basij-Rasikh founded SOLA with Ted Achilles, an American who had been one of her teachers in Afghanistan. She is NMH’s 2013 Commencement speaker.

This year, SOLA enrolled 25 female students at its facility in Kabul. BasijRasikh believes that an educated workforce is the country’s best hope for overcoming the Taliban and that women can be instrumental in rebuilding the country. Afghanistan is the 16th least-developed nation in the world, according to the United Nations Human Development Index.

Funded by private donors and grants from foundations, SOLA helps its students apply to top high schools, colleges, and universities around the world.

30 I NMH Magazine

“They are the future leaders of Afghanistan, who need up-to-date, 21st-century education to be prepared,” Basij-Rasikh says. There are currently 18 SOLA graduates studying in the U.S., Bangladesh, Jordan, and the United Kingdom. The organization strongly encourages its students to return to Afghanistan after completing their studies abroad.

“For [Saidi] to have this amazing opportunity right now and ahead of her is rare and huge,” Basij-Rasikh says. “It’s my hope that she is going to use these skills, knowledge, and education to benefit her country.”

Ask Saidi if she will return to Afghanistan after college, and she beams. “One hundred percent is weak. I want to go back more than 100 percent,” she says.

In her dorm room in Lower South Crossley, Saidi opens her laptop and clicks through photographs of home.

She points to a photo of her youngest sister, whom she affectionately calls “the little devil.” She says her sister is allowed to wear clothing that Saidi could never wear growing up because it wasn’t deemed appropriate for a girl.

Toward the end of her first semester at NMH, Saidi cut her long, dark hair to her chin. “Now I am giving [myself ] a chance of being who I want to be,” she says. “Cutting hair is a small thing, so I told myself, ‘You can do that.’”

She uses Skype to talk with her family and misses arguing with her brothers. “I even miss the war,” she says. “That feels like home. That’s what I grew up with. Sometimes I think I am becoming spoiled to not hear the sound of bullets. I’m afraid to get engaged with this much freedom and ‘good life’ that I will forget.”

Basij-Rasikh thinks Saidi will not forget. “I know that because of her interest and love for her village, deep down inside, she will do

“

When I first came here, I didn’t like to shout because I grew up in a country where girls are not even allowed to talk loud.

But now when I go into choir practice, I shout as much as I can.

And I don’t feel bad.

whatever she can to help her people,” Basij-Rasikh says.

That already has happened within Saidi’s family. “My father is always saying, ‘You changed me,’” Saidi says.

“I don’t know how I did that, but I changed him to be a strong supporter of me. I respect my sister as much as my brother and I’m making sure that now my mother and father are doing that, too.”

Saidi also has contributed to change at NMH, according to Lorrie Byrom, director of the Center for International Education. “She is an articulate Muslim woman who has been helpful in eradicating stereotypes about her faith and her situation as a woman in that culture,” Byrom says.

Still, there are moments when Saidi feels overwhelmed by her mission, or enticed by her friends—like any teenager—to put off studying. “When I am feeling tired about not doing my homework, and thinking that I will do it later and go with my friends instead,” she says, “I tell myself, ‘Fatima, if someone else were here, she could get more advantage of this opportunity, so feel the responsibility.’ That keeps me working.”

Perhaps the thought of her father keeps her working, too. At home in Afghanistan, people ask him, Why did you send her? Why should a girl go to America for an education?

“Most of the time he is just quiet,” Saidi says.

Perhaps, also, the thought of her younger sisters keeps Saidi working—and the thought of other girls in Afghanistan who might follow in her footsteps and pursue their own educations. “I don’t want to be the start and the end,” Saidi says. “I want other Afghans to come.” [NMH]

”

P H O T O : K AT H L E E N D O O H E R

spring 2013 I 31

ICONIC IM AGE S

+

PHOTOJOURNALIST BROOKS KRAFT ’82 CAPTURES THE MOMENT.

spring 2013 I 33

2

1

3

4

B RO O K S K R A FT

first began publishing his photographs when he was photo editor of The Bridge at Northfield Mount Hermon. Since then, he has covered seven American presidential campaigns, flown on Air Force One to more than 50 countries, and traveled with Nelson Mandela to document South Africa’s first democratic election. His award-winning images have appeared in TIME Magazine for 15 years, including on more than 25 covers; in The New Yorker, Business Week, The New York Times Magazine, People, The New Republic, and The Atlantic; and in hundreds of publications around the world.

All of Kraft’s accomplishments stem from a singular purpose: “I try to capture the essence of my subject, whether it’s a historical event or a simple portrait,” he says.

Sometimes that means a quiet, intimate approach. Other images require a wider philosophical angle. Many of Kraft’s most notable photographs have to do with the themes of power and patriotism. “When I photograph at the White House,” Kraft says, “I’m interested not just in President Obama, but also in iconic visual symbols of the American presidency, such as Air Force One and the military.”

And in a world so dominated by video, why stay with still photography? “We live in the midst of a constant barrage of moving imagery, where everything seems to change in an instant,” Kraft says. “But a still photograph can capture something special—a personality, or a moment of beauty—that otherwise is fleeting. It gives viewers a chance to reflect on our world in a unique way.” [NMH]

34 I NMH Magazine

1. Cadets celebrate at the United States Naval Academy Commencement.

2. An American flag serves as the backdrop for a rally for President George W. Bush in Arkansas.

3. A meeting of the Zionist Church of South Africa.

4. President Barack Obama takes the oath of office in January 2013.

5. Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice presidential candidate and governor of Alaska, stands out at a campaign rally in Lancaster, Penn.

6. Chief Justice John Roberts and his son, Jack, on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court after his investiture ceremony in Washington, D.C. 7. Confession before a Catholic Mass with Pope Benedict XVI at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. 8. Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton.

9. Members of the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army listen to President George W. Bush speak at Fort Campbell, Ky.

To see more photographs, visit www.brookskraft.com.

6

7

+

8

5

9

spring 2013 I 35

A religious scholar who led Northfield with a strong hand, an open mind, and a gentle heart.

Remembering

Mira Wilson

BY SUJEONG SHIN ’79

F

or most people in the Northfield Mount Hermon community today, the name Mira Bigelow Wilson means little, if anything. The principal association may be Wilson Hall, the boxy brick dormitory on the Northfield campus that was built in 1956. But “Miss Wilson,” as she was known, served as the sixth principal of the Northfield School for Girls from 1929 to 1952, and guided the school through years that spanned the Great Depression and World War II. She inspired thousands of young women with her intellect, spiritual sensitivity, and nurturing, open-minded ways.

36 I NMH Magazine

PHOTO: COURTE SY OF NMH ARCHIVE S

spring 2013 I 37

“For a lot of people, Miss Wilson was Northfield,” says Sybil Benton Williamson ’52. “There was an aura about her. Though she was calm and gentle, she cut a commanding figure.

She didn’t walk, she strode, and always her Irish setter at her heels.”

While she was deeply committed to D.L. Moody’s vision of providing young people with a Christian education, Wilson also promoted liberal social policies that advanced Northfield with the times. In June, during reunion weekend, the East Dining Room in Alumni Hall (formerly West Hall) will be officially dedicated in honor of her work at Northfield.

Born on January 13, 1893, to the Reverend Frederick A. and Florence (Nason) Wilson in Andover, Mass., Wilson graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Smith College in 1914 and earned a bachelor of divinity degree from Boston University. Following her graduation, she returned to Smith, where she worked almost a decade as director of religious and social work, class dean, and assistant professor of religion and biblical literature.

Wilson came to Northfield at the invitation of Elliott Speer, who at the time led the school’s board of trustees and who would soon take over the headship at Mount Hermon. He was widely respected as a progressive thinker, and in Wilson, he saw a “likeminded spirit,” according to Peter Weis, NMH’s archivist.

Both Speer and Wilson were committed to making Northfield a nondenominational school, as D.L. Moody had originally intended. When Wilson arrived at Northfield in the fall of 1929, students attended Sunday services in Northfield village at the Trinitarian Congregational Church.

“The Trinitarian church is the evangelical arm of Congregationalism,” says Weis. “It emphasized salvation through

38 I NMH Magazine

prayer. Speer and Wilson shared the more liberal view that doing social justice on Earth is the true essence of Christianity.” By establishing nondenominational services in Northfield’s Sage Chapel in 1933, Wilson achieved an essential element of Moody’s founding vision.

Wilson also understood the value of a coherent campus community, and took concrete steps to build it. When she arrived at Northfield, some students lived in dormitories, but many girls lived off campus, in several large houses on Highland Avenue. Despite the difficulty of asking people for money during the Great Depression, Wilson helped raise the necessary funds for a sizable dormitory, and MerrillKeep opened in the fall of 1937.

While Wilson was known beyond Northfield as a strong educator and administrator—she was awarded honorary degrees by both Smith College and Wilson College—her greatest gifts to students and colleagues occurred on a personal level. “She had an appreciation of every kind of girl, and she didn’t confine her admiration just to the top students,” says Nancy Edmonton Jandl ’39. “She appreciated each girl for her special attributes, saw that potential and encouraged it.”

For most students, daily chapel was the principal way they connected with Wilson. “Her ‘Chapel Talks’ were amazingly good,” Jandl recalls. Wilson delivered hundreds of talks over her 23 years, and her messages were full of wisdom, practicality, and genuine concern for students.

Consider her words on friendship: “Friendship requires the greatest honesty of which people are capable. No faked emotion ever made a friendship flourish. It is easy to whip up our emotions. We must remember that emotion is always costly of nervous, mental, and spiritual strength. Save

it only for the worthwhile things.

Don’t throw it away on trifles.” And on the opposite sex: “You have good I.Q.’s. Keep the reins in your own hands. Don’t let the Jukebox grinding out ‘I want to love you, I want to love, you, I want to love you’ and nothing else get you down. You wouldn’t stand for…a comparable ‘dumbness’ in any other area of life.”

Wilson related stories from the Bible and other spiritual texts to her Chapel Talks, but her tone was never dogmatic or preachy. As Nancy Jandl puts it, “She was not a narrow-minded

Mira B. Wilson was principal of the Northfield School for Girls from 1929 to 1952. She was committed to D.L. Moody’s vision of providing young women with a Christian education, and also to empowering them: “You have good I.Q.’s,” she told them. “Keep the reins in your own hands.”

“

Miss Wilson was not a narrow-minded religious leader. She was spiritual, yes, but so broad-minded, always ready for change and growth.

”

PHOTOS: COURTE SY OF NM H ARCHIVE S

spring 2013 I 39

religious leader. She was spiritual, yes, but so broad-minded, always ready for change and growth.”

Like Elliott Speer, Wilson strongly promoted greater interaction between the sexes. To understand the magnitude of this shift, consider this: In 1925, just four years before Wilson’s arrival, dancing of any kind was strictly forbidden at Northfield. The trustees, however, were becoming more liberal-minded. Though they were not ready to allow dancing between Northfield girls and Mount Hermon boys, they voted to permit Northfield girls to dance with one another at social events. Charles Dickerson, then the principal of Northfield, was so

diagnosed with cancer. In October 1951, she informed the board of trustees that she would retire at the end of the academic year. “That announcement was hard to make,” she wrote. “I felt like a mother deserting her brood.”

Says Sybil Williamson: “I’ll never forget the chapel when Miss Wilson announced that she would be retiring. There was just stunned silence.

Nobody could imagine Northfield without her.” In July 1952, Wilson completed her last day as principal.

Less than a year later, she was dead, at the age of 60.

Not surprisingly, memories of Wilson refused to die. Members of the Northfield class of ’39 created a

“

these writings published with the title Toward Eternity.

Wilson’s poignant words reveal her spiritual and intellectual curiosity, which compelled her to contemplate the meaning of her illness and the certainty of death. When she writes, “It is not easy to accustom one’s self to the realization that extreme physical pain must be faced,” her restraint only highlights the severity of her suffering. On a day when negative thoughts nearly overwhelmed her, she wrote, “Shepard Thou our thoughts, was the only prayer I could murmur, for I soon saw that I must call a halt to this line of thinking or I should be lost.” Again and again, she finds solace in scripture

Though Miss Wilson was calm and gentle, she cut a commanding figure. She didn’t walk, she strode, her Irish setter at her heels. enraged that he resigned in protest.

A quarter of the faculty, mostly senior members, followed. Under Wilson’s leadership, dances between girls and boys and even Sunday parlor dates all became intrinsic elements of the Northfield experience.

Wilson also had a sense of humor, Jandl recalls. “One of my classmates, Charlotte ‘Chick’ Johnson, came back to Northfield after college to teach Latin, and one day, Chick and another faculty member were sitting on the chapel stairs. They thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to roll down the hill?’ Down they went, and when they got to the bottom, there was Miss Wilson. They were horrified. They thought, ‘We’re going to be fired,’ but Miss Wilson smiled and said, ‘Oh, I wish I were young enough to do that.’”

Sadly, this vibrant woman never lived to be old. In 1950, she was

40 I NMH Magazine

scholarship fund to honor her in a way that reflected her compassion and love for Northfield students. Since its inception during the class’s 50th reunion in 1989, the Class of ’39 Mira B. Wilson Fund has helped more than 2,500 students pay for expenses not covered by financial aid—everything from books, testing fees, and tutoring to warm clothing, sports equipment, and travel fees.

Wilson’s spirit also lives on in a stirring account of her illness that she wrote during the last two years of her life. Having lived with such active and disciplined purpose, Wilson found it impossible not to be useful after her resignation from Northfield. Even as she battled the physical pain of her cancer, she wrote with the hope that her story might “allay…apprehension and anxiety for those in a similar case.”

After her death, family and friends had

”

and hymns and the “marvels of the skies and woods and pastures that led me on to their Maker.”

In the last few months of her life, Wilson wrote very few entries. Yet they reveal her strength and the strength of her faith. Just three weeks before her death, which occurred on March 14, 1953, she wrote to a friend: “Although I had expected that my sense of the enduring life of the spirit might easily be worn down by physical pain, I find quite the reverse is true—I never felt more sure that life goes on.” [NMH]

Dedicated Principals In June, NMH will honor Northfield Seminary principal Evelyn Hall along with Mira Wilson, dedicating two dining rooms in Alumni Hall in their names.

Evelyn Hall was 28 years old when D.L. Moody appointed her as Northfieldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s third principal in 1883. The school was 4 years old, with three buildings, meager equipment, and unsettled policies. Hall literally built up the school; she oversaw the construction of a dozen major school buildings, including Marquand Hall, Russell Sage Chapel, and Olivia Music Hall.

Evelyn Hall

During Hallâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tenure of nearly 30 years, the student body grew from 125 girls to 460. She welcomed thousands of students to Northfield and saw more than 600 receive their diplomas.

She helped develop Northfield into a premier academic secondary school, insisting, for example, that Greek be added to Latin in the Classics course.

Hall died on April 14, 1911, at the age of 55. She is buried next to Sage Chapel.

PHOTOS: COURTE SY OF NM H ARCHIVE S

spring 2013 I 41

ALUMNI HALL

Reunion: Making Peace with the Past

by LINDA HOFF IRVIN ’67

Reunions are not for the faint of heart. The reality of aging and the passage of time can clobber you over the head. As another Northfield alumna said to me, describing the first view of classmates from long ago: “It’s like a Fellini movie: If you squint, you can sort of recognize who it is.”

Going to reunions helps me integrate who I was with who I have become, like a braid that weaves together the threads of my life, past and present.

Reunions awaken long-dormant memories of the pain and angst of adolescence, but now, with the eyes of the mom I have become, I have the greatest compassion for the teenage girl I was.

A drive down Main Street and around the Northfield campus jostles my memories and they come tumbling out. They begin at Moore Cottage, where I lived as a student for four years. For some time, when Moore Cottage had morphed into a charming guesthouse, I was able to stay there during reunions.

My visits go something like this: I wander the hallways and in and out of rooms and I visualize my dormmates like ghosts, sitting on their beds or at their desks.

This was Karin’s room, I say to myself, remembering the boxes of butterscotch brownies her mother used to send. I visit the bathroom stall where we used to lock ourselves in at night, sitting on the toilet seats and lifting up our feet so we were invisible if a student cop came looking for us on her nightly rounds.

We snarfed down whole gallons of ice cream—snuck out of the freezer—in those stalls.

I visit each room that I lived in and I see myself and my former dormmates, sometimes in our dummy smocks and caps, looking like the downstairs help in “Downton Abbey,” sometimes with Clearasil smeared on our faces and rollers in our hair before bedtime. I remember having visions of beautiful girls from Seventeen magazine dancing in my head, and thinking that I must be the ugliest teenager on the planet.

So I come back to reunions to relive memories of the teenage girl I was, and to remember with others who were on that peculiar and rich journey with me. In her book One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskomp writes, “Remembering is an act of thanksgiving, this turn of the heart over time’s shoulder…”

Remembering is also a way to find healing. I never will be the perfect girl in Seventeen magazine. And at 63, I’m totally cool with that.

“It’s like a Fellini movie: If you squint, you can sort of recognize who it is.”

42 I NMH Magazine

CALENDAR

May 26 Commencement June 6–9 Reunion 2013* September 7–8 Alumni Council Annual Meeting, Reunion Work Day October 4–5 Fall Family Days

November 11 Bemis-Forslund Pie Race December 8 Christmas Vespers on campus December 19 Christmas Vespers, New York City

*This year, NMH celebrates reunions for alumni whose classes end in the year 3 or 8—notably the 50th reunion for the class of 1963 and the 25th reunion for the class of 1988. Young alumni weekend is June 7–9, Friday through Sunday.

For information about reunion, visit www. nmhschool.org/alumni-1.

P H O T O : D AV I D WA R R E N

The Mini-Man Society StoryCorps, the national nonprofit that records and preserves the stories of everyday people, operates a recording studio in the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. That’s where Al Gilbert ’69 and George Chaltas ’69 shared stories about their Mount Hermon experience—a time when they were thrust into what Gilbert calls “a mini-man society.” Like all StoryCorps recordings, their interview is archived at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

Go Team!

Watching an NMH basketball game is always a draw for current students. Now it’s becoming one for former students, too.

This year, when NMH played games in Providence, Rhode Island, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, dozens of alumni joined parents and other fans in the stands.

Multiple generations of alums were represented at the National Prep Invitational at Rhode Island College, as NMH took on St. Andrew’s School, and at Harvard, where NMH’s players squared off against Harvard’s JV team. “Getting together to cheer for the school is a tangible thing,” says Andrew Heist ’06 of NMH’s Office of Alumni and Parent Programs. “And people like to see how the students are doing now.”

O N S PI R I T U A L I T Y

What I learned about spirituality came from a Bible teacher named Rev. Judson Stent. In class one day, he explained a state of mind in which people are appreciative. Later, I got an inkling of what he was talking about: It was just before a football game; the leaves were falling, and there were those beautiful mountains surrounding us, and I felt an odd connection with everything. I remember thinking, This must be what Judson Stent was talking about. —George Chaltas

ON ROMANCE AND LETTER WRITING

My philosophy was, I don’t date—I marry. I had one girlfriend at a time. And when I did have a girlfriend, I remember almost running to the post office at lunchtime. With one girlfriend, we wrote back and forth virtually every day. I’d open the mailbox and this whiff of perfume would come out from her letter. —Al Gilbert If you were really lucky, you’d get the lipstick mark on the envelope.

That was for special occasions only. —George Chaltas

O N “ S I G N AT U R E ” E X P E R I E N C E S

If I had to pick one, it would be Christmas Vespers. I was in the choir.

There was something safe about that concert. It was in the evening, so it was dark and the chapel was candle-lit. It was quiet. The years between 1964 and 1969 were a pretty turbulent time, with the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., and Vietnam, and our own testosterone raging away. Somehow, at Vespers, all that melted away. —Al Gilbert

For more information about athletic events, visit www. nmhschool.org/athletics.

spring 2013 I 43

PARTING WORDS

A Serious Mistake, A Lesson Learned

by YIFEI GAO ’13

When students speak in Memorial Chapel, they normally do so to share their wisdom or to be praised for their achievement. Either way, they look good. Unlike them, I am here to make a confession.

I have worked hard and stayed up late solely for the purpose of college admission. I have taken every math and science course available at NMH. I have a big dream to become a great, or even the greatest, physicist. For a long time, I thought I could achieve anything.

Last May, my English teacher assigned an optional extra-credit paper.

Initially, I was not going to write it because I was busy preparing for six AP exams. However, only two days before the due date, I realized, after some calculations, that a decent grade on this paper could bring up my average by 0.3.

And if my teacher rounded up to 89.6, I might be able to get an A– instead of a B+. With that motive, I started to draft a paper in a hurry.

Around midnight, I was about to finish the six-page paper, but found one paragraph particularly weak. Maybe because I had been writing continuously for hours, or because I was worn out from those challenging AP exams, or because I was too eager to get that A–, I made a serious mistake. I went online to search for other papers and plagiarized, word for word, three paragraphs from the dissertation of a doctoral candidate at UNC Chapel Hill.

Just one day before summer vacation began, my teacher confronted me. I admitted my bad behavior. I met with the dean and was placed on disciplinary probation (DP).

96 I NMH Magazine

Until I was placed on DP, I had never met any setbacks. I always had been at the top of my class wherever I went to school. I thought I had the ability to achieve whatever I wanted. My ego and my greed for perfection blinded me. A zero grade on my paper, a B– final class grade, and a DP on my record—all my nights of hard work became useless and meaningless. And I had no one to blame except myself.

At NMH, I took as many AP exams as possible and did other unnecessary, stupid things only for the vague purpose of being perfect—in the eyes of my parents, my peers, and college admission officers. What I did not realize was that there is no definition of “perfect.”

“I went online…and plagiarized, word for word, three paragraphs from the dissertation of a doctoral candidate.”

What I chased after so hard was not worth chasing at all. Ten AP scores, a 3.9 GPA, and a high SAT score do not mean anything if I have lost myself in the middle of it all.

True self-esteem, I started to realize, means not caring whether I get an A in the first place. It means not calculating how much I need to score on the next test to secure my grade average. Despite everything that my upbringing has trained me to believe about myself, true

self-esteem means recognizing that the grades I get—and the awards, and the test scores, and the trophies—do not define who I am.

I now understand how important integrity is for an intellectual scholar, and how there is a difference between intelligence and wisdom. I have always been intelligent, but without integrity, I could never be wise. Without integrity, no matter how hard I work, or how intelligent I am, I will fall down like a tree without roots.

I am grateful that I met this setback, because I have learned an important lesson early in my life: that the ability to rise above difficulty is crucial. With support pouring in from teachers, family, and friends, I am ready to face the world. Now that everyone is aware of my shame, I no longer am afraid of behind-the-back rumors. I no longer need to pretend to be someone great.

I no longer feel humiliated speaking about what I have done. I will set out on a new path, with integrity, to realize my dream of becoming a great physicist.

The best way to make good from bad is to do what I can to prevent others from repeating my disaster— not only plagiarism, but also losing oneself, which is even more important. Recently, I was reading an online magazine and one sentence caught my eye and almost made me burst into tears. It said, “The thing that is really hard and really amazing is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.”

This is an adaptation of a speech Yifei Gao delivered at an all-school meeting.

Giving Back IDENTITY FOUND Some students find their niche at Northfield Mount Hermon on a sports team or in a musical ensemble.

SunYung “Yunny” Chung ’13 found hers in an AP calculus class. She started helping her classmates when they got stuck, and eventually, with advanced math skills honed first at home in Korea and then at NMH, she became an official peer tutor. “I’m not an innate mathematician, and I have the experience of really struggling,” she says. “At first, I felt a little ashamed about that, but I began to see that it made me a better tutor.”

Chung was motivated to help her fellow students wrestle with algebra and geometry—and physics and chemistry, too—because she “wanted to be of use to the community,” she says. “When I got to NMH, I was that awkward newcomer who didn’t see where I could fit in. I was a horrible athlete and a horrible singer. But I felt like NMH had trusted my potential, and I wanted to say thank you.”

Chung demonstrated her appreciation even further by donating her tutoring earnings to the NMH Annual Fund. That’s $195 from her junior year—which includes money Chung received from the Mary Peller Math Award—and $200 from the fall semester of her senior year. She pledges that more donations are on the way. “Tutoring has changed me,” Chung says. “It allowed me to find my identity, what I’m really passionate about. I want to pay back NMH for giving me that present.”

SunYung “Yunny” Chung ’13

PHOTO: KATHLEEN DOOHER

nd my u o f I H, eally “At NM , what I’m r ant y identit te about. I w for ol na passio ck the scho ” ba nt. to pay e that prese m giving

NMH

Magazine

One Lamplighter Way Mount Hermon, MA 01354

CHANGE SERVICE REQUESTED PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES

Analogous Colors Self Portrait

by Kevin Ouyang â&#x20AC;&#x2122;15

Nonprofit Org. US Postage PAID Northfield Mount Hermon School